Following up!

I wanted to offer proof that I did, in fact, wear floral and plaid out and about, as promised. Unfortunately, not when I said I would, but on Sunday, Feb. 7th. I forgot to take a picture with the scarf around my neck, which is too bad because with my mom's help, it was tied in the ascot style demonstrated on academichic, one of my all-time favorite fashion blogs. (Sidenote! The academichic post is from 2/3, my brother's birthday, and I wore it on 2/7, my dad's birthday!)


The floral isn't as big and bold as it could have been, but I thought the fact that I was also adding STRIPES into the pattern mix made up for it. I wore a dark green cardigan over the checkered blouse, since it was a little cold, and put a pink floral pin in my hair to complete the look.

The Second Civil War

I mentioned it before: the book club I was a part of during junior high and high school. Every first Wednesday of the month during the school year and every Wednesday during the summer, I'd trek down to the local library and enjoy an hour and a half of nerdy talk with other literary-minded teenagers and the teen librarian who put up with us. This experience, I believe, is the real reason behind my continued love affair with young adult literature. YA books can be just as smart and intriguing as those shelved in the adult fiction areas and are often more approachable. In my work with high schoolers at my church, too, it can sometimes be valuable to be familiar with new YA literature.

I just finished reading, for a second time, one of my new favorite YA books: Unwind by Neal Shusterman. Science fiction at its finest, Shusterman tackles the incredibly tense topic of abortion and human rights. Set fifty years or so after the second Americal civil war, known in the story as the Heartland War, Shusterman's created a world where abortion is illegal, but alternatives have been made common: unwinding and storking. Storking is the more mundane of the birth control issues presented in the novel; it's basically where a newborn baby is left on the doorstep of a house by a mother who cannot or will not take care of it. If a family is "storked," they are automatically the legal guardians of the child and have to simply deal with it.

Being unwound... that's a tougher issue. While the image of the book here is the copy that I own, this cover art more terrifyingly portrays the truth of the issue. Unwinding is organ harvesting and donation taken to the extreme. Thanks to a technology called 'neurografting,' in the world of Unwind, every part of a body can be safely transplanted and used. That was how the Heartland War was settled: both pro-life and pro-choice sides were pleased, since parents could choose to have their children unwound, but according to the technology, the child was never actually killed, as each part of their body was kept alive through the surgery.

The story follows three young adults who have been selected to be unwound: Connor, whose parents decided they'd rather have their eldest son be divided than remain in their house as the troublemaker he was; Risa, a ward of the state who was the victim of budget cuts; and Lev, a child specifically born and raised to be a "tithe," meant from birth to be unwound.

Shusterman's portrayal of this issue is masterful, touching and at times frankly horrific. One of the most impressive parts of his novel is how it remains roughly unbiased in terms of the pro-life and pro-choice struggle even now making its way through America. At one point in the novel, thinking of the babies deposited at places like the state homes she herself grew up in, Risa wonders which was worse: "To have tens of thousands of babies that no one wanted, or to silently make them go away before they were even born? On different days Risa had different answers." Connor recalls a time his family was storked and, not having the finances to take in another child, illegally passed the child onto the next house on their block, only to be re-storked a week and a half later -- with the same baby who by that time was jaundiced and soon died.

There's no question in the novel that unwinding was the worst compromise ever considered by those who fought the Heartland War, and that storking more often than not ended in misery. Shusterman presents these possible futures with a sense of foreboding and warning, but the novel rarely dips into something of a preachy tone. Even in a scene where four boys discuss the existence of a soul and when life starts (all the common current perspectives are introduced and each given their due weight, each with counterpoints and facts to back them up), it's just in a way to encourage the young readers who picked up the novel to start to think on the issues themselves.

Connor, Risa and Lev are unmistakably real, and that's what makes Shusterman's novel such a horror. Like every good foray into science fiction, this reality seems possible and like it's waiting just around the corner. But considering how well Shusterman presented the issue and how he delved into all possible sides throughout the story, it makes me hopeful that the young people reading this and other YA novels might, as they go into that cliched role of being our future, help make sure it never happens.

Making a cake of ideas, themes and polkadots

The past few days, I've been liberally mixing patterns in my outfits. First it was striped socks, a pinstriped blazer and a polkadot shirt. The next day, striped socks (again! but a different pair, I promise), a floral tee and leopard print silk scarf. I'm not sure if anyone at my work noticed, which either means my experiments in fashion are more benign than I thought or, more likely, no one at my work ever notices what I wear.

But I really do think that mixing things up, combining ideas and patterns that wouldn't seem to go together, can create some interesting end results. I certainly indulge in this pasttime in other parts of my life; for example, in literature! The past week, I've been working through three books, all in different genres, written for different audiences and starring very contrasting characters, but they come together to create a lovely mix.

Two out of the three I've read before, Unwind by Neal Shusterman and Nightmares & Dreamscapes by Stephen King. The third, though, was a new read for me and the first one I've finished: Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett.



I was first introduced to Pratchett's Discworld series when roughly ten years ago through, like many of my literary discoveries of that era, the monthly teen book club I took part in. Carpe Jugulum had just come out and, like every summer, we were working through a list of new releases at our own pace. I fell in love with the quirky witches Pratchett portrayed, finding myself reflected in the snarkily overweight Agnes Nitt, who became involved with a distant "vampyre" way before Bella Swan was even thought of. The story was a humorous look at the vampire-goth subculture that has continued to grow in mainstream media since then. Many of the Discworld books, in fact, take well-known literary tropes or cultural phenomena and twist them into the fantasy setting, allowing the audience to laugh at their own failings and misjudgments.

Ever since that first journey into Discworld, I've been hooked. Some of my favorite audiotapes are Pratchett's stories, but it doesn't matter the format: his wit and intelligence shine through no matter if I'm silently reading or listening to Nigel Planer's ridiculous voice.

Unseen Academicals was no disappointment. The story follows four young people in the Discworld's largest city, Ankh-Morpork, as they get sucked into the pull of football. Previously a lower-class sport that was literally surrounded by riots and violence -- along with disgusting pies -- the novel shows the sport's progress as first the wizards of Unseen University and then the government powers that be turn their interested eye at football. It's quickly transformed, as our four heroes: a smart and practical cook for the Night Shift at the university, her dim and beautiful friend, the son of the city's most famous football player, and -- of course -- an orc.

Just like the other Discworld stories, Pratchett uses the accepted tropes of a human interest sports story to catch our attention and then, just as we're getting sucked into cliches, roughly pull us out of the moment and makes us laugh at ourselves. Near the climax of the story, the four heroes have predictably paired off and everyone has romance on the brain, but the referee happily and loudly snaps at them to keep their pathos in their pants and get on with the game. It's a stark reminder of the mountains of movies that play on our emotions while connecting our need for love and attention with the young footballer's craving to get that perfect goal or the baseball rookie's desire to garner recognition from his hardassed coach.

While Pratchett started off his Discworld series by consistently mocking literary ideas -- Faust comes to mind in the form of the ninth book, Eric, and Maskerade, which did a stupendous job of spoofing one of that famous rock opera which centered around a creepy masked guy being obsessed with a young ingenue -- his newer venture into world-over facts of life, first in the postal service (Going Postal), the banking system (Making Money), and the scary facts of war (Monstrous Regiment), develops splendidly in this, his latest novel.

When news of Pratchett being diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's over two years ago, horror and despair swept the literary world. Maybe with this book and it's conscious playful attitude toward overly emotional displays, Pratchett's trying to make a point that despite the outpouring of love and support that swelled up from his fanbase, he's really just here to play ball. Or, that is, write novels. And, to celebrate that? Hell yes, I'm going to wear plaid and floral tomorrow.