Tag Archives: Writing

Top 5 (Literary) Things I’m Thankful for This Year

Posted on by
3

I’m ashamed of myself for putting off blogging for so long–it’s amazing how fast this month has flown by! It’s been an exciting time for the company I work for, because not only has it made some valuable sales and acquisitions, it has also officially been rewarded the honor of creating the fastest supercomputer in the world!

I’ve also kept myself busy after work hours: I’m now half-way into Chris Bohjalian’s The Sandcastle Girls. It’s Bohjalian’s first novel about the Armenian Genocide of the early 20th century, and my first time reading about it in something other than historical texts. Since we’re both Armenians, or “Hyes,” I understand just how vital this experience is for our community.

Much like the Jews, the Armenians are a race bound by tragedy. The genocide is the single most important event in our history, and unlike the Holocaust, it remains unrecognized by its instigator Turkey and the greater portion of the globe–including the United States.

I won’t delve into the details (which you can read about in my memorial post here), but I will say that I feel culturally obligated to read this tale, as well as emotionally exhausted after pages and pages of cruelty, pain, and sorrow. As much as I chuckle about the similarities between my family and the narrator’s, it’s an arduous journey when the horrors of almost 100  years ago are depicted as vividly as if they occurred right before your eyes.

I think that The Sandcastle Girls is a perfect read for me during Thanksgiving, because it makes me so aware of all the good in my life. To celebrate the holiday, I’d like to share the top 5 literary things I’m thankful for this year:

1.  I’m thankful for my good health, considering that I have sight and hearing to read and listen to books, as well as capable limbs to drive to the store, grab a tome off the shelf, and cradle it in my hands.

2.  I’m thankful that I had parents and teachers who encouraged me to enjoy learning for learning’s sake, and motivate me to challenge myself intellectually.

3.  I’m thankful that I live in a country that values the freedom of speech and expression. As much as the crazies have tried to ban certain books, I do not live in Fahrenheit 451 where I can be arrested and disposed of simply for reading. This shouldn’t be a luxury in the rest of the world; it should be a right.

4.  I’m thankful that I live in a time period where women are not only allowed to write, they are just as celebrated and successful as their male counterparts. I’m not saying that we don’t have a long feminist road ahead of us (since female authors are still judged by the reproductive choices), but at least we can get Rowling-rich without needing psuedonyms.

5.  And one just for fun…I’m thankful that I only have to wait three more weeks until my most anticipated movie release of the year, “The Hobbit!” Dwarves and dragons, I’m so excited!!!

I’ve finally created my review policy!

Posted on by
Reply

Creating a review policy has always been one thing on my to-do list for my blog, and it wasn’t until a recent request did I actually make time to formulate one. Please take some time to click on the “Review Policy” page to familiarize yourself with my terms and conditions.

I appreciate anyone who is interested in having me review his/her work, and I think you’ll find my policy comparable to other book blogs. If anyone has any questions or suggestions to make regarding my review policy, please leave a comment on this post.

Again, thank you to all my wonderful readers–you make blogging such a treat!

Sincerely,

Book Club Babe

Does Having Children Make You a Better Writer?

Posted on by
11

Maeve Binchy, who lived a wonderful, successful life full of affection, thank you very much, Ms. Craig

For the record, I’m having a pleasant low-key weekend while my parents are at the coast celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. Tonight one of my best friends is coming over for a girls movie night, and we’ll be binging on pizza, popcorn, and these delicious smores bars I’ve discovered.

However, yesterday I had a moment of blinding rage after I read this article by Amanda Craig in The Telegraph. The sub-heading lets you know this is going to be one rollercoaster of a read: “Does a female novelist need to have experienced childhood to truly understand human emotions?”

Why is she asking such a ridiculous question? She’s criticizing Maeve Binchy, an Irish writer who passed away earlier this week. Binchy’s sold more than 40 million copies of her books, has been featured in the New York Times bestseller list and Oprah’s book club, and won a “People of the Year” award in 2000.

But according to Craig, she would’ve been so much more successful if she had some babies too.

Starting with the photo caption, which states, “Maeve Binchy, who had no children on whom to lavish her affections,” this whole piece reeks of sanctimonious, patronizing, condescension. I cannot believe she has the gall to say that, “there is no practical difference between a man and a woman writer when the latter has not had children.” You know, because if you don’t use your womb, you might as well hand in your women’s ID card because it’s void now.

Let’s point out the real motive here: Craig is jealous. A writer with two children, she’s published six novels with relatively little fanfare. Oprah hasn’t chosen her for her book club. She moans that life is so hard when you’re trying to write and raise kids, so why can’t there be special mommy writing awards to celebrate all her extra hard work?

I have often wondered whether the Orange Prize should be renamed the Navel Orange Prize, given the difference in time and energy available to women writers before and after motherhood.

You’ve got to be kidding me! Craig is bitter at her relative lack of success compared to Binchy–and the echelon of childfree female authors, including Austen, Woolf, and the Bronte sisters–so instead she decides to judge a person’s career on their ability to reproduce.

Which by the way, is highly offensive, considering that many readers have commented that Binchy and her husband suffered from infertility. The woman just died, and you’re criticizing her life choices when she possibly didn’t choose them at all.

No matter what your experience of adult love, there is nothing as strong as the bond between a mother and a child.

I disagree wholeheartedly. Craig’s on a roll pouring salt into Binchy’s wounds, but even if Binchy was childfree-by-choice, this statement holds no weight. The bond between mother and child is just one kind of bond, and if you look to the likes of Casey Anthony, many women have not honored that bond. Love comes in many forms, between partners, spouses, friends, relatives, pets, etc. Love is not a hierarchy.

And by the way, men should also feel disgusted by this article for its inherent silence on fatherhood. Kafka and Poe never had children either, but you don’t see Craig judging childfree male authors. Are they somehow inferior to Hemingway or Fitzgerald because they didn’t create offspring?

Anyway, I could rant all day about this ridiculous piece of “journalism,” but I would love to hear your thoughts. I’ll just leave you with a final quote:

I make no moral claims for motherhood ­— which can bring out the worst in a person, in the form of vicarious rivalry, bitchiness, envy and even mental illness…

Finally, we agree on something, Ms. Craig, because motherhood has certainly brought out the worst in you.

Want free books and a Kindle? Watch this video!

Posted on by
2

The Guardian and Observer Books Season 2011 is hosting a contest on famous first lines in novels. You watch a video with six first lines, then provide your contact info below the video with your answers. Three winners will receive those six books, and the grand prize winner will also get an Amazon Kindle!

The catch is that you have to be a UK resident (sorry I tricked you fellow Americans!). But if you are one, the deadline’s Nov. 6. For the rest of us, it’s just fun to watch a beautifully animated video with some of the best sentences in the literary world. I personally knew 4 out of the 6 books, so I’m pretty pleased!

What are some of your other favorite first lines? Here’s my list from books I’ve read–Can you guess where they’re from?

  1. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
  2. If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.
  3. Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.
  4. As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
  5. Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
  6. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
  7. There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
  8. I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids–and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.
  9. Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.
  10. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. (Yes, I only read 50 pages of this one, but it’s still an excellent opening!)

Food for Thought While I’m Gone

Posted on by
2

Hey everybody!

I’m going out of town this weekend, so I won’t be blogging until Masterpiece Monday. I’ll leave you with an interesting picture I found on I-Am-Bored.com about the phrases we say today because of Shakespeare. Obviously, we owe A LOT to the Bard, and it’s nice to appreciate his influence on the English language every now and then!

In the meantime, I’ll be reading 1984, eating great food, and dancing like Big Brother’s not watching me! Hahaha!!!

Have a fabulous weekend! Love, Book Club Babe

Boys: Reluctant Readers?

Posted on by
1

Image via CollegePlus.org

Robert Lipsyte of The New York Times wrote an essay on Aug. 19, called “Boys and Reading: Is There Any Hope?”  He discussed how boys have become reluctant readers, significantly lagging behind girls for a multitude of reasons. The YA genre predominantly caters to girls, given the excess of mean girl and vampire bestsellers. Thus, boys might be under the impression that reading is not masculine, at least not compared to sports and video games. Not to mention, when boys do find an interest in reading, it’s either non-fiction or fiction with male protagonists, both of which might be hard to find for younger readers.

I can definitely relate to this essay. My 19-year-old brother hates reading, unless they’re existential novels like Fight Club or The Stranger. However, he much prefers to play guitar, video games, or Pokemon cards. And as a Literature major from UCSC, most of my classmates were women. Even the majority of people with book-related blogs are female, perhaps because the concept of a book club has been solidified as a feminine hobby, whereas men would rather join fantasy football leagues.

I also run into this problem at work. When I teach SAT prep classes, I always stress the importance of reading, and it’s usually the boys who are not so taken with the activity. I find this ironic, because while reading is depicted as feminine, writing has always been masculine. The literary canon is dominated by men, with powerhouses such as Shakespeare, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dickens, and Twain. It has taken centuries for women writers to even be considered worthy of reading, and I often feel that when men write best book lists, they throw in Austen and Wharton just to avoid claims of sexism.

Therefore, I tell my male students that there are so many books out there that they can enjoy. They can relate to Holden Caulfield’s angst in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and the tale of George and Lenny’s friendship in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. I give my classes a list of all my favorite masterpieces, but I highlight the authors by gender and ethnicity, so they can easily find a story that interests them. Of course, there are boy protagonists in popular fiction too, and I recommend series like Harry Potter and Percy Jackson to my elementary students.

I think it’s such a shame that not enough boys read, because it means that not enough men will read, and there’s nothing sexier than a guy with a good book in his hand. Men and women are all looking for someone with common interests, and the huge reading divide will leave many women disappointed–as I’m sure men are disappointed when women don’t take an interest in their hobbies.

Ultimately, though, society needs to stop classifying hobbies or fields of study exclusively by gender. Just like boys should be encouraged to read, girls should be encouraged to pursue careers in math and science. Boys can play with Barbies, and girls can skateboard and paintball. No one should be put down because they like something traditionally enjoyed by the opposite sex. If we continue to do so, we’re just widening the divide of understanding each other and perpetuating the ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ nonsense.

So do you see this disconnect between male and female readers? Are there any other reasons to explain this phenomenon? And you guys out there, let your voice be heard and stand up as a proud, not reluctant, reader!

Top 5 Books I Hated in High School

Posted on by
Reply
Winfrey as Sofia in The Color Purple

Feel free to send me to Australia, Oprah, to make up for your horrible movie!

Yesterday, I discussed a list of the 10 books you should have read in high school, but I’ll admit that not all required reading back then was magnificent. Even some of the most respected authors in the canon drove me nuts. Now I don’t regret reading these because I now know what kind of books/authors to avoid (and because my grades depended on it), but I hope that I can save you from my teenage pain and misery.

Here’s my top 5 literary happiness-killers:

  1. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. First off, this sucker is LONG. Getting paid by the word was a horrible idea back then. Not that I’m against long books (if reading the last two Harry Potter books in 12 hours each is any consolation), but this one sucked fun out of life like a Dementor. My teacher freshman year was my horrendous debate coach who eventually got fired for not getting his credential. He spent the year playing movies and making us do stupid projects, like build replicas of the Globe Theatre. Great Expectations was accompanied by a huge packet of busy work, like vocab lists and summaries; everyone else knew that he would pass everybody whether we completed it or not, but me being the nerdy student that I am, tried to take it seriously. They were right, of course, and now if you talk about any character named “Pip-” and you don’t end it with “-pin,” I might strangle you. ONE SENTENCE PLOT: Orphan boy meets crazy old lady, who secretly leaves him a fortune so he can impress a rich girl, but he loses both her and his money–making Great Expectations a Great Disappointment.
  2. Beloved by Toni Morrison. Overall, I think Morrison is overrated, and this book is definitely not beloved by me even though it won a Pulitzer. I’m not a fan of ghost stories, and a slavery ghost story is a whole new bag of depressing. I didn’t like any of the characters, and all the voodoo was making me crazy. And as if the novel was bad enough, I had to watch the movie with Oprah Winfrey. Good thing she realized she’s better at giving away cars and getting celebrities to jump on couches than she is at acting. ONE SENTENCE PLOT: Escaped slave kills her daughter to avoid recapture, but suffers from the haunting of her daughter’s reincarnated spirit.
  3. Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner. Honestly, I don’t really remember what this book was about, because of Faulkner committing my #1 literary sin: STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS. If an author does this, I will probably loathe him/her, no matter how deep the thoughts. It’s called a period, use it! Faulkner’s run-ons made me just want to run away, very far away. I remember pretending to know what’s going on and bs-ing my way through an essay, then promising myself that I would never read Faulkner again. If you’re a fan of his, sorry, but you’re probably too busy scratching whatever first comes to mind into your hipster diary to care about me anyway. ONE SENTENCE PLOT (ASSISTED BY WIKIPEDIA): Black farmer accused of murdering white man “is exonerated through the efforts of black and white teenagers and a spinster from a long-established Southern family.”
  4. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren. Again, another novel which did not leave a big impression on me. It just seemed like one big compare/contrast story between Stark and Burden. Politicians aren’t very exciting in real life, and they aren’t any different in this story. And unlike other political allegories like Orwell’s Animal Farm, the history it’s based on is just as boring. ONE SENTENCE PLOT: The rise and fall of a southern governor, as told by his right-hand man…yawn.
  5. The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy. Having also read Tess of the d’Urbervilles, I know that this book wasn’t just a one-time suck fest from Hardy. I also know that most high school students haven’t read these last 3 novels on my list, but my AP Lit teacher (who was so awesome that she deserves her own blog post someday) branched out and offered us some unique reading. Unfortunately, this was not one of them. Hardy has an amazing knack of being dark and dreary, without being interesting. Another forgettable text. ONE SENTENCE PLOT: Exotic, mysterious fallen woman commits suicide after long off-and-on love affair.
So there you have it! There’s so many excellent books out there, and there’s no reason why you should waste your time with these. Trust me, you’re not missing much! But if you disagree with my list or would like to add to it, feel free to comment!
PS: I finished Catching Fire, the 2nd book of The Hunger Games trilogy, last night, so come back tomorrow for its review!

Books You Shouldn’t Have Just Sparknotes-ed in High School

Posted on by
5

The only thing to fear...is not reading Shakespeare!

Earlier this week, MSNBC discussed the “10 books you really should have read in high school” as part of their “Back to School” special. I’ve got about two weeks left ’til my last year of school (ever!), but until then I spend my days begging high school kids to start reading.

One of my students admitted that he’s only assigned 4-5 books a year, and if he reads one of them he’s lucky. I believe that most teens are pretty intelligent, but most are too distracted by Facebook and football to care about books. A lot are too lazy, and Sparknotes and Wikipedia keep them that way. I love my job, but I know that I’d go crazy if I taught for the rest of my life, desperately trying to pry kids away from their iPhones long enough to write an essay and take a test every now and then.

That being said, I hope you’ll enjoy this list and reminisce about all the classics you actually read in high school. Here’s the 10 novels from MSNBC:

  1. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  2. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  3. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
  4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  5. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  6. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
  7. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
  8. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
  9. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  10. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

I’ve read #2, 3, 4, 5 (partially), 7, and 9–and I’ve already discussed my love for some of them in this blog. Junior year of high school at my school must have been the year of “Books about women who cheat or sleep around” because not only did we read The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby, we also read The Awakening by Kate Chopin, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, and East of Eden by John Steinbeck. With the exception of Chopin, I learned just how many male authors are haunted by female promiscuity in their work!

I can’t judge #1, 6, 8, and 10 personally–although I don’t hear many good things about Ayn Rand. However, I have read some of Twain’s short stories and Hesse’s novel Demian (one of my absolute favorites), so they’re definitely worth making the list.

The only entry I’d have to disagree with, in my humble opinion, is Pride and Prejudice. I tried so hard to like Austen and I respect her as one of the few female authors in the literary canon, but I could not make it past the first 50 pages. The writing wasn’t particularly riveting, the dialogue badly labeled and confusing, and the story full of women clucking around like gossipy hens. I much preferred the Brontes’ Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, as well as Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, to get my fix about marriage and elitism during the 19th century. Hate me if you want, but I found those novels of more substance. But, of course, with enough convincing, I might give Austen a second chance!

I’d also like to add that MSNBC did a horrible job, because THERE’S NO SHAKESPEARE ON THIS LIST!!! Granted, they’re plays, not novels, but STILL. No one should graduate high school without experiencing the Bard! There are also no ethnic minorities represented, and students should get the opportunity to read the works of Divakaruni, Allende, Ishiguro, or Achebe in order to learn about other cultures and appreciate diversity.

I think that tomorrow I’ll post my own list about overrated high school standard reading, so if you have any novels you couldn’t stand as a teen, let me know! I’ll give you a shout-out!

Is the Fantasy Bubble Ready to Burst?

Posted on by
6

You know, if fantasy’s dying, then Sean Bean is out of a job!

Yesterday E. D. Kain posted on TheAtlantic.com, “Fantasy’s Spell on Pop Culture: When Will It Wear Off?” an article about how the booming success of fantasy books and adaptations in the last decade might soon come to a slow-down, if not an actual end. How will authors and producers top the fame of Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, Twilight, and the recently acclaimed HBO series “Game of Thrones,” based on the novels by George R. R. Martin?

I believe that the answer regarding fantasy’s future is deceivingly simple: Those who only enjoy the movies are more likely to grow tired and bored with similar releases, but true fantasy fans will always be ready to support both the classics and the next big thing. I have not read/seen Game of Thrones, (I hear great things about the series, though!), but I’m familiar with all the others I listed and then some. Everybody goes through phases with their interests, as I progressed from animal novels like White Fang to fantasy sagas like His Dark Materials to chick lit like the novels of Sophie Kinsella.

But fantasy is something that I always return to, eager and enthralled by worlds much different than our own. I admit that I love fantasy more than sci-fi (because I prefer elves, magic, and sword-and-bow warfare over robots and aliens any day), but both genres represent escapism. Kain is right: Fantasy has gone mainstream. Fans are no longer just the mouth-breathing, D&D playing nerds in their moms’ basements. But that stereotype to me is offensive, as if all the “cool” fantasy fans will abandon the genre as soon as it gets too popular, like some sort of literary hipsters.

There are hardcore comic-books fans that will still get giddy over the latest Spiderman and Superman comics, no matter how many movies they remake. The same applies to fantasy: some fads like vampires and werewolves will come and go, but the genre will continue to grow and thrive as long as the true fans keep reading…and writing. The bestsellers of this decade have made fantasy-writing even more of a challenge. We shouldn’t be looking for a Harry Potter replacement, but a story that breathes new life and excitement into the genre. And those stories are out there, just waiting to be discovered…

So what are your thoughts? Has fantasy hit a dead end, or is it just getting started? Which stories prove promising, and which ones are just overrated? And perhaps most importantly–what IS fantasy? Has the genre grown and evolved, or have all the crossovers diluted what constitutes true fantasy? Let me know!

Most Hated Words in the English Language?

Posted on by
8

Last week, The Huffington Post released a list of words that readers find disgusting or hard to hear. I’ve always thought about words that drive me nuts, as well as ones I could say all day. Here’s their best of the worst:

  1. Maggots
  2. Sexy
  3. Pants
  4. Adipocere
  5. Fetus
  6. Viscous
  7. Roaches
  8. Hockey
  9. Moist
  10. Hillbilly
  11. Wolverine
  12. Slurp
  13. Hubby
  14. Panties
  15. Tender
          Now I have no problems with pants/panties, other than they’re singular words that sound plural. “Sexy” doesn’t bother me either, unless you use “sex” to describe genitalia instead of the act. Of course, any words about bugs like “maggots” and “roaches” are horrible–but I think “cockroach” is even worse. I also can’t stand “hubby,” simply because too many women use it when referring to their boyfriends–it’s short for “husband” people!!! “Fetus” also sounds gross, and I’ve wondered: what’s the plural form? Fetuses? Feti? Ugh.
          Personally, though, I have to give it to “moist.” It’s like nails on a chalkboard! It’s too versatile; I shouldn’t be able to use the same word for a delicious chocolate cake and a sweaty old man in the sauna…or worse, using “moist” in the bedroom, which should just be straight-up illegal!
          Other words that I would add to this list include “pus,” “crusty,” “mucus,” and “phelgm”–really anything to describe repulsive bodily functions or fluids. One of the many reasons why I want to be a writer, not a doctor.
          Thus, in order to cleanse my ears, here’s some of my favorite-sounding words:
  1. Loquacious
  2. Assassinate
  3. Annihilate
  4. Audacity
  5. Debacle
  6. Ethereal
  7. Prestidigitation
  8. Eclectic
  9. Adversary
  10. Lament
  11. Malevolent
  12. Pernicious
  13. Archaic
  14. Capricious
  15. Melody
          And yes, I realize that I have a lot of words dealing with destruction and evil. I’m not condoning the content, but what can I say? These words just roll off the tongue!
          What words do you love and hate? Any that need to be banned immediately? (But for the sake of my “G” rating, let’s avoid slang and slurs, alright? That’s a whole different level of ugly!)