Breaking News: The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater Release Date

If you've been here, you may remember that I shamelessly admitted that despite his anger issues I found Ronan Lynch of Maggie Stiefvater's The Raven Boys irresistible, which is why when I saw this just a few moments ago, I squealed, jumped up and down, and fanned myself.

I am a shameless fan girl.

September 17 - Mark it on your calendar, and get to know the Raven boys for yourself.

Top Ten Favorite Romances (2/12)

Image from The Broke and the Bookish

In honor of Valentine's Day, The Broke and the Bookish has asked us to catalog our top ten favorite romances for Top Ten Tuesday.  I interpret their instructions as my top ten favorite couples (I don't read a lot of true romance genre - although Mary Balogh is my guilty pleasure.  I currently have A Secret Affair on hold as my next audiobook - it's going to be a steamy ride to work...).

Ahem - to the list!

1. Gus and Hazel - The Fault in Our Stars by John Green - These characters are two whip-smart yet surprisingly innocent teens.  I love the progression of their relationship in this heartbreaking novel.
2. Jane and Rochester - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte - My favorite classic couple bar none (well except maybe Anne Elliott and Captain Wentworth in Persuasion).  Sorry, Jane Austen, I just like a little more passion in my romance. 
3. Jessica and Marcus - Sloppy Firsts-Perfect Fifths by Megan McCafferty - You. Yes. You.
4. Raziela and Andrew - The Mercy of Thin Air by Ronlyn Domingue - A good romance, to me, is timeless, and I think that Razi and Andrew's story of love gained and lost is just that.
5. Nick and Norah & Dash and Lily - Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist & Dash and Lily's Book of Dares (respectively) by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn - Fantastic characters, snappy dialogue, and a dash of whimsy makes these romances must-reads.
6. Jessie and Brother Thomas - The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd - Forbidden love between a married woman and a monk - it sounds overdone, but I promise you that The Mermaid Chair and the relationship between its main characters is spectacularly wrought.  I read this book on a trip to West Virginia with my husband's (then boyfriend's) family, and I was trying so hard not to just start bawling in the backseat!
7. Leo and Alma - The History of Love by Nicole Krauss - This is my favorite book ever.  It is an epic interconnected and intertextual tale of love as it grows and changes over time.
8. Hema and Kaushik - Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri - One of my mentors at Peace gifted me Jhumpa Lahiri's collection of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth, upon my receipt of a departmental English award.  The collection is awe-inspiring, but the story of Hema and Kaushik, told through three interlinking short stories at the end of the collection, is my favorite.  The setting, the writing, and the relationship are beautifully depicted.
9. Sean and Puck - The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater - Swoon, swoon, swoon.  This was my favorite book of 2012 for a variety of reasons, but the realistic, slow-growing, yet totally swoon-worthy relationship between Sean and Puck is probably the top one.
10. Martin and Claire - The Gazebo by Emily Grayson - This novel will slay you.  A couple who can't be together but vows to always love each other meets at the titular gazebo once a year.  I repeat - it will slay you.

Upon compiling this list, I realize how many of my favorite romances are really heartbreaking.  I must be a masochist of the heart.

Hope your love and lists are heartbreak free!

Why Didn't I Think of That? 2013 Banned Books Challenge

Christine over at Buckling Bookshelves knows me very well.

She commented on my recent Top Ten Bookish Memories post that I needed to join in the 2013 Banned Books Challenge she is hosting this year.

Anyone who works with me or reads this blog or knows me personally knows that me and banned books are BFFs.  It all started the first time I read Judy Blume's Forever.  It became a passion when I started reading Ellen Hopkins.  That passion become an obsession when I started teaching a banned books themed composition course at my college.  So. Much. Fun.

I've read a lot of banned books, but unfortunately, the list is long, so there are lots of interesting books that I haven't had a chance to read yet.  Christine's laid back challenge is going to help me tackle those.  The rules are as follows:

DATE: The challenge will run from January 1, 2013 through the first day of Banned Books Week 2013 (still TBD) -- the rest of the week will be used to wrap-up the challenge.

RULES: The only rules are that books read for this challenge must appear on one of the ALA's lists of frequently challenged books -- there are multiple lists split up by author, year, decade, & a separate list for Banned & Challenged Classics, so there should be plenty of options to choose from.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE: Write a post, as long or short as you like, about your participation in this challenge and linking to this post. If you don't have a blog, you can leave a comment here instead. I'd love for everyone to review the books they read, but it's not required. Overlap with other challenges is totally OK. Sometime during Banned Books Week 2013 (date TBD) link-up a wrap-up post about how you did with the challenge.

Update: For each book you read for the challenge, you can also link-up your reviews here, so we can read them!

2nd Update: The dates for Banned Books Week 2013 will be September 22-28. The challenge officially ends on the first day of Banned Books Week, but you can finish linking up your reviews and/or wrap-up posts throughout the week.

Here are the levels you can choose from (and if you decide to change at any point, that's totally OK too!):

Making Waves: 5 Challenged Books
Trouble-Maker: 10 Challenged Books
Rebel: 15 Challenged Books
Insurgent: 20 Challenged Books
Leader of a Revolution: 25 Challenged Books

I'm going to use this challenge to try to read some of the books my students consistently choose for their banned book project that I haven't read yet.  That way I can give more effective instruction and feedback on their essays and have more detailed discussions with them on those books.

I'm shooting for Making Waves, but I'm hoping I'll hit Trouble Maker before the challenge is up.

To keep me honest, I've already chosen my first five books.  They are, in no particular order:

1. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
2. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
3. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
4. When Dad Killed Mom by Julius Lester
5. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers

Honorable Mentions:

1. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
2. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
3. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
4. Grendel by John Gardner
5. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
6. Lush by Natasha Friend

I am so pumped about this challenge.  You can join in at any time, so hop on over to Buckling Bookshelves and start reading!

Review: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Image from Musings of a Book Lover

This is my first review as part of the Outside the Box Challenge hosted by Kate at Musings of a Book Lover.  I chose Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina as my read for "To the Screen," which asks readers to read a book that's been adapted to the big screen.  I've read several books already that have been made into movies - some I loved, some I hated (Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part II, I'm looking at you!!), but the recent adaptation of Anna Karenina with Kiera Knightly intrigued me, so I decided to give the novel a shot.

I actually began the novel last fall while flying out to Las Vegas for the NCTE conference.  Although it took me a while to get into the plot and used to Tolstoy's overly detailed writing style (and to keep all those Russian surnames straight!), I was enjoying the story; however, I picked up several new releases by some of my favorite authors while at NCTE, put Anna Karenina down, and never picked it back up.

As part of my book and blogging resolutions for the new year, I decided to try audiobooks.  Although I took easily to ebooks, I hadn't yet jumped on the audiobook train.  I definitely retain more when I'm the one reading and seeing the words on the page rather than just listening to someone read to me.  Faced with a one hour round trip commute to work every day as well as two massive, classical tomes on my TBR list (Anna Karenina and Les Miserables), I decided to take the audiobook plunge.  I was wary, so I found a free app boasting several thousand free, classic audiobooks called Libervox.  The narrators are volunteers, so they are not perfect, but I could deal.  I started at the beginning of Anna Karenina because it had been a few months since I had last touched it.  The first book flew by, and I was easily pulled back into the story.  However, I experienced problems with book two.  The quality of the narration was beginning to interfere with the story.  Whereas the first part of Anna Karenina had been narrated by one person, each chapter in book two was narrated by someone different.  Not too terribly troubling except some of the narrators were terrible!  One didn't read loudly enough, another was reading in an echoey room, a third constantly shifted while reading creating distracting background noise, and the fourth and final attempted to read Count Vronsky and his fellow soldiers with a faux male voice so over-the-top I had to turn off the narration.  You get what you paid for, right?

I wasn't convinced I needed to drop $40.00 dollars on a quality audiobook I was only going to listen to once though.  Then, lightbulb moment, one of my other bookish resolutions was to utilize my public library more.  My school library doesn't carry audiobooks, but we subscribe to NC-Live that has tons of free audio and e-books, one of which was Anna Karenina.  I downloaded it and was immediately rewarded with an expressive, engaging narrator.  Finally, I was able to lose myself in the story and boy did I.  Several times while listening, I would gasp, cry out, or otherwise react to the events unfolding before me.

Anna Karenina is known by many to be Tolstoy's pièce de résistance, and I can see why.  The story is epic despite the fact it mostly chronicles the intricacies of daily living.  It is this complex focus on the minutiae of daily life, though, that makes the novel so compelling.  We've all been heartbroken like Kitty, in love like Anna, unsure of our relationship status like Dolly and jealous, jealous, jealous of friends and lovers alike like all the woman in Tolstoy's fictional world.  (I remain, however, less than interested in the minutiae of scything or hunting snipe.)  This complicated, introspective meditation on passion and human nature that I loved ultimately became the thing that grated on my nerves towards the end of the novel.

Note: I'm not sure if you can spoil a classic; even before reading Anna Karenina, I knew how it was going to end, but just in case, spoilers will henceforth ensue.

I pitied every single character in Tolstoy's novel, but I was rooting for Anna and Vronsky even as I pitied Alexey's losing battle with propriety and his obvious inner struggle to maintain his wife and the facade of a normal household and family.  However, once the lovers had won, the predictable thrill of the chase wore off and was replaced by a never-ceasing litany of real and imagined jealousies on the part of Anna.  Her constant worrying refrain that "Yes, that's it, he must be in love with another woman" made me want to shake her.  "What did you expect?!" I'd shout.  "The man had no qualms going after a married woman!  And even despite that fact, there is no certifiable evidence he is cheating on you now!  Your constant sniveling and petty arguments might drive him to it though!"  Retrospectively, I see that Tolstoy was attempting to show Anna descending into a state of paranoia and near madness.  He succeeds, but not without driving his reader to those extremes as well.

And even though I knew what was coming, and even though I was thoroughly sick of Anna and her inner monologue at this point, I was still dumbstruck and teary-eyed when she made her choice to leap under a moving train, forsaking her children and all others, in a reckless attempt to atone for all the wrong choices she had made and erase the guilt that bogged her down.

Kitty and Levin's sweet, slow-growing relationship was the bright spot amid the dark and torrid knots of lovers dotting Tolstoy's pages.  I cried happy tears as Kitty and Levin exchanged vows in chalk upon meeting again after she had first refused him.  In depicting these two characters and their relationship, Tolstoy's writing style shines with eloquent and profound statements of love and companionship.  Although I found Levin's affirmation of God in the final pages of the novel a bit preachy, it was fitting that he had the last word.

For days I thought about what I would write when I reviewed this novel, and what's come out isn't really a review.  I find it difficult to condense a plot so timeless yet so complex into a few paragraphs and really do it justice.  Suffice it to say that this novel and these characters are ones that impacted me, flaws and all, and are ones that I suggest all readers get to know personally to form their own assessment.

Best matched with anyone who has had a broken heart.

Top Ten Bookish Memories (2/5)

Image from The Broke and the Bookish

This week's Top Ten Tuesday hosted by The Broke and the Bookish asked us to reach into our memory files and pull out those memories where books are center stage.  For bibliophiles like me, this was an enjoyable if tough request.  A lot of my favorite memories revolve around books and/or reading.  In no particular order, here are my top ten bookish memories.

1. Starting with the fifth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, my best friend, Bonnie, and I began standing in line at Barnes and Noble for the midnight releases.  We always had a blast, but the night the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was released was particularly memorable.  As the hour drew nigh, we were giddy with excitement and kept laughing about the stupidest things.  We struck up a friendship with a middle-aged woman who blasted someone for trying to break in line.  When we returned to the car, coveted books in hand, we sat in the parking lot to preview the chapters, and Bonnie begged me to start reading while she drove.

2. The Harry Potter books defined my childhood, so it's no surprise that the ending of the series was a defining moment for me.  Even though I had gone out at midnight to procure the last books in the series, I had never pulled an all-nighter to read one until the seventh book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was released.  I laughed; I cried; I was shocked by the turn of events, and I could not stop reading until I turned the last page, and then the next day (i. e. several hours later when I woke up), I had to re-read the last few chapters and the epilogue because I wasn't ready for it to end just yet.
 
3. Because the Harry Potter books spanned a decade of publication (1997-2007), there were huge chunks of time between the release of books.  I re-read the first four books in the series often, but several months, maybe a year, after the publication of the seventh and final installment in the saga, I decided to re-read them all back to back.  It was a true joy.  I uncovered details and saw connections that were not apparent to me the first time I had read each book.  This is a series that is greater than the sum of its parts.

4. Harry Potter obviously has defined a huge chunk of my life, but my subsequent memories are Harry Potter free.  This next one involves another author that had a huge impact on me while I was growing up, Sarah Dessen.  Sarah Dessen's Someone Like You is one of my favorite books ever.  It is the perfect blend of friendship and love.  Dessen is a local author and lives in North Carolina.  When I discovered at fifteen that she would be speaking at the literary festival at UNC-Chapel Hill, I had to go.  During this time, I was also an avid writer and dreamed of being an author.  She was my role-model.  My dad is a staunch N. C. State fan and half-jokingly asserted that he would under no circumstances allow me to set foot on UNC-Chapel Hill's campus, but more important than my dad's team loyalty was his desire to help me achieve my dreams, so on a sunny April Saturday, we made the two hour trek to Chapel Hill where I got to hear Dessen read from This Lullaby, ask her questions about being a writer, and get her to sign all of my books.  It was pure heaven.*

5. Since Dessen is a local author, I have gotten to attend her readings multiple times since that day in April when I was fifteen.  I attended Peace College and N. C. State in Raleigh, and Dessen often stopped at local independent bookstore Quail Ridge Books for readings.  When Lock and Key was in publication, she was reading at Chapel Hill, and my friends and I attended the early Saturday morning reading.  When Dessen was signing my book, she complimented me on my dress and ivory trench coat.  Since that meeting, every time I see Dessen at a reading, she recognizes me.  It is such a heartwarming experience to be recognized by one of your favorite authors.  As a side note, it was at this reading in Chapel Hill that I first met David Levithan, a friend of Dessen's.  I basically made an idiot of myself going on about how much I loved Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, but it was definitely a memorable experience. 

6. I've already written in great detail about the NCTE Conference I attended in November where I met Ellen Hopkins, Sonya Sones, Maggie Stiefvater, and David Levithan.  This was an incredible event, and it opened my eyes to the opportunity for author visits at my school.

7. Like any good bibliophile, Amazon became my best friend in college for ordering cheap books.  After attending the National Conference on Undergraduate Research in Salisbury, Maryland where I heard a girl read Margaret Atwood's "Tricks with Mirrors," I promptly ordered several of Atwood's anthologies, including Two-Headed Poems, for only a few dollars.  When I received them, I was shocked to discover that the cover page of my copy of Two-Headed Poems was signed by Margaret Atwood.  

8. Going back a little further, my love of reading was cultivated by both my parents and grandparents.  I remember in particular visiting my paternal grandparents' home where my grandma kept a little boxed set of Peter Rabbit books.  I loved these books and would read them over and over when I went to their house.  When I grew up, my grandma gave them to me, and now they sit in a place of honor on my bookshelf.  One day I will pass them down to my niece.

9. Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind was one of the first really dense books I read in terms of content, emotion, history, detail, and length.  Few books since have evoked the reaction that book did in me.  It had me in tears.  I screamed at the characters.  At one point, I was so frustrated with the course of the novel, I threw it against the wall.  This book evoked every possible emotion in me and prompted me to write this little reflection on writing:

On Becoming a Writer

I still remember the exact moment I decided I wanted to be a writer.  I don't remember the date or the time, the year or how old I was, but that doesn't matter anyway - writing- really writing - isn't so much about fact...it's about feeling, and I still remember that feeling, that moment when I knew that writing was what I wanted to do with my life.  I had just finished reading Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.  I was sobbing - that book had left me emotionally drained.  Margaret Mitchell captured me in her web, and I felt like I was Scarlett - I laughed when she laughed, I cried when she cried, I hated who she hated, I loved who she loved.  I yelled at the other characters, defending her to them when they turned their backs on her...we understood each other me and Scarlett...and it was in that moment that I knew.  When I was sitting there crying, moved to experience every emotion by Margaret's words, I knew I wanted to do that.  That I wanted to be the one changing the world, reaching the masses, or just touching one other person's life.  I want my words to be the words moving people, touching their hearts, giving them an escape from their harsh reality but teaching them how to apply that story (theme) to reality.  I want to move people to tears, laughter, hatred, love, joy...I want to make people think, feel.  That's my dream in life.

10.  That mediation on becoming a writer leads me, in a roundabout way, to memory number ten.  Memory ten isn't even my bookish memory, and it certainly wasn't my words that moved the reader like I so desperately desired it to be in memory nine, but it was my guidance that caused this moment to occur.  I have mentioned here and there on this blog that I am an English teacher and that my ENG 111 course is themed around banned books.  Students are required to choose one book off of the ALA's Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books of 2000-2009 list to read and research for the semester.  This past fall, one of my students read John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.  One day after class, he approached me, and asked solemnly, "Why did Lennie have to die?"  I responded, "I know.  It's so sad."  "I was tearing up at the end," he concurred, "and I was like am I supposed to be feeling this way?"  "Yes," I said, "that is the power of great literature."

*If you are also an avid fan of Sarah Dessen or if you want to be, I encourage you to join in the Sarah Dessen Reading Challenge hosted by I Eat Words.  It's a great way to re-visit old favorites or establish new ones!

Top Ten Tuesday Frustration

Image from The Broke and the Bookish

There's a lot of ranting going on in the blogosphere today due to The Broke and the Bookish's weekly Top Ten Tuesday meme.  Today, the prompt was the top ten most frustrating characters ever.  Originally, I wasn't going to participate in the meme this week.  If, when reading the prompt, several ideas don't spring naturally to mind, I usually skip that week.  I don't have top ten frustrating characters in mind (although reading other blogger's list definitely reminded me of what I hated and loved to hate about some characters); however, this topic happens to coincide with a post I've been wanting to write about my frustrations with a particular genre.

I may upset some fellow bloggers, but I've got to say it.  Friends...I'm sick of dystopia.

That doesn't mean I haven't read some FANTASTIC dystopian novels over the past few years:  Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy and Megan McCafferty's Bumped and Thumped for example.  The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and The Giver by Lois Lowry are also favorites of mine.  Recently I finished reading Ally Condie's Matched trilogy, which I liked, but also highlighted for me how overexposed the dystopia genre and its key plot points are: the technologically savvy but overly oppressive government (Capital, Society), the female protagonist who chafes under the government's rule and ultimately decides to break out, the, often unequally weighted, love triangle.

Partly what's exhausted me isn't the books I've read but the books that are popping up on TBR and debut lists everywhere I look.  Peruse a publisher's latest catalog or the bookshelves at your local bookstore - dystopia is taking over!  Although the unique aspect of world-building continues to intrigue me, I can't bring myself to pick up yet another dystopian novel, even if it explores the cognitive highway of our memories like Level 2 by Lenore Appelhans, because the "new world" setting is merely masking the same old tired storyline and characters.

Also, many of these dystopias are series, usually trilogies, which means I am investing significant time and energy in not one book but three or more that may ultimately leave me unsatisfied.  Part of my frustration is in the unnecessary cliffhanging that drags the plot on for two to three more books.  An epic story like Rowling's Harry Potter deserves its seven books, but currently I am aching for a good standalone, preferably of the contemporary variety.

A final underlying conduit of my frustration may be the obvious move on the part of many authors and publishers to cash in on the latest craze in YA lit.  When Twilight went blockbuster, suddenly the Teen sections of bookstores were awash in black and blood-red covers of pale, moody guys with sharp incisors hovering protectively (or provocatively) over a beautiful and innocent (but inwardly strong) heroine.  The craze began leaking into contemporary Adult lit as well.  After the success of The Hunger Games, vampires are duking it out with tough, rebellious chicks and their hunky, and occasionally sensitive, love interests in an apocalyptic battle to establish a new and improved literary society.  It's making my head spin.

As a remedy, I've found myself returning to the classics.  I've finally gotten in a rhythm with Anna Karenina, and I love it.  Les Miserables is on tap next, followed by Bel Ami, with maybe a little bit of historical fiction thrown in.  I'm also currently reading Steve Luxenberg's memoir, Annie's Ghosts, about discovering the existence of a maternal aunt only after his mother's death.  But this book is more than a rehash of family secrets.  It explores immigration pre-, during, and post-World War II as well as mental health assessment and care during the early and mid-twentieth century.  Finally, I'm reading Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler, which I picked up solely because it was illustrated (by Maira Kalman), but it turned out to be just what I needed: a regular teen girl trying to parse out, you guessed it, why she and her boyfriend broke up.

So guys, if you've stuck with me this long, am I crazy?  Justified?  Should I give dystopia another chance?  A cooling off period?  I need some perspective here!

Recommendation: David Levithan

I was so excited when I attended NCTE in November to learn that David Levithan would be there.  Several of his books have made their way onto my all-time favorites list, and I routinely recommend them.  Some of his more recent reads haven't been my cup of tea, but I'm not one who lets a bad book get in the way of a good author (see J. K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy).  At NCTE, Penguin was selling Levithan's Marly's Ghost for $5.00 and tossing in a galley copy of Levithan's newest novel Invisibility with Andrea Cremer for free.  I was so pumped.  I read Marly's Ghost, which is a Valentine's Day version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, on the plane ride home and was disappointed by its lack of originality.  Levithan wrote in his author's note that "for the actual writing, I sat with a copy of A Christmas Carol on my lap and went through it paragraph by paragraph, line by line, 'translating' the original story into my new story...some lines stayed verbatim."  This attention to detail is obvious and not for the betterment of the novel.  An idea that could have been interesting and refreshing turns out stale.  I began Invisibility with higher hopes.  For one, in reviewing Levithan's body of work, I found that I tended to love his collaborations more than his standalones.  Two, this was not billed as a remix but as a totally original work, unlike Marly's Ghost.  I am ashamed to admit that I couldn't get past the third chapter.  Because of some weird curse, I obviously never got far enough to figure it out, Stephen is invisible - others can't see him and therein lies the problem: there is nothing to distinguish him to the reader either.  He is a flat, one-dimensional character.  Elizabeth, who is the only one who can see Stephen, seems to have more bite and body, but even that wasn't enough to keep me going.  After two epic fails, I decided I needed to catalog what I loved and hated about Levithan in a tangible way.  At first I thought it was his collaborations I loved and his standalones I hated, but as Invisibility proved, it's not as black and white as that.
  
Loved

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (with Rachel Cohn) (my first David Levithan)
Dash and Lily's Book of Dares (with Rachel Cohn)
The Lover's Dictionary
How They Met and Other Stories

Didn't Love

Marly's Ghost
Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List (with Rachel Cohn)
Love is the Higher Law 

Anticipating

Will Grayson, Will Grayson (with John Green)
Every Day

Did Not Finish

The Realm of Possibility
Invisibility (with Andrea Cremer)

Maybe someone with keener insight can find the commonalities for me.  The breakdown of my list seems so arbitrary.  I am not giving up on Levithan though.  I have heard fantastic things about both Will Grayson, Will Grayson and Every Day, so I will definitely be reading them as soon as I can get my hands on a copy.  The premise of Every Day reminds me of The Lover's Dictionary, which I loved (no pun intended), and Will Grayson, Will Grayson is a collaboration with John Green.  What are the chances two of my favorite authors will let me down in the same book?