Reading Club Today: Jennifer Government by Max Barry

The group had mixed opinions on  Jennifer Government. Some loved it 'cause Jennifer is "totally kicka$$." Some liked it but didn't get into it soon enough to finish. Some finished but were kind of underwhelmed -- wanted more character development and a timeline to keep all the plotlines straight!

I have always loved this book because it's satirically hilarious in a dry way, and the corporatizm and capatalizm it skewers follow along with my own feelings on the topic. Plus, Max Barry is an Australian married to a librarian -- what's not to love??? (more about that when I tell you about Lexicon, Barry's 2014 Alex Award novel).

Max Barry's third novel, Company, is also in the Paideia Library.

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Info and Links for Today's Club Discussion


Max Barry answers reader questions from Goodreads


Review in the New York Times

Long interview with Max Barry (2005)

NationStates - an online game written by Max Barry (really!) to promote Jennifer Government

Max Barry's website

Jennifer Government extras -- from Max Barry's website (see how the cover got from bad to awesome!)



Trailer for Lexicon, Max Barry's most recent novel

Cute Lil' Critters: Sheep to Shawl

Sarah B's needle felted critters

 A couple of weeks ago, two high school students came by to ask for a plastic bag.  As a librarian, I naturally followed up with a "reference interview," in order to determine what kind of plastic bag would best meet their needs.  Turns out, they had absolutely adorable needle-felted animals made in Magnus Edlund's "Sheep to Shawl" short term class, and were taking them home on a rainy day.  I had to take pictures!

Julia K.'s creations (with special friend)

We don't yet have any books specific to needle felting (Wool Buddies is on the way), but Magnus has a couple I'm sure he'd let you borrow, even if you didn't win the "All About Yarn" experience he and wife Anna offered in the silent auction.  The "Sheep to Shawl" display in the high school commons illustrates the many steps in getting wool from the back of a four-footed animal onto two-footed people -- shearing, carding, spinning, dyeing, weaving or knitting.

Sheep-To-Shawl class exhibit in the High School commons.

We do have several other resources on wool and woolcraft (included felted knits).  Come have a look and get your wool on!

Fournier, Nola.  In Sheep's Clothing: A Handspinners's Guide to Wool.
Galeskas, Beverly.  Felted Knits.
Muir, Sally.  Knit Your Own Dog: Easy to Follow Patterns for 25 Pedigreed Pooches.
Righetti, Maggie.  Knitting in Plain English.
Taylor, Kathleen.  Knit One Felt Too: Discover the Magic of Knitted Felt.
Burgess, Rebecca.  Harvesting Color: How to Find Plants and Make Natural Dyes.

Sheep Station NZ (2 DVD set). Dylan Winter explores a variety of sheep enterprises from all parts of New Zealand.

2014 Awards Reading Report #1: Two Creepy Ones

I'm actually at 5 for 11 in my "personal challenge" to read the ten 2014 Alex Award winners and the 2014 Printz Award winner.   I've read Lexicon, Help for the Haunted,  The Lives of Tao, Mother, Mother, and Midwinterblood.  Today I'm going to tell you about the most recent two -- one compelling, one interesting, and it just so happens that both are kind of creepy.

Mother, Mother was a book I really didn't want to read.  The description --  a "terrifying and page-turning story of a mother’s love gone too far" --  plus author Koren Zailckas' earlier memoir (Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood), and comparisons to the horror/suspense of Shirley Jackson and Daphne DuMarier made me shy away.  I plan to finish out a long life without ever seeing Mommy Dearest, thank you very much.

So it was with some anxiety that I picked it up one Sunday night, needing something to read and pushing myself past stand-by favorites.  Turns out, anxiety was warranted, but not the way I'd feared.  Mother, Mother is gripping and compelling, and I stayed up way too late that night and the next immersed in and captivated by the Hurst family's disintegration.

The Hursts are an seemingly average family of five.  Mom Josephine is strict and runs a tight ship, while Dad seems to be fading from the picture. Being absolutely perfect in every way hasn't precluded college-aged Rose from running away with a mysterious boyfriend - and she's been very good at hiding her trail.  Without Rose, the mortar holding the rest of the family together starts to crumble.  The novel is told in the alternating viewpoints of middle child Violet, who's now trying to be as imperfect as possible, and the youngest, awkward 12-year-old Will, recently diagnosed with Asperger's  (his mother shopped a lot of doctors for the desired opinion).   After a drug-induced violent episode, Violet is in the psych ward and the target of her mother's frustrations, and Will falls more and more under his mother's sway, as ally and lackey.  Dad ignores all while focused on saving himself.

The suspense and horror in the book are in the actions, not the telling of the actions.  I found it surprising and interesting that, for a story with such huge emotional episodes, the tone for both narrators is rather dispassionate and observational, as though they were reporting what they saw but not how it felt.  There is no physical abuse, really, so the reader begins to understand the emotional abuse only through its repetition.  With the gradual discovery of tricks and lies, and a grim enjoyment of cruelty, we realize there is no saving this mom.  Will the other four find a way out?  How far will Josephine go -- how far has she already gone? -- to maintain control, and continue to be a perfect wife and mother in her own eyes?

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US hardback cover

On the other hand, Marcus Sedgwick's Midwinterblood, the 2014 winner of the Michael Printz award, didn't surprise at all.  He's a very smart and talented writer, always leaning to the creepy, supernatural and suspenseful.  Midwinterblood is a haunting, intricately plotted tale of love, longing and sacrifice, told in reverse order through linked and overlapping stories, all taking place on the mysterious Blessed Island, somewhere North Sea and Viking-ish, and intensely remote.  Rumors are that islanders seem to live forever, and in the year 2073, journalist Eric Seven arrives to investigate.  From there, the stories slip back through the centuries, telling their own tales yet making sense of the stories coming before and after, until at last we circle back to the final incarnation of an ages-old bond.

US paperback cover

I find myself thinking about the stories, the characters, how it all fits together, the crafting, and so I know this is no shabby piece of work. But it is one of those times when I wonder about the award it's won, 'cause I can tell you right now this book will sit on our shelf.  It's marketed as a YA novel, and I think that's the wrong market, at least in the US.  However, I challenge you to read it for yourself, and let me know.  I'd be happy to be wrong!

ps -- There seem to be a plethora of covers for this book, and in my opinon the hardback US cover (the one I read) is the least appealing of all. Maybe I would have come to the book in a different mindset with a different cover.  What do you think??

UK paperback cover

Atlanta Reads!

According to the America's Most Literate Cities 2013 study recently released by Central Connecticut State University, Atlanta ranks 4th out of all large cities (250,000+) in the United States, and the only Southern city in the top 10.  We've moved up from 8th place in 2012. Could it be due to all the reading our High School teachers have done in the past couple of years?

I was looking in the "What I'm Reading Now" folder on my laptop, and was kind of surprised at how many book cover images I've distributed since fall of 2012.   Twenty-one high school teachers (including me) are participating; I've got over a hundred images in that folder, and I know there are several missing (some clues are in last winters's "Caught Reading" post).  Check out the long list below.

Whatever Atlanta's doing right, let's keep doing it!

What are YOU reading now???

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What We've Been Reading

12 Years a Slave   by Solomon Northup
36 Arguments for the Existence of God  by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

The Elegance of the Hedgehog  by Muriel Barbery

A Walk in the Woods  by Bill Bryson

After Dark  by Haruki Murakami

Alone Together  by Sherry Turkle

The App Generation  by Howard Gardner & Katie Davis

Augusta Played  by Kelly Cherry

Bangkok Noir  edited by Christopher S. Moore

Banquet at Delmonicos  by Barry Werth

Beautiful Ruins  by Jess Walter

The Best American Poetry 2013

Biko  by Donald Woods

Bill Veek: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick  by Paul Dickson

A Short History of Nearly Everything  by Bill Bryson

One Summer: America 1927  by Bill Bryson

The Bone Bed  by Patricia Cornwell

The Moonstone  by Wilkie Collins

The Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin  by Jill Lepore

Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain  by Daniel Siegel

Charming Billy by Alice McDermott

Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21^st Century  by Christian Caryl

Clemente  by the Clemente family

Cooked  by Michael Pollan

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter  by Tom Franklin

The Culture of Defeat  by Wolfgang Schivelsbusch

Curtsies and Conspiracies  by Gail Carriger

Dear Life  by Alice Munro

Death of a Red Heroine  by Qiu Xiolong

Dust of 100 Dogs by A. S. King

One Foot in Eden  by Ron Rash

The English Girl by Daniel Silva

Every Day by David Levithan

The Fault in Our Stars  by John Green

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

Flying Too High  by Kerry Greenwood

The Forger’s Spell  by Edward Dolnick

Fractured  by Karen Slaughter

From Beirut to Jerusalem  by Thomas Friedman

The Gardner Heist  by Ulrich Boser

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief  by Lawrence Wright

The Good Lord Bird  by James McBride

Gospel of Freedom: MLK, Jr.’s Letters from Birmingham Jail

The Heart of Everything That Is  by Bob Drury & Tom Clavin

A History of Food in 100 Recipes  by William Sitwell

I Am Malala  by Malala Yousafzai

Idiot America  by Charles P. Pierce

In Human Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World  by David Bryon Davis

The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death & Detection  by Judith Flanders

Jennifer Government  by Max Barry

The Language of Bees  by Laurie R. King

Glitz  by Elmore Leonard

Lexicon  by Max Barry

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
The Lincoln Lawyer  by Michael Connelly

Little Bee  by Chris Cleave

The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren  by Iona & Peter Opie

Lowland  by Jhumpa Lahiri

Mao’s Great Famine  by Frank Dikotter

Legend  by Marie Lu

Middlesex  by Jeffrey Eugenides

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children  by Ransom Riggs

Norwegian Wood  by Haruki Murakami

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth & Happiness  by Richard H. Thaler

Nurture Shock  by Po Bronson

On These Courts  by Wayne B. Drash

The Orphan Master’s Son  by Adam Johnson

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Book Shop  by Robin Sloan

The Battle of the Labyrinth  by Rick Riordan

A Person of Interest  by Susan Choi

The Last Picture Show  by Larry McMurtry

Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking   by Michael Ruhlman

Reservation Blues  by Sherman Alexie

The Savage Detectives  by Roberto Bolaño

Serena  by Ron Rash

The Shining  by Stephen King

Steve Jobs  by Walter Isaacson

Stiff: The Curios Lives of Human Cadavers by  Mary Roach

Suite Française  by Irene Nemirovsky

Suspect  by Robert Crais

Swamplandia!  by Karen Russell

Sweet Tooth  by Ian McEwan

The Lives of Tao  by Wesley Chu

The Bingo Palace  by Louise Erdrich

The Wedding  by Dorothy West

The Last Olympian  by Rick Riordan

The Burgess Boys  by Elizabeth Strout

The City and the City  by China Mieville

The Maid’s Version  by Daniel Woodrell

The Mayor of Casterbridge  by Thomas Hardy

The Tilted World  by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fenelly

The Lightning Thief  by Rick Riordan

Thieves’ Quarry   by D. B. Jackson

The Highest Tide  by Jim Lynch

The Titan’s Curse  by Rick Riordan

The Vision of a Champion  by Anson Dorrance and Gloria Averbuch

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty  by James Thurber

The Golem and the Jinni  by   Helene Wecker

Where’d You Go, Bernadette?  by Maria Semple

White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of 
     Modern Conservatism  by Kevin Kruse

Wild  by Cheryl Strayd

Winger  by Andrew Smith

World War Z  by Max Brooks

The World We Found by Thrity Umrigar

4/21/2104 (post-spring break!) additions

Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest 
     to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York  by Richard Zacks
The Interestings  by Meg Wolitzer
The Round House  by Louise Erdrich
The Golden Notebook  by Doris Lessing
Case Histories  by Kate Atkinson
 Regeneration   by Pat Barker
The Dreyfus Affair  by Peter Lefcourt
Cesar Chavez  by Miriam Pawel
Room by Emma Donohue
Female Trouble  by Antonya Nelson
Boy, Snow, Bird  by Helen Oyeyemi
The Cigarette Century: The Rise and Fall of the Drug that Defined America   by Allan Brandt

Year Zero: A History of 1945  by Ian Buruma
Chronicle of a Death Foretold  by Gabriel García Marquez

Reading Clubs Update: Books for March

The junior high reading club is reading a favorite of mine this month:  Marcelo in the Real World  by Francisco X. Stork (ebook link here).  The coming-of-age tale of an Asberger's-ish teenager, there is a tiny bit of mystery, a dash of romantic interest, and a whole lot of looking at life through atypical eyes.  I wrote enthusiastically about it when I first read it in 2010, and I predict the club members will really like it as well.

High school reading club members voted before winter break to read Jennifer Government, a sardonic futuristic thriller by Max Barry.  To quote from the blurb:

In Max Barry’s twisted, hilarious vision of the near future, the world is run by giant American corporations (except for a few deluded holdouts like the French); taxes are illegal; employees take the last names of the companies they work for; The Police and The NRA are publicly-traded security firms; the U.S. government may only investigate crimes if they can bill a citizen directly. It’s a free market paradise! 

 Three guesses for which entity Jennifer G. works (of course the last two don't count).  She takes the investigation when hapless Hack Nike discovers his contract requires assassinating teenagers to build gangsta' cred for his employer's new line of luxury sneakers.  Another intriguing mystery -- what does the barcode tattoo under Jennifer's eye mean??

The library also has Jennifer Government in an audiobook edition.

Have you read either of these?  Write your review in the comments, please!