Gretchen C. Hohmeyer's Blog, page 39

April Wrap Up + PopSugar Challenge Update

If we’re being honest, this is the saddest wrap up I think I’ve ever written. Seriously. I know that April isn’t QUITE over yet, but I can promise you that I won’t be reading anything else over the weekend because I have a LOT to do.

I read four books in April. Four. Three, if we’re being truthful, all the way through. And none of them counted a thing for my PopSugar Challenge, so that is still standing at 10/40, as it was in my March wrap up. Here’s what I DID read in April!

If the Oceans Were Ink by Carla Power is a powerful spiritual memoir about her friendship with a Muslim Sheikh and her desire to understand the Quran for herself. This is for my Spiritual Journeys class, and by far is my favorite that we’ve read in the class. I wrote a longer review of it if you’d like to learn more!

Though I did not read the entirety of this work, I am counting Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground to this list. I gave it two stars on Goodreads, because what I did read was almost impossible to get through and really, really boring. It was useful for my senior seminar, yes, but as pure reading enjoyment … no. I also didn’t review this, and have no plans to. You’re welcome.

I FINALLY FINISHED GET IN TROUBLE BY KELLY LINK! If you didn’t catch Michaela’s last 30 Seconds to Disagree, then you might not understand why that’s all in CAPs but … trust me. I’ve had Taylor’s copy of this book in my apartment since last semester, and he was getting really angry with me about it. BUT. I finally finished it! A longer review of this will be coming in May.

My one enjoyable, read it in a day read–my only for a while, really–was Renee Ahdieh’s The Rose and The Dagger. This is the sequel to The Wrath and The Dawn, which was one of my favorite books of 2015 AND the very first book I showcased in my Worth It Wednesday series. A longer review of this will be coming later, but … well. I have thoughts. And not all of them good, sadly.

So … yeah. That’s it. There should have been more, but there wasn’t. School is crazy, guys. Hopefully May will bring better things! At the very least, school ends pretty soon, so I should have more opportunities to read then!

Interview with Kristen-Paige Madonia + Giveaway!

It’s finally here! If you caught my last From the Notebook, where I talk about exactly what I was up to during our hiatus, then you’ve probably been waiting for this for a while. Over the course of the New Voices Literary Festival, I was lucky enough to be able to sit down and interview Kristen-Paige Madonia, author of Fingerprints of You and the upcoming Invisible Fault Lines (to be released May 3). Not only was she gracious enough to talk to me for a while, but she ALSO singed a copy of Fingerprints of You that I am about to give away AND gave me some great swag! Before we get to that, though, allow me to introduce the fabulous Kristen-Paige!

Kristen-Paige Madonia is the author of the young adult novels Invisible Fault Lines (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2016) and Fingerprints of You (Simon & Schuster BFYR, 2012). Her short stories have been published in various literary magazines including FiveChapters, the New Orleans Review, the Greensboro Review, and America Fiction: Best Previously Unpublished Stories by Emerging Authors. She has received awards or fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, the Juniper Summer Writing Institute, VCCA, Hedgebrook, Millay Colony for the Arts, and the Key West Literary Seminar. She was the 2012 D.H. Lawrence Fellow and was awarded the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Prize in 2010. She holds an MFA in fiction from California State University, Long Beach and currently lives in Charlottesville, Va. She is a member of the University of Nebraska low-residency MFA Writing Program faculty and also teaches creative writing at the University of Virginia, James Madison University, and WriterHouse.

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

The interview and giveaway are coming, but first: logistics! This interview took place verbally over the course of 15 minutes. I transcribed it into what you are about to read, editing for general speech tics and creating full sentences–that kind of thing. Initially I thought I was going to edit it into something a bit shorter but … well … Kristen-Paige said too many smart things that I agreed with not to share them all with you! It’s a great read AND there’s a giveaway at the bottom, so here we go!

GH: What inspired Invisible Fault Lines?

KPM: It started in a number of different ways. The first was that I was traveling for Fingerprints of You and going to these conferences and festivals of young adult authors, and it didn’t take very long to notice that the audience and signing lines for authors that were writing about fantasy or time travel or other worlds were much longer and the rooms were much fuller than for those of us writing contemporary realistic fiction. I was really just curious about that, about why so many readers were excited about these “what if” scenarios about other worlds and alternating existences. So that was just the root of a curiosity, about why people were so excited about that and interested in it. I was also just kind of feeling sorry for myself. [laughs] That’s just sort of the honest answer. So my husband and I were in Portland at the Wordstock Literary Festival, and I acknowledge that in the book, and that’s where this book began. I was complaining and moaning and I said, “You know what, I should write a book like that. I should write a book that’s about that stuff but I would do it my way.” And I really didn’t even know what either of those things meant, or what my way meant either, but I knew that I was interested in exploring something that was very different than what I had done with Fingerprints of You, and to maybe reach a wider audience. So that was part of it.

The other part was that same conference. David Levithan’s novel Every Day came out around the same time that Fingerprints of You came out, so I felt that I was very fortunate because we ended up at a lot of the same places and a lot of the same festivals and our books would end up beside each other a lot, so we became sort of friendly. In Portland that weekend, he had been reading and publicizing Every Day, but he said “I’m going to do something I’m probably not supposed to do, but I’m going to read off of my phone from this new book that I just completed” and he read from Two Boys Kissing. In that passage, he read the passage that became the epigraph of Invisible Fault Lines, which is “How extraordinary the ordinary becomes once it disappears.” I was sitting in the audience with my notebook and I scribbled it down, and that line just haunted me, that concept of how we define ordinary. That sort of braided together with this idea of doing something different and this wonder about other worlds, so those two things blended together for me. That night, when I was trying to go to sleep, I sort of popped up and started working on this book instead.

GH: This is great because it leads into a question that I’m really curious about. So, you didn’t know that Fingerprints of You was going to be marketed as young adult, so did you have that sense of Invisible Fault Lines? And if so, how did it impact your writing, or did it change your writing?

KPM: I knew I wanted to stay involved with the [YA] community, so when I started Invisible Fault Lines it was with the intention of it to be YA, which is not how Fingerprints of You started. There is that element of ignorance is bliss. With Fingerprints of You I wasn’t thinking about readers at all. With Invisible Fault Lines I was more aware of who the intended readers are for YA. But that’s even blurry because now, statistically, more adults read young adult than young adults, so again it goes back to writing the best book and the best story that you can write. I find the less I can think about audience, the better the book is going to be. But I was more aware of our responsibilities as YA writers because I was frequently talking about that component with Fingerprints of You because it was not written as YA and contains so many adult themes but was marketed as YA. I was always on the panel about cross-over fiction or adult themes in young adult work, and so I was talking about that concept a lot. Walking into a new project thinking about the intended audience and what our responsibly is as young adult writers was very much on my mind.

GH: So, because there’s that stigma about young adult being the very “bland” prose, not very well thought out, “thin”—which is not what your books are at all—but where you cognizant thinking about that at all? Or were you just like, “I’m going to write my way”?

KPM: No, I think the goal is to always to write to the best of your ability regardless of who the reader is. I think that the young adult readers are very demanding and they deserve the best fiction that we can provide for them, and so it’s really a disservice to think “Oh well if it’s YA we can really cut some corners” or write more thinly or less complexly. It doesn’t make any sense! Why would you want to produce something that’s not as strong as it could possibly be? It’s a ridiculous conversation to even have.

I’m of the mindset that there’s no need to censor. I’m really lucky; I ended up with an editor whose comment to me, when I sold Fingerprints of You as YA and knowing that it wasn’t written as YA was, “The worst thing you can do is walk into the revision process thinking about the ‘teen’ reader and dumbing it down.” He used that term, “dumbing it down,” and that’s always really stuck with me and haunted me in a way because I just think it’s so completely ridiculous. We teach teenagers Shakespeare and we teach them all kinds of complicated literature in the classrooms. Why are we not writing contemporary literature at the same standard? I mean, that’s exactly what we should be doing.

GH: That’s so refreshing for me to hear because my English honors thesis is all in young adult literature and I just finished a chapter that was about covers, and about how cover art is getting so much better but prose is getting so much weaker and that’s because editors are predominantly focused on selling as opposed to producing.

KPM: Absolutely. I think you have to write what interests you and what you’re most equipped to do and so I am not the kind of writer who will produce a book a year. That’s just not my process. In the YA world, though, a lot of people do churn out books once a year, and there is a lot of emphasis on keeping the audience and “Your readers are waiting for the next book.” Well, I’m not going to give them a book that’s not ready, that’s not good, and most likely I won’t be able to write a book that’s strong enough in a year. What I’ve seen is that often the books that are coming out that quickly are probably coming out a bit too early, they could have used another revision or another plot line or another level of philosophical component. But, as you’ll note, there’s been four years between my books, which is not the norm in YA. But it’s a disservice to the readers because we might be producing books that aren’t ready to be on shelves because someone decided you need to put a book out every twelve months. Those kinds of standards can be really harmful to the art.

GH: So on the question of process, what is your favorite part? Do you prefer being in the early stages where everything is new and wonderful or do you like revision? Or is it about both?

KPM: Yeah, it is both. It depends on the book, and where the book starts. So, for me, Fingerprints of You started with character and voice, and the first draft was so much fun because I really felt like I knew this character from the start. It was a very quick process for me; writing the first draft took about five weeks. It was a blast.

With the book I’m working on right now, the first draft is not that wonderful. It’s been a lot more of a struggle. I think that the result of a lot of different factors, but at this point I just want to get this first draft down because I know the revision is going to be the more joyful part. It’ll be the place that I can breathe a bit and enjoy it more.

GH: Can I ask about what this new book might be about?

KPM: No. [laughs] I mean, you can. I’m about halfway through the first draft and so it’s a vulnerable place. I hesitate to talk too much about it. It’s rooted in my curiosity about technology and our increasing dependency on it. That’s probably all I can say.

GH: That’s fine, I was just curious because you said it was conceptual, and Fingerprints of You was all about character. There’s an interesting tension between character and concept, and some people can only do one or the other.

KPM: Yeah, I think that’s why I’m so uncomfortable with this book. I’ve always considered myself a character writer, and that’s not how this book started for me, which I find to be really interesting and challenging. My hope is that I’m doing something different with each book, so that’s what this book is. It’s an idea, and now I have to work with that to figure out how to write it knowing that that’s all I have right now and that I will be layering in all the other elements

GH: Are you aware of the YA trope idea? Do you think about that as you write?

KPM: I am aware of it. It’s hard not to be aware of these things because we’re all so connected online now. In early drafts I try to just follow the story and let it be what it is and give myself permission to make mistakes and to lean on devices like that if I need it just to power through that first draft. I become more intentional about my choices in revision. I do a lot of revising. I love revising. It’s so wonderful to watch a project go from such a loose, flexible thing to really reining it in and figuring out what you want to do and say.

NOW, the moment you’ve all been waiting for! The giveaway includes a signed copy of Kristen-Paige’s Fingerprints of You, plus swag from BOTH novels including coasters, temporary tattoos, a sticker and bookmarks. This giveaway is US only and ends on May 12th. Enough logistics? Enough! Enter away!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Worth It Wednesday: “Angelfire” by Courtney Allison Moulton

Worth It Wednesdays is a weekly post where I feature my favorite YA titles. Find out more about it here!

Title: Angelfire

Author: Courtney Allison Moulton

Goodreads Description: First there are nightmares.

Every night Ellie is haunted by terrifying dreams of monstrous creatures that are hunting her, killing her.

Then come the memories.

When Ellie meets Will, she feels on the verge of remembering something just beyond her grasp. His attention is intense and romantic, and Ellie feels like her soul has known him for centuries. On her seventeenth birthday, on a dark street at midnight, Will awakens Ellie’s power, and she knows that she can fight the creatures that stalk her in the grim darkness. Only Will holds the key to Ellie’s memories, whole lifetimes of them, and when she looks at him, she can no longer pretend anything was just a dream.

Now she must hunt.

Ellie has power that no one can match, and her role is to hunt and kill the reapers that prey on human souls. But in order to survive the dangerous and ancient battle of the angels and the Fallen, she must also hunt for the secrets of her past lives and truths that may be too frightening to remember.

Why it’s worth it: Okay, I know what you’re thinking. That blurb sounds kind of corny. HANG IN THERE WITH ME.

I got into Angelfire kind of on a whim, back when angels were big but I was being seriously bored by a lot of the other stuff out there. I saw the sword on the cover and instantly knew that this was going to be something different, and maybe something closer to what I was looking for. I was right.

Okay, so Angelfire is a bit predictable, especially looking back on it all these years. However, what I also saw as the merits then are still serious merits now. In so many other angel books I was reading, the girl never got to be the hero. She was the human or less-that-the-guy angel who didn’t really get to do anything cool. Ellie isn’t like that at all. SHE is the warrior, and it’s up to HER to save the day. The lore fed into the angels think in a really cool, unexpected way. The books were also REALLY fast paced and action packed. In my review of the second book, Wings of the Wicked, I start off by saying that I had to read that book in one sitting because I couldn’t find a place to put it down!

The romance, while kind of cutesy, also struck me as just … good. I really believed that these guys had a connection across reincarnations and time, and I understood why they struggled because of that. Will and Ellie were partners, not one-over-the-other protectors. Will doesn’t like it when Ellie puts herself in danger, but he lets her do what she needs to because he knows that she’s strong enough to take it. They fight each other, they find each other, and they really love each other. That’s enough for me to be happy.

While I mention in my review of the last book, Shadows in the Silence, that I was a little bit iffy on the ending, the only reason is that it happened too quick. That’s not surprising, however, since these books are SO fast paced. And if that’s my only complaint, it’s still VERY MUCH worth it to read!

Read it if you’re looking for: strong female characters, swoon worthy romance, angels, mythology, action, adventure, fast pace, fantasy

From the Notebook: I’m Back! +Giveaway Announcement

The hiatus is OVER! This isn’t a very bookish From the Notebook, but I am talking about where I’ve been, where I’m going … and I’m announcing an upcoming giveaway that’ll hit the blogosphere later this week. The giveaway includes a signed book and swag, and will be attached to an exclusive interview with the author, Kristen-Paige Madonia. I got to meet her last week, and she is amazing! Anyways, for more info … here’s the video!

Weekly Wrap Up 4/17/16

Hey guys! Sadly, there is neither a “what we read” section to this post nor a video. This is a text only wrap up post, due to the fact that Michaela and I are (technically) currently on hiatus. Michaela left for vacation a few days ago, and she is without time or internet to commit to things such as videos. BUT! There were still plenty of goodies this week that you don’t want to miss, so here we go!

Monday:

Gretchen’s From the Notebook: YA vs. Academia
Michaela’s Monday Musing: My Anxiety Story

Wednesday:

Gretchen’s Worth It Wednesday: The Song of the Lioness series by Tamora Pierce
Michaela’s Review of East of West: We are All One by Jonathan Hickman

Thursday:

Michaela’s version of our Mini Hiatus Announcement

Friday:

Gretchen’s version of our Mini Hiatus Announcement

Announcement! Upcoming Mini Hiatus

This post is coming to you a day late and a dollar short, but it is important information for those who follow this blog and our YouTube channel. Michaela and I are about to either go on vacation or go crazy for the next nine days, and as such we need to take some time. We will miss you all!

Worth It Wednesday: The Song of the Lioness Series by Tamora Pierce

Worth It Wednesdays is a weekly post where I feature my favorite YA titles. Find out more about it here!

Title: Alanna: The First Adventure (Song of the Lioness #1)

Author: Tamora Pierce

Goodreads Description: From now on I’m Alan of Trebond, the younger twin. I’ll be a knight.

And so young Alanna of Trebond begins the journey to knighthood. Though a girl, Alanna has always craved the adventure and daring allowed only for boys; her twin brother, Thom, yearns to learn the art of magic. So one day they decide to switch places: Thom heads for the convent to learn magic; Alanna, pretending to be a boy, is on her way to the castle of King Roald to begin her training as a page.

But the road to knighthood is not an easy one. As Alanna masters the skills necessary for battle, she must also learn to control her heart and to discern her enemies from her allies.

Filled with swords and sorcery, adventure and intrigue, good and evil, Alanna’s first adventure begins – one that will lead to the fulfillment of her dreams and the magical destiny that will make her a legend in her land.

Why it’s worth it: Do you love yourself a good female warrior? Well, any character you’ve ever loved that sounds like Alanna is basically thanks to this series. Tamora Pierce is widely regarded as the main popularizer of the genre, and for good damn reason. While my favorite series is The Protector of the Small, the Song of the Lioness will always occupy the strongest sense of love and nostalgia in my heart.

This series is the story of one woman up against terrible odds, and her struggle to overcome the sexism and gender expectations of her time. She has a fiery temper and a great sense of humor. Though Alanna does have magic, she earns her shield through tenacity and practice. What’s even better, however, is that this four book series chronicles a journey that is completely human even while being action packed and magical. Alanna makes mistakes, falls in love with the wrong people and has to overcome herself as much as she has to overcome the obstacles of others. While romance is involved with the plot, it is never the focal point, and Alanna goes through a series of relationships that grow and deepen as she grows up.

Tamora also sends Alanna far away into her extremely deep world of Tortall and beyond, exploring the themes of what it means to be a woman and a warrior outside of the traditional medieval-esque setting. While Alanna’s story may be the main focus, it is also about so many more smaller stories that connect together.

This series is one of my most re-read, and I’m pretty sure it’ll be that way until the dayI die. If you haven’t read it, GO DO SO!

Read it if you’re looking for: strong female characters, one of the original female warriors, high fantasy, strong world building, strong female friendships, action, adventure, magic, stories that don’t depend on romance, realistic romance

From the Notebook: YA vs. Academia

Hey there guys! This video is something that is near and dear to my heart: my thoughts on how college can treat YA literature. I want to be clear: I 1000% believe that YA should be criticized. However, that’s the point. In my experience, YA is often brushed aside and treated as something that is always bad, therefore telling people that YA can be and should be bad. I really, really wanted to change that.

Posts mentioned in video:

Betwixt the Books Discuss! Genre Hierarchy and Literary Snobbery
Perusing Poetics: End of the Poetics Journey
In Defense of YA: We Need a Rebellion of Our Own

Weekly Wrap Up + What We Read 4/10/16

This week, I am the queen of posting! I am not, however, the queen of reading. That falls to Michaela. Once again, I genuinely forgot about how much different stuff we put together for you guys this week. There’s tags and reviews and giveaways, oh my! But seriously, you don’t want to miss any of this. Here we go!

Monday:

Gretchen’s From the Notebook: A Brief History and Analysis of YA Book Covers
Michaela’s Collection of Cookbook Mini-Reviews

Tuesday:

Gretchen’s Intimidating TBR Tag
Michaela’s Intimidating TBR Tag
Release Day Blitz: The Glittering Court by Richelle Mead – Excerpt + Giveaway

Wednesday:

Gretchen’s Worth It Wednesday: Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead
Michaela’s Comic Book Wednesday: How to Use Previews

Thursday:

Gretchen’s Thesis Thursday: Big News that has Nothing to do with My Thesis

Friday:

Gretchen’s Review of If the Oceans Were Ink by Carla Power
Michaela’s Genrethon TBR

Review: “If The Oceans Were Ink” by Carla Power

If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran by Carla Power

Goodreads | Amazon

If the Oceans Were Ink is Carla Power’s eye-opening story of how she and her longtime friend Sheikh Mohammad Akram Nadwi found a way to confront ugly stereotypes and persistent misperceptions that were cleaving their communities. Their friendship-between a secular American and a madrasa-trained sheikh-had always seemed unlikely, but now they were frustrated and bewildered by the battles being fought in their names. Both knew that a close look at the Quran would reveal a faith that preached peace and not mass murder; respect for women and not oppression. And so they embarked on a yearlong journey through the controversial text.

A journalist who grew up in the Midwest and the Middle East, Power offers her unique vantage point on the Quran’s most provocative verses as she debates with Akram at cafes, family gatherings, and packed lecture halls, conversations filled with both good humor and powerful insights. Their story takes them to madrasas in India and pilgrimage sites in Mecca, as they encounter politicians and jihadis, feminist activists and conservative scholars. Armed with a new understanding of each other’s worldviews, Power and Akram offer eye-opening perspectives, destroy long-held myths, and reveal startling connections between worlds that have seemed hopelessly divided for far too long.

4 stars

Up until this point, I haven’t been too impressed by the books that I’ve been reading for my Spiritual Journeys class. Stephen Dubner’s Choosing My Religion was written poorly and lacked much depth. The second book, Monique and the Mango Rains by Kris Holloway, was even more surface level with a hidden amount of white privilege on top. I still haven’t finished the third one due to missed classes.

This book, however, changed everything. Here, at last, was the deep kind of inter-religious engagement that I had been looking for all this time, with an author I trusted to do the subject justice.

I did not believe that Carla would be the right narrator in the beginning. She opens the book with the story of her early years, living around the world with her family in Egypt and Afghanistan and India and all these other places, while her father collected artifacts. My stomach dropped when I thought that she was going to believe herself worldly enough to have these discussions because she’d been places and seen things in a very privileged fashion.

Instead, she directly confronts her privilege. She calls out her past self for thinking that she knew a lot about other cultures and other religions even though she had never really engaged with them deeply. Throughout the book, she is constantly admitting her to own biases and beliefs and using them to challenge her own way of thinking–and the reader’s. Instead of feeling as though I was listening to someone who thought they were an authority on the subject, I truly believed I was listening to the genuine journey to understanding of someone with an academic background of knowledge in Islamic religion and culture. That, on it’s own, is priceless.

Then there is the nature of the man with whom she takes this journey, Sheikh Mohammad Akram Nadwi. There is never any moment when either of them use his opinions as an end-all-be-all answer for all Muslims. Instead, we are led to a deep understanding of how he views the Quran the way he does, but also how others view it in different ways. We are never made to feel as if his answers are the “best” ones, though I grew to have a deep respect for him and his ideas.

A great deal of this comes from the fact that, while there are a lot of surprising places where Power and the Sheikh are in harmony, there are many places where they are not. The book does not shy away from these things, and instead investigates them on both sides. Sometimes, it is Power who showcases a shift in her worldview. In others, the Sheikh himself changes his opinion. It is a genuine dialogue of give and take.

I took this class in order to deepen my knowledge of other religions, and for the first time with these books I feel like that has been accomplished. Not only do I feel educated about some of the finer points of Islam and the Quran, but I have also come to an understanding of how the Quran can be interpreted and what it means to a variety of different Muslims. I also recognized myself taking a similar journey to Power while I was reading. I appreciated her blunt honesty with herself and her worldview, because it kept me from narrowing mine. If this is a topic that you are interested in, I completely recommend picking this up.