Gretchen C. Hohmeyer's Blog, page 51

Bibliomancy for Beginners Nostalgia Junkie: “The Reality Bug” by DJ MacHale

Welcome back all to this special Bibliomancy for Beginners series, Nostalgia Junkie! This ten part special goes book by book through one the favorite childhood series of Head Bibliomancer Michaela from The Pied Piper Calls. Us, with special guest Casey from The Drunk Librarian, will be going week by week through all ten books.

This week we’re talking about the fourth book: The Reality Bug. Will I ever stop hating Aja? Will Michaela be right, and this book be much better for adults than kids? Will Casey like this book or hate it like Michaela and I did as kids? FIND OUT!

Previous Episodes:

Ep #1: The Merchant of Death

Ep #2: The Lost City of Faar

Ep #3: The Never War

Bibliomancy for Beginners Season 3: Angelfall by Susan Ee

IT’S MY TURN FOR A PICK AND YOU CAN BET I’M ON A ROLL.

I don’t know if you saw my blow up after our last regularly scheduled hangout, but you can catch up with that here if you want. Anyways, this week we’re going my pick: Angelfall by Susan Ee.

I may scream again this episode. HOWEVER, thankfully we have TWO guest Bibliomancers this episode (even if one is just remote) who are in my corner on this one. I guess you’ll just have to watch and see if Taylor manages to set me off. Again. Here we go!

DUE TO TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES, THE VIDEO IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE. IT’LL BE BACK SOON!

Worth It Wednesdays: “The Wrath and The Dawn” by Renee Ahdieh

Welcome to My Life is a Notebook’s new weekly feature, “Worth It Wednesdays”! I know that this sounds like something linky, but for the moment it’s not. This is just me, making a commitment to being a better blogger in the way that I like to blog.

See, I gave up on reviewing for a long time because I just got tired of reading books to review them. It’s draining. I just wanted to read and enjoy, you know? So I stopped and my reading habits got so much better.

But, lately, I’ve been screaming and shouting a lot about YA. I wrote this rant and absolutely blew up in a recent book club video. One of my co-hosts asked me if I could send her a list of YA books that I thought were good, and so I compiled one.

Then I realized that I should start sharing them.

Some of these books I’ll have already reviewed. Some are old, some are new. They are in no particular order. Just … as they strike me. So here we go!

Title: The Wrath and The Dawn

Author: Renee Ahdieh

Publication Date: May 12, 2015

Goodreads Description: A sumptuous and epically told love story inspired by A Thousand and One Nights

Every dawn brings horror to a different family in a land ruled by a killer. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, takes a new bride each night only to have her executed at sunrise. So it is a suspicious surprise when sixteen-year-old Shahrzad volunteers to marry Khalid. But she does so with a clever plan to stay alive and exact revenge on the Caliph for the murder of her best friend and countless other girls. Shazi’s wit and will, indeed, get her through to the dawn that no others have seen, but with a catch . . . she’s falling in love with the very boy who killed her dearest friend.

She discovers that the murderous boy-king is not all that he seems and neither are the deaths of so many girls. Shazi is determined to uncover the reason for the murders and to break the cycle once and for all.

Why it’s worth it: I’ll be the first one to tell you that I hate retellings (ew) and I also was extremely wary about it because of the romance-centric story line. But I saw so much buzz about it on social media–and I had gift card money to burn. So I bought it.

And I have lost count of how many times I’ve re-read it in the two months since I bought it.

I can’t get enough of the characters. They are each well-rounded people I wish I could be friends with in real life. The romance is real and heart-wrenching/warming. The plot of the book is far more tense and thrilling than I originally pegged it to be. The setting is lavish and sumptuous. I’m also a sucker for a story within a story.

I could literally spend all day telling people to give this book a chance. You won’t regret it. I am actually in physical pain because I don’t have the sequel yet.

Read it if you’re looking for: A strong female lead, strong romance, a unique setting, strong female friendships, diverse reads, fantasy with magic

Bibliomancy for Beginners Nostalgia Junkie: “The Never War” by DJ MacHale

Welcome back all to this special Bibliomancy for Beginners series, Nostalgia Junkie! This ten part special goes book by book through one the favorite childhood series of Head Bibliomancer Michaela from The Pied Piper Calls. Us, with special guest Casey from The Drunk Librarian, will be going week by week through all ten books.

This week we’re talking about the third book: The Never War. Will I ever stop being cranky about the First, Second and Third Earth territories? Will Michaela’s love of Gunny endure? Will Casey come willingly into the happiness of nostalgia or must this first timer be dragged? FIND OUT!

Previous Episodes:

Ep #1: The Merchant of Death

Ep #2: The Lost City of Faar

In Defense of YA: We Need a Rebellion of Our Own

I promised myself a while ago–like, when I started this blog ago–that I would never write a response blog post. I have never wanted to get caught up in any drama. Lord, the drama on the internet, am I right? But two things have happened in such quick succession that I am finally using this blog to say some things.

The first was during the episode of my book club, Bibliomancy for Beginners, that aired last Tuesday. Head over to this link and watch the last six minutes or so. Starting at about 1:04:00 I just … blow up. Seriously. I scare my co-Bibliomancers. Because enough of them have taken enough jabs at the YA genre over the three years that we’ve been doing this that I just broke. (Warning: I say some choice things about John Green. While I stand by my opinion, I recognize that this is my opinion and not some cosmic rule.) So I start shouting in defense of it. Enjoy.

Secondly, this article was posted on The Guardian website. It’s titled “Falling out of love with YA fiction.” For the first half of the article, I totally and heartily agree. For the second half, however, I do not.

In a word, you could call my current state of mind: frustrated.

First off, I AM frustrated with young adult publishing as it stands today. As the author of The Guardian post, Hawwa, says,

I’m obviously not saying everyone does this, but I do feel as if there are certain “ingredients” authors feel they must include if their book is going to be published and become a success.

I literally have been posting about this nonsense since 2012, especially in regards to love triangles. Why this is still a thing three years later I have no idea.

Hawwa also brings up this point about romance.

My ultimate opinion is that all this comes down to the fact that these novels often do not explore ideas, but rather that far, far too much of the time there is a romance driving the plot instead.

Hilariously enough, Hawwa uses for one of the examples of this Sabaa Tahir’s debut novel An Ember in the Ashes, which Bibliomancy for Beginners tackled a few weeks ago. Is it a good debut novel? Yes. Did we have one of our most riotously hilarious hangouts ever discussing how the romance in the novel derailed so much of the book? Yes.

I honestly had to stop accepting YA books to review because I was trying to read too much and the predictability and formulaic quality of the plots was making me nauseous. I needed to scale back my reading and be much more selective with my choices, in order to find the books I truly wanted to read.

And I did.

That’s the thing. That’s my sticking point. I will be the first one to say that YA is a problematic fave. But there is so much good that the genre can do, and sometimes people forget that. I’ll be the first to say that I have disliked many of the huge trends that came up (Twilight, The Hunger Games, etc) but you know what? They got kids reading. They got kids excited about reading. I can respect that.

I wrote an extremely long blog post a while ago about why I write and read YA, but the bottom line is this: I want to write YA because I want to write better YA. Hawwa brings it back to a dilution of language as a base problem, but for me … I’m okay with that. I see such a bigger problem. A bigger problem with a solution that’s staring us right in the face.

Do you know why these formulas exist in plots? Because they sell. YA books have become a massive cash crop for a lot of people, and many large publishers want more of that. They want another Harry Potter, another Hunger Games, another Twilight. Because they sell.

So let’s not let them sell.

I, for one, no longer pick up a book that promises a love triangle. I will not spend my money on it. If you enjoy love triangles, that’s cool–I’m not saying that you can’t read what you like. But. If you don’t? Don’t buy them. Don’t go see the movie. I haven’t spent a single dime on The Hunger Games movies after they bent the love triangle into it.

Please God don’t take this as me suggesting you pirate anything. Please don’t do that.

You may be asking, “So then what the hell am I supposed to read if I can’t read anything with a love triangle with it?” Trust me, it exists. I’ve been living on it for a year or more now. Seek out indie publishers. Search Goodreads. You’d be amazed how many people create lists of “books without love triangles” or some such title. This literature is out there. We need more of it. So we need to demand it.

And maybe this isn’t the best solution. Maybe there are other roads, other options. Comments are free and open to all. Please. Because we need people to start thinking about it and talking about it. I will not “fall out of love with YA” because this is my genre. Every book that has impacted me and affected me deeply has been YA. The projects I’m most passionate about writing are YA. I will not sit idly and watch dollar signs destroy what is to me the most powerful and magical genre of writing out there. At the very least, I won’t let them take away my enjoyment of reading.

If you “fall out of love,” then this wins. YA will continue to be rather formulaic. If anything, dystopian fiction has prepared us for this. Be a Mockingjay. Be a Divergent. Choose your favorite rebel and stand up in their name. We needed them in some of our darkest moments. But now, they need us.

Where I’ve Been: Dreams to Realities (i.e., the Mushiest Thing I Will Ever Write)

I know that I don’t blog as much as I ought to anymore, but hey. That’s life. However, if you’ve been watching our Bibliomancer videos (or just seen Michaela’s great thumbnails for recent episodes) then you know that I missed on regularly scheduled episode on Jorge Luis Borges’ Collected Fictions AND the first of our ten part Nostalgia Junkie special with the Pendragon books. I promised in each of those posts that I would get around to tell you all where I’ve been.

That promised time is now.

I’m going to diverge for a second, though, and give some context for what’s about to follow. As you may or may not know, I am an English and Writing double major at Ithaca College–about to be a senior. This means I have two more semesters before I get spit out into the big, wide world. I always maintained that what I wanted was to be a teacher. Always.

And it had started to seem like a problem.

I follow these blogs on Tumblr for English majors, and sometimes they hold Q&As. The most popular question is: what can I do with an English degree besides teach? Because that’s the joke. Majoring in English? Must what to teach. But that’s NOT true. Except, that’s what I thought I wanted. Until the five hundredth time I heard that joke, and then I wasn’t so sure.

Did I just want to teach because I didn’t think I could do anything else?

So, last semester I applied to be a teaching assistant and a resident assistant for the Ithaca Writer’s Institute. This two week long venture would see me living and breathing high school writers, helping to teach them fiction as well as keep them in line in the dorm. I would have nowhere else to go. It was sort of terrifying.

And I got the job.

So two weeks ago, on July 4th, I drove my way back up to Ithaca and moved in and waited. Either my dreams were about to become reality, or they were going to crash and burn in spectacular fashion. But, either way, I was going to have to teach and see if I could actually do it on every possible level.

I don’t know what I expected, but I certainly didn’t get it. The experience had some low points, sure, but they weren’t low as much as … weird and absurd. My fabulous fiction professor-partner (Jacob White from the Ithaca Writing Department) described the high schoolers as shook up champagne we just popped the cork off of and he was correct.

Most of it, though? Most of it was pretty damn high.

Early on, I got to teach my own 2 hour craft class, and it was one of the more terrifying things I’d ever done. I punted, passed, and kicked my way through it, feeling at times that it was going horribly and other times that it was going wonderfully. But every kid I asked afterwards loved it. My only critique was that it had been “too fun,” allowing some kids to get rowdy. At the final reading, one of the kids read what “Gretchen inspired me to write” in the class.

Later on in the week, I got to do my own workshops. Jacob split the class in half and handed me eight kids, saying I could handle the process however I wanted. DO YOU KNOW how TERRIFYING that is? But it went … so well.

A few days ago, this one girl from the Institute emailed me. This girl and I had made some special connections over the two weeks, but I don’t want to spill personal details on the web. So let me just say that this girl was the biggest affirmation of my teaching and LOVE of teaching that I had for the whole two weeks. (Also, this kid is going to be published some day, let me tell you. I hope she remembers me then. Anyways.) She called me one of the best mentors that she’d ever had and a natural teacher, among many other overly generous things.

I woke up to that email. Which means I woke up, read the email and immediately started crying.

I am one of those people who tends to just know what I want. I might not know how I’m going to get it, but I know that I want it. But after three years of doubt and questioning from the outside world, I wasn’t sure of myself anymore. That is one of the most disastrous things that the world can do to you, if you let it. And I had let it.

I am an English and Writing major and I want to teach.

I want to teach because being in front of a classroom is exhilarating to me. I want to teach because feeling like I’ve helped just one person from this whole two week experience is the best feeling I have ever known. I want to teach because the idea that multiple kids from these two weeks connected to me and what I was saying and learned from me is the most mystical real magic to me. I want to teach because this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

After our last class, this girl came up to me, hugged me, and said thank you in my ear a few times. I said “You’re welcome,” because I was stunned and that’s what you say, right? But a huge thank you goes back to her, as well. Teaching isn’t always magical and wonderful–nothing is. But the idea that, every once and a while, I could have that kind of thing is worth fighting for.

In a world that kept asking me “Is this really what you want to do?”, that made me ask myself “Can I really even do this?” … I needed to know. I needed to know if I could teach, if I wanted to teach. For the first one, I think I’m on the right track. For the second one?

Yes.

And that’s the important thing. That I do what I want and feel confident in what I want. So thank you to all my ducklings from over these past two weeks. Someone once said that the best teachers learn from their students–so while I might not be the best teacher, I am most certainly grateful for the learning from my students bit. There are only strong steps from here.

Bibliomancy for Beginners Season 3: Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

Welcome to another episode of the regular season of Bibliomancy for Beginners! Tonight we’re discussing one of Taylor’s picks (ew): a graphic horror novel called Through the Woods by Emily Carroll!

THAT’S RIGHT, THE FIRST GRAPHIC NOVEL WE’VE EVER DONE.

It promises to be FANTASTIC. One, because it’s Taylor’s pick which means I make it my mission to trash him. Two, because the fabulous Casey from The Drunk Librarian (and also our Nostalgia Junkie: Pendragon series and our 13 Days of Misfortune series) will be joining us!

Make sure you join us too!

Bibliomancy for Beginners Nostalgia Junkie: The Lost City of Faar by DJ MacHale

Welcome to the second installment (of 10!) of the Bibliomancy for Beginners special series: Nostalgia Junkie. AND I’M ACTUALLY THERE FOR THIS ONE. (Not that it means that episode 1 is one for you to miss.)

In this special series, myself, Head Bibliomancer Michaela from The Pied Piper Calls and special guest Casey from The Drunk Librarian are tackling the ten books of the Pendragon series by DJ MacHale. This is the link to episode 2 on The Lost City of Faar!

Don’t miss next week, on Monday, when we three tackle the third book in the series, The Never War!

(We did have some technical difficulties in the end because Michaela lost her internet, but never mind the abrupt ending. We’re going to tie up any loose ends–of which there were few–at the beginning of the next episode!)

Bibliomancy for Beginners Nostalgia Junkie: The Merchant of Death by DJ MacHale

You know that, here at Bibliomancy, we’re all about reading as many books as we possibly can. And we love to do it in series. (Do you remember our 13 Days of Misfortune? I do. With anxiety.) Anyways.

Michaela really wanted to do another throwback series, so she picked one of her childhood favorites: The Pendragon books by DJ MacHale. So we’re doing a book a week until we finish the whole series!

Like I said, this special includes Michaela, me and our lovely dear Casey–who you might remember from 13 Days of Misfortune. The link to the first episode is below, which I–sadly–was not a part of due to reasons I will explain rather shortly. HOWEVER, it is still very much worth watching! I hope to see you next week when we do book 2!

Bibliomancy for Beginners Season 3: Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges

Hey there guys!

This is a posting that is a little bit late, but I wasn’t there for this episode for reasons they explain in the video and I’ll explain in a post later. HOWEVER, just because I’m not there doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth watching! (Or you can watch it and tell me how much you missed me because I make the show for you. That’s cool too.)

Anyways. Check it out! I guess Michaela and Taylor can be okay sometimes.