reading – Page 4 – Life and Lims

Review and thoughts on ‘UnWholly’ and ‘Unwind’

Although I write book reviews on my review website, Rated Reads, sometimes I’d just like to take a little time to write extra about the books I’ve read and put them in context in other ways. After reading Neal Shusterman’s UnWholly, the sequel to his young adult book Unwind, I find myself having to wax eloquent and enthusiastic about this series.

In brief, Unwind introduces a future in which there has been a war between pro-choice advocates and pro-lifers. It is ended when the two sides come to an agreement in which abortions are outlawed, but teens may be “retroactively aborted” or “unwound” by essentially donating their organs and ALL of their body parts. Whoa! What a concept! I love to read books that have compelling, original premises, and it thrills me when the authors are skilled enough to be able to execute those ideas perfectly. Neal Shusterman has written quite a few other young adult books, including the popular and well-regarded Skinjacker Trilogy (which I have yet to read but have heard good things about), and he also writes screenplays. So he was the right man for this job, with experience and skill.

I was introduced to Unwind by a friend, who had our book club read it, and it was a great book to use for that purpose: it’s interesting and fairly easy to read, but it is so thought-provoking that it provides plenty of material for discussion. UnWholly continues the series very well, keeping up a fast pace filled with action, and introducing new characters and new ideas that are ripe for dissection. What’s particularly interesting to me is that Shusterman doesn’t seem to have a clear “agenda” in that he’s obviously pro-life or pro-choice; he allows readers to just think about all the issues and ramifications of the choices that have been made by those two groups and society as a whole in this imagined future.

What’s nice is that Shusterman also chooses not to fill the books with bad language, vulgarity, sexual content or gore, which plenty of writers out there would certainly be tempted to do to give it “authenticity” (I’ve already discussed my feelings about THAT). There is occasional bad language and some violence, but it’s not too detailed or gross, just enough to get the point across and move along the action and plot. Good going, Neal!

This series is great for teens and adults alike, for entertainment and for the seeds of a good discussion about a variety of moral and ethical issues. Honestly, I think this trumps The Hunger Games for a few reasons and should get more attention because of that: it’s just as action-filled, compelling, and exciting, great for guys to read as well as girls (’cause honestly, there aren’t necessarily as many popular books out there geared towards teen males as there are toward female readers), but it has more elements that give food for thought. Hunger Games makes one think about the excesses of government and the concept of reality shows gone too far, but after that, it is just a good story. But Unwind and UnWholly continue to provide topics for discussion and pondering as the stories go forward, not just giving pause for thought with their premises. I’d definitely recommend this series for anyone who loved Hunger Games.

Review and thoughts on ‘Heaven Is Here’

It’s funny; I simply don’t read a ton of “inspirational” books; I do read memoirs and biographies on occasion as part of the wide mix of things I do like to read. But I don’t read a lot that’s really intended as inspirational, except for some official religious/church books, which I consider more reading for spiritual/religious purposes. So it was a little unusual for me to decide to read popular blogger Stephanie Nielson’s Heaven Is Here. And the main reason I did read it is I wanted to include it as part of my overall research into the topic of beauty and self-image, which I blog about sometimes here; in this case, I was curious to see what she had to say about how she felt about her appearance after a horrific plane crash that burned 80% of the skin on her body.

It’s also an interesting and different experience reading a book by a Mormon written for a general audience. As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints myself, I’m very used to the Mormon culture and way of talking and thinking about things, and I’m used to listening to speakers and reading books by Mormons aimed at other Mormons. But it’s rarer to read something one of “my own” has written that will be read mostly by people who aren’t familiar with some of our terminology, beliefs, and culture.

That said, it was such a fascinating experience reading this book. It actually elicited all kinds of interesting feelings and reactions as I went along. I will admit that we Mormons tend to have some interesting cultural quirks that may seem unusual to others; we marry young, for instance, typically after very short courtships, and have more children than the average. Some of our cultural quirks are particularly pronounced in the state of Utah and a few other pockets of concentrated Mormon population (note: I’m not a “Utah Mormon”: I grew up East of the Mississippi and only lived in Utah when I went to Brigham Young University). So it wasn’t surprising to me to read that Stephanie married at 19 after less than a year of knowing Christian Nielson. Or that she started having babies right away. Or that she was just thrilled at that young age to just get started with being a stay-at-home mom. At the same time, even though it was familiar territory, it was still different from what I chose to do (marry at 23, get a college degree, have first child at 26, work part-time off and on and freelance while raising kids). And there’s still just enough of cultural expectations and a kind of cultural divide that those (what outsiders may consider slight) differences just kind of grate a little somehow sometimes.

Nielson starts with telling about her very large, happy and tight-knit family in Utah and her fairy-tale courtship with Christian. She lays the groundwork of her happy, idyllic life before she moves on to the plane crash that changed it all — well, temporarily. No matter how you look at it, not everyone (well, rarely anyone) has that kind of idyllic upbringing, love story or marriage. And that’s OK. Even in our church, unmarried young people and adults are reminded not to expect an “easy” and “obvious” courtship that leads to marriage. Sometimes it is not clear if the person you’re dating is “the right one” (itself a myth). You mostly have to make sure you date good people and then choose wisely, marrying someone who has solid good qualities and should make a good partner. The answer is rarely written in the stars or with fireworks. And most of us know that idyllic families happen far less often than we’d like. (We can’t change our own upbringings, let’s just say, but we can do the best we can to provide our own children with solid, happy homes.) So reading about Nielson’s happy-happy-happy life can honestly make one feel a little over-sugared.

But knowing going into the book what Nielson is going to experience makes that early part of the book palatable — it’s all too clear that she’s going to need every ounce of strength, idyllic family support system, and reserves of happiness and faith that she has stored up to be able to survive the ordeal that she does go through. Heaven Is Here doesn’t necessarily provide many details of the plane crash or the injuries she sustained, but it definitely shares the emotions she went through after the crash — the story is no longer idyllic. Nielson is painfully honest about her fears, her anxiety, and the many scary feelings she experienced in the months after she woke up from the 10-week medically-induced coma in which she stayed shielded from unbearable pain. She had support from family, but she often felt alone, and she wanted to shield herself from even many of her own loved ones and friends. She was scared of how people would react to her, how she looked, how she felt, how her life would never be the same. She was scared of having to face a new life, one that stood in stark contrast to her “before-crash” idyllic one. The bulk of the book, then, allows us to see inside her mind and heart, as she struggles and wants to stay in a cocoon but finally knows she must gradually burst free and move forward, as difficult as it will be.

As much as I felt some reservations and knee-jerk reactions to her pre-crash account of life, I couldn’t help but be tremendously moved and, yes, inspired, by how she lived after that crash. I loved her honesty about all of the moments she had that were not supposedly inspirational. Because that’s what lent reality and depth to all that was truly uplifting. It felt authentic. She was able to do what she’d set out to do: give hope to readers and show that life is beautiful, particularly when filled with love. And a perfect body or perfect face has little to do with that. For all that, I was grateful to have read her story.

Yep, still wary about self-published books

I hate to say this, but as much as I hate the traditional publishing “system” as a writer, I’m mostly grateful for it as a reader. This past month I spent most of my time reading books that were either self-published or had originally been self-published and now had been picked up by a publisher, or the author had started out as a self-published writer.

First, I decided to try out Amanda Hocking. She received a great deal of attention for the many sales she made in self-publishing of her Trylle Trilogy series. The millions she made got the notice of some publishers, and she got picked up by a traditional company. I ended up getting a review copy of the first book in her new Watersong series, Wake, which is her first to be published entirely traditionally. It’s in e-book format as well as hardcover. Everything about it is polished and professional, from the cover to the marketing to the actual writing. I found the story to be compelling and pretty well written. I don’t think it’s going to be my favorite of any YA series out there, but it holds its own among its competitors.

After reading that, I thought it might be time to investigate the older Trylle series, starting with Switched. Now that Hocking has been picked up, the books she’s already self-published have gotten the professional treatment, with nice cover images and some editing. Having not read them before they were edited, I can’t say how much editing they got. Did they just get some good proofreading, or did the stories themselves get some good polishing and reworking to make them better? I don’t know. I suspect they didn’t get as thorough editing as the Watersong books, however, because I did feel they could have used some more changes. I can also say that I didn’t think that the Trylle books were “all that.” Again, they hold their own OK compared to other books in the full YA romance and “paranormal” market, but they’re not standouts, in my opinion. The love story was pretty well done, but I couldn’t get on board with the “triangle;” one character just didn’t get fleshed out well enough for me to be completely behind him. And that was really important. I also just couldn’t get into the premise of the story enough for me to really like it; the idea of these “beautiful trolls” having little communities and “kingdoms” hidden among humans was fine, sure, but I just didn’t care what happened to them. Hocking kind of resolved that for me by the end of the series, but a reader shouldn’t have to wait till the middle of the third book to “get into” the premise. That was a major strike against the books, I thought.

So I am glad that Hocking got picked up by a major publisher, because she has talent enough to produce books that will sell well in the YA market, and she definitely benefits from good editing.

Next, I started a self-published book called Broken Shell Island, which a blogger had highly recommended. Looking at her list of other favorite books, I found similarities in our tastes and thought I should try out this book. I have to say that this is a fairly good story, but I just didn’t love it. It’s deliberately quirky, with a splash of Alice in Wonderland, almost, but the whole mix just didn’t do it for me. Others may like it. I think it would do better with a larger audience if it had the benefit of a good editor, as well.

Since I had blogged about clean romances, an author contacted me and asked if I’d like to read one of hers. Normally, I tell self-published authors I simply don’t have time to read their books; I have such a huge list of to-reads anyway, and limited time for reading/ reviewing, that it’s just safer for me to stick with traditionally published stories. (More on this later.) Plus, I want to make sure that Rated Reads reviews books that are getting a lot of attention, so that my site’s visitors know if the popular books they’re hearing about are clean or not. If I had a hundred reviewers contributing to RR, maybe I could alter that policy, but for now it still works. But I made an exception and read her book, Forgotten Honeymoon. It was cute enough, I suppose, but I did feel that I could have used that reading time for something I would really have loved. Again, it’s nice to know that someone’s out there writing “clean romances,” but they have to be really great and well-written in addition to simply “clean.”

Last, I read Love Unscripted, which is another book and writer who have been picked up by a traditional publisher after finding some success in the self-publishing arena. As I wrote on Goodreads, I decided to read this when I saw on one of my publishing-news updates that it had gotten picked up by a publisher. I figured that meant it should be a cut above the usual self-published stuff. For the first half or third of the book, I felt convinced that was true. It was fun to read and actually pretty well written. But as the book wore on, I had more complaints. I am hoping that since it’s now getting the treatment from a good editor, it may end up correcting some of the problems that I saw.

First, it was entirely too long; it could easily have been edited down without losing anything at all; in fact, taking out some stuff would have made me happier. It just dragged. I felt that some of the plot points were stretching my credibility and patience, and they could easily have been left out or changed significantly. Second, and related to the first point, as some other Goodreads reviewers noted, Reber does too much “telling” rather than “showing” in her writing. She hammered us over the head in telling us how the characters must be feeling. We get it. We’re smart enough to follow where you’re going. Third, a few things toward the end were so obvious that I just wanted to smack the character and the writer. I won’t “spoil” the story, but, really, this character is pretty smart. She didn’t see the really, really, REALLY obvious things that were going on around her from a mile away? Everyone else knew, and she didn’t. Urgh.

And on the topic of “clean” content or not, I was unhappy with the number of uses of the f-word. There were at least 25 to 30, which was simply far too many. The sexual details throughout the book were actually at a satisfactory level except for the first time the main characters have sex, and that scene is long and detailed. I REALLY didn’t want to know exactly what he was doing to her. Ick.

I think, though, that this author has potential and can create some characters we can root for and a love story that draws us in. This just needs a little bit of good editing. I hope that when it gets that and is published “traditionally,” this book will do well.

So, to sum up: In this month of spending my reading time with books that have been self-published somewhere along the line, I can still say with all confidence that I’d rather read something traditionally published. It’s still true that the publishing route allows books to get vetted for quality and then edited to make them even better. I just want to read books that are going to knock my socks off, and so far I haven’t read anything self-published that has done that.

And if that means that since I have yet to get picked up by a traditional publisher for the projects I’ve spent months of my life (and blood, sweat, and tears) on, I’ve not produced writing that’s good enough for others to read and love, so be it. It hurts my pride, but I’ll keep trying.

Pinferiority: dodging a complex

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about how Pinterest can be really useful, and also how it can be just another brick in the backpack full of guilt that moms carry around. I read a great column yesterday by another blogger and thought it was just along the same lines of what I’d been pondering. As Tiffany writes, “I have this real and palpable fear that on my deathbed, surrounded by my children, they will say something like this: ‘Yeah, you were a pretty good mom, but you never, you know, made us apple snacks in the shape of ladybugs.’” Isn’t THAT the truth!

Because as any Pinterest user knows, here’s the breakdown on boards: 25% of pins are recipes, 25% home decor, 15% crafts, 15% exercise and diet tips, 10% jokes and inspirational quotes, and 10% everything else. And the recipes and home decor ideas have their own breakdowns: recipes are maybe a quarter cutesy kid-oriented, as are the home decor and crafts. Recipes show these darling cupcakes and unbreakable kid plates festooned with hot dogs and spaghetti noodles or vegetables or fruits cut and meticulously fashioned into animal shapes.

And kids’ rooms? They’re filled with professionally painted wall scenes, organized and clever bunk-bed arrangements, or fairy-tale canopies and related frou-frou. Pinterest is now the haven for moms gone wild decorating and cooking fantastical items for their adored little ones, who have endless ideas for educational and fun projects they do with their preschoolers. I’m guessing they sleep three hours a night, don’t work outside of the home, and focus all their time and energies on their kids.

Sixteen years into this parenting gig, I have mostly made peace with the fact that I can only do so much for my kids and everyone else. I have to sleep; I have to write; I have to take some quiet time for myself. I definitely need to take time to be with my husband. Alone. I decided I wouldn’t put my girls into lots of lessons and keep them busy all the time; I wanted them to have plenty of free-play time to just imagine and create on their own. Since I love to read, I did take the time (and still do) to read to them. Since I like to cook and bake, and since I want all of us to be healthy and use our food budget wisely, I make almost all the meals we eat. We don’t do much take-out or restaurant eating (maybe a couple of times a month). I don’t tend to make the kids a fancy breakfast most school days, but I do make something nice on weekends and maybe throw some muffins in the oven on an evening for breakfast the next day (because I’m not baking at 6 a.m.).

What I don’t do are these time-consuming jobs: home decorating. To me, function comes before form, and almost everything (except the pictures of the family on the walls) is useful in some way. Shelves hold toys and books. I don’t decorate for every holiday; I don’t, for instance, go all-out for Easter or Halloween, including a candy-corn-shaped nightlight (for instance, which I have seen) as part of the hundreds of orange/black or faux-scary decorations in October. I don’t do a lot of crafts. I do sew maybe a couple of times a year when I get the urge or when one of the girls needs something in particular for school or something else. I typically make skirts or dresses. The sewing machine otherwise sits quietly in its closet, awaiting my next yearly burst of sewing energy. Particularly, I don’t combine the two by crafting cutesy decorations, particularly not for transient seasons. I am not going to take the time to swap out dozens of decorations every month. Nope.

And yes, I like to cook, but I am not going to spend any extra time making the food look kid-friendly. I never even called broccoli trees. The girls love it, but I didn’t have to give it a cute name so they would eat it. It keeps me busy enough making weekly dinners and then breakfasts and lunches during weekends or school breaks. I can’t imagine doing any more prep or finishing work. It exhausts me thinking about it.

I’ve been able to largely be satisfied with my strengths and be OK with not doing all the other stuff over the years. I’d visit friends occasionally and be impressed with their decorations or cute kid bedrooms, but it was easy to brush aside feeling inferior because those were brief forays outside of my own good-enough child-rearing sphere. But then Pinterest came along, and it reminds every single mom out there that pins just how much we’re not doing. Well, now I have to steel myself against feeling inferior every time I get on Pinterest to look for recipes or great ways to get out stains (or the occasional really good laugh). I think I should just put a permanent pin up on the corner of Pinterest that tells me, “Being a good mom doesn’t make crafts mandatory” or any other reminders of reality.

Yes, Pinterest has its usefulness and a place in my life. But I refuse to let it make me feel bad. It’s just another time for me to go to my happy place and chant “I am a good mom, I am a good mom” until I stop looking at boards for the day.

‘White bias’ hits ‘favorite teen books’ list

A friend drew my attention to the voting for NPR’s “best ever” teen books some months back, and I gleefully voted. Then I wrote a post about the final picks. Now a friend has alerted me to the latest “buzz” about the NPR list: it’s the “whitest ever.”

To be completely honest, I suppose my first reaction as a white person was: “So?” I think that if this list is what the most enthusiastic readers (who were aware of the NPR poll in the first place) voted for, then so be it. Can we not talk about race all the time? I am not going to say that our society has evolved to a level at which race is no longer an issue. In fact, I can say for sure that it’s not. If we were at that wonderful place where we could say race just didn’t matter anymore, we wouldn’t ever have to talk about it. It simply wouldn’t be an issue anymore. (For instance, when Barack Obama was running for president and then elected as president of the United States, everyone talked exultantly about how wonderful it was that our country was open to a black “leader of the free world.” It was talked about a LOT. Right there, I felt confident in saying, No, we’ve made strides, but we have not reached that ideal point yet because if we had, no one would have talked about his race AT ALL. It would never have been brought up. Merely stating that it was great we were electing a black president showed that it was still an issue.) So that’s my take on the race topic in general. Someday we will truly be color-blind as a society, and that will be the day when no one even thinks about someone’s color or ethnic background, let alone talks about it in the media.

Let me also clarify this point: I am white, but my husband is Asian, and my three older daughters are half-Asian. The youngest is black. And they’re just people to me. It just never occurred to me that my husband’s race could be any kind of topic. He just was and is who he IS. But from the things we talk about now and again, I do appreciate that he feels somewhat of an outsider sometimes in our culture at large, especially in certain areas of the country.

But on to the actual “best” list. The list was compiled in a non-scientific manner, and it was answered by NPR readers/listeners and those who heard about it from readers/listeners. NPR is clearly known to have a white, older audience. For its poll to skew white was a “duh” to me. If it had been otherwise, I would have been surprised.

I also observed that probably half of these books are from years back (one to two generations), and the diversity in books representing more of the American experience wasn’t there decades ago like it is now. So if we were to post a list that just contained new and current books, that wouldn’t skew quite as much to the white past.

I should also note that I am not an “expert” on YA. I just love to read anything; I remember with great fondness the books I read when I was young and still want my daughters to read because they just hold special meaning for me; call it nostalgia. And I do read a fair amount of newly-published YA, but I also read a lot of “adult” fiction and nonfiction. I don’t specialize in YA. But from what I can gather, it is still true that a lot of the most popular books even now in the YA market have white protagonists. Yes, there are lots of other books that have non-white protagonists and are well written, but they’re simply not getting the attention. Look at the best-seller list: Twilight, Hunger Games, Harry Potter. The main characters are all white, with some sprinklings of other ethnicities as secondary characters.

Which brings me back to my earlier point about our society and color-blindness. We’re not there yet. While definitely pretty well mixed in terms of diversity, our society is not thoroughly past a white-dominated era. This is reflected in media. I think as we continue to move forward, that will slowly change and diversity will be better reflected in all media, including the best-sellers in YA. It’s still good to have conversations about race and how we as people view it, but I do think that these kinds of large tectonic shifts just take time. Maybe in twenty or fifty more years this list will look much more diverse. In the meantime, this is a reflection of our society as a whole (and, again, just the white-skewed NPR; the source is not diverse, and the methods for gathering the “top” picks were hardly geared toward getting diverse answers).

What do you think?

The power of story

Over the past few years, it has really struck me just how strong the power of a story is.

But really, most of us just take for granted how surrounded we are by stories, how they can captivate us, ensnare us, direct us and shape us, without our even realizing that it’s happening.

Of course, as a dedicated reader (and editor and writer), I love to be willingly captured by a good story, whether it’s one that’s been spun completely out of someone’s imagination or one that’s based in reality and been tamed just enough to be put down in words. I’ve come to realize how difficult it is to extricate ourselves from a story once we’ve stepped inside of its boundaries. The story could be shared via any medium: books, film, television, or any other kind of art.

Have you ever noticed that even if you’re watching a movie or reading a book that’s even just mediocre, it’s challenging to walk away? (I can detach myself from a story that’s really poorly told, however.) Something in us yearns to know “the rest of the story.” It’s so against our nature to not find satisfaction in completion. We must know how the story plays out ’til its bitter end.

What’s even more entrancing is to find ourselves enmeshed in stories within stories. One recent example that had me absolutely mind-boggled was the movie “Inception.” There were so many stories layered inside of each other that I wasn’t even satisfied completely with one viewing; I had to go back and let my mind wander those strange passages several times so I could really follow the stories and how every detail fit together. I absolutely adore complexity. And surprises. (I’ve written about that already in my post on gothic tales.)

But books and movies don’t by any means hold a lock on story. Our minds always create stories for us. We lay down memories that are ordered in some kind of story format. We consciously and unconsciously create stories to make sense of information we run across. Yes, story-making is hardwired within us. Some people are just skilled at weaving the stories within them for others’ consumption, but they are not the only storytellers. I recently loaned some of my favorite books to a friend, and she very kindly extricated some wonderful quotes from the second in the set, Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Angel’s Game. One goes like this: “Everything is a tale. … What we believe, what we know, what we remember, even what we dream. Everything is a story, a narrative, a sequence of events with characters communicating an emotional content. We only accept as true what can be narrated.”

Yes, story is a powerful thing. It can be dangerous; it can be liberating; it can be instructive. It has the power to move people to action, for good or evil.

I just thank those people who have the gift to create and shape stories and share them with me. I think that’s why books are so beloved, and why even writers pay homage to other writers and to the written word itself. Books and the stories in them can transport us and change us, so much so that they come alive themselves. As Zafon also writes, “As long as there is one person left in the world who is capable of reading [books] and experiencing them, a small piece of God, or of life, will remain.” Thank goodness for that!

The magic of reading aloud to a child

I’ve been blessed with four amazing daughters, and I have to say that, despite my general unease and unpreparedness for being a mother when I first gave birth, one of the things I most looked forward to at that time was being able to read to my children. I wasn’t a big fan of newborns or even older babies; I was eager to teach and talk to little people. Over time I did get better at appreciating the fun parts of having babies around, but I still think that my favorite part of raising children is teaching them and interacting verbally. What fun!

As a reader myself, sharing books with them was a big part of that teaching and communicating. I admit, however, when I first started reading aloud to my now-16-year-old, I was not a fan of the ABC and 1-2-3 books that we had to read OVER AND OVER. And over. And over. And … well, you get it. And over. Gah! Richard Scarry, cute. But I can only count so many bunnies and watermelons up till 3 or 4 or even 10 until my head’s about to explode like a ripe melon hit by a sledgehammer. I was SO excited when she got past that stage and I could read actual stories to her. Then we went through the stage of the very short stories that we read over and over and over. Even Dr. Seuss started to get on my nerves a bit. No, Mom, no. Don’t say that!

At any rate, I toughed it out and read to my girls every night. Unfortunately, I will also admit that as the third and fourth came along, I ended up getting a little busy and just overwhelmed to read to every single one of them every single night. My youngest hasn’t had the privilege of me reading to her every night before she nods off. The best she’s had was me reading to her in the middle of the day just before naptime. Now that this littlest one is in kindergarten, I’m going to have to figure out a good time to read to her and with her regularly. ‘Cause for a while there a few years back, I really was going bed to bed and room to room at 8:00 at night and reading with one girl at a time. An hour later, I was definitely ready for bed myself. Alone time with the husband? Important, yes. Did we get much of it? Not really.

So the routine’s gotten shaken up, but I’ve still logged many very pleasurable hours reading with the girls, at various stages and differing ages. Even my oldest enjoys having me come in at night sometimes as she’s finishing up schoolwork and Facebook-chatting and all that kind of teen stuff and lie down next to her on her double bed and read aloud as she winds down and relaxes to the sound of my voice. With her, I’ve read some of A Tale of Two Cities or Huck Finn or All Quiet on the Western Front, all assignments for classes, or we’ve pulled out a few old favorites for some fun. Maybe I’ll even read to her the night before she gets married someday. It’ll be the best way to remember our time together as mother and daughter at home.

My third daughter is an absolutely voracious reader and has been wolfing down books this summer in particular. We’ve had fun with a few in particular: I read Freaky Friday, one of my favorites from when I was a pre-teen long ago, aloud to all of the girls who wanted to listen some months back, and we all laughed and chortled and chuckled together at all the funny things that happened (Boris and his beetloaf … funny stuff, man). This past month or so, this third girl and I have been reading the very charming and quotable books about the Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place by Maryrose Wood. I am of the opinion that read-alouds are most fun when they provide many opportunities for giggling and lines to quote later as a shared experience. Daddy has no idea what we’re referring to, which is different from all of our shared family movie quotes.

I read Eragon aloud with my oldest when she was probably about 10, and it took us six months to get through. But we enjoyed it. The movie version came out not long after, and she and I joined together in great distress and disgust when the movie version was absolutely horrible. What a shame!

I admit that though I do have children of varying ages, picture books up through teen and adult books, and I do a ton of reading on my own, young adult books aren’t my specialty. I have lots of blogger friends who really know a LOT about the middle-grade and young adult genre. So I think my last point here is: what do you think qualifies as great read-aloud material for middle readers, in particular? I think that something of a modest length and with some silliness is extra handy. More “serious” material is fine as well, but the silly factor makes it lots of fun. Any ideas?

Favorite teen books, part 2

So since I wrote about my take on NPR’s top-100 young adult books, I realized I had a lot more to say on the topic. First, I felt that there were a fair number of books on the list that were just so-so and wouldn’t really stand up in 20 years or more to be “classics.” So then I thought, “Hm. So what books are missing from this list that should be on it?” And I realized, looking through all of the books I’ve kept and lugged around with me through thousands of miles of moves and lots of years, that I didn’t really have a lot to add to the list, for a few reasons. First, some of the books I remember loving and reading over and over were actually more like middle-grade books, rather than for older teens. Second, I’d like to see more Madeleine L’Engle books on the NPR list, but at least her teen books were represented with A Ring of Endless Light. (The wonderful series that starts with A Wrinkle in Time, of course, is really more aimed at middle readers.) Third, I just couldn’t find any other books I’ve read and enjoyed that weren’t on the list already or were really what I’d call classics. Yes, there have been some great books written in the past 25 years or so since I wasn’t a “young adult” myself, but I think most of what I have read more recently as an adult has gotten represented. Honestly, though, I think the list would be better if it were just a “top 50.”

So I’m going to write today just a bit about some of the books that I did absolutely adore as a younger reader, books I either kept from buying them way back when or that I bought later on to have copies of in my home library. They’ll fit into a few different categories, but I’ll just kind of lop them together in this post.

Middle-grade books I adored and read and re-read: These are easy: The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis and A Wrinkle in Time and sequels by Madeleine L’Engle. I have no idea how many times I went back to savor these. I will say now as an adult that I have read some with my daughters, and I still enjoy them for various reasons but am not quite as captivated. I’m guessing that has to do a little with the age level. Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising sequence is so complex in its world and how it is written that it can be read by middle readers but still is great for older readers, and it’s held up well for me as an adult. I don’t think that this means anything negative about the middle-grade books I loved so much back then, but they were, I think, really well-aimed at those ages, rather than being for a broader age group. But others may very well disagree with me on that opinion.
On to L’Engle’s teen books: as I just mentioned, there is a definite difference in target audience between A Wrinkle in Time and the Austin family books, even though there are connections in characters who appear in the two major sets of books she’s written (about the Murrays and Austins). The characters are different ages, as are the target readers, and have different kinds of struggles and experiences because of their ages. I love how I was able to grow up with Madeleine L’Engle’s characters, moving from middle reader to teen.
On teen books that were my absolutely most-read: thank you, Beverly Cleary. She, like L’Engle, wrote books for a variety of ages of young readers, and I grew up with her characters as well. I enjoyed Ramona and then went on to gobble up her teen romance stories. I really could have added in Cleary’s teen romances to the great clean romance list I contributed to and wrote about here. I read two books countless times: Fifteen and The Luckiest Girl. They are so well-worn they’re soft to the touch. My 16-year-old, who has kind of grown out of gobbling up books the past few years, still has read and re-read Fifteen almost as many times as I read it (at least 15). Some teens today might think that the stories are dated, and while it’s true they are most definitely set in a “simpler” time, they are still swoon-worthy and absolutely delightful. They’re clean, romantic and absolutely true. I wish more books today were as good as those.

And there you have it. I may revisit the topic and talk more about middle-grade books in the future, but for now this is how I view some of my old faves.

Make it permanent, make it right!

OK, I’ve already made clear how I feel about proper grammar and punctuation. I read and write book reviews and run a book-review website, and I work as a copy editor. I suppose I became a copy editor because I have always been so precise and persnickety about the proper use of punctuation and grammar. Then editing for a living has just cemented my punctiliousness and dedication to our lovely language and how it’s expressed, especially in writing.

So it is not an exaggeration to say it PAINS ME to see our language atrociously abused and misused. What gets my goat in our wired day and age is people’s inability to get even the most basic concepts correct when they communicate electronically. OK, I admit I’m forgiving when an iPhone or similar device is being used; they are notorious at messing up a comment or word that was written correctly in the first place. And quick emails or texts are forgivable as well. What I just cannot understand is when someone takes the time to craft a fun meme or e-card or something else “permanent” that is intended to be passed around the Web for public consumption. Is it not possible to make sure that “you’re” or “your” is used properly, or that a comma is put in the right place? One of the worst mistakes I’ve seen in indelible use is the poor, innocent apostrophe. It exists to do good. But it’s employed so wickedly wrongly. Outside of the Internet, I see it most often misused in those carved wooden signs outside people’s front doors: welcome, the signs say, to “the Smith’s”. (*Silent scream*) I’ve always said if I were to commission one of those signs, I would send it back to the artist for redo were that apostrophe so nefariously inserted into that simple plural of my last name.

Glancing on Pinterest this very morning, I saw a lovely graphic that proudly proclaims “Seven days of camping recipe’s!” There’s that naughty use of the poor apostrophe right at the top of my page. Further down is an inspiring saying that throws in a hapless comma: “You are always responsible for how you act, no matter how you feel. Remember, that.” (Remember, not, to, use, commas, needlessly!!!) And one simple green e-card is generous enough to illustrate my point about spelling by containing not one but TWO mistakes: “What I love most about our friendship is that it’s based soley on innapropriate conversations that no sane person should have. Ever.” Solely. Inappropriate.

I mean, really, folks. If you’re going to craft a cute meme or card, please use spell check before you hit “save” and ask a friend about your punctuation. Simple as that. I may enjoy your meme but simply WILL NOT re-pin or share it if it has mistakes. Simple as THAT.

And here is my own little meme. Share as you will.

More of my top picks: best gothic tales

There are probably some differing opinions out there on what exactly “gothic literature” entails. For my purposes, I’m just going to say it’s fiction that has a setting that’s at least in part dark and possibly supernatural (or just hints at it or seems like it), is infused with a sense of foreboding, and has a mystery or secret that is revealed by the end. I am a big fan of the surprise twist, and I LOVE to be caught off-guard at the end, completely unable to guess the twist. If I can guess, the book just isn’t fun for me.

So I have found myself to be enamored by really well-spun gothic stories. I suppose this shouldn’t be a surprise to me now, considering how much I devoured all of Edgar Allan Poe’s tales when I was a teen. Now, though, I enjoy stories that are a bit less macabre and more about the very well-kept secret. When these secrets are deeply buried in an old noble family somewhere in England living in a crumbling-down mansion, all the better.

So, without further ado, here are a few of my favorite gothic novels.

Rebecca, by Daphne DuMaurier. I read this classic book sometime in my late teens, I think, and it got me hooked on the twist.
The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield. A friend handed this to me to read, and I feel eternally indebted to her. What an amazing story! I don’t know if Setterfield will ever write another book, but if she doesn’t, that will be fine because this is a masterpiece of gothic literature. A mysterious, reclusive writer with a strange past finally decides to tell the truth about her life, and it is full of some shocking twists. Weird old family in old house? Check. Buried secrets? Check, check, check. It just doesn’t get better than this.
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. I came across this a few years after reading The Thirteenth Tale, and I found this was probably came in right behind that in pure awe and satisfaction. Another masterpiece. Zafón has written two novels in a series after this, continuing and enlarging upon the story and the setting, and they’ve been pretty good, but honestly not the triumph that the first was. Again, the setting is the past, and the story is permeated with mystery hanging over it like a mist. The twist is great, I loved how it all came together, and the writing is superb.
The Forgotten Garden, by Kate Morton. Morton has now written a number of really fine gothic stories, all set in England in old estates, with buried family secrets. The first, The House at Riverton, was a good example, but her second really nailed it. I am glad that she’s managed to keep writing. I don’t think any of her books is quite as amazing as Diane Setterfield’s one great story, but they’re all quite good, and I am just grateful she’s providing more stories for me to relish.
The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova. Since this story is about Dracula, this could almost be considered a horror tale, but it really has more elements of what I consider gothic. That infamous vampire rarely appears in the book, and the story revolves around some historians who are trying to hunt him down in the mostly present day. The story takes readers on a wonderful and intense journey around the globe, into rooms filled with old books and documents, slowly revealing information and ending in a satisfying manner. I savored the journey and was sad when it was over. I was also sad when Kostova wrote another book and it wasn’t at all what I had hoped in tone or story (and THAT is probably why Diane Setterfield has turned Harper Lee on us).

What do you think? What other great gothic tales (my definition) am I missing?