Chelsey Cosh's Blog: From Mind to Mouth - Posts Tagged "introvert"
Hey, Teacher, Leave Those Kids Alone.
The last week of September is typically celebrated by the ALA as Banned Books Week, in which readers exercise their right to read whatever they please, free from censorship. As someone who wholeheartedly supports freedom of expression, I really felt the need to mark this occasion. I already read
Animal Farm
this year, which is still banned in North Korea and has been banned, at some point, in the UAE and in many communist countries. As a child, I read many banned books, including
Green Eggs and Ham
,
And Tango Makes Three
, and the entire
Harry Potter
series. In fact, when I tried to put on a school play for The Philosopher's Stone, I faced a huge amount of censorship. While my music teacher wholly supported our endeavours as little 'uns running around, putting on a show, painting cardboard for sets and scrambling to come up with costumes while one of us learned to play the film score on piano, our principal waited until the day before the big event to tear down our beautifully hand-painted posters for the play clear off of the school walls and throw them in the trash. It was, for two seconds, heartbreaking. And then I was pissed. I still remember how furious that asshole of a principal made me feel to this day.
So, needless to say, I don't like the idea of censoring children. If children aren't ready for something, they often can decide for themselves. That's why they close their eyes and look away when they're not ready. They put down the books they're not ready to read yet. You don't need to legislate or rip apart a library.
And it's really counterproductive because, in the end, kids are most intrigued by the things they're told they can't have. "You can't read that" sparks a desire for a book that wasn't even on their radar. So, joke's on you, censorship.
Like I said, this month, I needed to read something to mark this occasion. Book #28 was my nod to freedom, in more ways than one.
So, let's begin.
Book #28: A book translated to English
I started this prompt by reading Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist , which would've marked the second book that I read with a protagonist named Santiago, the first being The Old Man and the Sea. However, my interest waned pretty hard with that one, despite its meagre page count.
Instead, I moved onto Marie Kondo's Spark Joy . I had read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, which was not life-changing as promised, but still doled out a little bit of advice in regards to how to properly organize a home.
Marie Kondo is Japanese and doesn't speak English, as far as I know, and thus this book was translated. To be fair, I am basing this on an episode of Ellen that Marie was on, so I could be wrong.
Either way, she has a unique style of getting organized, in that she believes her objects can feel things. Socks must breathe; balling them up is cruel. It's a very emotional process, she claims, to clean up, but it is beneficial because it can restore so many wanting aspects of your life. That's why she asks her clients and now her readers to evaluate every object in their home and decide if it "sparks joy." If it doesn't, you thank it for its time and toss it. If it does, you keep it and display it properly in its own place.
Some of her method is too wishy-washy for me. I have no trouble keeping things tidy. If anything, papers are my weakness, but even then, they're categorized and kept in neat folders or binders with appropriate labeling. I do love when life is neat and organized and I appreciate that Marie Kondo does, too, but some of her tips are either arbitrary with no evidence of their effectiveness (other than her telling us how no one rebounds from her wonderful method, which is a touch biased at best and arrogant at worst) or practically obvious (for example, don't keep unnecessary crap you don't like). Ultimately, Spark Joy retread the same ground that her first success walked on. I expected more in depth advice or a greater visual aspect to this so-called "illustrated master class", but alas, it was not to be. Overall, I wasn't too impressed with this one.
Book #29: A National Book Award winner
First of all, what is the National Book Award winner? It turns out it isn't one award to win but several, handed out by the non-profit National Book Foundation who aim to celebrate the best of American literature and have been doing so since 1950. It's a collection of awards given to writers by writers and once included awards for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, science, religion and philosophy, history, children's lit, and a bunch of other categories. Now it has been narrowed back down to fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and, recently, YA lit.
I then did a little research into what books had won this esteemed label and it turned out Alice Walker's The Color Purple earned this honour. The Colour Purple is one of those books that I have meant to read because I saw the film at a young age and knew the book was out there but never got around to reading. So, you can imagine my delight in finally finding a reason to read it that was a touch greater than the fact that I really, really, really wanted to.
I found that The Color Purple is largely plotless, but in a good way. I don't mean that nothing happens. In fact, a lot of things happen. It's hard to recount all the things that happen. But since this book is about a life and life is largely plotless, it feels like that, each event occurring because it happened to, and not because someone wrote it to be so. The novel revolves around the miserable existence that our protagonist, Celie, ekes out while married to an abusive husband who openly courts another woman right in front of Celie's eyes. She raises his disrespectful children and feels the oppression of being an African-American farmwife in the early decades of the twentieth century. I won't say too much because I don't want to ruin the novel (I never want to ruin a novel for anyone who hasn't read it), but I must say that watching Celie become more and more liberated is wonderful. An independent woman is a beautiful thing, a woman who realizes she needs love but that sometimes it comes in weird and unexpected forms.
And, above all, this is a book about sorority. The relationship between Celie and her sister Nettie is intensely vital. Without it, the book lacks that golden thread to tie all its parts together. It's a solidly written tale of Celie's life. And, of course, I appreciate the title. I may not speak the same words as they do or share the same belief system, but I too believe in the power of the colour purple.
Book #30: A book that's published in 2016
This one was a no-brainer for me. I am glad I waited long enough for this book to come out.
A play on words of one of my favourite novels of all time, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo is the writing debut for comedienne Amy Schumer.
Schumer is, of course, hilarious, but not everything she has to say is funny. No, sometimes it's heartbreaking, like dealing at a too-young age with the humiliating limitations of her father's MS, and other times, it's cautionary, like her encounters with emotional, physical, and sexual abusers.
Taken as a whole, Amy's biography is a full story, one that ranges the emotions of a real-life being. It is funny most of the time because she is funny most of the time, but it also realizes pain, beauty, yearning, misguidance, outrage, and fear, too.
It is nice to read an autobiography that seems like even the author herself is surprised at what she finds. She really digs in. I have to applaud Amy for that. I wish more were like her.
This month marked book number thirty, so, if all goes well, I will be solidly into the thirties by Halloween. As I sit now, I have eleven more to go and exactly three months to do it. I truly think it will be a travesty if I don't make it through and hit that end goal. They don't call it a challenge for nothing. Needless to say, it's going to be a bumpy ride, but I'm ready to buckle in and buckle down.
Until next month, happy reading!
So, needless to say, I don't like the idea of censoring children. If children aren't ready for something, they often can decide for themselves. That's why they close their eyes and look away when they're not ready. They put down the books they're not ready to read yet. You don't need to legislate or rip apart a library.
And it's really counterproductive because, in the end, kids are most intrigued by the things they're told they can't have. "You can't read that" sparks a desire for a book that wasn't even on their radar. So, joke's on you, censorship.
Like I said, this month, I needed to read something to mark this occasion. Book #28 was my nod to freedom, in more ways than one.
So, let's begin.
Book #28: A book translated to English
I started this prompt by reading Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist , which would've marked the second book that I read with a protagonist named Santiago, the first being The Old Man and the Sea. However, my interest waned pretty hard with that one, despite its meagre page count.
Instead, I moved onto Marie Kondo's Spark Joy . I had read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, which was not life-changing as promised, but still doled out a little bit of advice in regards to how to properly organize a home.
Marie Kondo is Japanese and doesn't speak English, as far as I know, and thus this book was translated. To be fair, I am basing this on an episode of Ellen that Marie was on, so I could be wrong.
Either way, she has a unique style of getting organized, in that she believes her objects can feel things. Socks must breathe; balling them up is cruel. It's a very emotional process, she claims, to clean up, but it is beneficial because it can restore so many wanting aspects of your life. That's why she asks her clients and now her readers to evaluate every object in their home and decide if it "sparks joy." If it doesn't, you thank it for its time and toss it. If it does, you keep it and display it properly in its own place.
Some of her method is too wishy-washy for me. I have no trouble keeping things tidy. If anything, papers are my weakness, but even then, they're categorized and kept in neat folders or binders with appropriate labeling. I do love when life is neat and organized and I appreciate that Marie Kondo does, too, but some of her tips are either arbitrary with no evidence of their effectiveness (other than her telling us how no one rebounds from her wonderful method, which is a touch biased at best and arrogant at worst) or practically obvious (for example, don't keep unnecessary crap you don't like). Ultimately, Spark Joy retread the same ground that her first success walked on. I expected more in depth advice or a greater visual aspect to this so-called "illustrated master class", but alas, it was not to be. Overall, I wasn't too impressed with this one.
Book #29: A National Book Award winner
First of all, what is the National Book Award winner? It turns out it isn't one award to win but several, handed out by the non-profit National Book Foundation who aim to celebrate the best of American literature and have been doing so since 1950. It's a collection of awards given to writers by writers and once included awards for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, science, religion and philosophy, history, children's lit, and a bunch of other categories. Now it has been narrowed back down to fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and, recently, YA lit.
I then did a little research into what books had won this esteemed label and it turned out Alice Walker's The Color Purple earned this honour. The Colour Purple is one of those books that I have meant to read because I saw the film at a young age and knew the book was out there but never got around to reading. So, you can imagine my delight in finally finding a reason to read it that was a touch greater than the fact that I really, really, really wanted to.
I found that The Color Purple is largely plotless, but in a good way. I don't mean that nothing happens. In fact, a lot of things happen. It's hard to recount all the things that happen. But since this book is about a life and life is largely plotless, it feels like that, each event occurring because it happened to, and not because someone wrote it to be so. The novel revolves around the miserable existence that our protagonist, Celie, ekes out while married to an abusive husband who openly courts another woman right in front of Celie's eyes. She raises his disrespectful children and feels the oppression of being an African-American farmwife in the early decades of the twentieth century. I won't say too much because I don't want to ruin the novel (I never want to ruin a novel for anyone who hasn't read it), but I must say that watching Celie become more and more liberated is wonderful. An independent woman is a beautiful thing, a woman who realizes she needs love but that sometimes it comes in weird and unexpected forms.
And, above all, this is a book about sorority. The relationship between Celie and her sister Nettie is intensely vital. Without it, the book lacks that golden thread to tie all its parts together. It's a solidly written tale of Celie's life. And, of course, I appreciate the title. I may not speak the same words as they do or share the same belief system, but I too believe in the power of the colour purple.
Book #30: A book that's published in 2016
This one was a no-brainer for me. I am glad I waited long enough for this book to come out.
A play on words of one of my favourite novels of all time, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo is the writing debut for comedienne Amy Schumer.
Schumer is, of course, hilarious, but not everything she has to say is funny. No, sometimes it's heartbreaking, like dealing at a too-young age with the humiliating limitations of her father's MS, and other times, it's cautionary, like her encounters with emotional, physical, and sexual abusers.
Taken as a whole, Amy's biography is a full story, one that ranges the emotions of a real-life being. It is funny most of the time because she is funny most of the time, but it also realizes pain, beauty, yearning, misguidance, outrage, and fear, too.
It is nice to read an autobiography that seems like even the author herself is surprised at what she finds. She really digs in. I have to applaud Amy for that. I wish more were like her.
This month marked book number thirty, so, if all goes well, I will be solidly into the thirties by Halloween. As I sit now, I have eleven more to go and exactly three months to do it. I truly think it will be a travesty if I don't make it through and hit that end goal. They don't call it a challenge for nothing. Needless to say, it's going to be a bumpy ride, but I'm ready to buckle in and buckle down.
Until next month, happy reading!
