Not So Much

The Collaborator of Bethlehem by Matt Beynon Rees, Contemporary Fiction, +9, Colleen Mondor at Bookslut

You pick up a book about something happening in or near Israel and you kind of expect it to be about the Israelis, about how they're awesome, or about how they're evil, or about them in some way.

This book is about... Not the Israelis. It's about the Palestinians. It's about internal conflict in the West Bank community. Communities? That's really the thing the book is trying to make you think about. And it does.

It's a Euphemism

Wicked by Gregory Maguire, +17, Fantasy, Mandar Talvekar at Ink Scrawl

There's a scene in this book that really stuck in my brain. There's a club in the Emerald City, a "Philosophy Club," but it's really a sex club. It's a very surreal scene; the club is in the back room of a bar, the bar scene is all smoke and mind-altering substances and booze. The philosophy club, when we follow the characters there... The atmosphere becomes totally surreal. There are elfin creatures there, genderless ones, lovely and strange and possibly responsible for contributing the genes that gave Elphaba her peculiar coloring. There's also a guy, a lady and a talking tiger.

Then it turns into an awful porno. An awful porno with a guy and a lady and a tiger.

It's really a lovely book; I just could have lived without "teh pr0n."