a wrinkle in time

November 7, 2017

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Characters Worth Following

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week, we’re looking at characters that would make great leaders, so here are ten characters that I think would be worth following.

Hermione Granger (Harry Potter): The Harry Potter series would have been, like, one book long without Hermoine making sure Harry and Ron didn’t kill themselves by accident. She is smart, capable, and I would be more than happy to follow her wherever she went.

Lyra Belacqua (The Golden Compass): Lyra’s just one of those “natural leaders”…it’s no accident that when the Jordan College kids are fighting the townie kids, that it’s Lyra that leads them into battle. Her natural charisma is obvious even on the page.

Gandalf (The Fellowship of the Ring): When the Fellowship sets off on their quest, it’s the wizard that leads them…in part to quell arguments between the races about leadership, but also because he’s wise and thoughtful and anyone who’s beloved in Hobbiton is someone I’d be okay trailing behind.

Madeline Mackenzie (Big Little Lies): After reading this book (I still haven’t seen the show and I really need to!), I so appreciated Madeline’s take-charge attitude that I’d have happily joined her book club (or anything else she wanted me to).

Charles O’Keefe (A Wrinkle In Time): While Meg is my favorite character from this series, she’s too short-tempered to make a good leader. Leaders are most effective if they’re liked, and who wouldn’t like and line up behind Charles?

Emma Woodhouse (Emma): England in Austen’s time didn’t have a lot in the way of formal leadership roles for women, but clever Emma was clearly the queen bee of her social set, which is about as much as an upper-class lady could aspire to.

Mr. Wednesday (American Gods): There’s a reason he’s the one that goes on the journey to round up the old gods across the country…he’s the one that’s got the persuasiveness to get them to join up!

Achilles (Song of Achilles): He’s a strong, true, and fair commander of his troops, who wouldn’t want to follow him…and who would care that he’s gay, for that matter?

Ned Stark (A Game of Thrones): Noble, brave, and always doing the right thing, Ned is pretty much the platonic ideal of a hero and a worthy leader.

Jean Valjean (Les Miserables): He spends most of his life repenting for a criminal act by becoming selfless and kind and the kind of man who gets elected to be the mayor of his town.

October 3, 2017

Top Ten Tuesday: Book Crushes

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week’s topic is book boyfriends/girlfriends…you know, when you’re reading a book and get all swoony about one of the characters. This is a bit of a tough one, for me, because I don’t read a ton of books with a central romance (which tend to be the type of books that make you all swoony over characters), so I’m splitting it up: five boy crushes, and five girl crushes!

The Dudes:

Captain Wentworth (Persuasion): This was the first Austen I read, and the hero remains my favorite. He’s loyal and good-natured and big enough to forgive a foolish spurning means that even though she’s an “old maid” (at 27!), the love he and Anne have for each other is just delayed rather than denied and this book is great and so is he.

Kolya (City of Thieves): Rakish and high-spirited, Kolya tends to win over everyone he meets with his charm. Especially women, and it’s not hard to understand why: young and handsome and endearing tends to be an easy sell.

Charles O’Keefe (A Wrinkle In Time): This series is so amazing because it has such great characters: prickly Meg, self-possessed Charles Wallace, and brave, kind Charles, who is able to maintain his own stable goodness despite adverse circumstances. It’s easy to understand why Meg loves him and it’s hard not to love him a bit yourself.

Eric Northman (Dead To The World): This whole series has a rotating cast of love interests for Louisiana waitress Sookie Stackhouse, but you’d be hard pressed to find someone whose favorite isn’t Eric, particularly in the fourth book, where he’s lost his memory and imperiousness and he’s just a tall, handsome sweetheart.

Jean Valjean (Les Miserables): A man who recovers from some previous missteps to live virtuously and devote himself to the loving raising of a child who isn’t his? If that’s not dreamy to you, we have different ideas of what dreamy is.

The Ladies:

Sabriel (Sabriel): Smart and brave and with powerful magic, Sabriel is enchanting and one of those characters who you can never forget once you’ve experienced.

Yvaine (Stardust): An actual star, kidnapped by a young man named Tristan to be a present for the girl he pines for, Yvaine is sarcastic and witty and it is no surprise that Tristan eventually realizes that he’s actually in love with her after all, because she’s great.

Natasha Rostova (War and Peace): If you can read this book and not fall a little bit in love with Natasha, you’ve got a heart of stone. Her spirit is what holds this enormous epic together, and the way she ends up still doesn’t sit quite right with me.

Ellen Cherry Charles (Skinny Legs and All): Tom Robbins is a love-him-or-hate-him writer, and I tend to be in the former group. Ellen is a waitress who wants to be an artist, and her struggle to figure out her relationship with her husband and the world and herself and her pride and vulnerability make her a winning heroine.

Bridget Jones (Bridget Jones’s Diary): Bridget drinks too much, can’t stick to a diet and exercise plan, and speaks before she thinks. She is a delight and I want to be best friends.

April 11, 2017

Top Ten Tuesday: Most Original Books I’ve Read

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week’s topic is original books. When I think of books that are original, I think of books that are kind of the first of their kind or kicked off a trend. I don’t tend to read a lot of books that fall into any sort of avant-garde category, so there are the books I’ve read that I think changed up the landscape for what came after them (and some that are just kind of offbeat).

Lord of the Rings: Forget just books, I think most high fantasy movies and video games owe a significant debt to J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterwork. My husband loves playing the Elder Scrolls video games, and I couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen the LOTR movies beforehand because they have so much in common.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: While the book itself is certainly an enjoyable twisty mystery, it’s really here for the amazing character of Lisbeth Salander. Usually a slight female is the victim, but she turns all that on its head and is a brutal force to be reckoned with in her own right.

Gone Girl: Besides some genuinely shocking twists and a depiction of a compelling female sociopath (a rare creature indeed), this book propelled a boom in domestic thrillers. How many times have you seen something labeled “the next Gone Girl”? Exactly.

Life of Pi: I can’t think of another book that tells a story quite like this one: a teenage boy trapped on a lifeboat with a variety of zoo animals, including a Bengal tiger, floating in the Pacific Ocean. Or was he trapped with any animals at all?

In Cold Blood: Truman Capote’s incredible work basically created new genre: the non-fiction novel. Pretty darn original.

Bridget Jones’ Diary: This hysterically funny book kicked off a boom in “chick lit” with flawed, quirky heroines. None of them were quite as much fun to spend time with as Bridget.

Moby-Dick: When I read this a few years ago on a classics binge, I was expecting something boring. But it’s actually very modern, interspersing its revenge saga with details about whales and whaling that made it surprisingly enjoyable.

American Gods: Gaiman’s incredible book manages to juggle multiple threads and characters along with an incredible main story about a clash between the gods people brought to the US from “the Old World” and the ones they’ve raised in the New. There’s nothing quite like it that I’ve read.

A Wrinkle In Time: Maybe it’s not nearly as special as I remember it, but to this day I don’t know that I’ve ever come across as defiantly prickly a character as Meg Murray in a YA book…when I was a prickly girl myself, discovering Meg felt like a revelation.

Flowers for Algernon: I don’t think I’ve ever read another book quite like this one, with its trajectory of genius found and lost. It’s a heart-ripper.

March 20, 2017

My Reading Life: What I Wish I Would Have Read In High School

The title is a bit of a misnomer. There are some books that I read in high school that were amazing: To Kill A Mockingbird (read in 10th grade), The Great Gatsby (read in 11th grade, and which I super hated at the time and think high school is too early to really appreciate it). But there were also some clunkers: Of Mice and Men (read in 9th grade), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (read in 12th grade). High school is such a heady time, hormones and emotions running high, and the right book at the right time can instill a lifelong appreciation for books and the worlds you can explore through them. If I was redesigning the standard-issue high school curriculum (which I know doesn’t really exist, my in-laws are teachers), here are the three works I would want everyone to read each year

Freshman Year

Romeo and Juliet: I read this one freshman year, and I think that’s the perfect time to read it. Romeo and Juliet is a bonkers play, you guys. Fighting in the streets! Romantic obsession! Sex! Death! It’s a story about teenagers being crazy and stupid and perfect for 14 year olds.

1984: In terms of actual reading comprehension level, this is very understandable for a teenager. Some parents would probably freak out because of some very mild sexual situations, but they need to chill out. This is a great novel to inspire kids to start to think critically about political and media manipulation (especially in this new age of “alternative facts”)

The Hunger Games: I think recently popular lit gets overlooked on school reading lists, but I think this would actually go great with 1984. The language is a bit more modern but touches on similar themes about government control, and features a badass female heroine.

Sophomore Year

To Kill A Mockingbird: This literary classic was on my own 10th grade reading list, and I think that was a great time to have read it. Scout is a fantastic heroine, and lessons this book imparts about standing up for what’s right and empathy for others are powerful at any age, but especially around this time.

The Perks of Being A Wallflower: This story, about the tight bond that develops between flawed teenage outcasts, is sensitive and powerful. As much as parents would love to pretend otherwise, teenagers do have sex lives and sexuality, and this novel speaks to those developments in a way that will ring true for 15 year-olds.

Speak: On the dark side of that idea about teenage sexuality is the reality that sexual assault is a real risk during these years. The book is incisive and witty and can help girls understand that unwanted sexual attention isn’t their fault…and boys understand the importance of consent.

Junior Year

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn: The story of Francie Nolan is one about overcoming the odds, mostly because of a love of reading and school. Francie lives through some pretty tough stuff and manages to stick it out, and I know when I was 16, I was pretty sure I had it pretty bad myself, so this book will bring both perspective and an example of triumph over obstacles.

The Catcher In The Rye: I really think this book speaks most powerfully to teenagers, who are obsessed with the idea of being real, the idea that adults are fake. By the time I read it, in my early 20s, I mostly wanted to give Holden a hearty smack across the face and tell him to snap out of it. But for a 16 year-old, the sense of aimlessness and feeling like you should know what you want from your life even though you totally don’t is very identifiable.

Fahrenheit 451: Our world today has more easy distractions than ever, making the relevance of this novel, about the importance of books and reading and how easy it is for these things to fall by the wayside, even more obvious. This book will likely not speak to every 11th grade student, but for those who make the effort to understand it, it would be richly rewarding.

Senior Year

In Cold Blood: Truman Capote’s masterpiece about a shocking murder in Kansas is a fantastic way to work with 12th graders about style. It was one of the very first non-fiction novels, and is perfectly paced and plotted. The appeal of a story is about the way it’s told as much as anything else.

A Brave New World: This fits right in with the 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 suggestions earlier along the way about the ways that the powerful can subdue the masses through social control. This one is, for my money, the most mature of the three I’ve picked and as you’re about to send kids out into the world, one that I’d like to have fresh in their minds.

Lord of the Flies: I think I actually read this in 11th grade, but it works fine here too. Finding and trying to fit into groups is a big part of the teen years, which continue into college, and the power of those groups to influence their members is something that’s good to put into 17 and 18 year-olds minds as they get ready to really experience life outside the home for the first time.

August 9, 2016

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Characters You Would Want As Family Members

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week’s topic is a rewind…i.e go back in the archives and find a topic you didn’t do the first time around and do it. I picked a way old topic, long before I started book blogging: ten characters I’d want as family members! I love character-driven writing and usually remember more about them than the plot for most books, so this topic spoke to me.

Fred and George Weasley (Harry Potter): I grew up with just one sibling, my sister (who I love and adore), but Fred and George seem like the perfect brothers. Constant pranking would thicken your skin but how could you stay mad when they’re so delightful? I’m counting them as one because they’re a matched pair.

Elizabeth Bennett (Pride and Prejudice): Her bright wit and lively personality would make her a great sister. Can you imagine all the fun marathon phone calls you could have with a sister like Lizzy just snarking on everyone?

Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games): On the flip side of the sister coin, Katniss is fiercely protective of her own and would make sure no one ever messed with you.

Lisbeth Salander (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo): She doesn’t seem like she makes much of an effort to be super pleasant to a lot of people, so I don’t know that I’d want her in the immediate family, but as a cousin that you see maybe once or twice a year? And feel like you could maybe call on for backup in case of emergency? Perfect!

Pi Patel (Life of Pi): A dad who can tell a story like Pi Patel can tell a story would be an awesome dad indeed.

Tom Bombadil (The Fellowship of the Ring): Too irresponsible for a parent, but a whacky uncle who shows up every so often to be charming and lighthearted and sing songs and tell stories? Yes please.

Wilbur Larch (The Cider House Rules): Dr. Larch’s fatherly love and empathy for orphaned Homer Wells is so touching, even when Homer spurns him and his work. I’ve already got a book dad, but how about a grandpa?

Bridget Jones (Bridget Jones’ Diary): I’m giving myself all kinds of fictional siblings, because it wouldn’t be hard to be the good/together sister next to Bridget, and she’s really very good natured and would have the BEST stories.

Catlyn Stark (A Game of Thrones): She’s flawed, like every single person in George R.R. Martin’s world, but she’s strong, loves her kids, and raised a bunch of fundamentally decent people. She reminds me of my actual mom, and I’d gladly join Sansa and Arya as one of her daughters!

The whole Murray clan (A Wrinkle In Time): I want to be a part of this entire educated, loving, crazy-adventure having family. Just all of them.

May 3, 2016

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Childhood Characters You’d Love To Revisit As Adults

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week’s topic: ten characters from childhood that you’d love to revisit as adults. This was a trip down memory lane, as I spent time thinking about the books I loved growing up, which was a lot of them. Here are the characters I’d most like to connect with:

The Babysitters Club: I read what feels like it was probably close to 100 of these books as a kid. Of course I desperately wanted to start a club of my own, and of course I didn’t, but I lived vicariously though the girls’ adventures. I wanted to think I was a Claudia, but I was totally a Mary Ann. I’d love to see an adult novel that followed up on their lives…maybe a mystery set at their 10 year reunion?

Meg Murry (A Wrinkle In Time): After being the main character of the first two novels of the Time Quartet, the focus shifts off of Meg and onto her brothers. We see a little bit of her, but we don’t really get to focus on her and her life. We know that she ends up married to Calvin and the mother of a large family, but I want to see a follow up with Meg from her own perspective. It looks like such a novel was in the works when Madeline L’Engle had a stroke and stopped writing, which bums me out.

Georgia Nicholson (Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging): I loved this silly series and in my head, Georgia grows up to be more-or-less Bridget Jones, but I have a feeling she’d even put Bridget to shame sometimes in terms of getting herself into messes. I’m going to have to keep on with my own ideas, though, because Louise Rennison sadly passed away earlier this year.

Harry Potter: And the rest of the Potter gang, obviously. We’ve gotten little glimpses through Rowling’s ending of the final book and updates on Pottermore, and I’m hoping Harry Potter and the Cursed Child shows us even more of who Harry, Hermione, and Ron have become as adults.

Ella (Ella Enchanted): Cinderella may be a classic, but the Disney movie was never a favorite of mine because Cinderella is so boring (I quite liked Drew Barrymore’s Ever After, though). This retelling makes our girl a much stronger and more interesting character, and I’d love to see what happens in her happily ever after…I have a feeling it’s much more complicated than that.

Matilda Wormwood (Matilda): I loved this book so much as a kid…probably because I identified hard with its smart, book-loving heroine. I have a whole rant about the movie and how much I hated it, but that’s neither here nor there. After a childhood full of abusive parenting and magical powers, I really want to know what a grown-up Matilda is like after her telekinesis vanishes and she gets to live with Miss Honey. You have to think those early experiences would leave some pretty significant scars…

Jess Aarons (Bridge to Terabithia): This book made me ugly-cry as a kid, and after the death of his best friend, I wonder what happened to Jess. Thinking back on it as an adult, imaginative and artistic Jess seems to be written as potentially quietly gay, and I want to read about him going back home to visit small-town Virginia after moving to New York or Chicago or LA and becoming an artist.

Karana (Island of the Blue Dolphins): I’m pretty sure everyone read this in elementary or middle school, right? What we don’t think about is what happens when a young woman who has lived alone on an island for years not only re-encounters humanity, but finds herself in a completely different culture. What does she do? How does she live her life? I’d love to read about Karana’s post-Island life.

Miyax (Julie of the Wolves): I remember reading the sequel, which presents Miyax/Julie’s life when she leaves her wolf pack and struggles to readjust to a world that’s changed in her absence. But she’s still just a teenager in Julie, and I’d love to see her continue to learn and grow and see what she decides to make of her life and continue to deal with culture clash

April and Melanie (The Egypt Game): I know, there are other characters, but these two unlikely friends were my favorite. After a childhood of imagination games, I picture the girls going to college and growing apart, but reuniting in a chance encounter and slowly reconnecting. Anyone else want to read that or just me?

March 21, 2016

So You Miss The Hunger Games?

With the final movie having come out a few months ago, The Hunger Games are officially over. Like most readers, I tore through the trilogy in what felt like no time…more than once even! While Katniss Everdeen inspired her really obvious knockoffs (Divergent, anyone?), nothing has quite lived up to Collins’ trilogy. And while they’re not all quite the same, obviously, here are some of my favorite YA series led by bad-ass female characters:

The Old Kingdom trilogy: For me, these books are the most similar to Collins’ and the most likely to be enjoyed by the Hunger Games crowd. Anyone who loved tough, strong Katniss should love equally tough and strong Sabriel, whose beloved father has disappeared into the realm of Death while fighting a powerful necromancer. She has no choice but to rely on the skills he taught her to find him and save her home from evil. These books are fantasy rather than dystopia, but they’ve got a similar girl-on-a-quest narrative, and a similar approach to the obligatory “love interest” plot point (in that it’s a relatively minor plot point…and bonus for no artificial love triangle!). For me, the second volume of this was the weakest (I didn’t like Lirael as a character as much as I liked Sabriel), but the first and third were great. There’s actually a fourth one that’s come out, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it and read it because Garth Nix is amazing.

The Immortals quartet: Anything by Tamora Pierce is a solid choice for a young feminist (she’s also got the Young Lioness quartet that’s very popular and well-regarded, but that one didn’t do nearly as much for me when I read it), but this series is my favorite. Daine Sarassri is an orphaned young woman living in a fantasy kingdom called Tortall who discovers that she has a kind of magic, not of the traditional spells-and-charms kind, but a rarer kind of Wild Magic that allows her to commune with animals. Her gift has always set her apart from people, so she’s more comfortable with four-footed than two-footed company. Daine, like Katniss, is proud and private and awkward and uses her strength to protect the ones she loves, and her adventures make for compulsive, entertaining reading.

His Dark Materials trilogy: This one is stretching it farther from The Hunger Games base, but it does feature a headstrong, scrappy girl who fights back against the system. The plot is complicated and gets into some strong theological questions like the nature of sin, so the reading is a little bit slower paced, but don’t worry, it’s not drudgery by a long shot. Lyra Belacqua is an unforgettable heroine and readers who gobbled up Katniss’ fight against the Capitol should enjoy Lyra’s push back against authority in her world, too.

A Wrinkle In Time Quintet: If you’ve read them, you might be wondering how I’d compare them to The Hunger Games, which is fair. But I think you can trace a line from smart, stubborn Meg Murray to smart, stubborn Katniss Everdeen without too much trouble. Neither Madeline L’Engle nor Susan Collins is afraid to let their heroine be prickly and sometimes unlikable. Both Meg and Katniss fiercely love and work to protect their younger sibling at great risk to themselves. Unlike The Hunger Games, we actually get to see later stories from the perspectives of the younger siblings in question, and the part of the story that involve an older Meg make me wish we’d gotten a better look at older Katniss.

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