bookriot:

It’s Emily Dickinson’s birthday! Didja know you can sing her poems to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme song? Here’s the music, and a poem:

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste, 
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then ‘tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.

This is pretty great, guys.
thisgingerreads: This map was created by Epic Reads. For the full list of books and states you can visit the Epic Reads’ blog. Pretty. I’ve read Oregon and Illinois and Minnesota and Maine and North Carolina and the state of The Fault in Our Stars, whose state I don’t recognize because I’m awful at geography and mostly just remember crying straight through while lying in bed (first trimester is a laugh).
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thisgingerreads:

This map was created by Epic Reads. For the full list of books and states you can visit the Epic Reads’ blog.

Pretty. I’ve read Oregon and Illinois and Minnesota and Maine and North Carolina and the state of The Fault in Our Stars, whose state I don’t recognize because I’m awful at geography and mostly just remember crying straight through while lying in bed (first trimester is a laugh).

Sometimes it’s not the books that change, though, it’s you. If I’m the same sort of person I was five years ago, then I’m failing utterly at being alive. (Mark Twain said it best: “Consistency requires me to be as ignorant today as I was yesterday.”) Between one re-read and another, I’ve grown and lived…but I’ve also expanded my vocabulary and read countless other books, seen films, listened to music, had new thoughts, and done new writing myself. All of that is there, lurking just offstage, when I step back into a book for a revisit, and all of it changes how I view that book.
Why Re-Read? (via bookriot)

(via bookriot)

Pride & Prejudice Is Top Book Brits Lie About Reading

I can nearly quote P&P, though I suspect lifeguard librarian might have me beat.

I don’t lie about what I’ve read, but I have occasionally read things just to be able to say I’ve read them, and also, I have pretty terrible retention for plots, so sometimes I worry I look like I’m lying. (This is also why I reread books that are important to me. So I can remember them.)

Award Winners, Adults versus Children

far-to-fall:

In my head, it seems as though the books chosen by children can be captured and deeply appreciated in an independent read.  The adult award winners sometimes require a little help, some students may like these books on their own, but these books are great for literature studies in class.  A teacher can help bring out the allusions, literary elements, and depth to help the students gain true appreciation.

I have loved books from both lists, and I think all of the books are of high quality.  I think children vote for the books that they read on their own and loved.  Adults vote on the books that are the best literature (if that can be quantified).

Worth reading the whole post. far-to-fall offers a balanced perspective, not the usual knee-jerk rejection of literary children literature that’s been so prevalent in the wake of the Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! dramz.

Sweethearts

Scenario: Jennifer Harris, elementary school nerd, loses her best friend, Cameron Quick, and reinvents herself as Jenna, cool kid. It’s the life she’s leading senior year when Cameron, whom she believed dead, reappears and changes everything.

Pros:

  • Past tense! Oh, how I’ve missed you, past tense. Why does every YA author believe that present tense instantly makes her story more compelling?
  • Being good is not a big deal. Jenna is cool, and she’s not mean or wild, like Before I Fall’s Sam. When she’s invited to a party with alcohol, though she does accept, she responds, “If I got caught my parents would literally kill me, so I won’t be drinking. But as long as there is no drunk driving or drunk sex or drunk fights, I don’t really care what anyone else does.”
  • Jenna’s relationship with her stepdad. He’s just a good guy, and it seems like a strong, uncomplicated relationship.

Cons:

  • The flashback slow reveal. I am over these. Also, if you read enough of a genre, then trauma starts getting weirdly relative, like when I scoffed at Edmond as a crybaby in How I Live Now, coming so soon after the total devastation of Katniss’s world in Mockingjay. Like, what happens to Jenna is bad, but it’s not as bad as some of the things I’ve been reading about, so I find myself oddly cynical. But I guess that’s my problem.
  • The inside flap copy: “Sweethearts is a story about the power of memory, the bond of friendship, and the quiet resilience of our childhood hearts.” Bsh, plz. This is not a blurb meant to appeal to teens.
  • I had high hopes for this one, as I’d read Zarr’s Once Was Lost, and it ended up just OK.

Pron:

  • [It’s my blog, I can make up words.] I thought Jenna’s eating disorder (bingeing, especially as a little girl) was interesting and underrepresented in YA lit. I read a lot of stuff for my YA class, fiction and non, addressing anorexia and bulimia (including the totally harrowing Wintergirls), but here’s the other side of the coin. So that was good. But also kind of under-addressed in the story. I don’t know.


The Sky Is Everywhere

The Sky Is Everywhere

{The Sky Is Everywhere.* Jandy Nelson. 2010}

Scenario: Lennie, growing up in hippie Northern California, raised by her eccentric grandma, has always been pretty content to remain in big sister Bailey’s shadow. Then Bailey dies, and Lennie’s left to pick up the pieces of her old life, creating one bigger than the sum of its parts.

Pros:

  • Uncle Big, the incurable romantic and crazy stoner.
  • Lennie’s grief felt bigger and wilder and realer than Amy’s in Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour. Witness Exhibit A below:

The bottom drawer is full of school notebooks, years of work, now useless. I take one out, glide my fingers over the cover, hold it to my chest, and then put it in the carton. All her knowledge is gone now. Everything she ever learned, or heard, or saw. Her particular way of look at Hamlet or daisies or thinking about love, all her private intricate thoughts, her inconsequential secret musings — they’re gone too. I heard this expression once: Each time someone dies, a library burns. I’m watching it burn right now.

Cons:

  • On the whole, I just really didn’t connect with Lennie as a narrator, or maybe it was Nelson as an author. This was really my biggest beef with the story, but it was so powerful that I really struggled to finish Lennie’s story. The cadence of the language was weird, with lots of commas tacking things together. I sometimes couldn’t even follow the logic of a sentence. The ending was satisfying, but the story was work. Was it just me? 

*: It took me forever to settle on a blog template, and now this one doesn’t make hyperlinks clear…? Bah! Consider this a hyperlink. Then hunt for the others.

Before I Fall

{Before I Fall. Lauren Oliver. 2010.}

So, let’s try this again.

Scenario: Sam is a popular senior at Thomas Jefferson High, enjoying her favorite day of the year, Cupid Day, when she dies. She wakes up the next morning, and lives the day all over.

Pros:

  • Kent. He and Sam made it onto last year’s Most Swoonworthy YA Couples of All Time comments over at Forever YA, and he reminds me of Mr. Cardigan Librarian, when I met him back in junior year Latin (high praise indeed). I expected the evolution of their relationship to be more central to the story, but I’m actually glad it wasn’t.
  • the lack of rules to Samantha’s post-death adventures. Seriously. There’s no genie or angel or deity who comes on the crash scene and breaks it down for Sam, and that’s a good thing. In fact, I’d have preferred that the flap stayed similarly vague — then I wouldn’t have even known about the seven day thing.
  • Sam’s path to understanding and dealing with her situation feels real, which is pretty impressive when you consider the scenario. The early attempts to fit in, the rebellion, and her eventual decisions.
  • I’d heard Mean Girls and Groundhog Day comparisons — there’s actually an in-text allusion to the latter — but it didn’t feel derivative.

Cons:

  • By the end I could almost love Lindsay, but it was a little too hard, and the book was a little too long to spend so many pages actively hating a character who was supposed to evoke not just rage but also grudging sympathy. In the end, I kind of came around, but it could be sloggy in passages. Lindsay’s henchgirls, Elody and Ally, alternately sweet and spiteful, were easier to love.
  • I thought some of Sam’s musings on popularity, especially before the accident, rang a little artificial. Like, she was thinking about it all too directly and philosophically. But ultimately, the reflections gain power as the story progresses, and so I’m not sure I’d take them out.

PS: And oh, look, Fox 2000 has optioned the rights to the book, so it can join the illustrious ranks of all the casting updates I so love to post.