In lieu of full write-ups

Jack Gantos, Love Curse of the Rumbaughs

What a strange, strange book. Gantos's preoccupation with free will vs. predestination is an interesting one. I think I admired more than liked it.

Cecil Castellucci, Plain Janes

What Boy Proof does for geeks, Plain Janes does for suburbia: hits the balance between empathy and call-to-action. "Yes, it sucks, I know it sucks, you have every right to be angsty and alienated. But it's up to you to make things better. Nobody else is going to do it for you. So go to it! It's fun!"

Loved it, but wanted more (especially given all the advertising in the back pages...)

Katayama, Kyoichi. Socrates in Love

I'm not abandoning the blog-- I've been spending my lunch hours reading in Japanese. It takes longer. (And I have a couple more books to write up this weekend that I've really been meaning to get to!)

And this is one of the books I've been reading. I looked over the translation and wasn't particularly impressed by it, but as you'll see, I wasn't particularly impressed by anything else in the book either.

Two Japanese teenagers, Aki and Sakutaro, fall in love. Then Aki gets leukemia and dies. There is not much plot (but you never expect a Japanese novel to have too much plot); there is a lot of sophomoric philosophy and maudlin rehashing of people's feelings. (Let the record show that the version I borrowed was not entitled Socrates in Love, but that apparently is the author's original title.)

It was nowhere as deep as it wanted to be; and that's because of how intensely it idealizes Aki, and the relationship between Aki and Sakutaro. Does Aki never do something dumb? (Sakutaro does, but it's romantic dumb stuff) Do they never say things that are angry and mean? Why do you only have scenes like this? (my translation, not official translation):

"I think we have everything right here and now." When she finally spoke, she chose her words carefully. "We have everything we need, we don't lack anything. So there's no reason to ask God for anything, no reason to seek heaven or the afterlife. Because--everything is here right now, and you just have to find it." After a while she said, "What I don't have isn't going to appear after I die. The things that are here right now will still be there even after I die. I guess I can't put it into words right..."
"Like, my love for you exists now, and that's still going to be there even after you die."
"Right," Aki nodded. "That's what I want to say. So I'm not sad or scared."

Truthfully? I kind of want to smack her. Not only for that scene, but because it isn't balanced out with the truth that dying sucks, and dying before you've even graduated high school sucks, and being told you have aplastic anemia even after you start getting chemo and your hair starts falling out sucks.

Go get some Kleenex and download "Casimir Pulaski Day" off iTunes; it's six minutes and a much better "my girlfriend got cancer and died" story.