Tag: readers

A Little Tea If You Please

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Kind of love these descriptions from the Jane Austen Tea Series. For example, Mr. Knightley’s Reserve:

“An Earl Grey that is true and balanced. The Bergamot is smooth and steady. A tea to depend on and love more with each passing cup!”

I might be the target audience for this tea, but their marketing is just so fun.

In case you’re even more in the target audience, check out this article on the Jane Austen Society of North America’s recent gathering in New York. These people know their literature and can put together a historically accurate costume. Rock on.

Ravens and Research

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It’s a gray, drizzly day here, which is the perfect kind of day to pick up The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater if you haven’t already. It’s got ghosts and psychics and boarding school boys–the perfect combination for fall reading. Fellow 2014 debut author Julie Murphy sent me her copy and I loved it; thanks, Julie!

If you have read the book and you wish you had more until the sequel is released, or if you haven’t read the book and you’re interest in peaked, you should check out this interview with Maggie Stiefvater. Read about Stiefvator’s research process, and see images of the real Gansey notebook:

Fangirling out over here. I also love that there is a real journal–it makes me wonder about other fictional artifacts and what an author needs to physically create to understand her characters. Have you ever created anything for your characters?

Make sure to check out the whole interview through the link.

Lois Lowry on Reading as a Child

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From this interview with Lois Lowry:

“Early on I came to realize something, and it came from the mail I received from kids. That is, kids at that pivotal age, 12, 13 or 14, they’re still deeply affected by what they read, some are changed by what they read, books can change the way they feel about the world in general. I don’t think that’s true of adults as much. I’m an adult, I read, I’m no longer going to be changed by it. I think writing for kids is profoundly important.”

This is one aspect of writing for children and young adults I find particularly exciting. When you love a book at that age, that book belongs to you in such a deep, personal way that stays with you for your entire life. I know that Lowry’s books, particularly The Giver, changed me as a reader and I will forever consider The Giver one of my favorite books.

That isn’t to say that you can’t feel passionately about adult books, but it’s a totally different reading experience. But as Lowry says, you’re much more likely to have your worldview already formed as an adult reader. Maybe you’ll feel affected by a particular book, but it’s not the same kind of life-altering reading you get as a child.

Make sure to read the rest of the article for more good thoughts about children’s literature from a master author.

Friday Fifteen

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Happy Friday everyone! Feeling even better because it’s a long weekend. Onto the Friday Fifteen, in which I review five books in fifteen words or less.

1. The Premier Book of Major Poets: an Anthology ed. by Anita Dore
All the heavy-hitters, arranged by theme. Walt gave me his copy early in our relationship.

2. How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food by Nigella Lawson
More of a conversation with a chef than a standard cookbook. Really enjoy her ideas, though.

3. The Goldsmith’s Daughter by Tanya Landman
Wish I had this when I was 12 and reading about the Aztecs in class.

4. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling
Love how the series circled back to this. But JK, seriously, why the spiders? Terrifying!

5. The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg
A Christmas favorite, plus Allsburg’s beautiful art.

Other People Have Your Ideas and That’s Okay

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Love this post by Natalie Whipple about ideas.

The bad part: other people will have your awesome ideas.

Oh, hey. I’m just writing that bestselling novel about the same thing your novel’s about.

Sure, they won’t be exactly the same, but maybe someone else out there is also writing a book about a magic hat/boy who talks to wolves/kickboxing grandma. Maybe both of you will even get published around the same time. Maybe the other writer is someone super famous.

It’s a scary thought. No one wants to be the writer who misses out on a big idea. No one hears about a guy who wrote some other book about a white whale and a crazy captain with a missing leg. What if someone is out there right now, writing your book?

The good part: that’s okay.

First, no one else can write your book. It’s your book, from your imagination and experiences. Even if you write a book about a white whale and a crazy captain, it’s going to be different than Moby-Dick because you and Melville are different writers. And maybe they’ll both be awesome. Writing isn’t like a

Second, Whipple talks about how books don’t exist in a vacuum. If a reader picks up book A, thinking “Huh, magic hat, sounds interesting” and loves it, that reader might also pick up book B because they still love magic hats. Sure, you could be concerned about comparisons between the two, but if both books are written by talented people who care about craft and story, I think the reader can appreciate both.

Case in point–dystopian YA novels. It’s been a major trend in recent years, thanks in large part due to The Hunger Games. I’m sure a lot of writers were crafting their dystopian worlds when The Hunger Games hit and they thought “No, that was my idea!” And I compare a lot of YA to The Hunger Games. Still, that doesn’t mean I haven’t found other dystopian novels I’ve loved.

Whipple says it well: “But ultimately this whole experience has taught me that publishing isn’t really a competition. It’s a big web of connected creativity that all of us can benefit from.” The more creativity and stories we have, the better. And we all bring different viewpoints and voices into these stories, even if they’re all about kickboxing grandmas.

(image: Dean Wissing)

YA Doesn’t Hide Its Heart

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After reading this interview, I’m pretty sure Libba Bray is going at the top of my “We Need to Be Friends Please” list. This alone gets my vote of awesome:

CultureMap: You say that it was “love at first sight” for you with YA. What drew you to it?

Libba Bray: I just read this great quote by Junot Diaz, he was talking about true intimacy, and he was saying that it was the willingness to be vulnerable and to be found out. That’s what I felt that YA did. It wasn’t pretentious, and it wasn’t hiding its heart. It wanted to be found out…

It felt like those moments when you go to a party and you’re standing around for a long time, going, I don’t fit in here, what am I going to talk to these people about? And everybody’s getting drunk, and then you find this one person, and you end up sitting in some corner talking about all these arcane things.

And then before you know it you’re having a conversation about the meaning of life and it’s four o’clock in the morning. That kind of feeling, that kind of intimacy — I felt like that’s what I got from YA.

I feel like this is the perfect way to describe a career in YA. When I was in college and grad school, most of my fellow writers focused on literary fiction. There’s a lot about literary fiction I like, but it never felt as compelling to me as YA. Like Bray says, I feel that YA isn’t “hiding its heart.” I love that there’s so much heart.

Celebrate Reading With Banned Books Week

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Happy Banned Books Week, everyone! It’s a great time to honor the librarians, educators, and authors who stand up for books and knowledge and against prejudice and hate. Censorship doesn’t help society. Books do.

Check out Bill Moyers’ video about the importance of Banned Books Week, and then watch other famous authors and literary advocates talk about censorship and how it relates to their own work.

Also loving this fantastic timeline, 30 Years of Liberating Literature, from the ALA. It contains some fantastic information about bans on classic books, such as:

The Giver, by Lois Lowry
In 2003, “The Giver” was challenged as suggested reading for eighth-grade students in Blue Springs, MO, where parents called the book “lewd” and “twisted” and pleaded for it to be tossed out of the district. The book was reviewed by two committees and recommended for retention, but the controversy continued for more than two years. Lowry’s novel for young readers has frequently attracted objections due to its “mature themes” including suicide, sexuality, and euthanasia. “The Giver” received the Newbery Medal in 1994.

I’ve mentioned here before how much I love this book and, as a middle-schooler, I was grateful to read about these mature themes. It was the first book that really got me thinking about the value of life (all of life) and how we should function as a society. It infuriates me to think that some people want to take that away from young readers.

It’s easy to feel complacent about our overall access to books, but Banned Books Week is a great reminder that we need to appreciate the access we have and work toward giving everyone that same access. Celebrate with your favorite banned book today and all week long!

(image: Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression 2011 Banned Books Week celebration, sponsored by the Freedom to Read Foundation’s Judith F. Krug Memorial Fund, via ALA)

Friday Fifteen

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Another Friday, another case of the Friday Fifteens. Check out this week’s fifteen-word book reviews:

1. Hair: A Book of Braiding and Styles by Anne Johnson
One reason I wear my hair short now. (One day, braided crown, one day).

2. Insurgent by Veronica Roth
Not as fast-paced as Divergent, but pretty sure I’ll pick up the next book.

3. In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 by Mary Beth Norton
Norton looks at the First and Second Indian Wars’ effect on Salem. Interesting take.

4. Little Miss Stoneybrook…and Dawn (The Baby-sitters Club #15) by Ann M. Martin
Toddlers and tiaras, plus the BSC.

5. The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers by John Gardner
You need to read this in workshop at least once. Solid advice, not very dynamic.

Exclamations, Questions, and Commas: Favorite Punctation Marks

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For National Punctuation Day, The Atlantic Wire collected favorite punctuation marks from famous writers. I’m with NPR book critic Maureen Corrigan, who says:

“The semicolon is my psychological metaphor, my mascot. It’s the punctuation mark that qualifies, hesitates, and ties together ideas and parts of a life that shot off in different directions.”

Man, I am a semicolon fiend. It lets a sentence breathe while still organizing. In a punctuation world of black and white (full stop!), it’s nice to have a punctuation mark that covers some sentence gray area.

I also love the Oxford comma and get upset whenever I hear a certain Vampire Weekend song.

Share your favorites in the comments!