A happy post, damn it: Between Books

I wanted to write a happy post, and damn it, I am.

Yesterday afternoon I drove down with sparowhawk to an indie sffh/comics store I've been wanting to visit for a while, Between Books in Claymont, Delaware. My reaction can be summed up in one word: Wow. Seriously, they don't make bookstores like Between Books anymore, and we're all worse off for it. Between Books has been run since 1979 by Greg Schauer, whom we found behind the counter yesterday and who clearly has an encyclopedic knowledge of and appreciation for all things geeky and/or genre, and who was ridiculously helpful. There were even people playing D&D in the back of the store! There are shelves of comics! And manga! And used books! And one entire wall is given over entirely to sff books, so many that paperbacks are piled on the floor in front of the shelves. It's been years since I've seen many of those books on sale anywhere--some of those books and authors I've never seen on sale anywhere--a lot of the stock is as old as, or older than, I am. Among other things, I purchased a copy of the anthology the stories (in) between, which contains stories by many of the authors who've done appearances at the store over the years, including Maria V. Snyder, Jonathan Carroll and Cat Valente. The store is literally only about five minutes off I-95, so if you're passing through I highly, highly recommend pulling off the freeway (there's even a swanky brick Wawa across the street) and stopping by. I'll definitely be going back.

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I stayed up late reading The Queen of Attolia and toft's "Blood Shift" last night, and in combination they left me feeling a bit emotionally wrecked this morning, which I didn't realize until I teared up in Meeting for Worship at something someone else said. But the members of the meeting, who are universally kind, made me feel better just by being their selves afterward. I'm glad to be a part of that community.

All right, off to hack away at the piles of words, both reading and writing.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Pearson, Mary E. The Adoration of Jenna Fox. New York: Henry Holt, 2008.

I read this book, which is quite short but packs an inversely proportional wallop, for calico_reaction's book club, and all in all I liked it. I would unquestionably have never read it otherwise, though. 

In the near future, seventeen-year-old Jenna Fox wakes up after more than a year in a coma and must somehow fit the pieces of herself back into a coherent whole, as well as figure out exactly what caused the accident that changed her life irrevocably.

The book, while YA, is definitely on the sf-nal edge of the genre, and accustomed genre readers will see the big reveal coming from about page 1, if not beforehand, so the intrigue of the book becomes not Jenna's problem but what she does with it, how she finds out what she is now and how she decides who she is. I really liked the fact that at one level, despite the dystopian future trappings--viral plagues? check! end of antibiotics' effectiveness? check! transgenic plants and animals causing massive environmental damage? check! polar bears extinct in the wild? check! Nigerian-descendant female PotUS? check! okay, so the future isn't all bad--Jenna's story is only half a metaphor for the process everyone goes through in life and particularly in adolescence: figuring out who you are and what matters to you. I also liked that the narrative puts science and religion (as one might guess from the title) on an equal footing, metaphysically speaking. And I also liked that Jenna's parents are put under a microscope, in the way that most teens do but with an added edge.

I do think the supporting characters are somewhat hit or miss, though--Jenna's classmates Allys and Ethan are pretty believable (I like Allys in particular, though I do think she's a bit dogmatic at times) , but sociopath Dane in particular gets short shrift, particularly for someone who's supposed to be the person in contrast to whom Jenna defines herself. But Jenna's grandmother Lily, and her eccentric neighbor, are fully fleshed out, particularly Lily, whose reaction to the accident and to Jenna is diametrically opposed to Jenna's parents'. All in all, a thought-provoking read.