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minutia_rGordon Korman writes the premium-grade uncut pre-slash, doesn't he?
So, I spent yesterday morning reading Schooled. I've heard that Gordon Korman's more recent work isn't a patch on his older stuff, and in some ways that's true. In places it felt more like an outline of a book than a book; in other places it felt like he was trying too hard to be Jerry Spinelli to remember to be Gordon Korman. It was published in 2007, and the setting is presumably meant to be more-or-less contemporary, but if there are such things as cell phones or computers you wouldn't know it by this book. The hippie stuff revealed more half-assed grabbing after cliches than any real understanding of 1960's counterculture. There was a major plot development where I had to suspend disbelief approximately the size of a mountain from something approximately the size of a spiderweb. There was wackiness (the scene with Cap driving the bus was particularly good) but there wasn't the katamari of wackiness that's the reason one reads Gordon Korman in the first place.
AND YET. Ever since, my brain has been busily spinning out Zach/Hugh, with a side order of unrequited Darryl/Cap. (Seriously, Gordon Korman. That Darryl chapter. How do you know where all my buttons are? It's a little embarrassing.)
I am really supposed to be working on other things. I am working on other things. I certainly don't need to be getting into a new dead fandom now. So I am not going to write it. Damn it.
So, I spent yesterday morning reading Schooled. I've heard that Gordon Korman's more recent work isn't a patch on his older stuff, and in some ways that's true. In places it felt more like an outline of a book than a book; in other places it felt like he was trying too hard to be Jerry Spinelli to remember to be Gordon Korman. It was published in 2007, and the setting is presumably meant to be more-or-less contemporary, but if there are such things as cell phones or computers you wouldn't know it by this book. The hippie stuff revealed more half-assed grabbing after cliches than any real understanding of 1960's counterculture. There was a major plot development where I had to suspend disbelief approximately the size of a mountain from something approximately the size of a spiderweb. There was wackiness (the scene with Cap driving the bus was particularly good) but there wasn't the katamari of wackiness that's the reason one reads Gordon Korman in the first place.
AND YET. Ever since, my brain has been busily spinning out Zach/Hugh, with a side order of unrequited Darryl/Cap. (Seriously, Gordon Korman. That Darryl chapter. How do you know where all my buttons are? It's a little embarrassing.)
I am really supposed to be working on other things. I am working on other things. I certainly don't need to be getting into a new dead fandom now. So I am not going to write it. Damn it.
