NaNoWriMo Research: Akeelah and the Bee

My pregnant friends tell me that they cry at the drop of a hat at touching movies.  For this reason, I think pregnant ladies should probably not watch Akeelah and the Bee.  So if you are pregnant and don't want to become a sobbing mess, don't watch Akeelah and the Bee. 

It is awesome.  I knew I was going to love it, so it's kind of a real wonder that I managed not to watch it for this long.  It's just great.  Smart female protagonist who has retreated into hiding is drawn out into the spotlight where her talent can shine if she can just be honest with herself and others and get the help she needs from her family, school, and community.  It's a traditional underdog story, so you will likely not be surprised by the overall trajectory.  There were a few surprises for me, and I realized one twist in advance and felt like the pot calling the kettle black (and also stupid for yelling at a movie character).

The extras were enlightening and helped me write off some of the critics more virulent criticisms (the movie was written a long time before the documentary about spelling bees, so it wasn't derivative) and has a charming underdog story of its own. 

Some of the acting is amazing, and it's a feel-good sort of story, so set your expectations low, warm, and fuzzy, and you will probably enjoy it despite its occasional heavy-handedness.  If you know any tweens, enjoy it with them, too.

NaNoWriMo Research: Shug

Shug by Jenny Han: Shug is a tomboy, but she and her friends are getting older, and now she has a crush on one of them, and nothing is going right with her friends, teachers, or family.  POV: 1st person limited, present tense.

(It's pronounced like the first syllable of the word sugar, something I wish they would have pointed out earlier, so I didn't have to unlearn the wrong pronunciation.)  Another Southern girl novel!  Wow, I really had no idea they were so well represented in Tween lit . . .  This is a first novel and somehow shows it.  Too many smoking guns for something this size and a somewhat clunky, out of gas ending but lots of charm and heart and painful honesty not just about crushes but about transitions and family dysfunction and other things handly less delicately than I've usually seen or assumed. Delicate isn't quite the right word.  Sharper?  They're less blunted, somehow.  More honest while still filtered realistically through the character's point of view.  Totally worth the 3 bucks I paid at the used bookstore. 

NaNoWriMo Research: Anne of Green Gables

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery:  Anne starts out the book as an orphan and then finds a home and friends and family at Green Gables.  POV: 3rd person limited, varied, past tense.

Abridged versions of children's books should burn in eternal fire.  I was only supposed to read this up to where Anne was an early teen, but that self-control didn't hold out well at all.  I find it interesting how much Anne's vanity is irritating to me this time around.  I don't know how many times (or if ever) I've read this book, but I didn't remember Anne being such a girly-girl.  I guess I remembered things like walking ridgepoles and assumed this sort of thing was mutually exclusive to wanting frou-frou dresses.  I failed to remember that most of the tomboy activities occured when she was younger.  (Don't worry.  I obviously didn't hold it against her.)  I wanted to immediately go on to Anne of Avonlea, but I couldn't justify it because of the protagonist's age.  Soon, I told myself, after November you can read it.  After a little grumbling, I agreed.

NaNoWriMo Research: Millicent Min: Girl Genius

Millicent Min: Girl Genius by Lisa Yee: Millicent Min is looking forward to her senior year in high school, but first she has to make it through her 11th summer surrounded by the love and misunderstanding of her family and and the hostility and misunderstanding of her peers.  POV: 1st person limited, present tense. 

I've read this book before, so when I was looking for quirky, smart girl voices to dump into my reservoir, I couldn't resist revisiting Millicent.  She's a unique character with a very unique point of view.  She's sometimes annoying, and this book is quite different from the other bright-girl book I read (Emma Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree).  Where Emma's voice was sort of gentle and whimsical and a bit puzzled but very orderly and rational as she dealt with her peers, Millicient is rough and abrasive and socially clumsy because she hasn't had much experience dealing with her age-mates or her peers because of all the grade-skipping she's done.  I actually read the hilarious Stanford Wong Flunks Big Time first and looked this book up later because it covered the same time period from a totally different point of view, and I like it when authors try this (especially when it really works).  Good stuff.

NaNoWriMo Research: Ten, Eleven, and Twelve

Ten, Eleven, and Twelve (first half) by Lauren Myracle:  Winnie is a regular kid growing up at her own pace one year at a time and learning how to deal with changing friends, changing family members, changing priorities, and her changing body and mind.  She just wishes everything could stay the same.  POV: 1st person limited, past tense.

Each book captures one year of her life with a chapter per month.  Each chapter mainly covers an event that happened during the month, not everything that happened during the month.  The books are mostly light, and Winnie is a fun main character.  She's a late bloomer, and this is handled pretty well.  Her mother is amazing, her older sister is well-drawn, and her puzzlement about the choices her friends are making is really genuine.  Sometimes I feel like maybe the narrator is a bit too old for her years, but, frankly, I don't really care.  (The popularity of these books indicates that most tween girls don't care either.)

NaNoWriMo Research: Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree

Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree by Lauren Tarshis:  Emma-Jean is in seventh grade, and she is very bright and thinks about the world very differently from her classmates.  She keeps her distance and observes their bizarre behaviors benevolently until the pain of a classmate draws her in, and she starts trying to help others with some interesting results.  This one is told in alternating POV between Emma-Jean and Colleen (the classmate she first tries to help).  POV: 3rd person, quasi-limited, alternating.

I adored Emma-Jean.  The author did a great job of making her point of view read completely differently from really anything I've read before.  I wasn't as big of a fan of Colleen.  I'm still not entirely sure she was needed as a POV character, but I think that may be because I loved Emma-Jean's familiar head so much.  Ah, nostalgia.  Colleen's POV did help set off the uniqueness of Emma-Jean's as well, and I'm sure to the average reader, she was needed as an accessible entry point and someone to relate to.  And there were some twists that would have been hard to show clearly if there were only one narrator.  Overall the characters are quirky and well-made, the twists are pretty unexpected, and the adults are a good mix of nice and nasty and mostly realistic, as are the kids.  Loved it.  Thanks to Joseph for this recommendation.

NaNoWriMo Research: Caddie Woodlawn

Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink: Caddie's 11 and lives in the mostly-wilderness of Wisconsin where she and her older and younger brother get into trouble a lot and grow up a little, too.  POV: 3rd person quasi-limited, past tense.

"In 1864 Caddie Woodlawn was eleven, and as wild a little tomboy as ever ran the woods of western Wisconsin.  She was the despair of her mother and of her elder sister Clara."  I sort of wish I could have offered this book to my mother at age 11 to show her how much worse it could have been.  Alas, the cream pie of justice flies only one way.  This won the Newbery, which usually indicates literature, but the dog doesn't die.  I do like the father much better than the mother, which tends to be a mark of literature. I'm not sure if this one should be classed as literature or fun, but I enjoyed the heck out of it.  Lots of adventures and some lessons learned without feeling the least bit preachy.  Thanks to Deborah for the suggestion. : )

NaNoWriMo Research: Skinnybones

Skinnybones by Barbara Park (the "updated" version from 1997): tiny class clown Alex Frankovitch tries to talk his way out of trouble, but he usually ends up doing just the opposite, like the time he ends up in a pitcher's duel with the state little league star even though he describes his baseball prowess as follows: "I'm not exactly what you'd call a real good athlete.  Actually, I'm not even real okay.  Basically, what I'm trying to say here is, I stink."  POV: 1st person, past tense.

Well, I didn't just want to read serious literature that requires tissues or stuff about girls getting their periods and crushes on boys, so I threw in some other fun things.  This is one of said fun things.  This book was updated after 15 years to make it more accessible to the kids who kept writing the author to ask who certain super-famous-in-the-early-80s people were, which I find amusing because there were several names I didn't recognize from the update.  (The context made it clear enough who the people were supposed to be, though, so I didn't think the book lost anything.)  This is a short book that moves as fast as the main character's motor mouth and has a sort of surprise ending that I found pretty funny.

NaNoWriMo Research: The Agony of Alice

The Agony of Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor: Alice doesn't have a mom, and she is looking for a role model.  Too bad she gets the frumpy teacher instead of the beautiful, young, and glamorous one.  It's kind of hard becoming a woman when you, your college-aged brother, and your father don't know exactly how it's supposed to work.  POV: 1st person, past tense.

These sorts of things (getting the teacher no one wants and being a total jerk about it, accidentally kicking your favorite teacher in the head while dressed as the rear end of a horse, etc.) are always funny in retrospect, but they are The End of the World when you are living them.  I feel like the author really captured that while still keeping this funny.  It's a fine line between making fun of and sympathizing with while being a step removed/older/wiser.  The Catholic saint card bit was a hoot.  I like that Alice's dad is bumbling but good-hearted and that he is allowed to have a work life that is part of Alice's life.  I like that her brother isn't a monster despite the age difference, that she has some good extended family, and that the lessons she learns about not judging by appearances aren't too heavy-handed.  The ending is really sweet, too.

NaNoWriMo Research: Sparrow Road

Sparrow Road by Sheila O'Connor: A literary fiction book set maybe late in the 70s/early in the 80s where a 12-year-old girl is forced to spend her summer at a remote art colony in the country by her mom who may have other motives than just ruining her citified daughter's summer.  POV: 1st person limited, past tense.

This book has a pretty unique setup, and the result is that it's a children's book where the protagonist/narrator never really interacts with any other kids.  To me at age 12, this would have been pretty awesome, especially being out in the country and with all these interesting artists.  The author, Sheila O'Connor, recommends against this kind of setup because publishers don't like it and don't think it will sell.  She's a also a writing teacher in college, graduate school, and elementary and secondary schools, though, so she probably convinced the publisher that enough libraries and teachers would buy this book that they could make up their costs. 

The girl in it starts writing stories and learns quite a bit about knowing and expressing herself, and sometimes kids need to read about someone doing something as an example before they can do it themselves.  The mysterious back story is also interesting and a bit wrenching.  I like stories where

1. not all the grownups are portrayed as stupid and out of touch
2. some adults are just kind of mean and hard to like
3. grownups screw up and are given the chance to prove themselves again and do so, but the ongoing struggle isn't all sweet, saccharine, and cut & dried
4. some adults are great and amazing despite not feeling comfortable around kids, but the kids learn about it and start realizing the value of looking beneath the exterior gruffness of people for their wonderful hearts

an excellent explanation of memoir

"And it’s because there is this misconception about memoir: you write because you’ve had some kind of unusual life. You write a memoir because you are Somebody or because Some Big Thing has happened to you, and this is how we end up with tomes by the Kardashians and…Snookie.

"But the truth – the thing I love about the genre – is that in its purest form, it’s exactly the opposite. I tell my story not because it is particularly thrilling, but because if I tell it right, it will tap into your story, into the collective story that we all live in.

"The whole truth is in the details, the landscapes, the parts of myself that hide in the shadows of my memory. To dig for these pieces is an act of faith all its own; to assemble them into art, into story, is an act of healing."

-Addie Zierman

I love the story Addie blogs about, too.  A poem about it figured very prominently in my thesis and still does in my life.  If only I could touch His robe's hem and be rid of this (comparably minor) pain and finally start getting solid sleep again . . .

On antagonists who just want to be understood

I was reading a graphic novel, and I had an epiphany about why the Napkin Epic is stalled: I am trying too hard to make the antagonist not a completely bad guy.  I am making too many excuses for his (completely rational but somewhat harsh) behavior.  I want him to be understood, to not be a villain.  I am killing my story where it stands because I want people to know the antagonist's motives and his suffering and all that good stuff.

Thing is, with the narrative structured the way it is, that really can't happen, and the answer is not to restructure the story but to let him stay more in the background where he won't be talked about and explained to death.  He needs to be a bit mysterious and unknowable.  It's okay, yea, necessary for him to be so.  This means that people won't necessarily understand him and know everything about him that I do, and this is really okay.

Since he will never be physically present until near the end, his dialogue can't do much to reveal his character, and having other people give speeches about him is also not the answer.  I will have to work harder to reveal his character in bits and pieces the reader can pick up from other people and from his actions as they affect the characters in the story.

Drat.  It's way easier to just talk him to death.

In which I rhapsodize about Megan Whalen Turner's Attolia books

Apparently, I waited the perfect amount of time to reread the Eugenides books by Megan Whalen Turner because, after four years, I remembered pretty close to nothing about them except that they were awesome.  It really was like reading them again for the first time, and they were incredible.  What a treat after four years!

What I remembered

• The Thief: Gen goes to steal a legendary gem.
• The Queen of Attolia: The Queen of Attolia cuts off Gen's hand, and he comes to terms with it eventually and then proposes to her.  I thought that was the whole book, but it's only about half of it.  I can't tell you how surprised I was about how much stuff happened after that . . .
• The King of Attolia: Gen has become the King of Attolia, and he eventually wins over the Queen's supporters in his own special way . . .

Seriously, that's all I remembered.  I reread all of them in preparation for reading A Conspiracy of Kings, and it was good that I did because I didn't remember anything about the main character Sophos, and the fourth book wouldn't have been nearly as good without knowledge of him and his relationship to the various rulers in question. 

Oh, it was so wonderful.  And awful too, because those kinds of things shouldn't happen to anyone, and some of those choices were just awful.  I'm so glad I'm not royalty or involved in politics and high-level decision making.  The responsibility is terrible.  I had such mixed emotions watching them grow into their roles because of what they had to sacrifice.

Beautifully crafted Attolia books

One of the things I've liked about this "series" is the craft that goes into each book's point of view, meaning that it doesn't exactly feel like most series that turn on a single, charismatic character to lead the show.  Book one unreliable narrator Gen gives a masterful performance in first person limited.  Book two includes more points of view, but Gen is still central.  The third book is told through an entirely new (and initially completely hostile) character, and the only glimpses we get of Gen are from this new narrator's less than fair observations.  The fourth book is third person limited Sophos (and it is on this POV that the plot turns, once again).  I just admire how perfectly the POV matches the story.  Beautiful! 

And the world-building! Oh, the politics, the tragedy, the relentless character-development, the slow-burn tension, and the incredible excitement!

And then there's Gen

I adore Gen.  The fact that he can be so interesting even when he's really a peripheral character speaks of just how wonderful a creation he is.  I hope he will forgive me for forgetting all the awesome parts of the first three books.  They were just as amazing this time around.

I would love another book (I feel like there might be one more here), and I am totally content to wait another 4 years for it.  By then, I'll have forgotten everything, and I'll get to read it all again for the first time.  I can't wait to meet Gen and company once more.

Loving the fallen sparrow

We're back from the dead and ready to roll.  Thank you for your concern about my dead computer and lack of internet access for, er, too long.  My lack of access to the net (and several delayed and canceled flights) meant I read a great book lately, and I wanted to tell you about it while I am still gobsmacked.

READER GEEKING OUT

I loved the characters.  I loved the plot.  I loved this book.  It made me cry so much that my nose peeled from tissue over-use, and I had to do all kinds of wonky things to prevent my awkwardly peeling nose from being what people at my new job remembered about me henceforth. 

This is a difficult and beautiful story.  The characters are lovable and believable and painfully awkward and broken in so many different, normal ways, and that's why this book may break your heart.  It's challenging and moving and heartbreaking and harrowing and full of fragile happiness and despair and death and sadness and tragedy and seeking and surviving and not-finding and truth and grace and faith and hope and love in so many forms.  I can't give you details because it must be read to be understood. 


WRITER GEEKING OUT

No plot summary could possibly do it justice.  Such summaries only serve to cheapen it (as I have proven by trying and getting less-than enthusiastic reactions.  This is a tight book, a finely crafted piece of speculative fiction no "literary fiction" reader should feel ashamed of reading.  World and plot and characters are melded to each other.

The parallel narrative structure is pulled off wonderfully.  I've read other books that try to be this good at a parallel story, and I ended up feeling jerked back and forth, always in the middle of things, as if constantly being in media res is a good thing.  No thank you; I don't appreciate the whiplash.  There is no whiplash here, just elegant execution.

Great balance of new information, great use of point of view to control what is withheld and what we learn and what the characters learn without making the readers feel like the writer is toying with or torturing them.  It's all remarkably organic.  We are on a journey with the main character in the present, and we are reliving the past with him.  We are restricted, but it doesn't feel manipulative because it rises from the story itself and the way it is being told.

It deals extensively with ideas and themes I wish more people would think about (good and evil, maturity, change, celibacy, society, community, mistakes, hindsight, judgment [without facts or love], respect, kindness, tenderness, love and friendship, dignity, fate, good intentions, God, sin, nature, and some other things).  This is a smart book with smart characters, and you will think whether you plan to or not.  Also, regard the calm foreshadowing with awe and dread.

The paperback version I read had some extras at the end, including author insights, and I was blown away by Russell's comments about how we look back at the past and judge harshly, as if we are better people now who would not do these things, as if we are not still the same human beings who make the same mistakes ad nauseum, as if we have the right to judge based on our imperfect information and the twisting of facts and historical records.  If you have any smugness in you, it might be beaten out of you by the end.  Read the book before you read the extra bits because it's kind of like being punched (in a thought-provoking way) if you read it in the context of the whole story.

AND FINALLY

One of the most amazing things about the book is that when you come to the end of the story, having been pummelled and rung out and smashed, somehow there is hope.  This is a miracle.  Don't miss it.

If you've read The Sparrow, feel free to gush or just talk about it or recommend other books people might like.  It's vaguely similar to but clearly better than Out of the Silent Planet and is somewhat redolent of Madeleine L'Engle to me (criticisms I've seen of this work and some of her thinkier works are very similar, and I couldn't help but connect this with The Arm of the Starfish for the sparrow quotes alone).

I'm sorry I waited so long to read this for the first time.  Feel free not to repeat my mistake.

Rules for writers?

Lovely and inspiring article in two parts.  Lots of famous author people were asked for 10 rules for writing fiction, and they responded. 

I have to say I really do appreciate Leonard's answers.  I like it when someone says, "Don't do this unless you can do it successfully like this person in this book."  In fact, I love it when people give specific examples like these.  It's like a writing gold mine!

Books I'm going to love this April: A Conspiracy of Kings

The next Megan Whalen Turner book is coming out, and I am more than a tad excited to go back into the highly charged world that began with The Thief all those years ago, took me through the ringer with Queen of Attolia, and totally won my heart with the politics and subtle romance of King of Attolia.

I didn't know if there was going to be a next book after King came out.  In fact, I only started reading the series when King came out because I thought it was the last book in a trilogy.  Then it ended, and I needed to know more, but I heard nothing for years, and I began to despair that no sequel would come.  No new adventures in this world I love: too sad to contemplate.

And then, a title.  No data on whether it was a new series or part of the old one.  For months, I agonized.  And then, yes!  A kid who was an aristocrat who never wanted to rule has to choose between his somewhat comfortable life as a slave and a chance to save the people he loves (or die trying).

Turner uses a different point-of-view for each of her books, and I love how well she pulls it off.  The point-of-view she picks is the organic one, the only one that will make the story work, the one that will tell you most about the characters you love from a new perspective.  It makes me tingly.  :)

I'm not sure if my favorite characters will really be making much of an appearance in this book, but, to be honest, I don't care because Megan Whalen Turner wrote it.  I will most likely love it.  She will, no doubt, surprise me time and time again.  And, as an added bonus, I will have to go back through the whole series since one of the main characters from this book was a side-character in the first, and I totally don't remember him at all.

At least I know to bring extra tissues for Queen.  Man, that was rough.  And cathartic.

The wait will (probably) be over eventually, and it will be worth it (I dearly wish)

In the saga for the long-awaited book II by Patrick Rothfuss, progress has been made.  I found this update post interesting for the light it sheds on the publishing process and its illuminating look at how ridiculously large the manuscript he's juggling with is. 

Also, cute baby pictures to illustrate massiveness of manuscript = synergistic awesome.

Rothfuss is a meticulous craftsman and an engaging world-builder, and he's writing an epic.  Don't wait to read the first one until the second one is done (or the third and final one) because you (or Rothfuss) might die first, and The Name of the Wind is worth reading right now for its musical prose and breathtakingly sprawling, humorously unexpected, perfectly-crafted story. 

Seriously, go get it now.  I can wait.  Talk to me after you've read it.  Then we can wait together in agony for The Wise Man's Fear.  The more, the merrier, heh heh hehhhhh.