10 books that have stayed with me

Apparently there is a challenge thing that was going around Facebook and Tumblr recently where you were supposed to list 10 books that have stayed with you or affected you in some way. I missed that memo, but I saw something about it the other day and it got me thinking. I have read so many books. I honestly have no idea how many and it would be pointless to try to guess because I wouldn't even know where to start. And I'm not just saying that because I was an English major in college. I'm saying it because it's the truth. I read voraciously. I read more than one book at a time, I read quickly, and I read constantly. So how do I pick from the hundreds of books that I have read and list 10 that have affected me more than the rest? Let's just say it wasn't easy.

In no particular order.

Harry Potter series
I am proud to say that I am a part of the Harry Potter generation. I literally grew up with this series and its characters. I was 15 when Deathly Hallows came out and the series ended. I was still a kid, a teenager, and the series had a major impact on me and how I view the world. I don't quite remember when I first started reading the series. It's like the books were always there. I do remember going to a midnight release of Order of the Phoenix. It was such a cool experience. And I spent the next day devouring the book. I ignored my family, built a nest, and hid there until I finished the book. For me, the series is more than just books. I view the characters as friends because I know them so well and for so long. And the series isn't about magic. It's about love, friendship, family, evil, hate, prejudice, and hope. It's about so much and is so beautiful. It's a series that can instantly reawaken the child within me, in the same manner that even the mention of visiting Disney does. I can't exactly put into words what the series means to me. Sometimes I feel that it is a part of me, something that has always been there and always will be.

The Lord of the Rings, including The Hobbit and The Silmarillion
I tend to refer to Tolkien's works collectively as LOTR, so when I say that know that I am referring to all his works dealing with Middle Earth. LOTR has done for me as an adult what Harry Potter did for me as a child. That is to say, it has became a major influence in my life. And not just because I insisted on doing my Senior Seminar presentation on Tolkien. I have 2 previous posts devoted to the impact that Tolkien has had on my life. I don't think I need to rehash everything. But I will say that Tolkien's works have become more important to me as I've grown older. When I was younger I was entranced by the way he wrote and by the story in general. Now, I'm in love with the world, the people, the history of what happens in the stories and the history of how the stories were created. The series has just become exponentially more important. I love LOTR for the things not seen in the movies. For the relationship between Eowyn and Faramir, and her strength. For the friendship and brotherhood between Faramir, Eomer and Aragorn. For the return to the Shire after the ring is destroyed. For Fatty Bolger. For the Noldor and their folly. For Beren and Luthien. For every little detail from beginning to end. And just like Harry Potter, LOTR is so deeply ingrained in me that I can feel it in my bones.

The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice
I know Shakespeare is a great author and his works are classic, blah blah blah, but I have never particularly loved any of his works. They force you to read a few in high school and they were okay but never really stuck with me. Then in college I had an entire class devoted to Shakespeare. And we read Othello. And that was that. I was in love. I've always liked Shakespeare's tragedies better, although Much Ado About Nothing has recently become a favorite in movie form at least, but none of his other tragedies had caught my attention as much as Othello did. I'm not sure if it's the interracial couple that I love so much (Othello is black and Desdemona is white) or if it's the fact that Iago in Aladdin was named after the villain in Othello. It's certainly not because of the extreme lack of communication throughout the play. It aggravates me that Othello and Desdemona are unable to communicate with each other in any way that could be effective. However without their stupidity the play would have no point so it serves a purpose. And they truly did love one another. Maybe that's why it spoke to me: the idea that two people could love each other so much and yet so quickly fall into mistrust, jealousy, rage, and murder.

Pride and Prejudice
Yes, it's rather cliche to have this novel on my list. But I truly love this book. I am a hopeless romantic at heart and this book feeds on that desire within me. The relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy is wonderful and quiet. It sneaks up on you until all of a sudden it's there and you wonder how you ever missed it. And I love that it always takes me a little bit to adjust to the language of the novel, and then for days after finishing it I think and speak in the same manner. I feel that I've been reading this book all my life and I still immensely enjoy it every time I begin reading it again.

The Blue Sword
I've come to love the works of Robin McKinley, and it's all because of this book. It's beautifully written and so incredibly real that I can't help but love it. It's one of the first books I read where the heroine has to stand on her own, not because she's destined to but simply because she's in the right place at the right time. And although the romance is very subtle, I still love the relationship between Harry and Corlath. This is one of those books that I could read once a month and never grow tired of. There are few books I can say that about but for this it's absolutely true. It's a book that I cannot get enough of no matter how many times I read it.

The Book Thief
I love this book because it's so different from other stories about World War II. It's about a child, it's about Germans, and it's narrated by Death. It's much funnier than it should be but also sad enough to break your heart. And for a book geared towards children, it has a very powerful message about a dark time in recent history. It deals with real-life issues and things that are hard to talk about but something that should not be forgotten. I won't get into the novel here because I've written about it before. So if you want to know more of my thoughts then go read my other post. But let's just say that it is a truly wonderful, beautiful book and well worth the read.

The Circle Trilogy: Black, Red, White
Officially it's a series now, not a trilogy, as there is a fourth book but for the purpose of this list I'm only referring to the first 3 novels. The Circle trilogy is, simply put, about Jesus and God's love for humanity. It's a retelling of the fall of Adam and Eve, of the chosen people, and of the sacrifice of Jesus. The story is set in our world but also in another world, which is where the retelling takes place. This series is beautiful. I can't say much more than that. It's a breathtaking story and will make you cry but it is just so magnificent. Sometimes I think we need a fresh perspective on Jesus and His sacrifice, and to be reminded again of what He did for us. That's what this series is for me. It's a reminder of who Jesus is and who we are to Him.

Jane Eyre
Sometimes I love this novel more than Pride & Prejudice. There's something about Jane Eyre that Pride & Prejudice doesn't have. And I certainly can't decide if I like Rochester or Darcy more. Both are equally lovely in my eyes. What I like about Jane Eyre is how quiet and unassuming Jane is yet at the same time how strong and fierce she is. Jane is quite willing to stand up for herself, even if it means losing someone she loves. She's determined to always do the right thing and not to give false hope to people. She's a strong woman but that doesn't mean she wants to remain single forever. Although she's described as being plain, I think she's beautiful in many ways. And the hopeless romantic in me love that she gets her happy ending after everything.

Life of Pi
What could be more interesting than a boy stuck on a lifeboat with an adult tiger? It's a terrifying thought but at the same time I can't stop thinking about how cuddly tigers look. Until they eat your face, that is. What I absolutely adore about this book is that it's categorized as a work of fiction but seems so incredibly real. I can imagine everything in the novel happening. It's very cleverly written in that respect. And it even addresses the question of reality at the end, when Pi tells the investigators a second, more believable story since they don't like the one with the animals. Life of Pi is a grand adventure on the high seas, full of wild animals, dangerous creatures, near death situations, and the hope that maybe things will end nicely.

Deerskin
I absolutely adore this book because it is everything a fairy tale should be. It's a retelling of a very dark fairy tale and it keeps that feeling. It's not a happy book, at least not in the Disney sense of fairy tales. But it's true to the way fairy tales were written, which is what appeals to me so much. It's also written by Robin McKinley, which is honestly part of the reason I like it so much. And I've already written about the book so if you want to know more then go read my previous post about it. But I will say that this has quickly become a favorite of mine and a book that I can read over and over again.

A Growing Love, Or Obsession

When I started college, I was a History major and English minor. I then switched to a double major in History and English, but I graduated with an English major and History minor. I had no concerns about English Senior Seminar when I started college because I wasn't an English major, and minors didn't have to do Senior Sem. By the time I was an English major, I was determined that no matter what I would do my Senior Sem presentation and paper on Tolkien. But before any of that even happened I was already writing papers on Tolkien.

Every English major and minor has to take Intro to English. This is where you get grammar and literary theory. Let me tell you, I hate literary theory. I just don't like it. One of the first things our professor made us do was write a paper on one of several topics so that she could get an understanding of our writing abilities at that point. One of the topics was Write About Your Favorite Author. Guess what topic I chose? And guess which author I picked? If you guessed Tolkien, you'd be right. I still have the paper and what follows is an excerpt. It's clearly not my best writing but I'm going to share some of it anyways so you can have something to compare my Senior Sem excerpt to.

"Each land has a voice of its own. The Shire is peaceful and naive. The realms of Rivendell and Lothlorien are the last havens of the Elves. Rohan is a hardworking country while Gondor is more warlike. The forests are ancient and angry, existing in a dreamlike state. And Mordor is bleak, possessed by and producing evil. The people and creatures are equally amazing. The different races each have their own personalities that clearly define them. The elves are majestic and peaceful, yet at times they can be ruthless. The orcs are pure evil, created by evil and living only to serve it. Men are proud and arrogant, but willing to try to redeem themselves. Dwarves are stubborn and competitive, always wanting to prove themselves. And hobbits are like children, innocent and pure."

Part of what bothered me about Tolkien's writings not being considered literary is that he's created this completely realistic world, full of real people and places. It's not something that he sat down one weekend and wrote. It was the product of many years of writing and study, and the end result is magnificent. How can you claim such a work does not have literary merit? 

It wasn't until after my freshman year of college that I tried reading The Hobbit again. And this time I finished it. I actually really like it. It's so easy to read that I can't fathom what my problem was when I tried to read it the first time. I've even read it a couple times since then, mainly to prepare myself before the movies came out. 

My next couple years of college passed with no real thought about Senior Sem and what I would focus my presentation on. It's an unstated rule that all English majors attend a Senior Sem presentation before they start Senior Sem. This way they have some idea what they're getting into beforehand. I had attended a couple my freshman year. The first presentation I saw was on Harry Potter. A couple people that year focused their presentations on Harry Potter and after that the series was banned from being used in Senior Sem. It's another series that I love and think has literary merit but because it's popular and written for "children", it's considered unworthy. 

The summer before my senior year, I started doing research on Tolkien and his works. I needed something that I could use to justify doing my presentation on Tolkien. That is when I discovered mythopoeia and my topic was born. Since we had to have more than one work, and at least one had to be from an upper-level class, the other works I picked were Odyssey by Homer and The Four Zoas by William Blake. I used Homer as a basis for what canon mythology was and Blake as an example of created mythology that is considered worthwhile. I needed to establish what mythology was before I could prove that Tolkien's works should be considered mythopoeic (created mythology). To further my point, I focused on The Silmarillion. First, it's a single book and therefore shorter than The Lord of the Rings. Second, it's an outline of how Middle Earth was created and where the people came from. It's one very long creation story, one of the oldest kinds of mythology. During my research on The Silmarillion I stumbled upon something very exciting: there were bands who had written songs/albums based off the book. In particular, Blind Guardian has an album called Nightfall in Middle-Earth that I bought and listened to throughout my semester of Senior Sem. I still listen to it frequently. It's wonderful and I recommend it if you don't mind power metal. 

Finding music based off The Silmarillion was easy. Finding articles on the novel, The Four Zoas, or mythopoeia was not so easy. It was really difficult to find anything on those 3 topics. Homer is popular so articles about him and his writings are abundant. Even finding articles on LOTR was easy but as I wasn't using it for my presentation those articles were pointless. Eventually though I found enough articles for all of my sources. Some of them I actually really enjoyed and still have copies of. And I found an article with one of the most interesting titles ever: "An Imitation of Oysters: C.S. Lewis and the Myth in Mythopoeia". Once I had all of my articles I was ready to start writing my paper and creating my presentation. End result: 20 page paper and 30 minute presentation. What follows is two excerpts from my final paper. The first deals with the concept of the fall in mythology and one of the places where it is found in The Silmarillion. The second deals with a couple cases were Tolkien was influenced by outside sources.

"The fall of the Elves is limited to a line of Elves, specifically the Noldor.  They are the ones who create the Silmarils and then vow to reclaim them at any cost.  The Silmarils increased the “Noldor’s pride, but also their sorrow, a Fall that took them into destruction, and with them all those that became involved in one way or another with the Silmarils” (Schweicher 168).  The Silmarils are the bane of the Noldor and almost destroy them, their allies, and all of Middle-earth.  Their fall is by far the most destructive and the farthest reaching."

"The character of Túrin Turambar mirrors the character Kullervo from the Finnish epic The Kalevala.  In his book Tolkien and the Silmarils, Randel Helms describes the relationship between the two men.  Both grow up in the home of a noble relative and both unknowingly sleep with their estranged sister.  When the two discover that they are siblings the sister throws herself over a cliff and the brother falls on his sword.  The story of Túrin also shows aspects of fate and doom, traits common to Germanic literature.  Not only does Túrin’s name “Turambar” means “master of doom” but he is frequently guided by his fate.  He slays his friend Beleg in what seems like an accident but was really the workings of fate.  Fate is also prevalent in the story of Beren and Luthien.  Thingol, Luthien’s father, tells Beren that he may marry Luthien on the condition “that Beren wrench a Silmaril out of the crown of Morgoth and bring it back” (Whitt).  Thingol’s desire for a Silmaril dooms himself and all his people, and involves them in the Doom of Mandos that is upon the Noldor for their kinslaying."

Although I loved spending four months studying Tolkien and his works, I was happy when the semester was finally over. Senior Sem is very stressful and I was so ready for it to be over by the end. It was wonderful to do a presentation on Tolkien and show people that his works are more than what they seem and that they are worth more than people think. And I've certainly gained something from the experience. I have discovered two different societies based on Tolkien and mythopoeia, both which I fully intend to join. I've discovered a CD that combines my love of Tolkien with my love of music. I've discovered the art of Ted Nasmith, who illustrated The Silmarillion, and I found a copy of the book with his art which I was forced to buy. And I've become even more of a fount of useless knowledge when it comes to Tolkien, but I enjoy it so it's ok.

Entranced by Tolkien

I cannot remember a time when I did not love to read. Most people can pick out a book that changed their outlook on reading; they can say "This book made me love reading". I can't say that. I'm absolutely certain that I was born with an innate love of reading. It's part of my DNA. It's just who I am. But, there is still a series that majorly influenced the way I look at literature and  reading.

I was 9 years old when The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was released in theaters. I can remember going to see the movie and my mom covering my eyes when Galadriel almost takes the ring from Frodo. I'm not sure why she thought that would scare me when I had been watching Star Wars and Jurassic Park since I was 3. But I digress. Somewhere around this time is when I also began reading the books. Since I was still a little young, my parents thought I should start with The Hobbit, that it would be easier for me to read than The Lord of the Rings. It was a nice theory but it didn't work so well. I got bored about the time the dwarves started singing as they washed the dishes. So I stopped reading The Hobbit and instead spent at least the next year struggling through The Lord of the Rings. What 9 year old thinks The Hobbit is hard to read but The Lord of the Rings is easy? Clearly, I have issues.

Part of the reason I struggled with LOTR at first is because Tolkien uses a lot of detail. A lot. At the time, I had a difficult time reading just detail and only a little bit of dialogue. But I persevered and finished the series. And it became my favorite. Well, along with Harry Potter, as I devoured that series as the books came out. I probably read LOTR a couple more times between then and my senior year of high school. During high school I also read The Silmarillion and started The Unfinished Tales, which ironically enough I'm not sure I ever finished.

The big eye-opening moment came when I was a senior in high school. I was taking AP Literature and one of our projects/presentations required us to chose a book and do a report on it. Basic high school assignment. I believe we were given a list of books and told to pick one of those, or check with our teacher if we had another book in mind. When I heard about the project I immediately knew that I wanted to do it on LOTR. I approached my teacher and asked her if I could. I'll never forget her response. Basically, she said "No, because it's escapist literature". Welcome to the literary canon, where scholars you don't know decide what books are worthy of being taught. I had a whole argument planned to convince her to let me do LOTR but I was so shocked by her answer that I conceded.

"Escapist literature": basically, books that you read to escape from real life or read for fun. So anything that isn't escapist literature is boring and forced upon us? One problem: I enjoyed all except maybe 3 books that we had to read in high school. I read Pride & Prejudice, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights way before anyone was ever required to read them. I read those books because I wanted to, because I enjoyed them. Does that make them escapist literature? Does that mean they shouldn't be a part of the literary canon? These are the issues I have with the literary canon. I don't agree with how it is decided that a book is worthy of joining the canon. I understand that during this time Harry Potter was huge and people still saw it mostly as young adult or children's fiction. But there is so much in those books that is more than what it seems. And LOTR is the same way, if not more so. Just because a book is popular and is made into a movie does not mean that it's unworthy of being considered canon literature.

And thus was my soapbox born. This is the issue that would bother me through my last year of high school and through my years as an English major in college. I was determined, however, to change the popular opinion somehow. And I like to think I did, at least a little.

Gone Girl

MAJOR SPOILERS!!!!! Seriously, do not keep reading if you have any intention of someday soon reading Gone Girl or seeing the movie. If spoilers don't bother you then feel free to read on. Let me start by saying that Gillian Flynn is a great writer. I'm 99% sure that Gone Girl is the first book I've read where I do not like a single character in the novel. Not one. All the characters suck and are terrible people. That being said, it was a seriously incredible, mind-boggling book. It is definitely worth reading, no matter how terrible the characters act.

The scene. It's Nick and Amy's five year wedding anniversary. Nick comes home from work (he owns a bar with his twin sister) to find Amy gone. There are signs of a struggle in the living room and there is a present in their closet for Nick from Amy. The police naturally somewhat suspect Nick, although he keeps denying that he killed his wife. It was tradition for Amy to create a treasure hunt for Nick on their anniversary, and the present is the first step. He follows the clues, hoping for some hint about what happened to Amy.

I knew going into the novel that it was one of two things: either Nick really did kill Amy, or she faked her death for some reason. The answer: she faked her death. The reason: she's bloody crazy. Ok, that's not the only reason but she is absolutely crazy. Everyone is whack. Amy discovered over a year before the novel begins that Nick was having an affair with a former student of his (he's a college professor). Amy is naturally upset by this discovery but instead of confronting her husband, she decides she's going to ruin his life. She starts meticulously planning every little detail, intent on framing Nick for her "murder".

Let me back up a little. Amy's parents are psychologists, as is Amy. Her parents wrote a series of highly successful children's books called Amazing Amy, based off their daughter but a more perfect version. Amy is very detail-oriented and creates elaborate plans. She made it look like a friend tried to kill her because she wanted to replace Amy, all because her friend was better than her at some things. She made it look like a boyfriend raped her when she discovered he was cheating on her. Amy would physically injure herself to implicate others. The cases against her boyfriend and friend were solid and there was no question that Amy was telling the truth, except she wasn't.

And now this woman has discovered her husband is having an affair. Nick talks to Amy's former boyfriend and friend for insight into Amy's past, and her friend sums it up perfectly.

"Friends see most of each other's flaws. Spouses see every awful last bit. If she punished a friend of a few months by throwing herself down a flight of stairs, what would she do to a man who was dumb enough to marry her?"

What she does is write a fake diary, pretending that she fears her husband may kill her. She leaves clues that throw Nick's innocence into question. She thinks of every minute detail and has a plan to cover it. This is a new level of crazy. And when Amy accepts help from her high school boyfriend who is obsessed with her and kidnaps her, she kills him. She literally gets away with murder, although not the murder she intended.

Nick is not much better. Amy's clues seem sweet on the surface and Nick finds himself falling for them, and by extension, for Amy. Their relationship is very twisted. They were not honest with each other when they first met and when they showed their true selves, they didn't like each other. Their marriage was more or less based on lies. Once Nick realizes that Amy is actually still alive and trying to frame him for her murder, he starts pleading with her through interviews, begging her to come home. He wants to show everyone who she truly is and have her arrested for what she's done. But when she comes home, she spins a convincing story of kidnapping, rape, and murder done in self-defense. There is no way to prove that Nick's theory is true, or that Amy's story is false. Once again, she has thought of everything.

How does the story end? Nick can't prove anything, no matter how hard he tries. And eventually he has to give up because Amy has found a way to keep him around: she gets pregnant. They will always second guess each other and never fully trust the other, but they stay together. Their marriage is completely toxic and will probably destroy them both and their child.

You can see why I don't like any of the characters. Nick and Amy are both seriously messed up. They constantly present a facade to the world and each other. Amy is willing to go so far as actually killing herself to help prove that Nick is a murderer and receive the death sentence. She throws herself down stairs, poisons herself, cuts herself. She does a whole slew of insane things throughout her life to prove that others have hurt her. Nick is terrified of becoming his father, a man who hates women. He is also a mama's boy and very close with his twin sister. Once Amy disappears, he starts having vivid daydreams of her bleeding, struggling, and begging for help. He envisions killing her when he realizes Amy is framing him. He actually tries to once she comes back, before realizing that Amy was right: they are perfect for each other and could not survive married to anyone else. Nick is also very standoffish. He doesn't always act the way a grieving husband is expected to, and he is frequently described as having a "killer" smile. Not exactly helpful in convincing people he's innocent.

You may be wondering how someone could even like a novel with such despicable characters. Well, the story's very well written. It's hard to put down; once you start it you don't want to stop. There are several twists and turns that keep you guessing. It's actually a really good book and fun to read, as you try to figure out what really happened. I'm very excited to see the movie, which comes out October 3. I'm interested to see how Rosamund Pike plays Amy and I think Ben Affleck will be good as Nick. I would definitely recommend reading the book before seeing the movie. Either way, I hope you have as much fun figuring everything out and being completely frustrated with the characters as I did.              

The Storyteller

I started college as a History major and English minor, switched to a double major, and graduated as an English major and History minor. I love reading (clearly, hence the blog) and I love history. What I discovered though is that I don't like political or economic or even really military history (although learning about wars was always one of my favorite things). No, the history I really love to learn about is people; how they lived, how they acted, how their life was different than mine is today. "History isn't about dates and places and wars. It's about the people who fill the spaces between them." (Pg 373) And in school, even college, you don't get a lot of that kind of history. So instead I turned to books, not only for my own enjoyment but also to learn. I read quite a bit of historical fiction and it's allowed me to learn about different times and people without having to also learn about politics and economics. And yes, it's fiction and not everything is 100% true but a good author does their research and I have learned things from books that we were taught in class. I did a review of The Book Thief, which deals with WWII but from the point of a young German girl. It was different from your average book about that time and absolutely incredible. I just finished another book about the Holocaust, although this one is set in modern times. Jodi Picoult's The Storyteller is about a man in his 90s who was an SS officer and wants a friend of his to kill him. It's powerful, graphic, and surprising. And it's beautiful.

SPOILERS!
Little bit of plot. Sage is a baker in her early 20s who has a scar on her face and is having an affair with a married man. Josef confesses to her that he was an SS officer named Reiner Hartmann and asks her to forgive and then kill him, since she is Jewish by birth though not by practice. Leo works for the office of Human Rights and Special Prosecutions and he is trying to help Sage prove that Josef is who he says he is. Minka is Sage's grandmother who is a Holocaust survivor and was at Auschwitz. And interspersed through their POVs is a story about a young girl who falls in love with a vampire who killed her father.

The book is split into three parts. Part I is Sage learning about Josef's past and getting in contact with Leo. Part II is Minka's account of her experience during the war. Part III is how everything ends. The whole book deals with the issue of good and evil, right and wrong, black and white. Can Sage kill Josef if he asks her to? What will that do to her? How can she live with that? Is it enough knowing that he killed or participated in the death of thousands of Jews? There's no answer. You can't answer questions like those. The whole situation is too personal, too fresh, too fragile. The questions asked in the book are the same ones that historians and people have been asking since the Holocaust happened. And Picoult's answers are interesting.

"Did I know this brutality was wrong? Even that first time, when my brother was the victim? I have asked myself a thousand times, and the answer is always the same: of course. That day was the hardest, because i could have said no. Every time after that, it became easier, because if I didn't do it again, I would be reminded of that first time I did not say no. Repeat the same action over and over again, and eventually it will feel right. Eventually, there isn't any guilt." (Pg 120 Josef)

"I did not think about what I was doing. How could I? To be stripped naked, shouted at to move faster and faster toward the pit with your children running beside you. To look down and see your friends and your relatives, dying an instant before you. To take your place between the twitching limbs of the wounded, and wait for your moment. To feel the blast of the bullet, and then the heaviness of a stranger falling on top of you. To think like this was to think that we were killing other humans, and to us, they could not be humans. Because then what did that say about us?" (Pg 156 Josef)

"Inside each of us is a monster; inside each of us is a saint. The real question is which one we nurture the most, which one will smite the other." (Pg 111 Josef)

Sage hears both Josef's side and Minka's. She hears from the predator and the prey, the victim and the attacker. It makes things hard for her, to reconcile this old man who everyone in the community loves with a cold-blooded killer who murdered innocent people. Especially since Josef and Minka crossed paths in Auschwitz. Minka worked as a secretary for Josef's brother, who was also an SS officer. Franz was not as brutal and violent as Josef, although he could be if the occasion called for it. Minka started working for him after the story she was writing was discovered. Her story is the one interspersed throughout the book. Although it deals with supernatural creatures, it's a clear allusion to the situation between the Germans and Jews, and the undeserved prejudice for something that is not the fault of the Jews. Minka's story kept her alive for a time, the way Scheherazade used her storytelling to stay alive. In the end, Franz is not able to hear the rest of her story and neither is Sage as Minka left it unfinished, leaving the ending up to the reader.

When Picoult explained Minka's reasoning in leaving her story unfinished I was afraid that meant the book would not have a solid ending. But it does. Sage manages to get proof that Josef was who he said he was and Leo is going to arrest him. But Sage goes through with killing Josef. She doesn't forgive him but she wants to keep the promise she made, even if it means she has to kill someone. That's not the end though. When Josef was an SS solider he had had his blood type tattooed to his arm in case he ever needed blood. He removed the tattoo but his SS records still listed his blood type. When Josef tries to kill himself because he believes Sage won't kill him, he receives a wristband at the hospital with his blood type. And when Sage and Leo arrive at Josef's house to arrest him after Sage has killed him, she sees the wristband and realizes that Josef was not Reiner Hartmann. He was Franz Hartmann, the scholarly brother who was so enthralled by Minka's story and not as terrible as his brother, but who in the end watched his brother die and did nothing to save him.

I don't remember when it was, but there was a moment when I thought that maybe Josef was Franz and not Reiner. I dismissed the thought but it turns out I was right. I wasn't exactly expecting it. It certainly explains how Josef was able to pass himself off as Reiner so successfully; as Reiner's brother he would have known about the things Reiner had done. But still, poor Sage. You can't exactly say she killed an innocent man, but she didn't kill the man she expected. And even after all those years, Franz still had the original copy of Minka's story and was still trying to figure out the ending.

I loved it. Even with the plot twist and the dark subject matter. Yes, there were lighthearted moments. Leo mentions that people know when someone was a Nazi because "he's got a European accent and wears a long leather coat and has a German shepherd." But Picoult was also not sparse on the account of Auschwitz and the treatment of the Jews. The novel is graphic, it's dark, and it can be hard to read. It's so hard to imagine that these things really happened, that humans treated other humans like that. But it's also captivating and beautifully written. You want to know what happens next, both to Minka and Sage. You know Minka survives, but how? And you hope that Sage realizes she's worth more than being the other woman, which she finds through Leo. And while there is still no answer to the difficult questions presented in the book, Picoult manages to give different interpretations that leave you thinking long after the book is finished.

The Little Friend

SPOILERS. A few months ago, my mom read Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. She raved about the book and how much she loved it, and shortly after she read Tartt's The Little Friend. She kept telling me that I needed to read both the books and I finally read The Little Friend. What a book! It's one of those books that makes you think and question. It's a long book but so worth the read.

First, I want to talk about Tartt's style of writing. Let me start by mentioning that the book is 555 pages long but has only 7 chapters and a prologue. That makes for seriously long chapters sometimes. On top of that, the perspective jumps from character to character. I actually liked that in this case, though, as there are so many characters and so much happening all at once. It allowed you to see across the board and get to know all of the characters, which is important as the story goes along. I had a little trouble getting used to her writing at first, as some of the sentences were a little disjointed. Also, several of the characters either daydream a lot or get lost in memory, and sometimes you're not sure what is a dream and what is actually happening.

So, what is the story all about? Well, Harriet's brother, Robin, was lynched when he was 9 and she was only a baby. Her sister, Allison, was 4 at the time and outside when it happened but can't remember anything. Robin's death totally destroyed their mother and changed the whole family forever. The story takes place when Harriet is 12 and she desperately wants to know who killed her brother. She starts investigating and gets it into her head that Danny Ratliff, a somewhat friend of Robin's, is the person behind the murder. This sets off the whole story and gets Harriet into a world of trouble.

Harriet tries to get answers out of her sister, Allison, and her grandmother and 3 great-aunts. No one wants to talk about Robin's death, as everyone loved him. His memory has been completely immortalized by the family but they don't like to talk about his death. Once Harriet decides that Danny Ratliff killed Robin, she starts following him with the help of her friend Hely, whose older brother was also a friend of Robin's. And this is where things start to get interesting. It's hard to explain everything that happens in a 555 page novel in only a few paragraphs so I'm only going to touch upon a few things.

The Ratliffs. My goodness does this family need serious help. All of the sons have been in jail, except the youngest who is retarded. The family is basically white trash so they're looked down upon without adding the jail time to the situation. And the grandmother is absolutely crazy. She's mean in a conniving way and eggs her grandsons on, causing fights all the time. Plus, she is constantly "sick and dying" but never actually dies. Farish is literally crazy and was actually institutionalized at one point. He cooks meth, and uses it a little too often, and is beyond paranoid about everything. Eugene is crazy religious and for a time hangs out with a preacher who handles snakes, which plays a major part later on. And Danny is stuck in this family and wants out but can't leave. You believe, like Harriet, that he probably killed Robin. You want him to get caught and get what he deserves. But then you start to know him and realize he actually was friends with Robin and was very upset by his death. But his family beat that out of him and he bragged about killing Robin. In the end, you pity Danny. He's not perfect, but you also don't want Harriet to succeed in killing him.

Which is her plan all along. Harriet wants to kill Danny because she thinks he killed Robin and she wants revenge for the brother she never knew. Although she's the "main character" it doesn't take long to realize that Harriet isn't all right either. Really, no one in the whole novel is. Harriet has no proof that Danny killed Robin but she is adamant that he did and goes to great lengths to kill him. She breaks into Eugene's apartment to steal one of the visiting preacher's snakes, which she and Hely then throw over an overpass onto Danny's Trans Am as it drives by. However, Danny's grandmother is the one driving the car and almost dies. Life lesson: when driving under an overpass in a convertible, beware of falling snakes. Harriet then decides to shoot Danny, which doesn't happen. Instead, he almost drowns her in a water tower, where paranoid Farish had hidden his meth. Harriet manages to escape but Danny, who can't swim, ends up in the water tower. He survives for 2 days, before being rescued and admitting to killing Farish, who he'd shot because Farish was really starting to lose it and Danny wanted to get away.

In the end, Danny is on his way back to prison and Farish is dead. Hely still believes the sun shines upon Harriet and her every deed. And no one suspects Harriet of anything, except epilepsy. The story ends with her in the hospital after having a seizure when she returned home from the water tower incident. The doctors believe she has epilepsy and that's it for her. It's a way to explain away her reaction to the water tower incident, her vomiting and blackout. She almost gets away with murder, expect Danny actually survives and she also begins to realize that Danny and Robin were actually friends and that Danny didn't kill Robin.

Some people don't like the ending. They think that Harriet's epilepsy is a cop out. However, I do think there's something wrong with her because she more than any character had vivid daydreams and seemed to zone out and go into her own world. It seems that Harriet, her sister, and her mother all have a loose grip on reality sometimes. I don't know if Harriet actually has epilepsy but I think there are problems. The other problem people have with the ending is that Robin's killer is never revealed. Honestly, I went into the book expecting that we would never know who killed Robin. How could we? It's been 12 years since his death and no one ever had any clue who did it, so how is a 12 year old girl supposed to figure it out? I think the open ending is part of what makes the book so good and what keeps you thinking about it after you've finished it.

And it really is a good book. It touches upon class issues, between blacks, whites and white trash. It shows you how dark life can really be and how easy it can be to get mixed up in something very dangerous. And while it's a little slow at first, once things start happening they just happen all at once. It's not an easy read, in that the subject material is not always pleasant and the issues throughout the novel are not happy. Death, lynching, murder, drugs, abuse. The novel is dark. But it still captures your attention and doesn't let go.

The Book Thief

I've always loved learning about the World Wars. I'm not sure why I find them so fascinating but I do. So naturally, I enjoy reading books set during the wars. I recently read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and it was incredible. I cried, I laughed, I loved it.

The first thing you need to know about the book is that it's narrated by Death. And he's actually quite funny and personable. He's also very blunt, stating outright that everyone dies eventually. You might think Death would be a depressing narrator but he's not. And if you think about it, death is one of the only guarantees we have in our life. It's only natural that he would be honest. Death tends to jump around in his narration, talking about things out of order. This means that there are spoilers in the book and instead of preparing you for what's to come, they seem to make it worse when you finally get there.

The book takes place in Germany, from 1939 to the end of the war. Liesel is a young girl who is taken to live with Hans and Rosa Hubermann, who are to be her new parents. She becomes friends with the neighbor boy, Rudy Stiener, who has a major crush on her and is always asking for a kiss. The Hubermanns eventually hide a Jew, a young man named Max. He and Liesel become very good friends and she is very upset when he chooses to leave. Liesel is the book thief the title refers to; she steals books and together she and Hans read them. I can't really get into more detail because this is a book that should be read and not spoiled. There is so much and it's so powerful.

The way Zusak writes is so interesting. Each part of the book is titled based on the book that is featured in that section. You can gather from the title of the book that books are important to the storyline. The part titles are The Grave Digger's Handbook, The Shoulder Shrug, Mein Kampf, The Standover Man, The Whistler, The Dream Carrier, The Complete Duden Dictionary and Thesaurus, The Word Shaker, The Last Human Stranger, and The Book Thief.  The book titles are important to what happens in that part. Sometimes you don't realize the significance until the part is over. Zusak also introduces the chapter titles by writing "featuring" and then listing a series of events or topics that are covered in the section. It's very different from your normal novel, which is what makes it so interesting. Throughout the book, Death interjects with little fun facts or pieces of conversation, written in bold and set apart from the rest of the text. In the part The Complete Duden Dictionary and Thesaurus, the interjections are definitions of different words that are important to the story. The parts The Standover Man and The Word Shaker are actually about books that Max writes for Liesel, and The Book Thief is about the book that Liesel writes about her life. Zusak completely wrote the two stories and included them in the novel, complete with illustrations.

A page from The Word Shaker

I won't lie, the book is sad. It's heartbreaking and will make you cry. But it's absolutely beautiful. It's so different from your typical novel about the World Wars. It's through the eyes of Death, who is telling the story through the eyes of a child. And it's about Germans, who are the "bad guys". But Zusak makes these Germans human, capable of pity and understanding. It's a seriously incredible book. One reviewer said "It's the kind of book that can be life changing" and I agree. It's a powerful book about people and the choices they are faced with. As Death says:

"I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words so damning and brilliant."

As you probably know, last year The Book Thief was made into a movie. I recently saw the movie, and you can find my thoughts on it here:http://moviegeek92.blogspot.com/2014/04/words-are-life.html

Deerskin

I'm in the English honor society at my school, Sigma Tau Delta (STD and yes, we joke about that). We had a book sale on Saturday, and as you can imagine, the members were some of the first people grabbing books. I was hoping to find something interesting and I certainly did. I was emptying a box and saw Deerskin by Robin McKinley. I immediately grabbed it. I'd been wanting to read it for a while now but the library doesn't have it. So you can imagine how excited I was when I found it.

There is an author's note in the front of the book:

"There is a story by Charles Perrault called Donkeyskin which, because of its subject matter, is often not included in collections of Perrault's fairy tales. Or, if it does appear, it does so in a bowdlerized state. The original Donkeyskin is where Deerskin began." 

And it's quite understandable why the story is not common. It's worse than the original Grimms' fairy tales. One reviewer called the book a fairy tale for adults, which I think is a very accurate description. 

Lissar is the daughter of a handsome king and the most beautiful woman in the seven kingdoms. The people were so enamored of the king and queen that Lissar was fairly neglected. She rarely saw her parents and even her nursemaid was her nursemaid so she could be close to the queen. Then the queen died and people remembered the potential uses of Lissar. She is 15 when her mother dies, and a prince from the sixth kingdom sends her a puppy to help her in her grief. For the next 2 years, Ash is Lissar's closest companion. During these 2 yeas Lissar is trying to decide who she is and who she can be. On her 17 birthday there is a ball in her honor and people realize that she has come to greatly resemble her mother. Including her father, who had promised his wife he would only marry someone as beautiful as she was. He gets the great idea that he's going to marry Lissar four days after her birthday. It gets worse. She locks herself in her room with Ash, refusing to marry her father. On the night they were to be married, her father breaks into her room, almost kills Ash, beats Lissar, and then rapes her. Yep. Definitely a fairy tale for adults.

Lissar and Ash escape the next morning and travel for many days before finding a cabin in the woods. They spend the winter there. Lissar has blocked out any memories of her life before she ran away, which woks until she realizes she's pregnant. The stress and horror cause a miscarriage. She is visited in a dream by the Moonwoman, who takes away her memories and gives her time to heal (you learn later that five years passed during Lissar's dream). Lissar and Ash are also transformed to be unrecognizable; Ash with a longer coat and Lissar with white hair, black eyes, and a white deerskin dress.

Lissar and Ash travel and find themselves, although they don't know it yet, in the country Ash was born in. Lissar gets a job in the kennels, working to save a litter of 6 motherless puppies. She becomes friends with Ossin, the prince who sent her Ash. It isn't until Ossin begs her to attend a ball that she begins to remember who she really is. She's once again horrified and confused. And then at the ball Ossin asks her to marry him. She runs again, taking Ash and the 6 dogs she saved with her. They end up at the cabin again and by the end of winter she realizes she has to return. And she does right as Ossin's sister is about to be married to her father. Lissar and Ash lose their disguises and she reveals the kind of man her father has become. Then she runs again, ashamed of her past, but this time Ossin chases her.

Ossin: "I let you leave me the first time because I thought that was what you wanted - that what you wanted didn't include me."

Lissar: "I do want you. But it does not matter. I am...not whole. I am hurt...in ways you cannot see, and that I cannot explain, even to myself, but only know that they are there, and a part of me, as much as my hand and eyes and breath are a part of me."

Ossin: "I do not believe there is anything so wrong with you. You are fair in my eyes and you lie fair on my heart."

Once again, McKinley has written a wonderful novel. However, I have never despised one of her characters as much as I despise Lissar's parents and the people of their kingdom. McKinley just has a way with words that I love. And it doesn't hurt that Deerskin takes place in the same world as The Blue Sword, which I adore. I loved McKinley's foray into fairy tales for adults. We need fairy tales just as much as children do, and whether she is rewriting existing fairy tales or creating her own, McKinley has a gift for fairy tales.

One Amazing Thing

As an English Literature major I do a lot of reading. I don't like all the authors or works we read. In fact, some of them I rather hate. But sometimes, I'll really enjoy an author we read. When that happens, I'll look up the author and see what else they have written, and then I'll check to see if those books are at the library. I've expanded my reading horizons a lot by doing this.

One of the authors I enjoyed is Chitra Divakaruni, an Indian-American author. Her works take place in both America and India, and are exotic and exciting. I recently read her novel One Amazing Thing. The novel is about a group of nine people who get stuck in an underground office after an earthquake. Everyone begins to freak out because they don't know if they'll ever be rescued. One of the people suggests that everyone tell a story from their life, a story about one amazing thing that's happened to them. Each character tells their story in a different way. Some are first person, some third, some a combination. All of the stories deal with India in some way. The office they are stuck in is at a visa office at an Indian Consulate in America.

The people in the office are Jiang, a Chinese woman who grew up in India; her granddaughter Lily, who is quite gifted with the flute; an ex-soldier named Cameron who grew up in the ghetto; a young Muslim man named Tariq who is having issues adjusting to America post-9/11; an Indian-American girl named Uma who is in college; an elderly married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Pritchett, who have been having issues since Mrs. Pritchett tried to kill herself; the receptionist, Malathi, who distrusts men, even though she likes her married boss; and Mangalam, the man who runs the visa office.

They each tell their story and all of them are heartbreaking. All of their stories deal with loss and love, with a struggle to do what's right versus what they want. I think Jiang's is one of the saddest, although Mr. Pritchett and Mangalam both have stories that are rather sad as well. Malathi's story is probably the most cheerful and the funniest. I would not want to be in any of their shoes, either in their stories or in the office after the earthquake.

I love the way that Divakaruni wrote the novel. She begins before the earthquake and lays out the landscape. We follow the characters through their thought process about what to do and how to survive long enough to be rescued. She doesn't have the stories follow one after another. Instead, she interjects the stories in the action, so you go from a story back to the office. It's rather like Canterbury Tales, which the character Uma is reading in the office before the earthquake hits. I think it was very well written and really conveyed the fear that people have during a situation like that. People were lying and hoarding things at the beginning, but as they all connected they began sharing with each other.

How does the story end? Do they get rescued? Well, I wouldn't want to spoil the ending. And even if I wanted to, I couldn't. Divakaruni ends the novel on a cliffhanger. Uma is just about to end her story and they can hear people moving around upstairs. And the story ends. That's it. It's frustrating and maddening, and brilliant. If I was ever an author, I would write endings like this, ones that are incomplete and leave everything open. They're cruel and unusual, but they make a point. And in a story like this, where the characters are hoping they will be rescued and not die, leaving the ending open is perfect. Would you rather know they were never rescued and died, or would you like to hope they were found on time?

The Freedom (or Catteni) Series

I haven't read much science fiction. I watch a lot of science fiction movies and TV shows but I find it difficult to read science fiction books. I get confused with all the different kinds of spaceships, and technical and science jargon. So I tend to avoid most science fiction. Occasionally though, I will find a series (as science fiction is almost always written in series instead of singular books) that I really like and find easy to understand.

My parents recently got really into audio books and listen to them on their way to work. My dad decided to get some Anne McCaffrey books and choose the Freedom Series. On the days I went in to work with him and he was listening to an audio book, I took a book of my own and read during the drive. It worked pretty well, until I heard one of the voices in the series. The character sounded like a Nazgul (the few times you hear them speak) or Emperor Palpatine talking through Vader's helmet. Needless to say, I was intrigued and decided to read the books, which I did this weekend (the series made up four of the eleven books I read).

The series is called both the Freedom Series and the Catteni Series. Freedom because each book has the word "freedom" in the title and the concept of freedom is very important to the story, and Catteni because the Catteni are the alien race that have attacked Earth (or Terra, as they call it). The series was published beginning in 1995 with Freedom's Landing, followed by Freedom's Choice in 1996, Freedom's Challenge in 1998 and Freedom's Ransom in 2002.

As I mentioned, an alien race called the Catteni have invaded Earth. They are humanoid, with grey skin and yellow eyes. Their home planet has a denser gravity than Earth and the other planets in the series, so while they are bulkier than humans they can move quickly. The Catteni have rounded up thousands of humans and taken them from Earth to become slaves. The story begins with Kris Bjornsen on Barevi, a merchant planet with a slave market. Kris inadvertently saves a Catteni man, and together they are captured and dropped on an uncivilized planet. This is a common practice of the Catteni to see if a planet is habitable. Throughout the first novel, the people dropped adjust to their new surroundings. They name the planet Botany and begin making it a home. Zainal, the Catteni, becomes a huge asset to the humans and other alien races and is a major reason they survive. Kris also finds herself falling for him and they begin a relationship.

The rest of the series describes the struggle of the Botanists to regain their freedom. Through Zainal, they learn that the Catteni are just as much victims as the other alien races. They are controlled by the Eosi, our Nazgul sounding friends from earlier. Zainal, Kris, and the other Botanists slowly steal spaceships from the Catteni and begin a rebellion against the Eosi. They manage to kill the Eosi and free Earth, Botany and Catten (the Catteni home planet) from Eosi domination. In the last book, Zainal leads a group from Botany to Earth and then to Barevi to help restore order and regain materials stolen from Earth.

I really liked the series. I loved the description of Botany and the ingenuity of the humans in adapting to their surroundings. I thought it was interesting that the Catteni were just as much victims as the humans and other alien races. I think having the bad guys being controlled by even bigger bad guys was smart and different. I also appreciated the difference in how Catteni raise their children versus how humans raise their children. Not to mention how amusing it was reading about Zainal slowly learning English and then seeing him correct a human's English later. And even though there were a lot of people moving in and out of the series, it was easy to keep track of everyone and like certain people better than others. Not all of the humans were likable either, which was realistic and showed that even after being invaded by aliens some people will be creepers.

For the first major science fiction series I've read, it was easy to read and understand. And it really was very good. What I like so much about fantasy is that it's magical, even if there isn't magic in the story. And since science and magic are at such odds with each other, science fiction doesn't tend to be magical the way fantasy is. But I found the Freedom Series to be magical in a way. Even though there were spaceships and travel between planets, there was still a fantastical element to it. It was certainly more believable than fantasy; it's easier to believe in an alien invasion than in magic wands. And I enjoyed that even through an alien invasion and against tremendous odds, humans fought back and won. It just goes to show what resilient beings we are.

How I Define a "Good" Book

My computer died on Thursday (for the fourth time in five months) so I've spent most of the weekend reading. I read 11 books from Wednesday to Sunday. That's a lot in such a short time even for me. And it was a wide range of books and authors. Nine of the books were ones I hadn't read before and they were, for the most part, alright. There was a series of four books I read that was really good, but none of the books I read are my new favorite. Which got me thinking about how I decide a book is one of my favorites. What is it about a book that makes it better than others?

It's the feeling I have when the book is over. That's the first clue. I have one of two responses when I finish a book. The first is "Oh, that's the end. Well that was a good book. It was enjoyable. Now, what else do I have that I can read?" I feel indifferent at the end (or on rare occasions, I absolutely hated the book and never want to see it again). The second response is "It's over. It's over? But what now? Maybe I should read it again. No, I have other things to read. But none like this so I should read this again. Well, I could try reading this but it's not quite right. Neither is this. Hmm maybe I have a movie that's similar?" THAT is the response I'm looking for.

When I finish a truly good book, I feel like something is missing but I also feel complete. It's a paradox, an oxymoron, and a simply beautiful feeling. I can look back on the book and I know it is something that I could read a hundred times and never get tired of.

The funny thing is, almost all my favorite books are ones that I had to force myself to read at first. They are either written at a different time so I have to adjust to the language, or they start slow and  I have to tell myself it will be worth it if I just keep reading. It's still that way. Of my 10 favorite books, only 2 are ones that I can pick up and start reading with no trouble. And both of those are marketed as children's books (Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia). The other 8 are all books from a different time period or are a little slow at the beginning (The Lord of the Rings, Pride & Prejudice, Jane Eyre, The Blue Sword, Life of Pi, Jurassic Park, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and World War Z).

All 10 of my favorite books evoke that feeling of loss and completion. It's a bittersweet feeling and I honestly do consider reading the book again immediately after I've finished it. It's amazing I read as many new books as I do instead of just rereading all of my favorites. At least for the books with movie adaptations (good ones, that is) I have some way of relieving the feeling.

But it's not just the end result. I should be able to look back at a book that I really liked and pick it apart. I liked this, I didn't like that, this quote was amazing, I cried here. Something in the book produced the feelings I have at the end and I should be able to pinpoint it. And then I use that to find other works that are similar. For me, reading is an enjoyable experience. It's an escape, a way to relax, and a way to dream. I get lost in a truly good book and have to reconnect with reality. That's why I read. That's what I'm looking for in a good book.

Sunshine

One of my favorite books, The Blue Sword, was written by Robin McKinley. For a while, it was the only book of hers that I had read but I've slowly started reading more of her works. The latest book I read by her is Sunshine. It won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature in 2004, which gives me even more reason to love the book.

The story takes place in a world very much like ours but with one minor change: there are zombies, vampires, weres of many different animals, succubi and demons. Collectively, they are called Others. The story is set after the Voodoo Wars, which were between humans and the Others. Magic plays a big part in the story and there are many bad spots, or places where black magic thrives.

The main character is a young woman whose name is Rae but is nicknamed Sunshine. She is a baker at her stepfather's coffee shop. One evening she heads out to her family's old cabin by the lake and is abducted by vampires. This changes her life. She is chained to the wall in a ballroom but she is not the only prisoner. A vampire named Constantine is also being held and she's supposed to be a treat for him. Sunshine manages to escape by turning the knife she hid in her bra into a key. She also frees Con and they leave together, in the daytime. Sunshine is able to keep Con from bursting into flames from the sun if they are touching.

The rest of the book takes place over the next six months. Sunshine has to explain why she was missing without saying it was vampires and without mentioning that she freed a vampire. She and Con have formed a bond that could threaten both their lives if anyone from SOF (Special Others Forces) found out. Sunshine has to deal with her magical heritage and the knowledge that there are more partbloods (part human-part demon) around her than she originally thought.

The novel was very good. I love McKinley's works and her style of writing. Sunshine was a little different, as it was from Sunshine's point of view and was very honest and open. It gave the whole situation a touch of reality: this is how someone really feels when their world is stripped away from them. Like most of McKinley's other works, the book was a little slow at the beginning. But once it took off, it just kept going. McKinley frequently creates new worlds or worlds that look like ours but with a slight difference, and her books usually start right in the middle. As the story goes, she'll explain things here or there to catch you up. Sometimes this makes things really confusing but that was not the case here. I found everything easy to follow and understand.

And as far as vampire novels go, it wasn't a cheesy romance or some sort of erotic thriller. The Others were handled very well and the vampires were not appealing. Sunshine frequently thought about how awkward Con was and how different he was from humans. She never saw him as blindingly attractive and I'm honestly not sure she ever thought he was attractive. I actually have a quote describing the antagonist, a master vampire who is not physically seen until the very end of the book. What I like about the following quote is how disgusting McKinley makes him sound.

“I said that monster doesn’t cover it. There is no word for a several-hundred-year-old vampire who has performed every available wickedness over and over till he has to invent unavailable ones because he’d worn the others out. His flesh was not flesh; it was a viscous ooze, held together by malice. His voice was a manifestation of malignancy, for he had no tongue, no larynx; his eyes were the purest imagination of evil: flawless in a way that flesh could never be.” 

There are two other quotes that I want to leave you with. The first is a rather charming description of what you feel like after killing several vampires. Again, it's disgusting but I love the imagery that McKinley uses.

“I wish I could forget how it feels, your hair stuck to your skull with blood, foul blood running gummily down inside your clothes, invading your privacy, your decency, your humanity, till it chafes you with every breath, every movement, the tug of it as it dries on your skin feeling like some kind of snare. Blood in your mouth, that you cannot spit the vile taste of away.”

And the last quote. I love the contrast that McKinley creates between opposites. I love that such a surprising element is possible, as I myself love lying in the sun. And I just love the last line. 

“The hierarchies of magic handling are no particular study of mine. But your particular affinity is for sunlight: your element, as it were. It is usually one of the standard four: earth, air, water, fire. Sometimes it is metal, sometimes wood. I have never heard of one for sunlight before, but there are—are tests for these things. Yours is neither fire nor air, but a bit of both, and something else. While I was doing the tests and coming up nowhere, I thought of sunlight because of all the days I have seen you lying in the sun like a cat or a dog—I have only ever seen you truly relaxed like that, lying motionless in sunlight. And you told me once about the year you were ill, when you lived in a basement flat, and how you cured yourself by lying in front of the sunny windows when you moved upstairs. I thought of your nickname—how I myself had relied on your nickname to tell me the real truth about you, after the vampire visited you….As for your—let us call it counteraffinity: your counteraffinity may be for vampires. I have never heard of this either, but I do know it is often a magic handler with a principal affinity for water who can cross a desert most easily; a handler with a principal affinity for air who can hold her breath the longest, someone with an affinity for earth who flies most easily. It is the strength of the element in you that makes you more able to resist—and simultaneously embrace—its opposite. You are not consumed by the dark because you are full of light.”

Mythopoeia

In my last post I mentioned a little-known genre of literature called mythopoeia. Since I doubt many of you have ever heard of mythopoeia, I thought I would educate you. We'll start with the definition: mythopoeia is when an author creates his own mythology using elements and archetypes found in traditional mythology.

So what does that mean? Everyone has heard of the Greek gods (Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, Hades, Aphrodite) and most people know that there were Egyptian, Norse, and Hindu gods, along with many others. The stories about these gods and the mortals whose lives were influenced by them are traditional mythology. In ancient times, myths were used to explain things that people could not understand or rationalize, such as why the seasons changed or where people went after they died. With the Scientific Revolution, a rational, reasonable, scientific answer was discovered for many of the questions that mythology tried to answer. Because of this, mythology lost most of its importance.

But it did not die out completely. Some authors began taking the elements found in traditional mythology and adapting them to create their own form of mythology. This became known as mythopoeia. And now we get to my favorite part about mythopoeia. Guess who popularized the term? J. R. R. Tolkien. He was part of a marvelous little group called the Inklings. The group was comprised of mainly Oxford professors, and they met on a regular basis to discuss literature. One of the places they frequently met was the pub The Eagle and Child, which has a section dedicated to the Inklings. The other notable member who is directly involved in mythopoeia was C. S. Lewis.

The topic of myth-making was first brought up in a discussion between Lewis and Tolkien. In order to defend his stance on myth-making, Tolkien wrote a poem, titled Mythopoeia, and gave it to Lewis. This poem is what started everything.

The poem was written in 1931. In 1937, The Hobbit was first published and shortly after Tolkien began writing the sequel, The Lord of the Rings. Lewis began writing The Chronicles of Narnia in 1949. And Tolkien's greatest mythopoeic work, The Silmarillion, was published posthumously by Christopher Tolkien in 1977. These are some of the greatest and most popular mythopoeic works. Other works include Star Wars, some comic book characters such as Superman, parts of Harry Potter, and parts of the TV show Battlestar Galactica. As I mentioned previously, the series Rose of the Prophet is mythopoeic as well. Other authors who commonly write mythopoeic works are Neil Gaiman and Robin McKinley.

These authors and works all have noticeable aspects of traditional mythology. Lewis' series is clearly heavily based on Christianity. Tolkien uses Christianity as well as Irish, German, and some Finnish mythology. Not every mythopoeic work has to have a pantheon of gods but many of them do; the gods are a big part of mythology and very easy to transfer. Some mythopoeic works reuse mythological creatures. while others focus more on the important hero's journey. Several mythopoeic works follow the model of the creation myth and depict the creation of the mythopoeic world. One of the most important parts of mythopoeia is the feeling you get when you read one of the works. It's supposed to be fantastical and amazing, and create a sense of wonder. Traditional mythology often had a hidden or obvious message, and mythopoeia is the same way. Think about the things that Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter have taught people, the values and lessons that so many have learned from those stories. That is just as big a part of mythopoeia as the world that the author creates.

Those created worlds are what first drew me to mythopoeia. I love Lord of the Rings, and I am torn between love and hate when it comes to Tolkien. He created such a beautiful world in Middle-Earth, with its own people, history and languages. But it kind of sickens me that he did all that. He's such an over-achiever. Who writes two and a half complete languages and creates an entire history for a world that isn't even real? Tolkien, that's who, and I hate him for it. But I love him for it just as much. I love him so much that I based my entire Senior presentation on mythopoeia just so that I could talk about Tolkien and how brilliant he is (I'm an English Lit major).

There is even a whole society dedicated to mythopoeia. It's called the Mythopoeic Society and is based at Michigan State University. They have Mythopoeic Awards for books and authors that are considered outstanding works of fantasy and myth. There is a scholarly journal as well as a monthly bulletin that talk about different mythopoeic works. I'm kind of in love and would seriously consider becoming a lifetime member if I had an extra $500 laying around.

What I've said here is only a brief overview of what mythopoeia is. And I really can't even begin to describe what the genre means to me. It's such a beautiful thing and so creative. To end, I'll leave you with this excerpt from Tolkien's poem Mythopoeia:

Though all the crannies of the world we filled

with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build

Gods and their houses out of dark and light,

and sowed the seeds of dragons, 'twas our right

(used or misused). The right has not decayed.

We make still by the law in which we're made.

Rose of the Prophet

My favorite literary genre is fantasy. I love being swept up in a story of another world, with different rules, customs and people. My absolute favorite series is The Lord of the Rings but there are a few others that I quite enjoy as well. One of those is the Rose of the Prophet trilogy. The books were co-authored by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman and were published from 1988-1989. It is a story of romance, treachery, magic and mystery. I have read the trilogy three or four times now, and each time I fall even more in love. The last time I was reading the books, I was struggling not to laugh out loud.

The series takes place on the world Sularin, which is ruled by a group of 20 gods. The 20 gods make up a single, central god called Sul. When the gods are in accord, the world is balanced. But, as so often happens when there are so many who desire power, the gods fight and chaos occurs. Not all of the gods are major characters in the series; only 5 are featured heavily. And the gods are rarely seen. Instead, their agents appear to the humans. The Immortals are generally either angel,s djinns, 'efreets, or imps. And they are probably the funniest part of the series. The djinn are conniving and mischievous and get into all kinds of trouble. They are the comedic relief in the books, which is good because the books can get dark.

The series starts with two nomadic tribes being told by their god, Akhran, that the children of the Sheiks must marry. During the ceremony, the bride is tied up and gagged and the groom is drunk. Clearly, the marriage is off to a good start. The two tribes are constantly at odds. Zohra's tribe is comprised of sheep-herders and Khardan's tribe breeds horses. Zohra's tribe is also ashamed of her because she is stubborn and "manly". She goes so far as to stab Khardan on their wedding night. If any couple needed counseling, it is Zohra and Khardan. But they are wonderful. Even though they do nothing but fight, they still have a connection. We only see hints of tenderness between them, and even at the end they are fighting about where they will live. The biggest sign that there is something more to their relationship happens when Zohra refuses to sleep with Khardan's blood brother, Auda ibn Jad. He propositions her, saying that he wants a son before he dies. But she refuses and ibn Jad tells Khardan she will bear many sons of the man she loves.

The other major character in the story is Mathew. He is a sorcerer who is disguised as a woman, an interesting case of mistaken identity. He is very timid in the beginning but learns to stand on his feet and stand up for himself and those around him. He is the one who teaches Zohra how to do more extensive magic. The nomadic tribes only practice woman's magic so the fact that Mathew can do magic is astonishing. But he teaches Zohra a lot. Together, Mathew, Zohra and Khardan save the nomadic tribes. They do not bring peace, per say, as the series ends with the tribes fighting among themselves. But the tribes are saved and the gods are in balance again so there is hope that everything will be alright soon.

If you love fantasy and are looking for something new to read, then I highly recommend the Rose of the Prophet trilogy. It's refreshing, funny, and romantic. And it's also a part of another genre of literature that I adore called mythopoeia, where an author creates his own mythology. These books are definitely a created mythology. There is a vast world with its own gods and social order to be found in this trilogy. It's a beautiful series and one you should definitely read.

Life: An Exploded Diagram

A few weeks ago I was at the library and I realized that one of the authors I really liked, Mal Peet, had a new book. It was called Life: An Exploded Diagram and it was set around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. At the time, I just picked the book up because it sounded good and Peet had written other books that I really enjoyed. But the book deals with a time when America and the Soviet Union were at a standstill over nuclear weapons, and currently, Russia is invading the Crimea. It's a little freaky that I would pick up a book that would have more in common with today than I had expected.

Although the book is set during the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it isn't actually about the Crisis. I had expected the book to be set in America and for the Crisis to play a major part. That's not exactly the case. The book is actually set in England, and is about two teenagers who are in love. Clem is the son of a working class man who works for Frankie's father, who is a wealthy landowner. The two meet and it's practically love at first sight. They have to hide their relationship from everyone, and the Cuban Missile Crisis adds a twist to the situation. I won't go into all the details; I don't believe in spoilers unless they are absolutely necessary and I do hope some of you will want to read the books I blog about so I don't want to give everything away. Let's just say that Clem and Frankie are your typical teenagers and want to expand their relationship. And what better time to do that than right before the world ends?

I really enjoyed the book. Peet writes in an odd manner. You expect the book to start with Clem and Frankie meeting but it doesn't. Instead, you are thoroughly introduced to Clem's grandmother, mother and father. It's actually really cool because Peet creates these complete characters with their own history and feelings. And although the climax of the story revolves around the Cuban Missile Crisis, the book takes place from World War I to 9/11. I love Peet's style of writing and his depth of detail.  I loved the way Clem thought as he was drawing Frankie, and the importance art played in his life. I also liked the role that cults played in the novel. Clem's grandmother is part of a cult that believes the world is going to end; the leader actually believes that he has predicted the date of the end of the world. This is a common occurrence in our world; the year 2012 was supposed to be the last, and there are constant predictions about when the world will end.

It was also interesting how Peet depicted President John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev. Americans view Kennedy as the hero, who prevented World War III and nuclear holocaust. But Peet touches upon Kennedy's affairs and his health issues, which I didn't even know existed. Instead of presenting Kennedy as a hero, Peet presents him as slightly comical and morally ambiguous. I found it refreshing because Kennedy was a man like anyone else and showing his faults makes him more realistic to me.

The book is a coming-of-age story. It's funny and witty, and I do recommend reading it. And to end, the following is a quote from the book that I really liked:

"The end of the world is almost as old as its beginning. In chapter one of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, God spends most of a week creating the earth and all that is in it; then a mere six pages later, He destroys it all in a flood, the only survivors being, of course, Noah and his family and their floating menagerie. So it's hardly surprising that for thousands of years people have been predicting another End. The Apocalypse. Armageddon. The Day of Judgement. Again. Nor is it unreasonable. Consider our brutal, bloody, and filthy history, our nasty habits. If there was ever a species that deserved purging from the surface of the planet, it is humanity. We are, or should be, a temporary infestation or infection, a smart virus awaiting its divine antidote."