CEFS is a blog and podcast. Established in 2013, we are now a serialized site, with new content generally published monthly. We hope you enjoy!
All in Greatest Hits
My source was Taim, which was conveniently located in the nifty West Village neighborhood I stayed in. (Seriously, guys, if you go to NYC, skip the hell that is Midtown and stay in the Village, it's so pleasant.) Here are some of my falafels.
The following are 11 smart big-R romances (read: happy ending of a central love story, as defined by the Romance Writers Association) I recommend for Clever Ladies who are interested in the genre. Keep in mind that there's just about something for everyone in this genre, so if there's not something that's up your alley on this list, there's probably something out there--leave a note in the comments and I'll see what I can do.
Wild Child focuses on Monica Appleby, famous reality television teen wild child, who wrote a bestselling tell-all memoir of her raucous and destructive formative years. She's alone, her closest friend having recently died and not having a relationship with her mother, and has returned to the town of Bishop, Arkansas to write her follow-up book, this time chronicling the events of her parents' tumultuous relationship and her father's subsequent death. Monica is all hard edges and walls, unwilling to make even casual connections with anyone.
Monica ignored Jackson as he slid into the booth across from her. First the Cracker dude and now Jackson. Good Lord, weren’t the headphones a giveaway? Did she need to make a Do Not Disturb sign? This was why she so rarely went to coffee shops to work, preferring her own company and her own music.
The mayor of Bishop is Jackson Davies, who dropped out of law school and returned to his hard-luck hometown to raise his younger sister, Gwen, after their parents were killed in a car accident. Jackson never wanted to make Bishop his home; the town is dying, with an empty factory gathering dust and many of the town's residents struggling in the blighted economy. His father was mayor of Bishop as well, and his goal at the town's leader is the turn the economy around, make sure his sister is safely away at college and then get out of town.
This (somewhat link-bait-y) piece is called "The Julie Taylor Test," referencing the daughter fo Eric and Tami Taylor on Friday Night Lights, and it's absolutely dripping with sexism. The author, Willa Paskin, asserts that bad acting can be identified by comparing the performer suspected of bad acting to Julie Taylor on Friday Night Lights, portrayed by Aimee Teegarden.
She argues,
Enter the Julie Taylor Test, an easy way to identify bad TV acting: Ask yourself, is it to imagine the inner life of this character? If no, is it possible to imagine the inner life of the characters surrounding him or her? It was all too possible to imagine the inner lives of every character on “Friday Night Lights” but Julie.
The thing is, using Paskin's own example, Julie Taylor has an immense inner life (watch The Giving Tree, S3E10, if you don't believe me).
But as I’ve thought about the novel over the past two months, mulling over the possibility that I was perhaps being too sensitive, that the possibility of my being too sensitive was unfairly impacting my view of the rest of the book, and the book as a whole, my final analysis has always been the same: I don’t believe this book.
I don’t believe the historical context.
I don’t believe the characters.
I don’t believe the romance.
Eleanor and Park is framed as a historical novel, taking place in Omaha, Nebraska, the author Rainbow Rowell’s hometown, in 1986. Our titular 16-year-old characters meet on the school bus when Park grudgingly allows new kid Eleanor to share his seat.
Park is half-Korean, his parents having met and married in South Korea, where his father was stationed as a member of the army. Hmmmmm. Okay, so they met around 1968? 1969? I have to assume it was no later than 1969 since as a sixteen year old in 1986, Park would have to have been born in 1970. So...during the height of the Vietnam War, when a draft was in place to send as many young men as possible into the fray, Park’s father, an able-bodied member of the U.S. military was...stationed at an army base in Korea. Possible, I suppose, but still a bit ludicrous to me.
Ok, so then his parents get married and move to his father’s hometown of Omaha, Nebraska where Park is raised and, according to Park, the good people of Omaha,
“...couldn’t call him a freak or a [anti-Asian slur] or a [homosexual slur], because—well, first, because his dad was a giant and a veteran and from the neighborhood.”
Let me get this straight.
In that spirit--and as a service to the world--today, I'm counting down the top ten best lyrics from Justin Timberlake's new album. Someone had to do it, right?
And now it's clear as this promise
That we're making
Two reflections into one
Cause it's like you're my mirror
My mirror staring back at me, staring back at me
--Mirrors
Mirrors is kind of narcissistic if you analyze it literally, now that I think about it, but still... Anyway, I'm going to go with the belief that this is a song about Justin & Jessica and the idea of two halves of the same whole, yada yada.
Bonus: This is a rare song which is better with the video--and not just because of the crazy dancing at the end.
C'mon and dance,
C'mon baby dance with me
Take my hand,
Get on the floor
C'mon baby dance with me
Please don't hold the wall
Please don't hold the wall tonight
We're gonna do it all,
So please don't hold the wall tonight
--Don't Hold the Wall
I'm conflicted. What do you do when Justin Timberlake encourages you to dance, dance? I mean, you'll never be able to match JT's moves, so that's a lot of pressure. However, I suspect that Justin also doesn't judge bad dancing, as long as you're feeling the music or what have you.
Around the ol’ interwebs, there seems to be some confusion about what “YA” is and what books fit into this category.
To clarify quickly, it does not stand for “Young Age” nor does it stand for “Yeah, Anything.” It stands for “Young Adult,” meaning—loosely—“teen.”
It is a book category (not a genre, which is another one of my linguistic bugaboos) with an teenage audience in mind. It is not a reading level.
These mis-categorizations never cease to annoy me. I think it has to do with that it symbolizes some adults’ insistence on invalidating the entire teenage experience. Instead of pointing to legitimately young adult/teen titles, they look at nostalgically on books they loved as children, or point to books written for adults that see teens through the lens of the adult experience.
The teen years are very important in the path to becoming an adult, and by disregarding books that depict that experience, adults are saying something, aren’t they?
NOT YA. The title should’ve been the tell. Or possibly the mention of life as a third grader.
Is the book shelved as a “chapter book”? Then, no, you are not reading YA.
Most bookstores and libraries have sections labeled “Chapter Books” or “Juvenile Fiction.” If you are in this section, you are not reading YA. And yet, this continues to confuse many, many people. The Atlantic’s book coverage is so absurd that I’ve largely stopped paying attention to it, but everytime that outlet mentions YA, the amount of wrongness invariably makes me laugh out loud. But they are one of the worst offenders of this. They included Ramona Quimby, Age 8 (age 8, people—that should’ve been the first clue), Harriet the Spy (WTF, just WTF) and Little House on the Prairie as book featuring their favorite girl characters from from YA literature. No, just no.
Like I said, YA stands for “Young Adult,” not “Young Age.”
Was it on your third grade reading list? Nope, you’re not reading YA.
Yes, Flavorwire, I’m talking about you. Good grief.
