Kylie's Book Log

I'm back! I'm going to pick up my book count where I left off because, although I did read some new books between March 10th and now, of course, I was doing a lot of rereading, because I was feeling yucky, mood-wise, and when I am feeling yucky I default to a lot of rereading. I don't remember what-all I read, so I'm just going to start at 35.

Book: 35
Title: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (obv.)
Author: J.K. Rowling
Genre: Juvie fiction, fantasy
One-sentence summary: Harry Potter has to defeat Lord Voldemort while struggling to deal with the fact that as a character and even as a protagonist, Snape is way cooler than Harry is.
Why did you get this book? It's the end of the Harry Potter series. I find myself rolling my eyes at the template here.
Do you like the cover? Yeah. I sort of wonder whether Mary Grand-Pre drew it entirely alone; the covers on the first three or so weren't that impressive, and then as the furor over the series began to heat up the covers started getting better, and this final one is much more skillfully done than the first one. Maybe they paid her more to have her give more of a shit, I dunno.
Did you enjoy the book? It's a complicated question, given that it's the last book in this series, especially as the expectations were so high. I read it all and kept turning the pages, and there were parts that were really great (the scene in the Ministry springs to mind). And then there were parts that were really not great at all (the scene in Gringotts springs to mind). Her characterization is on-again-off-again, and in terms of plot, I had some major objections to certain parts of it and was quite happy with the way she resolved other parts. It wasn't perfect, but it was fun, and I liked it fine. (For the purposes of this review, by the way, we are ignoring the existence of the epilogue. I think the world will be an immeasurably better place if we just pretend that epilogue never existed.) Long, disjointed, and spoilery review here.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? I will get that encyclopedia thing she says she will be writing, whenever she chooses to write it.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Keeping.
Anything else? Not that can't be seen in the long spoilery review.
Number of pages: 760
Total pages for the year: 10404
Scale of 1 to 10: 7/8

Book: 36
Title: Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement
Author: Tanya Erzen
Genre: Sociology, anthropology, ethnology, queer studies, religion. Etc.
One-sentence summary: Tanya Erzen spent close to a year studying New Hope, an all-male residential "ex-gay" program based on the premise that homosexuality is inherently antithetical to living a Christian life and that homosexuality can be "cured" with the help of their program. This book, which was originally her dissertation, puts forth what she learned there with the sensitive but dispassionate attitude of a good social scientist.
Why did you get this book? I read about it on salon.com ages ago and was really struck by the tone of the Salon article: I was so used to liberals having nothing but knee-jerk scorn for the ex-gay movement, and yet the Salon article really took the trouble to explore the nuances of the issue. Since Salon is often not given to terribly nuanced or original analysis when left to its own devices, I was really interested in reading the book that had spurred that review.
Do you like the cover? It's fine - a bride and groom walking into a church. It's a photo from gettyimages.com, so maybe I'm reading into it too much, but there seemed to be a subtle tension in the posture of the bride and groom as they stand side by side that's in keeping with the content of the book.
Did you enjoy the book? Tremendously. This is a really, really interesting piece of sociological research, guys. What I loved most about it was that Erzen didn't go in to prove a point. She had enough theoretical grounding in sociology/anthropology in general and in queer studies in particular that she knew what she was doing, but she went in to learn, rather than to find evidence to support an already-developed viewpoint. As such, this isn't a book about how the ex-gay movement is horrible and it lies to people and it damages people's psyches irreversibly and it should be shut down immediately, like some of the books on the subject. Nor is it a piece of propaganda for the ex-gay movement; it's not politically motivated at all. It's a thoughtful exploration of an issue that's much more complex than most people see it as being. The question, of course, is whether gays can change; the program answers "yes," while most contemporary gay activist programs say "no". I will insert my own viewpoint here and say that queer theory would give a pretty unequivocal "yes" as well: if we assume that sexuality and gender are both fluid and exist on a continuum, why *wouldn't* people be able to change? Erzen looks at the scientific background of the ex-gay movement and explains that the treatment at New Hope, the specific program where she did her fieldwork, is based in the idea that homosexuality exists as the result of "gender deficits" - i.e., that the men in the program were raised with insufficient models of masculinity and that they need healthy male-male relationships and retraining in masculine behavior in order to exist as straight. That, to me, is where the program falls down - the assumption that homosexuality is the result of a deficit of masculinity (or femininity, in women) has been pretty well disproven (the person who developed the theory hadn't actually done any direct research - it was all strictly theoretical). It seemed to be focused on teaching men not to be attracted to other men, rather than on teaching men to be attracted to women, and to me that's backwards. But what I loved about the book was that Erzen was able to divorce her analysis of the inadequacies in the "science" behind the ex-gay movement from her perception of the people in the program. She was able to accept that the men in the program had made a choice to abandon their previous lifestyles because they felt their faith was more important. She made it clear to the men that she wanted to learn from them, and as they warmed to her and came to understand that she wasn't there to judge them, they opened up to her. In the end, she doesn't give you any predetermined conclusions, except for a strong final chapter in which she demonstrates how the ex-gay movement has been hijacked by hardcore fundamentalists like James Dobson and how much that upset a lot of the men in the program, who felt their personal struggles were being misinterpreted and twisted into propaganda for an anti-gay movement that they didn't necessarily support: many of them were not interested in trying to convert other people, they were just trying to live their own lives as best they knew how. I don't mean to imply that she whitewashes the fact that many of these men grew up in stern fundamentalist homes/atmospheres that colored their thinking about the issues, because that's in the book too. The thing is that in the end, Erzen leaves it up to the reader to decide what they think of the movement and of the choice these men are making. What she's doing is providing us with a really complex and well-researched portrayal of what the ex-gay movement looks like from the inside, and I found it incredibly valuable and thought-provoking.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? Yes. She hasn't written anything else yet, but I'd be interested to see what else she publishes. If it's on a subject I'm interested in, I'm there.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? It's a library book, but I may get my own copy at some point.
Anything else? The only thing that I wished Erzen had done more of in this book would have been to put direct transcriptions of interviews with program members in the narrative. I don't know if it really would have fit, but I would have liked to get to know each of the men in the program a little better. We got to know them somewhat, of course, but I would have liked to read case studies on each of them, honestly. I got to wondering if I should work on something like that.
Number of pages: 293
Total pages for the year: 10697
Scale of 1 to 10: 9

Book: 37
Title: Purple Hibiscus
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Genre: Fiction
One-sentence summary: In the frightening political chaos of modern-day Nigeria, fifteen-year-old Kambili finds herself torn between the need to please her abusive and religiously fanatical father and her growing desire to find her own voice, encouraged by her independent-minded aunt and a magnetic young parish priest.
Why did you get this book? I'd read a short story by Adichie in This Is Not Chick Lit and decided I had to read more by her.
Do you like the cover? Yeah, it draws the eye.
Did you enjoy the book? I did, although it picked up steam as it went on. At first I thought the portrayal of the dynamics of an abusive home seemed a little facile, but it stopped seeming so as I went on. I do think that "facile" is a good word for a few things she did in the book - at the beginning of the book Kambili was so utterly controlled by her father, but she started to be able to abandon those thought patterns in something like a week spent with her aunt, which I found to be unrealistic given how abusive her father was. That would have been easily fixed by expanding the time frame a bit, though, and the characterization and the family dynamics were well handled. It also got me interested in learning more about the current political situation in Nigeria, and anything that gets me interested in learning something new is a good thing in my book.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? The only thing I'd read before was the short story. Half of a Yellow Sun looks really good and I will almost certainly get it from the library soon.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Another library book, and another one I may get my own copy of.
Anything else? Not really, except that I bet I'll recommend this book to a lot of people.
Number of pages: 320
Total pages for the year: 11017
Scale of 1 to 10: 8/9

Book: 38
Title: The Abortionist's Daughter
Author: Elisabeth Hyde
Genre: Fiction, women's fiction, mystery
One-sentence summary: When the outspoken doctor at an abortion clinic is murdered, the investigation into her death is complicated by the complex dynamics within her family and by her controversial position within the community.
Why did you get this book? The title grabbed my interest, and I picked it up and was utterly hooked by the first sentence: "The problem was, Megan had just taken the second half of the ecstasy when her father called with the news." First sentence: A+
Do you like the cover? It's fine - a sweater crumpled by the edge of a pool - but I'm irked because there was a lovely little bit of a description at the beginning of the book where they talked about the sweater crumpled by the pool and how the character's purple flipflops were lying near it, their heels darkened with sweat. I am very annoyed that they didn't put the flipflops on the cover.
Did you enjoy the book? I did. At first I was *really* enjoying it: her writing was fresh and sparkling and her characterization was great and her plot was gripping and I was thrilled because I thought I'd discovered another mystery novelist to love - I like really good mystery-genre fiction, but thus far Dennis Lehane is the only novelist who consistently grabs me, with Sarah Dunant coming in second and Ruth Rendell dragging behind in the rear. There's no one else I've read that I find to be worth bothering with at all, so I was excited about Elisabeth Hyde. But then the book kind of fell apart as it went on - her writing went from sparkling to flat, her characterization became inconsistent, and she threw in a truly heinous plot twist that ruined a lot of the last half of the book for me. I wound up enjoying it, but not loving it.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? Yeah, she was new to me. I may or may not read something else by her; I did like this, and yet it's hard to like a book so much at the beginning and find yourself so disappointed by the end.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Another library book. I might pick this up if I see it being sold used and for cheap somewhere.
Anything else? Not really.
Number of pages: 304
Total pages for the year: 11321
Scale of 1 to 10: 7/8