Tag: adult lit

Friday Fifteen

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Let’s kick Friday off with this week’s fifteen-word book reviews:

97800605723411. Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
“Sick” was my favorite. I think I looked at the illustrations more than the poems.

2. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
The ultimate novel about academia. Which says it all for me.

3. Felicity Saves the Day (American Girls: Felicity #3) by Valerie Tripp
No, Ben, you can’t fight in the Revolutionary War because you already have a job!

4. The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson
Sci-fi YA takes on Frankenstein. Really dug it, but felt complete; why’s there a sequel?

5. The Bad Beginning (The Series of Unfortunate Events #1) by Lemony Snicket
I liked that the Baudelaires never solved problems easily. Lots of literary fun sprinkled throughout.

Days of Remembrance and Why Stories Matter

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This week is the national Days of Remembrance, which commemorates Holocaust victims and survivors. I remember learning about the Holocaust in school, primarily with two main books. The first was Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, which my class read in third or fourth grade. I knew about WWII in general, but this was the first time I remembered hearing about the significant threat to Jewish people during that time. The book provided a safe way to learn about a very scary part of history; the threat to Ellen’s family is very real but Lowry is careful not to go into too much detail about what could have faced the Rosens if they’d been caught.

Night by Elie Wiesel was another significant book in my learning about the Holocaust. By the time I read it, I was in eighth grade and knew millions of innocent people had been tortured and killed. I didn’t expect Night to affect me so, but I read it in one evening and spent the entire time crying. For me, it was an opportunity to understand the Holocaust in a very personal way. Somehow it’s easy to gloss over statistics about how many people died; it’s far harder to ignore real stories about the horrors that individual people experienced.

Which is why the Days of Remembrance and honoring all the specific victims and survivors are essential. We need to hear their stories and remember that these were/are specific people with specific lives. They were mothers and singers and readers and kids who liked silly jokes and lawyers and on and on. All of their stories are valuable and need to be shared.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has resources for taking part in the Days of Remembrance, including a webcast of the national ceremony on Thursday, April 11 at 11:00am. In case you can’t take part in an organized event, you can also share the stories of victims and listen to the stories of survivors, as documented on the museum website. Make sure their voices are heard.

Aprill Shoures Brung May Flours: April Is for Poetry

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April is National Poetry Month, so it makes sense that one of English literature’s oldest poems opens with a reference to this very month. Check out this opening to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales:

Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(so priketh hem nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;

Um…what does that mean? Don’t worry, I’m not exactly fluent in Middle English myself. Fortunately there’s a translation:

When April with his showers sweet with fruit
The drought of March has pierced unto the root
And bathed each vein with liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire the flower;
When Zephyr also has, with his sweet breath,
Quickened again, in every holt and heath,
The tender shoots and buds, and the young sun
Into the Ram one half his course has run,
And many little birds make melody
That sleep through all the night with open eye
(So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)-
Then do folk long to go on pilgrimage,
And palmers to go seeking out strange strands,
To distant shrines well known in sundry lands.

Whether April’s inspired you to make a pilgrimage to Canterbury or not, you can check out the rest of The Canterbury Tales here. I didn’t have the best experience with Chaucer in college, which of course makes me think I should go back and investigate this Chaucer guy. I mean, dude did popularize the English language. We need to give him props for that.

May your April showers be sweet with fruit!

Friday Fifteen

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Happy Friday, everyone! Let’s kick off the weekend with some good ol’ fashioned fifteen-word book reviews.

382721. Lidia’s Italy in America by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and Tanya Bastianich Manuali
Great recipes and glimpses into Italian-American communities. Can’t wait to try the Shrimp Fra Diavalo.

2. Ming Lo Moves the Mountain by Arnold Lobel
Fun folktale about changing perspectives. I used to pull this out all the time.

3. Happy Birthday, Molly! (American Girls: Molly #4) by Valerie Tripp
I learned about the Blitz during WWII from this book.

4. Speaking With the Angel ed. Nick Hornby
Short story collection with some great writers. Features my favorite work by Dave Eggers.

5. Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
Didn’t connect with me like I wanted. Probably read too close to quirky Weetzie Bat.

The Story Beyond Attainment, Beyond Help

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I’ve confessed before that I’m not a Hemingway fan. But I was intrigued by his Nobel Prize speech and the circumstances surrounding it. He talks a little about the loneliness of writing, which I don’t tend to agree with, but I liked this part quite a bit:

“For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment…It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.”

I like this idea of being driven out beyond help, beyond what you can conceive of for yourself. Because if you’re writing, it should be because this is a story that needs to be told and hasn’t been told before. This is your challenge and we’re always pushed further than before.

Make sure to check out the whole speech.

Friday Fifteen

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What a crazy week! A Veronica Mars movie, a new pope, Pi Day, the Ides of March, the announced end of Google Reader, a day above 50 degrees–I can’t handle this kind of intensity. Fortunately, we can always count on the Friday Fifteen. This week in fifteen-word book reviews:

1. The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
I was new when we read this in fifth grade. Needed an Egypt Game group.

2. Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry
Read years after The Giver, initially didn’t know they were connected. Better that way.

3. The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
Best use of music in a book ever. Funny and sharp and thrilling, Barrytown-style.

4. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett
In the town of Chewandswallow, global warming means a tomato tornado. All that vitamin C!

5. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Watched the Little Prince TV show growing up. Shocked to find the book was different.

Prom Night Is Dark and Full of Terrors

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By now, you’re probably already obsessed with the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. (All. The. Feelings!) But we’re winding down in the P&P plotline–Lizzie and Darcy have come to feel more about each other; Jane and Bing have reconciled; and Lydia has overcome the potential scandal of the heinous Wickham. I was really sad to imagine an end in the near future.

Fortunately, it looks like we’ve got another modern literary web series to latch onto–starring a few favorites from LBD! Although A Game of Thrones might be set in a medieval-ish fantasy world, looks like things translate pretty well to a contemporary high school setting in School of Thrones. I especially like the retro-hipster Starks.

And it’s only just started! Check out the first episode here:

Is it weird that this might actually inspire me to read beyond the first book?

Friday Fifteen

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Welcome to March, everybody! They say March comes in like a lion, so let’s start the month with some lion-related books:

1. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Tell me you didn’t open your closet and hope you’d find Narnia.

2. The Woman Who Rides Like a Man (Song of the Lioness #3) by Tamora Pierce
My least favorite of the series; she’s away from the main cast for so long.

3. The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney
Gorgeous take on Aesop’s fable. Try telling me children’s illustrations aren’t fine art.

4. Lionboy by Zizou Corder
Got this for free at the midnight release of Harry Potter #6. Didn’t grab me.

5. The Lion in Winter by James Goldman
Here’s betting your family isn’t as messed up as Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine’s.

Isn’t That About a Circus? And Other Misconceptions of Classic Stories

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The other day, Walt mentioned wanting to see the A.R.T. performance of The Glass Menagerie. I agreed, and remarked I hadn’t even read it. “Isn’t it kind of weird?” I asked.

“Not really,” he said.

“Really? I thought it was about an old lady in a sandbox.”

Apparently that’s not what The Glass Menagerie is about. It is, however, what The Sandbox by Edward Albee is about. I think The Sandbox was in an anthology we had in high school, and for some reason I conflated it with The Glass Menagerie. But it got me thinking about other misconceptions I had/have about famous works prior to actually reading them. Some books and plays are so connected with popular culture that i’s almost impossible not to encounter them in some way. But hearing about something doesn’t mean you actually know it. Here are some other assumptions I’ve made about  classic stories:

Somehow, NOT about actual wind.

Gone with the Wind
Real story: period romance set during the American Civil War, about a bitchy but determined southern belle and her romantic mistakes.
My version: like The Wizard of Oz, except without the magic.

Lord of the Flies
Real story: a group of British boys get stranded on an island, go crazy without the rules of society.
My version: the history of the devil; probably confused it with Paradise Lost.

Far from the Madding Crowd
Real story: courtship in English rural life.
My version: a traveling circus travels around, has feelings.

A Tale of Two Cities
Real story: two lookalikes (one a former aristocrat and one a drunk genius lawyer) get caught up in the French Revolution.
My version: I thought this was supposed to be A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I was really confused when I started reading it.

To Kill a Mockingbird
Real story: a young girl encounters racism in the deep South as her father defends a black man accused of rape.
My version: a young girl gets bitten by a rabid squirrel and goes crazy. (????? right? I guess the rabid dog from the real book somehow entered my subconsciousness and got really distorted.)

Do or did you have any wrong impressions about famous novels?

Start off with a Bang

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The cold, hard truth of submitting your work: your opening better be kick-ass. At the Ploughshares blog, Sarah Martin Banse shares her thoughts on why you need a great opening:

“If you want to get out of the slush pile, one of the worst things you can do is write a lackluster first paragraph. Don’t make the mistake of thinking: the really fine writing starts on page three of my story, and I’m sure they’ll appreciate it when they get there.  By page three, I’m frustrated. If you want out of the slush pile, you must prove it from the first paragraph, from the first line.”

I think this is great advice no matter what you’re writing or who you’re submitting to. Editors and agents only have so much time in the day, and if you can’t hook them right away, there’s no way they’re going to keep reading to get to the really exciting part later on.

That doesn’t mean your first page has to be all explosions at the unicorn factory. (Although if anyone has that opening, I want to see it.) It can be quiet, but it has to challenge the reader in some way–an interesting image, the suggestion that today is going to be significant for the main character, a hint that this world is different from the one we know, etc.

I’ve been on the reading side of the slush pile for both literary fiction and YA/children’s, and if a story didn’t grab me within the first few pages, chances are that I’d end up scanning the rest without much interest. Maybe some agents and editors are much more forgiving readers, but why take that chance? Make sure your first pages are irresistible.