tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34022122781853787272024-03-19T16:01:27.530-07:002013 - My Year In Books"That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong." - F. Scott FitzgeraldBrittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-66589682977633972442014-01-03T17:17:00.001-08:002014-01-03T17:17:49.115-08:002013: My Year In Books<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Books By the Numbers</span></h2>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">36 complete books read (mix of lit theory, novels, plays, graphic novels, short story collections, and non-fiction)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">33 authors (Salinger, Shakespeare, and Larsson appeared more than once)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">14 female authors</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">19 male authors</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">14 living authors</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">19 dead authors</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">13 books were read for grad school</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">9 books were read for work to prep for freshmen and American lit</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1 book was read because I had a super major crush on a man and it is his favorite book</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena: Brilliant and touching, it has been a while since I have loved a book the way I loved this book. Also, how many other novels are out there about Chechnya? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">2. Gone Girl: I recommended this book to more people than I have ever recommended any book. It is just so satisfying, and I think that 95% of people will enjoy it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">3. A Visit from the Goon Squad: Absolutely deserved the Pulitzer (although I have read neither of the finalists from 2011, so I am totally saying that based on the merit of this book alone)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">4. This is How You Lose Her: I love Junot Diaz, and I loved this collection of short stories.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">5. House of Mirth: So easy and satisfying! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">6. Portrait of a Lady: So difficult and satisfying!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">7. Titus Andronicus: This is my new favorite Shakespeare play, and it is so over the top and so unlike other plays that I think it is absolutely worth it. Also, the movie version was top notch. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">8. Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl: I said it after I read it and I still believe it: every American needs to read this book. To that end, my American Lit students were subjected to a chapter to coincide with the chapter of Equiano that their textbook provides. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">9. Maus: Incredible graphic novel that is right up there with Persepolis in my eyes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">10. M. Butterfly: Most people don't, I think, read plays for pleasure, but I can't resist putting this on my list. I worked with this text SO much in my final grad school paper that I have SUCH a sweet spot for it. I hope that I am some day able to see the play.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Special Shout Outs to: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The webcomics that have kept me entertained this year: Anders Loves Maria, <a href="http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1" target="_blank">Questionable Content</a>, <a href="http://www.girlswithslingshots.com/comic/gws1/" target="_blank">Girls with Slingshots</a>, and <a href="http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1" target="_blank">Gunnerkrigg Court</a> (links take you to the first comic).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I have never kept track of the books I've read before, so I can't say whether I read more or less or whether this was an unusual mix or not. Even if I don't always blog about my reading, I do want to start keeping a list of each year's books, just so that as I get older I can look back and remember what was going on in my life (for example, this year's list reminds me that I was taking a class on gender, that I was trying to catch up with all the contemporary books I missed, that I was changing schools and needed to catch up on some classics I had missed). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I wish I had read more, but I have a problem balancing all my hobbies (ukulele, board games, rock climbing, writing, reading, crossfitting, cooking, travelling), and something always gets shoved to the side. This year was a lot more about crossfitting and rockclimbing than anything else. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For 2014 I am excited to be blogging with <a href="http://fiftybooksproject.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">50 books</a> and I have a self-imposed goal to do 50 short stories which I will still update here!</span></div>
Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-15002061994010074422014-01-03T10:23:00.003-08:002014-01-03T10:23:37.860-08:0036: Swamplandia! - Karen Russell<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i> "'Honestly, can you imagine me without your father!' She used to say this all the time. With a sort of vacant, sticky violence, she'd kiss the forehead of whichever of her children was nearest. Even as a kid I understood that she was kissing us to answer some question that she was putting to herself. Was she happy? we wondered. Were we the right answer? My mother married the chief and gave birth to Kiwi at age nineteen; she started her career as an alligator wrestler that same year.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i> 'She married him too young,' Kiwi told me once in a sad, knowing voice. But when I told Mom what he'd said, she laughed herself dizzy. Then she repeated it to the Chief and they both roared.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i> 'Listen: your brother is an unkissed thirteen, Ava,' she told me. 'He is just a boy. His judgments are like green fruit. He doesn't have any idea about that stuff.'"</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"I had thought that my brother and I were communicating from more or less the same neighborhood of feelings, but I'd been wrong." </i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"He went on accumulating beginnings."</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Swamplandia! is a book that has been on my radar for a while - I had heard so many great things about it an its authors other works that I've been meaning to check it out. It walked into my Savers from some nice donating soul and walked out with me. The premise of the book is incredibly compelling to me. I have been called a hipster manic pixie dream girl on more than one occasion, so the idea of Swamplandia! is exactly the one I could ironically fall in love with and take men there on first dates while they fall in love with me. It's an island in the Florida Everglades that has been turned into a theme park - if a theme park can be something that is crumbling board walks, a lame museum, a crappy diner, and one 'show' where a pretty woman jumps into a pool of alligators and maybe someone in the family wrestles a gator. Russell's depiction of Swamplandia! as a place is perfection. It is creepy, sad, pathetic, and nostalgia-inducing. Anyone who has had a home that they loved - even if it was a little shitty - will connect to the family's love of this place that is falling apart physically and financially. Swamplandia! doesn't have the same draw that it used to, and a competing theme park (World of Darkness) is taking away the rest of the customers. The family is trying to hold the park, their finances, and themselves together in the midst of all this. Ava, Ossie, and Kiwi are the homeschooled awkward and weird kids. The Chief and Hilola are their dreamer parents. Grandfather Sawtooth is the original founder of Swamplandia!</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Kiwi and Ava share the narrating in mostly-alternating chapters.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I finished the book a few weeks ago but have held off from writing a review because of my mixed feelings which started about halfway through the book and just haven't left me. There are many wonderful things about this book: the premise, the writing, the world building, the characters, the differing point of views, the mood. It really captures the disconnectedness of families, and how people can live their entire lives with each other without knowing each other at all, and how disconcerting it is to begin to realize that as a young teenager. However, there were some major problems I had with the book. Without giving anything away, it seemed the book had the potential to go in a genre direction that I am not at all interested in reading, and I didn't want to waste my last book of the year on this book if it was just going to be a ____ story. I actually dug around on goodreads* to spoil the book a bit, and decided to keep going through. I'm glad I finished it just because a book has to be REALLY terrible to be unfinished, and this book is not terrible, but it's also not as amazing as I thought it was going to be. Russell's short stories have had rave reviews, and I am very interested in those. A fair amount of the novel felt like short stories that just happened to have the same characters and were woven together that way. Unfortunately, the short story bits were not strong enough to stand alone, and woven together it leads to a kind of meandering plot where very few things happen. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I would probably read her next novel in the hopes that she figures out what she didn't quite nail here for me, and I am very interested in her short stories because her writing is truly lovely. Swamplandia! just didn't give me the satisfaction that I wanted.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">*Sidenote: people on goodreads can be totally evil and stuck up. I read several low-star reviews where people replied snarkily "If this is too dark for you, go back to Nicholas Sparks." Soooo...if you don't like one critically acclaimed book then you must like trash only? Also...does that mean that those readers ONLY read critically acclaimed literature and have never picked up a genre book in their entire lives? I find that attitude to be so boring, and it makes me want to internet punch them with my MA and tell them to STFU.</span></div>
Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-24440008043250197322013-12-09T16:27:00.003-08:002013-12-09T16:27:58.431-08:0035: City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments Book One) - Cassandra Clare<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"Is there anything I could get for you?" he asked. "Something to drink? Some tea?" </i></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"I don't want tea," said Clary, with muffled force. "I want to find my mother. An then I want to find out who took her in the first place, and I want to kill them." </i></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"Unfortunately," said Hodge, "we're all out of bitter revenge at the moment, so it's either tea or nothing."</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At the start of the year I asked my students to write about what their favorite book was and why. The books that had the most votes were put on my To Read List so that I can be hip with the kids and make the connections that might make what I'm teaching them more meaningful. Based on the cover, I would never by this book. Too shiny, too shitty tribal tattooey, too shirtless. I have spent too many years poking fun at my mom's shirtless romance book covers to carry this around, except that I did. FOR THE CHILDREN!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Like all young adult books, it's an incredibly quick read. It weighs in at almost 500 pages, but I read it in a few days which were not particularly reading heavy. The book is incredibly formulaic. One girl. Two guys. Secret world that the girl (and one of the boys) is a part of, but never knew it until her true identity is revealed. Missing parent. Quest to reunite. Mentor. Danger. Romance. Torment. Etc. The secret underworld is predictable when considering what has been popular lately. There are vampires, werewolves, demons, warlocks, pixies, fae, etc. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The twist is in the Shadow Hunters who are part human, part angel, and hunt down demons from different dimensions. Their power comes from training, education, and the magic wands (called a stele) runes that they temporarily tattoo on their body to give them different powers and protection.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It holds up well if you like your characters sarcastic, sexy, and self-absorbed (the Shadowhunters), your love life triangular, and your plot with some rather convenient timing. It made me laugh at time (see above quote), surprised me with its inclusion on topics other young adult novels sometimes leave out (a gay character, teenage drinking, lots of hints about all the sex that is happening in the background), and included some genuine plot twists that I didn't seem coming.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On the other hand, this novel has some SERIOUS problems with how it portrays character development and teenagers. Two female characters spend the entirety of the novel hating each other. A male character later correctly identifies their conflict as being based on teen girl jealousy, which is fine, but it's wrapped up when one girl tells another, "And I guess I resented you at first, but I realize now that was stupid. Just because I've never had a friend who was a girl doesn't mean I couldn't learn how to have one." The other girl replies, "Me too actually." Ummmm, no. Nope. No. No way. Not happening. I work with teenage girls for a living - that is not how they talk and that is not how they conflict solve. That conversation is how teenage girls problem solve in health class when they are forced to do conflict resolution roleplays by adults - and they are rolling their eyes the whole way through I promise.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I am sure the girls will be best best besties in the next two books (did I mention that it's a trilogy?) which I will find annoying throughout. Will I read the next two books? Sure. They're easy reads and I'm still curious about how the characters will turn out. I also have a crush on Clary's best friend who makes Star Wars references and plays D and D, so I really want to see what happens to HIM - the rest of the gang is kind of meh.</span></div>
Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-38251143086466265062013-12-04T19:25:00.000-08:002013-12-04T19:25:02.057-08:0034: This Is How You Lose Her - Junot Diaz<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Editor's Note: In spite of having not read a book for 11 weeks, I am still the 3rd best read if you compare me to the <a href="http://fiftybooksproject.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Fifty Books Boys</a> (speaking of which - why are they all boys?) I do think that with my upcoming Winter Break, my re-dedication to being good to myself before I'm good to my students, and my decision to no longer work 10 hour days, I will be able to get into second place before the year is over. Watch out!</i></span><div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I love Junot Diaz like Oscar Wao loves cake and comic books. Love him. LOVE HIM. I saw him at a really fun event in town (take that everyone who is like "blah blab blah Las Vegas has no culture") and that allowed everything I felt for him as an author to turn into a Mega Crush - to the point that I COULD NOT GET MY BOOK SIGNED BECAUSE I FELT TOO STUPID. Yup. My heart broke when I received a text message from a grad student colleague.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Him: <i>You like Junot Diaz, right? </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Me: <i>I love him. LOOOOOOVEEEE him. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Him: <i>I don't think you're going to love him after you read his new book. A story from it was published in the New Yorker. It's called "The Cheater's Guide to Love."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I didn't read the story right then - I didn't want to get it out of context. Surely there was a reason for this? I waited for the book to come out. Then I waited desperately for the paperback to come out because hardcovers are not in my budget, even for Mr. Diaz. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This book is a collection of interconnected short stories about our standby Diaz character: Yunior. We are back with Yunior, and Rafa, and their crazy mom, and their shitty dad, except this time Yunior is an adult - as the reader who is growing up with him, it's nice that we are in the same place in our lives: professionally established, looking for love, ready to get serious, right in that age bracket where people are getting pregnant both on purpose and on accident. Yunior's voice is perfection, and much like Diaz's own, it is a mix of ghetto and incredibly well educated. The fact that our narrator uses 'nigger' just a breath away from a Melville allusion is completely and utterly satisfying for me. Although we never see Yunior in his campus life at Rutgers or his professional life as a university professor in Boston, these little moments reveal this complex character who obviously code switches between his two different worlds, but has developed his own perfect language in his head. As someone who drops enough F-bombs in real life that people are often incredulous that I am a teacher of children, I appreciate the depiction. I really do want to talk to Yunior about his usage of the n-word though, and after some googling to satisfy my own curiosity about Diaz's reasoning (see below), I hope that this is a conversation that Yunior has some day in some book. A man who is capable of blaming the patriarchy for his infidelity can certainly talk about his African-diaspora-Dominican-claim to the n-word, and what he is trying to establish by using it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The stories are tied together by the common motif of infidelity, but it would be selling them short to say this is a book about cheating. This is a book about immigration, loneliness, learning patterns of behavior from your family, loving someone and completely fucking it up, and knowing you're fucking it up, and not being able to stop yourself. It's a study in the psychology of what makes a really smart, really talented, really lucky person act like a damn fool.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's hard to describe how Yunior can be such a sympathetic character while also being such a ______ (offensive word taken out because I'm not ready to have a conversation about whether it's okay to use a super offensive Spanish word if I am half-Mexican even though I certainly did not grow up in a neighborhood or family that used that word, but I spent four years teaching kids who did?). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Perhaps it's as simple as: the writing is beautiful and it's from him. Maybe it's because, outside of the cheating, he captures the complexity of any relationship and the mistakes that everyone makes. We take each other for granted. We don't go the extra step. We handle things without care. The second excerpt above is absolutely my favorite section of the book: the desperate ways that people try to put back together a relationship that is already too broken. It is utterly childish to think that a Neruda poem or a salsa class can save such massive betrayal - but people try those things all the time. We see it in movies and songs and TV shows and music video narratives. We want to believe that everything can be FIXED, that hurts are never so devastating that they cannot be undone with something as simple as a sonnet. </span></div>
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<i style="text-align: -webkit-center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,<br />or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.<br />I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,<br />in secret, between the shadow and the soul.<br /><br />I love you as the plant that never blooms<br />but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;<br />thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,<br />risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.<br /><br />I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.<br />I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;<br />so I love you because I know no other way than this:<br />where I does not exist, nor you,<br />so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,<br />so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. </span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://laist.com/2008/04/10/laist_interview_134.php" target="_blank">LAist Interview with Junot Diaz</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"</span><strong style="border: 0px; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Let’s talk then about the kinds of words that are okay to use and the kinds that aren’t. You use the word “nigger” a lot in this book [Oscar Wao]. Have you gotten any pushback from people about being a Latino writer and using that word?</strong></div>
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It's one of those things, I mean -- there's a ton of child rape in this book too. Does that mean I'm a child rapist, I endorse child rape? I mean, the word nigger exists in the world. And some people aren’t okay with a Latino writer using it, and you know what? That's really cool! That's the difference that we're talking about, is it real life or is it art? When it comes right down to it, so child rape should only be represented by child rapists? Or if you represent child rape in a book, does this speak to your relationship with child rape? Or is there something far more complicated going on, with the concept of representations, or the concept of deploying "taboo" language and who deploys it? I don't ever remember Oscar calling anybody nigger, or Lola using that word – it's coming from Yunior specifically.</div>
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It's easy to assume that because there's one person in a culture or group using that word, that everyone's using it. But I find that part of what the book is about is about who uses what language and how they're using it. There is something about the way Yunior uses language that is worth really interrogating. I totally understand people's political decisions about language, vis-a-vis their decisions about their practice and their life, but I just feel like when issues of representation are up in the air, you have to use a much wider palette. We're trying to talk about the world. I guess this isn't an essay about for or against the "n word", it's sort of a larger argument about the world, so that everything in the world, positive and negative, should find its way into a book. There's something surprisingly reductive about how people are always trying to scratch books out of existence. That means we've got to get of almost everything by Mark Twain!</div>
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I mean, after all, Malcolm X is of Caribbean descent. He's not purely African American descent, if I remember correctly, part of his family is either from St Lucia or St Croix. [Editor's note: Malcolm X's mother was born in Grenada, in the southeastern Caribbean sea]. So he shouldn't use it either, right?!</div>
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What I find interesting is that I'm neither for nor against who should use certain words or not. But there's a tremendous amount at stake in trying to control how language is used."</div>
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Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-4478785891750742192013-09-14T19:30:00.001-07:002013-09-14T19:30:08.341-07:0033: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena - Anthony Marra<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"Why do they even care? What could they possibly want with a child?" "No one is off limits because there are no limits. The why and the what aren't for us to consider. Those are questions for philosophers and imams and not for people like us, whoever we are."</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you haven't heard of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, it's only a matter of time as the book just came out in May. It's being hailed by everyone as brilliant and wonderful and Foer-esque; I am completely in agreement with everything good said about this book. My only complaint is that I read it while camping and without any internet access, which made it a little difficult because if I don't know something, I want to know it. A book about Chechnya when you have never even heard of Chechnya is not a book to be tackled without the google machine.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The book has interconnected stories that span space and time which is always a quick way to my heart. It focuses on an eight-year old, Havaa, who manages to escape the Russian raid that takes her father to a torture camp. The neighbor, Akhmed, takes it upon himself to keep her safe. They journey to a hospital where Akhmed offers his medical skills (he is the worst doctor in Chechnya, but a brilliant portrait artist) in exchange for the Head Surgeon (and only doctor) Sonja to keep her safe. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The book is a long one, and I also didn't have a pen with me to keep track of people's relationships to one another which I could have used. It's been compared to Everything Is Illuminated and the comparison is apt - we get people's back stories, it's a war torn country, incredibly terrible things happen to very good people, and everyone is just trying to get by. The writing is beautiful, the story is beautiful, and I cried several times while reading it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One of my Facebook book groups recently posed the question: how do you feel when an author is telling a story about a group of people that they're not a part of? (It was in reference to Lisa See who has one Chinese great-grandparent and writes novels mostly centering around China). This book is an example of me being so utterly impressed that an author is able to capture something so outside of his own personal experiences. Much of the book is written from the perspective of women - from the child, to the doctor who defies gender roles, to a woman who is forced into sexual slavery. He is not Chechan or Russian, but this area of the world is obviously his passion. Not knowing anything about Chechnya, I can't speak to his ability to capture that. He does a wonderful job capturing the female experience, so I can only hope that he does the same for this small part of the world that has not received a lot of literary treatment. </span></div>
Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-62256713874338143342013-09-14T18:13:00.002-07:002013-09-14T18:13:44.692-07:0032: Eden Close - Anita Shreve<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"Jim is dead," said his father. "Eden's been shot, but she's still alive....It looks like...a man broke in while she and Jim were out...a man broke in...He was...assaulting Eden, and the man had a gun - we heard the shots...Eden somehow got in the way..."</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Eden: Your father was a brave but foolish man. </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Anita Shreve is one of my guilty pleasures that I indulge in frequently because Las Vegas women love to read her and donate her to Goodwill, so I pick these up sometimes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This one is a mysteryish returning-to-homeish romanceish type of a book. It opens on a moment back in time when our main character, Andrew, is lying awake in bed as a teenager and hears a scream, a shot, and a wail from the neighbor's house. His good friend from childhood, Eden, has been sexually assaulted, her dad, Jim, attempted to stop the assault and was shot. Eden gets caught in the scuffle and is also shot in the face, blinding her for life. Andrew hasn't seen her since she was taken out of her house in the ambulance. As an adult returning home to take care of his mother's affairs after her death he's curious about Eden, who still lives next door with her mom.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There's not much more to say without giving everything away. Is it worth reading? Meh. If you're into fluffy reading that's really heavy and depressing, sure!</span></div>
Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-86455901742312799122013-09-14T17:43:00.001-07:002013-09-14T17:43:29.943-07:0031: To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"Before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"Scout," said Atticus, "nigger-lover is just one of those terms that don't mean anything - like snot-nose. It's hard to explain - ignorant, trashy people use it when they think somebody's favoring Negroes over and above themselves. It's slipped into usage with some people like ourselves, when they want a common, ugly term to label somebody." </i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"You aren't really a nigger-lover, then, are you?"</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"I certainly am. I do my best to love everybody."</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand."</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I haven't read To Kill a Mockingbird since I was in middle school, and I was either an unevolved middle schooler or middle schoolers as a whole are just too unevolved to appreciate the book. I didn't have any particularly fond memories of the book and thus it was the last that I read on my list of books for my upcoming classes. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I don't know what else to say besides: every moment of this book was pure magic. Scout made me laugh, the town made me cry, and Atticus Finch made me a better person. This is the kind of book that makes you a better person after you read it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It has definitely become one of my favorite books of all time which doesn't happen very often these days. I am very much looking forward to teaching it. I'm actually looking forward to reading it again, but I know how teaching a book over and over can ruin the magic a little bit, so I am refraining as I have four freshmen classes to teach it to this year.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you haven't read it, or haven't read it in a while, you absolutely must. It is that good. I promise. </span></div>
Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-35005852999092527332013-09-14T16:33:00.001-07:002013-09-14T16:33:25.901-07:0030: Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"One of the oldest adages about Romeo and Juliet, one which every director and every actor in the part of either lover has to tackle, is that once actors are old enough to understand the play's rhetoric they are usually too old to play the lovers' parts."</i></div>
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight, / For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night"</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It has been so long since I last posted that I have forgotten how to even put my text in line with the foto of the book cover. I have read a few books, but between teaching summer school, getting ready for the school year, and trying to enjoy the last bits of summer, I have just not felt like writing. However, last night I met <a href="http://fiftybooksproject.blogspot.com/2006/12/billys-books-2013.html" target="_blank">Billy from fiftybooks</a> and remembered that I had this whole plan to read and blog and y'know, it's time to get back to that. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Romeo and Juliet is another read for the adventure of teaching freshmen. Although I've seen many stage and movie productions and studied it before, I don't think that I've ever done the whole text in its entirety. I'm still in love with the Ardens, so that was my version of choice. The introduction tells you everything you never know you needed to know about the play, from all the source material to all the variations to information about Shakespeare's boy actors ("In 'How old were Shakespeare's boy actors?', David Kathman remarks that '..all between twelve and twenty-two years old, with the normal range being roughfly thirteen to twenty-one'. Kathman notes that Richard Sharpe was between seventeen and twenty-one when he played the Duchess of Malfi and that 'The very youngest boys seem to have played only minor parts, but boys across the entire rest of the age range can be found playing demanding lead female roles" (54). <- I have always been under the apparently mistaken impression that Shakespeare's boy actors were pre-pubescent and very young). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I don't think that there's anything to say about the plot, but what struck me most is how actually romantic it is and how gorgeous the writing is. Unfortunately, Romeo and Juliet is SUCH a worn out cliche that all of the best parts get lost. I would have loved to be able to see a really great production of it without having any ideas in my head about it - then I would probably feel all moony eyed and sighed and wonderful. As it is, it was a pleasant surprise to find all those bits. I made the unfortunate mistake of taking a few days off very near the end lost all the momentum of the play which made it a very slow and unexciting ending which tells me that I am going to have to push my students to get through it before they lose the momentum too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Since I am now teaching at an arts school where the kids are much more familiar with plays and Shakespeare than my previous school, I'm very curious to see how it goes. I feel like I'm learning to teach all over again.</span></div>
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Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-28178243710968497922013-08-12T21:19:00.002-07:002013-08-12T21:19:50.859-07:0029: The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it."</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It would be incredibly awkward if J. D. Salinger were my terrific friend because I really would not want to call him up after finishing it. In fact, I am already a book and a half ahead of this book, but have been dragging my feet on writing a review because I didn't feel that I could justify my mixed feelings that land on the side of disliking this book. I still don't think so, but I really want to talk about my next book which handles growing up, recognizing evil in the world, etc so much better (To Kill a Mockingbird ftw).</span><br />
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<i style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"I don't know exactly what I mean by that, but I mean it."</i><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"You'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior."</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Oh Holden. The way he says things passionately (with much cursing and repetitive turns of phrases that feel very much like I'm-trying-to-develop-my-catch-phrases) without knowing what he means but feeling self-righteously angry about what he means is...boring to me. When his former teacher reveals that Holden is going through a universal experience about being confused, frightened, and sickened, my thought is...get some real problems. Well, he has real problems (Allie's death), but he pretends that that is not what is bothering him at all - and maybe it's not, I really can't speak for him. However, he is too much of a bored rich kid whose 'problems' (everyone is phony, everything is boring, everything and everyone is stupid, high school sucks) are too dumb to get my sympathy. <span style="font-size: x-small;">[Full disclosure: I have a real problem with people with money (especially that was not earned by them). It is not fair, but everyone has their prejudices, and this is mine. I am not particularly worried that my prejudice is affecting my reading of books - I think I (and the book) will survive this injustice.]</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"People never notice anything."</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"People never believe you."</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"People are always ruining things for you."</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"People never give your message to anybody."</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"People never think anything is anything really."</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"Sex is something I really don't understand too hot...sex is something I just don't understand. I swear to God I don't."</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Sometimes I actually liked Holden. I am a high school teacher, and I love my job, and you cannot love teaching high school unless you love teenagers. Teenagers are hyperbolic and absolutists (see above lines about people are always and people are never - very typical) and very confused by the world while pretending they're not (see above line about sex in the midst of quite a lot of apparently fake confidence about being sexy and making it with the ladies). I get that - I was there, and I see my students there, and when Holden is very teenager (in the moments where he cries, admits he doesn't understand something, has honest emotions) I sympathize. However, these moments are so few and far between (the betweens just being him acting like an asshole and a richie) that it doesn't sustain my sympathy for him throughout the text. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"I started giving the three witches at the next table the eye again...they started giggling like morons...I'm not kidding, they were three real morons...God, could that dopey girl dance...she came out with this very dumb remark...she really was a moron...I let it drop. It was over her head anyway...they were too ignorant...you could hardly tell which was the stupidest of the three of them...do you think you could get an intelligent answer out of those three dopes?"</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Having just taken a gender studies class, I couldn't help but rereading this scene (where Holden encounters the three tourists in his hotel's bar) and looking for all the misogyny. Holden is really afraid of women or has an inferiority complex or just hates them. This scene plus kissing a crying girl who gives no appearance of consent plus his worry over his roommate making it with a girl while he is also talks about making it with girls plus his hiring of a prostitute....ugh. I hope some day someone has a serious conversation with him about how damaging his thought process is. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is my second reading of The Catcher in the Rye. My first was near the end of high school/beginning of college (it left that much of an impression on me), and I really felt like I was too old for it. I definitely had more of an appreciation for it, but it just doesn't hit anywhere near the top of my Great Novels List. I read many reviews around the web about why people loved this book and noticed that the people who love it love it unreasonably. Ask why it's so great, they will roll their eyes at you and tell you to go back to reading Dean Koontz, Dan Brown, and Stephanie Meyer, because clearly you cannot understand any great literature if you cannot understand this book. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Catcher in the Rye is one of my juniors' summer reading books and while I am curious to see what the contemporary teen thinks of it when I grade their homework, I'm totally okay with the fact that we probably won't spend a heck of a lot of time talking about it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I do think that I will try to buy myself <a href="http://www.redbubble.com/people/swanghost/works/9780749-holden-caulfield-thinks-you-are-a-phony?body_color=white&p=t-shirt&print_location=front&ref=shop_grid&style=mens" target="_blank">this T-shirt</a> because I think it's funny. </span><br />
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Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-82354941717078121942013-08-01T15:47:00.000-07:002013-08-01T15:47:04.027-07:0028: Maus I and II - Art Spigelman<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I have been carrying these graphic novels (Maus I: My Father Bleeds History and Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began) around for the past few years waiting for the right time to read them. I thought that after Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies (where I think a common essential question is: How could people do this to each other?) they might be a good place to find some materials that helps answer that essential question in a different way. I am kind of a genocide weirdo. Sitting in an undergraduate class talking about the Rwandan genocide, a classmate said, "I can't believe it! I remember learning about the Holocaust in school and thinking, that was a bad idea, good thing we don't do that anymore, but we do? We still do it?" and I was doing my very superior eye roll and decided I never wanted to be the girl people were rolling their eyes at superiorily in this field. I went on a genocide-story-reading kick, went to a conference on teaching the Holocaust, saw Gerda Weissman Klein speak (while clutching my best friend's hand and sobbing together. If you read ONE Holocaust book, read All But My Life. It has the happiest ending a Holocuast book can have), and then proceeded to burn out on genocide and need a break from everyone dying. </div>
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These graphic novels are the end of that break. First, the art is great. I really dig the black-and-white style, it reminds me of Persepolis in the best way (although it came first). The animal species for people totally makes sense, especially with all the "Jews are vermin" propaganda that was everywhere. Jews are mice, Poles are pigs, French are frogs, Germans are cats, and Americans are dogs. (For the record, this is something that some people find VERY offensive. I read some of the low-star reviews on Amazon because I couldn't imagine how someone could NOT like these books, and apparently they find the Polish pigs and American dogs to be terrible ways to portray all the good Americans and Polish people.) The story is a Holocaust story, but the author's father, Vladeck, is such an interesting and unique person, both as an older man in the 'current' part of the frame story and as a young man in the flashback part of the story. The way he manipulates situations in order to come out of the Holocaust alive is truly impressive and creative.</div>
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The structure of the story - a frame story where AS is IN the story surrounding the flashbacks while he visits with his father to GET the story - works well for many reasons. It's fun because it gets meta (the mouse-author has a conversation with his French-converted-Jewish wife about what kind of animal she should be, or at one point the cartoon author runs away to take notes on the conversation that we just saw). It also works because AS asks his father many of the questions that people ask about the Holocaust: why didn't anyone fight back? why were some Jews complicit and working with the Nazis? what happened to the people who weren't? why didn't you do x, y, z? and his father addresses all of his concerns. At the how-to-teach-the-Holocaust conference I attended, we spent a lot of time discussing how to talk to students who are unsympathetic and feel like they would have 'done something different.' Ultimately, the Holocaust was about people being forced to make IMPOSSIBLE choices. </div>
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In this book, parents are trying to decide whether they should send their child away with X family to hide. They are too afraid to be away from their child, so they do not. Later they are given the chance to send their child away with Y family to hide. They are too afraid to stay with their child, so they do. X family survived, Y family (and the child) did not. Two impossible choices with absolutely NO WAY to know which was going to be the right choice. Over and over in this book we see people die and people survive and there is so little that separates the survivers and the dead besides just dumb luck.</div>
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This is an absolute recommended book - it did not win the Pulitzer for nothing after all - but if a teacher were ever going to teach anything about any genocide, I think there are many panels from here that could be pulled to teach that will help grab more students' attention.</div>
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Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-14785002844502205072013-07-29T18:54:00.001-07:002013-07-29T18:54:21.079-07:0027: Animal Farm - George Orwell<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short. We are born, we are given just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength; and the very instant that our usefulness has come to an end we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty. No animal in England knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. No animal in England is free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth." </i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS"</i></span><br />
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I am a little burned out on the Classic Books Every High Schooler Should Read, as I am reading two years worth of a high school curriculum in one summer. Animal Farm is the other summer reading book selection for my future honors freshman, coupled with Lord of the Flies. I remember reading AF in 7th grade reading and really NOT getting it at all, and in retrospect I think it was an inappropriate choice for my teacher to have made. Reading it as an adult, I still felt like I didn't have enough of a solid background to 'get it' and have been brushing up on related wikis of the Russian Revolution, Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, as well as the North Korean Famine, Chinese Re-education Farms, and the Rwandan Genocide. With all that said, I feel like it's a pretty hefty novel to give students who have just finished up 8th grade to read on their own over the summer.<br />
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As an adult who has now lived through a handful of governments toppling under people's desire for revolution, I have a much greater appreciation for the novel. It was powerful, moving, angering, and ridiculous. Napoleon's coming to power under a revolution and then turning the farm into a police state was scary (particularly after watching the Ai Weiwei documentary two nights ago). Squealer's propaganda machine was so eye-rollingly bad but I have no doubt to its effectivenss. The animals' acceptance of information and philosophy was maddening, but I've also listened to a high school senior give a very serious presentation about the Illuminati (in case you're wondering, they control everything from Presidential elections to Superbowl winners) and then seen an entire class of seniors regard that student as the upmost expert on the field of Illuminati conspiracies and BELIEVE HIM. I also know a college educated person who works in the math field post on Facebook links to articles that show that global warming is just liberal propaganda, so....yup. Squealer, eye-rollingly bad, yet effective. The way history is re-written is evident in the way that North Korea exists in the world. My only critique is that GO gets a little NH and at the end is like, "HEY DID YOU GET MY ALLEGORY? DID YOU GET IT? IF YOU DIDN"T GET IT I AM GOING TO EXPLAIN IT TO YOU! DO YOU GET IT NOW? YEAH YOU DO BECAUSE I TOLD YOU." That part I could have lived without, but what do I know? I am not an author and have no alternative ending suggestions for GO.<br />
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So, actually, as an adult who has now lived through a bunch of experiences, I have a much greater appreciation for the novel. I am very interested to see what my students reactions are to it, but I wish I could guide them through it because I feel like it's the perfect text to explore what function you think a government should have in society. Also, the kindergarten teacher in me totally wants to have my students make a flag for our country and our school, and the government teacher in me totally wants to have my students make their X# COMMANDMENTS, and the soft science teacher in me totally wants to have my students look into social science experiments on how advertising works, and the English teacher in me wants to bring it all together brilliantly. Especially when paired with Lord of the Flies! My previous school required social contracts, which I was a fan of; I am thinking of bringing the practice over to my new school, so my freshman will have at least one opportunity to create a democratic contract among themselves as to how they want the society of my classroom to function - if nothing else it could be a great starting point for our discussions of summer reading.</div>
Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-27205593763128438042013-07-25T12:42:00.002-07:002013-07-25T12:42:42.144-07:0026: Lord of the Flies - William Golding<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>He wanted to explain how people were never quite what you thought they were.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I first read Lord of the Flies in middle school, but have very little memory of the experience - no idea whether I loved it or hated it or cried or anything. I did remember that horrible things happened on the island, so I re-read it with a sense of doom. I had vague images of beatings and betrayal, but I couldn't remember who had done what to whom, so I was very anxious throughout and after each awful event I hoped that there wouldn't be any more. I also honestly could not remember how it ended, so as we follow the end of the novel I felt like a first time reader wondering, "Would an author really let it have such a terrible ending?" Great book overall, groundbreaking for its time, perfect reminder that the children-being-horrible genre is not new. Stephen King writes this edition's introduction, and he says "My rule of thumb as a writer and as a reader is Feel it first, think about it later. Analyze all you want, but first dig the experience." This book is a perfect example of something that can be read as pop lit, fun and page turning, or more academically analytical. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is one of the summer reading assignments for my honors freshman next year, so it's a little weird to think of it as a teacher because I don't actually know how much time I am supposed to spend on their summer reading and what I'm supposed to be covering with them. If I were handling it during the school year, I would probably go crazy with this book in a few different areas. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">First, I couldn't stop thinking about all the horrible things that supposedly normal people do to each other which makes the book so utterly believable. Honestly, I would expect more people to die than do in Lord of the Flies. With my students, I would want to talk about </span><a href="http://www.prisonexp.org/" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;" target="_blank">the Stanford prison experiment</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, about </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;" target="_blank">Abu Ghraib</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, about </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_soldiers" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;" target="_blank">Child Soldiers</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, about </span><a href="http://www.ocala.com/article/20120106/ARTICLES/120109796/1412?Title=Seven-youths-charged-with-beating-girl-on-school-bus&tc=ar" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;" target="_blank">the 7 kids (ages 12-15) who beat a 13-year-old girl unconscious on a school bus</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. There are endless stories about teenagers being horrible to each other and people being horrible to each other that this could last forever.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Second, I couldn't stop thinking about all the survivalist stories that I read as a young adult that I loved: Hatchet, Island of the Blue Dolphins, My Side of the Mountain, Life of Pi, Hunger Games (ok, I read that as an adult). If I were teaching this, I think I would require students to find a more contemporary novel to read as a companion to it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Third, I couldn't stop thinking about survivalist skills in general. I have a friend who is learning about edible plants of the Pacific Northwest, and I have a friend who is a pretty hardcore survivalist (he can make fire and suture with agave and all kinds of cool stuff), and I know...almost nothing. And my kids also know almost nothing, so I think I would have them research and learn a survivalist skill and then give a short how-to speech that demonstrates their knowledge. My hardcore survivalist friend was talking to another survivalist guy who said, "Society is where it's hard to survive because you cannot survive without money. Most of the rest of the planet has everything you need to survive." Of course that is assuming that the rest of your planet isn't an island with horrible teenage boys who will kill you. (A really fun assignment would be to imagine what the island would be like if there had been girls trapped there with them. Would having both genders have inspired everyone to keep up society longer or would it have descended even faster into brutality with the possibility of rape? Imagine what the island would be like if there had been only girls trapped on the island. I once subbed in an all-girls middle school math class (it was an experiment to segregate girls and boys in math and science) and I was very surprised to see how un-girly they were without any guys around. Burping, farting, and cheeto-dust wiped all over everywhere was totally ok in that room. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Ralph was running with the swiftness of fear through the undergrowth.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now having the experience of running away from a bear, I was totally like, "Ralph, I know EXACTLY how you feel." Fear makes you a swift and silent runner, that is for sure. </span></div>
Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-39236893738722003102013-07-16T13:43:00.004-07:002013-07-16T13:43:41.452-07:0025: The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"First you borrow. Then you beg."</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so."</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>I am not good for many more turns. Yes you are, he told himself. You're good for ever."</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"But man is not made for defeat," he said. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated."</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is."</i></span><br />
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2013 has really been an epic reminder of how much I haven't read and how much I don't know. So, once again, let me display my ignorance for all the internet to see: <u style="font-weight: bold;">I HAVE NEVER READ AN ERNEST HEMINGWAY NOVEL.</u> Yes, I know, I know, that's terrible. I own quite a few of them, but they always seem to be shuffled to the bottom of the To Read Pile by basically any other book I pick up. This book is another one of the texts on my curriculum for American Lit, so I decided to chase the marlin and do it. I fell asleep multiple times. I took many <a href="http://www.girlswithslingshots.com/" target="_blank">Girls With Slingshots</a> breaks (I read all 1659 comic strips in the series). I did laundry.<br />
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Reading it as a reader/teacher I kept thinking: how am I going to get my kids into this? We live in Las Vegas - not exactly a fisherman's paradise. I took to the internets and found some really great videos that I will be using for teaching.<br />
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<li>On Netflix Watch Instantly there is a show called "The Mad Man and the Sea." The first 15 minutes of Season 1 Episode 2 are about catching and wrestling a marlin from a jetski. It's well made and well produced, so it is flashy like a regular TV show an has good underwater cameras. The marlin that they are catching (to tag for biologists) is huge, but still smaller than Santiago's.</li>
<li>T<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LavrLsf7_Dg" target="_blank">his clip from The Ultimate Fishing Show has a man catching a marlin from a dinghy that is very Old-Man-And-The-Sea-Esque</a> "The line is going to break or he's going to tire out. Something's got to give. Either he's going to win or I'm going to win...He's a good one. He's a good one...I'm so happy, but so exhausted."</li>
<li>T<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=904hlyK5glQ" target="_blank">his clip from The Ultimate Fishing Show has a man catching a marlin from a surfboard</a>. The marlin pulls him for 90 min and 7 miles! Shows the strength and beauty of marlin.</li>
<li>T<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ly0DTSEDD0" target="_blank">his clip from The Ultimate Fishing Show of a man jumping out of a helicopter and wrestling a marlin</a>. It's short and kind of pointless, but is so 'extreme' that I think it will catch any kid's attention. </li>
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Interestingly, in all of these clips the fishermen talk about the fish in the same way that Santiago does. I'm hoping that seeing these videos will help make the fish and the fisherman and the struggle more real and therefore more interesting.</div>
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What did I think of the book as a reader? I thought it was boring. A thoughtful aphorism (see above) would appear and I would think, "That's so true. What an important thing to say about life." Then I would think, "What is this? Zen and the Art of Marlin Fishing?" I really feel like my next step is to read another Hemingway novel so I can have a fair opinion because this just didn't do it for me. </div>
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Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-18251253682275672972013-07-12T11:19:00.000-07:002013-07-12T11:19:00.943-07:0024: The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life." </i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars." </i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther...And one fine morning ----</i></span></div>
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<i style="color: #999999;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Five years ago, I walked into my student teaching classroom while the students were taking their semester exams, my master teacher decided I seemed absurdly competent, and she put me in charge of creating two units for the following week: The Great Gatsby and Macbeth. The only problem was that I had never read either, and I had never taught outside of small chunks of time, and I had never planned a unit for a novel or play (sure, my best friend and I had come up with an epic plan for Fahrenheit 451 in college, but that was for the Magical Dream Classroom, not real life); that is the life of an English student teacher. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I went on a reading and planning frenzy and then started learning how to be an educator. This experience left me less than charmed with Gatsby. I thought it was overrated and I believe my common response to anyone who asked me why I didn't like the book was something like, "Maybe he was the first to write about bored rich kids, but Ellis and others have done it since in a way that's more interesting to our times." I was working at a fairly wealthy school (one of my students had a custom Louis Vuitton Hummer and another had a pink Paris Hilton-esque Mercedes and all of my students looked like they walked out of an episode of Laguna Beach) which is not the kind of school I ever wanted to work in, so it is very possible that my bitterness towards people who have lots of nice things without having to bust their ass for those nice things was being projected onto this novel. (Of course, like the characters in Gatsby, their lives weren't perfect. One student lived alone in a mansion while her father essentially lived with his much-younger-girlfriend because she wasn't really interested in step-momming a 17-year-old). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 12.800000190734863px;">Let's repeat the past, prove that we're a rotten crowd, and miss the longest day of the year.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 12.800000190734863px;">Please bring: voices full of money, green lights, vehicular homicide, owl eyes, and minds that will no longer romp again like the mind of God.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 12.800000190734863px;">Cardinal virtues not welcome.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And then I met a rather charming gentleman who did things like force me to recreate his favorite Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald foto while hosting parties that had the above description included in invitations. To say that he likes Gatsby is an understatement. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I will once again be teaching The Great Gatsby, so I decided it had been long enough that it deserved a re-reading. I am so glad that I did because I had a totally different experience. This time around I ached for Gatsby...I have spent the last four years watching some of my students' dreams get crushed, and honestly not all of them are 'good' people, but that has nothing to do with whether or not I like them and whether or not I still want them to have all the possibilities of their potential. I have so much sympathy for the rags-to-riches, for loving the idea of someone instead of the actual someone, for the dream crushing, for trying to be an idea instead of trying to be a person. With all this emotional attachment, the book becomes this horrible roller coaster (especially because I know how it all ends) of watching people you like made terrible decisions and deal with the consequences. And watching people you hate make terrible decisions and have no consequence besides their fake fake lives and their awful marriage and their guilt.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I also can't believe that the writing didn't strike me before. I don't feel like I do a terribly great job of being able to articulate what is the difference between 'good' writing and 'bad' writing, but I do know that FSF creates these PERFECT sentences that are almost painfully good.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you're into Gatsby at all, I highly recommend <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/2010/09/27/100927on_audio_mead" target="_blank">this podcast about Gatz, a play that uses every word of The Great Gatsby (it is 8 hours long)</a>. I will absolutely be having my students listen to it before we start the novel as it builds hype beautifully without spoiling anything. </span></div>
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Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-80980593756273569822013-07-10T12:02:00.001-07:002013-07-10T12:02:25.388-07:0023: The Crucible - Arthur Miller<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Why do you never wonder if Parris be innocent, or Abigail? Is the accuser always holy now? Were they born this morning as clean as God's fingers? I'll tell you what's walking Salem - vengeance is walking Salem. We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!"</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"I have signed seventy-two death warrants; I am a minister of the Lord, and I dare not take a life without there be a proof so immaculate no slightest qualm of conscience may doubt it."</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"In an ordinary crime, how does one defend the accused? One calls up the witnesses to prove his innocent. But witchcraft is ipso facto, on its face and by its nature, an invisible crime, is it not? ...Now, we cannot hope the witch will accuse herself; granted? Therefore, we must rely upon her victims - and they do testify, the children certainly do testify...I think I have made my point. Have I not?"</span></i><br />
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The Crucible is another classic text I hadn't previously read that I will be teaching next year. It was an incredibly painful read because of my own fluffy emotions. Miller is, of course, brilliant in it (although I found it very annoying that what should have been endnoted commentary interrupted the narrative frequently, but I assume that that is not read aloud in production). Death of a Salesman is beloved to me, and there are quite a few similarities between Willy Loman and John Proctor and I think one could make an argument about the flippancy and lack of empathy that Biff and Happy have and compare that with the flippancy and lack of respect for human life that the accusing girls have.<br />
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Background Anecdote #1: In middle school we had to do a creative presentation after researching something in American history. I made a HUGE diorama of a little jail in Salem. The footprint was probably 2'x2' and it included a tree with a noose, a styrofoam jail with pinecone-piece-roof, tiny jail cells with black toothpick bars, and little hand made dollies with little hand made Puritan outfits in various states of death (yes, I even had one that was being pressed with a board made from popsicle sticks and a real little rock pile). That summer my family went to Salem and we did the whole Salem thing, so it is fairly fresh in my head.<br />
Background Anecdote #2: I was a victim of a crime and many people thought I was 'crazy' and falsely accusing the perp. This has given me an INSANE hatred of people who falsely accuse people of crimes, because that is the fuel that some people need to assume that real victims of real crimes COULD BE false accusers.<br />
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The whole time I read the play, my hatred for Abigail, Mary, Mercy, et al was so overpowering I could barely spare any pity for the victims and our protagonist, John Proctor. I am, however, very excited to teach it because it brings up so many interesting discussion points for my students to start to develop and articulate their personal philosophy on life, revenge, morality, the legal system, etc. I also think that, unfortunately, we live in a very appropriate time to make this text come to life. <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rosalyn-schroeder/sunil-tripathi-witch-hunt_b_3192189.html" target="_blank">This HuffPo article demonstrates a very recent modern witch hunt against one of the totally innocent 'suspects' in the Boston bombings.</a> I think it would be very interesting for students to research recent stories of mass hysteria induced demands for justice, mass hysteria induced accusations, and innocent people being exonerated after more evidence comes forth and discussing that.</div>
Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-38323611440500017282013-07-07T17:07:00.000-07:002013-07-07T17:07:01.945-07:00Fun Books for Littlies<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://www.babylit.com/shop-books/" target="_blank">Baby Lit</a> has awesome cardboard books for the littlie in your life who is ready for an early introduction for Moby Dick, Jane Eyre, and Dracula. The books are number books, color books, weather books, etc, and are incredibly well done with a fantastic style of art. I gave a few as Christmas presents to my bestie and she now owns every one available; as soon as I can afford to, I will as well. She likes them because she's an English teacher, her kids (both below 4) like them because they are cardboard (good to chew on) and have fun pictures. I used the book as an inspiration to give my AP students the option to make an alphabet book of a novel they read over spring break and got a fantastic book on The Mysterious Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide. I would highly recommend them as presents for any parents or teachers who are literary minded! Thanks to<br />
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Lucas Books with Chronicle Books and Jeffrey Brown has put out <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Vaders-Little-Princess/dp/1452118698" target="_blank">Vader's Little Princess</a>. It's a picture book that is totally appropriate for the kids and will make the adults laugh as well. My rockclimbing partner's daughters (age 5 and 7) just finished the Star Wars movies and it is a present for them - I will update when I know how real life littlies react to it!</div>
Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-78554156625823315712013-07-07T16:38:00.001-07:002013-07-07T16:38:08.424-07:0022: A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"People will try to change you, Rhea, Lou goes. Don't let 'em. </i></span><br />
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>But I want to change.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>No, he goes, serious. You're beautiful. Stay like this. </i></span><br />
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>But the freckles, I go, and my throat gets that ache.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>The freckles are the best part, Lou says. Some guy is going to go apeshit for those freckles. He's going to kiss them one by one.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>I start to cry, I don't even hide it.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Hey, Lou goes. he leans down so our faces are together, and stares straight into my eyes. He looks tired, like someone walked on his skin and left footprints. He goes, The world is full of shitheads, Rhea. Don't listen to them - listen to me. </i></span><br />
<i style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And I know that Lou is one of those shitheads. But I listen. </i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This novel was recommended especially for me years ago, and I have been looking forward to having enough time to read it since then. For me, a recommendation from someone I trust is quite enough of a reason for me to read a book, and I have no need to investigate it further, so I opened this book with no idea what it was about. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Pleasant Surprises:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1. It has interconnected narrators. If you find that gimmicky, this books is not for you! I love it, because we are all interconnected in real life and real life is no gimmick. Las Vegas is very curious because it is an overblown small town and anyone who has been here for a while is inevitably connected to everyone else who has been here for a while (oh, my college chum that I haven't heard from in 4+ years was best friends in middle school with a girl I met rockcliming after she found my OKCupid profile and approached me in a climbing gym because we like the same obscure band and we three are now at Pub Quiz together? Of course).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">2. It jumps through time and space as it jumps through narrators. This means we get to see some characters from multiple perspectives and some events through multiple perspectives. It reminds me of George Plimpton's oral biography of Truman Capote as well as Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, and it is a style that I love. Even in my recent read Letters From Yellowstone, I stopped while reading and told my friend that I was so excited to read about an event from two perspectives. Again, if you find this gimmicky, this book is not for you. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">3. It is multigenre. There are regular first-person narrative sections as well as newspaper articles and an entire chapter told in a 'slide journal' (power point made by a tween girl). Quite a few people find this gimmicky and use this as their reason for hating the novel. The newspaper article section utilizes footnotes and the internet is all OMG YOU ARE NOT DAVID FOSTER WALLACE JENNIFER EGAN - those people are wannabe-pretentious-judgey-pants-wearing-idiots because footnotes are not a part of JE's narrative story, they are used by the character who wrote the newspaper article and it was completely unsurprising that he did so because he is totally that type of writer. (Also: what are people SO upset by women writers who do anything 'quirky'? I feel like people love to hate on women for being 'too quirky' and I am not as aware of the same criticism on male authors using similar devices (like Junot Diaz for footnotes). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">4. As for the content and characters - it's depressing, and honest, and sometimes beautiful. I have no problem with it getting the Pulitzer as it is in many ways SO American and SO filled with contemporary problems and that is what makes it SO depressing and SO honest and SO sometimes beautiful, and the ending is Perfection.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Highly recommended, especially if you were ever into punk music or have any thoughts on modern consumer culture.</span></div>
Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-66647161132304364232013-07-07T15:27:00.002-07:002013-07-07T15:27:37.864-07:0021: Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">How to Read Gone Girl:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1. Know nothing about the book. No really, you don't want to know anything. I knew this was THE book of last summer and knew nothing else at all. I had no idea character names, plot, summary, nothing. All I knew was that it had a TWIST (omgz!)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">2. Get the audiobook. Get a friend (preferably a good looking criminal defense lawyer friend). Get a car. Get 20 hours of driving.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">3. Listen to the book together. Pause frequently to discuss, analyze, speculate about the law, cops, crimes, relationships, marriages, parents, etc.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">4. Finish the book with great anticipation before a long hike with excitement that it will fuel your hiking conversation as it has fueled so many conversations so far (fuel is necessary when you spend every waking minute for two weeks with the above mentioned good looking lawyer)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">5. Have almost nothing to say afterwards.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I would definitely recommend this book to every person. I would say that you should read it sooner rather than later to avoid spoilers, because there are quite a few and THERE IS NO REASON TO READ THE BOOK if you already know the spoilers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you need to know more, I would tell you it begins with a wife missing from a home that shows an obvious struggle took place, and the novel's structure has the husband narrating from the day she goes missing interspersed with diary entries from the wife beginning with when they first met and catching up to the present.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I really would say you should read it WITH someone because the most fun thing about this book was the discussions that it started. If I had read it independently (probably in one sleepless-can't-put-it-down night) I would have felt the same deflation that it seems so many people felt after finishing it. </span></div>
Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-71502350497904070782013-07-07T15:10:00.002-07:002013-07-07T16:46:56.709-07:0020: Letters From Yellowstone - Diane Smith<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i style="color: #999999;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Dear Mother, </span></i><br />
<i style="color: #999999;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Remember that Dr. Bartram I wrote to you about? Well he has arrived. Only he is a she, and now I am at a complete loss as to what I should do. I am so woefully short of staff, I would embrace the worst laggard or miscreant the scientific world has to offer, but, dear Mother, what am I to do with a woman? We already have a cook."</span></i><br />
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<span style="color: #999999;"><i>"I am not deserting my career; I am pursuing my life's work."</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #999999;"><i>"The natural world is my religion. I worship the random and the wondrous beauty of it all."</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Letters From Yellowstone is a Goodwill find that I picked up because I barely glanced at the back and thought it was a nonfiction book about a female scientist joining a field study in Yellowstone National Park in 1898. It is in fact a novel, although a particularly well researched one (the author studie nineteenth-century western and environmental history as a graduate student and references quite a few Yellowstone books that informed her writing), and was a fantastic read (particularly because I finished it while laid out on a sleeping pad on top of a picnic table in Yellowstone National Park).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is an epistolary novel told in letters and telegrams from most of the main characters to their various friends, family, colleagues, and bosses. It begins with Miss Alex Bartram writing Professor Merriam asking to join his Yellowstone expedition and signing simply "A. E. Bartram" leaving to the kerfluffle of him assuming that this botanist is a man. (Even now many female scientists choose to submit using initials rather than names that give away their sex - tried to find a cite about an interesting study of how female submitters are accepted less often in scientific journals than males, but I don't have a subscription and the pop-press apparently didn't pick it up - will keep looking). The book is interesting for a few reasons. We encounter a variety of women interested in science in different ways (from our serious botanist to hardcore bird watchers to silly girls who just like to look at cool things in nature) and get to see the sexist ways men react to them (from simply being patronizing to completely ignoring them). We also encounter an American Indian family and see the different racist and progressive ways people react to them as people and as scientists with their traditional natural remedies to maladies. The characters are dynamic and believable, with their belief systems changing in a way that reflects their experiences. Most interesting to me was the way the author incorporates early Yellowstone history - how the army was commissioned to protect the park and the park lovers were terrified of how 'popular' and 'accessible' it was becoming because it would be destroyed (people used to put their clothing into the Old Faithful geyser as a quick way to give them a hot wash!) All of this heightened my entrance into the park through the majestic Roosevelt Arch which says "For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People" - I am so proud of our National Park system.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I would say this novel is a little more serious than a beach read, but is still quick and easy, and anyone with an interest in Yellowstone or botany would enjoy it.</span></div>
Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-2809468237308097592013-07-07T13:59:00.003-07:002013-07-07T13:59:46.183-07:0019: Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Me: I haven't read the Scarlet Letter.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Students: OH MY GOD YOU HAVEN"T READ THE SCARLET LETTER!?</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Me: Nope. I mean, I know all about it, I just never got around to reading it. </i></span><br />
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Students: OH MY GOD THAT SHOULD BE, like, AGAINST THE LAW YOU ARE AN ENGLISH TEACHER</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Me: So you would recommend it? It's that good?</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Students: OH MY GOD NO IT IS TERRIBLE. BUT STILL!</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That conversation has happened every year, sometimes multiple times a year, for the last four years while I've been a teacher. My argument is always that I can't read every book in existence, and secretly I have felt like it is a good thing to let students one up me in this way. For better or worse, I am expected to teach all or part of this book next year in American Lit, so I finally gave in and read it. I have misplaced my actual book, so this review will be rather short, lacking quotations, and unorganized as I actually read this book over two weeks ago.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1. I am thinking of cutting The Custom House completely when I teach it, as it is boring, and puts one off the book. It took me forever to get through this section myself and I kept thinking "how will I get my kids through this?" Every time I picked it up, my eyes fluttered shut and I ended up taking a totally unnecessary nap.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">2. Ignoring the first section, I mostly enjoyed the novel as a reader. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Early into the novel I asked my fellow English teacher friend why this book is so reviled, and her explanation was apt: "You read it and you catch the symbolism and it's very subtle and interesting, and then you keep reading it and the symbolism is less subtle, and less subtle, until Hawthorne is hitting you over the head with it LOOK AT ME I AM THE FOREST THE FOREST IS A DARK PLACE THAT IS OUTSIDE OF CIVILIZATION WHICH CAN MEAN MANY MANY THINGS HERE LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THEM" By the end of the novel, I really agreed with her, and I can see why it works well with students who haven't quite grasped that multi-layered-reading-ability and how it falls totally flat with the students who feel like Hawthorne is treating them like they're idiots. I was pretty surprised with how liberal/progressive/proto-feminist a lot of the novel read, and I'm looking forward to reading some of the lit theory surrounding it to see if I'm pushing my own ideas onto the novel or if it's commonly thought to be quite feministy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">3. As a teacher, I'm really looking forward to teaching it. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I think teenagers in the digital age have completely revitalized the topics of this novel. The completely hypocritical, stone throwing, judgmental</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> nature of teenagers+sex+sexting totally reminded me of the town - at least the Puritans had a chance of NOT being hypocritical while they were putting on their judgey pants. I really want to teach this with some news articles about bullying, cyber bullying, and some of the recent teen suicides that came after extensive bullying about sexual activity and/or orientation. Unfortunately, I'll be teaching this book with my juniors and I feel like they are almost too old for my After School Message. I'm also curious to have my students research and examine crimes and punishments around the world and have them start to critically think about our own American judicial system.</span></div>
Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-32377116677918395112013-06-04T16:18:00.001-07:002013-06-04T16:18:29.814-07:00Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffeneggar<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"CLARE: It’s hard being left
behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he’s okay. It’s
hard to be the one who stays."</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"HENRY: All my pleasures are homey
ones: armchair splendor, the sedate excitements of domesticity. All I ask for
are humble delights…I love meandering through the stacks at the library after
the patrons have gone home, lightly touching the spines of the books. These are
the things that can pierce me with longing when I am displaced from them by
Time’s whim. And Clare, always Clare. Clare in the morning, sleepy and
crumple-faced…Clare reading, with her hair hanging over the back of the
chair…Clare’s low voice is in my ear often. I hate to be where she is not, when
she is not. And yet, I am always going, and she cannot follow."</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>“I’ve been wanting to tell you: I
feel so different. I just…feel so connected to you. And I think that it holds
me here, in the present. Being physically connected the way that we are, it’s
kind of rewiring my brain.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The podcast<a href="http://booksonthenightstand.com/2013/05/botns-231-unlikeable-characters.html" target="_blank"> Books on theNightstand episode 231 </a>addressed the idea of unlikeable characters prompted by
the now infamous quote by Claire Messud (“Would you want to be friends with
Humbert Humbert? Would you want to be friends with Hamlet? Oedipus? Oscar Wao?
Any of the characters in anything Pynchon has ever written? If you’re reading
to find friends, you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its
possibilities. The relevant question isn’t “is this a potential friend for me?”
but “is this character alive?”)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One of the hosts brought up that her teenage
daughter is reading quite a bit of young adult novels that have strong romantic
storylines. The girl exclaimed that she felt ruined by all the perfect men in
her books. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That is how I feel about The Time
Traveler’s Wife. I have read it so many times the different experiences have
blurred together and I can’t actually remember when I read it the first time,
but it was published my senior year of high school so undoubtedly it was at a
very impressionable young age. It is the book I am guilty of handing off to
boyfriends and then obsessively reading over their shoulders to see where they
are and watch their face for their reactions. I can pick it up at any page and
drop it with complete satisfaction and delight because I know the story so
well, but I love it so much.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Henry DeTamble: the dashing time
traveler librarian</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Clare: the gorgeous artist who is the love of Henry's life</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Gomez and Charisse: the friends
who invent games like Modern Capitalist MindFuck</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Mrs. Kim aka Kimy, the sassysweet
woman who unofficially runs the “Philanthropic Society for the Support of
Wayward DeTambles”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Dr. Kendrick: philosopher
geneticist</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The whole cast is completely
charming. Like your best friends in real life, they are flawed, but they are so
great that you must love them because of and in spite of their flaws. The
romance of Henry and Clare and the chemistry of everyone else is perfection. It would really just be a book about awesome people doing normal things if it weren't for the time travel. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As a sci-fi and science nerd, I have no problem with time
travel being a part of the book’s universe (hellooooo Dr. Who), and this novel
does it particularly well. AN makes it a scientific plausibility (thus Dr.
Kendrick) and works with our disbelief by making sure every time traveling
moment is tightly written with no holes that would make it less believable. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ultimately, the novel presents a world where you get to live with your time traveling boyfriend by your side, and you get the
assurance of making the right choice in life and love. The knowledge that
somewhere in the future is a self that Henry can report is doing just fine. The
ability to visit and revisit awesome moments in the past. The beautiful
opportunity to see, touch, and talk to people who have died. The chance to
comfort and advise the younger selves of the people you love. (On the flip
side, you also miss the opportunity of taking a chance, taking a crazy leap of
faith, you know in advance that you will have very difficult times in life, you
will visit and revisit the worst moments in the past, and you will have the
nightmare of seeing, touching, and talking to people who have died knowing damn
well that they are no longer alive, and you have the nightmare of seeing your
younger self do stupid things over and over and over again, in spite of
whatever you said. All of these are presented in the book as well, but I am an
optimist and a romantic like AN is, so I choose to revel in the comfort of the
goodness).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The only thing I dislike about
this book is that AN’s other work has not lived up to the expectation that it
sets. It’s hard to settle for the okayness of her other novel when I know that
this book is out there, and sometimes I worry that it will be hard to settle for the okayness of reality when I know there is a time traveler out there. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">PS: Oh my god in looking for an image for this book I found the new movie-tie-in cover. Bleck!!!! <a href="http://booksonthenightstand.com/2013/05/botns-229-books-into-movies-movies-on-to-books.html" target="_blank">Books on the Nighstand did an episode about that</a> too, and I felt indifferent until I saw the movie tie in cover for The Time Traveler's Wife. Both the actors are gorgeous, but holy fuck you need to leave that cover alone for the love of Whitman. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">PPS: The irony of making fun of my mom fairly frequently for her preferred choice of reading (paperback time traveling romance novels - you know they're time traveling because there's an hourglass logo on them) while loving this book is not lost on me. Ugh, I hate turning into my mother. Incidentally, she hated this book. </span></div>
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Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-52061326352805157842013-06-04T16:04:00.004-07:002013-06-04T16:04:43.684-07:0018: Juliet, Naked - Nick Hornby<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>“Hahahahahahahahahaha. I told you he was
overrated. Now go and listen to everything MORRISSEY has ever sung, you
muppets.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>“Nobody grew up or got bigger; no landmark occasions were
commemorated, because there were none. Duncan and Annie just got slowly older,
and a little fatter…Annie had single friends who’d never had kids, but their
holiday photos, usually taken in exotic locations, were never boring – or
rather, they didn’t feature the same two people over and over again, quite
often wearing the same T-shirts and sunglasses, quite often sitting by the same
swimming pool in the same hotel on the Amalfi coast.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>“The fact is, some of these myths are so colorful hat they
have deterred me from re-entering the world; it seems to me that people were
having more fun with me gone than they could ever have if I was around.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With Juliet, Naked, Nick Hornby proves that he can write
about music in a world where only hipsters have record players, music stores
are going extinct, and the internet takes up most of our lives (if you’re
curious if he can write about a world without music at all, I highly recommend
you check out A Long Way Down). Juliet, Naked, follows the above-quoted couple
Annie and Duncan who are stuck. Their lives are agonizingly boring and at times
frustrating to read; frustrating mostly because I see parts of myself that I dislike and parts of
my friends that I dislike and when our lives are kind of boring we complain
lots but can’t change anything because a lot of the time life is kind of boring
– that’s why I read books to pretend that I have had a lot more interesting
experiences than I have had. The frustration is what makes the bulk of the book
– versions of Annie and Duncan are all over real life which makes them entirely
real and sympathetic. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Annie has settled for Duncan, an ok bloke who is obsessed
with Tucker Crowe, a musician who wrote one of the greatest albums of all time
and then disappeared in the middle of a tour. He is obsessive, creepy, and
sometimes lawbreaking in his need to analyze and re-analyze everything that is
known about Tucker Crowe. The Internet has saved Duncan from being a weirdo
though, because through it he can join message boards and converge with other
weirdos and find a sense of family, community, and purpose that don’t exist in
his real life. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On the other side of the
narrative voice is Annie who longs to have a richer life, but continually
chooses to settle into whatever is safe and easy. The tension between her and
Duncan rises and rises until <i>Juliet,
Naked</i> (the acoustic version of Crowe’s famous album <i>Juliet</i>) arrives on their doorstep. Duncan writes a glowing review
while Annie writes a tepid one…and Tucker Crowe sends her an e-mail.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The novel is multi-genre with
shifting narratives which are two ways an author can easily win me over.
Interspersed with the regular narrative perspectives of Annie, Duncan, and
Tucker are e-mail exchanges and message board conversations, and Hornby hits
the right voice for all of these – we don’t e-mail the way we talk and we don’t
message board the way we e-mail. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The ending is ambiguous, which is why I have
been sitting on this review for about a week – I liked it, but I don’t know how
I feel about it if that makes any sense. I just don't expect that sort of ending from the typical poplit novel, and I'm not sure if I want it. After my final day of sitting-on-the-review I have determined that with our new world we need new literature that captures it. We need books about message board communities, e-mail flirtations, long distance relationships, and artists who did one great thing and disappeared much to the disappointment of their fans, and because we don't have much of them, I'll accept this book as a successful endeavor. </span></div>
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Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-9923289764568747562013-06-03T22:23:00.000-07:002013-06-04T16:18:57.016-07:0017: Franny and Zooey - J. D. Salinger<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>“The rest, with very little exaggeration, was
books. Meant-to-be-picked-up books. Permanently-left-behind books.
Uncertain-what-to-do-with books. But books, books."<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>“I’m to write and tell you that you have your
Whole Life Before You and that it’s Criminal if you don’t go after your
Ph.D….you dirty little bookworm”<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><span style="color: #999999;"> “I don’t
know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it
doesn't make you happy.”</span></i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">It is rare that I close a book with the
satisfaction of having just read something lovely, and I would have never
guessed that Mr. J. D. Salinger would bring this moment to me. My only
experience with JDS is The Catcher in the Rye which I read shortly after high
school and felt that I needed to have read it five years earlier to feel any of
the reverence that every guy I knew who read it between the ages of 13 and 17
seemed to feel about it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the great tradition of dirty little bookworms
everywhere, I picked up this book because<strike> a cute guy liked it</strike> I will be teaching American lit next year and am incredibly passionate about my subject.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">First and only complaint: Little Brown, the
original publisher of the iconic rainbow striped JDS books has apparently
started a new trade paperback imprint called Back Bay Books which has decided
to redo the cover meaning my JDS spines no longer match. I know I am not the
only freak about this, and it's annoying, especially because Catcher in the Rye is also on its own planet when it comes to its new jacket.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The rest: this book was lovely and you should read
it. It’s a quick read that has the cutest sentimental moment ever (it involves a child and a puppy omgawd it's a little kid and a little puppy what more do you want in life you heartless bastard?) intermixed
with hilarious dry humor and criticisms of the academic system and certain
kinds of religious people. If you are at all booky, educated, or quirky, you
too will long to be a member of the Glass family and long to be taught under
Seymour and Buddy so that you too can have a nervous breakdown at college –
which is really all this book is about when you ignore the humor, charm, and
writing. Part of the beauty is that it really is that simple – a girl has a
breakdown – but JDS makes it so much more interesting than that. As someone who grew up in a household where buying books was forbidden, I am completely enchanted by the idea of a family growing up where bookshelves line bedrooms.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-1718437925124251582013-05-22T19:44:00.000-07:002013-05-22T19:44:34.992-07:0015-16: The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - Stieg Larsson<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">"Salander was the woman who hated men who hate women"</i><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The first time I heard about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was on NPR in a comparison between Lisbeth Salander and Bella Swan (really, the article is <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128518742" target="_blank">here</a>). It intrigued me, especially because I was reading the Hunger Games when I heard it and I really wanted to think about the role that women (especially young women) were playing in popular contemporary books. I promptly thought "I should read that some day" and added it to my mental list of millions of books.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Then my parents went on a vacation. They like to fly to a place, rent a car, and drive around for a week or so looking at things, taking fotos, and listening to books on tape. They had gotten GWTDT from the library for some reason and were totally bored, but had nothing else left. Then, as my mom tells it, they hit that glorious moment in an audiobook where all of a sudden you don't care what you're doing as long as you're driving. Upon their return they devoured the sequels and told me I must read them immediately. I promptly thought "I should really read that some day" and added it to my mental list of millions of books minus the ones I head already read since the last time I looked at the list. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In 2012 I finally allowed myself to read GWTDT over spring break. It was juicy, I didn't sleep, I was hooked, and I knew I could not allow myself to read anymore or risk dropping out of grad school and/or quitting my job, so I set aside and ignored the sequels until I finished my Master's. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My major issue with GWTDT was the epic rape scene which was incredibly difficult for me to read and I couldn't see how SL could justify it. I posted on my Facebook page to ask for advice on whether or not to continue. At what point does detailing something horrible cross the line from important-to-the-plot/informational/eye-opening to exploiting-tragic-experiences/rapertainment? I almost never pull the Rape Victim Card, but if the whole book was going to be rapertainment I was ready to pull the card and spit on everyone who loved this series. Fortunately, Facebook told me to persevere, and ultimately as the novels wrapped up the epic rape scene was necessary enough to the plot that I will refrain from spitting on SL. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Rape victim revenge, secret government conspiracy theories, crazy serial killers, organized crime, journalism, writers, secrets, revenge violence, poverty to luxury with pretensions, hot lesbian sex, hot straight sex, a tiny punked out pierced and tattooed girl, a buff muscular chick, a chubby dyke who loves leather - I mean seriously? What more could you want out of a book? (I was about to say hot gay sex but that's totally in there too!)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is an incredibly satisfying page turner if you like suspenseful thrillers. Writing isn't brilliant, but I am always a fan of texts that have multiple POVS and incorporate a variety of genre within the story. The plot ended at just the right time as well - while I can see where there was space for the SL to continue the books into a longer series, and I would have read them all, I think it would have become a thing where I read them just because I can't let the characters go and not because I think I'll be getting more out of the books (I'm looking at you Orson Scott Card). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What probably made my reading experience more terrible and real was the fact that <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/us/three-women-gone-for-years-found-in-ohio.html?_r=0" target="_blank">Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight were rescued</a> and I read some terrible articles on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22437771" target="_blank">Geoffrey Portway </a>a man who could be straight from a SL novel (made a secret basement with cutting table, cage, coffin, and fridge, was trying to get people to kidnap kids for him, had tons of child porn that also featured dead, tortured, and mutilated children). </span></div>
Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3402212278185378727.post-47360287227169714182013-05-12T13:53:00.004-07:002013-05-12T13:53:39.185-07:0014: The Hollow Kingdom - Clare B. Dunkle<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"Imagine as she stood by the bonfire tonight, she saw outlandish and otherworldly sights, and when I cam toward her to lift her on this this horse here, she knew - she just knew - that if she let me put her onto this horse, she'd be galloped away beyond the world we know into some strange, shadowy underworld." - Goblin King</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"Why would I remember that? Do I guard Kings? I do not worry about the minor details of King's lives. I only remember what is important." - the snake that guards the King's Wife</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This young adult book was handed to me by an AP student before winter break with the hopes that I would read it before my next semester began. Instead, I spent the break recovering from a kind-of-cracked-heart and did not read it which of course lead to this semester, also known as the semester-where-I-read-nothing-light-or-fun-ever. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Fortunately, my last paper is written and I am one presentation away from being finished with grad school. Unfortunately, I have pink eye and need to take the next few days off of work so I am actually a little excited to read some things that are light and fun.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My first thought when starting the book is that it is very different from the literary masterpieces I've been reading. It is a Young Adult fantasy novel targeted towards kids in grades 5-9, and I don't think anyone is picking it up expecting to discover the next Marquez which is totally okay.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Plot has pretty typical motifs that we're seeing in a lot of YA work recently: orphaned children, supernatural creatures, surprising superpowers, weird-stalkery-love from a supernatural creature to a young woman where doesn't really have any choice or control over. What is super atypical is how fucking badass our orphaned young ladies are. I have been a little checked out of the YA scene for the past few years, and I hope this is a new trend. For the record, this book came out in 2003, five years before Katniss Everdeen ever grabbed a bow and arrow.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our story takes place in the countryside during the Industrial Revolution in England. Kate and Emily have recently been orphaned after being raised by their father who had crazy ideas like young women should be educated in literature and science, and they are shipped off to distant relatives who are the closest thing to appropriate guardians. Very early in the text it becomes clear that there are magical races still alive (goblins, elves, dwarves) and one has decided that Kate must become his bride. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I don't want to give too much away, as this is NOT the Scarlet Letter where we all know the plot and read it anyway, so I'm going to obliquely reference some of the very awesome things this book does without giving away too much about the plot. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Kate is beautiful, of course, but more importantly she is FIERCE and SMART. She uses her limited physical capabilities (she is an undersized teenager after all) and her intelligence to scheme and plan and foil her enemies, and when she needs to, she uses weapons, and yes, she totally kills. Emma is our minor character whose virtues are in her SWEETNESS. Oh are you an ugly little baby goblin who is scared? Don't worry, Emma will coo at you and make it all better. She's also incredibly CURIOUS which is a useful plot tool because she asks questions that the reader is wondering and thus we get the backstory we need, but it's also just nice to see so many quality characteristics spread across two young women. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Probably because I'm in a gender class right now, I'm paying a lot more attention to it, but the mythos this book presents about women, marriage, and pregnancy are an interesting and welcome balance of sweet/romantic/chivalrous and feminist (see the above snake who knows EVERYTHING about every king's wife and could care less about unimportant king's lives). </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Also, because there are different races who look quite different from humans, it has a great message about discrimination but it's woven into the story and doesn't feel didactic.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Overall, I'd be very very happy for more young people, particularly young women, to read this book. It satisfies what I want out of light reading but also upholds all the values that I want young women to have. </span></div>
Brittanyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11505849394031450120noreply@blogger.com0