Note: I read this book in 2008 and then revisited it after the election when I got into a discussion of why I disliked it with a friend. The time away didn’t warm my heart to it at all. This review reflects my opinion after the discussion, whereas my first was review was more to the tune of “WHY IS THIS SO AWFUL?” I, at least, think it explains my issues more.

Returning to Renay-reads-all-the-gay-YA-novels-she-can-find–to-scope-out-the-competition portion of Let’s Get Literate! 2008, I had a moment of bemusement when I finished this story. Wide Awake reminds me of that little kid who just knows he can get the square peg in the circle hole if he just keeps banging on it.

Don’t get me wrong: Levithan is still a good writer and he still writes about things I think need to be written about. The story here about these boys and their future and Duncan’s worries as he watches things he believed in fall apart were just lost because I spent so much time enraged at the politics. I even agree with Levithan about most of this stuff!

I think it’s safe to say that I am too jaded, cynical and bitter for this book to work on me. It felt fake. I get that Levithan enjoys gay utopias and optimism and hope but this story was kind of like eating five of those pies at once. I can’t buy into it anymore. The timing of the release of this book just gets me so riled up, too. Sure, YA can be political, but there’s no reason to bash people in the face with it.

Places where Levithan lost me: non-shopping malls (I cannot suspend my disbelief this far, I am sorry), demonizing the opposition while preaching against that opposition demonizing our heroes, crammed so full of diversity that it was a joke. I felt like I might vomit rainbows; I’m not against a good character sketch once in awhile, but yes! America is DIVERSE! It was like a game of musical chairs, every time the music stopped we got a new minority individual, a inspiring speech, and sometimes there would even be some character development. I look over the scenes with Duncan watching his girlfriends have issues and smile fondly.

However, mostly it was just inspiring speeches. I should use scare quotes there, because I simply wasn’t inspired. I was bored; I knew what was going to be said already. Maybe too much time in gay rights work.

It’s too much, all at once. The story is set in some nebulous future where a gay man is good enough and the society changed enough for him to get on the ticket, when we’re sitting in 2009 and I watch racism ruin friendships and various forms of media and tell me my president isn’t actually black because he looks white, even though he identifies as black? It started in 1862, for varying degrees of beginnings, that’s 147 years. 147 years later and we finally have our first black president. Right now, in many states, in my state, gay people can’t even get married and the Supreme Court hasn’t even gone near it yet. This book is set too close to our time. That’s what it boils down to: I cannot buy the premise of this book at all based on the numbers. The numbers don’t crunch and I have given up on urban sprawl and education to speed up the process of changing minds. Maybe after March and the decision in California in announced I will reevaluate.

The opposition are still awful people, characterized like big meanies. Listen, I live in the South. I know some of these meanies, meanies that will have my gay friends over for dinner and be perfectly nice and then go vote and pass an amendment banning gays from adopting. This book took all the bad parts of these people I know and made villains. Excuse me, they’re not evil. They’re a product of their times and minds don’t always change fast, even with wars and disease and poverty. People who are not okay with gay people are not evil because they are afraid of what redefining their worlds means and it does a disservice to paint them with that brush, because it takes away their humanity—the very thing most of our biggest detractors do (don’t forget, gay people fuck goats). It’s pretty hypocritical for Levithan to write a book about uniting humanity but save a little bigoted piece so there could be some drama! It’s wishful thinking and wishful thinking doesn’t tell a good story. It reads like an AU fanfic of election 2000. I do not know what Levithan intended with this book but it missed for me. I hope other people get more out of it.

Final point: I think this is an important book, because it shows where too much optimism can lead: imagining a future that’s impossible with our past, just to critique our present and oh, have a pastede on gay romance.

I’m sorry, David Levithan! Um. I love your co-authored stuff? *mourns*

1. bookboy.net
2. bookshelves of doom
3. Frenetic Reader
4. I’m a Reading Fool
5. Swarm of Beasts

It is no secret I am into BOYS KISSING in huge, flashing neon letters, capslock on and some glittery stars attached for good measure. I like male/male romance and I do not apologize for this. I do not think this is weird or freakish or sick. I think it is normal. I have liked it for almost ten years and I haven’t been struck down yet. I am quite sure the romance novel industry makes enough money that Scrooge McDuck would drown in for male/female sexy times. Sarah Dessen has her own GOLD PEDESTAL for male/female teen romance. People like romance! Some people happen to like romance where the same gender gets together and makes out a little. Why do I get the stink eye? It’s not like we’re in the 90s, bookstores!

What do I want? BOYS KISSING. When do I want it? NOW. Where do I want it shelved? IN THE YA SECTION.

Not, say, over in the social science sections between BEST GAY EROTICA 2006 and GAY ASTROLOGY. Number one, I get plenty of gay erotica for the low cost of TOTALLY FREE in fandom and it’s normally a hell of a lot better, no offense to gay male authors writing erotica that is kind of terrible (I’m sure you’re talented to someone who is not me). Also, astrology is junk science and 170% useless and easy to beat up on when you’re a frustrated fangirl.

Why are these books being shelved there? All Robin Reardon’s books get stuck there. I saw David Levithan there once (yet Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List was in the YA section). The book I just read by Martin Wilson would have been shelved “right here, if we had it but I guess we don’t”. The worker said this in a rush before scrambling to get away from the creepy woman who wants to read about BOYS KISSING. Right Here referred to a place between a book on feminism and something about karma.

YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG. Books-a-Million, I’m looking directly at you.

Also, I am tired of getting funny looks for asking about these books. I went in asking about The Dreyfus Affair by Peter Lefcourt and The Screwed Up Life of Charlie the Second by Drew Ferguson and was told, “Oh, that kind of book! We’d never order THAT KIND of book for shelving.” YOU MEAN THE KIND OF BOOK WHERE MEN KISS AND MAYBE HAVE SEX, LADY? IS THAT WHAT YOU MEANT? I wasn’t sure, just checking, no need to blush and look around, that gaggle of teen girls over there heard me talking about it. THE SECRET’S OUT. Women like reading about male/male relationships! Oh noez!

In other news, my shopping trip looking for some books I’ve been planning to read didn’t go so well.

Let’s talk about this book that I laughed my way through in a about four hours.

Billy Bloom is a recent transplant to Republican-red Florida, a teenage drag queen out of place in the swampy conservative scene he finds at his new school. Daily, he faces ridicule and attacks on his person by the uptight rich kids he tries to befriend on the first day of school, putting himself immediately and permanently on their radar. It’s flat-out hysterical and I’m really not sure how James St. James wrote a book where so many terrible things happen to Billy that kept me so entertained. You should not laugh after horrific events. You should not laugh after horrific events. I could write it 5,000 times and if I went back and read the scenes again Billy’s voice would still have me cracking up. I can’t say if it’s tissue-worthy, but I do know that Billy’s smart-ass, intelligent voice and his personality make this book just A+ awesome. How he handles his move, attempts to garner acceptable from his classmates and seduce a totally hot jock were fantastic to read about. He does it with such verve and capslock, a whirlwind of knowing exactly who he is and exactly what he wants—and demanding it.

When I like a book like this I have a hard time finding things wrong. I am sure this book has flaws but am I going to find them? Absolutely not. I love this book for its straight-up honesty, excellent portrayal of what it means to be different in a place where different means you are, by definition, “other” and by definition, “wrong”, the eternal debate over how much make-up is too much and whether these skin-tight pants with this wig actually works (although I have a feeling Billy and I would disagree on these subjects). The book doesn’t lie; Billy is an out-and-proud teen, both with his sexuality and his preference for drag. Way back when Dewey recommended this to be, she reviewed it on her blog and said:

Billy wanted to appear very hetero, you see. He wanted to fly under the radar, get through his remaining time in high school unnoticed. So he decided to go with a manly look. And what is a perfect example of a real man’s man, in Billy’s view? Why, a pirate, of course! Yes, Billy went to his first day at a new high school decked out in pirate garb. Only, more Adam Ant than Johnny Depp.

The fact that Billy’s idea of what image best represents masculinity is a pirate might give you a peek into his world view and show just how far outside his element he’s in going into the novel and into his new school. He is woefully unprepared for the glass ceilings he’s going to hit and throughout the course of the novel attempts to crash through them all: ending with taking the title of Homecoming Queen. Sounds totally outrageous? Yes! Sound totally fucking awesome? It’s also that!

I fucking loved this books guys, I’m not even kidding, and not just because it has boys making out.

Disclaimer: this is not a book for uptight people. This is not a book for people who dislike gay or transgendered characters. This is a book about acceptance and tolerance and whatever GLBTQ buzz words you want to throw around. It is a story speaking for all the future drag queens who can’t yet talk and who haven’t found their voice. And you know, it mentions erections and gay sex, if those kind of things make you clutch pearls, well, um run away, because I don’t have any smelling salts.

I loved this passage. I rolled:

“I’m pro-glamour and anti-khaki. I support total artistic freedom, and I’m against conservative backlashes. I intend to stamp out redneckism where I find it, and fight discrimination and Christian intolerance, using only my beauty, wit, and wig-styling skills. I’m going to try, single-handedly, to bring about an end to the hatred I’m found here at Eisenhower. … TEASE HAIR, NOT HOMOS!”

Anyone who can resist Billy has more self-control than I do, that’s for sure, but they probably wouldn’t be reading this book in the first place. Great! MORE GLEE FOR THE REST OF US.

Read it! The end.

1. Karin’s Book Nook
2. the hidden side of a leaf

A group of gay teens decide to get together and form a safe harbor group for themselves. They call it the Geography Club, because honestly, who’s going to be interested in a club about geography, of all things? Geography is boring to the majority of students that would actually hurt them if they knew about the truth behind the club and they feel no one will discover their group as long as they stay low-profile. Nothing could go wrong.

This story is not subtle! It is what it is, but subtle is about as far away from this entire story as can be. The feeling I get from this book is the same I get when I watch movies like The Breakfast Club, which are good for the sentimental value but are actually terrible.

I think we’ve moved past one-dimensional dealings with this issue. Everything about the book just sounds fake to me; the only thing that rings true is that high school sucks big balls. It’s the sort of book that gets the play and the press but when people outside the group praising it for being so groundbreaking pick it up they say, “Are you KIDDING?” This is written like a Lifetime Movie for kids, if the budget was $20 and I’m just so disappointed in the writing and the plotting. I am biased; I except writing to flow, like the pulse of a story, but this mess is…I don’t know what it is, but it hits sour notes over and over again with awkward narrative and terrible dialogue. I just feel like too many characters and too much stuff was piled into a very short book, which means everything got cheated. There were too many balls in the air for them all to be caught. The writing and the story are flat, the characters are one-dimensional, and at the end there’s a pretty bow. I’m embarrassed for this book.

(Also, the Jesus reference? Ugh.)

Teen lives are entirely more ambiguous and layered and this books just yanks all that out and replaces it with what reads like the reflection of a grown adult looking back; it feels very disingenuous.

I don’t like this idea that a book that is written so weakly can garner this much praise from a community just because we’re so starved for some kind of substance or representation. You think I would be used to this as that happens in fandom constantly. Weak writing with a weak plot can be lauded as long as it’s What Fandom Wants at the time. I have a feeling this book came on the scene at a time where books with sympathetic gay characters for teens were hard to find. I get that there was not a lot of literature, but if someone wants to sell me on something being groundbreaking after the fact, they have to work a little harder convincing me that the lazy writing in this book is the best we can do in a genre that is wide open. Perhaps it’s because the genre is wide open that this book is so fantastically mediocre.

I’ll admit I’m too old for this in-your-face lesson. It bugs me because it becomes less of a living story and more a vehicle for the moralizing about tolerance and being true to who you are and that sometimes life is a bitch, but it gets better after high school. This book was talking down to teens in the worst way. It’s an Issue Book and I am not a fan of Issue Books (I wasn’t when I was a teen either; I saw right through them and grew tired of the Infinite Wisdom of The Adult Author). They cheat the depth of life, the thing that good books can mirror. That’s why they’re good books!

I’m glad this is available for kids to pick up, but I’m even more pleased that better authors are moving in to render this title obsolete with stories that are constructed better and pay attention to how teens have real lives outside their sexuality.

None!

Rachel Cohn and David Levithan team up again after their first successful collaboration, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. While the aforementioned title has many of the same elements, Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List is a different kind of emotional journey between two teens. The dual narrators Infinite Playlist boasted make a return here in the form of multiple narrators with Cohn and Levithan switching off between perspectives, providing an in-depth look at Naomi and Ely from side characters.

Naomi and Ely grew up across the hall from each other in a New York City apartment complex. Best friends from childhood even after surviving tough problems within their families, Naomi loves Ely loves Naomi, with one catch—Naomi is also in love with Ely likes kissing boys way more than girls.

To protect their friendship, they create a No Kiss List, adding boys that meet both their taste to it so that any dramatic problems will be avoided. The story is titled for this list, even though what causes the rift in Naomi and Ely’s friendship, leading them both on a path to self-discovery is someone not on the list at all. It never occurred to Naomi to add Bruce the Second to the list so Ely wouldn’t kiss him.

After all, Bruce the Second is Naomi’s boyfriend.

The No Kiss List in the title and at the heart of this story at plays both a large and small role at once. The list works two ways; for Ely, its purpose is the put their friendship first by staying away from guys they might both like to prevent problems. For Naomi, its purpose is to keep boys Naomi thinks might take Ely away from her at a distance, to perpetuate the hope Naomi holds that one day Ely will love her back the same way she loves him. She doesn’t need the list to keep away guys for herself as Ely does, because for her, Ely is it, even as she strings along guy after guy waiting for Ely to finally realize that he loves her back—regardless of his sexuality.

This story, narrated by several characters, centers on friendship and romantic love and is played out between Naomi and Ely and their friends. There’s Bruce the First, with his impossible crush on Naomi, Ely’s love for Bruce the Second and the love he gets back, even though Bruce the Second didn’t think he was gay. Gabriel, the doorman of the apartment Naomi and Ely live in was on the No Kiss List, but once Ely has betrayed Naomi by kissing her boyfriend, does the No Kiss List even matter? Ultimately it becomes about how friendships and relationships are defined by different people, what lengths some people will go to place a friendship at the heart of their lives to the detriment of everything else and how they change as we grow. The idea of a friendship so close that romantic love is impossible—can a friendship like that survive as teens turn to adults?

Cohn and Levithan address how the concept of best friend that is forever and ever to the inclusion of other people and loves is inherently flawed. They take two teenagers and show how differently this question can be answered depending on perspectives, and tackle the sticky side of how trust in all relationship works and how badly those relationships can be broken if that trust is shaken. Although the book is about breaking up and making up, it’s also about being honest and open with everyone.

I’m just sort of feeling a happy glow. This is a book I would have wanted when I was a teenager—how to deal with loving friends who are gay and will never love you back the right way. It would have been so validating, why did the YA suck so much when I was a teen. Damn you, R.L. Stine! I’m starting to wonder if the gay boy/straight girl thing is going to become a trend—I’ve seen other books that follow the pattern. I spent most of the novel driven crazy by how much I loved the characters but how much I hated Naomi’s symbol habit as a code for her and Ely signing to one another. It works but damn if it doesn’t drive me up the wall. I found the title funny because it really has nothing to do with the novel after the few few chapters except as a reference to a friendship strained by Ely kissing Naomi’s boyfriend.

However, Orbit is not Juicy Fruit, cover guys! WHAT IS UP? Perhaps Orbit hasn’t reached critical cultural mass yet.

Back in April, there were rumors of a movie with Hayden Panettiere at the helm and Ely and Bruce the Second still uncast, leaving me unable to squee properly. I was nervous about it then and am also nervous now, and wonder if it’s still even a possibility. I don’t know how well Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist did in theaters and don’t rightly know if the success of that movie would stop this one from getting a green light, and I can’t tell if Panettiere is attached to the project anymore. Considering that her star might be dimming because Heroes has started to suck big balls, maybe I should stomp on my hopes and dreams. This is the one I would go to see because fuck, boys making out? ON A GIANT SCREEN? I would camp out for a triple feature, pay for three tickets and watch it over and over and over. I am that hard up for touching romance and hot boy-on-boy action and I am not afraid to say so.

Also, there is so much talk about cock in this book. HOW DID IT GET PUBLISHED. I am so jealous of teens these days, where were these things when I was a teen. *sobs into hands*

1. Bart’s Bookshelf
2. The Book Muncher
3. Books & other thoughts
4. Books Are King
5. bookshelves of doom
6. A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy
7. Frenetic Reader
8. Harmony Book Reviews
9. Laina Has Too Much Spare Time
10. Oops…Wrong Cookie
11. Peace, Love, Vote Books
12. propernoun.net
13. Sara’s Holds Shelf
14. Sassymonkey Reads
15. Teen Book Review
16. things mean a lot
17. A True Reality
18. What Vanessa Reads
19. yaReads.com