Sarah Jamila Stevenson's Blog: Blog - Sarah Jamila Stevenson, page 35

TBR Monday! More Books On My List

Greetings, Book People of Earth! I kind of enjoyed doing that previous post on my TBR pile, so here's another one with a few more recent acquisitions. Comments, opinions, and ancillary recommendations are welcome!

Clockwise from Upper Left: Out on the Wire is a graphic novel recommended by friend, fellow author, and writing group colleague Sara Lewis Holmes. She mentioned it during our writing group meeting and it sounds right up my alley, since it's about various awesome public radio personalities AND it's a GN by an artist I really like.

The Vanishing Throne is the sequel to The Falconer, a faerie/steampunk/action fantasy which I reviewed here and which ended up being quite enjoyable. Stay tuned for an upcoming review soonish, and a guest post from author Elizabeth May on Tuesday next, thanks to Chronicle Books! I'm hoping she'll talk a bit about world-building, a topic that is much on my mind currently...

My mom lent me the first two books in a series called The Neapolitan Novels by Italian author Elena Ferrante, the first being My Brilliant Friend. Evidently it starts with the character's childhood and follows her as she grows up, which is always an interesting strategy. I liked it in the Anne of Green Gables books, the Little House books, and the Betsy-Tacy books, so I am certainly intrigued. Evidently these books are quite popular in Europe but not so well known here.

I got a copy of Once Was a Time for review some time ago and it languished on the pile, even though I very much like the sound of it. It's a middle grade read set in wartime 1940s England, so that is an immediate draw for me. Also, it involves time travel and a main character named Charlotte--possibly a nod to the cult classic Charlotte Sometimes? Anyway, I look forward to it.

Happy Reading!

This work is copyrighted material. All opinions are those of the writer, unless otherwise indicated. All book reviews are UNSOLICITED, and no money has exchanged hands, unless otherwise indicated. Please contact the weblog owner for further details.

New Books Haul

I was good. You'd be proud of me. I limited my book buying spree to merely THREE.

This was at the Mixed Remixed Festival, which took place over this past Friday and Saturday at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown L.A. (Read a great recap here.) I was a volunteer on Saturday, mostly working at the registration table, but I also got a chance to chat with folks and attend a fantastic reading by featured writers F. Douglas Brown (a poet), Willy Wilkinson (Lambda Award winner), Natashia Deon (who KILLED it with her reading from just-released Grace), Jamie Ford, and Sunil Yapa. It was a great opportunity to buy one of Jamie Ford's books, which I've been meaning to read for a while, and I was really blown away by all five speakers. I feel privileged to have gotten to chat with and/or congratulate all of them afterward. Lovely people one and all. And of course the wonderful Heidi Durrow, author of The Girl Who Fell from the Sky and director of the festival. We had some great phone chats over the past few months as I worked on laying out the program.

I had some kidlit-specific encounters, too! I got to say hi again to Katrina Goldsaito, author of the upcoming kids' book The Sound of Silence and fellow client at Andrea Brown. (I also had a great chat with her agent Jamie Weiss Chilton! All those Andrea Brown peeps are fantastic.) And I met Eleanor Glewwe, author of DIVERSE FANTASY MG title Sparkers, which I'm looking forward to reading. Last but not least, it was nice to talk again to Jamie Moore of Mixed Reader, who was the one who initially invited me to read at Mixed Remixed a few years back--she's a fellow Central Valley resident, so we resolved to try to meet up at some point.

There is something unique and magical about meeting other writers in a context that is not just related to one's writing, in an environment that is all about acceptance and celebration of all our mixed and mixed-up stories. In that context you know you have something immediately in common, that you have experiences in common and those experiences have inextricably informed your writing and formed you as a person.

It's always hard to put those things into words, though, and do it justice. If you want to know more, check out the Twitter hashtag!

This work is copyrighted material. All opinions are those of the writer, unless otherwise indicated. All book reviews are UNSOLICITED, and no money has exchanged hands, unless otherwise indicated. Please contact the weblog owner for further details.

Self-Belief, Grit, and Writing

In a recent article in The Atlantic entitled "Is Grit Overrated?", Jerry Useem examines recent research by University of Pennsylvania psychology professor Angela Duckworth on the topic of GRIT: a sort of hard-to-define special something that is one of the secret ingredients in the sauce of success and a rather persistent ingrained belief--one that can be somewhat damaging, as it turns out, when it comes to us writers. It wasn't a specific thrust of the article but what I found the most interesting was Useem's extrapolation of the problems with grit to some of the recognizable day-to-day tribulations of the writing life.

Duckworth "argues that grit—perseverance plus the exclusive pursuit of a single passion—is a severely underrated component of career success, and that grown-ups, too, need a better understanding of the nature and prevalence of setbacks." And yet there's this: "Ask Americans which they think is more important to success, effort or talent, and they pick effort two to one. Ask them which quality they’d desire most in a new employee, and they pick industriousness over intelligence five to one. But deep down, they hold the opposite view." In other words, we have this deeply ingrained idea that true genius is somehow inherent, inborn, and glamorous, rather than a product of many hours of hard work to overcome obstacles.

Here's the part of the article I found the most interesting, though:

Whatever its origins, the bias has practical implications. Certainly, it suggests that my deep terror of letting anyone see my half-written article drafts is not irrational but adaptive. It perpetuates a myth that I’m a natural—the words just flow out, folks, as fast as I can type!—and hides the far more mundane truth: that the words come out fitfully and woodenly, gradually succumbing to a state of readability only after many seemingly fruitless sessions. “If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all,” Michelangelo observed. Nietzsche concurred: “Wherever one can see the act of becoming one grows somewhat cool.”

Which suggests that Duckworth’s basic admonition, “Embrace challenge,” needs a qualifier: Do it in private. Grit may be essential. But it is not attractive.

It may not be attractive, but I'll tell you one thing: it's reassuring to those of us normal folks whose words do not flow out with constant ease and immediate perfection. And it's hopeful: it implies that, given enough work and time and effort, we, too, can improve and achieve a higher level of creative production.

What thinkest thou about GRIT? Chime in in the comments.

This work is copyrighted material. All opinions are those of the writer, unless otherwise indicated. All book reviews are UNSOLICITED, and no money has exchanged hands, unless otherwise indicated. Please contact the weblog owner for further details.

Toon Thursday: The Return of Psychobabble for Writers

That's right--last time's rerun was just a teaser for the real thing: a lovely new cartoon featuring everyone's favorite bummer topic, DYSTOPIAS. More precisely, the shiny happy people who write them. Any resemblance to existing writers, living or dead, is purely coincidental. No angry notes this time, thanks.

This work is copyrighted material. All opinions are those of the writer, unless otherwise indicated. All book reviews are UNSOLICITED, and no money has exchanged hands, unless otherwise indicated. Please contact the weblog owner for further details.

Happy Memorial Day and Heat-Soaked Mondaze

I have nothing noteworthy for you today: not a thing. For one thing, it's a holiday. Gimme a break. Also, it is really HOT. Thirdly, I'm trapped in the mental quagmire that is novel revision, and it is a doozy. But I did want to pop my head up and say HEY! I'm here! Hope your day looks something like this:

This work is copyrighted material. All opinions are those of the writer, unless otherwise indicated. All book reviews are UNSOLICITED, and no money has exchanged hands, unless otherwise indicated. Please contact the weblog owner for further details.

Proof that We Actually Exist

AF and I met up the other day at our grad school alma mater, Mills College, to speak to the graduate and undergraduate writers in Kathryn Reiss's YA writing course. It was a lot of fun, but it was an afternoon class, and it was a fairly warm afternoon. We were FAR more lively/hopped up on caffeine than the students, and I think we might have scared them the tiniest little bit. Ah, well.

There's nothing like doing a classroom visit with someone else! Our ideas sparked off of each other, and I think we were pretty much quadruple the entertainment for the money. Photographers came by, too, which ... is also kind of funny; we're apparently going to be part of the school's PR for "Authors Occasionally Come And Visit! Try Our School!" It's all good, though; we're happy to help, and hope others are encouraged to get their MFA or at least take a few writing classes.

Stay tuned for more random reviews, bits and pieces of this and that, and eventually another tandem review. When we can settle on a book...

This work is copyrighted material. All opinions are those of the writer, unless otherwise indicated. All book reviews are UNSOLICITED, and no money has exchanged hands, unless otherwise indicated. Please contact the weblog owner for further details.

The Comfort of Rereading

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl: I must have read and reread it at least half a dozen times growing up. Maybe, dare I say, a dozen. Roald Dahl's books were perennial favorites for me, but especially this one and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They meant so much to me, in fact, that I still haven't seen the most recent movies of either one because I don't want the books to be ruined. (The Gene Wilder movie, though: amazing.)

When I got a bit older—as a tween and teen—I found myself rereading a lot of my favorite Madeleine L'Engle books, in particular A Ring of Endless Light and A Swiftly Tilting Planet. And, though I cringe a little to admit it, I also reread several favorite Sweet Valley High books. (Rereading Sweet Valley High was not only a guilty pleasure but also provided the slight satisfying twinge of schadenfreude resulting from watching them do crazy things I'd never do and suffering the consequences.)

I was actually kind of a reading and rereading machine as a youth. And in retrospect, not only did I reread books simply because I loved them, I also turned to familiar reads when I needed comfort. My parents were divorced, and I regularly spent fairly long stretches of time at my dad's house over the summer and on weekends. If I was upset or missed my mom or was just plain bored, I would draw or read, and often I'd pick up something I'd read before, picturing myself as James finding the giant peach that allowed him to escape the nasty Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker and traverse the world with his new insectile friends who appreciated him for who he was.

As an adult, it's harder to find time or justification to reread books. As a writer, being widely read is encouraged, and between reading broadly and reading deeply within one's own genre, that doesn't leave a lot of room for old favorites. Despite that, I've managed a few rereads in recent years. I "needed" to reread The Winner's Curse and The Winner's Crime to properly appreciate Book 3, for instance. But this past week I found myself rereading purely for comfort for the first time in a long time. Under a lot of stress, and feeling rather unenthusiastic about reading anything that might even remotely remind me of the writing I'm currently failing to do, I flipped through my Kindle books and landed on a newer classic: the Lioness quartet by Tamora Pierce. Determined, spunky girl with sword works hard, then harder; Alanna is truly special, one of a kind, not like the others around her but nevertheless loved and respected for her abilities, her loyalty, and her diligence.

If you know me, you'll know I have trouble resisting the urge to be an armchair psychologist. (A BA in Psychology only earns you an armchair; you need a Ph.D. to get that fancy chaise longue.) But anyway, I can't help reading something into my choices of books that I returned to over and over. In childhood, it's easy to see simple escapism in my selections. Later, I liked reading about characters who were underappreciated and yet special, learning over time to master their skills and prevail. That hasn't changed, clearly—and it probably says something about me and how I see myself. It probably says a lot about how I wish I could be, just as rereading James and the Giant Peach was a reflection of a wish: a wish for escape, for empowerment, for rescue from a situation in which I felt helpless. Maybe now, rereading the books about the kingdom of Tortall, I'm feeling a similar desire to escape from what feels like a lot of externally imposed obligations, just as Alanna was escaping from her predetermined life in the convent by disguising herself as a boy and training to be a knight.

Or maybe I just wish I could hit things with a sword…

What are your favorite rereads? What books could you read over and over and never get sick of? I want to know!

This work is copyrighted material. All opinions are those of the writer, unless otherwise indicated. All book reviews are UNSOLICITED, and no money has exchanged hands, unless otherwise indicated. Please contact the weblog owner for further details.

Throwback Toon Thursday: Psychobabble from Four Years Ago

I'm trying to come up with a new installment of Psychobabble for Writers, but I've been too busy to get inspired (or, for that matter, to even think about a new and original post of any kind...). Therefore, here is a Toon Thursday from the past for your enjoyment and delectation.

This work is copyrighted material. All opinions are those of the writer, unless otherwise indicated. All book reviews are UNSOLICITED, and no money has exchanged hands, unless otherwise indicated. Please contact the weblog owner for further details.

Thursday Review: THE WINNER'S KISS by Marie Rutkoski

Synopsis : Much as the cover of this one might suggest a romance novel or something particularly girly, don't be fooled. The Winner's Kiss is the conclusion to the trilogy that started with The Winner's Curse and The Winner's Crime, both of which I enjoyed immensely and both of which contain not only romance (though there's certainly some in there) but a healthy helping of action and political intrigue. If you haven't read the first two books yet, I'd say STOP READING THIS NOW AND GO READ THEM! If you're all caught up, though (I went back and re-read, and didn't regret it a bit), then you can safely read on without fear of any spoilers except the teensiest.

At the end of Book 2, Kestrel had just been betrayed by her father to the emperor, and sentenced to life in a work camp up in the frozen tundra. Book 3 opens with Arin not knowing any of this, instead returning to Herran with his new allies from the Eastern empire, the Dacrans, fearing what he might find out about Kestrel's betrayal. However, as he's soon to find out, she is imprisoned in a mining camp, digging for the raw materials for the explosive black powder the Valorians need to wage war on their enemies. She's never betrayed him at all, and this wrenching discovery ultimately brings Arin and Kestrel back together, this time as allies against everything she once held dear.

Observations : I like stories in which the characters succeed against difficult odds, get slammed down again and again only to ultimately rise in triumph. At the same time, it bothers me when a character is all ABOUT suffering and defeat, with no room left over for even the smallest of victories; I find it suffocating and disheartening. This trilogy, and the concluding book in particular, strike the right balance for me in general, even if I did want to give Arin a little smack upside the head now and then for being so willing to assume Kestrel would betray him.

Besides being a novel about love and betrayal, this is also a book about war (in many ways I'd call it a War Novel, actually), and it doesn't pull any punches about the terrible cost in terms of loss of life, people turning against one another, and the ravaging of the land itself. I credit the author's excellent research into the great and terrible wars of history, as well as the details of life during the Classical period and other past eras. Borrowing real-life details gives the story a richness and believability that is almost tangible, and as a writer working on some world building right now, I am in awe.

Conclusion : This is a very well written and deeply plotted trilogy that's in a genre I'd call "fantasy without magic"—an imaginary setting, but a world in which the rules (and the inhabitants) are very much like our own. As with all great fantasy, magic or not, it makes the reader think about this world a little differently.

I received my copy of this book as a birthday present. You can find THE WINNER'S KISS by Marie Rutkoski at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

This work is copyrighted material. All opinions are those of the writer, unless otherwise indicated. All book reviews are UNSOLICITED, and no money has exchanged hands, unless otherwise indicated. Please contact the weblog owner for further details.

Monday Review: THE GIRL IN THE BLUE COAT by Monica Hesse

Synopsis: It's Amsterdam, 1943, during the Second World War, and the Nazis have occupied the city. Times are tough, and narrator Hanneke is helping her family scrape by with her own jobs--the ostensible "real" job she has working for an undertaker, and her actual work, which is serving as a delivery girl for the undertaker's secret black market business. Still mourning her boyfriend Bas's death at the front, she helps the oppressed people of her city find the things they need: extra ration coupons, cosmetics, and the like. Until one day old Mrs. Janssen asks for Hanneke's help finding something special, and unusual: a girl.
Not just any girl, either: a Jewish girl, whom Mrs. Janssen was hiding in her back pantry. The Nazis have been rounding up all the Jews of Amsterdam and housing them in an old theater before relocation to camps, and Mrs. J. is terrified they'll find Mirjam, too, if Hanneke can't find her first. This starts Hanneke on a harrowing quest to locate a girl she doesn't even know in order to do what's right and fight her small part of the fight, and of course she ends up finding much more than Mirjam herself...
Observations: I thought this was a fresh take on the World War II, Nazi-occupied-Europe story, one that's more introspective, like The Book Thief, but with a healthy share of action and suspense. It was fascinating to read about Hanneke's black market business, and the reader is immediately drawn to root for her success, even if she is only playing a small, even opportunistic part in thwarting the Nazi regime. She is helping people in a human way, person to person, and so it seems natural that she becomes drawn into the quest to find Mirjam, seeing in her absence, perhaps, an echo of her boyfriend's absence and maybe an alternate version of herself. 
There are various tales out there which tackle the specific situation endured by the Dutch during WWII--Lois Lowry's Number the Stars, for one, and of course the Diary of Anne Frank. Hesse's book looks at the situation through a somewhat older narrator's eyes, one with some small power to change things, because she is not part of one of the Nazi-oppressed groups. This is not a concentration camp story; it is a story about how ordinary citizens coped, endured, defended themselves and their loved ones, and fought back in thousands of small ways. At the same time, it's also a bit of a thriller/mystery, a quest to find a missing person in a very dangerous time and place. And, in the end, the mystery takes a surprising turn--but I won't give that away. 
Conclusions: I enjoy historical fiction set during wartime and find it both fascinating and inspiring to read about the ways we as humans find to deal with harsh situations that are out of individual control. This is one of those stories, with a very determined and independent-minded narrator who realizes that she has, perhaps, more power than she originally thought. 

I received my copy of this book courtesy of my library's ebook collection. You can find THE GIRL IN THE BLUE COAT by Monica Hesse at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

This work is copyrighted material. All opinions are those of the writer, unless otherwise indicated. All book reviews are UNSOLICITED, and no money has exchanged hands, unless otherwise indicated. Please contact the weblog owner for further details.