(no subject)

[oyceter]

As usual, all links go back to my LJ.

11. Ferrer, Caridad - Adiós to My Old Life
    Ali Montero has loved music, particularly playing the guitar, for her entire life, so making it as a contestant on Oye Mi Canto, a reality show targeted toward South America, Latin America, and parts of the US. She and 15 other people are trying to get voted in as the next Latin superstar. What follows is how Ali deals with being on the show, her burgeoning fame, her father's ambivalence about the show, and what may be a growing romance as well. (more)


12. Hunter-Gault, Charlayne - New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa's Renaissance
    Hunter-Gault begins this book by telling a story about one of her professors asking for a new, not news, then noting that much of the "news" coming out of Africa today isn't news, but olds: poverty, genocide, AIDS, famine, and military coups. What follows are three essays about news in Africa, from post-apartheid South Africa to democracy across Africa to African journalism. (more)


13. Young, Kevin - Jelly Roll: A Blues
    Kevin Young does the blues in this book, as the subtitle notes, and the collection goes through the familiar arch of love, loss, and lament. What I noticed most was Young's playfulness with the language: most of the poems are drawn-out metaphors. I am sure this is common to poetry (?), and can't say how different Young's is, save that it felt fresh to me, and many of the poems made me laugh with their invention and cheek and delight. I tend to like the first third of the collection better, probably because I gravitate toward happy cheerful music, and I particularly love it when Young uses food in his poetry, for the obvious reasons ;). (more)


14. Hong, Cathy Park - Dance Dance Revolution
    Dance Dance Revolution has nothing to do with the video game; instead, it's set in the not-too-distant future, in a place only called the Desert. The Desert is hotels and glamour and rich tourists in the center, and poverty everywhere else; the introduction compares it to Dubai or Las Vegas, though probably more apocalyptic. We're introduced to the Historian, who has come to interview the Guide, a Korean expat survivor of the Kwangju Massacre turned tour guide. (more)


15. Johnson, Angela - Bird
    This feels like it belongs in that genre of YA/children's that I call "middle-class white girl angst" in my head (I say this because I love that genre to pieces), even though the heroine Bird is black. Johnson reminds me a lot of Sarah Dessen; they both share quiet, delicate prose; heroines looking for themselves; a very light touch with relationships that emphasizes how deep they run; and, what draws me most, a sympathy and empathy for their characters. (more)