anxiety – KZ Rochelle

Vlog Review: The Canyon’s Edge

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The Best Thing about this Book is the combination of the adventure genre with verse.

Premise: Nora blames herself for her mom’s death. If it hadn’t been her birthday or if she’d chosen a different restaurant, her mom would still be alive. Instead, one year later, she and her anxiety-ridden dad who no longer trusts people (except Nora) brings her to a canyon to hike and climb. When an unexpected natural event separates Nora and her father, Nora must survive in the desert and find her father before she loses two parents.

Rating: 4/5
Target: 5-8 grade

Title: Interspersed in the events of the narrative, Dusti Bowling inserts flashbacks as well as therapeutic moments and reflections. The symbolic meaning of both a canyon and an edge are played with here in terms of the wariness we have of falling and the necessity to climb up when we’ve been pushed in (see cover art), among other things.

Main Character(s): Nora (she/her)

Motifs (not exhaustive): grief, PTSD, trauma, anxiety, survival, guilt, reflection, desert, solitude vs. loneliness

Great for…* (readers): who like Hatchet. Dare I say this is a newer, better adventure book rippling with figurative language?

Great for…* (teachers): who want to teach annotation and layers of reading. Good for incorporating poetry and different poetic forms. (Nora writes haikus regularly.)

Parental Warning(s): I mean, it’s there in the premise, isn’t it? Nora is dealing with the loss of her mother in an active shooter situation.

Interact: Which genre of nature’s beauty do you prefer and why: desert? coast? mountain?

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^{*The “Great for” category is not exhaustive and does not intend to neglect the multitude of readers/teachers who could learn from this book in any number of ways.}

RATINGS GUIDE

٭ = DNF, would not recommend
٭٭ = would not recommend
٭٭٭ = enjoyable, would recommend
٭٭٭٭ = very good, would recommend
٭٭٭٭٭ = amazing, would definitely recommend

Vlog Review: Biggie

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The Best Thing About this Book is Biggie’s little brother, Maddux. The eleven-year-old displays the best character. He’s helpful and reliable if naive. However, his role is minor so not enough to win me over to the book itself.

Premise: Biggie is fat. It’s why no one calls him by his given name anymore. It’s also what propelled him to want to disappear from everyone else’s radar so they don’t make fun of him. For two years of high school, he got out of PE without his mom knowing it. Not anymore. And in his first PE class, he pitches a perfect game of wiffle ball. The girl of his dreams makes a comment that he should play for the school team, so he sets out to pitch a perfect game for the school. First, of course, he has to make the team in his ploy to win the girl.

Rating: 2/5
Target: 8th-12th grade

Title: It’s his name and arguably his identity. The book begins with the story of how he got his nickname, so it’s fitting — and it is about him when you break it all down.

Main Character(s): Biggie aka Henry, 17 y/o (he/him)

Motifs (not exhaustive): obesity, dating, goals, high school relationships, cliques, bullying, teasing, baseball, perfection, anxiety, identity, athletics, broken families, step fathers, family dynamics, social media

Great for…* (readers): N/A

Great for…* (teachers): N/A

Parental Warning(s): Some cursing, crude reference to female body, sexual reference/innuendo

Interact: Does a negative review make you want to read a book more than a positive one?

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^{*The “Great for” category is not exhaustive and does not intend to neglect the multitude of readers/teachers who could learn from this book in any number of ways.}

RATINGS GUIDE

٭ = DNF, would not recommend
٭٭ = would not recommend
٭٭٭ = enjoyable, would recommend
٭٭٭٭ = very good, would recommend
٭٭٭٭٭ = amazing, would definitely recommend

Book Review: Anxious People

The structure is the meaning. The meaning is the structure. The structure’s in the meaning. The meaning’s in the structure. If that’s too much for you, you may want to either skip this read or read it without much care.

I admit it. When I started Anxious People by Fredrik Backman, my first Backman book, I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the short, choppy chapters that read as unique short story submissions to literary journals with flashpoints in the final lines that change the entire reading of the story. Again and again and again. One was good. Two okay. Then, it irritated me. I couldn’t get my feet on the ground of this narrative without having Backman purposely launch me off them.

The interjections of interviews with equally irritating, if not obnoxious, characters proved nothing if not a nuisance.

Precisely as they were meant to do.

This will be a short review (if you can call it that) because I have no intention of revealing the plot resolution of Backman’s book featuring a bank robber without a robbery and a hostage situation with the “world’s worst hostages.” You’ll have to experience the details for yourself. But here is what I’ve come to conclude: despite all that Backman himself will tell you the book’s about (in the text itself, he will use the phrase repeatedly), if you can trust him, the story is about isolation and connection.

The jagged pieces that begin the book are reflections of the characters themselves: intriguing, well-crafted, but ultimately awkward in how they attempt to be more than alone. Because as the reader, I was somewhat lost in the nameless characters and their stories at the start, I found myself like them, weighing whether or not connecting to these characters is worth it. The more they revealed, the less annoying the characters were, and the more I recognized bits of myself in them.

That’s the genius of this narrative. You find yourself in characters who you assumed were nothing like you. You connect with them as Backman transitions from his short, stop-and-go chapters to lengthier ones. Even the shorter interviews reveal connections you may not anticipate and which bolster the meaning of the narrative.

The book is well done and meaningful. It is unusual and unique, like we are, yet immensely relatable, too. Also, like we are. If that seems enigmatic or problematic or paradoxical, well, you’ll just have to read Anxious People to understand what I mean.

Rating: 4/5
Target: adult readership, 16 y.o. (not due to word or subject-matter but due to nuance)

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Add on Goodreads.}

RATINGS GUIDE

٭ = DNF, would not recommend
٭٭ = would not recommend
٭٭٭ = enjoyable, would recommend
٭٭٭٭ = very good, would recommend
٭٭٭٭٭ = amazing, would definitely recommend