I Promise I've Been Reading

Somehow, almost an entire month has gone by since my last post, though it's not for lack of reading.  I've had a pretty busy month.  Sick kids.  A crazy puppy.  School.  A fallen tree in my backyard (due to Polar Vortex 2.0).  I guess the time just got away from me.

Regardless, I've read several books.  I briefly thought I might want to see the movie "The Best of Me" which is modeled after the book of the same name written by Nicholas Sparks.  Since I am a book lover, I wanted to read the book before the movie.  It was a decent book, not my favorite Nicholas Sparks novel though.  But decent.  I think the idea of two characters who've both moved on with their lives reuniting is a common plot that's been done before.  I liked how they way in which they were brought back together, through the will of a mutual friend who died.  But it was entirely too predictable and mushy.  And I like predictable and mushy.

After watching the trailer,  the guy who plays Dawson is almost exactly how I imagined him.  Amanda, not so much.  For being middle-aged, I think she looks too young.  Will I see the movie?  Meh...probably not in theatres.  But I will tune in once it hits Amazon Prime.

Currently, I am reading a book called leaving time (purposefully lowercase) by Jodi Picoult, my all-time favorite author.  Pretty much every book she writes deals with some sort of controversial situation or scenario and is told from multiple perspectives.  She usually switches the first person point-of-view every chapter so we are aware of multiple character's thoughts and actions.  Though it can be hard to follow at times if you lose track of the speaker, I admire (and envy) her ability to create so many round characters.

That being said, I am not very far into this book yet.  I am on page 114 out of 398.  The main premise is a young girl named Jenna whose mother, an elephant researcher, disappeared when she was three.  The main characters we hear from include: Jenna Metcalf, Alice Metcalf (her mother), Virgil Stanhope (a detective), and Serenity (a psychic).  Expect an update soon...I promise it will be quicker than a month!

If I Stay by Gayle Forman

Countless student readers + being made into a motion picture = why I chose to pick up If I Stay by Gayle Forman.

The equation was simple really.  And the book did not disappoint.  I thought it was a sweet story, beautifully written, and full of emotion.  I think every high school girl would appreciate this novel.

So here is the premise: Mia is a teenager who is in a car accident with her family.  Both of her parents die on impact and her younger brother passes later at the hospital.  The book is told from her perspective while she is in limbo.  She watches the doctors and nurses working on her body; she watches her extended family, friends, and boyfriend gather around her; she decides whether to keep fighting to live or whether to join her family on the other side.  Don't worry - I won't spoil the ending.

I have not seen the movie yet (shocking considering I have three small children at home), but did find the book trailer online:

If you have any interest in this book, you should most definitely watch the  trailer.  I will say that the girl who plays Mia is exactly how I imagined her, from the looks all the way to her voice.  The character who plays Adam, however, was just not what I envisioned while I read.  Not that this is a bad thing.  It's just not what I was expecting.

I enjoyed this book so much that I already visited the MHS learning commons this morning to check out the sequel, Where She Went.  I'm not very far yet, but the most obvious difference is that this book is told from Adam's perspective and not Mia's.  I'm interested to hear his perspective on the situation.

I'll leave you with a line that showed the young love between Mia and Adam.  One of the lines that I thought was just the sweetest: “If you stay, I'll do whatever you want. I'll quit the band, go with you to New York. But if you need me to go away, I'll do that, too. I was talking to Liz and she said maybe coming back to your old life would be too painful, that maybe it'd be easier for you to erase us. And that would suck, but I'd do it. I can lose you like that if I don't lose you today. I'll let you go. If you stay.”  This was Adam talking to Mia while she was comatose.  I know in my last post I wrote about the love between Eleanor and Park was not believable.  This love though...it just was.

Eleanor and Park

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell was a book that many of my students read last year.  I won a free copy from Goodreads.  Did you know they have giveaways?  And as soon as my copy arrived it went from one student to the next to the next.  I even had a girl ask me if she could borrow it over the summer to use it for her summer reading project.  So needless to say, once it was finally back in my possession, I had pretty high expectations.


To be honest, I'm not sure they were met.  I did finish the book, however there were several elements about the book that just bothered me a bit.


#1: I almost put it down within the first few pages due to  the overuse of foul language.  The overuse of foul language in YA books drives me nuts.  Totally unnecessary and really just annoying to read.


#2: I had a hard time believing the love between these two characters.  They seemed so unlike each other that I had a hard time seeing the connection and really believing two characters like Eleanor and Park would fall for each other.


#3: (This one is totally my own fault)  I just took too long to read it.  I only read this while at school and so it was very disconnected for me because I usually would only read it for ten minutes at a time and never gave myself the chance to get lost in the story and the characters.


Despite these observations, I do still think the book has many redeeming qualities and would appeal to a lot of YA readers, so I'll also discuss the pros.


#1: It was told from two different perspectives and switched chapters between Eleanor and Park.  I love when authors do this, as it  allows the readers to truly understand multiple characters since you see their inner thoughts.


#2: The characterization in general.  We've been discussing how authors create round characters by utilizing all five methods of characterization and this author has a good grasp on this.  I loved both characters.  I just didn't see their love for each other.


#3: Figurative language, similes, and metaphors.  Rainbow Rowell can write.  Here is one example of the kind of writing you might see:


"Or maybe, he thought now, he just didn't recognize all those other girls.  The way a computer drive will spit out a disk if it doesn't recognize the formatting.  When he touched Eleanor's hand, he recognized her.  He knew."

So there you have it.  The pros and cons of Eleanor and Park.  On to my next book...

The Goldfinch

Are any of you on Facebook?  I know, I know…it's not so cool anymore with the younger generation.  I, however, am on Facebook and there's been a post going around asking people who are tagged to make a post of the ten books that have changed their life.  Mrs. Kinross, MHS 10th grade teacher, tagged me in this post.  And to be honest, I replied to her with some book suggestions but wasn't quite ready to make my list.  I still am not sure I am ready.  Only ten books?  The pressure is too much.

But I recently finished a novel that I feel confident I would place on that list of top ten.  It is called The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.  The only reason I requested it from the library was because I had seen so many of my Goodreads friends suggesting it, as well as bestseller lists.  I thought it was amazing.  I will also tell you that it was LONG.  771 pages long.

Okay, so here's the abbreviated version of those 771 pages.  It begins when Theo is a thirteen year old. He and his mom stop at a museum in New York City briefly to examine some paintings.  While they are there, a bomb goes off (well, two actually) and his mother dies.  Theo meets a man named Welty after the bombing but before he escapes.  Welty gives him a ring and tells him to save this famous painting of a goldfinch.  Theo obliges and runs home with the painting and ring, never telling authorities about it.  The painting follows him from place to place….to Vegas to live with his father and his girlfriend, back to New York City to live with a friend and confidante, Hobie, who later becomes his business partner.

There are so many things I loved about this book.  It is hard to keep my attention for 771 pages, but Donna Tartt was able to do just that.  Her characterization was well developed, and not just for the main character, Theo.  I felt like his good friend Boris could just walk off the page and introduce himself to me.  My heart tugged for Mrs. Barbour towards the end of the book when two people very close to her died.  When you feel like you know a character, like you could meet them in real life, like you see a person on the street and think, "That's Boris!" then that is plain 'ol good writing.

I also loved the imagination the author must have to spin such a creative, imaginative plot.  Every twist in Theo's life was unexpected to me and I loved that.  I also appreciated that Theo's character was not perfect.   Far from it actually.  Theo did a lot of bad, bad things over the course of the book, but was still able to learn things from his experiences.

And since a post would not be complete without some quotes from the text, I'll leave you with a few of my favorites.  "Isn't everything worthwhile a gamble?  Can't good come around sometimes through some strange back doors?" (Tartt 758).  This line addresses that earlier notion of Theo not always making the best choices or causing the best actions, but sometimes things still ended up okay.  Sometimes even better than okay and he was able to grow from his experiences.

The other line that really spoke to me reads, "A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don't get to choose our own hearts.  We can't make ourselves want what's good for us or what's good for other people.  We don't get to choose the people we are" (Tartt 761).  This line comes near the end of the book when Theo is reflecting on his experiences through his journey.  So universal and it spoke to me as both a parent and a teacher.  My children are not exactly like me.  Neither are my students.  And that's okay.  They are who they are.  Something for me to embrace and appreciate.

Golden Lines

You know those lines that you read that you feel like everyone should read?  That almost feel like thematic statements themselves?  That make you wish you had written them yourself?  That's what todays' post is going to be about.  I've actually read about five books since my last post, so these lines are going to be from a hodgepodge of different authors.

This first is from Left to Tell, which I blogged about last week.  Here is the line: "Mr. Mehu introduced me to his secretary, Jeane, and she spent the day showing me how to use the computer and write memos, along with the ins and outs of their filing system.  I memorized every function of every button on the computer, and then I drew an exact replica of the keyboard on a piece of cardboard.  I spent three days working on the computer, and stayed up three entire nights practicing, typing on my own hand drawn keyboard" (Ilibagiza 189).  I love what this says about hard work. Can't you just imagine the amazing thematic statement that could come from this: If one works hard, any goal can be achieved.  I too often today people just expecting something, a new car, to be the best in a sport or subject, etc. without putting in any hard work. Unfortunately, I see this with my own children at times already.  And the older two are only four and six!  My four year old plays soccer.  He never wants to practice with me at home, but then wonders why he hasn't scored a goal yet.  He is not understanding (at least not yet) the importance of hard work.  I see it with students at the end of a grading period (in former years of course) who will rush in the last week, requesting extra credit and all of a sudden wondering how they can bring their grade up from a D.  Well, the answer my friends, is hard work and putting in the effort.  Just like Immaculee did in Left to Tell.

Another book I read at home was called The Hypnotist's Love Story by Liane Moriarty.  Another book full of golden lines.  So many, I had to pick two: 

"This was the problem with being friends with someone who knew you when you were a teenager.  They never quite take you seriously because they always see you as your stupid teenage self" (Moriarty 43).

"Over the last few months she'd learned that anything she thought she knew to be true could shift and change in an instant.  Nothing was permanent: The Buddhists knew what they were talking about" (Moriarty 391).

I like both these lines.  The first, just because the advice is simple, but I know the audience of this blog is teenagers, so I picked a line that could possibly speak to you.  That being said, some of my best friends in this world are from high school.  We still meet for monthly dinners, birthday parties, and our soirees have grown to include our husbands and children.  So even though I love the line, I don't think it applies to me all that much.  I could definitely see how it could though…

The second line appeals to those moments that are life-changing.  You can think everything is going hunky-dory perfect in your life.  Until there is a life-changing medical diagnosis.  Or a death of  a loved one.  Or a move.  Or the loss of a pet.  These moments that you remember forever.  And that seem to change everything that instant.  

I have more lines ready, but unfortunately it is 6:15 on a Sunday morning and my children are starting to wake up, which means it is time for me to make pancakes.  Yum!  

I will leave you with the next quote I was going to talk about instead.  This comes from The Goldfinch, a novel I started last week but has quickly consumed me.  It is FANTASTIC!

"Every new event--everything I did for the rest of my life--would only separate us more and more: days she was no longer a part of, an ever-growing distance between us.  Every single day for the rest of my life, she would only be further away" (Tartt 89).

Please respond in the comments: What does this line mean to you?  What do you think is happening to these characters?  Can you make any predictions just from this one line?

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

Left to Tell is join going to be an upcoming literature circle novel for our CP students.  The unit will focus on multicultural memoirs.  Multicultural meaning it's written about an experience outside the United States and memoir meaning it is told by the person who went through the experience.  I have to say that this book was the one I knew the least about when we started planning the unit.  I was 13 years old when the Rwandan Holocaust occurred and it was not something I knew much about.  Okay, anything.  At least at the time.

But I did know about Hotel Rwanda, a Hollywood film created in 2004 that depicts the Holocaust from the eyes of Paul Rusebagina, who attempts to shelter his own family and over a thousand other refugees at the hotel  he managed.  Though the movie was not real, the story of Paul was real.  And the event was real.  It's hard to believe that something so much like the Holocaust during WW2 could happen again.  More than 50 years later.  It's like the Rwandans didn't learn anything from that experience, nor the rest of the world, who failed to come to the aid of the Tutsi's being persecuted.  Here is a short clip from the film, showing the chaos in the streets, the fear of the citizens, and the brutality of the Holocaust.  (Don't worry…nothing too violent).

The whole purpose of talking about this film is that I had some background knowledge before I actually picked up the book and started reading.  And I'm glad.  Questions I had in the movie were easily explained by Immaculee in her memoir.  If you click on the hyperlink in the first paragraph, you can read a short summary of Immaculee's story.  Immaculee was a successful, smart young woman who had her entire life on the horizon.  She did well in school, earning a scholarship to University.  She had friends and aspirations, a loving family.  When the genocide began, her father begged her to come back from University for the Easter break.  Immaculee was so glad she did.   She was able to see her family one last time.  When the rebels started the attacks and began looking for her family, she escaped to a local pastor's house and was hidden with six other women in a bathroom for the three month duration.  Currently, I am at the part where she is hiding in the bathroom.  She must remain absolutely silent while hiding.

I love her word choice here, where she is describing what it was like when the rebels were actually at the pastor's house to start searching for her: "Hundreds of people surrounded the house, many of whom were dressed like devils, wearing skirts of tee bark and shirts of dried banana leaves, and some even had goat horns strapped onto their heads.  Despite their demonic costumes, their faces were easily recognizable, and there was murder in their eyes" (Ilibagiza 77).  You can only imagine the terror she felt at that moment.  During another attempt and finding the women at the pastor's house, Immaculee reflects, "Prayer became my armor, and I wrapped it tightly around my heart" (Ilibagiza 85).   I loved the personification used here.  Immaculee is a strong writer.  Combine that with a gripping story and you have a recipe for a you-can't-put-it-down book.  I hope some of you choose to read this during our multicultural memoir unit!

Mrs. Palmer's Summer Reading

This post will be a bit atypical from my normal posts.  I typically focus on one text and go into detail about some of it's features.  Today, I plan to highlight several books I've read over the summer since I took a blogging hiatus.

Maus
This book is a graphic novel…to be honest, it's the first graphic novel I've actually read in its entirety.  I guess I always had a preconceived notion that graphic novels were too simplistic and didn't carry much of a story line.  I stand corrected.  Maus was interesting, forced me to use both pictures and words to tell a complete story (something I only do when reading picture books with my children), and actually quite serious in plot.  It is a story about the Holocaust, told from the perspective of a young Jewish boy interviewing his father, a man who survived the Holocaust.  What I was expecting to be an unrealistic cartoon surprised me; it was powerful.  Some of you will have the opportunity to read this later during our multicultural memoir unit this Fall.  If you want to know more, click here.

The Death of Bees
This was the first book I read this summer.  I selected it because it was one of the Alex Award winners, so I knew some students may come in this school year and chose this for summer reading.  The premise of this book was actually quite crazy, and I'm being somewhat vague to avoid spoilers, but here it is: Two girls find their father and mother both dead in their rundown house.  Their parents were horrible to them, so instead of calling the authorities, they decide to bury them in their backyard and just live by themselves, pretending the parents ran off on an adventure when anyone close to them asked.  The girls end up becoming friends with a neighbor…and I have to stop here or I'll spoil something.  I LOVED this book!  Read more here.

The Universe Versus Alex Woods
This was another book title that appeared on the Alex Award list.  This one took me a bit longer to get through than The Death of Bees, though I still did enjoy it.  This title was about a boy named Alex Woods who was struck by a meteor at the age of ten and suffered some health consequences as a result, such as seizures.  The novel starts right in the action of Alex trying to cross a European border with a dead man's ashes in the car.  Then the whole book flashes back to the events leading up to this pseudo-arrest.  There are definitely moments where this one seemed farfetched, but I didn't really mind.  The author kept you interested and the characterization was impeccable.  Another YA book with my stamp of approval!

These were the only three YA books I read this summer.  I can't wait to hear about your summer reading!