If you’re new around here, Things I’ve Read Recently is a series of posts I do that are basically mini-reviews of books that I either forgot to review, didn’t have enough to say for a full review, or just didn’t want to do a full post about for whatever reason.
Or I just want to have a theme.
This post is only going to have three books because my “mini” review
Generation Green by Linda Sivertsen and Tosh Sivertsten
Published: August 5th, 2008 by Simon and Schuster
Genre: YA Nonfiction
Binding: Paperback
Page Count: 248 plus some ads
Part of a series? No
Got via: Remember Book Divas? Back in the late 2000s, they had a really active message board and periodically you could get a free copy of a book to be part of the book club discussion.
Summary (from goodreads): We all know about the Earth’s environmental crisis, but there is someone who can truly make a difference: you. If you text your friends or chat with them online, download music to your iPod, or toss bottles and papers into recycling bins, you’re already more eco-savvy than you think. It’s just as easy to do even more to help save the earth, and Generation Green shows you how. This book:
- Lays out the inside scoop on the biggest issues affecting our planet, such as global warming and overflowing landfills
- Offers dozens of tips on how to shop, dress, eat, and travel the green way Includes interviews with teens like you who are involved with fun, innovative green causes
- Shows that being environmentally conscious can be a natural part of your life — and your generation’s contribution to turning things around.
It doesn’t matter if you can’t vote or drive. Your efforts — big or small — will contribute to saving the planet. It’s time for all of us to take action. It’s time to go green!
Thoughts: Well, I had fun making fun of this on Twitter. That’s about the most I can say for it. This book is at best incredibly simplistic and at worst actively dangerous. Since the summary likes bullet points, let’s use some. Because that’s kind of fun.
Simplistic at best suggestions:
- Did you know you can use reusable tote bags instead of plastic bags?
- Plastic water bottles are bad
- Unplug your electronics when you’re not using them and turn the lights off when you leave a room
An off-shoot of this is “this book aged really fast”:
- Buying a lot of CDs and DVDs creates waste
- Burning your work to CDs as backup creates waste so you should use a cloud backup instead – the book mentions a service that offers a whole 25MB of data free!
- They mention the 2007 Live Earth concert pretty often? And I kind of wonder how long that was supposed to be relevant. I was 15 in 2007 and I don’t even remember that.
- Did you know your VCR uses a lot of energy when it’s plugged in and you aren’t using it?
- Wouldn’t getting some digital newspaper subscriptions – or even seeing if your library has that service, many do! – be “greener” than all the projects they suggest using old newspapers for?
- They spend some time talking about how “toxic” most makeup is because scary chemicals, and they talk about a friend who “started wearing sparkles on her cheeks at thirteen years old, and today at twenty-one she still wears them” – but we’re not gonna talk about plastic glitter being really bad for the ocean?
Actively dangerous:
- They recommend feeding your dog a lot of garlic to keep fleas away. Garlic is toxic to dogs.
- It’s kind of racist sometimes? I dunno, I couldn’t name anything specific but it’s got a re-occuring romanticizing of Indigenous people as super myserical and stuff. They also use the phrase “green karma” a lot which is… a choice.
- The book suggests you should put your alarm clock across the room and stand away from your microwave because EMFs might give you cancer.
- Don’t put essential oils in your mouth instead of mouthwash.
- This isn’t actively dangerous, but I feel like suggesting teengers should skip a daily shower, rewear clothes that “aren’t dirty” after a day’s wear, and give up antipersperant is just gross. Have you met a teenager lately?
- They suggest using thrift stores a lot, which is fine, but they also mention Goodwill specifically, and don’t mention that Goodwill is pretty awful to disabled people.
- There’s also no mention of bedbugs from picking your neighbour’s couch up off the side of the road. Just saying.
- The makeup/beauty chapter goes into a lot of cissexist stuff about “female bodies” that honestly feels like complete BS. In general, they say a lot of “studies show” but they almost never cite those studies and the ones they do seem incredibly cherrypicked.
Most of the rest of my complaints are petty things, like how unrealistic the idea of shoving soda cans into your pockets to bring home to recycle is. Or things like reusing paper towels that have been used once after they dry to pick up after your dog, or that I’ve NEVER heard of someone using a solar phone charger and they act like that that’s normal to suggest, or that it can be really repetative and the voice is trying too hard to relate to teens or that white text on green paper is impossible to read. I have two things I NEED to talk about though that are my biggest complaints. (Saved the best for last, I guess?)
One – this book assumes that the teenager reading this is a middle to upper class teenager able-bodied who lives in a city. It even says “Most of us live in cities” which… do we? Because I certainly don’t. It has absolutely no room in it for the idea of a teenager who doesn’t live in a large house with room to garden and collect your own rainwater. If you live in a food desert and barely have access to basic produce, how do you buy the local organic produce the book insists in best? Or the expensive organic cotton sheets, or the expensive organic cosmetics, or the Tesla which you totally, as a poor teenager or even a teenager in general, have the power to influence your parents into buying?
At one point, they say “Your eating will improve as you get better at choosing restaurants, shopping for good food, or cooking for your friends”. Teenagers aren’t usually in control of those things! It’s so unrealistic. So many of the things they suggest require so much privilege to be accessible.
Two – the dangerous “nutrition” advice. There’s a chapter on “Eating Green” that is full of dangerous and disgusting “advice” and food guilt. They suggest – through a totally real anecdote of a friend who’s in her seventies and allegedly looks fifty – that eating “mostly organic raw fruits and vegetables” will make you look younger as it’s “as if the living cells in the food give you added beauty and energy”. Canned vegetables are bad, empty calories, “chemicals are bad”, etc.
Linda says she was a “fruitarian” when pregnant with Tosh, meaning she only ate fruit, a few leafy greens, and the occasional nut. I’m just going to leave this video from an actual dietitian about this exact subject here. They claim “we’re fairly certain we can credit all the purewater and organic fruits and vegetables Tosh eats for how little acne he’s had as a teen” because why not skin-shame the teenagers while we’re at it, like water you drink doesn’t actually have very little to do with your skin and that genetics doesn’t play a HUGE role in skin. Linda also claims this is why she did not have morning sickness while pregnant, and why Tosh was “sick only about, oh, three short days during his entire childhood”.
As he’s only 17 while co-writing this book, this rather contradicts the claim on the next page that they fast on only water when they feel illness coming on. It also contradicts the statement that when Tosh was five the “medicine man” came to see them in the mountains where they didn’t have heat and was so concerned about how frail they were that he immediately fed them a bunch of venison.
But they’re totally not saying YOU should eat this way, even though the closest thing to a nutrition expert they mention is a model and actress who wrote a book about eating only raw foods.
Overall, this has aged badly and I don’t think it was particularly great when it was new. I got it as a teenager, read half, left a bookmark in there, and never touched it again for 12 years. Maybe if you live in an LA suburb and your mom is a writer and your dad is an actor, and you have money to burn, this could convince you to shop vintage instead of at Abercombie, or Lush instead of Sephora, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
The Book of Lists for Teens by Sandra and Harry Choron
Published: October 24th, 2002 by Mariner Books
Genre: YA Nonfiction
Binding: Paperback
Page Count: 322
Part of a series? Kinda actually? They have a couple other books of lists.
Got via: It’s a library reject I was curious about.
Summary (from goodreads): Face it: no self-respecting young adult likes to be caught out of the know. But few teenagers have the time or inclination to plow through Web sites, almanacs, and weighty reference books to find the answers to all their questions. The Book of Lists for Teens is an informative, lively, and engaging source of information about all kinds of things, and it’s fun.
It’s all here: everything that matters most to people aged twelve to sixteen, from lists on cyberfun, music, and movies to advice about social pressures, family matters, and planning for the future. Packed with Internet addresses, recommended reading, and project ideas, The Book of Lists for Teens provides a resource that goes far beyond its pages.
Thoughts: This is like reading a magazine from 2002. It’s fun for me because I was like ten in 2002, but it’s very, very dated.
My favourite suggestions are from the “Simplify Your Life” list, which includes “Get an address book,” “Create a filing system,” “Don’t wear makeup regularly,” “Don’t get any piercings or dye your hair,” “Listen to music at the record store before buying CDs,” “Don’t be a prima donna” and by this they mean, use the same shampoo, soap, and breakfast cereal as everyone in your household because anyone with allergies is just a drama queen, clearly. You also should not “Play sports that require elaborate equipment, planning, or expense” or “Answer every email you get.” You also should not send your friends large files, like 50KB photos, because it might take 20 minutes for them to download them, or meet someone from the Internet, and you must be careful about chat rooms. Also be careful about fake Beanie Baby sellers.
However, if you’re bored, they suggest to “Pray”, “Cry”, and “Don’t talk for a whole day”. Oh, and even though you shouldn’t wear makeup, you should slather your face in Vaseline and clog your pores to death. They recommend using it on your eyebrows, eyelashes, lips, and cheeks for a “healthy glow”.
It’s very cissexist and very binarist. They don’t acknowledge that trans people exist at all. Gay people are mentioned very, very occasionally, like three times, but in the section about dating, it’s assumed everyone is heterosexual. I will say for the time, the list about myths about HIV, and the list about sex myths, were probably a pretty good. But overall, not great on all that.
I also found any mention of weight or eating pretty obnoxious. There’s a bunch of diet talk, like to “control yourself” by not eating when you’re full, calorie counts of a bunch of fast food, and a list about of “Tips for Dressing Thin” which say that oversized clothes look bad on an “oversized body”. Just a whole bunch of BS. I may just have defaced the book in a few places where it really annoyed me.
What? I own it. I can cross stuff out if I want.
Anyways, it’s pretty goofy and I’ll probably keep it because a lot of it really amuses but the problems with books like these is they age so, so fast, but they do have a lot of appeal to teen readers. This type of format also has big selective reader appeal. It’s a double edged sword. I can see it being popular at the time, but I also see why it’s been weeded by my library. I got a laugh out of it, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
Does This Book Make Me Look Fat? edited by Marissa Walsh
Published: December 29th, 2008
Genre: YA anthology
Binding: ARC
Page Count: 216 but it goodreads says 208 so it could be different in a finished copy.
Part of a series? Nope.
Got via: I won it in a blog giveaway. Not before it was published.
Summary (from goodreads): How often do you find yourself looking in the mirror? And smiling at what you see?
More likely, you’re thinking what you see is: Fat, Ugly, Skinny, Round, Stacked or Flat, Bad or Good. From reality television to tabloid headlines, we’re all surrounded by weight and discussion of weight. In this collection, a stellar lineup of YA writers sound off on body image, self-esteem, diets, eating disorders, boys, fashion magazines, and why trying on jeans is a bad experience for everyone.
There are eight powerful short stories and six moving personal essays from authors whose works include two New York Times bestsellers, a Los Angeles TImes Book Prize, and a Printz Honor; an appendix offers book, movie, and music recommendations. (And in case you’re still wondering, No this book does not make you look fat.)
Thoughts: Yes, this book does make me look fat. All books do, because I am fat. My body is a fat body, and it looks fat whether I’m holding a book, or not holding a book, or wearing clothes, or not wearing clothes. This is such a pet peeve of mine, much like the phrase “feeling fat”. When you say that, what do you actually mean?
I have thoughts on a few of the offerings individually, so I’ll talk about those, and then about the anthology as a whole. Note here that this is an anthology with a mixture of essays and fiction.
Circumferentially Challenged by Daniel Pinkwater: This, to me, is the best essay or story in the anthology. It talks about using the word fat in neutral and positive way, and the author IS actually, currently fat. It also states “there is a societal bias against fatness” which is great, and debunks a bit of the “But what about heeeaaaaalth” thing. It does have a couple of not great things, like the idea that fat people “should not expect to excel in the track and field category” of sports, but while a bit dated, it’s pretty good.
Mirror, Mirror by Megan McCafferty: This made a giant thing about “negative-zero jeans” which is a size that as far as I know doesn’t exist. It’s told from the POV of a mirror and feels incredibly shallow, stereotypical, and misogynistic.
Alterations by Eireann Corrigan: This is an essay about a person with a history of severe anorexia talking about how they deliberately bought a wedding dress two sizes too small, but it was totally okay because they lost weight “the right way” this time. This made me incredibly uncomfortable and I feel as though it could be very, very triggering for someone with a history of disordered eating.
Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others by Sarra Manning: I really didn’t like this story. It’s very victim-blaming at times, and has transmisia and unchecked homomisia. Also, the main character says her friend is totally not fat when she feels nice to her, but calls her fat when she’s mad at her, clearly using body size as an insult. I guess she’s not supposed to be a role model, but it’s just unpleasant. It’s also just… I dunno, the whole thing rubs me the wrong way. Maybe because it’s the whole “a makeover montage makes solves all problems” thing.
HELLO my name is by Carolyn Mackler: I agree with the main point of this essay, that commenting on peoples’ bodies is unacceptable and also a freaking RUDE thing to do when you first meet someone. However, she talks about “The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, which if you’re not familiar, is one of very few early YA books with a fat protagonist. People still recommend this book when you ask for fat-positive rep (even though I think it ends with the MC losing weight?).
And she says, “More than anything, though, Virginia’s weight was a metaphor for all the ways we feel insecure, don’t measure up, don’t fit in, don’t think we’re as deserving as other people.” And I think that sums up my entire problem with (some, obviously) thin people who write books with fat main characters. A fat body is not a metaphor for insecurity. A fat body is a body. A fat person is a person.
Pretty, Hungry by Ellen Hopkins: Ellen Hopkins has a racism problem and I don’t support her.
Supplements: This is a list of “Books That Fit” that, among others, recommends Judy Blume’s Blubber, Life in the Fat Lane by Cherie Bennett, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher, Little Miss Tiny by Roger Hargreaves (???), One Fat Summer by Robert Lipsyte, Holes by Louis Sachar, and Forever in Blue by Ann Brasheres. Now I like Holes, but I think the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants book (the fourth book, for some reason) is the only one with a fat character that doesn’t have that character ending their arc in weight loss and I don’t even remember if the girl in that series is even meant to be actually fat.
There’s also a movie/TV show section that recommends “Super Size Me”. Did we not know in 2008 that he faked his results on that whole thing?
Overall: This was published in 2008 and it shows, but even with that in mind, it seems incredibly confused about what it wants to do. The whole thing where half of the entries were essays and half were fiction confused me. There’s at least one story where I legit could not tell if a selection was nonfiction or fiction. I almost wonder if it’s so that the book would be put in the YA fiction section of libraries versus nonfiction.
I just can’t tell what their deal is. Other than the first essay by Daniel Pinkwater, I can’t say any of these are fat positive. Most of the entries about fat people are about weight loss in some way or another. Fatness also is often conflated with overeating – disordered eating, really – or eating almost stereotypically “unhealthily”, and weight loss is almost always seen as a good thing as long as you do it the “right” way. And of course it’s as simple as “eat less, move more”. The only other entry about fatness that doesn’t revolve around weight loss is about how bad plus size shopping was in the 80s.
Where are the stories about loving your fat body I was promised?
There are also exactly two entries from authors who aren’t white, and the only story to mention sexual orientation or gender identity did so derisively. And in the “About the Contributors”, they specifically give every author’s size (and the editor). So I tallied that up. 1 XS, 2 S, 6 M, 1L, 2 XL, 2 XXL, and 1 XXXL. One author also chose to say “That depends who I’m standing next to”, which honestly, good for them, but I googled that author and they’re very thin. So 11 thin authors, 2 authors probably between straight sized and plus sized, and 3 fat authors. Those numbers feel off for a book with “Fat” in the title.
I keep asking who this book is for and I guess it’s for thin white girl struggling with their body image, but even then I wouldn’t recommend it. The anthology often talks about specific weights and sizes outside of the author list. I can’t imagine reading this as a fat teen and reading how insulting some of these stories are about a (plus) size I was larger than. It’s just not kind to fat people, and I think many of the messages about eating could be harmful to people of all sizes.
Am I allowed to recommend the anthology I’m in instead? XD It’s a whole lot more inclusive.
Well, this was mostly disappointing. Interesting, but I didn’t really find anything I loved. I’m interested in reading more non-fiction though! What would you recommend for me?
Peace and cookies,
Laina
Laina Has Too Much Spare Time 