March 29 - April 4

Shakespeare saved my life: ten years in solitary with the Bard by Dr. Laura Bates

I saw this book offered as an eBook through sobering called the global book club. I had no idea what that was, but it sounded like an interesting book anyway! A college professor works with prisoners to study Shakespeare, including most notably one man who had life without the possibility of speak for parole. Larry Newton had been in prisons since he was ten and went to juvi several times. Escape attempts, stabbing officers... It got pretty bad. So he had to go to solitary confinement... For a decade or more.

The story focuses mainly on them working together to create a workbook for other insured who would benefit. They make some pretty amazing insights into Shakespeare's work, and in that way I was even able to learn about some of his works that I wasn't familiar with (such as many of the historical plays that tend to get passed over in traditional education... and in my interests). It was pretty solid. Interesting to see how prisoners view Macbeth and his hallucinations after looking Duncan, his holding onto the daggers... seeing those scenes from the mind of people who have murdered was incredibly revealing. I can't believe no one had acted on that idea before. What a great payout!

Wicked by Gregory Maguire
This book has been sitting on my shelf for SO long, and during this break I finally had some time and got randomly intrigued by it once again. I picked it up and didn't stop reading until I had to stop for family events and returning to school! This is such an interesting take on a pretty well-known tale. I love the imaginative back story for Elphaba, Galinda-turned-Glinda, and Nessarose. I find myself totally drawn in to their world, with the Animals and their compelling push for equal rights! Go Doctor Dillamond! I'm constantly wondering how and IF it will line up with the version of the story I know. When will those worlds collide? When will this rebellious and strong girl colored green turn into the Wicked Witch of the West? Do I really trust Glinda all that much? And really, what the heck happened at the Philosophy Club?! That was such an unexpected scene! So not what I would associate with little Munchinklanders and Animals that are aware! How bizzarre!

The progression in this book is done extremely well. We go back to Elphaba's mother and learn about them, as well as Elphaba as a very colorful (ha!) infant. We meet Glinda, a rich girl, heading off to a ritzy boarding school in the big city. There are adulterers and places of sexual deviancy and thinly veiled insults and blatant insults and sorcery and brain washing and corruption and exploitation and poverty and starvation and bloodthirst and secret rebel societies, and, and, and...! There is SO much going on here, and I love it!! I cannot wait to finish it up, although unfortunately it's going to be a bit on hold for now because I have so many Big Things coming up!

March 22 - 28

Champion by Marie Lu
The series was interesting enough to get me through to the end, but I was kind of disappointed by the turns it took into slightly cliched territory. The big final twist was definitely a cliche... but not from the expected set of Y.A cliches. Seems like Lu looked for a surprise ending from a different genre. Interesting though, definitely unexpected. I feel like this book was less strong than the others though, like maybe the author was starting to get tired of the world and just wanted to wrap everything up.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
WOW, did not expect so much from this book! The big twist was a complete surprise to me, which gave the rest of my experience reading a really eerie quality since the narrator did exactly what was intended.

I don't even know how to write about it if someone hasn't read it....

The longer it's been since I've read this book the more I can appreciate it. It was surprisingly well written (surprising only because it was recently a successful movie... I'm a bit biased), and it affected me quite strongly at points, to the level where I would sometimes need to stop reading for a little while, even though I was so invested in finding out what was going to happen. This modern day murder mystery pulled me in like murder mysteries rarely do.

March 15 - 21

Prodigy by Marie Lu
Wow! Okay, this one got impressively political in a way that added a lot to the world, AND didn't bore me to tears. That's quite an achievement. If Lu had been an author in Antarctica in her own novel, she would have gained MAJOR points and probably and actual achievement from managing that. The characters' travel to outside of their own boundaries was incredibly interesting. The political landscape on a global scale was creatively imagined in ways most people ignore. It can be hard to imagine Africa as a technological mecca, and most people don't even think twice about Antarctica. That whole aspect really caught my attention.

(Note... I'm actually thinking this might have been in the next book in the series... but it was still awesome.)

March 8 - 14

Legend by Marie Lu
Yep! Finished this one. It was a pretty solidly entertaining read, even if I was able to guess most of the "big plot twists" way ahead of them ever being revealed. Still worth the read. I don't really feel like I have much to say about this one---it's a pretty standard YA dystopian novel.

Rich privileged girl, poor slum boy. One pitted against the other with an unexpected similarity. Both have lost their families and friends, and both have their beliefs shaken about things they thought they knew to be true.

Prodigy by Marie Lu
Started in on the second one, and already I have my suspicions. I'm not too far in yet, but I think I have some ideas about where this is all heading... we'll see....

March 1 - 7

Hello March! It's starting to feel like spring, even with the several feet of snow and temperatures in the teens.

Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
My goodness this kid swears a lot! It's very distracting and bothersome. If I wanted to listen to a fourteen-year-old, I'd go help out at the high school. I can say that Salinger did at least capture the voice well, but JEEZ, on a personal level it was hard to deal with and I nearly put it down every time I started again. I think it was a large part of why that relatively short book took me so long to get through.

Kind of dull. Someone in class this week used it as an example of "a book with no plot." I used Country of the Pointed Firs as my example, if you recall that one (it's in here somewhere...). I guess I agree with that argument. I think the most interesting thing about the book was the way it was a tragi-comedy. Holden puts on a face, and that is supposed to be funny (and at times it certainly is), but he is one sad boy. The world has got him down and he just hates everything except his little sister and his dead brother. The only thing he ever seems to not hate is children, which is a sign of how he views them as uncorrupted at their young ages, unlike everyone and everything else in the world (in his mind). That could be an interesting consideration of the novel, but as a simple story, it was pretty lacking. I think any depth from this book comes in discussion.

What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal] by Zoe Heller
A floaty new teacher named Sheba stumbles into a young male student's arms. Their ages and positions as teacher and pupil are obvious problems, forcing them to keep everything under wraps. The fact that Sheba has a husband and children certainly don't make things any easier. We already know that she has been exposed, and is evidently being taken care of by a friend in her time of need. How did this all happen? That's what this kind friend of Sheba is here to tell us about.

I was surprised by how much I liked this book! Maybe I'm just a sucker for teacher drama since it plays to my interests, but the characters were unexpected and their interactions even more so. The narrator felt like she was losing it a bit at the end there, and it had a distinctly creepy feeling to it that I couldn't quite place that I can't wait to discuss with everyone. The usual role reversal was refreshing, and some of the points made in the story via other characters' comments and judgments made me chuckle. It feels like a novel packed with moments that could be used for anyone's political agenda. Feminism and double standards? Definitely. To Catch a Predator-esque commentary about our children's safety? You betcha. Help services about abusive relationships? In a number of surprising ways, without a doubt.


Legend by Marie Lu
This is the same lady who recently published The Young Elites which I read a few weeks back. I didn't realize that when I bought it on sale on Google Play the other night, but I guess I've found a new author I like. This is a distinctly young adult dystopian novel, as I've been diving into quite voraciously lately (when I have time, that is). I'm very barely into this one, only a few chapters (maybe thirty pages) but I'm already quite drawn in! Stay tuned!

February 22 - 28

What a conveniently square month February is: exactly four weeks with a nice start on Sunday.

Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
I admit, I didn't do a lot of reading this week. Only about 50 pages of this one book. I'm not sure why. Perhaps the marathon of reading for classes has worn me out a bit at this point in the year. This book is also not terribly interesting... but I'll get through it.

February 15 - 21

Break this week! And a book I've had on hold for a while had the extreme good fortune to become available this week, while I actually had time to read it!

The Young Elites by Marie Lu
This is the book I had been waiting for. It was a nice splash of YA in the midst of my 400-level English kind of readings. I powered through it in a night, and was surprised by it. It has the pretty standard lines of YA through it, but there were some aspects that had me go, "Oh! That's new!" The protagonist was abused horribly as a young girl, which isn't terribly surprising. However, she's also pretty much established as a horrifying murderer, and her magic is powered by hate and fear, both her own and others'. THAT'S pretty... grisly, I suppose, for a nice little young-adult novel. But definitely the most surprising part---

 **HUGE SPOILERS** 

was that the prince, the man they were all fighting to put back in power, the love interest even, DIES. And not in any way that lets you imagine, "Oh, maybe he's not really dead and he's just pretending for the sake of the duel!" No. This guy is gutted with a sword straight through his body, guts hanging out and everything. And not only that, but it's the main girl's fault. She attacked him in a blind terror and then his opponent totally gutted him. So... she's not doing so hot in this novel. There was an epilogue in another country though, that suggested we might see him reanimated like a zombie, albeit with some unknown yet creepy complications...I think we'll see....


Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Well, this one was for school. I thought I would really hate it, and I kind of did for a while. As I pushed through, I developed a better understanding of it though. This book is an interesting hybrid told in an unusual way. The narrator is the friend of a poet who was murdered. The friend takes it upon himself to provide explanatory notes to his friend's poem so that he can publish it posthumously. However, the narrator just turns everything into a story about his homeland and his king there, like some kind of absurdly patriotic guy who's so upset that his friend didn't write the poem about the stories the narrator told him about his homeland that he's using the poem and established author's fame to hijack it and tell his own story.

That's all true. However, it makes a little more sense when you learn through the process of the egotistical narrator's notes that

**HUGE SPOILERS**

(well, maybe not... but still.)

he's actually the king he knows so much about. It becomes obvious pretty early on, but he never actually gets to the point of expressly admitting it until the last twenty pages or so, when he finally shifts from "The king thought this" to "I couldn't believe how..." (shifts from a clearly false third-person to a more honest first-person). The ending was... odd. The parallel stories were interestingly woven though, and by the end I had a more invested interest and respect for the narrator, the story, and the actual author, Nabokov, for weaving such contrasting threads into a complementary tapestry.


The Gate Thief by Orson Scott Card
I didn't actually get much farther in this, but I did listen to some of it so I wanted to include it in here. Clearly, as you can tell from the VOLUMES I had to say about the other two books this week, I had a lot of other things on my mind. :)