Year: 2012

The Pride and Prejudice Bicentenary Challenge

Posted on by Dana

The Pride and Prejudice Bicentenary Challenge Jane Austen’s beloved novel Pride and Prejudice turns 200 in January. I already had plans to begin re-reading the novel on the 200th anniversary of its publication, January 28, 2013. I should have known Austenprose would have a massive celebration, just as they did for Sense and Sensibility. Even though I promised myself I’d limit challenges this year, I decided I couldn’t pass this one up.

The idea behind the challenge is to read or revisit Pride and Prejudice, view the film adaptions, and read the sequels. I haven’t read too many sequels, but I am willing to give it a try. To that end, I plan to participate only at the Neophyte level of 1-4 selections. I will be reading Pride and Prejudice, Death Comes to Pemberley by P. D. James, Darcy and Fitzwilliam by Karen Wasylowski, and Celebrating Pride and Prejudice: 200 Years of Jane Austen’s Masterpiece by Susannah Fullerton. If the spirit moves me, I may do a bit more, but that is what I will commit to  the moment.

I’m very excited about celebrating along with Austenprose this year.

Related posts:

Miss Austen Regrets

Sunday Post #41: Books and Tea

Sunday Post #15: Wuthering, Wuthering Heights

Best Books of 2012

Posted on by Dana

Booking Through Thursday

In my last post I listed my favorite reads of the year. Here’s why I liked them and why I’m still thinking about them.

  1. Moloka’i, Alan Brennert: This book was a bit of a departure for me. I had never read anything set in Hawaii, and I knew next to nothing about the leper colony on Moloka’i. I absolutely loved this story of Rachel. I think the part I liked best was that she was able to leave and reunite with her sister before the end, and that she was able to connect with her daughter. I was truly swept up into the story. In fact, it might have been my absolute favorite book of the year, and it was also the first one I finished.
  2. Divergent, Veronica Roth: Roth manages to capture her futuristic Chicago in clear detail, and the world she describes is so different. I read on, unable to stop turning pages, so I could find out what would happen to Tris and Four.
  3. The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Margot Livesey: I didn’t give this book five stars, but it’s one that I continued to think about long after I read it. One of my new colleagues was reading it earlier this year, and we talked about it a little bit. I thought it was a great modern retelling of Jane Eyre that made sense. I loved the settings in the book: Scotland’s Orkneys and Iceland. So exotic!
  4. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi: I haven’t read a lot of graphic novels, but this one made me want to read more. It’s an interesting memoir, and I enjoyed both the artwork and the story.
  5. A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway: Actually this may also be the best book I read this year. I love Hemingway’s writing, and this book felt like reading gossip about other writers. He captures that time and place, Paris in the 1920’s, so well that he made me long to go. I created a Paris board on Pinterest after reading it.
  6. The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, William Joyce: This book really opened my eyes to the direction that books can go in the future. If you haven’t seen this book, check it out on the iPad. It’s a completely interactive storybook. The story itself is charming—it’s about a man who discovers the joy of caring for books, a monument to librarians. This book isn’t read—it’s experienced.
  7. The Fault in Our Stars, John Green: I am convinced after this book that John Green is the Judy Blume for this generation. This book was excellent. I enjoyed the plucky protagonist Hazel. The book doesn’t flinch in its portrayal of teens with cancer, but it is surprisingly uplifting. In the end, I felt it was much more about living than dying.
  8. Smart Soapmaking and Milk Soapmaking, Anne L. Watson: My new soapmaking hobby has taken over my life! I enjoy it a great deal, and almost all the nonfiction I read this year was about soapmaking. These two books were, by far, the best books I read about the craft of making handmade soap.

 

Related posts:

Music and Reading

Top Ten Fictional Couples

Booking Through Thursday: Night Owl

Year in Review 2013

Posted on by Dana

bird

As I have for the past few years, I have spent the last few days reflecting on my reading year. This year wasn’t great. I didn’t meet any of my reading goals.

2012 Reading Challenge

2012 Reading Challenge
Dana has read 27 books toward her goal of 52 books.
hide

 

  • Total number of books read: 27.
  • Fiction books: 19.
  • Nonfiction books: 6.
  • Memoirs: 2.
  • YA books: 7.
  • Audio books: 2.
  • Digital books: 10.
  • DailyLit books: 0.
  • Books reread: 5.

Favorite Reads of the Year (in no particular order):

  1. Moloka’i, Alan Brennert
  2. Divergent, Veronica Roth
  3. The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Margot Livesey
  4. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
  5. A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
  6. The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, William Joyce
  7. The Fault in Our Stars, John Green
  8. Smart Soapmaking and Milk Soapmaking, Anne L. Watson

Least Favorite Books (although this is relative because I didn’t have any less than 3-star books):

  1. Making Soaps & Scents, Catherine Bardey
  2. Delirium, Lauren Oliver

Favorite Book Meme of the Year: Top Ten Tuesdays.

Favorite Reading Challenge: The Mixing it Up Challenge (for at least making me thinking about going outside my usual reading comfort zones).

Favorite Blog Posts (again, in no particular order):

Here is my Where Are Your Reading 2012 Challenge map:


View 2012 Where Are You Reading Challenge in a larger map

I finished a re-read of Wuthering Heights recently, bringing my total to 27 books for the year. I don’t think I’ll finish anything else before the end of the year, so I’m calling it at 27. I have some hopes that if I buckle down, I can finish A Great and Terrible Beauty, but not high hopes.

In addition to not meeting my goal of reading 52 books, I also did not complete any of the challenges I set for myself. I think I over-committed myself on the challenges for sure, but I really did think I could meet the challenges. They didn’t seem onerous. I have decided to limit myself a bit more this year and just try to read things that look interesting.

I am also not going to host any challenges this year, as I find I am a terrible challenge host. I don’t think I peeked in after January, mainly because folks didn’t seem too interested in the challenge. I think I’d rather just participate in other challenges than host them.

There are good reasons for my failure to meet my reading goals. This year I moved and started a new job. I am not being too hard on myself because it was a huge adjustment. I moved 1000 miles from Roswell, GA (suburb of Atlanta) to Worcester, MA in central Massachusetts. We are all very happy in our new digs, and I love my new job.

In my previous job, I rode the bus to work, and my commute was typically 30 minutes each morning on the bus. I was able to get in a lot of reading that way, and I think my lack of commute now is a considerable factor in the number of books I was able to read. We moved here in June, and from that time onward, my commute was typically five minutes. The only way I could stretch it would be to walk, which I have done when the weather is nice, but it’s not conducive to reading. I actually can read and walk at the same time, but it’s better to have your wits about you. Even riding the bus, I only took about five minutes to get to work, but now that I’m carpooling with a coworker, it’s downright rude to think about. Essentially, one hour of reading time I used to have has been taken away. What I need to do is dedicate that reading time each day at home, even if I have to set a timer. I have often said that if something is important to you, you will make time for it. Well, reading is obviously important to me, but I have not been making as much time for it as I previously have done.

I’m looking forward to trying again to read a book a week this coming year.

Related posts:

Sunday Salon: Where I've Been

Summer Reading

2017: Reading Year in Review

Bookish Gifts

Posted on by Dana

beautiful books

Years ago, my local Barnes & Noble had a Christmas tree set up in the center of the store. It was decorated with gift tags, and each tag had the name and age of a local boy or girl who was in need of a Christmas gift. I had so much fun buying books for boys and girls that year. I haven’t seen anything like it since, though my school did a book drive for a local chapter of Girls Inc. I don’t know why I haven’t seen the tree idea used again. I suppose it’s possible it wasn’t very successful, but I find it hard to believe (of course, that’s also because I bought a lot of the books myself, so naturally I assumed others did, too).

I find it harder and harder to figure out what books people might like for Christmas. Even me. I hate to admit it, but I’d much rather receive a bookstore gift card than a book. I can spend the money on whatever strikes my fancy at the moment. I find this to be true even if I want a particular book, though I can’t say why, particularly because a book chosen as a gift usually sends the message, “I saw this and thought of you,” or “I loved this and wanted you to love it, too.” And I love to give books, even if I do have trouble figuring out what others will like.

One of my new roles at work involves working on the YA collection in our library. I also give book talks to the middle schoolers, and I absolutely love sharing books I enjoyed with them. Even more, I love it when they tell me how much they enjoyed a book. A student who heard my last book talk stopped me in the hall to tell me she read [amazon asin=0525478817&text=The Fault in Our Stars] in one evening and just loved it. Their teacher recently told me that many of her students were already finished with the books, which they had to read over their holiday break, and were requesting them for Christmas.

In a way, I almost feel like I gave those books as gifts, even though I didn’t physically do it. However, I have several books that have been given to me, book I actually really want to read, and I haven’t read them yet. Maybe 2013 is the year I need to do that. It feels sort of rude not to read a book given to me as a gift.

So what books are you giving for Christmas? What books do you hope to receive?

Merry Christmas to everyone.

The Sunday Salon

 

Related posts:

Books I Had to Have

Listening to My Own Advice

Sunday Salon: Book Club

Reading Challenges and Goals for 2013

Posted on by Dana

I need to preface this post with the admission that 2012 was a wash for me as far as meeting any of my reading goals, including reading challenges. However, I also moved and started a new job, so I have forgiven myself and decided to make 2013 a better reading year. To that end, I’m going to participate in some of my favorite challenges, but I’m not going to stress myself out by taking on more than I can handle, nor am I going to try to host my own challenge this year.

Historical Fiction Reading ChallengeHistorical Tapestry hosts a Historical Fiction Challenge every year, and 2013 is no exception. As historical fiction is one of my favorite genres, I don’t need much prodding to participate in this challenge. I want to be more active this year, however. I plan to participate at the Renaissance Reader level of 10 books, but I will perhaps read more than that.

Carl‘s R.I.P. Challenge is usually announced later, and I always participate in that challenge as well. I may also participate in his Once Upon a Time Challenge this year, too, as I plan to read a bit more fantasy in 2013.

As of right now, I haven’t seen any Jane Austen reading challenges out there, but I plan to re-read [amazon asin=0674049160&text=Pride and Prejudice], starting on the 200th anniversary of its publication and will be trying some other Austen-related books.

Once again, I will also participate in the Where are You Reading Challenge. I love creating Google Maps of my reading progress and seeing patterns in the places where the novels I read are set. This challenge has no set number of books. I simply need to remember to create a Google Map pin for each book I read.

2013 Where are You Reading Challenge

Another challenge? Make new soap recipes based on my favorite 5-star reads in 2013. I figure that’s doable because not every book will be 5 stars, and I love making soap. In fact, it may this new hobby prevented me from reading perhaps 10 of the books I intended to read this year. But I don’t regret it at all.

Another goal I have is to read 50 books, a goal I failed to achieve this year. I came close in 2011, though 50 was not my goal that year. I barely made it to half 50 books this year. I think I can do it if I dedicate myself to the task.

Finally, I would like to blog more. I didn’t blog as much here or anywhere this year. I fell desperately behind in my own feed reader. I think perhaps I should use some of my time off to figure out how to follow the blogs I enjoy a little better and leave more regular comments, too.

What do you have in mind for your next year of reading?

Related posts:

How to Read Novels Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster

Reading Challenges and Goals for 2014

2017 Reading Goals

Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver

Posted on by Dana

Flight Behavior: A NovelBarbara Kingsolver’s latest novel [amazon asin=0062124269&text=Flight Behavior] opens as Dellarobia Turnbow, unhappily married at the age of 17 after a pregnancy scare, is on her way to meet up with a telephone repairman with the express purpose of cheating on her husband. Before she reaches her destination, she is confronted with the arresting sight of trees aflame with monarch butterflies. Spooked by the vision, which she considers a sign, she returns to her mother-in-law’s house to pick up her children and go back home.

Others in her small town view the strange butterflies as a sign of God’s providence. The butterflies’ appearance sparks a national news story. Monarch butterflies are, of course, native to Mexico and unheard of in the small town of Feathertown, Tennessee. What could be driving them to Appalachia? Scientists visiting the town set up a lab in the Turnbows’ barn, pulling Dellarobia further into their work. The scientists discover that the monarchs’ appearance is the result of global warming, but the populace of Feathertown doesn’t believe it. Over the course of the novel, Dellarobia’s life in Feathertown is reflected in the butterflies’ existence. Dellarobia wonders, “Why did the one rare, spectacular thing in her life have to be a sickness of nature?”

Kingsolver is one of my favorite authors. She has a way with words that is frankly gorgeous. I marvel at her writing. However, I had trouble getting into this book. I didn’t find myself too interested in Dellarobia. I think Barbara Kingsolver has a gift for character development, and I could clearly see Dellarobia as a real person. I didn’t relate to her in the same way I have other characters she has created. [amazon asin=0060786507&text=The Poisonwood Bible] is one of my favorite books, and [amazon asin=006210392X&text=The Bean Trees] is another I enjoyed quite a lot. I also appreciate Kingsolver’s purposeful use of symbolism and metaphor to convey much larger ideas (brilliantly executed in The Poisonwood Bible). This book starts kind of slowly, but the beautiful writing and description should keep readers going in spite of the slow start.

Rating: ★★★★½

Learn more about Barbara Kingsolver at her website and connect with her on Facebook.

TLC Tour HostBarbara’s Tour Stops

Tuesday, November 6th: A Reader of Fictions

Wednesday, November 7th: Dolce Bellezza

Thursday, November 8th: The Blog of Lit Wits

Monday, November 12th: Caribousmom

Tuesday, November 13th: Bookish Habits

Wednesday, November 14th: 50 Books Project

Thursday, November 15th: Unabridged Chick

Monday, November 26th: Book Snob

Tuesday, November 27th: What She Read … – joint review

Wednesday, November 28th: Becca’s Byline

Thursday, November 29th: A Patchwork of Books

Wednesday, December 5th: No More Grumpy Bookseller

Thursday, December 6th: The 3 R’s: Reading, ‘Riting, and Randomness

Tuesday, December 11th: Man of La Book

Wednesday, December 12th: Tina’s Books Reviews

Thursday, December 13th: Seaside Book Corner

Monday, December 17th: 50 Books Project

Friday, December 21st: Much Madness is Divinest Sense

Related posts:

A Question of Honor

Review: Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Jewish History and Culture

How the French Invented Love, Marilyn Yalom

Posted on by Dana

How the French Invented Love: Nine Hundred Years of Passion and RomanceMarilyn Yalom’s book [amazon asin=0062048317&text=How the French Invented Love] is an interesting look at the French attitude toward love from the Middle Ages to today. Yalom’s source material is the body of French literature produced over time.

As a fan of medieval literature, I particularly enjoyed Yalom’s examination of the letters of Abelard and Héloïse, whose story should fascinate anyone interested in true love. I thoroughly enjoyed the long chapter on courtly love and wished I were teaching the concept in a course again, as I have done in the past, because I think Yalom’s ideas would help me break down the idea in a way that would be easier for my students to understand. It has traditionally been a difficult concept for me to teach. I loved seeing the references to Guinevere and Lancelot. I always found it interesting that the French invented perhaps the most famous Arthurian knight—Sir Lancelot (I have always been more partial to Sir Gawain).

Another section I enjoyed was the chapter on George Sand and Alfred de Musset. I encountered George Sand’s journals about her relationship with de Musset in college, and I developed an interest in Sand that endures to this day as a result. Like Yalom, I adore the English Romantics (one of my best ever dreams was about having tea with Byron, Shelley, and Keats), and Yalom begins that chapter with a comparison between English and French Romantics before focusing more narrowly on George Sand. As Yalom notes, Sand gave her entire “heart and soul” to whatever “enterprise” with which she was concerned, whether it was writing or an affair. Her journals about the end of her relationship with de Musset are so heart-wrenching, that I wondered how she ever recovered from the loss. Yet, she went on to have other affairs, notably with Frederic Chopin. That she could recover and love again speaks to resiliency of the human heart.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject, but particularly to literature scholars. I enjoyed the narrow focus of the history of love in French literature. One quibble I had with the writing style was Yalom’s propensity to insert herself in the thread of the book. It made the book feel more anecdotal and perhaps less formal, which may have been Yalom’s goal, but it’s not typical of other nonfiction of this type (or at least not that I’ve noticed), and I found it drew my focus away from what she was saying—each time I encountered it, I was rewriting the sentence in my head to remove the personal reference. I can’t explain why it bothered me, particularly, but it did.

At any rate, this was an interesting read, and anyone who enjoys literature, especially Francophiles, will enjoy it very much. I would definitely read more of her writing.

Rating: ★★★★☆

About Marilyn Yalom

Marilyn Yalom is a former professor of French and presently a senior scholar at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. She is the author of widely acclaimed books such as A History of the Breast, A History of the Wife, and Birth of the Chess Queen, as well as The American Resting Place: Four Hundred Years of History Through our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds, which includes a portfolio of photographs by her son Reid S. Yalom. She lives in Palo Alto, California, with her husband, the psychiatrist and author Irvin D. Yalom.

Website

Marilyn’s Tour Stops

Tuesday, October 23rd: The Year in Books

Thursday, October 25th: Unabridged Chick

Tuesday, October 30th: Doing Dewey

Wednesday, October 31st: Take Me Away

Monday, November 5th: Sophisticated Dorkiness

Tuesday, November 6th: Dreaming in Books

Wednesday, November 7th: Bibliophiliac

Thursday, November 8th: Book Hooked Blog

Friday, November 9th: BooksAreTheNewBlack

Monday, November 12th: missris

Wednesday, November 14th: Oh! Paper Pages

Wednesday, November 28th: Much Madness is Divinest Sense

TBD: The Written World

Related posts:

MT Amazon and BookQueueToo

Review: Wonder, R. J. Palacio

Mockingjay

Top Ten Tuesday adapted from http://www.flickr.com/photos/ceasedesist/4812981497/

Top Ten Tuesday: Authors I’m Thankful For

Posted on by Dana

Top Ten Tuesday adapted from http://www.flickr.com/photos/ceasedesist/4812981497/

This week’s appropriate Top Ten Tuesday concerns authors I’m thankful for.

  1. William Shakespeare: My best moments in the classroom I owe to this writer, who is not only the greatest writer in the English language, but also the most fun to teach. I can return to his plays again and again, and I always get something new out of them. In addition, his sonnets are some of the most glorious poetry in the English language. Don’t believe me? Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ORccj9HosA
  2. Jane Austen: She is my homegirl. Really. I love her. I return to her books all the time. I love her characters, her sparkling wit, and her tangled love stories.
  3. J. K. Rowling: Some of my best reading experiences have been with the Harry Potter series. If I could read just one series over and over, and no other books, for the rest of my life, I’d choose the Harry Potter series. I find the Wizarding World to be a rich, imaginative place I never tire of visiting.
  4. Emily Brontë: She gave me my favorite book, even though it was the only book she wrote. I love returning to this book. I always notice something new. I love to hate her characters. I marvel each time I read it at the novel’s beautiful structure. Though I find the characters horrendous, I admit one place I’d love to visit is Wuthering Heights.
  5. J. R. R. Tolkien: My first major foray into fantasy set the bar really high. I am currently listening to The Hobbit in preparation for the movie. I love reading this series, and I love Middle Earth.
  6. Judy Blume: I read her books over and over again as a child. I grew up on her stories, and she has been a huge influence over my reading and writing life.
  7. Jasper Fforde: I have spent many a happy hour giggling through one of his books. He is crack for book and word nerds, and he is utterly charming.
  8. Joseph Campbell: His enduring ideas and understandings about the hero’s journey enabled me to enjoy literature and film in a new way, and I was able to construct a course around his work.
  9. Diana Gabaldon: I love her time travel romance/fantasy/historical fiction/genre-bending stories about Claire and Jamie Fraser. She is so much fun, and such a nice lady, too.
  10. Ernest Hemingway: I love, love, love F. Scott Fitzgerald, but Hemingway has a much larger canon, and I am not done with it yet. I love the way he writes, and I love to read his ideas about writing. I have rarely cried so hard over a book as I did over the end of A Farewell to Arms.

What authors are you thankful for?

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving! I am so thrilled to be celebrating it this year in the state where the first Thanksgiving took place.

Related posts:

Two More Reading Challenges

One of Our Thursdays is Missing, Jasper Fforde

The Big Over Easy

R.I.P. Challenge VII

R.I.P. Recap

Posted on by Dana

I did not complete the R.I.P. Challenge this year. It’s absolutely my favorite challenge of the year, but I only managed to read one book that could be considered part of the challenge, and it wasn’t even one of the books I planned to count. By the way, I did make a soap inspired by Attica Locke’s The Cutting Season. I call it Vanilla Sugar Cane. Its ingredients are olive oil, water, coconut oil, palm oil, sodium hydroxide, sweet almond oil, cocoa butter, and castor oil, along with a vanilla sugar fragrance that is an exact duplicate of Bath & Body Works’ Warm Vanilla Sugar fragrance—one of my favorites. I can’t wait until this soap is ready.

I did not manage to finish Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, and I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I’m giving up on it because it just didn’t do anything for me. I don’t know what’s wrong with me because it has all the elements I usually like in books: a creepy carnival visiting a small town in the fall; lots of imagery; a story that can be read on multiple levels. I think ultimately, I don’t care much for the characters. I have seen the movie (many years ago), and I liked it, so I can’t explain why the book is just not appealing to me. I find it is not difficult to put down, and I keep looking at it, thinking I should pick it up. At this point, I’ve maxed out my library renewals, and I just don’t have a desire to try to finish it. I feel like I’m giving the book the old, “It’s not you, it’s me,” speech. But I really feel like it is me. People love this book. I did make a soap inspired by Mr. Crosetti’s cotton candy. It was pink and cotton-candy scented. However, as the soap cured, it turned a deeper shade closer to purple. My feeling is it now looks like appropriately dark and twisted cotton candy, and Mr. Dark would approve. I will probably just gift it to the kids in my family for Christmas.

I enjoyed the challenge I set for myself of thinking of an appropriate soap inspired by the books I read for this challenge. I am not sure I’d want to do it for every challenge or every book, but it was fun, and just like the books, I was really pleased with how the Vanilla Sugar Cane Soap came out from the very start, and as it cures, it is shaping up into a very nice soap, just like the book. On the other hand, I was initially pleased with the Cotton Candy Soap, and over time, I found my enthusiasm cooled as the soap changed a funny color, which mirrors my feelings for the book on which I based it.

This year is shaping up to be a bad reading year for me all the way around. I am already feeling a pull to re-read [amazon asin=0143105434&text=Wuthering Heights]. I recognize the signs: I start Googling things related to the book and looking for film versions on Netflix. And I don’t have time. I have other books I’ve committed to read. That book is a damned siren.

So how did you do with the challenge this year? How’s your reading year shaping up as we slide into the final two months?

Related posts:

The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern

Weekend Reading: May 3, 2014

Top Ten Favorite Quotes from Books

Bless Me, Ultima, Rudolfo Anaya

Posted on by Dana

Bless Me, UltimaThe tenth grade curriculum where I now teach includes Rudolfo Anaya’s novel Bless Me, Ultima. I had never read the book before, and I managed to stay right with the students as we read. There is something to be said for reading alongside students instead of in advance. On this particular occasion, I did it out of necessity rather than design. I usually try to read in advance, but constraints on my time have made that hard. I enjoyed the novel very much, and it was a nice segue from The Catcher in the Rye, which we just studied, to Macbeth, which we will study next. For this particular novel, it was nice to experience the unfolding of the story right alongside the students.

Bless Me, Ultima is a semi-autobiographical novel (something Anaya admits), so my students and I used a biographical lens to study the novel. Like Anaya, Antonio was a young boy living in New Mexico. He feels a great deal of conflict over his path in life. Should he become a vaquero and wander the llano like his father’s family, the Márez? Or should he become a farmer, like his mother’s brothers, the Lunas? His mother wishes for him to become a priest of the Lunas. Or does his path lay on a completely different road? At his mother’s insistence, the family takes in the elderly curandera Ultima, who was present at the birth of Antonio and his siblings. She is a wise healer, and she shows Antonio her healing ways. The two grow close, and he helps her as she is persuaded to use her healing arts to cure victims of witchcraft. Antonio discovers much about the mysteries of life, God, and magic over the course of the two years Ultima lives with his family.

One of my favorite parts of much literature in this genre, and in particular, Chicano and other Latino literature, is the magical realism. I feel that the magical realism in Latino literature is almost always more seamlessly executed and accepted by the characters (and, as a result, the reader) than it is in other types of literature. As I read this novel, it wasn’t hard to accept the notion that of course witchcraft was real, and there were those who used their powers for good, and others who used their powers for evil. And of course, there was a magical Golden Carp who might be part of Antonio’s religious destiny. And of course, small children were religious philosophers who pushed Antonio’s thinking through their clear conclusions about God and the Golden Carp.

Anaya has no trouble bringing his New Mexican llano to life. I grew up in Colorado, and I have been to New Mexico many times. The flat llano was easy for me to picture even without Anaya’s help, but he brings the setting to life through his descriptions of the flat land, the scrubby cacti and yucca plants, the big sky, and the river. There are elements of a traditional shoot-em-up Western, too, as the Márez vaqueros ride in and the evil Tenorio chases people in his quest for vengeance. But what ties all of it together is Ultima and Antonio’s respect for the beauty and utility of the land.

This novel was chosen as a Big Read selection, and here is a video that might interest you. I love Anaya’s bolo tie and tennis shoes. Cute!

Rating: ★★★★★

Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from my school as part of my curriculum materials.

Related posts:

Review: Dubliners, James Joyce

Divergent, Veronica Roth

Review: Elegy for Mary Turner: An Illustrated Account of a Lynching, Rachel Marie-Crane Williams