Jepp, Who Defied the Stars

First of all, that title. Don't you want to read it for that? And if not that, then the design, because what a lovely cover! And the end-pages, and the blue text...it may all be artifice, but it is charming artifice.

I've been reading a lot of this book out loud to myself. It slows me down, and there are just some people whose words you want to say out loud. Katherine Marsh is one of those people. I've mentioned before the language of Mervyn Peake in his Gormenghast trilogy - the way he lavishes words on his readers; I don't think Marsh is quite up to Peake's standards, but she doesn't shy away from the vocab. Especially given that this is, ostensibly, a young adult novel (I can see some teen readers struggling with the language, as well as the shifts in time and tense).

At this point, I'm about a third of the way in. Beyond the language, I'm finding the story pretty engaging, although I don't know (at this point) if it would make my year-end top 10 (that's a thing I should do, right?). If it gets really good over the next 200+ pages, I'll be back with more information. Otherwise, next up is probably going to be Lovely, Dark and Deep by Amy McNamara (yes, I'm incredibly bothered by the lack of an Oxford comma there).

So Long

How long I've been away, that is. I haven't entirely given up on this (though, let's be honest, I probably should).

I didn't even check to see what the last book I posted about was...it's been far too long to catch up. But the last book I read was this one:

Kristin Cronin-Mills' Beautiful Music for Ugly Children.

It's about Gabe, a trans boy with a serious music obsession, growing up in southern Minnesota. The book follows Gabe's final days of high school and the summer after graduation as he struggles with coming out and being out and tests out his dream of being a radio DJ. 

Let me say first of all that I tend to be a little biased toward books set in Minnesota. I can't help it. That said, it would be a pretty darn good book no matter where it was set. It's an important story to be telling (there just isn't much out there dealing with trans issues for young adults), it avoids a super-easy happy ending (thank God - I was worried that Gabe would get absolutely everything he wanted), and it's relatable, even for kids who aren't dealing with coming out of the closet. I think most of us have felt like the person we know ourselves to be isn't visible to those around us and have been frustrated when our attempts to make other people really see us go awry. 

Honestly, my biggest problem with this book is a pretty nit-picky thing from early on - Gabe and his mentor are debating music and Cronin-Mills offers some simplistic explanations of who these musical giants are. First, I don't like the assumption that Merle Haggard needs to be explained. Second, and more importantly, the explanations discourage exploration. If I didn't know who Merle Haggard was and read an argument about his greatness, I would feel compelled to do a little research and listen to some new music and I might discover something incredible. When you're writing about music, you should make me want to listen to it. (The best example I can give is the way Daniel Handler wrote about Hawk Davies in Why We Broke Up. I wanted to hear his music and understand what Min was talking about and I was kind of devastated to discover that he didn't exist.) But like I said, this is nit-picky and really, it's only a problem in the first chapter. 

In sum, read it.