Divergent

I'm usually pretty good at suspending my disbelief. I'd rather be immersed in a different world and accept the fact that the rules are a lil' bendy, than read tomes filled with the details of a depressingly plausible life. There's a place on my bookshelf for Jonathan Franzen, but it's not my HAPPY place, you know?*

A dystopian tale though, now that is definitely my happy place (irony alert lulz). Divergent is set in a future Chicago, where the population is divided into five factions based on the values humanity has considered necessary for balance and order: Abnegation (they run the government...wouldn't that be nice?), Amity, Erudite, Candor, and Dauntless. I would have also included Lusty, Witty, and Goofy - but that's just me. Anyway, five factions, all with different tasks and duties, and kids get to pick their factions (and their futures) when they turn sixteen. The novel follows one girl, Beatrice, who chooses to leave her birth faction for the brave and thrill-seeking Dauntless. The COOL KIDS FUCK YEAH! They do mixed-martial arts and get tattoos and pierce their FACES. Do you even DAUNTLESS, BRO?

And here is where my belief, floating happily along, is rudely kicked in the nards. Poor guy never had a chance. Apparently, to get around future Chicago, the Dauntless run alongside moving trains and jump on them. When they want to get off, they jump off. *Record scratch*

Yes: their system of transportation is jumping on and off moving trains. Because they are brave. At this point my belief is writhing on the ground in agony, struggling with the following:

• During one of the first train-jumping scenes, someone dies. Does this happen often? At what point do they reconsider their everyday mode of transportation due to the fact that it's killing their troops? 
• Who is driving these trains? When they start up for the day, are people allowed to get on then? Or do they have to wait until the trains get up to full speed?
• The trains seem to run all around the city but then also into the country. Who designed these trains?! They seem to use them for training exercises/to move troops but then also they are just running all the time for people to jump on them whenever. Is there a schedule? Is there a plan?
• It's not like they are so brave, so lacking of daunt, that they have to do everything in the most extreme way possible, because obviously that would be ridiculous. They don't eat by shooting potato cannons into their face-holes, they don't get dressed by jumping into their outfits from the roof, and they don't have sex by loading their naked bodies into giant slingshots and trying to collide in mid-air at 90 mph (yes - I've been reading your diary. WEIRD, DUDE). They do many, many normal things in non-brave ways so WHY THE DEATH-DEFYING PUBLIC TRANSPORT?
• I KNOW YOU ARE BRAVE BUT YOU ARE LITERALLY JUMPING ON AND OFF RANDOM RUNAWAY DEATH TRAINS WITH GHOST PILOTS FOR NO REASON JUST TO GET MORE MILK OR VISIT YOUR GRANDMOTHER. 

And so I spent most of the book thinking about the above, unable to focus on Beatrice's angst, teen romance, or the intricacies of inter-faction politics. 

RIP to my belief. He was hit by a train. Never even saw it coming.

1.5 teeny tiny British conductors out 5.

*Sorry, Franzie. Maybe throw some dragons in your next book?

Just Kids

If this book had a smell, it would be beer, piss, sweat, charcoal dust, and that musty thrift-store clothing odor. I’m sure certain people would also add “pretension” to that list, but I never got that vibe from Patti Smith’s memoir of her time spent in late 60s/70s NYC with Robert Mapplethorpe.  Sure, if Paris Hilton wrote “The artist seeks contact with his intuitive sense of the gods, but in order to create his work, he cannot stay in this seductive and incorporeal realm,” I’d be rolling my eyes with the best of them and looking forward to the inevitable reading by James Lipton on Conan. But pretension can’t exist if you have the chops to back it up, and I’d make the argument that Patti Smith, the Godmother of Punk, has got some fierce chops.

Besides, the memoir is really a love letter to Mapplethorpe and to the gritty New York City I can barely imagine. Hustling on 42^nd street, rooming with junkies at the Hotel Allerton, shoplifting raw steaks...it all has a seedy glamour* when seen through the lens of Smith & Mapplethorpe’s complicated relationship. Sometimes lovers, always friends, and often muses for each other, they navigated the city and its art scene together. The intimacy, warmth, and affection that comes through in Smith’s writing is powerful enough – take away Warhol, Hendrix, Max’s Kansas City, Joni Mitchell, CBGB’s; even the protagonists' eventual fame & fortune, and it’s still a worthwhile read. Actually, it would have been more interesting if both of them had grown up, moved to suburbia, become tax attorneys, and gotten together occasionally to reminisce about their wild youth over a glass of Pinot. Oh well - sometimes people grow up to be rock stars.

4 androgynous haircuts out of 5.

*A seedy glamour I am happy to appreciate from afar: I hate having dirty feet & I’m terrified of bedbugs, so I’m fairly content with the sanitized version of NYC that exists today.  

The Age of Miracles

Sometimes I like to read the 1-star Amazon reviews given to the books I love.

"This book is too much like The Road."

Oh, okay, is this book too much like another GREAT BOOK? How *annoying* for you.

"It's depressing."

Um, yeah, the rotation of the earth has slowed and it's wreaking havoc on the earth and the main character is coming-of-age with a dysfunctional family during this tumultuous time. Sorry it wasn't enough like an ABC Family Movie starring Melissa Joan Hart, GOD GO BACK TO YOUR READER'S DIGEST.

"Sorely lacking in miracles."

Oh man - this person is going to be super angry when they read Life of Pi ("sorely lacking in mathematical constants"), Catcher in the Rye ("sorely lacking in hearty grains"), Trainspotting ("sorely lacking in looking at trains"), or any other book where the title is not a literal representation of the body of the book. I mean, is there even Twilight in Twilight? I don't know, and please - don't tell me. All I'm saying is, this person needs to check themselves.

I guess I am feeling a bit protective, because what is not to love about an actual original apocalyptic/disaster situation merged with a bittersweet coming of age tale? This book reminded me a lot of Meg Rosoff's great YA novel, How I Live Now. Growing up is such a terrifying ordeal in itself, so maybe seeing disasters and world-changing events through the eyes of tweens & teens somehow makes for a more interesting story: It's just one more shitty thing happening to them.

5 very confused migrating birds out of 5.