Who Says America Isn't Reading?

I hear complaints all the time that Americans are no longer reading, yet reading trends have swept the country. First it was Harry Potter, and now it is Twilight. Evidence of our country's love for Twilight came in the form of a list of the most popular names for babies in 2009 (the link here is to the article on MSNBC). The top two names in our country are Isabella and Jacob. While Edward didn't make the top list, a surprising leap of the name Cullen came from 2008 to 2009. I wonder why Harry, Ron, and Hermione didn't top the lists of the preceding years...

The Twilight phenomenon fascinates me. I am one of the many readers in our country (and beyond) who gulped the books down when they came out, but now looking back on the series, I get bugged by themes presented in the books. I get mad that Bella is such a wishy-washy character, and I feel that the love presented in the books is an idealized, yet archaic form of what love could be. It's funny how angry I get, but I can't deny the addictive nature of the books. I know that if I were to pick up Twilight right now, I would read all four books without stopping all over again. Just like I know I can't pick up the first Harry Potter without continuing on to read all seven books in the series. (As a side note, I do not think Twilight holds a candle to the Harry Potter series. I'm simply using it as a comparison.)

Do you have any books like that in your life? Ones that if you take the time to think about them, you wouldn't want to read them, yet you still love them?

Voting for the book I'll be reading once I finish my current one is still going on in the left-hand sidebar. Please make your way over there to cast your vote so you can have a say in what book I'll read next.

Happy reading!

My Sister's Keeper: A plot that could only happen in America?

This week I started reading My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult.  I had previously heard of Jodi Picoult's novels because many of my students are fans of her books, but this is the first book I've read of hers.  I chose this particular one to start reading because the movie (also called My Sister's Keeper) based on the book came out during the summer (I'm waiting until it hits Netflix to see it), and I have a compulsion to read books before seeing the movies based on them.  Luckily for me, my sister had given me the book for Christmas last year, so I didn't have to go far to get the book.

For anyone unfamiliar with the plot, a couple's young daughter is diagnosed with leukemia, and no one in their family is a perfect match for the daughter to be able to give her blood, platelets, marrow, organs, or anything else she might need to fight the leukemia.  The doctor working on the case tells the parents that using any non-related donor increases the risk of something going wrong with transfusions or transplants.  So what does the couple do?  They go to other doctors to genetically engineer an embryo that will be a perfect match for their sick daughter.  Once the other daughter is born, her predetermined job is to play the role as her sister's lifelong donor.  That's the backdrop to the story, which has its own twists and turns once you get into the plot; however, for my purposes in this blog, if what I've written here is all you know about the book, it will be enough.

As I am reading the book, one question keeps running through my head: "Could this only happen in America?"  Our culture has such a hard time saying goodbye to someone when it's necessary that we have become a culture that mourns the death of household pets (Hallmark even makes sympathy cards now for the loss of a pet) and that is afraid to use the word die in most polite situations, preferring instead the euphemistic pass on (as in He passed on last year).  It is not difficult to imagine, then, American parents who are so afraid to let go of one daughter that they genetically engineer another daughter to save her, without wondering if their next daughter would ever have a chance at life.  In the book, almost every time the daughter with leukemia gets sick and is hospitalized, the donor daughter has to be hospitalized, too, so that she can provide whatever it is her sister's body requires to go back into remission.  Would this be a plausible plot in other cultures?  Or is it just America that tries its hardest to not deal with death?

Not only do we, as Americans, have a hard time dealing with death, we also have a hard time dealing with disease in general.  The following passage was taken from page 131 of My Sister's Keeper:

There was this kid in my school, Jimmy Stredboe, who used to be a total loser.  He got zits on top of his zits; he had a pet rat named Orphan Annie; and once in science class he puked into the fish tank.  No one ever talked to him, in case dorkhood was contagious.  But then one summer he was diagnosed with MS.  After that, no one was mean to Jimmy anymore.  If you passed him in the hall, you smiled.  If he sat next to you at the lunch table, you nodded hello.  It was as if being a walking tragedy canceled out ever having been a geek.

From the moment I was born, I have been the girl with the sick sister.  All my life bank tellers have given me extra lollipops; principals have known me by name.  No one is ever outright mean to me.

It makes me wonder how I'd be treated if I were like everyone else.

The community doesn't know how to react to the family because one of their five members was diagnosed with a fatal disease.  In fact, the family members often don't know how to act around each other (not knowing what they can say or what they should do).  The parents especially have a hard time relating to their non-sick kids with most of their energy focused on keeping their daughter with leukemia in remission.  The "emotionally absent parents" syndrome is reminiscent of a recent post on Angieville that focused on prevalent bad parenting in young adult novels (though Jodi Picoult's book is not classified as YA, it focuses on telling the story of the 13-year-old donor daughter).  Is the inability to deal with disease unique to the American culture?  Or do people from other cultures also completely shut down and forget how to be an interactive human once someone who has a disease crosses their path?

In the mid-1990s, a movie called The Cure explored the relationship between a young boy who has AIDS and his best friend (who is also his neighbor).  When the young boy with AIDS and his mother move into a new community, the community responds by avoiding both of them.  The only one who treats them as normal humans is their neighbor's son.  Everyone else avoids them not because they get to know them and don't like them, but because they don't know how to act around them and they don't know what to say.  Instead of trying, they run in a different direction.  Are we afraid of facing the disease or of facing our own inadequacies in difficult situations?  Or maybe it is simply because they are different, and Americans tend to prefer the status quo.

My question remains: Are all cultures like ours?  It is an unwritten rule that we can't speak ill of the dead or the dying, so some exalt them while others avoid them altogether, whether it's motivated by pity or fear.  Is it an American curse or humanity's curse?

"Happy reading" seems like an inappropriate sign-off after this post, and yet I still wish you all happy reading, even if what you're reading is anything but "happy."

Judging Books

We've all heard the old adage, "Don't judge a book by its cover."  While the saying is intended to go deeper than actually judging books and be applied to not judging people on first impressions or looks or something similar, I realized I am guilty of another type of judging: Judging people based on their books.  Actually, I am more guilty of worrying about other people judging me based on my book choices and going out of my way to make sure I have an "appropriate" book with me when I'm out in public (one reason I absolutely love the Kindle--it takes away the fear of being judged because no one can see what I'm reading unless they're looking over my shoulder at the screen).  I then tend to admire the people who could care less and read whatever it is they want to read regardless of who is looking their way.

I realized I am not the only one who worries about being judged on silly things when one of my favorite authors, Sarah Addison Allen, posted as her Facebook status, "Today I realized that I get embarrassed when I look around and see that my windshield wipers are going faster than everyone else's."  The status post cracked me up and made me realize that I get an odd sense of satisfaction if I can keep my windshield wipers going at a slower pace than everyone else's.  As if my ability to see through rain is my very own super power.  As if other people are watching the speed of my wipers, wishing they could be as savvy as I am.  As if anyone actually cares.

My realization that I am not alone in thinking I am being judged for many silly things in life was further backed up by Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding, a book I am now reading at my sister's repeated suggestion.  On the very first page of text is a list of Bridget's resolutions; the first list is an "I will not" list, one of her "will nots" being the following:

"Waste money on . . . books by unreadable literary authors to put impressively on shelves . . ."

Wanting impressive books appears to be one possible side effect of a national disease: wanting to "keep up with the Joneses."  We, oh so naturally, assume that our book choices directly reflect our intelligence or cultural status and, thus, feel pressured to reach for that more impressive, intelligent-sounding book to show off our literary genius.

Going on in the book, Bridget's mom and mom's friends try to set Bridget up with Mark Darcy, the son of other family friends, at a party.  It is an awkward situation, to say the least, and both Bridget and Mark feel that pressure from being stuck in a situation neither wants to be in.  After Mark learns Bridget works in the publishing world, he attempts to start a conversation:

***

"I.  Um.  Are you reading any, ah . . . Have you read any good books lately?" he said.

Oh, for God's sake.

I racked my brain frantically to think when I last read a proper book. . . . I'm halfway through Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, which Jude lent me, but I didn't think Mark Darcy, though clearly odd, was ready to accept himself as a Martian quite yet.  Then I had a brainwave.

"Backlash, actually, by Susan Faludi," I said triumphantly.  Hah!  I haven't exactly read it as such, but feel I have as Sharon has been ranting about it so much.  Anyway, completely safe option as no way diamond-pattern-jumpered goody-goody would have read five-hundred-page feminist treatise.

"Ah.  Really?" he said.  "I read that when it first came out.  Didn't you find there was rather a lot of special pleading?"

"Oh, well, not too much . . . ," I said wildly, racking my brains for a way to get off the subject.  "Have you been staying with your parents over New Year?"

***

This conversation cracks me up because I have found myself putting a literary foot in my mouth when I try to impress someone else by claiming to have read a book when really all I read was the back cover.  Then when asked a specific question, the floor seems to drop from below me as I try to cover up the fact that I have not, in fact, read the book.  Or have any intention of ever reading the book.  I have an ingrained fear of admitting to not knowing.  Not knowing about the latest news flash.  Not knowing about a literary author.  Not knowing how exactly one defines "post-modernism."  I especially feel this fear when I'm at work, as I am surrounded by literary specialists.  My one literature course in college was Shakespeare--a course that didn't require reading long classic novels and being able to define literary eras.

One specific instance of my own paranoia of people judging my book choices is when I was selecting a book to bring with me to the doctor's office (I always carry a book because I hate just sitting in waiting rooms with nothing to do).  I was reading a Janet Evanovich novel but instead brought along Pride and Prejudice as my reading material.  I was sure all the other patients would be impressed at my selection and immediately know how brilliantly fascinating I am.  I don't think a single person even bothered to glance my way as I shifted restlessly in the uncomfortable chair, flipping through the pages.

My challenge to myself is to get over the fear of being judged and read the books I've chosen with pride. After all, who really cares if I enjoy reading pop culture fiction?

Happy reading the books you want to read, whether they be literary classics or pop culture novels.