A sad return from Mexico....

I have to admit, returning home from Mexico is one of the more heartbreaking things I've done in a long time. It didn't help that we were leaving 80 degrees of sunny awesomeness and coming home to 20 degrees of cold, gray, snowyness! But I did it, and I'm back. I only finished one book and one play since my last post.

I started reading Ellen Hopkins a couple years ago and quickly ate up the majority of her books. They are all written in stark and visually stimulating poetry. They all tackle very tough subjects, from drug use to mental issues, disfunctional families to molestation. The book I finished this afternoon is called Fallout and is the third in a trilogy based on her own daughter's experiences. Now, these books are largely fictional, but many of the big events actually happened. The first two books, Crank and Glass follow Kristina into her addiction to crystal methamphetamine and how it destroys her life and her self and lands her in jail and with kids she can't support. Fallout introduces us to Kristina's oldest three children and tell their story. This book takes a look into their future, as she wrote them older than they really are, but her purpose was to give voice to the children of addicts. She does that amazingly well. I will continue to read her books as long as she writes them, no matter how tough the subject.

I also read The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare. I first read this play in tenth grade for English and remember it as the one I liked the best. I read it again to see if it still held the same appeal. I was highly amused by much of it, but there were definitely things that I didn't find as amusing... like the premise that a woman has to be tamed... or that a man governs when and what a woman eats and are at their beck and call. I understand that I have to take this in it's timeframe, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. I still enjoyed reading it, as there are many funny parts, although the whole premise for the play is never finished! At the beginning, a lord has his men take a drunkard up to his room and has them treat him like the lord. Then he has players come in and perform the play. It never goes back to the drunkard!

Finally, I just want to say congratulations to Shaun Tan for his Oscar! I haven't seen the short, The Lost Thing, but I've read a couple of his graphic novels and they are AWESOME! The Arrival is a story in pictures, but it is beautiful and I've always wanted to use it with my students. Tales from Outer Suburbia tells short, odd and interesting tales. They are charming and fun to read. I'll be looking for his other books in the future!

Blogging from Paradise!

I sit here, writing this blog, from what has to be one of the most beautiful places on the planet! Have you ever heard of Zihuatanejo, Mexico? No? Well, most people haven’t. It is situated next to a little bay (aptly named Zihuatanejo Bay) in southern Mexico, about an hour and a half north of Acapulco. I am sitting on the veranda with a dipping pool bubbling about five feet to my left, my husband on the lounge chair beside me, and my children asleep on the pullout sofa in the living room behind me, for which we slid closed the doors that open up to the veranda and the bay and the Pacific Ocean beyond. I have been resting in this absolute PARADISE for three and a half days now. I have already consumed two books, and plan to read at least one or two more before this blog gets published. (If it doesn’t get published soon, that would be because I’ve refused to leave and plan to live here forever! Just saying…) (Strike that! Yay for free wi-fi!)

The first book I read upon arrival was I Am Number Four by Pitticus Lore (a pseudonym, or truly the ruling elder of the planet Lorien, from which the main character and narrator came from). Like much of today’s YA lit, this story is long on story, short on literary elements, which is fine with me, because this is the kind of books that kids are reading today, and as long as they’re reading, does it really matter what? Four, AKA Daniel Jones, AKA John Smith, is the fourth of nine children sent to Earth from Lorien, when the Mogadorians annihilated their planet. A charm was placed on them so that they could only be killed in a certain order. Each time one is killed, a scar encircles their right ankle. Every time a scar shows up, Four and his guardian high-tail it to a new location with new identities. Especially now that his turn is up. Throughout this book, Four has to deal with bullies, first-ever friends, first-loves, and an army of Mogadorians out to get him. I wonder if the movie will live up to the book. (Doubt it… but I’ll go see it anyways!)

The second book I devoured in the course of this morning and afternoon. It was Anthem by Ayn Rand. I have never read Rand before and got this book because it was free on my Kindle and I know a few people who view Atlas Shrugged as their Bible. This book is told mostly in the first person plural, from the point of view of a man in a future society that, like most dystopias, has regressed for the most part. The narrator’s name is Equality 7-2521 and it is told from the plural because in his society, there is no singular. People don’t exist except as a group. Anything that is done for the self is evil. Everything that the group doesn’t condone is evil. This book looks deeply at an extreme form of communism, where there can be no self, no individuality, only community. While I highly enjoyed reading this book, I am not sure that the ending shows a much better future. Is it supposed to be metaphorical or literal? Taken metaphorically, I think it accurately portrays how a person would feel given the situation. Taken literally, it is kind of scary and would lead to a society with even greater problems. And maybe that is part of her commentary… that no society is really good. What do you think?

If you’re following my blog, don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about those books I said I was going to write about for the last two weeks now! I just left them at home and only brought my Kindle. I didn’t want to be lugging around three or four largish hard bound books! Right now I am reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larrsen and The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare.

Hell week....

Have you ever had a week that ended so far from where it started? Nothing went the way you expected it to? THAT was my week... Sunday and Monday were fine. Monday night stressed me out, which led to my migraine on Tuesday and my aftershock headache Wednesday. I'm still not the same from that migraine! This weekend was ALL WORK! (Ok, I had some fun in there, but even the fun was work!)

Anywho, with all of that, I didn't finish any books this week. But I did read a number of short stories, so I'd like to talk about them. Short stories, to me, some times leave me the same way as my morning coffee does, like it served it's purpose, but I'm still not entirely satisfied. I need just a little more. I've always prefered reading novels, as they hold my attention better. It seems contrary for something longer to hold my attention better, but that is how I am! This past week, I chose to reread some short stories that I highly enjoyed the first time around, and read some that I had never read, but should have.

The stories that I reread were "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin. I have always loved these stories because they portray women in a different light than normal for the time they were written. In "The Yellow Wallpaper", the narrator is slowly driven mad by the wallpaper bedroom of the house her husband has rented. She has something like post-partem depression and is supposed to be resting and not worrying about anything, even the baby. Gilman wrote the story in protest to the "rest cures" doctors were prescribing to women. As a result, her doctor changed his treatments. "The Story of an Hour" could be read in about ten minutes. It is super short, but the emotions that go through the main character tell the story. Kate Chopin was a wonderful writer whose work was banned while she was alive. Her women didn't do what was expected of them from society, and for that reason, she is one of my favorites!

I also read "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe for a class that I am coteaching and saw a production of it. I have to admit that the first time I read through the story I was lost in Poe's language. Poe is a writer whose work I have to read with other people in order to enjoy it. Or maybe it's in the explaining it to my students that I can really appreciate its beauty. There is very little dialogue and a lot of description, which made for an interesting stage adaptation. Poe's description weaves a gothically beautiful picture of a house nearing it's end, both literally and figuratively, with words like phantasmagoric and miasma and phrases like an anomylous species of terror. If you enjoy the macabre, you'll enjoy this story.

I'm not sure, yet, what is on the docket for next week. Hopefully, I will finish Matched by Ally Condie and I will most likely read all of Fallout by Ellen Hopkins.

Week 2 - Two YA books and a Classic

So, I said last week that I was going to review Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane by Suzanne Collins and Nightlight by The Harvard Lampoon. I also managed to finish The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I guess that's where I'll start. I read The Great Gatsby because I'm going to be teaching it next month in the English class I coteach. It's a book I've been meaning to read for awhile but probably would have never gotten around to without the proper prompting. I did enjoy it. A lot took place in the narrator's (Nick Carraway's) head, and a lot was what he heard. It is interesting how a lot of modern lit focuses on the drama as it is happening. The main character is the person that is going through the drama. Not so in this book. The main character watches a lot of what happens, but most of the real action happens as he is looking back in hindsight. After learning the time frame it takes place in, I got into it a lot more. It is a "roaring 20's", prohibition/bootlegging, jazz era book. Taken as that, it is beautiful.

I talked about the first Underland Chronicles book in my last blog. If you aren't familiar with the series, check it out! In the second book, Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane, Gregor and his little sister Boots are once again dragged into the Underworld. This time, Gregor must defeat the Bane, a ten-foot-tall, white rat, to save his sister from the other rats who are hunting her and to save the Underworld. But nothing turns out exactly how people expect it in the Underland. Gregor takes another exciting journey through the Underland and the reader tags along, fighting his fight, feeling his pain and enduring all his hardships. One thing that Suzanne Collins excells at in her writing is pulling the reader in and making them feel like part of the story!

The last book I read, Nightlight by the Harvard Lampoon was just too fricken funny! If you liked Twilight, you should totally read the parody! If you hated Twilight, you will love this book! Belle Goose leaves her babyish mom and her travel-street-hockey playing step-dad to move to Switchblade, Oregon, where she meets Edwart Mullen. She detects early on that he is a vampire and she wants him to make her one, too. When she tells her dad she is in love he responds: " ...isn't it a little soon to cut yourself off from the rest of your peers, depending on a boyfriend to satisfy your social needs as opposed to making friends? Imagine what would happen if something forced that boy to leave! I'm imagining pages and pages would happen- with nothing but the names of the month on them!" I almost dropped the book laughing at that point. Later on, Belle almost gets eaten by a real vampire who decides to take her to the vampire prom instead, where the theme is human. Then the vampire starts rattling off the prom themes from former years: "Pimps and their Street Ho's; CEOs and their Office Ho's; GI Joes and their Combat Ho's; Gardeners and their Garden Hoes; Firemen and their Fire Hose..." It's a short book, filled with hilarity... Don't read it expecting to get some kind of greater knowledge out of it, it's just a parody! Enjoy!

Next week:
Matched by Allie Condie
Not sure what else yet, but there's this big controversy going on where three books were put on this top 100 list and then removed and replaced with three "less controversial" books. So, needless to say, I'm trying to get my hands on the books that were removed! We'll see! Happy reading!