Dana Swier Huff's Blog, page 57

Top Ten Books I Hope Santa Brings

Steve Jobs  by Walter Isaacson
Divergent  by Veronica Roth
Persuasion: An Annotated Edition  by Jane Austen, ed. by Robert Morrison
The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers  by Christopher E. Vogler
Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women  by Elizabeth Kerri Mahon
A Thousand Times More Fair: What Shakespeare's Plays Teach Us About Justice  by Kenji Yoshino
Paris: The Secret History  by Andrew Hussey
For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed History  by Sarah Rose
Rules of Civility  by Amor Towles
The True History of Chocolate  by Michael D. Coe

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Post © Dana Huff

Top Ten Books I Hope Santa Brings

Harry Potter Reading Challenge 2012

I found another challenge I want to participate in this year. I haven't re-read the Harry Potter series in a while. I always enjoy it when I do, and I always get something new out of it, too. I think I'd like to try it again. Penelope at The Reading Fever is hosting what looks like a fun Harry Potter Reading Challenge.

In order to participate, you just need to read or re-read the Harry Potter series between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2012.

Anyone want to join me?

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Post © Dana Huff

Harry Potter Reading Challenge 2012

Catalyst, Laurie Halse Anderson

Laurie Halse Anderson's novel Catalyst is the story of Kate Malone, perfect student, driven athlete, minister's daughter, and so dead-set on going to MIT that she hasn't applied anywhere else. Since her mother's death, Kate has held everything together through tightly-controlled organization. She makes she her brother has his asthma medication and that her family's clothes are cleaned and pressed. With all this pressure, something has to give. Kate's life starts spinning out of control when her neighbors, the Litches, lose their home to a fire and move in with her family while they rebuild their home, which means Teri Litch—the angry bully who used to pick on Kate—is now sharing her room.

Kate was not as likeable a heroine as some other characters Laurie Halse Anderson has written. Sometimes people need to be shown that their priorities are out of whack in a really harsh way, and to Kate's credit, she gets it by the end of the book. She's fairly typical of a lot of overachievers—driven, way too focused, wound so tight it's a question of when not if they're going to pop. I didn't enjoy this book as much as Anderson's other books, but Melinda Sordino of Speak has a cameo appearance; this novel takes place in the same school and community as Speak. The characters were interesting: they were layered and more complex than you usually see in YA (but typical of Laurie Halse Anderson, who is a brilliant writer). I just didn't like them very much, and it was hard to root for them. Still, I would probably read anything that Laurie Halse Anderson wrote.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Full disclosure: I checked this book out of my school library.

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Catalyst, Laurie Halse Anderson

WWW Wednesdays: December 14, 2011

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you'll read next?

I am currently reading Laurie Halse Anderson's YA novel Catalyst. It was, incidentally, mentioned in the most recent book I read by Sherman Alexie: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. It's one of Junior Spirit's favorite books. I also recently read Looking for Alaska by John Green. You can read my reviews of these books here and here. John Green will be in Atlanta next month, and I think my daughter wants to go see him. I have also finished Stephen King's novel Misery since I last checked in with WWW Wednesdays. My review of that book can be found here.

I am not totally sure what I'll read next. It'll be something from this list. I have a lot of those books already, many on my Kindle, and it seems about time for a Kindle book.

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Post © Dana Huff

WWW Wednesdays: December 14, 2011

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie's young adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is the story of Arnold Spirit, Jr., better known as Junior, a fourteen-year-old Spokane Indian living on the reservation and dreaming of a better life. When he begins high school on the reservation and opens his geometry book only discover his mother's name written the book (it had been her geometry book, too), he becomes enraged at the poverty surrounding him and the way he must live. His teacher suggests he go to the white high school in a nearby small town off the reservation so that he will have a shot at a better education. He decides to do it. He must win the acceptance of his white peers at the high school and contend with his friends' belief that he is a traitor for going to school off the Rez.

Neil Gaiman's blurb on the back cover reads:

Excellent in every way, poignant and really funny and heartwarming and honest and wise and smart… I have no doubt that in a year or so it'll both be winning awards and being banned.

In fact, it was recently removed from the library shelves and curriculum of a local Georgia system (for "study," ostensibly). Whether the book will survive the challenge or not is up in the air, but people who pick out a couple of things to be angry about in these books without looking at the context make me so angry. One of the complaints the book received in this recent challenge is that it's "anti-Christian." Junior is mad at God after suffering the deaths of two people close to him in senseless accidents within a matter of weeks. Many people going through the grieving process are mad at God for a while. And they may say things that indicate that anger. If the worst thing a kid in Junior's shoes does is imply Jesus once passed gas, then I would like to think we could all have a sense of humor and admit it's true. All human beings do that, right?

At any rate, I think this book is great for students in middle and high school to read. It's funny, even when Junior is describing the tragedy of living with an alcoholic father or losing his best friend, he manages to make you smile and even laugh out loud. More than that, however, the book is perfect for examining the big question of identity that teens grapple with. Junior has more trouble than most teens with this question because he knows he can't reach his goals on the reservation, but he also feels like he's betraying the people he loves by going. Junior's cartoons, sprinkled throughout the text, illustrate his complicated feelings and add to the story.

I have to say I agree completely with Neil Gaiman's assessment of the book.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Full disclosure: I checked this book out of my school library.

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The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie

Looking for Alaska, John Green

John Green's young adult novel Looking for Alaska is the story of Miles "Pudge" Halter, who goes to boarding school in Alabama—at his request—after telling his parents he thinks going there will help him seek "the Great Perhaps," in the last words of François Rabelais. Miles collects the last words of famous people. Once at Culver Creek School, he quickly makes friends with his roommate, Chip Martin, better known as "The Colonel," and Alaska Young, a free-spirited, intelligent, but troubled girl in his grade at school. He quickly develops a crush on Alaska. Alaska and the Colonel get Pudge into all kinds of trouble with their pranks, smoking, drinking, and sneaking around, but they also offer him a kind of acceptance he hasn't experienced before. This next bit is a little spoilery, so I'm going to put it after the cut…

If you're still reading, then that means you either don't mind spoilers or you've read the book.

Alaska dies in a car accident about halfway through the book. She leaves, drunk and crying hysterically in the middle of the night, and crashes into a police cruiser on I-65. Her friends investigate her death, trying to come to terms with the loss of their friend and to discover whether or not her death was a suicide.

In reading this book, I was struck by the fact that it is a fairly accurate portrayal of how teenagers grieve when they lose a friend their age. I remember attending the funeral of a sixteen-year-old boy many years ago, and the outpouring of grief from teenagers who didn't know the boy and hadn't been a great friend of his during life struck me. I didn't necessarily think it was fake. I think they really felt the grief they were expressing. But from the perspective of an adult, it seemed out of place. Pudge only knows Alaska for about four months prior to her death, and while they were friends, and he did have a crush on her, his devastation at her death is the kind of devastation only a teenager can feel after losing one of his own. That isn't to say it isn't real devastation. It's just not the same as the way I might feel losing a friend who was around the same age as I am, especially one I had known four months. There is an intensity to adolescence that maddening for adults who are too far removed from the drama of being a teenager, but it's not any less real for that, and John Green captures that intensity very well.

This book probably has more appeal for its intended audience. I admit to not liking Alaska very much, and I kept wanting to say to Pudge that he needed to get a grip—he'd known the girl for four months—but like I said, things like that are different when you're a teenager than they are when you're 40. It was a good read, and I would highly recommend it to teenagers, but perhaps not fans of YA who are a little more A and a little too far removed from Y.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Full disclosure: I checked this book out of my school library.

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Post © Dana Huff

Looking for Alaska, John Green

Musing Mondays: December 12, 2011

This week's musing [borrowed from an old BTT post] asks…

I once knew a man who read about WWII. He read everything he could get his hands on on the subject. He had a whole wall of books that were all about WWII. It amazed me. How could he continue to find one subject that engrossing? My mother, on the other hand, loves to read best sellers. I've known other people who read science fiction to the exclusion of everything else; for others it was philosophy, self-help, or history.

So, to the questions…

What kind of books do you like to read?

Why? Provide specific examples.

I consider myself more eclectic than the average reader, but my staple is historical fiction. I love history. It's exciting to see my younger daughter turning into a history buff. My older daughter does not like historical fiction; she prefers contemporary fiction or manga. I remember how floored I was when she told me she didn't like The Witch of Blackbird Pond. Granted, she read it for school instead of for pleasure, like I did when I read it, but I have enjoyed books I read for school, and the requirement to read it does not necessarily preclude enjoying it.

I have read 22 historical fiction books this year out of a total of 47 books. I would say that statistic more than any other shows my interest. I like to read about a variety of history periods, but one period I'm not much interested in is World War II. I know what you're thinking: why? It's an endlessly fascinating time period, and I get that. I happen to be more interested in Medieval, Renaissance, Restoration, Georgian, and Victorian England (so roughly 500-1900 A. D.), but I occasionally like Edwardian England, too. I have recently developed an interested in Revolutionary and Napoleonic-era France. Pretty narrow, interests, I suppose. In terms of American historical fiction, I like the Colonial era, the Revolutionary era, and the Civil War, but that's about it.

I can't say I have a weakness for any particular genre aside from historical fiction. I find it to be a fun way to learn more about history, and I myself have enjoyed the challenge of the research when writing it.

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Post © Dana Huff

Musing Mondays: December 12, 2011

2012 Reading Challenges

I love reading challenges! Here are some 2012 reading challenges I've found and decided to try. I probably will add a few more, and once the calendar flips over to January, you'll find permanent links to these challenges in the sidebar where all the 2011 ones are right now. What I need to be better about this year is actually participating on the blog challenge sites themselves—posting links to my reviews, and the like.

I participated in the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2011, and it was easily one of my favorite and most successful reading challenges of the year, so I wouldn't want to miss it again. I'm going for the Severe Bookaholism level of 20 books. Sign up here.

The Where Are You Reading Challenge is another challenge I also did in 2011 and thoroughly enjoyed. You can see my Google Map here. I'll post it again later in the month in my recap post. Sign up here.

I'm kind of excited about the Mixing it Up Challenge. The idea is to branch out and try books in different genres:

Classics
Biography
Cookery, Food, and Wine
History
Modern Fiction
Graphic Novels and Manga
Crime and Mystery
Horror
Romance
Science Fiction and Fantasy
Travel
Poetry and Drama
Journalism and Humor
Science and Natural History
Children's and Young Adult
Social Sciences and Philosophy

I'm going for the "All the Trimmings and a Cherry on Top" level of participation at one book in each genre. Not sure what I'll read yet, but I have a few ideas for some of the categories. Sign up here.

As soon as I described this one to my husband, he said I needed to sign up for it. I do have a small TBR mountain leaning against the wall on my side of the bed. Steve would be glad if I could plow through some of it. I'm not too insane, so I'm going for Pike's Peak (plus, I've been there because it's in my home state of Colorado), which requires me to read 12 books from my TBR pile. I'm not sure which ones I'll read yet, but as I said, I have a huge stack, and I also have a lot of unread Kindle books. Sign up here.

How absolutely adorable is that button? This challenge asks participants to read free e-books. For the purposes of this challenge, ARC's, library books, or books I've won can't be counted. The books must be free, legally downloaded books. FYI NetGalley users, it looks like NetGalley books are counted as ARC's for the purposes of this challenge, so they're out, too. I'm going for the Coupon Clipper level of 12 books. Sign up here.

I have actually only read the first four books of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander Series. I just recently downloaded all of the audio books with Audible credits I had saved up, so this challenge seems like a good incentive to actually listen to the books and actually catch up with the series. Sign up here.

You know of any other great challenges I should check out? Naturally, I'll be doing the Once Upon a Time Challenge and the R.I.P. Challenge that Carl hosts once he announces them later.

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Post © Dana Huff

2012 Reading Challenges

Misery, Stephen King

You've probably seen the film based on Stephen King's novel Misery, even if you haven't read the book, so you probably know the story: writer Paul Sheldon is kidnapped after nearly dying in a car accident and tortured by insane former nurse Annie Wilkes, who is his number one fan. Incredulous that Paul has written a novel she considers crass, she forces him to burn it and write Misery, the romance-novel heroine he killed off in his last book Misery's Child, back into being in Misery's Return. Paul undergoes the worst sorts of physical and psychological terror as he writes what ironically is certainly the best Misery novel he's written.

I saw the movie when it came out, and having read the book now, about twenty years later, it seems as if the movie adhered fairly closely to the plot of the book. Kathy Bates was brilliant as Annie, and having seen the movie first, of course I pictured her in the role as I read. Annie Wilkes may be completely insane, but putting on my writer glasses, I can see she was a gift of a character for King. She is possibly the most frightening villain I've read precisely because of the realness of her character. On the one hand, she's a completely psychotic serial killer who first murdered almost an entire family at the age of eleven; on the other hand, she can't stand cursing, lying, or smoking. She uses lame expletives like "cockadoodie brat" and admonishes Paul for wanting a cigarette even as she contemplates murdering him. My husband says he thinks King is wary of people who don't curse, that somehow, those people are a little unhinged.

One of the things King says in On Writing is that folks ask him why he writes the kinds of stories he writes, and his response is that he doesn't have a choice. You have to wonder what kind of a place a novel like Misery came from. I always kind of enjoy books about writers. My NaNoWriMo novel is such a book. I'm not sure why, but that sort of window into the creative process is always interesting to me. I like to see fictional writers flying away on their keyboards, sweating through writer's block, and triumphantly finishing a novel. It's kind of weird to read books about writing, I guess, and now that you pin me down, I'm hard pressed to name another book like this that I've read.

One reason I read this novel (finally) was that King mentioned both the book and the character Annie Wilkes (and he clearly thought Annie was more interesting than Paul Sheldon) several times in On Writing, and I was struck with the desire to see what it was all about. It is fairly gruesome, but I think most people picking up a Stephen King book know what they're in for without needing to be warned. The book is quick-paced and starts off right in the middle of the action. It's a great on-the-edge-of-your-seat read.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Full disclosure: I obtained this book from PaperBackSwap.

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Post © Dana Huff

Misery, Stephen King

WWW Wednesdays: December 7, 2011

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you'll read next?

Wow, I haven't played along with WWW Wednesdays in a long time.

I am currently reading several books. The main one is Misery by Stephen King. I have seen the movie, and I thought Kathy Bates was brilliant in the role of Annie Wilkes. I had never read the book, and I admit that reading King's memoir On Writing is what prompted me to finally pick it up. I am enjoying it a hell of a lot. I'm also still dipping into The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee. I can totally see why it won the Pulitzer for nonfiction. It's not just an interesting subject; it's well written. I tried reading Anna Karenina on DailyLit, but I finally had to admit I wasn't into it when I had a huge backlog of unread book installments and no desire to even open them. I have to just say it: I'm not into the Russians. I have tried them and tried them, several times, and I have given them a fair shake. I think it's time to give up trying to be cultured. I picked up Madame Bovary instead, and while it hasn't grabbed me yet, I will give it more than two installments. I guess I'm also still reading As You Like It when I think about it.

I recently finished a re-read of Sense and Sensibility read by Juliet Stevenson. I highly recommend her Naxos audio book readings of Austen's works. I think the only one she didn't record for them was Pride and Prejudice. Stevenson is a brilliant reader. I also recently finished Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson, who consistently writes amazing books for teens that are straight out of the Judy Blume School of writing about what young people are really like and what they care about. I discovered that Laurie Halse Anderson creates playlists for her books, so given that I love creating Spotify lists, I went ahead and put her playlists in Spotify (at least all the songs that were available). Here is her playlist for Twisted. Naturally, you need to have Spotify to listen. Here are my reviews for Sense and Sensibility and Twisted.

The next book I read will be either Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, John Green's Looking for Alaska, or Laurie Halse Anderson's Catalyst. I am in a YA mood right now (probably because I just went to NCTE). I also really, really want to read Divergent by Veronica Roth soon, but I don't have it, and neither does my school library. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was recently challenged here in my home state of Georgia. My daughter, however, says I should start with Looking for Alaska, but that I'd better be prepared to cry. I think I will probably read that one first just because she wants me to and so we can talk about it.

So, what are you reading?

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Post © Dana Huff

WWW Wednesdays: December 7, 2011