Zoo City by Lauren Beukes (4 stars)

This is a really entertaining read. The world building is excellent, and Zinzi December is a great character. The dash of magic into the gritty Johannesburg setting works really well. The idea of being 'animalled' for crimes is very creative and well executed. I totally bought the burden and social stigma of being an "Apo" (Aposymbiot), the Zoo City ghetto, and Zinzi's dark side scamming innocents out of their life savings with 419 emails.

I found the transition from "I don't do missing persons" to being a private eye a little under-explained. I think the author intended to show Zinzi getting sucked into the investigation reluctantly, but it didn't read like that, I never really got an insight into her motivations. But generally I liked that many aspects of the world weren't explained, it kept a real air of mystery to the story, i.e what crimes warrant an animal? What is the Undertow? What are the properties of the connection to the animal?

Beukes takes an interesting approach to filling in details, she does it with a number of factual interstitials: IMDB entries, newspaper articles etc. I liked this idea: some of them were really well written and revealed detail in clever ways, others (like the IMDB entry and comments) were fairly annoying to read but still very believable.

The writing is really good, full of ironic humour and witticisms:

All it takes is one Afgan warlord to show up with a Penguin in a bulletproof vest, and everything science and religion thought they knew goes right out the window.

Some people have complained that the good guys don't win cleanly. I hate those sorts of endings, and while there is some raggedness to this ending I felt like the opposite, that most things got wrapped up a little too neatly. The climax also feels rather rushed and broke with the dark mysterious feel of the rest of the book for a Van-Damme-style finish. Contrast the brilliantly written off-balance dirty fight in the sewers with the final scenes: I wish the climax had been more in the style of the former.

Some more choice quotes:

Nzambe aza na zamba te. God is not in the forest. Maybe He is too busy looking after sports teams or worrying about teenagers having sex before marriage. I think they take up a lot of His time.

They burned this neighbourhood down in the early 1900s to prevent the spread of bubonic plague, and it occurs to me that they should consider doing it again, to purge the blight of well-meaning hipsters desperately trying to paint it rainbow.

4 stars.

Born On A Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant by Daniel Tammet (4 stars)

This insight into a savant's brain is fascinating. Daniel is unique in that he has the talents of a savant (e.g. memorising 22,514 digits of pi in a few days), but is capable of leading a relatively normal life, being in a relationship, and even writing about all of it in an autobiography.

The high point of the book for me was seeing a graphical representation of a string of numbers from pi as visualized by Daniel. He has synesthesia, a neurological 'union of the senses', which in Daniel's case means he perceives numbers and words as having particular colours and shapes. He shows a painting of his visualisation of the same sequence of numbers in this TED talk. The idea that someone's brain is so different that they can see the number "1" as a bright light, when I just see a 1, is really pretty amazing.

Daniel's Asperger's means he struggles with many of the things, particularly interactions with other people, that most people can accomplish without any conscious thought. It was fascinating watching the David Letterman interview after reading Daniel's behind-the-scenes account. He seems completely calm and collected on stage, but it was actually a very challenging thing for him to do.

Daniel also meets Kim Peek (the real "rain man") as part of the "Brainman" documentary, and while they share some savant talents there is a stark contrast between Daniel's high functioning autism and Peek's need for full time care.

I found some parts of the novel less interesting: such as lots of details of who he talked to in Lithuania, and the occasional side track into neurological research. But overall I enjoyed it, and this book left me intensely hoping that Daniel can move beyond simple demonstrations of his impressive talents and use his abilities to change the world. I wish him all the best.

4 stars

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (4.5 stars)

After reading Ruth Graham's literary snobbitribe on slate, and infuriated counter arugments, I immediately went out and bought The Fault In Our Stars to see what all the fuss was about.

My first observation while reading this novel was that the line for Young Adult seems to be extremely fuzzy. Is just having a teenager's POV enough to make it YA? What if said teenagers have a better vocabulary than most literary critics and razor-sharp acidic wit?

Kaitlyn, you're the only person I've ever known to have toe-specific dysmorphia

But of course there is always a hamartia and yours is that oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER

...but he didn't die and now here he is, a full-grown adult in a church basement in the 137th nicest city in America, divorced, addicted to video games, mostly friendless, eking out a meager living by exploiting his cancertastic past, slowly working his way towards a master's degree that will not improve his career prospects, waiting, as we all do, for the sword of Damocles, to give him the relief that he escaped lo those many years ago when cancer took both his nuts but spared what only the most generous would call his life.

These words are unlike any I have heard come out of the mouth of a 16 year old, but I'm willing to suspend my disbelief on that account and swallow the line that two teenage literary, sarcastic geniuses were thrown together by fate, because the result is fascinating. According to Graham, the thing that makes YA is presenting:

...the teenage perspective in a fundamentally uncritical way. It’s not simply that YA readers are asked to immerse themselves in a character’s emotional life—that’s the trick of so much great fiction—but that they are asked to abandon the mature insights into that perspective that they (supposedly) have acquired as adults.

While that makes complete sense when talking about something empty-headed like Vampire Academy, it seems much less obvious here. In any case, defining YA is going to remain complicated, especially when some presumably respectable pundits consider LOTR to be YA.

In any case, meta-discussions aside, this is a fantastic book and I'd recommend it to all adults and teenagers alike. The dialogue is brilliantly written, savagely sarcastic and ironic, and a joy to read. The cancer isn't central to the book, but requires the characters to drop all of the normal teenage concerns and pursue a really interesting journey together, including a realisation that ultimately they may make little to no mark on the world.

A minor point but something I found annoying was Van Houten's strange appearance in the final act of the novel. It was completely out of character for Van Houten and implausible. Perhaps Green felt the need to show that Hazel had moved past her obsession with the novel, trivialised in the face of the recent events?

I have no idea what having a terminal illness is like, but the experiences of the "cancer kids" and their families rang true to me. I really liked Gus and Hazel, even if they sounded a little like male and female versions of the same person.

4.5 stars

Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead (1 star)

There's few books on the Dymocks top 100 I haven't read, and this was one of them. I put it on my list with some trepidation, knowing I was likely to hate it, but also knowing that writing a scathing review is kinda fun too. There's a movie coming out so I decided it was time. Worst case it's another Twilight, best case it's a Sunshine.

It's been so long since I read Twilight I can't say for sure that this is worse, but it's definitely just as bad. Being inside the decidedly empty head of a shallow image-obsessed teenager during the height of teenage he-said-she-said-you-stole-my-boyfriend-lets-spread-rumours is nauseating. This is basically an insipid high-school drama about looking hot, getting boyfriends and backstabbing, with a very light dusting of what could have been an interesting vampire world.

Rose at least has more backbone than Twilight's Bella, but she's a boring follower. Despite her supposedly rebellious outlook she never questions the obvious oppression and servant class status of Dhampirs, and whether the Moroi she loves so much are actually the good guys.

I know I'm not the target audience, but there is far better YA fiction to be had.

1 star

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (3.5 stars)

The first half of this book is great. Reading about the birth of cell culture was really interesting, and Henrietta's personal struggle was moving and very sad. I'd heard a few radio interviews about this book, and read some articles, so I didn't really learn much about the HeLa cells themselves. However I was shocked by the history of unethical human experimentation mentioned, including the Tuskegee syphilis experiment and Southam's intentional injection of HeLa cancer cells into unsuspecting patients and prison volunteers.

If the book ended with the medical non-fiction history being caught up to roughly the current day I would have been very happy. But the author then inserts herself into the story and turns it into a extended familial biography. The whole second half of the book feels like it is about her personal difficulties in dealing with the modern-day Lacks family members.

I think Skloot's intention here was to show how Henrietta's famous cells had changed their lives, and how they struggled to come to terms with the media attention and lack of any financial compensation. But it doesn't read that way. It feels like Skloot is pointing out just how hard her job was: aren't I just the best journalist ever? Look at all the stuff I put up with!

The Afterword gets back to the core ethical questions posed and gives a good overview of recent legal battles, and the applicable laws, regulations, and codes of conduct. None of which would require informed consent to make a HeLa-like collection of body tissue and sell it today. This is a strong finish to a book that lost its way in the middle.

3.5 stars.