I'm just going to plagiarize off the Megan of four days ago, because I wrote this on Facebook for something and now I am going to paste it here. (I cheat, and I eat pumpkins). :)
I'd tell you what you want to hear and say "Oh my god, it's just like Sophie's choice! It's just like Joey Tribbiani choosing between food and sex!" But it's not. As an endearing/obnoxious fan of the series, I've given this a great deal of thought. While Goblet of Fire has got all the buildup, mystery, and suspense you'll ever want from a novel, Order of the Phoenix is the emotional peak of the chain, and Half-Blood Prince is nothing short of brilliant in terms of plot devices, the biggest slice of my love is reserved for the one-and-only Deathly Hallows. It's essentially the Mecca of the series - the one we waited for for ten years of our lives. I spent so much time speculating, along with the rest of the world, what was going to happen in this book. It was like the best game ever. Is Snape on the side of good or evil? Will Voldemort die? Will Harry die? Should Harry die? Blaaaargh! And nobody ever had the answers until July 21, 2007. Nobody could win these arguments - all they could do was ferociously tear through the books, searching for clues to back up their cause (much the same way people do with the Bible. Except, you know, this is less important). You better believe my kids aren't going to be allowed to date or drive or have fun until they read the entire series, but even they won't get to experience that thrill of not knowing what was going to happen to the pretend people you loved throughout your entire childhood. And the book did not disappoint. It had everything I hoped it would and more. Everything converged in a spectacular array of twists and emotional ups and downs and...I can't even. It was just perfect.
[I suppose this next part contains some vague spoilers. Just in case you haven't read it and nobody has ruined it for you in the past 3 and a half years. :)]
And to the person who's sitting there thinking, "Okay, but what about the epilogue? The epilogue sucked." I agree that Albus Severus is an awful thing to name a child, but you've got to admit that the characters were all consistent, the scene was realistic, and the biggest argument people have against it is that it was "too happy." Personally, I don't think it needed to have a dark ending. I think the literary world is too pessimistic, and that the idea of good triumphing over evil in the end shouldn't be such a cliche, but something appreciated as realistic. There is good in the world, you know. I think this book did an excellent job conveying that. Through all the chapters. Even the epilogue.
BUT LOOK! NOW I'M DONE! I have officially used up my quota of Harry Potter talk - it's over for my 30 Days of Books-a-thon. Aren't you glad I got it out of the way early?
....Aren't you? :)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Google Books
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
Day 3: Your Favorite Series
I reckon you'd have to be barking mad not to know immediately what goes in this category.
If you answered "yes," you're going to LOVE the Harry Potter series, brought to you by a Scottish lady and some publishers! Never before seen before 1999, this series is taking the world by storm - it's like MAGIC! You, too, can have all seven books memorized at little to no cost - just pay shipping and processing, and donate your soul to the pursuit of proving that magic does, in fact, exist. Act now and get this FREE glow-in-the-dark wand, courtesy of Home Depot:
Plus, order in the next fifteen minutes and receive this AUTHENTIC Hogwarts acceptance letter, signed by ALBUS DUMBLEDORE HIMSELF!
You'll never see an offer like this EVER AGAIN, so call NOW! Don't miss your one and only chance to join the ranks of the extreme nerds, who make silly Harry Potter blog posts in their spare time. :)
You'll never see an offer like this EVER AGAIN, so call NOW! Don't miss your one and only chance to join the ranks of the extreme nerds, who make silly Harry Potter blog posts in their spare time. :)
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Day 2: A book that you've read more than three times.
Here's where I talk about what's probably my favorite book next to the Harry Potters (which I sort of lump together into the number-one spot) - The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffeneger. I know a lot of people who didn't care for this book because:
a.) It's really confusing for the first 3-4 chapters until you hit a rhythm with it. The author tries to make it less confusing by telling you the date and the ages of the characters at the beginning of each section, but it's still a brain-bender until you get a decent way in.
b.) There are a few cases where the sex gets a bit descriptive. (Hey, it's a romance).
c.) It's a romance.
Now here's where I counter-argue those points and convince you that this book is one of the best things ever (because it is).
a.) True, there may have been a way for the author to clarify what Henry's time-travel actually means. Sort of map it out, in a sense, earlier on in the book. But I think she wants you to have to figure it out, and I think that's important. The characters don't really get it, either, until a few chapters into the story; therefore, neither does the reader. She's very careful about only revealing things to us that both Clare and Henry understand - actually, there are times when Henry understands something that Clare doesn't, and the readers are left in the dark until Clare catches on as well (and vice-versa). Because the two of them share the story's narrative, it really helps to drive home the idea that both of them - and, in a sense, their relationship - are the main character. Not one or the other.
b.) If you don't feel the emotions that the characters feel, you can't care about what happens to them. I think it makes their relationship more human, because the settings and situations are so surreal. Also, it's a romance. Not a trashy one, but still a romance.
c.) This is one of the few books that's ever made me sob uncontrollably. Like, cry-like-your-boyfriend-just-broke-up-with-you cry. And I'm always amazed when that happens. In the midst of my crying, I sort of start to chuckle at myself. Here's me, sitting at the end of my bed, splashing salt water all over a book and making the pages wrinkle, for people and situations that only feel like they existed but never truly did. It takes honest-to-goodness talent to be able to do that to someone. I don't exactly know what is it that makes people able to get so emotionally invested in this book - I think it might be how she gives you enough time to really know the characters inside and out, but there has to be more to it than that. Regardless, this book has everything you could want in a story. It has fear, suspense, love, trauma, family - though it's classified as a romance, it's a lot more than that. And if you're reading this, and you're one of the people who stopped reading the book after chapter 3 because it confused you, pick it up again. I promsie you it's worth it. (And don't watch the movie first. It's not a horrible adaptation, but as usual, it just doesn't do the text justice).
This book is awesome. Case closed. I'm right. :)
The Time-Traveler's Wife - Google Books
a.) It's really confusing for the first 3-4 chapters until you hit a rhythm with it. The author tries to make it less confusing by telling you the date and the ages of the characters at the beginning of each section, but it's still a brain-bender until you get a decent way in.
b.) There are a few cases where the sex gets a bit descriptive. (Hey, it's a romance).
c.) It's a romance.
Now here's where I counter-argue those points and convince you that this book is one of the best things ever (because it is).
a.) True, there may have been a way for the author to clarify what Henry's time-travel actually means. Sort of map it out, in a sense, earlier on in the book. But I think she wants you to have to figure it out, and I think that's important. The characters don't really get it, either, until a few chapters into the story; therefore, neither does the reader. She's very careful about only revealing things to us that both Clare and Henry understand - actually, there are times when Henry understands something that Clare doesn't, and the readers are left in the dark until Clare catches on as well (and vice-versa). Because the two of them share the story's narrative, it really helps to drive home the idea that both of them - and, in a sense, their relationship - are the main character. Not one or the other.
b.) If you don't feel the emotions that the characters feel, you can't care about what happens to them. I think it makes their relationship more human, because the settings and situations are so surreal. Also, it's a romance. Not a trashy one, but still a romance.
c.) This is one of the few books that's ever made me sob uncontrollably. Like, cry-like-your-boyfriend-just-broke-up-with-you cry. And I'm always amazed when that happens. In the midst of my crying, I sort of start to chuckle at myself. Here's me, sitting at the end of my bed, splashing salt water all over a book and making the pages wrinkle, for people and situations that only feel like they existed but never truly did. It takes honest-to-goodness talent to be able to do that to someone. I don't exactly know what is it that makes people able to get so emotionally invested in this book - I think it might be how she gives you enough time to really know the characters inside and out, but there has to be more to it than that. Regardless, this book has everything you could want in a story. It has fear, suspense, love, trauma, family - though it's classified as a romance, it's a lot more than that. And if you're reading this, and you're one of the people who stopped reading the book after chapter 3 because it confused you, pick it up again. I promsie you it's worth it. (And don't watch the movie first. It's not a horrible adaptation, but as usual, it just doesn't do the text justice).
This book is awesome. Case closed. I'm right. :)
The Time-Traveler's Wife - Google Books
Saturday, January 1, 2011
30 Days of Spasmodic Imagery
Welcome to the new year! Same place, same oddball, different slice of history.
Because I usually have trouble motivating myself to get through the first three-ish months of the calendar year (Pittsburgh is just so dark and gray around this time. It's depressing), I was poking around the lovely world-wide web for something to occupy my time with (aside from school and work and such). I found this little situation on Tumblr that people call "30 Days of Books." (I also found 30 Days of Harry Potter, which I could probably run all the way to Russia with, but I figure that caters to a significantly slimmer audience). :) So for the next thirty days, you'll be getting daily updates from me about bookishness. Because that's the kind of person you're dealing with here. My apologies.
Disclaimer: I feel like you might expect a Fiction Writing Major to have really literary and intelligent interests and things to say about her reading material. And while I've definitely been exposed to some really excellent literary bits this past semester, a lot of my favorites are still along the lines of popular fiction. So. You know. You'll live, I'm sure.
Day 01: Best Book You Read Last Year
Immediately I'm reminded of the fact that I don't read enough, I don't read NEW things enough, and I don't keep a good enough record of what I've read. When I get time to read, I usually turn to Harry. Remind me to expand my horizons this year.
Okay. So I didn't read Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. SORRY.
Actually, just over Winter Break, I read a book called Room by Emma Donoghue that I sort of wish I had written first. It was one of those things that makes me sort of euphoric to be reading such an awesome story, but also pissed because it's just the sort of formula I've been searching for in my own stuff and someone else got it perfectly, absolutely right. (Not to say I could write something at this time in my life that would hit the NYTimes Bestseller List). But it's got the characters - they're flawed, of course, and their situation isn't exactly idyllic, but they're so real I still kind of want to be them. Or at least know them. It's got the emotion - it blurs the lines between happiness and fear, something we almost always see in black-and-white. It's got psychology and politics and family. Oh, and the whole thing is narrated through the eyes of a child (difficult to pull of in and of itself) who is held captive with his mother in an 11x11-foot room.
The woman's got skills.
It's not exactly a straightforward, effortless read. But such is life.
Room - Google Books
Because I usually have trouble motivating myself to get through the first three-ish months of the calendar year (Pittsburgh is just so dark and gray around this time. It's depressing), I was poking around the lovely world-wide web for something to occupy my time with (aside from school and work and such). I found this little situation on Tumblr that people call "30 Days of Books." (I also found 30 Days of Harry Potter, which I could probably run all the way to Russia with, but I figure that caters to a significantly slimmer audience). :) So for the next thirty days, you'll be getting daily updates from me about bookishness. Because that's the kind of person you're dealing with here. My apologies.
Disclaimer: I feel like you might expect a Fiction Writing Major to have really literary and intelligent interests and things to say about her reading material. And while I've definitely been exposed to some really excellent literary bits this past semester, a lot of my favorites are still along the lines of popular fiction. So. You know. You'll live, I'm sure.
Day 01: Best Book You Read Last Year
Immediately I'm reminded of the fact that I don't read enough, I don't read NEW things enough, and I don't keep a good enough record of what I've read. When I get time to read, I usually turn to Harry. Remind me to expand my horizons this year.
Okay. So I didn't read Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. SORRY.
Actually, just over Winter Break, I read a book called Room by Emma Donoghue that I sort of wish I had written first. It was one of those things that makes me sort of euphoric to be reading such an awesome story, but also pissed because it's just the sort of formula I've been searching for in my own stuff and someone else got it perfectly, absolutely right. (Not to say I could write something at this time in my life that would hit the NYTimes Bestseller List). But it's got the characters - they're flawed, of course, and their situation isn't exactly idyllic, but they're so real I still kind of want to be them. Or at least know them. It's got the emotion - it blurs the lines between happiness and fear, something we almost always see in black-and-white. It's got psychology and politics and family. Oh, and the whole thing is narrated through the eyes of a child (difficult to pull of in and of itself) who is held captive with his mother in an 11x11-foot room.
The woman's got skills.
It's not exactly a straightforward, effortless read. But such is life.
Room - Google Books
Monday, December 6, 2010
To make sense of it all.
To the left:
I have one of those big car-washing sponges, shaped like a figure-8 with the holes filled in. I'm holding it next to your ear and soaking up the things that come trickling out of your brain. Slowly but surely, the sponge gets saturated and I wring it out into a bathtub. Pretty soon, the bathtub is full. So I start to fill an empty swimming pool instead. Sponge by sponge. Squeeze by squeeze.
How far can I go?
Will your thoughts need an entire swimming pool to contain them? Something the size of one of the great lakes, maybe?
Could you fill up the basins and the trenches in the ocean?
And would it take you your entire life to do so, or maybe just a week or two?
To the right:
It doesn't matter.
If you flood the earth with thoughts about clothing catalogues, self-obsession, materialism, doubt, negativity - all you're doing is ruining the place. If you can fill a bathtub with thoughts about ways to be happy and ways to spread happy, of love and family and friendship, then you're going to end up taking the most wonderful bath anyone's ever had.
Sink or swim; regardless, you've still got to worry about what it is you're soaking in.
I have one of those big car-washing sponges, shaped like a figure-8 with the holes filled in. I'm holding it next to your ear and soaking up the things that come trickling out of your brain. Slowly but surely, the sponge gets saturated and I wring it out into a bathtub. Pretty soon, the bathtub is full. So I start to fill an empty swimming pool instead. Sponge by sponge. Squeeze by squeeze.
How far can I go?
Will your thoughts need an entire swimming pool to contain them? Something the size of one of the great lakes, maybe?
Could you fill up the basins and the trenches in the ocean?
And would it take you your entire life to do so, or maybe just a week or two?
To the right:
It doesn't matter.
If you flood the earth with thoughts about clothing catalogues, self-obsession, materialism, doubt, negativity - all you're doing is ruining the place. If you can fill a bathtub with thoughts about ways to be happy and ways to spread happy, of love and family and friendship, then you're going to end up taking the most wonderful bath anyone's ever had.
Sink or swim; regardless, you've still got to worry about what it is you're soaking in.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Run fast for your mother.
I like knowing that however inconveniently timed their presence, I can still be inspired by the little things. It makes me feel like maybe I haven't gotten too old yet. Even if twenty is creeping up on me like some sort of enticing, colorful plague. There's still some kind of six-year-old Megan in my brain, watching Gullah Gullah island and somersalting through the house.
- Your friendly neighborhood fortune cookie
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Every Little Thing The Reflex Does.
If you seat a child who has recently returned from fat camp at the dining room table and fill it with cupcakes, bags of chips, and those bagged pastries you can buy at the gas station, his poor, deprived little mouth is going to suck them down faster than the speed of light. It doesn't matter that he spent his entire summer running six miles per week or learning various forms of self-control when it comes to over-indulgence. If you push him just far enough, all of the controlling he learned to do with his mind will sink swiftly into his stomach. And he'll feel bad afterwards. But during? While he's swimming in a sea of the snacks he's fantasized about for four months? He'll feel oh. So. Good.
Gluttony comes in many forms. Obviously food, sex, drugs, and the like are most addressed by society because they're the most popular outlets. But there are a few secret, underground gluttons who prefer to remain less apparent. They skulk around the vast, dusty shelves of libraries, digging for spare change in gutters so they can pay their overdue fines. They avoid bookstores because most of their debts can be traced back to an overly enthusiastic trip to Borders. The bookworms. The readers. Those whose relatives buy them the latest bestseller for Christmas without even asking first. They may not be outwardly harming themselves with their gluttony, but trust me. The bookworm is just as dangerous a glutton as any. And most of them were born this way - there's nothing they can do about it.
As one of the aforementioned cursed-at-birth bookworms, I experience the side-effects of my gluttony much the same way the kid with the smorgasbord of snacks would. When I find a book that captures my imagination to the degree that part of my mind is thinking about the characters and their desires while the book is closed and on my bookshelf, I have no choice but to give it my utmost attention. I cancel plans. I close the door to my room and don't bother talking to anyone. I neglect the cleanliness of my carpet, my laundry, my e-mail, any form of regular eating schedule - the only place I go is to class, and even then I bring the book along because it makes me feel better. If I get too bored or stressed while I'm there, the characters will be right there next to me. It's like having a friend in my backpack. And it feels oh. So. Good.
On the other hand, similar to the fat kid, I suck that story down at the speed of light. After about 24 to 36 hours of the inexplicably wonderful comfort of being curled up on my comforter with a book that practically stabs me with its demand to be read, it is gone. The last page flutters closed along a few more filler pages in the back of the binding, and then the back cover slips between my fingers and the book closes itself to me. And I can't get back in, because it's not the same anymore. If I open it back up right away, the characters will be too tired to tell me their story quite as well. I have to let them rest.
The next phase is what I like to call the aftermath. It's when I spend the next 2 to 3 days sulking, inwardly pissed that I finished the book so quickly, but not having an adequate way to outwardly express this bizarrely fantastic frustration. I want to slip back into the book's world - I want to feel what the book feels, I want to teleport and cast spells and fall in love and watch people die. But I can't get back in, no matter how hard I try. Sometimes I even open another book, hoping it will sweep me away on some new adventure so I can get over the old one. But the new book is just a rebound. It just makes me miss the old one all the more, and I usually throw it aside and glare at it for trying to replace something so epic.
This is the trigger to my current aftermath, and even Harry Potter couldn't heal my separation anxiety. I might write a review soon, but for the time being I just want to bask in how good I felt while I was reading it. As a writing major, I get sucked up in the battle between literary fiction and the sort of fiction that normal people who aren't hipsters or college kids or angsty white writer men read. This one reminded me why reading is important, and why I don't care about securing a space in the VIP literary fiction lounge. It also reminded me why I write.
Read slowly, friends.
Gluttony comes in many forms. Obviously food, sex, drugs, and the like are most addressed by society because they're the most popular outlets. But there are a few secret, underground gluttons who prefer to remain less apparent. They skulk around the vast, dusty shelves of libraries, digging for spare change in gutters so they can pay their overdue fines. They avoid bookstores because most of their debts can be traced back to an overly enthusiastic trip to Borders. The bookworms. The readers. Those whose relatives buy them the latest bestseller for Christmas without even asking first. They may not be outwardly harming themselves with their gluttony, but trust me. The bookworm is just as dangerous a glutton as any. And most of them were born this way - there's nothing they can do about it.
As one of the aforementioned cursed-at-birth bookworms, I experience the side-effects of my gluttony much the same way the kid with the smorgasbord of snacks would. When I find a book that captures my imagination to the degree that part of my mind is thinking about the characters and their desires while the book is closed and on my bookshelf, I have no choice but to give it my utmost attention. I cancel plans. I close the door to my room and don't bother talking to anyone. I neglect the cleanliness of my carpet, my laundry, my e-mail, any form of regular eating schedule - the only place I go is to class, and even then I bring the book along because it makes me feel better. If I get too bored or stressed while I'm there, the characters will be right there next to me. It's like having a friend in my backpack. And it feels oh. So. Good.
On the other hand, similar to the fat kid, I suck that story down at the speed of light. After about 24 to 36 hours of the inexplicably wonderful comfort of being curled up on my comforter with a book that practically stabs me with its demand to be read, it is gone. The last page flutters closed along a few more filler pages in the back of the binding, and then the back cover slips between my fingers and the book closes itself to me. And I can't get back in, because it's not the same anymore. If I open it back up right away, the characters will be too tired to tell me their story quite as well. I have to let them rest.
The next phase is what I like to call the aftermath. It's when I spend the next 2 to 3 days sulking, inwardly pissed that I finished the book so quickly, but not having an adequate way to outwardly express this bizarrely fantastic frustration. I want to slip back into the book's world - I want to feel what the book feels, I want to teleport and cast spells and fall in love and watch people die. But I can't get back in, no matter how hard I try. Sometimes I even open another book, hoping it will sweep me away on some new adventure so I can get over the old one. But the new book is just a rebound. It just makes me miss the old one all the more, and I usually throw it aside and glare at it for trying to replace something so epic.
This is the trigger to my current aftermath, and even Harry Potter couldn't heal my separation anxiety. I might write a review soon, but for the time being I just want to bask in how good I felt while I was reading it. As a writing major, I get sucked up in the battle between literary fiction and the sort of fiction that normal people who aren't hipsters or college kids or angsty white writer men read. This one reminded me why reading is important, and why I don't care about securing a space in the VIP literary fiction lounge. It also reminded me why I write.
Read slowly, friends.
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