Poetry Friday: Getting the Girl

Getting the Girl

 by Markus Zusak

I always have to think awhile after closing a Zusak book. He socks me so hard in the gut it's hard to formulate a coherent "review" of the experience.

Getting the Girl is a continuation of the story of the Wolfe brothers begun in Fighting Ruben Wolfe. (My review here.) Zusak writes close to the bone, exposing the marrow of what love is---between a boy and a girl, and between brothers. It's also about Cameron defining himself, as he is ripped away from all the safe places he used to hide, including his identity as Ruben's inferior brother.

And once again, Zusak takes artistic risks within his story, risks which could've easily gone horribly awry. This time, he includes Cameron's stumbling and raw words as he puts who he is on paper, foreshadowing this almost mute boy's emergence as a writer/poet. These sections work, thank God, because Zusak doesn't try to underwrite them. He lets Cameron be over-the-top and angsty and "poetical" so his words read like the rough drafts of poetry before it's shaped by time and practice. They sound wincingly authentic, of the sort you'd want to hide if only they didn't demand such attention for their pure gutsy-ness and flashes of stabbingly accurate emotional insight.

The Charcoal Sky

Sometimes you go to the wrong place, but the right way comes and finds you. It might make you trip over it or speak to it. Or it might come to you when a day is stripped apart by night and ask you to take its hand and forget this wrong place, this illusion where you stand. 

I think of the mess in my mind and the girl who walked through it to stand before me and let her voice come close.

The rest of Getting the Girl is unflinching, too, as no one "gets" anyone. Instead, we wrestle with the dual meaning of "get": 1) to obtain or take and 2) to understand. When we love someone, which is it?

And most brilliantly, even though the book is a slim, short read, and we may think we already know we can't truly "have" another person, Zusak takes us on a long, slow walk through the conflicting desires that make it so difficult to let go of that need, so we can, like Cameron, chose how to love with open eyes.

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Karen Edmisten at The Blog With the Shockingly Clever Title

Promises and Light

Got children? Or need a hilarious plot point?

Then you should catch up with my friend Donna, who makes me laugh out loud with new school year snippets like this:

"(My son) was all in a rage because apparently, the student body president was elected at the end of the school year last year, and he ran on the platform that he would get boys only hot tubs in the teachers lounge for this year. He was so disappointed that it didn't pan out."

Ha ha ha ha!! I'm wondering why the "boys only" hot tubs would be in the TEACHERS LOUNGE??

Donna also had a beautiful piece in the Raleigh-Durham News and Observer yesterday about a magical childhood moment near the Cape Hatteras lighthouse with her dad. Read it, and think about which moment sweeps over you again and again.

Guys Lit Wire Set to Launch June 1

Colleen at Chasing Ray said it was cool to cut and paste this from her blog, so I'm doing it. This is such an awesome idea, and I can't wait to see how it catches fire. (Note: the Sarah mentioned is NOT me. I'm Sara. Sarah would be the talented blogger from Finding Wonderland.)

And one more thing. I know there are guys who read my blog. You know you want to do this. Think about emailing Colleen and getting in on the ground floor of this sweet start-up. (I think that's guy-speak for pretty please?)

________________________________________________

Just to update you on the idea that several of us have been bouncing around for a web site recommending books to teenage boys. We are working on the design and putting together a big list of daily posters. But first the name:

Guys Lit Wire!!

All credit for that one goes to Sarah (who will likely also want to mention some help from Tanita). I was banging my head hard against the wall on this and Sarah came through big time. So kudos to her limitless creativity which will be big time on display on the site. Wait until you see the header she is working on for the main page - it is some kind of awesome.

We are planning to go live by June 1st and update every Monday - Friday with a different daily poster. We hope to have 21 folks on board dedicated to posting at least once a month. This way we get tons of new content from lots of different points of view, which is what I really wanted. We will likely run multiple daily posts as the site evolves but readers will be able to count for sure on at least one new post every weekday and that is what we will build a lot of the site's readership on.

There will be book recommendations, author interviews, literary commentary, a rant or two (I'm sure) and lots of other good stuff. The goal is to cover a ton of different types of books from across the literary spectrum so we can become a good resource to actual teenagers as well as anyone seeking to find books for teen boys. (And if the girls want to visit we are happy to have them, but boys are our target audience.)

Right now everything is moving forward quite nicely but we do still need some folks to commit to posting. If any of you would like to participate in Guys Lit Wire (or recommend someone) then please let me know. We are especially looking for guys so we can keep our group balanced (and because guys know a thing or two about what guys like to read... :) Please send me an email if you can help. (colleenatchasingraydotcom)

Why is it so crowded in here?

All of you went to the book store with me yesterday. I went into Borders under the pretense of getting my son a copy of Huckleberry Finn, which he needs for AP U.S. History. But that task took all of two minutes, and I'm genetically incapable of leaving a book store until at least an hour has elapsed from my entrance. Sooo, browsing ensued. That's where all of you came in, as both guides and experts.

Here's an example: My husband saw about 500 copies of Diary of a Wimpy Kid and picked one up. (Ha! That cover works, even on a grownup boy.) "Why do they have so many copies of this book?" he asked. Thanks to this post at A Year of Reading, I could tell him that it was a huge classroom hit, and had started as a web comic, and there was a sequel coming out soon. We didn't buy a copy, although I offered to front for him, if he needed an excuse to read it.

Then we got into a discussion about boy books, which was prompted by my paraphrased quoting from this post by Colleen. He concurred with her, and went on to rave about the Heinlein books he'd read growing up. So I went to the shelves and pulled out Have Space Suit, Will Travel. I read the first two pages. I was hooked. I bought it. Technically, I bought it for my son, to introduce him to a classic SF books beyond the Ender saga by Orson Scott Card. But really, so that I can read it.

Oh, and Colleen, I had paraphrased your post earlier to my son, too, and asked him why he doesn't read much anymore, and he said: "I would, if someone would find the books for me." He hates searching for reading material. He hates bringing home a book, even a library book, that turns out to be terrible. Could this be the root of the guy/book dilemma? They don't like to shop or look? What if we delivered great books to them, like groceries?

Also, and I hate to say this, but my son also said that "video games are like books." Ouch. But he went on to explain that some of them have great storylines, like Call of Duty 4, and are adventures where you're never sure if you're going to survive. We even talked about the fact that Orson Scott Card wrote dialogue for the computer game, The Dig, as well as the insults for The Secret of Monkey Island.

Anyway, back to the book store, where I'm browsing with all of you at my side. Because of MotherReader, I'm fingering a copy of Middle School is Worse Than Meatloaf. I'm desperately looking for Billie Standish Was Here because of Jules. I'm running out of time, but I really want to search for I am a Pencil, because of Liz and Tricia.

I wind up deciding my huge TBR pile at home is enough for me for now, except that I really have to have I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak. I use, as an excuse to justify the purchase, the fact that my husband and son will want to read it too.

Hey, I realized something! I LOVE "boy books,"* and I love to browse/shop. Anybody want to hire me to buy and deliver books to the men in their lives?

*Sorry, Little Willow, I know you hate gender bias. And I agree with you that labels should not be used to prevent or hinder readers from reading what they want to. Edited to be clearer: But what do you think of my theory that at the root of the boy reading problem is that boys hate to shop? Or, to be more specific: some readers hate to browse or otherwise search for reading material, and many of those readers are boys, who thus, don't read as much.

P.S. This theory doesn't apply to my husband, who buys many, many books all on his own. Possibly more than me. Maybe he would consider guest blogging about some of them. He finished Boy Proof before I did. He recently read (and has been raving about) the adult book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. And he likes to stay in a book store as long as I do.