I have a confession to make: When reading books I like, I skip ahead to read the ending.
I know, I know! I'm a terrible person. Everyone I've ever admitted this to has practically disowned me, and who can blame them? But I promise you that when I started Lady Pain I did not know it was the third in a trilogy. When the author made cryptic statements I thought she was just really good at foreshadowing. How was I to know that when it said on the cover "Rebecca Bradley, Author of Lady in Gil" they meant, "Go read that one first"!
I found out it was a sequel about halfway through, and by then it was too late to stop and go back. I'd been hooked since the first page, and that's pretty much how I determine whether a book is worth reading (that, or I read the end and determine if I want to find out how they got there, or if I can just figure it out on my own. cringe).
After that stunning revelation, for the rest of the book I was trying to see if the author was genuinely clever, or if I had mistaken vagueness for tasty plot bits dangled tantalizingly out of reach. I concluded that while a few of the things I'd thought were clever foreshadowing were really just a way of re-introducing people to the characters, there were still plenty of really good moments that showcased the author's ability to make a situation interesting, exciting, a bit nail-biting, and funny all at the same time. Moments that could have gotten heavy-handed were toned down with a bit of humor, without lessening the breathless page-turning-ness of the action. It was in first-person, too, which I am generally suspicious of, but this author made it sound genuine, without erring either on the side of being too much like dialog, or too eloquent and author-y, which are both faults I've seen in first person before. (If I didn't love Robin McKinley's style so much, I'd've thrown Dragonhaven across the room in frustration. That cat can ramble.)
When I reached the end, though (which, when I'd read it, had given nothing of the awesome climax away; hooray for epilogues!), I was faced with the question of whether I would go back and read the first two. On the one hand, it was really well written, and there were a few characters that I'm sure we got to know before, because they were too good to have such small parts. On the other hand, now I know how it all ends, and if I'm not mistaken, it seems the action starts twenty years or more before the conclusion. That's twenty years of knowledge about the future that I will have to pretend to myself I don't know while I read about How It All Began. And that's a little mentally exhausting (as anyone who's watched the new Star Wars can attest). So while I definitely plan to return, it may have to be a while before I do. Because while I may be totally scatterbrained and unable to find my glasses when they're on my head (true story), I can remember details I read in books for years.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Thinking About Books: The Book Whisperer
I just finished a book called The Book Whisperer written by a sixth grade teacher who is tired of school making kids hate reading. In her class, therefore, she assigns kids to read forty (40) books in the school year, which basically means they have to be reading constantly to make this requirement. They can choose whatever books they want, but she does have genre requirements to help broaden their perspective. There are kids who come into her class having read maybe one book in their entire life that wasn't forced upon them by a grown up, and most of them leave her class at least not hating reading anymore, at most having had their ideas about reading completely changed. Instead of some evil chore foisted on them by teachers who think it's "good for them," reading becomes a pleasure, something to do in one's own spare time.
Can you guess why this book caught my eye?
I would have killed for a teacher like that. Killed. I have often expressed to my friends that my husband and I are fully planning on homeschooling our kids, and my own middle school experience is one of the reasons I feel so strongly about that. In the seventh grade I had a science teacher who was a nice enough guy, not too boring or strict. The problem was that I already knew everything he was teaching. (I'm not actually sure about this, looking back. Did I already know it, or did he just go so slowly and redundantly that I could skim the textbook and, using my many years of watching Nature and The Magic School Bus, ace the tests?) In any case, the class was not structured for me, and I was bored out of my skull. I was a dutiful student, but there are limits even to the patience of someone who cares about their grade. I tried to pay attention, I really did, but it soon became clear that my brain was going to start melting and oozing out of my ears if I didn't keep myself occupied somehow. So I read a book.
This seems pretty innocent, right? I even kept it hidden so that you couldn't really see it. I was not distracting the other children or being flagrantly disrespectful. And I got good grades. But this teacher was so annoyed that I wasn't listening to him blather that he stopped his lecture (oh, great idea, derail everyone's train of thought all at once) and demanded that I hand over my book. I protested, of course, but in the end he got his way (I was a Good Kid, remember?) and he told me that I could have the book back at the end of the day. Not the end of the period. The end of the day.
I lived in a rural town. Education was not seen as valuable or important to most people around there, and their kids definitely picked up on that attitude. I had moved there a few years prior from a suburban school near a big city, populated mostly by the children of lawyers and doctors. My parents emphasized education so much that it took me years to figure out that college was optional. I had no idea. It was what you did after high school.
I was also an avid reader. (Still am.) I vacuumed up books like they were oxygen and I enjoyed learning. I had made something of a reputation for myself the year before in the sixth grade by beating, mangling and hanging up to dry the previous reading record of the school. My nickname for years was "Bookworm." (These kids were not very imaginative, either.)
For these reasons (and others, I suppose, but mostly these) I stuck out. I had a reputation among the students, but I also had one among the teachers. They knew I was serious about this school thing, and that learning mattered to me. I'm not gonna say I got special treatment- aw heck, why not? I got special treatment. My sixth grade reading teacher had a no-food policy that he conveniently forgot about when I brought a muffin to class (every day). He knew I wasn't gonna be a pig about it, and I was discreet.
I say all this not to boast (well, maybe a little), but to set the scene. When I got my book out to keep myself occupied, I was sort of counting on the teacher to understand and look the other way. Maybe my head was a little swollen by then, but I think it was more than that. I expected my teacher to understand that I valued my education enough to not let him get in the way of it. So when instead I got punished for doing something voluntarily that teachers struggled and prayed and wailed about for years to get my peers to do, I was understandably angry. I slouched down in my desk and doodled, furiously not listening to the rest of the lecture. (Which was such an improvement, right?)
This happened multiple times throughout the year. It got to the point where they got my mother involved. ('Cause I'm such a bad kid 'n all.) And at the time it instilled in me a bad attitude toward that teacher and that class, and school in general, really. (I still blame him for the fact that even today I have a problem with automatically tuning out the voice of someone lecturing. That helped with reading in his class, but it has not served me well since.) But thinking about it now, I do not see how that teacher could have demonstrated more clearly that school was for jumping through academic hoops, not genuinely learning.
My husband would like to make it clear that he thinks I am reading too much into this, and he is probably right. It was a kind of traumatic event that damaged my pride as "the special one," and the teacher was most likely simply concerned with keeping classroom discipline. But how many of you can share an experience even a little like mine, an experience that cut the wind out of your sails and made you realize that school was not a place conducive to learning about things that were important to you? I mean, how many of you came to love reading because a teacher made you read a book for an assignment? How many adults do you know who don't read, or who read trash because no one ever tried or knew how to develop their reading tastes to something more mature than "The Day My Butt Went Crazy"? (Yes, that's a real book.)
What The Book Whisperer calls for is a change in the school system to emphasize real reading, the kind of reading that people actually do. Not reading one chapter a night for six weeks, and doing activities and filling out worksheets, but devouring books one after another, gobbling up literature and letting it digest. Guiding kids through the kind of reading they're already doing, instead of trying to cookie-cutter everyone into compliance with some arbitrary standard. Letting books teach instead of teaching about books. I wish the author well in her quest to make school a friendly place for reading, but I'm more cynical (actually, she is, too). I don't believe this will ever happen until schools are made to be accountable for how they are ruining our children and producing people who can take standardized tests, but have no idea how to live.
Can you guess why this book caught my eye?
I would have killed for a teacher like that. Killed. I have often expressed to my friends that my husband and I are fully planning on homeschooling our kids, and my own middle school experience is one of the reasons I feel so strongly about that. In the seventh grade I had a science teacher who was a nice enough guy, not too boring or strict. The problem was that I already knew everything he was teaching. (I'm not actually sure about this, looking back. Did I already know it, or did he just go so slowly and redundantly that I could skim the textbook and, using my many years of watching Nature and The Magic School Bus, ace the tests?) In any case, the class was not structured for me, and I was bored out of my skull. I was a dutiful student, but there are limits even to the patience of someone who cares about their grade. I tried to pay attention, I really did, but it soon became clear that my brain was going to start melting and oozing out of my ears if I didn't keep myself occupied somehow. So I read a book.
This seems pretty innocent, right? I even kept it hidden so that you couldn't really see it. I was not distracting the other children or being flagrantly disrespectful. And I got good grades. But this teacher was so annoyed that I wasn't listening to him blather that he stopped his lecture (oh, great idea, derail everyone's train of thought all at once) and demanded that I hand over my book. I protested, of course, but in the end he got his way (I was a Good Kid, remember?) and he told me that I could have the book back at the end of the day. Not the end of the period. The end of the day.
I lived in a rural town. Education was not seen as valuable or important to most people around there, and their kids definitely picked up on that attitude. I had moved there a few years prior from a suburban school near a big city, populated mostly by the children of lawyers and doctors. My parents emphasized education so much that it took me years to figure out that college was optional. I had no idea. It was what you did after high school.
I was also an avid reader. (Still am.) I vacuumed up books like they were oxygen and I enjoyed learning. I had made something of a reputation for myself the year before in the sixth grade by beating, mangling and hanging up to dry the previous reading record of the school. My nickname for years was "Bookworm." (These kids were not very imaginative, either.)
For these reasons (and others, I suppose, but mostly these) I stuck out. I had a reputation among the students, but I also had one among the teachers. They knew I was serious about this school thing, and that learning mattered to me. I'm not gonna say I got special treatment- aw heck, why not? I got special treatment. My sixth grade reading teacher had a no-food policy that he conveniently forgot about when I brought a muffin to class (every day). He knew I wasn't gonna be a pig about it, and I was discreet.
I say all this not to boast (well, maybe a little), but to set the scene. When I got my book out to keep myself occupied, I was sort of counting on the teacher to understand and look the other way. Maybe my head was a little swollen by then, but I think it was more than that. I expected my teacher to understand that I valued my education enough to not let him get in the way of it. So when instead I got punished for doing something voluntarily that teachers struggled and prayed and wailed about for years to get my peers to do, I was understandably angry. I slouched down in my desk and doodled, furiously not listening to the rest of the lecture. (Which was such an improvement, right?)
This happened multiple times throughout the year. It got to the point where they got my mother involved. ('Cause I'm such a bad kid 'n all.) And at the time it instilled in me a bad attitude toward that teacher and that class, and school in general, really. (I still blame him for the fact that even today I have a problem with automatically tuning out the voice of someone lecturing. That helped with reading in his class, but it has not served me well since.) But thinking about it now, I do not see how that teacher could have demonstrated more clearly that school was for jumping through academic hoops, not genuinely learning.
My husband would like to make it clear that he thinks I am reading too much into this, and he is probably right. It was a kind of traumatic event that damaged my pride as "the special one," and the teacher was most likely simply concerned with keeping classroom discipline. But how many of you can share an experience even a little like mine, an experience that cut the wind out of your sails and made you realize that school was not a place conducive to learning about things that were important to you? I mean, how many of you came to love reading because a teacher made you read a book for an assignment? How many adults do you know who don't read, or who read trash because no one ever tried or knew how to develop their reading tastes to something more mature than "The Day My Butt Went Crazy"? (Yes, that's a real book.)
What The Book Whisperer calls for is a change in the school system to emphasize real reading, the kind of reading that people actually do. Not reading one chapter a night for six weeks, and doing activities and filling out worksheets, but devouring books one after another, gobbling up literature and letting it digest. Guiding kids through the kind of reading they're already doing, instead of trying to cookie-cutter everyone into compliance with some arbitrary standard. Letting books teach instead of teaching about books. I wish the author well in her quest to make school a friendly place for reading, but I'm more cynical (actually, she is, too). I don't believe this will ever happen until schools are made to be accountable for how they are ruining our children and producing people who can take standardized tests, but have no idea how to live.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Maybe I Should Get a Bigger Ring...
Last Saturday I was in Barnes and Noble, minding my own business, kind of checking out the relationships section, which, in this store, is right next to the sex books. This guy comes into the isle, and is a little too close to my personal space, so I scooch over a bit to give myself some more room, and (red flag! red flag!) he moves over too. I move over again, a little more this time, and he moves right with me, keeping the same distance between us. Okay, now I'm a little weirded out, but I keep studiously avoiding eye contact (I don't even know what the guy looked like, I was avoiding eye contact THAT MUCH) and think about leaving to go find my husband. Before I can, though, the guy says, "Find anything good?"
Short aside: when I'm by myself, I often imagine different dangerous scenarios, just to keep me on my toes. What if that guy walking toward me down the hall suddenly tries to grab me? I'll elbow him in the gut and kick him in the crotch. Okay, what if that guy tries something...? And so on. And just before this guy came into the isle I'd been wondering what I would do if someone said something inappropriate to me regarding those very pink books.
So, this is what was running through my head when he says, "Find anything good?" I had imagined a snappy comeback, something like, "Just who do you think you are, stupid?" or even just flashing my ring (because, to be fair, it was on the other side of me out of his sight). But in the second after he said it, while my breath was still caught in my throat, I just decided to be rude, and I walked away without saying anything, without looking at him, as though I hadn't even heard him.
Now my brain turns back on and I starting screaming to myself, "Oh my gosh, what the heck, I just got harassed in the sex isle, I think I'm gonna die, WHERE IS MY HUSBAND?" I found him soon after, and told him what happened. We escaped to the manga section and I didn't leave his side for the rest of the trip. He was outraged on my behalf, but in the end, when I'd calmed down a little, I had to admit that probably the guy was just very socially awkward, or possibly looking for a one night stand, and not actively trying to harass married women. I came to this opinion because I think that this guy (who I did not get a good look at) may have been the same guy who, right before this, rushed into the isle, slammed a book onto the shelf, and rushed away. (The book was something like "How to Make Love to a Woman" or something.) I can just image him thinking desperately of something to say, and I feel bad that this was all he could come up with.
But not bad enough to dignify him with a response.
Short aside: when I'm by myself, I often imagine different dangerous scenarios, just to keep me on my toes. What if that guy walking toward me down the hall suddenly tries to grab me? I'll elbow him in the gut and kick him in the crotch. Okay, what if that guy tries something...? And so on. And just before this guy came into the isle I'd been wondering what I would do if someone said something inappropriate to me regarding those very pink books.
So, this is what was running through my head when he says, "Find anything good?" I had imagined a snappy comeback, something like, "Just who do you think you are, stupid?" or even just flashing my ring (because, to be fair, it was on the other side of me out of his sight). But in the second after he said it, while my breath was still caught in my throat, I just decided to be rude, and I walked away without saying anything, without looking at him, as though I hadn't even heard him.
Now my brain turns back on and I starting screaming to myself, "Oh my gosh, what the heck, I just got harassed in the sex isle, I think I'm gonna die, WHERE IS MY HUSBAND?" I found him soon after, and told him what happened. We escaped to the manga section and I didn't leave his side for the rest of the trip. He was outraged on my behalf, but in the end, when I'd calmed down a little, I had to admit that probably the guy was just very socially awkward, or possibly looking for a one night stand, and not actively trying to harass married women. I came to this opinion because I think that this guy (who I did not get a good look at) may have been the same guy who, right before this, rushed into the isle, slammed a book onto the shelf, and rushed away. (The book was something like "How to Make Love to a Woman" or something.) I can just image him thinking desperately of something to say, and I feel bad that this was all he could come up with.
But not bad enough to dignify him with a response.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Fear is the soul killer
I think I'm afraid of success. Afraid of climbing up too high on my potential and falling off. Afraid of being more visible and therefore more subject to laughter and scorn. Afraid of giving it my all and my all not being enough. Being anonymous is easier. It's comfortable. It's the known. When will I finally work up the courage to put my full effort behind something? To work hard and get past initial failures and succeed? When will I stop being afraid?
Saturday, March 21, 2009
If you give a mouse a cookie... it will eat it and infest your house.
So the other night I saw a ballet version of Romeo and Juliet. There was this really touching scene when Romeo realizes Juliet is dead, and he takes her limp body and tries to dance with it. It was done really well (she did sort of help him a little, but it wasn’t distracting at all) and it was very moving. But of course it made me think of necrophilia (Despite the fact that I didn't want to think about necrophilia, cuz, ew). Which of course meant I had to look up the Wikipedia article on it, which of course lead me to the article on praying mantises, which of course meant that I was clicking around Wikipedia for hours, which of course meant that eventually I ended up at the article for Romeo and Juliet. Of course.
Take that Felicia Bond! Speaking of which, I’m going to go make some cookies now.
(Okay, okay, that’s not how it actually went down, but honestly, would you have been surprised if it had?)
Take that Felicia Bond! Speaking of which, I’m going to go make some cookies now.
(Okay, okay, that’s not how it actually went down, but honestly, would you have been surprised if it had?)
Friday, March 20, 2009
Zzzzzzzzzz.....
Apparently I have mono, which I was pretty sure I did. The doctor didn’t think so, but when the test results came back he said, “Well, it looks like your instincts were correct.”
Sometimes I hate being right.
Sometimes I hate being right.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Please help
You may have seen the collection of links on the sidebar of this blog having to do with webcomics. I love reading webcomics, partly because I want to make one when I grow up, and partly because there is such a sense of community involved. I mention this because the person who draws Planet Karen, a young woman who lives in England, recently had her entire apartment building burn down. She has been able to salvage almost nothing. She ran out with her shoes and a coat, and that's about all she has. It seems odd, but I feel like I know Karen. Her comic is a diary comic, meaning she doesn't write about fictionalized characters, she writes about her own life. I have watched her go through learning she has diabetes, battling depression, fighting loneliness, and somehow she always manages to find witty and insightful things to say about what happens to her. But this time, she doesn't just need readership. She needs help. I am going to spare what I can and use the donation button on her webpage for the first time ever. "Donating the price of a pair of socks buys me a pair of socks," she said. "The price of a can opener buys me a can opener." I don't know how many of you who read this blog click on any of my links, but if you have a few spare minutes, please click on the link to Planet Karen. I'm not asking you to donate. I know I would feel weird giving money to a stranger, but like I said, I feel like I know her. I've read her comic every day for years. I just wanted to get the word out. It's about all I can do.
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