Authors I'm Obsessing Over

So lately I've been obsessed with young adult literature ever since I took a YA lit class at BYU. There are a couple authors that have impressed me enough to read more of their works, even if there may or may not be a sequel to the book I read. With this new blog category I wanted to kind of spotlight the author and write a little something about them, why I like them so much, and what I've read by them. I hope you enjoy!

Laurie Halse Anderson

Laurie Halse Anderson

Website: http://www.writerlady.com/
Books Written:Twisted, Prom, Catalyst, Speak, Fever 1793, Chains, Wintergirls - she also has some picture books and juvenile books

Notable Awards:
For her book Speak: The Printz Honor Award (which is the teen lit Newbery award), National Book Award Finalist, Edgar Allen Poe Award, LA Times Book Prize, as well as many others
For Fever, 1793: American Library Association (ALA) Best Book for Young Adults selection, and a Junior Library Guild selection.
For Chains: National Book Award Finalist, Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction
Books Adapted into Films: Speak, starring Kristen Stewart- the same girl who plays Bella in Twilight
Her Niche: She usually writes about high school and the teenagers who end up being left out of a stereotypical category. She does an excellent job of capturing the essence of a teenager's life and the somewhat painful and awkward experiences that come with high school. In between times of writing teenage high school lit, she's written a variety of historical fiction that is almost as popular as her teen lit.
Why I like her (a lot) and why I think you should too: My first encounter with Laurie was her award winning novel Speak. This book is on my all-time favorites list and I have re-read it countless times because it's just that good. Laurie has a way of channeling and expressing the thoughts of teens during the most awkward and, one could argue, "defining" points of their lives. Her stories have a way of bringing the characters to life; you can't help letting your thoughts drift to the situations and people she's created once you're finished reading her novels. Upon reading her books for the first time, you can see that she writes more than just about a girl or a boy in high school- she sells you their story and their pain. I don't think I've "met" any other YA author quite like her.
Which of her books I've read: Speak, Twisted, Catalyst, and Wintergirls. On a scale of 1 to 5 (5 being "This book was sent by the gods for us mere mortals to read" and 1 being "This book wouldn't even make good toilet paper") here's how they rate:
Speak- 5
Twisted- 4
Catalyst- 2.5
Wintergirls- 3

The Princess of the Midnight Ball

Jessica Day George has done it again with another fairytale classic in The Princess of the Midnight Ball. Not unlike Sun and Moon Ice and Snow in the reconstruction of a classic fairytale, Midnight Ball does the same yet tells the story from the point of view from both protagonists (male and female). This is a retelling of the twelve dancing princesses with a twist that I've never read of before.

Rose is the oldest of 12 daughters (all have names of flowers) and the princess of a land that seems to be based loosely on Germany. Each night she and her sisters are forced to dance for King Under Stone to fulfill the contract that their mother made with him prior to her death. The girls are forced to dance all hours of the night, every night, driving them and their father insane. The other protagonist, Galen, is a soldier returning from war. He tries to transition from the life of a soldier to that of working as a gardener in the King's garden, and ends up falling for Rose. At this time the King has posted a reward for the prize of one of his daughter's hands, and his kingdom, to figure out the riddle of where his daughters go each night, and how they escape when he locks them into their bedroom. I won't give the rest away, but I'm sure you can predict the ending (it is a fairytale after all).

Overall I really enjoyed this book, though it was odd for the narrator to switch from Rose to Galen and back again. I think the part that really freaked me out was reading how Galen felt about Rose (don't worry- it's just puppy love). Just hearing romantic thoughts from a male perspective was just a little freaky and unusual seeing as I've never been inside the head of a boy. I did like this book a lot though but just not as much as the book I've read by her, Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow.

Random History Facts...

...that have contributed to the making of literature as we know it. I'm in a Medieval literature class as well as an Early British Literary History class (there's a lot of overlap) with the same professor- who is quite hilarious and keeps me in raptures every time she begins "lecturing". I thought it would be interesting to share my wealth of knowledge seeing as I had no idea that any of these things happened. Who knew there were so many interesting things about history? (I did- as well as many professors at BYU).

Anne Bradstreet is called the mother of American poetry, though she personally never published any of her poetry- her brother in law took her writing and published it in The Tenth Muse without her knowledge

Thomas Paine helped sell the American Revolution to the people with his pamphlets.

John Adams said there were 3 reasons why he shouldn't write the Declaration of Independence but Thomas Jefferson should: Jefferson was a better writer than himself, people didn't like him as much so they wouldn't take him as seriously, and he thought it should be written by a Virginian.

Herman Melville dedicated The White Whale or Moby Dick to fellow author Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The word "hell" and "jello" are etymologically connected. In the North (as in Scandinavia), hell is a place of freezing, not burning- it's so cold you can't move.

There is a different Christ for the Anglo-Saxon's than the suffering Mediterranean Christ.

• Anglo-Saxon Christ- heroic/king-like, wants to get the job done right now, fully clothed, and "takes it like a man"
• Mediterranean Christ- sorrowful, pitiful, emaciated, naked

The uncle-nephew relationship was more important than the father-son relationship in Anglo-Saxon times.

Richard the Lionheart was king of England for 14 years and only spent 10 months of it in England.

The word "gang" comes from the Old English word "gangr"- means a person who owns nothing; has no ownership or inheritance, which ultimately results in anger and destruction.

A monster isn't just a destructive force of nature- monsters are scary because they have consciousness that they are a monster.

During the Middle Ages, people bathed probably more than twice a week.

If you got the plague you died within 2 days.

It was the least nourished, and those that were not well exercised that were the ones who died of the plague.

Two good effects of the plague- it raised the language and status of the common people.

When people died of the plague their clothing was tossed into the street; popularity of rag paper came forth because it was so cheap. Half of Chaucer's writings were on rag paper.

Robin Hood is most likely a descendant of the Green Man/Pan.

The Dark Ages changed the climate of England from vineyards to frozen wasteland.

"Fitz" means "bastard son of..." whereas "O' " and "Mac" mean "son of..."
Examples of these are Fitzpatrick- means the illegitimate son of Patrick
MacDonald- means son of Donald
O'Brien- means son of Brien

York in England claims to be the most haunted city in the world- they have tons of ghost tours from the plague.

Jack 'o' lanters are the oldest part of Halloween- Halloween was part of Celtic samhain which is the harvest festival celebrating the death of the crops. Tricksters would steal a chicken or some farm animal if you didn't have lanterns out because you weren't paying your respects to death and how he helps bring life.

A rhyme to help you remember how Henry VIII's 6 wives died/ended up, here's a poem that the schoolchildren of England recite:

• "Divorce, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived."
• In order his wives would be: Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Kathryn Howard, and Katherine Parr

Henry hired the best French swordsman to cut off Anne's head. (so kind of him)

I hope you enjoyed learning these random facts as much as I did. I'm sure I'll post another fact blog once classes finish.

If I hadn't read Girl with a Pearl Earring when I did, I may have turned out to be a non-thinking sop.

So just a little info for this post, I had to write a personal essay for my English 251 class on a literary experience I've had. This was the first thing that came to mind, so I thought I'd write about it and change people's opinions of what could be seen as a literary experience. Here goes:

My rebellion stage never really kicked in until about my sophomore year in high school. It took me a little longer than other delinquents my age to say no to my mom's face (though I had been doing it in my head for a lot longer). I was too naive to realize that rebellion has a sweet sense of freedom that can't be obtained by following the rules. Reading had always been an outlet for me and helped me cope with the demands of my mom, but I never thought that it could aid in my fight for freedom from her tyrannical reign.
As I began to realize her expectations were ridiculous and much more rigorous than what my friends were going through, my will to become a good child began to break down quickly. With this new resolve to become an individual and no longer stay a sheep, my love of reading grew. Instead of reading after school or at breaks, I slowly began to read during class and lunch, and sometimes I would completely ignore my friends and retreat to the school library if I didn't want to sit and chat. The only problem with my school's library was that each book was considered outdated in 1970. I think there were only 2 books that I ended up checking out that I found enjoyable- one of them being Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier. No book has ever aided my fight for rebellion more so than Chevalier's at that time.
I remember bringing it home and going straight to my room where I can vaguely recall reading until my mom came home, skipping out on practicing my piano (which I never did anyway, so why start now?), completely ignoring my mom's request for me to get in the kitchen to help her make dinner, again ignoring her, and even trying so much as to lock her out of my room but realizing that she would bother me more later if I didn't do what she asked right then. Up until that point I had never felt such a need to defy the rules and fall just short of saying "screw you" to her. It felt good. Even though I finally gave in and did what she wanted, I couldn't help smiling to myself with satisfaction that this was a part of my life that I could control and enjoy- not only because I had found a book that I wanted to never put down, but because I was making my mom so angry and blue in the face with rage because I had realized that I didn't have to conform.
That night, after she went to bed, I got my flashlight out and began where I had left off. Chevalier's potent imagery, deep characters, and moving storyline left me enraptured and felt as if I was being sucked into the story with each page that I turned. I have pretty slow reading skills mainly because I like to savor everything that I read and pick up on details that I would otherwise miss, so when I got to the end of the book I knew that several hours had passed. Yes. It was now 3:30. And I had seminary at 6:20. Which meant I had to be up in 2 hours or so. Great. But I felt accomplished. This was the first time that I had ever stayed up late into the night to finish reading a book because I couldn't put it down. With that one night I started a chain reaction of rebellious events that were soon to follow. My mindset has changed forever.
Today, I still stay up late into the night if I've found a book that captures me so much that I feel it's actually happening. I still continue to ignore my mom when I go back home for the holidays if I'm reading (and usually I am because it's the only way I can keep my sanity around my family), and I still feel a little flicker of rebellion each time I purposely tell her no and/or ignore her. The only thing that's changed is that I set my alarm clock before I start reading before bed so that I don't have to experience the guilt that comes with finding out what time it is. Reading Girl with a Pearl Earring saved my sanity.

Offical Reading List- Fall Semester 2008

So I did it. I read 43 books this semester. Yeah. And I wonder why my grades suffered this semester (it's my worst semester academically yet). Though in my defense I did have to read at least 30 books for my YA lit class, so technically it was just this class that screwed me. I did find a couple books out there that I love and some that were not worth my time and should not have even been published, but I'm glad I'm done "speed reading". My quota on average for the semester was roughly 2 books per week. Crazy. Now I just have to explain to my parents who are paying for my schooling why I'm now going to have less than a 3.0. Joy.

The Inacuracy of Sparknotes

This is part of a passage that I found on Sparknotes.com about The Crucible when it is talking about the different themes and ideas that are present in its pages. However, I seem to disagree with one of the viewpoints that they have on empowerment when it comes to Abigail Williams. It continues as thus:

Empowerment

The witch trials empower several characters in the play who are previously marginalized in Salem society. In addition to being thus restricted, Abigail is also slave to John Proctor's sexual whims–he strips away her innocence when he commits adultery with her, and he arouses her spiteful jealousy when he terminates their affair. Because the Puritans' greatest fear is the defiance of God, Abigail's accusations of witchcraft and devil-worship immediately command the attention of the court. By aligning herself, in the eyes of others, with God's will, she gains power over society, as do the other girls in her pack, and her word becomes virtually unassailable, as do theirs.

No, I'm pretty sure that Abigail is practically the spawn of Satan, and it wasn't John Proctor that seduced Abigail, it was Abigail who seduced Proctor. I'm sorry but the way the Abigail's character is written in the play, she is too much a manipulative witch (no pun intended, though I mean to replace a different letter) to have Proctor being the one to take away her virginity and "innocence". If Abigail Williams is innocent when it comes to sex then I'm a $50 whore (and I've been told by a co-worker that this is the price paid for the cheapest bottom-of-the-barrel "lady of the night").

Similarly I've seen Sparknotes say that Hamlet has an Oedipus complex. Excuse me, what?

The motif of incest runs throughout the play and is frequently alluded to by Hamlet and the ghost, most obviously in conversations about Gertrude and Claudius, the former brother-in-law and sister-in-law who are now married. A subtle motif of incestuous desire can be found in the relationship of Laertes and Ophelia, as Laertes sometimes speaks to his sister in suggestively sexual terms and, at her funeral, leaps into her grave to hold her in his arms. However, the strongest overtones of incestuous desire arise in the relationship of Hamlet and Gertrude, in Hamlet’s fixation on Gertrude’s sex life with Claudius and his preoccupation with her in general.

Anyone who has read Hamlet know that this accusation of an incestous relationship between Hamlet and Gertrude is ridiculous- Hamlet is concerned that his mom has completely forgotten the memory of his father a month after he died and that she married his uncle because she wants to stay in power and keep her cushy life- I'm pretty sure he's not concerned that she's now having sex with his uncle now step-dad and not him. Let's be honest here. That's a little creepy. And I'm sure that Shakespeare couldn't and didn't write creepy stuff like that. He left thatkind of writing for the Marquis de Sade to tackle a couple hundred years later.

What I want to know is what is Sparknotes' fascination with sex and getting the story line wrong? Do they insist on getting the entire plot of a story wrong so that when an inscestous relationship actually shapes the plot of a story, they leave it out? Like saying that Oedipus actually didn't have sex with his mom and that the former phrase an "Oedipus Complex" is nothing more than a lie? The thing that I find stupid is that professors and those who believe they are God's gift to the world when it comes to interpreting literature read much more into what was written and try to fill their meaningless jobs with things to do such as finding new meanings for why Hamlet is upset that his mom is now shacking up with his uncle a month after his father's death, or calling John Proctor a pedafile. Thanks for letting me make my own interpretations of what the great authors have written, and ruining the literature experience for me.