So closed a year of reading and writing. A year of no school to speak of. A year of figuring myself out. When I found the Eclectic Reader's challenge last January, hosted by Book'd Out, it seemed like the perfect way to help myself transition into life and learning on my own. I've always loved to read, it was always my favorite part of school, so this challenge presented me with a framework for continuing that love while trying to move it into a new phase. And it worked wonders. I read so many books this year, so many different types of books, books that I bought just or this purpose, but also books that had once appealed to me into purchase and then languished on my shelf for "free time" to come around and remind me to read something just for me--a rare occurrence. Others were recommendations from friends, some were chosen purely for their blurb and an impulse at a new bookstore. I tried to find something that fit each of my assigned categories but also would give something back to me as well. I learned a lot this year, and here I'm gonna try to figure out what.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
January - fiction into film
I didn't read this in middle school like the rest of the world, and I think coming to it through older eyes changed the way I related to Charlie. I saw him through the eyes of someone who had already been through high school and left those friend behind, made those choices and loved those people. I think it was helpful for me to read about his transition as I was going through my own, leaving a different sort of school and striking out on my own; even though I still had my friends around me, I felt alone a lot. Charlie being able to find Sam again when she came back helped me realize that it isn't the end of an era, just a widening out.
Zorro by Isabel Allende
February - translated fiction
I have loved Isabel Allende since I first read House of the Spirits when I was twelve years old. The mysticism in her voice and the idea of magical realism captured my attention from the very first pages, and she has also strengthened my love for Spanish. Zorro was an opportunity for me to read a different kind of book by her, a story that came with baggage she did not create but used expertly all the same. It was a chance for me to revisit an old friend and experience it a different way, something I love to do and have done for many of my favorite stories like hansel & gretel and beauty and the beast.
Drawing in the Dust by Zoe Klein
March - romantic suspense
This book caught my eye because it was about Israel, a country I know and love. It was interesting--if a little jarring--to see her through the eyes of a Christian woman, and I was surprised at myself for being surprised that I could relate. I saw my religion from the outside for the first time in a long time, and it was still beautiful to me.
John Dies At The End by David Wong
April - urban fantasy
This was my first official recommendation. My boyfriend's best friend Cam had me watch the new movie version of this weird-ass story and told me that they only tell about a third of it on screen, I was intrigued. These people felt real, raw, ridiculous in the best sense of the word, and I loved every weird, disjointed page of this book. So much so that I bought the sequel IN HARDCOVER, something I rarely do, but I couldn't wait to read it.
The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan
May - published in 2013
I love Degas. He has been my favorite artist since I was little, and I have always been unspeakably moved by his paintings, though I can't remember what exactly brought me to him. So reading about the girl who was a model for his famous statue was like bringing history to life for me. For a long time I wanted to write historical fiction like this, to find stories untold in the pages of a textbook and give them voices. This book reawakened that desire in me.
Suck It, Wonder Woman! by Olivia Munn
June - memoir
I really wanted to like this book more than I did. I just had too many problems with Olivia Munn by the end of it. I didn't like some of her choices of anecdotes and how she didn't take her examination or her anger far enough, just putting it out there to bake under the heat of the public's invited rage. Maybe if she had written it more recently, during her stint as the amazing Sloan Sabbith on The Newsroom her voice would've changed a little bit. But I needed more from her, and I didn't get it.
Dracula, the Undead by Ian Holt and Dacre Stoker
July - action adventure
I fucking love Dracula. I have read countless vampire books and watched so many movie iterations and seen the lore translated in so many ways, so getting something by an actual Stoker sounded amazing. I think my favorite part, though, was the analysis at the end, where the coauthors explained their intent ad plan for the story.
The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez Reverte
August - historical mystery
Ahh historical mystery. I love this genre. I also love books like this that delve into real authors and their stories, like The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl. I love seeing parts of history in a different way, and this book had so many opportunities for that. So many mysteries, my only problem was that sometimes I wouldn't catch on and the chapter would end with a cryptic revelation that I didn't quite get and it frustrated me. There was so much going on that I didn't know what my brain was supposed to latch into.
The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
September - dystopia
This book was an impulse buy. I had been considering reading Ender's Game for this month's book, but decided to do some research and find a new world of my own. I was drawn to this book because it is written by a 22 year old woman, and I wanted it to serve as a sort of inspiration to me, that I should keep writing and get my story out there like this girl did. Plus she made up a lot of words and had a glossary in the back and I'm a sucker for that shit.
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon
October - LGBTQ
This book was recommended to me by one of my favorite literary critics and beautiful minds: my friend Olivia. We were tipsily walking to a bar one night to meet our friends, talking about literature (like you do) and she was asking about my challenge and if I had the next book picked out. I told her I had some ideas for this month but wasn't sure and she pretty much shot all of them down and told me I had to read this. That it is one of her favorite books of all time and it will mean so much to me because we're so similar. I'm so glad I did. It was inspirational in that it was an amazing author's first attempt at writing, and the story itself was also about first attempts, about the transition that I'm going through, from college to the new world, and even though the specifics are different, the feelings of recklessness and dislocation rang true.
How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran
November - humor
I'm gonna be honest, I really liked her name (spelled the same as mine, *ahem*) and the title and every blurb I read said it sounded funny, and I am in fact figuring out how to be a woman, so this book was a pretty easy decision. Caitlin Moran took me with her as she remembered her process of How To Be A Woman, and every anecdote held some kernel of reassurance for me, and her incredible candor allowed me to delve into topics I haven't quite allowed myself to think about deeply before.
Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan
December - new adult
Critics have called this chick lit and berated it for its vagueness and flat characters, but I did enjoy this book. It's not really that surprising how many of the books I chose this year were about some great change in an individual's life, most mirroring the changes I am going through right now, but what is surprising is the incredible range of decisions those individuals made, most specifically in this book. The four protagonists in Commencement almost spoke to four different parts of me, as a woman, as a feminist, as a new adult making her way in the world, as one half of a serious relationship. No matter the vagueness or the flat characters (and I'm not denying those claims their validity), this book was a perfect way for me to round out a year of eclectic reading because it gave me a backdrop to think about what I really want to do--what I really could do--with this new life that has presented itself to me.
Throughout the course of this year, I have also learned a lot about writing. Forcing myself to reflect on something and write about it every month made me look at how I form my own opinions about things. For example, I read a lot of other reviews when I was writing about each book, and it took a while for me to realize that that wasn't always productive. Sure, getting ideas from other sources' opinions is fine, but I need to be confident enough in my own to not shrink back from opposition or think that what I originally felt about a book was wrong. Because feelings aren't wrong. Responses to the way a certain text talks to you are instinct and speak to your personal emotional makeup at the time. I suppose this translates to pretty much anything anyone could have an opinion about in the entire world, but as with a lot of things in my life, it took reading to bring it out. So this year, I plan to give myself more time. More time alone with a feeling before posting about it or discussing it or analyzing it. I want to know in detail what something means to me, how it fits into my personal worldview, before I put it out on the chopping block to get ripped apart. Because there's nothing worse than turning around and beating yourself up for your own opinions, rather than allowing them to be strong for you. So thanks, 2013, for helping me remember how to think for myself, and here's to 2014 for showing me the strength to do so.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Saturday, December 21, 2013
DEC - Commencement
December review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan, 2009. [New Adult category]
Commencement by J Courtney Sullivan is just that: a commencement. A beginning that, like life, once begun cannot be paused or made to wait for you. It picks you up and wraps you into the lives of four young women during their days at Smith College, and the intricacies of each story keep the pages turning. Sally, Celia, Bree, and April are very different in their first days at Smith, but we follow as they move toward each other, learning about themselves and about life as a woman along the way. Sullivan deals with dark topics such as rape, child prostitution and nascent feminism as the girls make their way through their years in Smith's bubble and then ripple out into their own worlds. For all its vague character development and surface-scratching of aforementioned issues, I couldn't stop reading. It was one of two possible titles for my "new adult" category, the one I started reading second, but the first very soon fell by the wayside as I stayed up later and later in my hotel room over Thanksgiving to read Commencement, while College Girl languished with a bookmark barely past the first chapter and the meeting of the strangely friendly boy who will obviously bring eponymous heroine out of her young adult shell. (Boring.) I enjoyed my final decision much more.
As a word nerd, the very first thing I loved about this book was the play on the title; the word "commencement" as a reference to the college graduation ceremony, but also to the start of a new life, a new chapter. This novel perfectly straddled that double meaning, especially through the use of memories dislocated in time. We are never quite sure if what we are experiencing is in the present until the end of the book, when the old memories get fewer and farther between. Sullivan pulled off a book about four girls' realigning relationships that also comments on the absurdity of some of life's vicissitudes, especially those facing young women. Sure her characters are white women from varying degrees of the upper-middle class, and there are times when Sullivan presents their feminism as if it is the only brand that exists, but I think that she did a good job for what this book was trying to be. And that's the thing about feminist endeavors lately: it seems to me that we as a culture have become so hypercritical and obsessed with a political correctness that ends in sanitization of anything real that whenever anyone tries to make a dent, however small, in such a complex topic, if they don't pull it off perfectly and without anything that could possibly be construed as offensive to someone else, we attack them. When really we should be applauding their attempt to do something about anything, to keep the ball rolling even if it gets picked up and hurled back in their face (read: Lily Allen and her "Hard Out Here" video).
In terms of the category of the month, I originally wasn't positive this book would fit. I mean, it fit by my understanding of the definition (New Adult is a category with protagonists age 18-25 learning about their world and how to transition in it), but this particular book wasn't on any "delineated "New Adult" list per se, so I took a few liberties. When I was searching, most of the "new adult" category seemed to be sexed-up half-naked 19 year olds on the covers going to college and (possibly) being magical and just generally angsting about things for sequels on sequels on sequels. (Aside--Hell yeah I'm judging books by their covers, and I'm super glad I did so. Fight about it.) As a young twentysomething moving through the commencement of my own strange life, I felt that this second wave of "New Adult" (the college/post-college subjects) was more fitted to my sensibilities. I mentioned Commencement wasn't on any Goodreads lists or the New Adult fiction wikipedia page et cetera, I used my literary discretion to find a book that I thought fit the category but would also give me something in return, a practice I have tried to use all year. There is talk amongst The Critics, that amorphous blob of humanity that makes up most of my knowledge about new books, that this category is purely a fad, a marketing technique to differentiate Skyler Gray from Percy Jackson, and while this is a valid point, I think this category will last. I think people will always be looking to find books that mirror their own life, and having more and more specific subcategories (teen paranormal romance, anyone?) will help people on their quest. I enjoyed Commencement even though I didn't go to a womens college or go undercover to bring awareness to child prostitution rings or have an affair with my professor, and it was because it was about girls in the same mindset as me, trying to figure out what a big ticket education and all the possibility in the world is going to get me.
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