May 17 - 23

I knew I'd kick back into high gear!
So I am home from school now and have had some time to regain my wits. I have also had time to visit the library, which I've only been able to visit once before since it was built a few years back. It was terribly exciting! And as you can see, I picked up an entire series that I've been wanting to read. Very nice welcome home!

The Selection by Kiera Cass
I PLOWED through this one! I started it at about 7pm and read until I finished it at 2am. My favorite part? The foreword, where Kiera begins by saying "Okay, in case you're in a hurry or are tired because you stayed up really late to finish this..." Oh, how accurate that was! It wasn't a terribly original plot or anything, but after what I've been reading --(refresher: critical analyses)-- this was a DELICIOUS break for my mind. It had some unexpected moments of intrigue behind the predictable girly backstabbing and drama. Basically, this is a dystopian-ish form of the show  The Bachelor.

The Elite by Kiera Cass
It was interesting to get the additional character development here, to actually have few enough girls remaining to have personalities beyond "she's nice" or "she's mean" or "she's manipulative" and whatnot. Quite frankly, I'm having some trouble remembering what was in this one because I read each book in such quick succession. I do have to say though: what's up with the king? I feel like that was a plot line barely established before it was snuffed out.

The One by Kiera Cass
Okay, well, the cover and the title pretty much assure you of what happens at the end. She tries to throw you off in the final hour, but in the final minute she brings you back around to the usual conventions. It was an interesting and bold move though, at least more so than usually seen in the genre. However, it's a good thing this was the final novel because it entered that territory of the boy and the girl just fighting over stupid things and making way to big a deal out of things that would have been barely a speck on the radar if they had just freaking talked to each other! So minus some points for being one of those miscommunication stories, because those are too common and dull. It was really weird as well though because  it felt like really interesting things could have come in the next book... If it existed. :/

Wicked by Gregory Maguire
While I am excited to get back into this gripping story, I'm also slogging through it a little bit. The point where I became too busy to read was in the middle of a very political section, complete with protests and detainment camps. It was interesting, but at times got very philosophical and kind of lost me. I haven't gotten too much further, but I am interested in seeing how he pulls everything together, especially since we know the ending is not in Elphaba's favor.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua
In the midst of all my fiction I finished up my nonfiction, a controversial piece this time. This is the author talks about how she gets her children to be excellent musicians and star students and that kind of thing, as many Asian children are according to her. I can see how the controversy comes in, as she often puts down things that seem kind of weird, like having fun and caring about your child's feelings. Those moments through me off, as did an early scene where she puts her three-year-old out into a snowstorm because she refused to do a musical drill or something like that. That's the moment that made me go, "Oh, I see now". With that said, it was still very interesting, & I think she has valid points. Either way, it's her opinion. As for the experience of it as a book, it was very well done. It was chronologically organized, and there were many funny stories. There are also many touching moments, where I found myself smiling and cheering for the girls as well as the mother. There were moments of pain and failure, but that exist in any life and so it made it feel like a more balanced and fair point of view. The sorry if it is, I enjoyed this book, and kept in mind that different people parent in different ways.

May 10 - 16

Critical Analyses
These have been my life this last week as I raced to find the perfect ideas and quotations to work into my capstone thesis work for my 400-level English class, Terrific Liars (about unreliable narrators, very interesting!). It was a 20-page beast of a paper, and I'm so proud of what I managed! However, this week was nuts and after reading hundred of pages of criticism, I wasn't exactly feeling up to reading when I got home from a flurry of goodbyes and packing and unpacking. BUSY BUSY BUSY! But I have a whole long list of books to read and a few to get back to that had to be interrupted (Hello, Wicked and A Handmaid's Tale!).

UPDATE: I actually managed to get in a little bit of reading for FUN this week!! :D

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

So I was at the used bookstore today, and I saw this sitting on a shelf. I have to admit, the cover of it is quite beautiful and eye-catching. It was only $7 and for a used copy, it was in really great condition. I've been interested in reading this one for a while now, because I've heard so much about it and the author. For any who don't know, Amy Chua has been accused of many things, and basically she totes a kind of screaming yet affectionate yet focused parental method and puts down the gentle individual-based method that she describes many Americans and Western families as having. I'm not too far and yet, but there has already been a moment that caught me off guard, and made me kind of cringe and cool towards her. She described early on a moment with her 3 year old daughter who refuses to play a simple tune on the piano. Amy decides a pro priate course of action is to put her three-year-old outside into a snowstorm until she will apologize promise to play what her mother wants. The three year old is stubborn, and refuses, staying outside and slowly freezing. It's a really uncomfortable moment for me, because I can't imagine ever being able to validate doing that to a child. Or anyone, really. So after reading that, I kind of knew what sort of person I would be reading about, and adjusted my expectations accordingly. We'll see how this goes. I am intrigued.

April 26 - May 2

Luckily...
I was able to get back on track this week, and it felt goooood. They were for school unfortunately, so they're not exactly the books I've had waiting for me on my shelf for so long, but I did choose them and they were good reads.

Love That Dog by Sharon Creech
I had to read a novel in verse for a project, and thought of this one immediately. It's a pretty popular one, and I had never read it, so I thought I would give it a try. I picked it up off the shelf at the library that evening and read it in about a half hour. I more or less knew the story, but I still enjoyed it. I think it did a pretty decent job showing the transition and reluctance people often have with poetry, and it did it in a pretty short amount of space. It seems like it would be a pretty good one to read with your kid before bed or something.

Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff
So this is the book I chose for the actual novel-in-verse project I needed to do. I found a list on goodreads and was desperately trying to find something that wasn't 1)depressed teens or 2)love-struck teens or 3)depresssed love-struck teens. Amazingly, I did find it. Even more amazing though is that one of the quotes on the back from a reviewer was actually accurate! They never seem to help much. It more or less says that the book is interesting because it focuses not on a racial culture, but on the culture of poverty, which transcends all racial boundaries. It was an intriguing book for sure. A young girl being raised by her mother is working hard hard hard to be able to have enough money to go to college. She picks up a babysitting job for a seventeen-year-old girl named Jolly who has two young kids, about 5 and 2 years old. The narrator helps out at the home, experiences some really terrible things with this young mother, as well as some really amazing things, she tries to help, fails, succeeds... it's actually a quite well-written and moving story that feels very realistic and honest. The ending is not exactly happy, but again it's honest and realistic. It feels good. It's an optimistic, hopeful ending that made me feel ready to start my day full of an incredible load of work.

April 19 - 25

OH MY GOD this is my life.
Ah jeez, I'm doing this one late again. I have a great reason though, I promise! I helped out with a spring fling event that went until 2 am on Saturday and then had to get up for 7am on Saturday to help set up for Battle of the Bands, a.k.a. yet another spring fling event. That went until about 1am Sunday. Sunday was sleep and a boatload of homework, Monday was a continuation of the boatload, Tuesday was a day of classes, and today has been meetings, work, symposium, and more meetings, and more work, BUT HERE IT IS!

Unfortunately...
for the first time in the course of this blog, I don't think I actually read a single word of a book this whole week. That's so horribly sad for me. Dx Actually, you know what? I did finish up the end of

We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
So I did read something, though it was only about 30 pages. If it helps, I did write several pages though. This book... it was weird. The narrator is permanently in we, but the final line pulls the reader in by addressing "you" and it's very confusing when suddenly someone expects that you totally understand everything that was going on because you were a part of it all when the whole time you were hearing it as a separate narrated story. How confusing! It was an odd book, and even after this time I've had to give it some thought, I'm still just a little... baffled. It felt like the book version of the t.v. show The Office right to the end. It took a bit of a dark turn, but even that... I don't know. Ugh, this one is such a mess.

April 12 - 18

Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris
This book is kind of like the t.v. show The Office. It's just a story about a bunch of people who work at a job that they sometimes hate with people who they sometimes hate. It took me a while to get into it at all---just like it did with The Office. The interesting part of this book is that it's written in... uhm, plural person? I don't even know what to call it because I've never encountered it before. It's written entirely as "we." "We always knew..." "Those of us who wanted bagels would have to wait to hear Benny's story." It's very strange. The story is very heavily focused on dialogue, and is written in such a way as to encourage that group mentality to the point where sometimes you might need to backtrack to figure out who is saying what and at what point chronologically it occurs. The plot is also constructed in a really strange way, because it's a story that's almost entirely stories related by other people being yet again related. There are times where it will be Benny telling Marcia a story, and it will turn to the scene played out between Benny and Chris and suddenly Marcia will say something, apparently having entered the scene between the two men, and it will then simply resume. It's very realistic, but I can see it being confusing at times. I'm still a little baffled by this book. It's like I'm reading a diary that a whole group of people wrote together, or took turns writing in but did so in third person so no one knew who said what. The characters are developed in a roundabout way since everything is largely he-said-she-said. I didn't know it was even possible to write a book this way.

April 5 - 11

Oh dear...
I haven't done very well with the past month. I'm sure I could blame it on a whole range of things (school projects, Praxis test, being sick...), but this is basically only for me, and I'd be lying to myself, and that's pretty silly. So while I had a bit of a lapse, I feel that it was kind of inevitable, and this wasn't really so bad. I was consistent for about 6 or 7 months, which is pretty good! I *did* have drafts of my last posts, even if they were fairly scant. Anyway, here are my recent reads!!

Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite by Suki Kim
I had put a hold on this book at the end of a long waiting list a while back when I stumbled upon it and it came available recently, so I really had to jump on it even though I was pretty busy. I'm so glad I did! I'm not sure where my recent fascination with the Koreas came from, but this book fed into it pretty well.

Suki Kim managed to score a job at a school run and funded by Christian missionaries in North Korea, despite not being exactly religious herself... and despite being a journalist, and using the time to gather information and experiences for this very book. Reading about the struggles there... well, I don't really know what to say about it. It was certainly an enlightening book, and was even more engaging for me because of the unique perspective of a teacher with her students. What a difficult situation, to be a foreigner teaching students who have been taught their whole lives to fear and hate the two very nationalities that you are! It was touching, and chilling, and funny. It was truly heartbreaking. Really, just read it for yourself, and you will be able to see all that I mean. It was dangerous every day and probably one of the most taxing experiences someone could have, but I appreciate Suki's efforts for what she was able to share with us.

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!