don’t look for alaska in tennessee

don’t look for alaska in tennessee

May 09

One of the books I’ve read recently but not reviewed is John Green’s Looking for Alaska. I follow the author on Twitter (@realjohngreen) and yesterday he tweeted this link to a news story about a school district in Tennessee that banned his book. So now I’m forced to turn my erstwhile review of Looking for Alaska into a ranty rant about book banning, but that’s okay because rants are good for the soul.

But first, let me tell you about this book, because I loved it. It’s about this kid, Miles, AKA Pudge, who collects people’s last words and is basically bored with his life, so he decides to go to the same boarding school where his father went long ago. His roommate is nicknamed The Colonel, and the other two main people in this group of friends are Takumi and Alaska. Alaska is the only girl in the group, and she’s feisty, damaged, a little bitter, mischievous, and sexy as all get-out, at least to Miles. The group is constantly breaking the rules, doing things they’re not supposed to do, generally causing varying degrees of trouble, until finally one of them makes one bad decision too many and they all have to suffer the consequences.

It’s not like the plot is that surprising, but I don’t want to spoil it here. The book is organized around this one catastrophic event, and the first part of the book is a countdown to the days leading up to it, while the latter part of the book is the story of what happened in the days following. There’s enough foreshadowing that you can pretty much tell something big is going to happen.

So if you don’t want to know any more about what happens in the book, you should stop reading now, because I’m about to get my rant on.

The objectionable part of Looking for Alaska really boils down to two pages of a horribly awkward, bumbling, mostly disastrous oral sex scene. See, Miles has the biggest crush in the world on Alaska, but Alaska has a boyfriend, Jake, who’s older and doesn’t go to their school. Miles settles for Lara, a fellow student, as his love interest. I mean, I say he settles for her, which is true at first, but I do think he ends up kindof actually liking her a lot. Just not as much as he likes Alaska. Anyway, Lara wants to prove up her girl powers and so offers to give Miles a blow job, which he happily accepts, except that Lara really doesn’t know what she’s doing at all, and the whole thing is just pretty hilarious when you think about it. Unless you live in Sumner County, Tennessee, in which case it’s THE DEVIL’S WORK AND MUST BE BANNED WE MUST PROTECT THE CHILDREN OMG.

But, as is wont to happen, in its rush to protect the children from reading anything about oral sex ever (which will obviously keep them from ever learning about it from any source ever, duh), the school district in Sumner County ignores multiple larger, positive takeaways from Looking for Alaska. I believe we call this throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Let me tell you what all was in the bathwater.

First, can we just talk for a second about the big tragedy around which the entire structure of the book is based? So the kids drink regularly, some more than others, and one night they play a game of Truth or Dare and get pretty drunk. Alaska and Miles finally kiss, and then she falls asleep but is woken up later by the phone. Suddenly she is distraught and convinces Miles and The Colonel to distract the school’s Dean long enough that she can leave campus, and she winds up dying in a car accident. Miles and The Colonel spend the rest of the book trying to figure out (1) why she felt the need to leave campus so suddenly, (2) whether her death was accidental or a suicide, and (3) how to best memorialize Alaska at the end of the school year.

The takeaway here, of course, is an anti-drunk-driving message. I feel like that’s a message we can all get behind, right? But that’s completely overshadowed by this oral sex scene that takes up two pages of a pretty fantastic book. I mean, nobody really wants to think about their kid reading crap about blow jobs. I don’t. Gross. But honestly, raise your hand if you actually think your teenager has NO CLUE that blow jobs are even a thing.

*crickets*

That’s what I thought. Of course they already know about them. If they don’t, it’s because you’ve had them in a bubble for twelve years. Shame on you. Bubble life is unrealistic and you’re not doing your kids any favors by keeping them in there. They’ll never grow up to be functioning, contributing members of society if you never let them out. How will they ever learn to make good choices if you make all their choices for them?

A second overarching message in Looking for Alaska is this idea that sometimes you take risks and you get away with them, and sometimes you don’t. And sometimes those risky behaviors lead to disaster. You, dear teenagers, are not bulletproof, no matter how unconquerable you feel. I remember what it’s like to be a teenager. The concept of mortality is the farthest thing from your mind. I think it’s worthwhile sometimes for kids to be reminded, for example, that you may drink and drive successfully eleventy billion times, but on the eleventy-billionth-and-first time you (and/or someone else) might end up dead. That’s why you shouldn’t do it. Plus, it’s illegal. And by the way? Odds are that you won’t end up dead from oral sex.

To me, showing kids that actions sometimes have bad consequences is a good thing. To me, what’s damaging is a story line that has kids making bad choices or taking risks and never really having any negative fall-out from it. The Twilight books are a perfect example. Girls reading those books are basically told that (1) it’s normal to fall head-over-heels in love with a guy who’s completely unavailable and also inherently dangerous, (2) when he behaves in the creepiest of ways it’s not because he’s a stalker but because he loves you so much he wants to drink your blood, (3) when he breaks up with you and leaves you alone in a forest, the appropriate reaction is to mope and isolate yourself from all of society for months on end, and (4) eventually, if you mope long enough and engage in enough risky behavior, he’ll come back to you and stop being a fucking weirdo sparkly stalker. See? All’s well that ends well. Life is a bowl of cherries. Happily ever after. La la la la.

The third big theme of Looking for Alaska revolves around a search for meaning. Miles collects famous last words, and among his favorites are the dying words of Francois Rabelais: “I go to seek a Great Perhaps.” Alaska repeatedly refers to the “labyrinth of life” that she’s trying to find a way out of. Alaska is plagued by the circumstances of her mother’s death and struggles with the (misplaced) guilt she feels because she didn’t/couldn’t save her mother’s life. After her death, Miles and The Colonel then look for the meaning of Alaska’s death, seeking to understand both the source of her despair and the intent, if any, behind her death.

I mean, there’s a reason that “teen angst” is a common cliché. It’s because we’ve all felt it. Being a teenager is hard enough even when you have a mostly perfect life. When your life is fucked up in some way, it just makes it worse. The idea in Looking for Alaska is that even if you think your life is fucked up beyond repair, even if you have no idea why you’re here or what your purpose is, your life has worth. And sometimes we can find meaning in the darkest of places.

OKIE DOKIE. I think I’ve ranted myself out now. Do I think this is an appropriate book for the K-6 age group? Nope. I sure don’t. Do I think it’s appropriate for all kids even above that age? Nope. But do I think school districts are missing the big picture by banning a book based on two pages of novice oral sex? Absolutely.

I gave Looking for Alaska five stars on Goodreads and it gets nine hearts here.

two shorties

two shorties

May 08

I’m hesitant to write much about Let’s Pretend This Never Happened because I don’t want to spoil the hilarity, and I know you’re going to read this book because I told you yesterday that it’s the funniest book I’ve ever read. I mean it. Go buy it. Then read it and cackle. Then buy a few copies to give away. You and your friends can thank me later.

So instead of talking about what I’m reading now, I’m going to do two short reviews of books I read earlier this year that fell into the craziest-semester-of-all-time crack and never got discussed much.

First up is Volt, by Alan Heathcock. It’s a collection of short stories, which I really don’t read that much but am trying to make a concerted effort to start reading, and I really liked it a lot. The stories are dark and disturbing and sad and scary. They all revolve around a town called Krafton, and a lot of the characters intertwine, though some don’t. One guy accidentally kills his son and sortof just starts walking and doesn’t stop. In another story, a guy kills another guy because he wouldn’t move his truck off to the side of the one-lane road on which they were traveling. In fact, I think pretty much every story in Volt deals with death and/or evil in some way.

One of the recurring characters is Sheriff Helen, who has to serve a warrant on this guy Jorgen for failure to appear on a case in a different county. She has this conversation with Jorgen’s mom, who explains that Jorgen is “the best of all of us” as opposed to her other son, Harlan, who once beat the shit out of a dog.

‘You think some are just bad or evil or whatnot, but somewhere along the way they was someone’s baby, suckling the teat like anybody. Then something puts a volt in ‘em and they aint the same no more.’

I really liked Volt and I look forward to reading more of Alan Heathcock’s writing. If you’re interested in short stories, this is a great pick. 8 hearts.

Next is The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides. This was my first Eugenides, and I was super excited about it because my friend K like LOVES Eugenides. There is a good chunk of this book devoted to semiotics, which I wrote about here, and the characters are sortof generally unlikeable, but you know what? I really liked this book. I remember being on the edge of my seat for the last 125-150 pages or so, and I was so invested in the otherwise unlikeable characters that I was a little bit nauseated with anticipation of what was going to happen. I suppose that’s the mark of a good story—when you don’t really even like the people but you’re dying to know what happens to them. The pacing of the story is pretty much perfection, in that I don’t recall any horribly boring parts (though the bit about semiotics may have been so traumatic that I’ve blocked it completely) and the pace quickens toward the end of the book.

I still haven’t read anything else of his, but I do own both of his other books, so maybe I’ll get around to one of them sooner rather than later. This one also gets 8 hearts.

all the things

all the things

May 07

I am continually amazed at my ability to sit on my couch with the intention of writing a blog post and instead stare at my walls/dogs/computer screen/cuticles for hours. Like, lterally, for hours. It’s almost completely out of my control, too. I’ve tried to write this blog post for three nights in a row and given up each time after getting lost on the internets looking for memes or gifs to go along with this blog post, which in reality lacks a an actual topic, which of course makes it hard to find the perfect funny picture to supplement.

So here’s one that made me giggle, apropos of nothing.

see more Gifs

*****

So on Thursday I had my last law school class ever. That’s kinda weird. Just two final exams and a set of paper revisions stand between me and that J.D. Which does me absolutely no good until I pass the bar exam, which I take in July, the results of which don’t come out until November.

*****

Speaking of the bar exam, about two years ago I promised NK (my daughter) that we’d go on a trip after I take the bar exam. We had the hardest time deciding where we wanted to go, but we finally settled on Hawaii and booked our flights and hotel last week. HAWAII, BABY. I’ve been saving up for this trip for two solid years and it’s going to be so so so so so so cool. We’re spending three nights in Maui and three nights in Honolulu. I can hardly wait.

*****

Any day now, I’m going to be an aunt again. The other night I dreamed about my soon-to-be-breathing-oxygen niece, and then I woke up with the worst pain in my inner thigh/hip area that just would NOT go away. Like, it was so bad I was holding my breath. And then I remembered that when I was in labor with NK, after I’d had my first epidural, there was this one area that I could still feel and it hurt SO BAD it made me cry real tears. So then they gave me a second epidural and it made the pain go away but I couldn’t move my legs for hours afterwards. Anyway, that exact spot where I had labor pain is where I had pain the other night in my sleep. So I was like hey, that’s weird, the only other time I’ve had pain in that spot is wh…ZOMG I bet this is me being a psychic and my sister-in-law is actually in labor AS WE SPEAK I HURT. It’s a sign!

Alas, I still have no niece. Nor do I have psychic powers, as it turns out. DANG IT ALL.

*****

I’m reading Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson, AKA The Bloggess, and I’m telling you right now it’s the funniest book I’ve ever read. EVER. I sortof want to give a copy of it to about 50 of my friends. It’s fantastic. I have to go with my mom to a doctor’s appointment tomorrow and I’m anticipating a couple of hours or more in the waiting room, but I can’t decide if I want to try to read LPTNH and risk the cold, skeptical glances of the humorless people in the waiting room when I cackle. Because this book makes me cackle, and not just a little but a lot.

*****

I feel like there’s more stuff going on but I’m already at the tl;dr stage with this post. The main thing you need to know is GRADUATION IS COMING.