Books are like...

Cake.  Delicious layer cake.  And since this is my blog, I am going to go with my kind of cake.  Books are like a chocolate, raspberry layer cake, with a bit of creamy custard between the layers, and topped with nuts, some fresh fruit, and (what the heck, why not) some drippy chocolate syrup.  Yep.  That'll do it. 

Books need lots of different components to make them great, just like cake.  Miss something, and you may as well toss it out the window, because it's just not going to be the same.  I am not talking about a box of cake mix you get at your local grocery store and pour in eggs, milk, and water.  I'm talking about a real, honest-to-goodness, from-scratch, like-Grandma-makes-it cake.  A book without decent character development for instance.  Boring.  People have depth and not to show it in a book is like forgetting to put the yeast in the cake mix.  It would be flat and hard to chew.  There has to be a good ending too.  That is the crowning glory of any book. (It's also that lovely bunch of raspberries at the top of the cake.)  It's what makes it.  With out it I always think "that's it?"  Give me flourishes and a climactic ending, or a really good satisfying conclusion.  Something that shows me the character's plight wasn't for nothing and came into his or her own.  Or, if the bad guy wins (which let's face it, sometimes they do) give me some sort of reason why this is how it has to end. 

In short, I want my cake and I want to eat it, too.

Flygirl

Just in case anyone thinks that I cannot read a book without loving it, here is a review of one I actually had to force myself to finish.  It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. This one is called Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith.  

Flygirl is about a young African American woman named Ida Mae Jones who passes herself off as white so she can join the WASPS, a women's pilot group in WWII.  It has really good character development with Ida Mae, and tells her back story fluidly along with the actual plot.  It also shows very well her inner turmoil at her decision to "pass" and how it affects her family and friends.  It also deals with her two personal losses, one in back story and one in the plot.  They are both pretty heartbreaking.

The author does a pretty good job of showing how scared Ida is when she faces racism in the town she trains in, and my heart was hammering in my chest every time.  However, I don't think it went far enough.  The whole time I was reading I was waiting for her to get caught, for someone in authority or one of her new friends to figure out that she was not who she was pretending to be.  She never tells anyone, not even when she starts falling for a white man.  The only time it happens is an old African American man in a store, and it was almost an anti-climax.  I know it wasn't the point of the book, and that the point was her flying and achieving her lifelong dream of being a pilot, but the other issue is racism so it should have been much more developed.

And the worst part is, it cannot be used in a classroom situation at all.  It uses the N-word 3 times in one chapter.  It would never fly in a school.  It doesn't matter if the word has historical use or needs to be included in a scene about racism, because of that one word, it would not be approved for school use.

Matched Review

Recently I went to the Scholastic Book Warehouse sale and bought $160 worth of books for about $60.  Most of them were YA books.  (Becoming a middle grades LA teacher has it's perks.) Now on to the reason I started this blog.

So the first book I read out of this major haul was Matched by Ally Condie.  (http://matched-book.com/) If you are a fan of The Giver by Lois Lowry, or even if you are not, this book is a much more modern version without the memory transfers.  It is first person narrative by the main character, Cassia, and goes in a more romantic direction.  While The Giver focuses on the main character, Jonas, receiving the memories of the past, Cassia is more focused on her Match, the boy she is paired up with to eventually marry.  She gets matched with the oh-so-hunky (of course) Xander, Cassia's best friend.  Everyone is thrilled.  The stinker of it is, she finds out that her Match to Xander may have been a mistake when another boy shows up on her Match card. She starts to get to know about the other boy that could be her real Match and finds herself falling in love with him instead of the boy the Officials say she will marry.  Quite the conundrum.

I did enjoy reading this very much, and I am positive I will eventually read the other two.  But what I actually enjoyed most about it were the comparisons to The Giver I kept finding.  The Giver has been one of my favorite books since I was in fourth grade, and I tend to read it about once a year.  I think reading both of them together would be pretty interesting in a classroom situation, or maybe just on your own.  My favorite reference to the earlier book was Xander asking Cassia if she enjoyed riding bicycles.  She said that she hates it because they don't go anywhere.  In The Giver, everyone gets around on bicycles, it is the only mode of transportation.  It was just a cute little reference that I am not even positive the author did on purpose, but if she did, kudos to her.

I liked that in Matched, the Society came up with ways to keep hold of the past, even if it was only a very tenuous hold.  They have the Hundred Songs, Poems, Stories, Paintings, etc.  Each person is allowed one "artifact" from the past societies that are passed down from one generation to the next.  When I compare this to The Giver, I see those songs, poems, and artifacts as the Memories.  Except in the case of the Society, everyone has access to them, not just one person singled out to keep them all.

The similarities are really well done too.  The Matching of course where the government picks out your spouse, as well as your job, your residence, and your time of death.  There is even a ceremony for dying in Matched just like in The Giver.  And just like Jonas, Cassia has to come to a decision. Will she continue to live in a society where every choice is made for you, content to live out a life that has been determined by statistical analysis and where everyone is the same?  Or will she break free from the mold and make her own choices?

It really gives you something to think about.  What if it were you where all your choices were predetermined.  Your life would be fulfilling and programed for optimum happiness, but without complete free will.  I honestly don't know what I would choose.

I am an addict

Hello.  My name is Mari and I am an addict.  I have never once been sober.  I am not an abuser of alcohol, drugs or anything of an illegal nature, but of books.  I am addicted to stories and must have them in any form.  I have listened to oral folktales from Africa to the Ozarks with a focused attention that left no room for other petty responsibilities like family or work.  As a child, I spent summer days at the local library listening to the read-aloud, and I sat on my Grandfather’s lap, repeatedly asking to hear his story of a brave little cabbage worm.  As an adult I continued this behavior.  Give me a hefty hardbound or a pliable paperback and I will read them over and over until they literally fall apart and I have to buy replacements.  I am ashamed to admit that I have done this on several occasions, abusing the book until it is reduced to no more than torn bindings and loose pages.  I recently bought a Nook so I could read electronically to avoid this problem.  Instead, I found electronic, or E-Books, come with their own troubles that may be worse than standard printed books.   

            I believe early exposure as a toddler contributed to my ongoing association with the “feel good” nature of reading.  From that early age, books have been my choice of uppers when I was upset and needed to escape or when I had nothing better to occupy my mind.  I name my mother as my first influence since she was the parent that read to me since before I could talk.  My parents would use their fingers to point to each word as they read the Care Bears Nighttime Poems and I would grab the finger to point along with them.  Soon, I had these poems memorized and would “read” to myself and anyone who would listen, marking my first foray into social use.  Over the years my tolerance level has increased from being satisfied with one  (or two) small children’s books, read at night during the “tuck in” ritual, to reading several chapter books at a time, sometimes starting as soon as I wake up.  The Care Bears were my gateway. 

            From the Care Bears I graduated to The Big Hungry Bear, P.D. Eastman’s Are You My Mother?  and anything by Eric Carle.  The Very Quiet Cricket was my most treasured First Communion gift from my family.  Jewelry and money paled in comparison, despite the fact that they were more monetarily valuable.  I even watched books on Reading Rainbow with LeVar Burton because simply reading a book was not enough anymore.  I soon began to explore more intense books, experimenting with everything from the vampire bunny Bunnicula, to the Great Illustrated Classics series, to the imaginative Anne of Green Gables.  It was about that time that I found my niche in the fantasy genre with the first time I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.  Oh, I dabbled in historical fiction, reading every book on Irish lore by Morgan Llewelyn and the medieval influenced Sharon Kay Penmen, but something about Fantasy continued to draw me back into its dark clutches.  I knew there was no hope of escape.

            From then on I filled every moment I could spare with reading my precious books and sometimes even moments I couldn’t.  I spent all my money on trips to Boarders to buy the latest and greatest books, and scrounged libraries and second hand stores for cheap bargains.  At one low point, my enabler father even took me to the US Dept. of Commerce for the Vassar Bag of Books sale.  For five dollars, you could fill a paper grocery bag of books.  I went home with two bags all for myself which included two books I still have today.  I think it was after this event I developed the appalling habit of reading at the dinner table.  My addiction went from a closely held secret to a dependency seen by everyone. 

            I surrounded myself with others who were like me and sometimes we would swap books hidden in plastic bags before school.  My craving for “just one more” chapter after lights-out soon spawned dark circles under my eyes. I took to hiding a flashlight under my mattress.  I couldn’t stop reading even in school and would hide a novel behind my propped up textbook when I was supposed to be learning about why A+B=C.  I got caught once or twice but was never punished so it never dissuaded me from continuing.  I developed health problems that required me to get glasses and it is something I still struggle with today.  I “borrowed” books from my parent’s house and started to accumulate a stash in my bedroom that soon spilled into the living room and then the basement.  People began to look at me differently because I was open about my habit and discussed my current fix in public, sometimes even flaunting the book where anyone could see.  I became irritable and jittery if I couldn’t have my book.

            During these technologically advanced days where I can buy my fixes online for a discount and immediately download them to my e-reader, I have to make a conscious effort not to fall into the old habits of reading in class. And yet at times, I still catch myself in math class sneaking a look at my nook app on my smart phone or using the tablet to browse friend’s recommendations on Amazon or Goodreads.com.  (Sorry, Mom!)

I bought an E-reader thinking I would spend less money driving to stores and buying full price books, my way of trying to curb my habit.  But you don’t have to recharge a paperback, and you can’t buy a novel from a store with the simple touch of a button.  I find myself spending money on e-versions of old favorites as well as continuing to seek new titles and authors without ever having to leave the couch.  I read George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones in days and resisted buying the sequel only by sheer force of will.  If the devil is in the details, that book needs an exorcist.  And don’t even get me started on the Artemis Fowl series.  I howled with maniacal laughter through all eight of them in the hallway of OSU.  It was not the first impression I wanted to make.

I have lost myself in a fantasy world where vampires are legal citizens and learned about Imperial China and its last Empress.  I finished The Hunger Games within hours and desperately wanted more of the fast paced excitement and quick thinking main character. Once, my addiction was a pleasure that could take me away to distant lands and teach me new ideas.  Now they are simply as necessary to my existence as breathing. They are my escape from reality and my connection to the world.

            But to choose a favorite?  It’s impossible.  There are far too many to chose only one.  I can only say that my favorite genre was, is and always will be fantasy.  It is my ecstasy. 

            Last year I was placed in a school for my first field experience.  I met a girl who had my addiction, and wasn’t shy about flaunting her book either.  I recommended books to her, and she did the same for me.  A teacher introduced me to her daughter and we traded books for the summer.  My boyfriend’s younger sister borrowed a trilogy from me and then passed them on to her mother.  I am reluctant to say I have become the influence, the enabler and the dealer. 

            For some time now I have been wondering if I am looking at this all wrong.  Maybe I don’t need to make this confession and start a program that can give me help for my problem.  Maybe the solution I need to spread it so that everyone is just as bad.  Then no one will see it as shocking that I can’t go to sleep without a fix, just one more turn of the page, just one more paragraph before I stop.  If I can get into the schools, I can spread the need, the rush, of reading.  I can teach the next generation to see it not as something despised, only fit for nerds and those with no social life, but as something respected. Imagine: a world where everyone is addicted to reading.  Bookstores are like crack houses and authors are drug lords.  Parents and teachers freely spend money on their children’s dependence on stories and we all get high together.