# 4. The Young Landlords, by Walter Dean Myers

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I remember reading and enjoying this children’s book from 1979 when I was about eleven, but that and the premise was all I recalled about it.

A group of black teenagers in New York City form the Action Group, a do-gooder club. After world peace proves elusive, they track down the slumlord of a local dump and demand that he improve conditions in the apartment building. He promptly tricks the narrator, Paul Williams, into buying the building for a dollar.

Now Paul and his friends are landlords. After an initial burst of enthusiasm at the idea of helping the tenants and making a profit as well, they discover why the slumlord was so desperate to get rid of the place. The place is falling apart, half their tenants don’t pay rent, another tenant is a maniac named Askia Ben Kenobi who karate-chops the banister to pieces, and Paul and Action Group founder Gloria get locked into a tenant’s bathroom while trying to fix the doorknob.

Paul and the Action Group desperately try to keep the place going – throwing a rent party, hiring an accountant (who moonlights as the head of an investment firm called Financial Banana), creating mental shields to zap Askia Ben Kenobi – while also trying to clear a friend of theirs who’s been charged with theft.

While there is an appealing sense of community and lots of individual funny and touching moments, the book doesn’t live up to its terrific premise. Characters are introduced and seem to be major, only to disappear without an explanation or ever being mentioned again. The “clear our friend’s name” plot is not integrated with the “young landlords” plot. Lots of funny bits are introduced, then dropped without ever coming to a climax or conclusion.

The slang and some of the ideas are distractingly dated. "Karate-chop" is not actually a karate term. Everybody trusts the cops. Gloria is into women’s lib while Paul doesn’t believe in it. (It’s clear that Myers is in favor, but that whole subplot is handled in a manner that feels very old-fashioned.)

This book didn’t age well. I wish I could see what Myers would do with the premise if he tackled it now.

Click here to buy it from Amazon: The Young Landlords

Londonstani, by Gautam Malkani

[rydra_wong]

A few days ago, I hit the last pages of this book, shrieked, blushed bright red with chagrin and glee, then ran around the house cackling maniacally. It's brilliant.

Malkani reminds me a lot of Minister Faust (minus the sf/f geekiness).

He's got some of the same high-octane verbal briliance and satirical vigour, and (like Faust) is one of the few writers who can get away with phonetic dialect without making me hurl the book across the room. Londonstani's got a definite South London accent, not to mention a gleefully foul mouth, with textspeak, slang, Hindi, Punjabi, and the occasional spasm of Take That lyrics mixed in.

Like Faust, Malkani's also working complex meta games, and beneath the broad comedy and melodramatic plot, there are some very disturbing and twisty things going on (this is not a book to read if you're sensitive to violence or self-harm, just for starters).

I could say that it's about British Asian youth culture, about the pursuit of authenticity, about tradition and rebellion -- I could even say that it's about cultural appropriation -- and none of those would quite do it justice.

A succession of scenes turn into elaborate bait-and-switches, revealing halfway through that the reader's been carefully wrong-footed. And the last reveal seems as if it should pull the rug out from under everything, but turns out on reflection to be more like a conjurer whipping a tablecloth out from underneath a load of crockery without disturbing a single piece.

Which is, I suspect, entirely the point.

Double Cross, by Malorie Blackman

[kitsuchi.livejournal.com]

Hi, first-time post!

1. Blackman, Malorie - Double Cross

I was ambivalent about Double Cross as first - partly because it's the fourth book in what was meant to be a trilogy, and partly because I didn't really feel like reading about gangs, about people making stupid painful decisions.  But I kept reading, and I kept reading till around midnight when I finished it.  I'd forgotten how damn good a writer Malorie Blackman is.

It's quite hard-going emotionally - although not so much as the earlier books in the series.  Noughts and Crosses was more heartbreaking, and Knife Edge more brutal.  But it's an engaging, edge of your seat read.  The first scene is close to the end chronologically, which I wasn't sure about as a technique till halfway through, when I desperately wanted to know what happened next, how it all worked out.

The Noughts and Crosses series deals with racism in an alternate universe where the balance of power is switched - Noughts, or white people, are the oppressed class, with the black Crosses holding power.  The earlier books dealt more with terrorism; Double Cross deals with gangs, with poverty, and with the after effects of violence.

At this point, the series is sort of a family epic, too.  The protagonist of Double Cross, Tobey, is the best friend and neighbour of Callie Rose, who is the daughter of the protagonists of the first book.  Callie's grandparents also figure particularly through the series - so we're seeing the effects of racism not just on any one person, but on whole families.  (Tech level in the series is pretty much modern day, but an 'equal rights bill' is yet to be passed in Double Cross.)

Compared to the others, this book even had a happy ending!  I definitely recommend the series.  It's British, so I don't know how readily available it is in the States, say - it looks like the first book may have been published under the title Black and White.

(no subject)

[oyceter]

Sigh. I give up. I am starting over with numbering and going with the calendar year instead, as that will be easier for me to track. Also, I am going to number according to when I read the book, as opposed to when I post about it to the comm.

Remaining books from 2008:

Masumoto, David Mas - Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm
But mostly, I love the story of the farm, of freak rainstorms that can ruin raisin crops, of cover crops and wildflowers, of peach-eating pests and fertilizer. Reading this book made me feel happy and fulfilled and at peace. Highly recommended. (more)

Butler, Octavia E. - Patternmaster and Mind of My Mind
I... have absolutely no idea what to write for these books, since many of the surprises and twists in worldbuilding were completely unsurprising to me, given that I had read Wild Seed and Clay's Ark, or I felt like there was no tension because I knew the outcome from Patternmaster. I was particularly disappointed because I read Wild Seed first, many years ago, and none of the characters in the other books come close to being as fascinating as Doro and Anyanwu. (more)

Uehashi Nahoko - Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit
Balsa is a 30-year-old spearwoman who has been tasked with protecting the younger prince. He's currently the receptacle of a mystical force that may or may not be deadly to him and those around him. To safeguard him, Balsa also has to uncover the actual history of the nation, which has been obscured to glorify the nation's founder. (more)

Smith, Sherri L. - Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet
Still, non-white biracial kid! I suspect the book skews young for most people on my flist, but it was still nice to read, and it's something I'd like to give to girls of color to read. (more)

Smith, Cynthia Leitich - Tantalize
Quincie P. Morris is busy these days trying to get her uncle's vampire-themed restaurant Sanguini's to successfully open, though things have been complicated by the murder of their chef Vinnie (possibly by a werewolf) and by the fact that her werewolf best friend Kieran doesn't get her not-too-subtle hints about liking him. Soon, she has to transform the restaurant's new chef Brad into a vampire sexpot who will lure in customers while her uncle and the police keep getting in the way of her relationship with Kieran. (more)

Sanchez, Alex - Rainbow Boys and Rainbow High
Sanchez is very good at doing real-life high school; his characters feel like people going through actual issues to me, and I like how sometimes they are stupid and sometimes they are not, because that's the way people (especially teenagers) are. The downside is that his prose tends to be very flat. (more)

Kim, Derek Kirk - Same Difference and Other Stories
I felt like this volume has much of the American indie comic sensibility—crowded art, neurotic characters, big focus on failed love lives—which is sad, as there's a reason why I don't read many American indie comics (I know, I stereotype). (more)