Studs Terkel

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I have not abandoned this blog, I promise you, but grad school has made it difficult for me to read as much as I’d like.  Not reading as much means no book reviews.  I’m finished with the semester, and I’m re-reading junk food favorite Twilight in addition to my new copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard.  I am enjoying a study of Macbeth with my juniors.  I begin Romeo and Juliet again in January, and I love teaching that play.  In addition, I also get to teach A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the second time ever and The Taming of the Shrew for the first, so I’m looking for some good times with Uncle Will.  I will probably blog about any experiences teaching these plays at my education blog rather than here.

I came upon the New York Times article about the memorial service for Studs Terkel today.  I listened to a long recording Terkel did with people who discussed the Great Depression, and it reminded me so much of what my grandfather did when he sent me a long letter about some of his experiences.  My life is richer for having heard his history, and now I can pass it on.  That’s what is valuable about the stories of the ordinary man in addition to politicians and famous folk, and that’s what Studs Terkel really understood about compelling stories — they are our stories and our voices, and our lives are richer when they are heard.  I listen to This American Life often as a subscriber of their podcast (which is where I heard the Terkel recording), and every week I find something new and enjoyable about the stories of people.

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The Graveyard Book

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I finished listening to Neil Gaiman’s latest novel, The Graveyard Book, at Neil Gaiman’s official site for young readers.  On his recent book tour, Gaiman read a chapter (or in the case of chapter 7, a half a chapter) at each stop on his tour.  Videos of his readings were posted on the site.  I’m not sure how much longer they are available, or if they are permanent, but do yourself a favor and enjoy Gaiman reading his work.  He does it very well, and it’s a gift not all authors have.  For instance, I have heard J.K. Rowling read her work on video, and while she wasn’t bad, she wasn’t a particularly good oral interpreter.  Gaiman changes voices for his characters, giving them different dialects and accents, and his emphasis in the right places draws out much of the humor of the book.  And there is quite a bit of humor in the book.  He’s a wonderful reader.

The Graveyard Book is the story of Nobody Owens — called Bod for short, a young boy who wanders into a nearby graveyard after his parents are murdered and is raised by the spirits who inhabit the graveyard.  We should all have such an education!  As Silas, Bod’s guardian says, “It is going to take more than just a couple of good-hearted souls to raise this child. It will … take a graveyard.”  Gaiman’s novel is a nod to Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.  Bod is given the freedom of the graveyard by the spirits, and until he is grown, they promise to look after him, for the man who killed his family is still out there, waiting.

The book was a pleasure from start to finish, and more so as a result of Neil Gaiman’s superb oral storytelling skills.  I plan to purchase a copy for my classroom library and will recommend the book to my students.  I think it very generous of Neil Gaiman to share his book in this manner, and I am grateful for the experience of hearing him read the book, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

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Neil Gaiman Reads

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I never outgrew a fondness for being read to, and if you didn’t either, you might want to check out this site, which features videos of Neil Gaiman reading his new novel The Graveyard Book in its entirety.  You can browse inside the book at Harper Collins’s site, and you can check out an NPR story about Neil and Neil’s blog.  Neil is one of the most accessible authors, and really seems to care about his fans.  What more perfect book for Halloween than a tale of a boy raised by ghosts in a graveyard?

What are your favorite Halloween books?  Are you participating in the RIP Challenge this year?  I couldn’t because I didn’t feel I should commit to a reading challenge with grad school taking up extra time.  I really wanted to do the challenge this year, when the chill in the air is the perfect accompaniment to a gothic novel.  I also really enjoyed my selections from last year, though I still haven’t finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.  I honestly did enjoy what I read, and I do want to finish it, but I found it was a challenging and very long book, and perhaps would be best to read when I feel I have time.

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Breaking Dawn

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Earlier this evening, I finished the final book in Stephenie Meyer’s vampire saga.  Breaking Dawn was not, in my estimation, as good as its predecessors.  I felt the book had a variety of problems that boil down to one main issue.  I expect books about the supernatural to stretch my credulity, but this book went over my credulity line.

Spoilers follow, so stop reading now if you intend to read the book and don’t want plot details revealed.

In this novel Bella, Meyer’s protagonist, marries her Edward (who was a little too bossy and controlling — and yes, he may be from a more patriarchal era, but I still don’t like it) and inexplicably gives birth to a half vampire/half human child.  The birth would have killed her except Edward is able to heal Bella’s injuries by making her into a vampire.  As a vampire, much of the quirks that make her personality accessible to teenage girls — her insecurity and clumsiness — fall away in the face of her superhuman powers.  And she defies the mold by displaying amazing self control and powers, considering she is a newborn vampire.  Meanwhile, Jacob inexplicably imprints on Edward and Bella’s daughter Renesmee.  Never mind she’s not part of the Quileute tribe.  See what I mean?  Finally, another vampire glimpses Renesmee and thinks Carlisle’s coven has done the unthinkable — created a vampire out of a child.  Supposedly it’s a crime to create child vampires because they have vampire strength and no control.  The Volturi — the guardians of the vampires’ secret — descend upon Bella and her family, but she’s not about to give up without a fight.

I believe the best book in the series remains the first, although I liked parts of each of the others, even this one.  However, Breaking Dawn was easy to put down for long periods of time, and it was difficult to pick up again sometimes.  I had eventually read through too much of it to put it down.  Once I invest in a book by a certain number of pages, I tend to plow through.  Overall, I was disappointed with this book, but the series as a whole is a satisfying, fun read.

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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

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First, the good news is that I was able to generate quite a lot of interest in a book club among the teachers at my school.  They graciously allowed me to select our first book, and I chose Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.  It’s a perfect book for book clubs, and I believe I had read as much somewhere, but I’m not sure where.  I was taken by the title.

The book is populated with memorable characters who tell their story through letters.  As this is one of only a handful of epistolary novels I’ve read, I’ll call it a unique storytelling device that works well to reveal the plot.  Much better, in fact, than I think a straight narrative would have because it allows for the otherwise risky device of multiple narrators to work much better.  The novel is the story of a writer named Juliet Ashton, who reminded me of Dorothy Parker.  I’ll be curious to see if my book club members thought of her, too.  By chance, Dawsey Adams, a pig farmer on the Channel Island of Guernsey comes upon one of her books in a used book store, and he enjoys it so much that he writes to her.  Over time, Juliet develops friendships with Dawsey and his friends, who formed the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society during Germany’s occupation of the island during World War II.

Any book focused on a setting ought to leave the reading feeling a desire to visit, and that’s precisely how I felt.  I have never thought even once in my life of going to Guernsey, but just like John Berendt’s characters in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil bring the city of Savannah to life and have caused a cottage industry around tourism related to the book, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn something similar happens to Guernsey; however, increased tourism will likely depend on how popular the book becomes.  My favorite books — the ones I couldn’t put down even if they were not literature with a capial L — were all populated with memorable, realistic characters I wish I could know in real life, and now I have one more book to add to that list.

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Birthday Books 2008

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My parents, in their infinite wisdom regaring gift giving, have made it an annual practice to give me a bookstore gift card for my birthday.  I nearly let the month go by before I shared my purchases this month with you.

This year, my selections were heavy on the Shakespeare, probably due to the fact that I took a class on teaching Shakespeare through the Folger Shakespeare Library in June.

I only hope I get a chance to read it all soon.

I started a reading group at my school.  I was surprised by the reception!  We have a good 15 interested teachers, which at my school is approaching half the faculty!  We are reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.  I need to get started on that one or I won’t be ready for our first meeting.

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Georgia Writers

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Omnivoracious, the Amazon Book Blog, has recently posted about Georgia writers as part of a series on the election and electoral votes.

The post has an impressive list of recommendations (though erroneously names the author of the Uncle Remus tales as Joel Chandler rather than Joel Chandler Harris.

Georgia has a rich literary history, as does much of the South.  When I was in undergrad, I took a course in Southern Literature, and it was a really excellent learning experience.

One or two suggestions I might add some of the following lesser known works to the list in the Omnivoriacious post:

  • Augustus Baldwin Longstreet’s Georgia Scenes: my Southern Lit. professor wrote the introduction to the version I had in college
  • Coleman Barks‘ Gourd Seed (poetry): my UGA poetry professor and a wonderful poet mostly known for translating the poetry of Rumi (in fact, the New Georgia Encyclopedia article recounts him sleeping through his last final exam — that was my class — he wrote a poem about us*
  • Judith Ortiz Cofer’s The Line of the Sun

Check out some of the other Georgia authors in the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

* Here is a link to the poem.  He gave us all a copy of Gourd Seed, and I remember being so scared to ask him to sign it.  I worked up my nerve and brought it to the final exam, and then, well as the poem says, he didn’t come.  So, I mailed it to him with postage and asked that he sign it and send it back.  He did.  And he told me I would be a wonderful teacher with students who would be blessed to have me.

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Free Audio Book: Persuasion

Posted on by Dana
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Through the Internet Archive’s audio offerings, I found LibriVox has a free audio version of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, which some of you might remember I’m currently reading.  The reader is Moira Fogarty.

Visit the site to download the book, or check out this embedded version:

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Criticism of the Twilight Series

Posted on by Dana
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My husband sent me a couple of articles on the Twilight series written by Kellen Rice for PSA:

  • ‘Twilight’ Sucks… And Not In A Good Way
  • Twilight: A Follow-Up and a Promise

The articles are actually well-written critiques of the books, and I agree with many of Rice’s points about both the writing and the characters in the books.  Rice should have expected the teenage girls to freak out over any criticism of the books they love, and I felt her second article — an answer to those critics designed to belittle them for their taste in reading — really could have remained unwritten.  It’s hard not to respond to the critics, but it would have been wiser, in my estimation.  One of the commenters she responded to in her second article insisted (albeit ungrammatically) that the main problem Rice seemed to have is that she forgot it was “This is a BOOK a FICTIONOUS BOOK” and another said, “YOU JUST THINK TOO MUCH JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE !”  Yeah, I was cringing, too, but I think what these two commenters meant to say and couldn’t articulate for who knows what reasons, is that they understand the books are not a role-model for conducting relationships, that they don’t take them seriously, and that they understand they’re literary junk food.  I, too, cringe at Bella’s “I’m-so-not-worthy-of-Edward” attitude.  For reasons my own daughter can’t articulate, she thinks Edward is a jerk, and she is right.  She is a fan of Jacob, who is a bit more realistic despite being a werewolf, and Bella’s relationship with him was slightly more healthy.  I think what these readers were trying to say to Rice is that yes, we understand these stories are not models for our lives.  We like them anyway because they’re like cookies or chocolate.  I don’t think we really need to worry that an entire generation of girls is going to idolize the men in their lives or accept abuse at rates any more alarming than they currently do.  Rice’s comparison to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (also not the most well-written read) are somewhat alarmist and, I believe, baseless.  Harriet Beecher Stowe and Stephenie Meyer wrote for different purposes and audiences entirely.  I can’t fathom the notion that Meyer is hoping to turn a generation of girls into Bella Swan in the same way that Stowe was hoping to examine the evils of slavery.

I had a student in my class who wouldn’t read.  I pointed her to these books, and now she does.  If you need to use cake as a lure, then I say why not let them eat cake?  Will it always lead to Nabokov, Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, and the like?  Certainly not.  But reading nothing at all won’t lead there either, whereas reading a little, even if it light, fun fluff, might lead somewhere.  And if nothing else, that purple prose is good for vocabulary development.  I think what Rice didn’t understand in her criticism is despite the fact that lots of impressionable teens are fans of the books, they fully understand it might not be a good idea to live the books.  After all, despite fears by the Christian right, we don’t have an entire generation of readers thinking they’re wizards and abandoning Christianity for Wicca.

I think Rice needs to let the criticism of her opinion roll off her back and rest assured that she is right about a great deal, but she missed the big picture: sometimes folks like to read junk food books like romance novels, horror, pop fiction, and the like, and it’s okay.  Even if it’s a steady diet, in my opinion.  Because, as the commenter so astutely noted, we understand they are just fictionous books.

Update, 1/9/09: I appreciate some of you do not like the books.  This is not really an “I Hate Twilight” Vent Forum.  I see legitimate reasons not to like the book, but you know what, I enjoyed it anyway, and so do a lot of other folks.  You don’t have to, and that’s really fine.  What I am seeing is people who do not regularly read this blog chiming in on this one topic alone, and keeping up with the comments is proving onerous.  I suggest you all start a forum where you can vent (or join one — I’ve seen one personally, and I would bet there are more).  I am closing comments on this post.  Thanks for visiting.

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