Crumble the cornbread into a bowl. Dot with butter and sprinkle on some walnuts. Microwave until hot and butter is melted. Drizzle with pancake syrup to taste. This is so good it makes me want more stale cornbread!
The SUN shone today. That is extraordinary this time of year. Blue sky and all that.
And a little while ago, a real sunset. The picture was taken at 5:45. That's SO much better than 5:00.
The bulk of the day was spent finishing the book I was reading. It was tough going, and I probably wouldn't have finished if I hadn't been reading it for possible research value even though it was very well written. Let me explain.
First of all, it had several elements I just don't care for. It was written in present tense and it is borderline horror although it's also a mystery. Each character's feelings and thoughts are agonizingly covered blow by blow (which makes me nuts).
Let me also say that this is a book for young adults. I would also call it a coming of age story, so I get it that young people are going to identify with all the angst and trying to be "real."
The features that are borderline for me are that each chapter is from a different point of view. They are well-labeled, but I had to keep looking back to see who was narrating. One character is a trans boy, one is a trans girl. One girl is autistic. The two other kids are neurotypical, but have few friends. Two of them have minor physical disabilities as well. They all had names and role-playing game names, so there were ten names to keep track of plus a few nicknames. One of the characters uses non-gender pronouns (they, them). I was forever thinking some character was talking about the group when they only meant Ever. I was also constantly confused because I know two boys named Ever, but in the book, it was a girl.
I'm glad I stuck it out because the book does a really good job of helping the reader get inside the heads of teenagers who are social misfits and band together to support each other, but they don't know much about it or life yet. The author herself is autistic.
If you care, it's Even If We Break by Marieka Nijkamp.
Other than that, I puttered at some other small tasks.
 | See The Ordinary Things |
2 comments:
It sounds as though this book is trying to cover so many identify issues in one book. I suspect a book would be more compelling if there was one character that had one major issue that affected how they identified or how they interacted with others. I doubt that I could have finished it.
Ellie
Ellie- I think the book was very well written, and is totally believable in that all these non-typical kids banded together. I'm sure it would be a compelling read for many young people.
Ann- Yes. The author mentions in her remarks that she was tired of books that don't get the autistic point-of-view right. She is out to fix that.
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