Party by Tom Leveen

What it's about (from Goodreads): It's Saturday night in Santa Barbara and school is done for the year. Everyone is headed to the same party. Or at least it seems that way. The place is packed. The beer is flowing. Simple, right? But for 11 different people the motives are way more complicated. As each character takes a turn and tells his or her story, the eleven individuals intersect, and reconnect, collide, and combine in ways that none of them ever saw coming.

What I learned: I love books that take place over a short amount of time with the story told from different viewpoints. For some reason, this style really appeals to me. Of course, my real lesson from this book is much deeper. Almost all of the main characters are dealing with something really rough in their lives including the death of a parent and a brother who was severely injured fighting in the Middle East. The storyline that really stuck with me was Anthony Lincoln and Azize's. Anthony's older brother gave up a football scholarship to join the army and came back without his legs. Azize is Turkish and looks very Middle Eastern. Though Anthony starts it, both of them say some stupid things and big Anthony ends up beating Azize to a pulp in a haze of anger and misplaced retribution for his brother. What absolutely blew my mind was Azize didn't blame Anthony for it and lied to the cops and paramedics to keep him from getting in trouble. I also loved the internal conversation Anthony has with his older brother that shows he knows that what he did was wrong. It's beautiful. This isn't completely new to me, but the book really reinforced the idea to me that none of us know what other people are going through and what their motivations for their actions are. It's so easy to pass judgment on people who are angry or mean, but for all we know they might have just gotten really bad news or are taking care of a loved one in bad health. I know I need to work on making snap judgments of people whose actions I don't agree with or understand.

If you've read Party, what did you learn? Do you have as hard of a time as I do understanding people whose beliefs you don't agree with?

Pink by Lili Wilkinson

(one of my all-time favorite covers!)

What it's about (from Goodreads): Ava has a secret. She is tired of her ultracool attitude, ultra-radical politics, and ultrablack clothing. She's ready to try something new—she's even ready to be someone new. Someone who fits in, someone with a gorgeous boyfriend, someone who wears pink.

Transferring to Billy Hughes School for Academic Excellence is the perfect chance to try on a new identity. But just in case things don't work out, Ava is hiding her new interests from her parents, and especially from her old girlfriend.

Secrets have a way of being hard to keep, though, and Ava finds that changing herself is more complicated than changing her wardrobe. Even getting involved in the school musical raises issues she never imagined. As she faces surprising choices and unforeseen consequences, Ava wonders if she will ever figure out who she really wants to be.

What I learned: Other people had and have a much harder time figuring out who they are than I did and do, at least in some ways. I was never unclear about my sexuality and I can't imagine how much more dramatic high school would have been had I been dealing with defining that alongside dating. There are so many people for whom identifying themselves on the sexuality spectrum is difficult and it's incredibly hard for people to go through. High school is full of so many other high-intensity situations to deal with. I'm so thankful that those four years were not a bad or hard period for me and I need to always be careful when I interact with others because I never know what they might be struggling with.

If you've read Pink, what did you learn? Have you ever questioned your sexuality? (Super personal question, I understand.)

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

What it's about (from Goodreads): The story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out–with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes–to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There’s Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family’s most precious–and dangerous–asset.
As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.

What I learned: This book is more than a little disturbing. There are drugs, incest, rapes, amputations, lobotomies, murders and all-out unhealthy relationships of all kinds. It's not a long book but it took me much longer than usual to get through because it's so dense, both physically (the type is smaller than most books and single-spaced) and content-wise. There is so much happening that it's sometimes hard to tell what the main plotline is.
I consider myself (as I'm sure many people do) quite normal and average. I'm of average height, weight, attractiveness and personableness. I'm pretty well-accepted in the world for who I am and I've never really felt uncomfortable with myself. To the characters in this book, I would be ignored and despised for being a "norm". Normal people from across the country desire abnormalities and get them in gruesome ways. It's so hard for me to imagine wanting to mutilate myself so that I could be set apart as not normal but this book almost accomplishes that. None of the Binewskis are at all self-conscious about their specialties, which include having flippers in place of arms and legs, being an albino hunch-backed dwarf and being a Siamese twin. Instead, they scoff at normal people and when it looks like a member of their own family might be normal, they almost get rid of him. I learned that not everyone who is different sees it as negative. I know that this book takes physical abnormalities to an extreme but I do think that it applies to people in general as well. This book made me think about the desire to be unique and the desire to be the same and how they are linked. If you are perfectly normal in every way, would you consider undergoing surgery to be given uniqueness? If you have something about yourself that is considered unusual, might you undergo surgery to be given normality? Geek Love made me think about how I feel about myself and define my self-worth as well as other people's.

If you've read Geek Love, what did you learn? Were you as creeped out by some parts of it as I was?

Wide Awake by David Levithan

What it's about (from Goodreads): In the not-too-impossible-to-imagine future, a gay Jewish man has been elected president of the United States. Until the governor of one state decides that some election results in his state are invalid, awarding crucial votes to the other candidate, and his fellow party member. Thus is the inspiration for couple Jimmy and Duncan to lend their support to their candidate by deciding to take part in the rallies and protests. Along the way comes an exploration of their relationship, their politics, and their country, and sometimes, as they learn, it's more about the journey than it is about reaching the destination.

What Goodreads doesn't mention: Jimmy and Duncan are in high school.

What I learned from it: Wow, where to start. This book is beautiful because it takes conventional thought and turns it on its head. For example, I loved that Levithan made Christians the main supporters of gay people and loving all kinds of different people. It's so rarely seen and I often feel that Christians are portrayed negatively in all kinds of media, books not excluded. Janna's idea to give food to the kids of the opposition is wonderful and so Christ-like. I grew up in a quite conservative evangelical Christian home and was even a missionary kid. My entire extended family on both sides are outspoken Christians and I grew up believing very conservative values. As I've grown up I've changed some of my views but this book really challenged me in several ways to inspect my beliefs about loving people and Jesus. Reading this book, I learned (again) that it's hard to do the right thing. I learned that sometimes it's hard to even figure out what the right thing is. But most of all I learned that loving other people - the same way you love yourself - is a good place to start.

If you've read Wide Awake (which you should!), what did you learn? When do you think the United States will have an openly gay or lesbian president?