Winger by Andrew Smith

Release Date: May 14, 2013
Publisher: Simon & Schuster BFYR
Age Group: Young Adult
Format: E-book
Source: Purchased
Pages: 439
Buy: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / IndieBound
Description: Goodreads
Ryan Dean West is a fourteen-year-old junior at a boarding school for rich kids. He’s living in Opportunity Hall, the dorm for troublemakers, and rooming with the biggest bully on the rugby team. And he’s madly in love with his best friend Annie, who thinks of him as a little boy.

With the help of his sense of humor, rugby buddies, and his penchant for doodling comics, Ryan Dean manages to survive life’s complications and even find some happiness along the way. But when the unthinkable happens, he has to figure out how to hold on to what’s important, even when it feels like everything has fallen apart.

Filled with hand-drawn info-graphics and illustrations and told in a pitch-perfect voice, this realistic depiction of a teen’s experience strikes an exceptional balance of hilarious and heartbreaking.

Winger reminds me of The Duff in that I really appreciated a rather minor aspect of the novel. In The Duff, I enjoyed the abundance of cursing. There’s also a plentiful amount of cursing in Winger, but I was more elated about rugby being a central part of the story. As someone who doesn’t understand the American obsession with football, it’s always good to see its manlier and more interesting cousin get its due.

Also much like The Duff, Winger has characters and interactions that I almost always totally believe. The playful insults, where even the most foul-mouth or egregious things act as strange bonding moments, perfectly capture the the way that dudes bond. The novel also captures the way that one guy can absolutely hate another guy personally, but both can still have a strange respect, and almost admiration for, each other. All of the interactions we actually see in the novel are completely believable. My only issues are with a few we don’t see that also end up being the crux of the novel’s final section.

As much as I had to admit it, the internal monologue in Winger is a frighteningly accurate  portrait of a 14-year-old boy. Constant thoughts of sex? Check. Being pretty sure you, and only you, are the only loser at school? Check. Inability not to think that every vaguely attractive female is a 5-out-of-5 Habaneros on the At Least Ryan Dean West Created Better Names Scale? I’m sad to admit it, but yes.

I have zero complaints about the novel’s first three parts. The style and voice are perfect. The characters are all likable, even when they’re jerks, and the interactions are believable. The pacing is brisk: there are zero wasted pages. The plot is always moving and I was always chuckling. The first three chapters are just fun. If the novel reached its climax at the school dance and ended up being a funny story about realizing that being a jerk doesn’t mean you’re growing up or that you’re standing up for yourself, I would have had zero complaints.

I’m still not even sure that I have complaints; I just don’t know how I feel about the final section. In terms of style and execution, I thought the section was fantastic. There are back-to-back three-sentence chapters that perfectly capture West’s reaction and making the reader feel just as surprised and heartbroken as West. Some of the passages are exceedingly well done. One that’s stuck in my brain is the bluntness of the following, which captures how arbitrary the whole thing is: “They got drunk. They were mad. They beat him until he stopped being Joey.” Even the chapter headings change from numerics to topics.

While I’m not going to disparage how the plot shift was handled stylistically, I still don’t know how I feel about the final section. The whole shift in tone and subject material felt like it came from out of left field, even though, looking back, some of the seeds were there. Maybe that was the point: the suddenness with which things can change.

Ryan Dean thinks his lit teacher is stupid for thinking everything boils down to sex. Winger thinks everything boils down to this one thing that people can’t see past when they look at you. I don’t think it’s as simple as either of them makes it out to be. What happened to Joey was about sex, but also about Casey not being able to give up the one thing everyone saw when they looked at him.

I can see the reason for the inclusion of the final section. It allows the author to show both a positive and negative end to the same essential story. While I’m still not totally sure it needed to be included, it did little to affect my overall fondness for the novel. At worst, it gave me something to keep pondering after its final page, much like An Abundance of Katherines and The Duff, which it has no question joined among the favorite novels I’ve read for Wastepaper Prose.

What Should Wes Read (10)

The season for giving is upon us, and all we ask of you, dear readers, is that you put a new book in Wes's hands. He's oh so desperate for a new read, so choose wisely. We're relying on you to infringe upon his holiday vacation by making him feel obligated to work during his time off. Just be sure to make your selection by 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 6. 

What Should Wes Read (9)

Once again, Wes is in need of a good book, and we're asking our fine readers to choose for him. There are some good choices in this batch. Just vote before 11:59 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 8. We'll announce the winning title and inform Wes what book he'll be subjected to enjoying this month.

WINNER

What Should Wes Read (8)

Summer's been pretty busy for everyone so far, but Wes told me he's ready for a new book recommendation. That's why I'm once again turning to you fine readers to choose his next read. The poll will be up until 11:59 p.m. on Aug. 8, so cast your vote soon!

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Release Date: December 2, 2010
Publisher: Dutton
Age Group: Young Adult
Format: E-book
Source: Purchased
Pages: 372
Buy: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / IndieBound
Description: Goodreads
Anna is looking forward to her senior year in Atlanta, where she has a great job, a loyal best friend, and a crush on the verge of becoming more. Which is why she is less than thrilled about being shipped off to boarding school in Paris--until she meets Étienne St. Clair. Smart, charming, beautiful, Étienne has it all...including a serious girlfriend. 

But in the City of Light, wishes have a way of coming true. Will a year of romantic near-misses end with their long-awaited French kiss?

I am absolutely not the target audience for Anna and the French Kiss. It seems prudent to just start the review with that. The books does what it tries to do very well: It’s a convincing story about high school with a narrator who both acts and sounds like a high school girl. Unfortunately, I’m neither in high school, nor am I a girl (shocking, I know). Listening to or interacting with high schools girls is near the very bottom of my current interests. The novel is sort of like the teenage romance version of The Catcher In The Rye. It does exactly what it sets out to do and I do respect it for that, but that doesn’t mean that I enjoyed reading it.

My biggest criticism of the novel is that very little actually happens to Anna. Lots of stuff happens around her, but aside from a few scenes with St. Claire and her family, Anna is very rarely the cause of or affected by the action. In fact, most of the stuff that happens around her is just briefly mentioned instead of actually shown. For example, there is a subplot in which a character has cancer. At no point do we even meet this character. The character doesn’t even have a name; we only know them because of their relationship to another character. We’re told intermittently how this character is faring, but we have no reason to care. We don’t know what this person is like. We never see this person’s relationship with the character we’re supposed to care about. The entire episode is used as a lazy way to try to make you care, but never gives you a reason to. The book is littered with tell-don’t-show moments like this. Characters fight, make up, have different fights, and break up all in one-to-two sentence tidbits scattered throughout the novel. To be fair, it makes sense that we won’t be privy to all of the gory details, since Anna herself is a bit of an outsider, but that doesn’t make the technique feel less boring and cheap.

Anna’s penchant for just telling us stuff that’s happened instead of actually showing us the scene is doubly disappointing because Perkins is really good when she actually writes a story scene. Her dialogue is well done and generally sounds natural. She’s very good at pacing a scene and Anna’s inner monologue is quite believable. Some of her descriptions of the settings and architecture are impressive. Her illustration of the sweets in a cake shop stands out as particularly well done. During some of the later conversations between Anna and St. Claire, I was surprised to find that Perkins’ descriptions and pacing had me rapidly turning pages despite my caring very little for either of the characters.

It’s unfortunate that I didn’t care for either Anna or St. Claire, because the other characters in the novel have very little depth. Josh matters only because he’s St. Claire’s best friend. Rashimi seems to only be there to have random fights with Josh so certain scenes can be more awkward. Of course, we never see the cause of or resolution to these fights. After the first few chapters, Meredith is relegated to being some vague obstacle to make Anna feel bad about liking St. Claire. The saddest part is that the characters seem like they’d be interesting if Perkins ever gave them something to do. 

Some of them have conflicts running in the background that have potential, if only we got to know the characters and see the conflict. Instead, the characters feel like obstacles at best and afterthoughts at worst, only there to try to drum up tension without actually working to earn it. Even a character who is set up as a sort of “big bad” gets one, wholly underwhelming appearance. His entire subplot and all of the talk about him in the novel could have been excised and the novel would have lost nothing important. 

It’s a shame that the execution didn’t click with me (although I can see how it would work for some: it really does do a good job of feeling like a high school girl’s diary), because there are some very good insights in here and a few moments that made me legitimately laugh out loud. I found Anna’s realization that home isn’t home because of its physical location, but because of the people there, a particularly good one to spell out. It’s something we all learn eventually, but is a good message to send to the target audience. In fact, Perkins does a pretty good job of making a book about high school seem an awful lot like the first year of college and packing in lots of little morals (mostly just told to the reader) about what that life is like.

With all that in mind, I think the book is fine for what it wants to be. Sadly, what it wants to be isn’t something I’m particularly interested in reading. I didn’t hate the novel; I just didn’t care. By the first time Josh and Rashimi had a fight we didn’t know the cause of, I was yearning for some ridiculous, Nicholas-Sparks-esque twist, like Anna contracting a debilitating disease or the world being overrun by some sort of Unicorn Armageddon. I sort of respect Perkins for instead opting for a mostly typical, realistic, down-to-earth love story, even if I found the result rather uninteresting.

What Should Wes Read (7)

We're keeping it lively this month with an interesting mix of titles, but as always what Wes winds up reading is up to you! Cast your vote for the title you'd like to see him read this month. The poll will be open until 11:59 p.m. on Friday, April 5.

Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

Release Date: Oct. 13, 2009
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Age Group: Young Adult
Format: E-book
Source: Purchased
Series: Hush, Hush #1
Pages: 260
Buy: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Google
Description: Goodreads
For Nora Grey, romance was not part of the plan. She's never been particularly attracted to the boys at her school, no matter how much her best friend, Vee, pushes them at her. Not until Patch came along.

With his easy smile and eyes that seem to see inside her, Nora is drawn to him against her better judgment.

But after a series of terrifying encounters, Nora's not sure who to trust. Patch seems to be everywhere she is, and to know more about her than her closest friends. She can't decide whether she should fall into his arms or run and hide. And when she tries to seek some answers, she finds herself near a truth that is way more unsettling than anything Patch makes her feel.

For Nora is right in the middle of an ancient battle between the immortal and those that have fallen - and, when it comes to choosing sides, the wrong choice will cost her life.

Easily the largest problem with Hush, Hush is the male romantic lead, Patch, who is a creep and a stalker. In his first conversation with Nora, after knowing her for less than five minutes, he asks her if she sleeps naked. This behavior isn’t suave or badass (no matter how much black he wears or how often he half-smiles). It’s creepy! Other charming encounters with Patch include him saying that he wants Nora after they’ve exchanged about thirty sentences, asking if a girl he’s had two whole conversations with would prefer his birthmark being "somewhere private", and telling the whole class that he’d like to mate with Nora. All of these interactions seem to be intended to make Patch come across as a bad boy. Instead, he just seems like a creepy jerk.

The Naked Sleeping Incident is indicative of the unrealistic actions that permeate the novel. Nora is supposedly a few percentage points away from getting scholarships to Impressive Schools, but makes questionable life choices in almost every chapter. The perfect example comes when Nora, knowing up to three people are actively trying to kill her, goes to a strange city alone. Character interactions are similarly unbelievable, such as Nora telling Vee that Elliot had threatened her and Vee completely ignoring her supposed best friend’s concerns because Elliot’s friend is hot. And pretty much everything Patch says.

The style of the novel leaves much to be desired. None of the character have any depth. When describing how she and Vee are complete opposites, Nora mentions only physical traits. It seems like every character’s motivation is just to hook up with someone, except for Nora, who's understandably worried about not dying.  Cliches such as referring to eyes as "orbs" are employed constantly. Character reactions in most conversations are limited to nods or, in Patch’s case, an overly-specific degree of a smile. There are lines like, “Right after my dad was shot to death in Portland while buying my mom’s birthday gift, a strange presence entered my life,” which drop important details without any setup, weight, or depth.

To be fair, the novel does have a few interesting ideas, even if the execution of those ideas is passable at best. At any given point, it’s possible that up to three different people are screwing with Nora’s brain without her realizing it. Had this device been revealed earlier, the author could have played with the idea in fun ways, especially during scenes in which multiple mind-alterers are present. Angels not being able to feel also could have been somewhat interesting on a metaphorical level, but the novel boils it down to Patch feeling bad that he can’t touch Nora. Had the feeling been emotional instead of physical (which makes me wonder things like how Patch is good at pool without sensory feedback), there could have been some cool thematic avenues to explore. Instead, these ideas get only the most basic treatment.

The DUFF by Kody Keplinger

Release Date: Sept. 7, 2010
Publisher: Poppy
Age Group: Young Adult
Format: E-book
Source: Purchased
Pages: 224
Buy: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / IndieBound
Description: Goodreads
Seventeen-year-old Bianca Piper is cynical and loyal, and she doesn't think she's the prettiest of her friends by a long shot. She's also way too smart to fall for the charms of man-slut and slimy school hottie Wesley Rush. In fact, Bianca hates him. And when he nicknames her "Duffy," she throws her Coke in his face.

But things aren't so great at home right now. Desperate for a distraction, Bianca ends up kissing Wesley. And likes it. Eager for escape, she throws herself into a closeted enemies-with-benefits relationship with Wesley.

Until it all goes horribly awry. It turns out that Wesley isn't such a bad listener, and his life is pretty screwed up, too. Suddenly Bianca realizes with absolute horror that she's falling for the guy she thought she hated more than anyone.

The first thing that stood out to me about The DUFF was the cursing. I don’t remember there being any cussing in anything else I’ve read for Wastepaper Prose, but within the first few pages of The DUFF  Bianca is cursing like a sailor. It’s a detail I appreciated not just because I enjoy cursing, but also because it’s one of many details that adds to the authenticity of almost every conversation in the novel. The way people interact in The DUFF is the way real people act and react. From Wesley using “Duffy” almost as a term of endearment and not realizing how much it bothers Bianca to the way Casey’s understandable anger dissipates as soon as she realizes just why Bianca has been such a flake, I struggled to find a scene that felt inauthentic. Characters make the same awful decisions for the same complex reasons as real people do. Supporting characters that appear for ten pages or fewer have more depth than some of the main characters in other novels I’ve read.

Very few characters come out of The DUFF without displaying some sort of dark side (neither Jessica nor Toby seems to have one). Some of the ugly parts are glossed over rather quickly, such as Casey’s not-entirely-selfless altruism, but most are rather obvious, like Wesley’s womanizing. The novel manages to touch on an impressive array of common issues in its short 200 pages, from alcoholism to divorce to teen pregnancy. Most impressive is that the novel doesn’t offer up any easy answers, instead realizing just how screwed up everyone is and how complicated all of these issues are for all parties involved. Its treatment of alcoholism and divorce is particularly strong. The novel somehow manages to squeeze in three points of view, three different ways of coping, and the repercussions each of the three characters’ actions has on the other two. And the divorce isn’t even the main plot. Impressive stuff.

While everyone comes out looking dirty, Bianca comes out of the novel looking the worst. She uses Wesley (just because he likes it doesn’t mean it’s not true). She uses Toby. For a decent chunk of the novel, she shuns her friends. She’s insecure, judgmental, unreliable, and a bit of a bitch. Having the main character of any narrative also be the biggest jerk is rare, but when done well, as it is in The DUFF  it can make for some stellar storytelling. By not shying away from letting Bianca be a crappy person, Keplinger manages to capture pretty accurately how self-absorbed most of us were in high school (or at least how obliviously self-obsessed I was).

The DUFF also manages to subvert a lot of the Gossip Girl-ish beats to its plot. Easily my favorite example of this comes at the end of the novel, when Bianca is walking across The Nest to Wesley. She’s wading through the crowd and you can almost hear the cheesy music and see the film-reel-in-your-head slow down. Then she loses balance on her heels and falls over, commencing the least sappy starcrossed-lovers-finally-reunite scene I’ve read in quite some time. Sure, the plot point is basically two people who are meant to be finally realize it, but there are surprisingly few flowers and lollipops involved.

And now we get to the real strength of The DUFF  which I hinted at earlier: its simple understanding of how people relate to each other and how to convey that to the reader. While I’d love to iterate through all of the examples I highlighted (“Toby, you’re stalling”), I think the following scene illustrates it the best:

He moved slowly forward, like he was afraid I might run away. Then he wrapped his arms around me, pulled me into his chest, and buried his face in my hair. We stood there together for a long moment, and when he finally spoke, I could tell the words came through sobs. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“I know,” I murmured into his shirt.

And I was crying, too

It would be so easy for an author to fall back of overblown emotion. You know, sadness welling up inside, dams bursting, so on and so forth. Instead, in just a few terse sentences, the conveys the awkwardness of not knowing how to ask for forgiveness; the relief of getting back something you thought you’d lost forever; and the knowledge that, while simply saying sorry will never be enough, you’ve got nothing else to offer. By the time she gets to, “And I was crying, too,” your heart is just as broken as theirs.

What Should Wes Read (6)

The time to vote has come once again! 

Wes is finishing up his most recent assignment, and that means we need to put a new novel in his hands. This time there are some forthcoming titles in the mix, so you may want to check out Goodreads if you aren't already familiar with them so you can cast an informed vote. After all the goal of this project is to stretch Wes to his literary limits.
Voting ends March 6. 

WINNER:

What Should Wes Read (5)

Step right up and choose the next hilariously awkward read for our resident boy blogger! 
Voting will remain open until Tuesday, February 5. We'll announce Wes' new read once the results are in. 

WINNER:

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

Release Date: Oct. 6, 2009
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Age Group: Young Adult
Format: E-book
Source: Purchased
Pages: 448
Buy: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Google
Description: Goodreads
It is the cusp of World War I, and all the European powers are arming up. The Austro-Hungarians and Germans have their Clankers, steam-driven iron machines loaded with guns and ammunition. The British Darwinists employ fabricated animals as their weaponry. Their Leviathan is a whale airship, and the most masterful beast in the British fleet.

Aleksandar Ferdinand, prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is on the run. His own people have turned on him. His title is worthless. All he has is a battle-torn Stormwalker and a loyal crew of men.

Deryn Sharp is a commoner, a girl disguised as a boy in the British Air Service. She's a brilliant airman. But her secret is in constant danger of being discovered.

With the Great War brewing, Alek's and Deryn's paths cross in the most unexpected way...taking them both aboard the Leviathan on a fantastical, around-the-world adventure. One that will change both their lives forever.

Hello, readers! Since a general reading slump and the holidays have combined to put me already almost a month behind in getting this review out, let’s just jump right in to my thoughts on Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan.

There are a lot of things to like about the novel’s style, not the least of which is the shift in voice depending on which character the chapter is focused on. The dichotomy is most obvious in Deryn’s chapters simply because the entire vocabulary shifts. Alek’s chapters are written in a rather standard style while Deryn’s are littered with Darwinist words and phrases, such as all fabrications being referred to as “beasties.” As a result, her chapters always seem a bit more fun, which works well since everything is an adventure for her, while Alek only has the weight of the whole world on his shoulders. 

The novel is also filled with tiny touches that show just how much thought and detail Westerfeld put into it, such as shifting units of measure between metric and imperial systems depending on the chapter, which also leads to a somewhat funny exchange where both sides are converting into each others’ units and back again as they try to work out an exchange. Westerfeld also employs one of my favorite tricks to let language sound normal without veering off into Parental Advisory territory: simply replacing a curse word with something else. It’s a simple trick, but it’s so much better than having people say, “Oh, shucks,” as things are exploding around them. 

On a few occasions, Westerfeld has characters react to and understand the other side’s technology in terms of their own, such as Alek thinking that the Darwinist’s war birds are swooping like fighter planes. It seems like a simple enough trick, but it’s the kind of believable touch that shows care and really rounds out a world or a character. 

While there quite a few clever stylistic touches, there are a few stylistic niggles as well. Most of these problems exist in a large number of books and movies and it doesn’t seem fair to take Westerfeld to task for them. That said, there is one stylistic thing I couldn’t figure out: Why the point of view changes every other chapter. It would make sense if it switched every chapter, but having two chapters in a row for each character seemed like an odd choice. I couldn’t figure out why they weren’t just combine into one chapter. Maybe there’s not a reason for it, but in that case it seems like an even weirder choice. 

As far as the technology is concerned, I’m going to talk mostly about the Darwinist fabrications both because they’re were most of the creative ideas lie and because giant robots are always cool. Nothing else needs to be said. Each of the fabs seemed quite well thought out and it was fun seeing what combination of form and function Westerfeld was going to throw at me next. The vision of the Leviathan as an entire ecosystem rather than a single creature was particularly inspired. 

Westerfeld seems to know exactly how each piece of his imagined technology works, even if he doesn’t tell us. He also does an excellent job at introducing both side of the tech gradually and without exposition. For instance, fabs are mentioned as Deryn passes a few early in the novel, then she rides in a flying one, and then this massive, flying ecosystem is introduced. There’s no giant info dump, just a slow introduction designed so each new bit of technology seems like a logical extension of what we’ve already seen.

Perhaps surprisingly, I don’t have any huge gripes with the Darwinist technology. One of the few issues I had originally was that using something filled with hydrogen, which could explode as a result of a stray bullet, seemed like a really stupid idea. Then Westerfeld reminded me that the Germans used zepplins during the real First World War. That said, I do have two minor issues with the tech. First, it seems to me that you wouldn’t really want war machines that could decide not to work because they get nervous. If I fire a gun or a missile, it would be nice for it to actually move in the general direction in which I pointed it, rather than it getting scared because there’s a thunderstorm.

Upon further reflection, though, actual real-world Clanker-esque tech wasn’t always the most reliable thing at the time, either, and you could probably convince me that the cheap production and maintenance might be worth the trade. My other complaint is more thematic in nature and is similar to my style complaint: I’m not sure what the point is. I thought originally that the differing technologies were supposed to be some sort of nature vs. science struggle, but the fabs only exist because scientists screwed with nature, so that seems out. Maybe it’s supposed to be something as disappointingly simplistic as our protagonists overcoming their deep philosophical differences. Maybe there isn’t supposed to be a thematic point. Maybe it’s just supposed to be cool, which is a completely fine answer.

As far as the main characters go, I found Deryn to be far more interesting than Alek. Alek feels like little more than a plot device, despite some lip service being given to a few interesting ideas. For instance, there’s a moment where it’s revealed that Alek, despite being able to speak many languages, can’t even read the local paper his would-be subjects read because he doesn’t understand their language. The divide between rulers and their subjects could have come into play in some interesting ways, but instead it’s never mentioned again. 

On the other hand, Deryn is interesting not only because she’s our window into the Darwinist tech, but also because Westerfeld handles her attempts to pass as a boy quite well. He smartly writes out the possibility of her being discovered based simply on physical traits, instead putting the focus on her need to behave like a boy by, for instance, checking her nails by curling her fingers instead of splaying them. He also doesn’t belabor the point by having her get almost-discovered every few chapters. In fact, she doesn’t really even come close to being discovered. Somehow, Westerfeld managed to turn what I thought was going to be the most annoying part of the book into one of its strengths.

As this review is already getting pretty long, I don’t have too much to say about the plot. I enjoyed the book just fine when I was reading it. The action is well written, the pace is good, and at least a few of the characters are fun to spend time with. There are also some really well-written, spy-gamey exchanges among the characters where they’re each trying to pry information out of each other while not giving up any themselves. That said, when I finished the book, I didn’t really feel like anything important happened. The Leviathan still flies. Alek is still on the run, just not in his ice fortress. About all that actually happened was that our characters met and, apparently, will be parting ways. Rather than feeling actually dire or epic, the weight of the actual conflict driving all of the action comes because I know about the actual, real-world World War I, not because of anything the novel itself did. In the end, it felt a lot like a popcorn action flick: Fun while it lasted, but not much more than that.

What Should Wes Read (4)

How would you like Wes to occupy his limited literary time this month? Cast your vote and put a book in his hands! Voting will remain open until Saturday, January 5. We'll announce which book he'll be subjected to enjoying this month shortly after the polls close. 

WINNER:

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

Release Date: Sept. 21, 2006
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
Age Group: Young Adult
Format: Hardcover
Source: Purchased
Pages: 227
Buy: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / IndieBound
Description: Goodreads
When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton's type is girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact. On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun - but no Katherines. Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship, avenge Dumpees everywhere, and finally win him the girl.

Welcome to the second installment of What Should Wes Read? This month, you selected An Abundance of Katherines by John Green, which put me in a somewhat precarious position. Considering her opinion of John Green, I’m pretty sure that Jessica would ban me from trading obscure pop culture references and, more importantly, convince Susan to ban me from Wastepaper Prose if I disliked this novel. Within six months, I went from never hearing of John Green to seeing this guy everywhere. The Wastepaper Posse discussed him often at BEA, he did a Reddit AMA, and now his latest novel is on prominent display every time I walk into a Barnes and Noble. Through all of it, I’ve heard nothing but good things about the dude. And so, I dove into An Abundance of Katherines knowing nothing except that he’s a swell dude, that Jessica said “star penis” to him at BEA, and that I faced exile if I disliked this book.

You’ve probably all noticed that I’m a bit particular about the technical accuracy of the books I read. I’m happy to say that An Abundance of Katherines gets all of the math spot on. Perhaps that isn’t surprising, considering there’s an appendix written by a math professor that explains all of the math in surprising detail. While the appendix is nice, what’s even better is that Green leaves all of the technical detail there rather than trying to shoehorn any of it into the narrative. The math described in the actual narrative is just detailed enough to frame Colin’s problem and track his progress towards the realization of his Eureka moment. Green even manages to use what little math is there to add to the generally playful air of the novel, with footnotes promising that there will be no more math and then glibly asserting that a later equation doesn’t count, because the mathematics of it don’t matter. Such a footnote¹ is both funny and demonstrates that Green knows just where and when to use the math to prove his point. For what it’s worth, this book actually even managed to teach me something about math: the notion of families. I had no idea that was a mathematical field of study, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Computer scientists have been (annoyingly) obsessed with object oriented programming over the same timeframe, which is pretty much the CS version of mathematical families.

¹ Considering my intellectual man-crush on David Foster Wallace, it should come as no surprise that I love that Green uses footnotes. Although, unlike DFW, his footnotes are always short and sweet, usually providing a brief aside that is either funny or illuminating. 

What Should Wes Read (3)

Once again we need you to cast your votes! 

Wes has finished An Abundance of Katherines by John Green, and his review will be posted soon. Now, he's wondering what you ladies and gents want him to read in December. Just vote on the poll below before Wednesday, Dec. 5, and we'll put the winning book in Wes' hands. 

WINNER:

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

Insignia by S.J. Kincaid

Release Date: July 10, 2012
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Age Group: Young Adult
Format: E-book
Source: Purchased
Pages: 444
Buy: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / IndieBound
Description: Goodreads
More than anything, Tom Raines wants to be important, though his shadowy life is anything but that. For years, Tom's drifted from casino to casino with his unlucky gambler of a dad, gaming for their survival. Keeping a roof over their heads depends on a careful combination of skill, luck, con artistry, and staying invisible.

Then one day, Tom stops being invisible. Someone's been watching his virtual-reality prowess, and he's offered the incredible--a place at the Pentagonal Spire, an elite military academy. There, Tom's instincts for combat will be put to the test and if he passes, he'll become a member of the Intrasolar Forces, helping to lead his country to victory in World War III. Finally, he'll be someone important: a superhuman war machine with the tech skills that every virtual-reality warrior dreams of. Life at the Spire holds everything that Tom's always wanted--friends, the possibility of a girlfriend, and a life where his every action matters--but what will it cost him?

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the very first installment of What Should Wes Read.  You all (fine, y’all) decided that I should read Insignia by S.J. Kincaid. I’m assuming you chose it because I’m a sci-fi nerd and a combination of Ender’s Game and The Matrix should be a wet dream come true. Despite a plot that comes together better than expected and some quite enjoyable characters, Insignia didn’t quite reach that level for me due to its inability to get me to buy into its premise.

Probably the biggest challenge when writing sci-fi is getting the audience to accept the outlandish premise. Sadly, I had a hard time accepting the premise of the novel. I think the issue was twofold. First, I know too much about technology for some of her ideas to play. For instance, one of the plot points deals with some IP addresses, but the whole conflict would have been avoided if the military just used DHCP instead of static assignment, not to mention the stupidity of the military using publicly accessible IP addresses for classified assets. Also, the idea of coding up viruses in minutes and flinging them around like spells in a Harry Potter novel just seems silly to me, especially the weird insistence that people be physically near each other when sending viruses over a network. The second reason I couldn’t get behind the technology is that it’s over explained, which is just begging the computer nerd in me to poke holes in it. A favorite example is the suggestion that there’s a storage medium of some sort that comes with the neural processor, which makes me wonder what happens when those NAND cells reach their write limit. On the plus side, the author seems to actually know what the uses and the limits of a firewall are, which is frustratingly rare.

The depiction of the war didn’t do much for me, either. The characters seem convinced that they have evolved beyond “conventional” war because wars are no longer fought on earth. That I was left a bit confused as to the nature of the conflict is probably not a good sign, but at best I could tell, one of two things is true. First, the countries could be warring over the actual location of resources on other planets. In this case, the conflict makes sense, but negates the idea that humans have moved beyond conventional war: It’s still a war fought over territory, just not Earth territory. The other possibility is that the countries are just fighting out in space until there’s a victor, which makes it a horribly pointless war with no cost and no incentive to ever end the war. Granted, there’s some interesting 1984-ish suggestion in that possibility, but I still don’t think I can get behind a war that doesn’t seem to have consequence. I believe the first is the intended interpretation and I have a sneaking suspicion that I missed something, but it’s a problem that I can finish the book and not have a decent understanding of the stakes of the overall story.

What Should Wes Read (2)

It's that time again! Wes is ready for another read, and we need our readers to lend a hand in choosing it. Just vote below and whatever book wins out is what our resident boy blogger will read this month. Voting will remain open until 11/8. 

What Should Wes Read (1): Voting Begins!

The time has finally come! You all made suggestions of what Wes should read, and now we need you to vote. The poll below will determine what book we put in Wes' hands this month. He'll read it and share his unique perspective and we all reap the benefit. Keep in mind, the more awkward the book, the better.

The poll will stay up until Friday at 11:59 p.m. EST. After that we'll inform Wes of his literary fate and sit back to see what happens. It could end in laughter, tears, or possibly both so stay tuned. 

Introducing "What Should Wes Read?"

Hello again. I'm here to introduce a new feature here: What Should Wes Read? Wherein you, the readers, of this fine blog decide what book I should read, and Susan and Jess force me to read it. I'm here at Susan's behest to provide you with some general interests of mine, both in life and literature. I'm assuming this information is needed so you can more accurately choose a book that will be hilariously awkward for me to read in public. (Susan: Yep! That's the idea.)

I like computers (clearly). On occasion, I even like programming. I enjoy running and am training for a race in January. Long walks on the beach are okay, but I'd prefer wine and a good book. Football is dumb. Other sports are awesome. Some of my favorite TV shows (that I've finished) are The Shield, Lost, Party Down, Buffy, and Arrested Development. I'm a big fan of the Oxford comma.

My favorite books (I guess that's what you're actually here for) are:

• American Gods by Neil Gaiman
• The Warriors by Sol Yurick
• Death with Interruptions (alternately, Death by Intervals) by Jose Saramago
• Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman
• A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle

I'm currently reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, which is good for a nice breeze as it goes soaring right over my head.

Susan again! Here's how it will work: 

We need you all to leave us comments, tons and tons of comments, with titles of books you'd like to see Wes read. The more out of his comfort zone the better! Anything fiction in any genre is fair game including adult books, but let's keep it pretty family friendly (as in no erotica). He does have to review it after all. 

Once we have a lengthy list of suggestions, we'll pick  four or five each month and post a poll on the blog so our lovely readers can choose what Wes will be reading that month. Polls will go live on the first of every month and remain open for about a week. Also, don't be shy about leaving more suggestions as we go along. You can be sure I'm keeping a running list. *grins* I'm excited to see what you all want our boy here to read. 

So without further ado... COMMENT!

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