So, remember when I was lamenting the loss of some of my books in progress? I just found one of them again yesterday! It’s Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, and I have just finished reading it. I believe I started it quite a while back, I mean, perhaps as far back as September or October even.
However, I sadly lost it just as things were getting really exciting in the storyline, and here’s the reason why: I’m a book sleeper- I have always liked to read before bed, and in graduate school I developed a (bad? Or Good?) habit of keeping my books close at hand, piled on the side of the bed in heaps. That worked pretty well when I had a bed on the floor, but apparently it does not work so well when the bed is raised.
Very nice tree. I really just wanted to post a tree picture 😉
I found the book tucked away under my bed, amongst a few other items I have been searching for, some for months. Next time I lose a book, I am looking here first.
Will be back with a review for you soon about this novel! I am also curious to know your experiences with books before sleep. Do you leave your books piled on your bed? Do you have a bookshelf next to your bed? I am looking for some strategies for managing this better in the future, and will hopefully be able to continue my reading habits of many at a time, without losing more of my books.
Here are the 10 Reasons I need to re-read Moby Dick:
One should probably do this at least once every three years, just as a general practice.
I love this novel so much I painted a mural on my door, as discussed in this previous post.
My tattoo of the future (I’ve been wafting on this for years) is inspired by Moby Dick, and I need some ideas for completing the design. I know that I am not the only one to want a Moby Dick tattoo- I have found a lot of them, some of which are on my Pinterest.
Western Washington coast- drifted log on the beach. I live by an ocean now- that also probably means I should read Moby Dick again, right?
I would like to revamp an old paper I wrote about the novel and send it off to a scholarly journal.
I miss it.
I want to paint another mural.
I want to read it again after having a Masters and see how that changes my reading.
It can be reviewed, lovingly, on the blog in one or multiple posts, thus contributing to the book reviews requested in one of my previous polls.
I will probably be using it for tutoring soon- one of my students has shown an interest in reading it, which of course makes me very happy.
There is really not a good reason I can come up with not to re-read it 🙂
I also found this really interesting blog of an artist who seems also very obsessed with Moby Dick, and makes artwork based on every page of the novel.
What do you think of Moby Dick? How many times have you read it, if any? If you have not read it, why not?
This is the third to the last day of National Library Week. While I love the idea of National Library Week, I also feel like every week in my life could be a library holiday. What a great idea though!
Not a library, but a place for books nonetheless...
I guess this could be a great week to check out my neighborhood branch of the Seattle Public Library 🙂
Is anyone going to the conferences or doing something special to participate?
I have been reading the God of Animals, by Aryn Kyle, and although I am very close to being done, I am ready to review it for you. After buying this book during grad school as one of my “fun” books for when I had spare time to read more fiction, it has been moved around the country, and has been sitting on my shelf for many months now, without more than a second thought.
I was intrigued by both the title and the cover, since the animal shape in relief with another layer under the title page in a contrasting color reminded me a little bit of Mark Haddon’s the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime, one of my all time favorite novels.
Honestly, I loved this book while I was reading it, but I had to take a break. I stopped reading it because this is one powerful book. Don’t let the childlike horse on the cover fool you- Aryn Kyle attempts to reverse any happy associations you might have had with horses, horse-rearing, ranch life, or romantic notions of what it is like to grow up in a ranching community.
Instead of a horse story, what we get as readers is a claustrophobic “coming of age” story that is filled with anxiety, discomfort, and people who have no understanding of emotional and psychological boundaries. I didn’t sleep for an entire night after reading the majority of it- there are some very disturbing elements of the novel, and things that you read that you can’t really “un see.”
Reading the God of Animals in the coffee shop as well- couldn't put it down so I took it with me for writing breaks...
The brutality and matter of fact negativity that Alice witnesses on a daily basis really seems to make her a pragmatist early on in life, but in the worst of ways. She has glimmers of hope throughout the text in the goodness of humanity, but she usually does not have her even low expectations met. She has a very unstable home life, and although she wants acceptance from her father, she fears her mother, and does not receive affection from either of her parents.
I think the writing is pretty incredible, and this is Kyle’s first published novel. Her characters are complex, and she does not shy away from real family issues. I cannot tell you too much about the plot, because there are some shockers, but the story begins with the protagonist telling us about a girl at school who drowned in the ravine walking home from school. We also soon find out that she lives with her parents on a horse ranch, her “do nothing wrong” award-winning sister has recently abandoned the family to marry a cowboy, and her mother has severe depression and potentially agoraphobia- she is also sometimes psychologically manipulative to her child and husband, and lives in her own land of self pity and misery.
Alice’s overarching motive as a character is a never-ending search for love she has never known. The way readers are privy to her thoughts about social interaction is a fascinating and really well-done aspect of the piece. She describes people in a distant and almost chilly way, and does not seem to understand what compassion or empathy feel like. Although there are moments when readers are encouraged to understand Alice as pitiable, since she truly does not understand love, on a certain level she is also an unreliable narrator and has some sociopathic tendencies to detach. This creates a really interesting, but very uncomfortable reader position throughout the novel.
For example, early on in the novel she is wondering what it would be like to attend a funeral, but from a very ego-centric standpoint. She attempts to present herself as a friend of the deceased various times throughout the book, even lying at times about her actions and relationship to her dead classmate, and desires attention and potentially even affection as a result of her classmate’s death. However, it is constantly often Alice’s experience in this novel that only the wealthy, and kids without the same depth of familial problems seem to have the luxury of grief, love, and a chance to make friends.
Alice’s detached narration often seems to come as the result of seeing the hopes and dreams of those around her fail, and although she is hard on herself, her parents put a large amount of responsibility and knowledge on her shoulders.
To find out more about the book, you will have to read it yourself, because I can’t give much more away without giving away too much.
I am giving this book 4-5 stars. I would recommend this book but with caution. If you are looking for a piece of really interesting fiction exploring family issues, then you should check it out. However, be warned that you will be put in an uncomfortable place as a reader, and that this is one of those books that is very difficult to put down once you get started, so give yourself some time to finish it if you plan to start.
Also know that this is the type of book that will stick with you for a while, and not necessarily in a happy way. I really appreciate that this novel addresses some serious issues in a unique and hard way, and that there is really nothing friendly about it. It is obvious that Aryn Kyle’s first novel is a brave one.
Read with some sort of cheap beer, like PBR or Rainier, but probably not with food- it’s not really the type of book you want to eat while reading.
Hello Dear Readers: We are happy to add the story of another conversion to Jane to our monthly column, Reading Austen. Today’s guest blog is by Emma Mincks, who shares her personal story of how she discovered Jane Austen and why she is passionate about defending her.
GUEST BLOG BY EMMA MINCKS
My love affair with Jane Austen’s storytelling began early. I watched the Gwyneth Paltrow adaptation of Emma in eighth grade. At the time, the melodrama and internal conflict that Emma experiences during
Hello everyone! Hope your Tuesday/Wednesday is going well.
Lately I have been reading blogs that have “Wordless Wednesdays.” Have you ever heard of that? It’s when blogs have a series of pictures, or one picture instead of a prose post.
I do not think I’ll start doing Wordless Wednesdays, but I did want to share some fun pics I took of writing in Seattle yesterday with you. Nothing serious today- just fun Seattle sunshine and latte art from a place you should definitely check out- Zoka coffee shop.
The Space Needle with sun in Seattle
Love it when the sun comes out in Seattle!
With the flash!
Different angle- no flash.
Love the new pattern.
about 1/2 the way through
Ah, I love my coffee while writing. It makes me more productive, although I usually don’t order lattes. Just regular black coffee. I am also very glad to have finally found a few places that serve delicious lattes (although coffee is everywhere here, truly great coffee shops are bizarrely difficult to find in Seattle, which shocks me). Zoka definitely makes one of the best lattes I’ve ever had in my lifetime.
In other good news, these pictures were all taken with my cell phone camera, as are many of the ones I post here. If you have a larger screen, you might be grossed out by the poor image quality/ pixels. However, my wonderful friend gave me an old Nikon digital camera yesterday. As you might have guessed, I will use it to take pictures, and will then post those (way better than cell phone quality) pictures to the blog! I’m very excited about it, and hope that it will make your reading experience better.
Do you drink coffee while writing? Something else? Nothing at all?
As you may remember, I had entered a challenge for the event Writer’s March (discussed in this previous post). My challenge to myself was to write at least a page a day of personal writing every day for the entire month of March. I am here to give you a recap of my experience.
So, I may or may not have written sporadically, as I always do. At first, I tried to write my page every night before bed, but that only worked for about 10 days. Then, I started writing my page (or less, or more) in the mornings and while waiting for my tutoring students. I did not necessarily accomplish my goal, but I also wouldn’t call the challenge an unmet failure either. There wasn’t a page of personal writing every day, but some days I wrote thousands of words of personal writing, including the start of a fiction story that might become something interesting.
I did write a lot more in my journal for the month of March than I have been. Even if it was only a few sentences some days, I think it was quite productive. I did think about it practically every day, although some days I actually just forgot. Oops.
So, at the end of this month what were my creative gains?
Learning more about my writing needs. I didn’t realize how that daily practice of writing non-fiction articles had really shifted my writing tone, until I started trying to write fiction again. It was a pretty startling change. I think I need to keep following other writers’ blogs, and keep challenging myself to write for myself even if I am tired.
I started singing, more cell phone pictures, and oil painting again. Oddly enough, thinking of what I needed to do in terms of writing opened up a lot of other creative outlets for me. I have also been more inspired lately to dream big, and have decided to create a list of creative goals for myself to enrich my life.
Typing for Pemberley (and many other projects)
Despite the fact that I was partaking in a challenge for Writer’s March, I also seemed to keep encountering facts and information about NaNoWriMo, the writer’s month in November that challenges people to write an entire novel in a month. Information about this event kept popping up this month, in books and on the internet. I think it’s a sign I need to write a longer work soon, a thousand words (ish) a day.
I have learned that I need to be more kind to my wrists, and to write with pen and paper as often as possible. I am also going to start stockpiling money for a new computer. The tiny netbook was great for riding my bike around, but it is a little cramped for being a professional writer and working on it all day, every day. Nope, pen and paper are my friendI also think more clearly when I write with pen and paper as well.
4.5. My reading increased pretty dramatically, although I keep losing my books (so not sure I can count this as a whole gain). Really, losing books is quite a nuisance, and has never happened to me as much as it has this month. I am starting Ulysses, am reading short stories from Jane Austen Made Me Do It, was almost done with the Happiness Project (before I lost it), reading another Jane Austen continuation, The God of Animals, and a few other novels currently. (I promise to have a book review for you in the coming weeks!) I am very close to the end in a few, if only I could find them.
I highly recommend checking out the Writer’s March site for helpful writing discussion and writing tips. Even though I may not have reached my goal in the traditional way, I did it in my roundabout way, which is really generally the way I do things, and has worked for me so far. It has been rewarding. Thanks to the creators of Writer’s March for their support, and thanks to my readers as well.
I was nominated for my first blogging award! I always see these awards around, and have always been curious about them, so I am very glad I get to partake! Thanks to Laurissa at Lest Twenty Two for nominating me. Go check out her comics- they are very entertaining!
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Here is the list of rules, from her site:
1. You must tell 3 completely weird things about your habits. If you claim to have no weird habits, you’re lying and we’ll have to send an investigative team for further analysis.
2. You must tell why you look at the “glass half full” scenario and ask “what? No coffee?”
3. Complete any one of the following essay questions:
A. You find yourself in a desolate place when your car breaks down. You have no cell phone service, no stores, and only a candy bar for food. It is 150 miles to the closest town. What color are your pants and why?
B. You find yourself having to ride an elevator quite frequently. How do you pass the time to show off your creativity?
4. Then you are to nominate 5 random people and let them know.
5. Make sure to show proper gratitude to the person who nominated you whether that is to shower them with gifts, prizes, and cash or to see that they are put into a clown costume and photographed for internet mocking.
6. Make sure to post the award somewhere other than the underside of the toilet seat.
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Here goes nothing, except my attempt to answer them to the best of my abilities.
Weird Habits. This one was pretty hard for me, because I have a lot of odd idiosyncrasies about myself, but I also because I don’t really have a routine (I even took a facebook poll for this!):
I tell stories about people from my life, using their full names. My current friends tease me about this, because they are like, “we don’t know this person- why are you telling us about them and using their full name!?” However, I do it because I truly feel like someday my friends from various parts of the world will know each other, and it has even happened quite a few times so far- a lot of my friends from New Mexico have met my Seattle friends, and a lot of my friends from South Dakota have met my other Washington friends. Someone from Austria has met a London friend, etc.
I sometimes cover cans of food with saran wrap, instead of putting them in a Tupperware. Not only is that weird, but my roommate recently told me it may give me some sort of disease, which would be dreadful.
I pull on my earrings when I get nervous.
2. I don’t know if I fully understand the question for this one, but here’s my answer anyway: I look at the glass half full because when I say, “what, where is the coffee?” I end up having too much caffeine and getting the jitters.
B. I’d make up songs about the predicament and sing them to myself, and dance around the elevator.
4. Who to nominate? Do you guys know how many blogs I visit every day? Literally hundreds, on a slow day. There really isn’t criteria, but I will chose 5 of the text or art-based blogs I read the most, whose blogs are king of my “feel good” sites, and who post more than once a month.
My first nomination goes to Little Wolf, an illustrator in Portland who portrays every day Portland characters in fun and quirky drawings.
The second goes to one that really cracks me up, Kate, Cracking Up. She’s funny!
I always read Hour of Gold as well, for her personal and entertaining recitations, stories of vegetarian adventures, and some doses of sarcasm. I appreciate her conversational style.
The blog Mile High Healthy gives me a daily dose of inspiration for healthy living and has a lot of tasty salad recipes. I love salads, and have a not so secret love of both the Colorado Rockies and food blogs, so this one kind of combines a bunch of my favorites.
I am constantly surprised that the blogger of The Last Classic is young (17ish). She is very eloquent, and the style of her site is really fun. I always enjoy her posts, especially about reading and authors.
Other recommendations, and close contenders who deserve some link love: The humor blog Cereal with a Fork is definitely a go-to for me on writing days. One of my favorites is the 3/28 post. I love the blog Diatribes and Ovations, and it was one of the first sites I followed here on WordPress. The site Masculinity U is also very good for masculinity studies and gender topics, although I am not sure who would answer these questions since they have multiple authors. And, last but not least, the young blogger over at Operation Equality is very impassioned and it is fun to watch her learn about and take action for social justice issues.
What is this, you ask? A creative fountain of chaos, of course.
Last Thursday I met with a brilliant new student. She is working on a paper for the novel 1984, and wanted to bounce ideas off of me. It was very fun, because she had so many wonderful ideas already. She was talking about George Orwell’s rejection of totalitarianism throughout the book, but had many questions she was just dying to explore the answers to. Unfortunately, she is only a junior in high school, and her paper is only supposed to be 3-4 pages. Working with her made me want to go back to graduate school though. It was so refreshing to have that type of conversation with someone so young, who has so many ideas and questions. She was also very excited to learn a new vocabulary word during our session- hegemony.
Photo Credit: netcharles.com (cited in the hyperlink above)
After she learned about hegemony and how she could use it while conceptualizing her paper, she smiled and said, “I like that word” before typing furiously for ten minutes on her computer. I was glad to know that learning a new word like that could help inspire her writing so much. It was a very cool moment. I know I have mentioned hegemony here before, but I am not sure it really gets used very often in regular conversations, so I have decided to define it for you as well.
Hegemony, as I understand it, means the oppression of others by a larger dominant, overarching (and widely accepted) force that creates a structure of sameness and difference. All societies have hegemony, and the tools to create what is deemed “normal” often belongs to the people/ entities in power. Hegemony can be both cultural and political, and its presence can be seen in books, movies, and society as a whole, since a small percentage of the population controls what movies are made, which books are published, and who wins elections.
One small group of people, usually the ones with the most money or political influence, can influence the way the society as a whole thinks and acts, even if they are perhaps acting against their best interests as individuals. Perhaps the easiest example of hegemony at work is in media portrayals of “average” people, ethnicities, places, politicians, love interests, gender identities, religions, music, rituals, and cultural practices.
Here is an interesting article that discusses hegemony’s role in relation to media theory which might interest you.
In our conversation, my student and I were discussing Orwell’s subversion of hegemony. Totalitarianism tries to enforce and reinforce a strict hegemonic culture from which to work from. Any variance must be destroyed so that people don’t question, don’t think, and certainly don’t make connections with each other independent of the state.
A very fun light from Spa Envy in Seattle- a group of people I have made individual connections with 🙂
In many ways, I like to consider this blog as a variance from hegemony. My interests include things that the hegemonic parts of Western culture accepts, like Jane Austen, but this blogging project also builds various connections with others based on individual interpretation and experiences. That, to me, does subvert hegemonic influence in many ways, and has been one of the primary benefits of the internet.
What do you think? If you have any more examples of hegemony in our modern times?
I watched Great Expectations the other night. The movie with Gwyneth Paltrow and Ethan Hawke, directed by Alfonso Cuaron. If you have read the novel, or if you are as far behind the movie times as I am (it was released in 1998), you might want to check it out.
Ever since I heard of this adaptation back in 2008, I have been searching for it everywhere. (As many of you might have guessed from reading this blog), I kind of have an obsession with film adaptations of 19th century literature. Luckily, a friend of mine had a copy of the movie on hand, and I was able to borrow it from him and enjoy it myself.
An alternate version of the cover (from Google Images)
Let’s face it: Dickens is usually depressing. After all the torture he puts his readers through in small victories for each character, and long-winded (but frequently beautiful) descriptions of every atmospheric detail of the setting, he rarely ever offers a hopeful end for his primary characters. He certainly does not give Pip a happy ending in Great Expectations.
I have always had a love/hate relationship with Great Expectations the novel- although I do acknowledge its genius, I find reading it absolute torture emotionally (which, I also acknowledge as part of the genius). Pip and Estella are never really redeemed, and may only get worse and worse. There are not many characters who readers can connect with that don’t get slapped in the face by life, or Pip, or Estella. By the end of the novel, I always want to yell at them all, especially Pip.
In contrast, this newer adaptation of a similar story, unexpectedly set in a contemporary age, in a location between Florida and New York city, gives its characters much needed humanity, and I would argue, redemption. I did not want to yell at Pip or Estella after finishing the film, yet my heart felt similarly broken to how it feels after reading the novel, and throughout the movie I was also annoyed with Pip quite a large percentage of the time (as it should be).
I did not expect to like this movie very well, but before and after the first hour, I felt continually interested in it. The director and actor choices were really fascinating. I usually never say this, but I may like this movie as much, if not better than, the book, if only because I felt less debilitated after it was over. The movie made many of the same points as Dickens does, but was also more hopeful for the state of humanity. I also loved that Pip became an artist, and the beautiful messages that the artwork was used for throughout the film. It felt rich, complex, and not entirely hopeless, and for that, I was grateful.
Although it is set in America, something that bothered me at first, the storyline and the character motives were still pretty well-drawn. There are many differences between the film and the book, as there always are, yet the characters retained their integrity and had enough similarities to the originals that they were highly recognizable.
Another hesitation I had that was overcome while watching the movie, was that the actors are so well known I was wondering if I would believe them in their roles. However, I was extremely impressed with the acting and I actually think that the difference in setting from the original was a smart choice. Giving the adaptation some spatial distance was effective, as it both gave homage to the old while creating a new piece of art altogether.
My favorite parts of the film surrounded Miss Havisham. The woman who played her as “Miss Dinsmore” (Ann Bancroft) was an amazing actor. The Havisham role was portrayed with incredible and eccentric detail, and her broken down mansion was stunningly recreated in a very Florida way, wedding tables and all. Even though I didn’t know exactly what to expect from her modern doppelganger, I felt that the exploration of her insanity was even better played out in the film than it was in the book. She was not just tortured from being stood up on her wedding day. Dinsmore was shown to have a severe mental disorder and a drinking problem on top of that lasting grief and self-induced heartbreak. She also was shown to have way too much money and time on her hands. There was also a lot of creepy sexual tension and lack of boundaries in the film coming from Miss Dinsmore, which I feel Dickens did not point to quite as much, but made total sense with her character. In the film, Miss Dinsmore wants to destroy both Estella and Pip through creating this alternate (and very weird) space for them all to exist in misery and be motivated by their obsessions to both possess and destroy one another. Her character was just as terrifying and disturbing as Miss Havisham’s was, if not more so.
Miss Dinsmore and Pip drawing
There is also an amazing part of the movie, that had to be my favorite. **Spoiler alert** Pip (Finn) goes to see Estella and profess his love for her, but instead finds Miss Dinsmore (Havisham). There she tells him of Estella’s marriage to another person, all part of her cruel and scheming plan to use Estella as revenge for her past, as a vehicle to break mens’ hearts. He takes her hand and puts it to his chest, saying “do you feel my heart? It’s broken.” This mimics an earlier moment in the film when Miss Havisham says something similar to him to performatively gain his pity, and is his second act of defiance against her in the film.
I loved the portrayal, and was so captivated by Anne Bancroft’s performance that when she was on screen I almost forgot about the other characters.
Parts that were left out included: more tension between Pip’s past and present, and his inability to feel truly comfortable in either, Estella’s second marriage, the final realization about the criminal (won’t give too much away in case you don’t know the story), his relation to Miss Havisham, and Pip’s anger towards him were either left out or diminished. Pip’s name is changed to Finn (short for Finnegan), which I thought was really interesting considering the tense relationship between Ireland and England (where the novel was written) in the 19th century.
There were also certain things added to the movie version that were not in the original story line, such as Pip as artist (painter), negative consequences of Pip’s actions on his family, and Pip’s isolation from his home community when he comes back to visit. I really liked that Pip was an untrained artist, but that his pictures were still impactful. I guess the drawings and paintings were done for the movie by Italian artist Francisco Clemente, who has become quite famous from it.
Finn's (Clemente's work) depiction of DeNiro's character
Watching this movie was a very weird, and very singular experience for me. It was beautiful, and also felt revelatory in a lot of ways. I wrote for hours after watching this movie, and wanted to start drawing again (it’s been a few years since I just sat for hours and did nothing but draw- writing has become my primary form of artistic outlet).
Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, but contrary to some of the bad reviews of the film, I found the adaptation very inspiring. Even though I am enthralled by adaptations, such a positive reaction to one is unusual for me. I would highly recommend it to all adult viewers.
Here is the trailer:
I would give it 4.5 out of 5 stars, for despite all of its problematic elements and loose ends, and the fact that it is set later than 100 years after the original on another continent, it keeps that same Dickensian mood, and the singular and almost dreamlike tension/ obsession that Pip feels throughout the novel would be very difficult to achieve in film.
I would suggest watching it with a glass of water (a theme throughout the movie).
From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress: 
Looking for Pemberley 