Book #21: Brazil - The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Round the World Wednesday! Is it still Wednesday anywhere in the world? No? Oh well. Today is Honorary Wednesday.

The Summer Prince is another of those books that evokes a place so viscerally that you think I want to go there, even if the 'there' is a few hundred years in the future, a parallel world or some undefined historical time. So, I'd like to go to Brazil now. I want to see Palmares Três, the jewel on the bay, the pyramid city of lights. Though possibly not with the bloodshed that goes with it.

The book is set in Brazil at least four hundred years in the future, where everything is life and death, love and hate, moving forward and holding back. The main character, June, is a young artist in a city ruled by grande women, where anyone below the age of thirty is not taken seriously. Every five years, the populace elects a king, and after a year of his rule, he chooses the next queen and is sacrificed. The system is quite logical, really - someone who is about to die is less likely to be swayed by politics.

It's an election year, but not just any election year. This year the king will be a waka, under thirty, and his sacrifice will serve only to continue the reign of the incumbent queen. He will have no true power to choose another queen, but for a year he will be the most priveleged of the youth of Palmares Três.

June votes for Enki, and is ecstatic when he wins. She's already half in love with him, but Enki falls in love with her best friend Gil and she's not quite sure where she stands. She throws herself into making Art, recognising that Enki is as much an artist as she with the way he moves and influences the crowds. They become collaborators on sensational projects, and Art is at its best when it creates a sensation. Or a revolution.

Enki is hurtling headlong towards death, but he is the most vital character in all senses of the word. He helps June understand what's important, and the reader along with her.

Palmares Três is most desperately, incredibly alive, with its dancing wakas and ritual sacrifice. I love the way Johnson communicates that, with the blocos and the graffiti and the secret ninja art projects. I also love the way she weaves Portuguese into the text, making it clear that English is a foreign language to her characters.


Any books you know and love that are set in Brazil?

Unput-downable

I’ve been reading a few non-YA books (i.e. ‘adult’, though that sounds dodgy) recently, because I feel I should expand my reading horizons and not read solely in one genre.

Then I read another YA book (Flip, by Martyn Bedford, if you want to know) and remembered why I like YA so much. I have been limiting my reading to during my commute (which, being a London commute, takes up almost two hours a day). Two hours a day is a very respectable amount of reading to get done, but when I was reading Flip, it wasn’t enough. I kept reading in the evening, while stirring my dinner (pumpkin soup, stirring with my left hand and spattering orange over the stove), while watching TV with my flatmates, and then until past my bedtime. I counted it an achievement when I actually managed to put it down and turn  off my light.

I know lots of adult books must be unput-downable, but I don’t seem to find them as often as unput-downable YA books. Maybe it’s just my personal preferences, or maybe I’m reading the wrong books, but I’m going to go with a gut theory here.

YA books tend to be shorter, so there is more of a chance you can finish in one sitting. The pace and language (broooad generalisation) tend to be faster, meaning you can read (and want to read) the book quicker. They deal with themes of identity (who doesn’t deal with that in their own lives?) and explore issues. They can end bitter-sweet or happy, but they don’t take themselves too seriously. You can have serious issues and jokes and fantasy and reality and adventure and mystery.

What books can’t you put down?

The State of Bookshops

I’m getting worried. In NZ 70% of our bookshops (Whitcoulls-since-1888(?), Borders and Bennetts – basically all the chains) are under voluntary administration because their parent company is semi-bankrupt. They keep telling us they’re pretty sure the NZ stores won’t be affected that much, but said NZ stores seem to be selling off most of their stock.

I was in Whitcoulls yesterday and they have sale tables throughout the shop, with pretty recent titles going for $10 or less (normal retail is about $20-$30). I was nearly tempted by some of them, but luckily I’d forgotten my wallet and I am GOING OVERSEAS SOON so I will not buy paper books. In the young adult section, they’ve started putting ALL the books face out to use more shelves and fewer books. The vampire invasion is even more obvious – I guess they’re the books they can be sure of selling.

I understand that if the chains go, the independents will get a lot more business. Whitcoulls has felt a bit like a pharmacy for a while now and Borders has always been the big corporate (though now I guess it’s one of the last Borders chains still standing) but it’s not fair that we lose 70% of our bookstores in one foul swoop. Whitcoulls, despite the clinical feel, is a New Zealand institution.

I’d like to support Whitcoulls. I have a few books I would buy from their ebook store, if they were there. And they’re not. So I look on international ebook stores instead, which won’t help Whitcoulls, and I find them. But they are not available in NZ. If I lived in Albania, I could buy them. If I lived in Tajikistan, I could buy them. I can buy paper copies, but not ebooks. Except if they’re kindle books, apparently – I can buy those from NZ. I almost would, but then I’d have to read on my computer.

Maybe I’m a product of the want-it-now generation. Maybe the want-it-now generation has had a hand in the downfall of the bookshops. But I don’t understand why you can get the paper version but not the ebook. Except if it’s a kindle. Or maybe (after further sleuthing) Whitcoulls just haven’t got it together and put the ebook up on site.

Right. Rant over.

Procrastination

Okay, I’m slack. Or just sharpening my skills at procrastination. There will be a round-the-world book this week! The thing is I haven’t finished reading it yet.

On Sunday I went to the main (not very good) library and got out two books. Then I went to a suburban (awesome) library and got out five books, one of which is my round-the-world book and actually quite good. Unfortunately I convinced myself that reading other books as ‘research’ is just as valid as reading my round-the-world book, and as it’s been my birthday this week I felt justified in procrastinating. Or perendinating (=super-procrastinating). So I started the book on Sunday, but since then I’ve finished four other books and started a fifth. I tend to chain-read.

But it shall be up later. I made a goal and I am sticking to it. Or sticking in its general area.

What do you do to procrastinate?