Different does not even cover it...

The two books I am going to write about could not be any more different. They only have one thing in common, being used...

City of Light by Lauren Belfer takes place in Buffalo right before and during the Pan American Exposition in 1901. Louisa Barrett is the headmistress of a prestigious school for girls. Many of her girls go on to fill traditional roles of wife, mother and hostess, but her greatest hope is for them to break out of these roles and pass the bug on to their children. Belfer's language is beautiful and the book is a nice balance of fact and fiction. I learned (or relearned) a lot about the Niagara Falls power station. Threaded throughout this book are a couple mysteries. One is fairly obvious and can be guessed at as soon as the question comes up. The other is more elusive and surprised me even as the answer was being revealed. I truly believe that reading is more about the journey than the destination, so I enjoyed the book, but the ending wasn't what I had been hoping for. After talking to friends, I decided that the protagonist ended pretty much where she began and that's where our disappointed laid. I would like to read Belfer's second book, A Fierce Radiance, so I'll see if she's gotten better at endings! (I didn't tell you how being used had to do with this book, because it's a major plot twist and I'm not giving it away!)

The second book is ALL about being used. It is called Tricks by Ellen Hopkins. As the title suggests, the books is about turning tricks. More specifically it's about teenagers who end up in situations where they have to turn tricks to survive. It is about five teenagers from five very different families and walks of life. I think I've read all of Ellen Hopkins books and I think this was the hardest to read. I could feel these teenagers getting dragged down and making bad choices without even knowing it, believing in the people who should have their best interest at heart, but don't. All in all, the book left me with hope... and a serious case of NEVER wanting to go to Las Vegas! It is a subject that I have always pondered writing about, because there are so many kids that this really happens to. Eventually, I wanted to explore (in writing) how a teen might end up on this path. After reading this book, I'm not 100% sure I'll be able to, but it's still an idea!

I have one more book to read of those three books that were yanked off the top 100 feminist books for Young Adults. I think after that, I'm going to take a break from reading these tough subjects! Maybe I'll reread Harry Potter in anticipation of the last movie!

Graphic Novels

If you know me, you know I love graphic novels. I like the literary graphic novels more than the Superhero or the anime. I've probably read dozens of them by now. That is one of my purposes in writing this blog - to keep track of all the books I read! I read a lot of books, and unfortunately, my memory doesn't always keep them. I generally finish graphic novels very quickly and they disappear just as quickly from my mind.

Bayou by Jeremy Love is probably one of the most original stories I've read in a while. It takes place in the Bayou during the 1930s when racism and lynchings were rampant. Lee lives with her father on the Westmoreland's land and when the daughter, Lily Westmoreland goes missing, guess who gets blamed? Lee witnessed Lily get eaten by a giant who then disappeared into the Bayou. To save her father, Lee dives in and follows the light under the roots of a tree deep in the Bayou to a strange land of giants and gods. This was just volume one, and I can't wait to read the rest of this strange story.

Think you have a crazy family? Maybe you have issue that you blame on your poor upbringing? Maybe you just have Daddy issues? Let me tell you, most people have nothing on Laurie Sandell! The Imposter's Daughter: A True Memoir tells her story from being a young girl and wondering why her father stops the mail when he goes out of town; to a college kid who gets rejected by credit card companies because her father took out credit cards in her name and charged them up and never paid them off; to a young woman who with attachment issues and addictions to alcohol and ambien. This was a great way to tell a very unique story! I am not usually very big on true stories, but I flew through this book and enjoyed every minute of it!

The last graphic novel I'm going to talk about in this post is a lot different than the other two. Trickster: Native American Tales is a wonderful collection of Native American Legends and Folktales told by a number of different authors and artists. Matt Dembicki did a great job putting this book together! The stories all have a different feel to them. Some of humorous, some are dark, some are serious. Most of them explain why certain things are the way they are today. My favorite story was "Puapualenalena: Wizard Dog of Waipi'o Valley" about a dog who has to go steal a sacred trumpet back from trouble-making spirits in order to save his master. My favorite artwork was the first story, "Coyote and the Pebbles" which tells the story of how the stars got in the sky. I also read this with my daughter Zoe. She enjoyed the more "cartoon-y" looking stories like "Rabbit's Choctaw Tail Tale" and "Mai and the Cliff-Dwelling Birds". This was a great book for adults and very appropriate for kids!

More graphic novels to come!

Crazy Week Amid Disaster

I know it's been over a week, but it's also been crazy here! Last week was Girl Scout week, so we had events EVERY NIGHT (FYI I'm a Brownie leader). Ash Wednesday was last week. A huge earthquake and then tsunami hit Japan and thousands of people died. What an awful event! I'm still not quite able to fathom the damage done. I keep looking at the photos and thinking that maybe the world really is ending... Maybe that's why I keep reading books about Dystopias and and futuristic worlds. They make me think that what we have now is not so bad. Maybe more people need to read them so they can recognize when things are heading the wrong way!

The first book I'm going to write about is not a book about a dystopia. It's called The Shadow of the Wind and is by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. It is one of the more beautiful books I have read this year. There are so many "deep thoughts" within the pages, it's hard to remember most of them. The story takes us through the young life of Daniel, the ten year old son of a book seller. His father takes him to The Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time and he gets to pick out a book to protect. The book he picks is called The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax. Daniel reads the book and is so taken with it, he tries to learn more about the author and find more of his books. Throughout the book, we see Daniel go through his adolescence and are swept up with him in unravelling the mystery of Julian Carax's life. This book has everything: romance, mystery, horror, murder, crime, intrigue. This is a book that will stay with me for a long time, while others slip out of my memory.

Matched by Ally Condie is a novel about a dystopia. Not to far in the future, the US has been morphed into The (perfect) Society. Everyone has food that meets their nutritional needs, everyone has a job suited to their abilities, and everyone who chooses to gets matched to a person who they will happy with until they die on their eightieth birthday. Or you can choose to be single for the rest of your life. In this society, everything is done for you, and there is very little choice. Cassia chose to be matched and is amazed to get matched to one of her best friends, when everyone else has been matched to people from other burroughs who they have never met before. Everyone who gets matched gets a microcard with all the information of their match on it. When Cassia views her microcard, she see's her match's picture, but then another face comes on the screen, and the face belongs to another friend of hers. Seeing the other boy's face opens up a world of possibilities for her, one being that The Society is not perfect and makes mistakes. Will she choose to accept her match, or will she chase destiny and see where it takes her? I have to admit that the beginning of this book was not easy for me to read. The writing was kind of mechanical and I didn't really get a feel for Cassia. By the end, I realized that's because she wasn't really a person, yet. She just did what The Society told her to do. As the story progresses, Cassia finds her voice and the writing becomes more emotional and easier to read. I really got caught up in the story and look forward to book two! (Yes, it's another series!)

I'm not even going to try to guess what I might write about next time, but I'm sure they'll be good!

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!