Compare and Contrast

From the book I just finished reading:

How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people--girls, women--went unarmed and were taught nothing of fighting, while the strong were trained to the highest reaches of their skill.

From the book I just finished listening to:

The counselor suggested competitive team sports as a positive outlet, and pushed Frankie to join the girls' field hockey team.

That was not a productive solution.

It was the girls' team.

Boys didn't even play field hockey.

Boys thought nothing of field hockey.

Frankie was not interested in playing a sport that was rated as nothing by the more powerful half of the population.

Heard on Good Morning America this morning about the new season of American Idol:

But is adding another female judge a direct threat to Paula?

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The read: Graceling, by Kristen Cashore -

A fantasy world where a few people happen to be born "graced" with special abilities. Usually they are mundane things like cooking, fishing, athletics, and the like. Katsa, however, is blessed with the ability to kill. Her uncle, one of 7 kings in the area, has carefully developed Katsa to be his personal assassin and enforcer, as she's the deadliest person in the land. But as Katsa is growing into adulthood, she is developing a conscience and a sense of independence. Then a stranger from one of the other kingdoms with his own unique grace enters into Katsa's life and they are both drawn into unexpected international intrigue. A very satisfying fantasy, and not just for teens.

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The listen: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, by E. Lockhart -

Frankie is a sophomore at an elite boarding school in northern Massachussetts. The kind of school where old money families send their kids to build relationships that will form the basis of their business networks for life. Frankie's father went there and still gets more joy and success from his associates in the Loyal Order of Bassett Hounds than anyone else. Frankie starts dating senior Matthew Livingston, whom she learns is the current president of the order. And who dismisses her at the drop of a hat to hang out with his "dogs." Frankie decides she doesn't like being second in his heart and goes about finding a way to infiltrate the order. An excellent book with some of the most believably complex characters I've read and a good heaping of sociological and psychological insight.

More Frankie:

Family wealth and social class didn't count on the surface. What those factors did was to lend the boys who had them an almost intangible sense of security regarding their places in the world, which often (thought not always) led to social dominance, which led to induction in the Loyal Order.

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It was a secret society, but what precisely for was hard to tell. Senior's reminiscences were largely of campus escapades like posting mysterious coded messages on the message boards or sneaking out after curfew. He and his friends seemed to want Frankie and Zada to know the society existed--and that they'd been members; but they didn't want to answer any direct questions. One night as they all sat looking at the remains of a heavy meal spread out across a soiled white tablecloth, the Old Boys did admit they'd kept a record of their misdeeds in a notebook they called The Disreputable History. But when Frankie asked Mr. Sutton what they'd written in it, he laughed and shook his head. "Now if I told you that, it wouldn't be a secret, would it?"

"But you're telling us about the society," Frankie said, "so how big a secret can it be?"

"Secrets are more powerful when people know you've got them," said Mr. Sutton. "You show them the tiniest edge of your secret, but the rest you keep under wraps."

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She felt strangely proud of what she'd done. She had been right about what Porter had really meant, she was certain she had been.

But she also knew she'd acted like a monster.

Frankie hadn't liked herself while she'd been yelling at Porter--but she had admired herself. For not being the littlest one at the table, like she had been all her childhood, depending on the big people (Senior, her mom, Zada), to make sense of the world for her.

For not pouting or grumbling, moping or whining, for not doing any of those behaviors a person engages in when she takes offense but doesn't feel like she has any way to assert herself.

She admired herself for taking charge of the situation, for deciding which way it went. She admired her own verbal abilities, her courage, her dominance.

So I was a monster, she thought. At least I wasn't someone's little sister, someone's girlfriend, some sophomore, some girl--someone whose opinions don't matter.

Frankie walked to her next class, not looking out for Matthew or Trish or anyone. Just feeling the power surging through her, with all its accompanying guilt, righteousness, joy, and fear.