Review: Wait for Me

Wait for Me by An Na
Find it at a local indie!

• Why I read it: Cover, multicultural, Korea, intriguing premise
• Disclosure: Purchased a final published paperback edition.

Mina is the perfect daughter. Bound for Harvard, she's Honor Society president and a straight-A student, even as she works at her family's dry-cleaning store and helps care for her hearing impaired little sister. On the outside, Mina does everything right. On the inside, Mina knows the truth. Her life is a lie. Then, the summer before her senior year, Mina meets someone to whom she cannot lie. Ysrael, a young migrant worker who dreams of becoming a musician, comes to work for her family, and asks Mina the one question that scares her the most. What does she want?

When I first saw this book while nosing around at a local thrift shop, I immediately knew I was going to walk out of the store with it.  First of all, Korea.  I've had a deep and abiding love for Korea ever since I tried and failed to make kimchi for a school project.  Something about the smell of rotting cabbage apparently creates an indestructible bond between a geek and a country.  Second of all, something that nearly everyone agrees is missing from YA fiction is inter-PoC (person/people of color) romance, which the blurb hinted at.  Third, I can definitely sympathize with a girl who has the weight of the world on her shoulders.  In short, of course I walked out with it.

It took me awhile to get around to it, of course.  What doesn't these days?  When I did, I finished it in quite literally a single sitting, under two hours.  It's not a heavy read by any means.  Unfortunately, as hopeful as I'd been about it, it also wasn't a particularly interesting one, despite its promise.  While its world is lush and real - I could practically hear Ysrael's guitar and feel the sand between my toes on the beach; the laundromat felt exotic and exciting, by no means your ordinary laundromat - every single one of the characters fell flat, especially Ysrael.  First of all, the double perspective between Mina and Suna didn't work at all.  Suna's passages felt painfully like watching What's Eating Gilbert Grape, where you cringe every time you know he's going to climb the water tower.  Only, Suna's just hearing impaired, not mentally disabled, which I'm sure would raise the ire of many.

Also, even when a character has every reason to whine, it's annoying to read - and Mina whined.  Even Jonathon, who in fairness was a total sleazeball, started to receive my sympathy after awhile.  It just wasn't fleshed out enough.  I'm a big fan of spare writing, but you can write sparely and still give us information vital to the story.  In particular, while promising, the relationship between Mina and Ysrael felt more like wishful thinking than actual love.  If you'll allow me a bad pun, I'm still waiting for something real to develop here.

All that said, Wait for Me had a brilliant premise, and I'd love to see more books along these lines.  It wasn't a book about American, Korean, and Mexican cultures clashing, which is starting to feel overdone.  It's a novel about disappointing your parents, defying expectations, and making mistakes - in short, being a teenager.  Race and cultural identity barely enters the picture, except when Mina's mother makes her feelings on Mexican migrant workers clear. 

While I'm not sure I would read it again, in the end, Wait for Me was well worth reading, if only as a preview of better things to come in YA PoC lit.  Even though this one wasn't my favorite, I'll also be keeping an eye out for An Na's work in the future.  Three out of five stars.

Waiting on Wednesdays #12: Matched

This was supposed to be what I posted yesterday, but I was understandably distracted after what is quite possibly the biggest Amazonfail of all time.  Better late than never is my motto here at Bibliophilia, so I figured I'd indulge my dystopia love yet again and share a book that has already earned itself a spot on PW's Best Children's Books 2010 (alongside Mockingjay and Incarceron), that has incited major, major buzz in the book blogging community, and just looks awesome.  Before I share, Waiting on Wednesdays is graciously hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine, so if you're late like me don't forget to post your link on this week's Mr Linky!  And the title is...drumroll please...

Matched by Ally Condie.

Cassia has always trusted their choices. It’s barely any price to pay for a long life, the perfect job, the ideal mate. So when her best friend appears on the Matching screen, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is the one . . . until she sees another face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. Now Cassia is faced with impossible choices: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she’s known and a path no one else has ever dared follow—between perfection and passion.
Matched is a story for right now and storytelling with the resonance of a classic.

First of all, serious cover love.  Second of all, OMFG DYSTOPIA!  Third of all...do you really need a third reason?  This book seems like it would resound on so many levels for teens.  While I'm a little young to be speaking from experience, doesn't it seem like everybody has someone they "should" be with, and then that other person that they are passionate about?  It's at the heart of the whole Gale vs. Peeta thing, Jacob vs. Edward, Jace vs. Simon, etc., etc., and while I'm kind of sick of love triangles, this one sounds like it will be exceptional enough to hold my attention.

Matched is releasing November 30th.  I can't wait!  What are you waiting on this Wednesday?  Please share in the comments!

Amazon is selling a book targeted to pedophiles?

No, seriously.  Sometimes you just can't make this stuff up.

I'm currently sitting in my college library, supposed to be doing homework (surprise, surprise), and I figure I'll pop on to Tweet Deck, blog, and email for a spell as I'm expecting some important responses.  It would be going overboard to call this super mega Amazonfail a "buzz," but there was some talk of a little volume titled The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure, and a bunch of broken links.  Finally I found a good one: Cheryl Rainfield, a survivor of rape, incest, and more abuse than anyone should ever have to deal with, posted about it over at her blog.

From there, I was able to find the actual Amazon.com page, which is frankly disgusting.

 

Do you see that there's even a Kindle edition availabe?  How the hell does this kind of thing fall through your administrative cracks, Amazon?  Three words for you: This is sick.  The product description goes on to say:

"This is my attempt to make pedophile situations safer for those juveniles that find themselves involved in them, by establishing certian rules for these adults to follow. I hope to achieve this by appealing to the better nature of pedosexuals, with hope that their doing so will result in less hatred and perhaps liter sentences should they ever be caught."

Right.  What he said.  Does this ever disgust me beyond words.

The whole Speak Loudly fiasco was one thing.  I never thought I'd be comparing Wesley Scroggins favorably to anybody, but Mr. Phillip R. Greaves 2nd, congratulations.  You are officially my top vote for scum of the earth.

Please, please, please, if you are a human being and you are reading this, write to Amazon and let them know that this is NOT okay and that they need to catch and prosecute whoever is behind this.  And if this is all just some big scheme to draw in real pedophiles and arrest them, then kudos to you, law enforcement, because you sure fooled me.  I'm honestly hoping that that's what this is, because if it isn't, I think I might have to go throw up now.

I am such a sucker for foreign editions.

As a cash-strapped college student who can't be legally employed for - um, let's see, how many days hath November?  Somewhere along the lines of three months, anyway - I spend a lot more time looking at covers on Goodreads and other blogs than I do reading actual books.  Sucks for me.  Wah.  This does mean, however, that I've become something of a connoisseur, and foreign language geek that I am there is absolutely nothing I love more than foreign editions.  NYT bestselling author that she is, Maggie Stiefvater ends up with loads that she is kind enough to post for us on her blog, and I always end up retweeting and drooling and what have you.  If, for some reason, you are stalking me, the comments of these kind of posts are 100% the way to go.  I mean, check the Bulgarian cover of Linger out:

*commences drooling*  I could take up half the server space on Blogger with this stuff, but I'll just share the links to two of the posts instead (because I'm too lazy to find all of them in the foreign labyrinth that is a Wordpress blog), here and here.  Also, Jennifer Brown posted pictures of the Chinese edition of Hate List that I squeed over (partially because Hate List is awesome and also because it was the first major ARC I ever received).

What is it, exactly, that draws me in about these?  Is it the fact that I so so so want the opportunity to do this kind of post if/when (when, I hope!) I'm a published author?  Is it that they just tend to be so darned pretty?  Is it yet another way for me to increase my hodge-podge vocabulary in more languages than I can list?  Personally, to overthink things just a tiny bit, I think it's because foreign editions tend to be such an insight into other cultures and ways of thinking.  Or even if you don't believe it's that, it's especially cool to see the way titles change, and not just the translations.  Lament becomes Heartbeat in Dutch, Linger becomes Deeper in Italian.  Laugh if you will, but this is the kind of stuff that makes me jump up and down in my chair with excitement.

So, what do you guys think of foreign editions?  Anyone else as much of a geek as I am?  And if you are, please please please tell me other authors that do posts like these because this is about as close to an addictive drug as I get.