Outside Reading

Yay, it's finally spring around here! And one of my favorite things to do when the weather is nice is slow down a bit, mix up a cool drink, and sit outside with a book. So with that in mind, I thought I'd offer a few suggestions straight from my patio...

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, by Rhoda Janzen

This is a fun, breezy memoir with some surprisingly poignant topics - religion, family, heartbreak and redemption. Rhoda tells the story of her failed marriage (her abusive husband runs off with a man he meets on gay.com) and her return to her Mennonite family home for recovery. Tales of her childhood in the fold of her religious community are told with love and brash humor. The chapters are related but not sequential, so it's a great book to pick up and put down as the wind blows...

Behind the Beautiful Forevers, by Katherine Boo

We can all admit that it is sometimes difficult to find the will to read non-fiction about the hard, troubling injustices of the world. Books like this might not seem like patio-friendly reading, but this one is different. Boo treats the subject of life in a Mumbai, India slum with the care and character development of a fictional telling. Facts, theories and statistics about the slum are included in the book, but the real heart and focus is the characters - families living in the slum (the only home they've ever known), children working to survive on their own (mostly by collecting trash or recyclables from the nearby dump), all constantly striving to better their lives in sharp contrast to the luxury hotels they watch grow and multiply nearby. The key element to this book is its ability to make you identify with the slum-dwellers, to see them as people entirely similar to yourself, and not just as statistics.

The Passage, by Justin Cronin

Need a little thrill in your spring? This page turner will keep you reading long after the moths and fireflies join you outside. Although technically a "vampire" novel, this book is more apocalyptic than your average paranormal romance. Telling the story, from various points and points of view, of a virus that consumes the United States, Cronin creates a highly-believable history of a world collapsing. Part 1 follows the downward spiral of a nation in crisis. Part II revisits the country, years later, when only pockets of human life survive. It's engrossing, I tell you. The sequel, The Twelve, is slightly less successful, but you'll want to keep reading to find out how this world progresses. Read now and you'll be ahead of the movie, which is reportedly in the works.

Oh, and for what I'm reading the rest of the spring and summer?

Right now, I'm a few pages into The Night Circus - and very intrigues.
And I hope to get to:
Bastard Out of Carolina, by Dorothy Allison
The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things, by Paula Byrne
These is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, by Nancy Turner

I hope you enjoy one or all of these books! What are you reading now that it's spring?

The Joy of a Library Card

Oh, man, I'm really blowing my street cred here. This weekend, I did something I've been looking forward to  since I moved up here a month-and-a-half ago. Something that made me actually EAGER to go to the BMV and get my new driver's license. Yes, friends - I got my new library card.

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 Say what you will about e-readers and the glories of Barnes and Noble but I will always have the fondest of feelings for libraries. Where else can you stack your arms full of interesting books and not fret over the price or whether you'll actually read and enjoy them (I'm notoriously picky about books - if the first page doesn't catch me, we're done)? Or grab all the latest gossip mags and read them, uninterrupted by pesky sales clerks or shoppers, to you heart's content? And don't get me started on the other media. My whole college-radio-dj career rested on the Indianapolis library's unending catalog of mainstream and obscure musical acts. And countless car trips have been made bearable thanks to library-owned books on tape.

 If you need further convincing, understand this: Libraries are like the cheaper, greener version of Amazon. What could be better than that?

So, along with recording this joyous event I'd like to suggest an author to grace your library account: Alexandra Fuller.

Ms. Fuller is an author I first read in college, I think, and have followed ever since. Her writing - memories of her life in Africa - is incredibly engrossing and evocative. The Africa of her books is endlessly complex- both racially (she's a white African and very clearly addresses the racial issues that status implies) and culturally. The environment is at once deadly and hauntingly beautiful. The scrapings of survival are both inherently noble and inherently futile. It makes me want to overcome all fears and travel to this amazingly diverse and challenging part of the world.

Her newest books is "Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness" -a portrait of her mother, a Welsh settler in southern Africa. I just started last night - want to jump on the train and read along?

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Support your libraries, folks! And if you've got a great book going, share with the class in the comments!

xo,

E.

Don't Judge a Book By Its....Movie

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Are you as excited about The Hunger Games movie as I am? I'm pretty stoked. And not in a Twilight I'm-excited-but-won't-admit-to-anyone-because-it's-so-lame way. I'm standing up on the (online) roof shouting about it.

Everyone I know who has read the book is super excited too see it on the big screen, partially, I think, just to see how they can possibly make the raw violence of the book into a PG-13 movie. I mean, we're talking about a book that has little children gruesomely hunting and murdering other little children....on TV. (For those of you who haven't read the trilogy, if that description hasn't scared you away, read them. READ THEM NOW.)

I have a friend who won't read anything on the bestseller list, on point of principle. I'm the opposite - I enjoy reading books that "everyone" is reading because it's one of the few opportunities to engage in those high school English class discussions: "What do you think about the ending" "What's this character's motivation,""Are you Team Gale or Team Peeta" ... well, ok maybe not that last one. Reading the book also gives you free leave to dissect the movie, line by line and shot by shot, until you inevitably conclude that the books is "like, way better."

While, in general, I agree that you shouldn't judge a book by its movie (I saw that on Pinterest) there are some great movies that do real justice to their books:

via Pinterest

 I'm a big Tolkien fan, but I have to say that in some ways, the LOTR movies improve upon the books. It's comparing apples and oranges, really - the books are an amazing work of world-building and imagination while the movie improves upon that framework in story telling and characterization. I love them both.

via Pinterest

 The Help was one of my favorite book/movie combos of the last few years. The movie definitely stayed true to the nature of the book, but added a really important element by elevating Aibileen to the role of narrator. In that way, I think the movie and book complement each other - one showing the young white writer's perspective, and one the black maid's.

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I had an English teacher in high school who always let us watch the movie versions of the books we were reading. Oftentimes, it was a good way to get past the tricky language or plots of a book and really get into the story. Much Ado About Nothing is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays - and it's been adapted into a wonderful movie, with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson (Keanu Reeves makes an appearance, as well.. in a Shakespeare.. I know.) 

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The Host is Stephanie Meyer's lesser-known, infinitely more interesting and better written adult sci-fi novel. Yes it's about aliens inhabiting human bodies, but the real theme, as usual, is love. I'm excited to see that Saorise Ronan, the badass girl from Hana, is taking the helm. Too bad we have to wait until 2013...

So those are some good one. But then there are those movies that so heinously deface their literary inspirations  that you just want to scream. Take for example, these ...

don't look it up, it sucks

This movie made me want to barf. I loved this book so so much as a kid, and after her breakout in Princess Diaries, I really thought Ann H could handle representing  such a great main character -- but, no. It's a total train wreck of cosmic proportions.

 

Ok, this is starting to reveal a trend in my literary tastes - I don't just read teen and pre-teen fantasy novels, ok? When I watched this with my bestie, she literally could not sit still she was so busy angry-whispering all the things the movie was getting wrong. Too bad - these books could have been made into really good movies .. but at least that'll keep too-young-to-have-chest-hair author Christopher Paolini in the millionaire range instead of the billionaire range - it's less depressing for me that way.

I know there's more I hated ... can you remember any?

PS See you at the Hunger Games, y'all. I know you're coming. But don't eat your popcorn too loud - I mean it!

Book Report: Life of Pi

Image. from here.

Call me crazy, but I kind of miss the old school book report. After turning the last page and closing the back cover of a great book, don't you sometimes feel sad that that's it? Reading alone has it's benefits; no one can tell you what to believe about the book or what it "means." But then I read something like this book, full of meaning and allegory and a very confusing ending, and I miss having a room full of people to challenge me, make me angry and help me find those moments of excitement where I realize a whole other layer of meaning to what I was reading. That is the value of reading in a class, or a book group, or whatever.

The book that's making me think this way is Yann Martel's Life of Pi. I know I'm late in the game getting to this book, but normally I sidestep the literary juggernaut that is the Oprah Winfrey book club. But damnit if she wasn't right about this one.

Image from here.

 Life of Pi is the perfect novel to read as you're stuck in the midst of a cold and dreary Midwestern winter, needing something to remind you that life is not all grey, cold and dismal. The book will transport you to the heady, warm culture of Southern India where Pi, the 15-year old protagonist, is raised among animals at his family's zoo. When he is shipwrecked in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, you can't help but appreciate the warm, dry roof over your head and the food (leftover cranberry relish, anyone?) in your belly. You will also appreciate the tame kitty curled up beside you, as you read about Pi's lifeboat companion, a full grown Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

Image from here.

Pi is perhaps one of my all-time favorite narrators. Coming from a family of zoo-keepers, Pi has an intrinsic and experiential understanding of animal behavior that is fascinating and vast. He loves animals unconditionally; he appreciates their natural qualities--appealing or not -- and doesn't patronize them by attempting to humanize them. Richard Parker, the tiger, is the leader of a veritable parade of animal characters -- a hyena, a zebra, rhinos, orangutans, and my favorite, the meercats -- and his presence in the story is at times menacing, comedic and heart-wrenching. 

Pi is also an amazing believer, devoutly ascribing to Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, all at the same time. He practices an ideal form of faith -- loving God unconditionally, and accepting the religious traditions around him simply as a way to access and express that love -- not as restrictions to it. The author claims Pi's is a story to make you believe in God, and while that may or may not be true for you, the tale is indeed an uplifting one. A story of one boy surviving--and finding beauty--in the most harrowing of circumstances...sounds like the ideal way to escape the winter blues, right?

Also, let's make a date to see the movie version in 2012.