Rachel's Teen Reads
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CLASSIC SUMMER
I’ve been wanting to do this for awhile. And by this, I mean read a bunch of classic novels that I haven’t read in awhile, or ones that I never had the chance to read at all.
So I have decided to challenge myself this summer by doing just that. For too long I have been reading books that I felt I could read quickly, just to keep up with my Reading Challenge Goal on GoodReads (in which I am currently 13 books behind…oy). Now don’t get me wrong, I love reading my teen books (if the theme of this blog doesn’t give that away), but I need to give my brain a little workout. That being said, all of the books I plan on reading are in fact read by teenagers in (and out of) high school classrooms everyday. So technically I am still reading teen-centered books. Just on a more classic and intellectual level (not that Young Adult books are not intellectual, because many of them definitely are. You know, just not ones like Twilight, hard as they try).
Here are the parameters:
- 12 books
- 12 weeks
- Read one book a week for the entire summer
- Provide weekly book reviews/discussion questions
Not too bad, right? Definitely something I can accomplish.
After much deliberation, here is my list of books:
- Week One: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Week Two: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston
- Week Three: Brave New World by Alduous Huxley
- Week Four: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Week Five: 1984 by George Orwell
- Week Six: Sula by Toni Morrison
- Week Seven: On the Road by Jack Kerouac
- Week Eight: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- Week Nine: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
- Week Ten: A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
- Week Eleven: Dracula by Bram Stoker
- Week Twelve: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Starting on Memorial Day, Monday, May 28, I will begin The Great Gatsby, and therefore begin my first Classic Summer. I figured this was a good one to start with, since the trailer for Baz Luhrman’s new film adaptation was just released.
12 books. 12 weeks. One Classic Summer.
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Adorable. I wish I could have made it to this game. My brother had a ticket he did not use and neglected to tell me.
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Hunger Games Madness
Ok, so I’ve been absent with my posts for a little while. But I’m determined to get back into it. So here goes. Better late than never.
THE HUNGER GAMES
It’s an epidemic that’s sweeping the world. The movie brought in the third best opening weekend of all time, raking in somewhere around $155 million dollars. In three days. I contributed to that total twice. $18 worth.
And my review of the movie…I loved it. I thought that it was perfectly cast, so well-directed, and tastefully done. How can you make a movie about kids killing one another? Gary Ross can answer that for you with the brilliance he put on screen in The Hunger Games. Jennifer Lawrence is perfect as Katniss (though people criticized her for being to “womanly,” but who cares), Josh Hutcherson’s performance made me absolutely love Peeta, and Elizabeth Banks’s Effie could not have been better. Lenny Kravitz, Stanley Tucci, Amandla Stenberg, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Wes Bentley, even Liam Hemsworth. All of them are so close to what I imagined. Besides the acting, I feel like the Games are done so well; you really feel the frantic energy that Katniss is feeling, the violence/death is shaky so you don’t even really see the kids killing each other, and the set was fantastic. I could rave about this movie adaptation all day. Of course there are some flaws, but I don’t really care to mention them. This movie deserves the hype it’s getting.
I’ve learned not to nitpick about movie adaptations. Aside from my general dislike for the Harry Potter movies, and that atrocity that was Ella Enchanted (such a great book!), I’m really trying not to point out every missed element from the book. Because you can’t include everything. Things need to be changed—books and movies are two very different forms of media that need to be altered in order to work in their own rights. John Green, my favorite author, has helped me to realize this. And after ten years of telling me this, my friend and movie buddy Michelle has finally helped me to realize this as well. I would always make the mistake of rereading the books right before going to see the movies. It’s never a great idea.
But this time, it was different.
I started rereading The Hunger Games two days before I went to see the movie, and I was about a third of the way through when I went to the midnight showing. Up to what I had read, it was almost exact (except for the part about Madge, but I’m OK with that change). Even as I was finishing the book a couple of days later, I think the movie adaptation was great. Of course a few things are left out, things are changed, but that needs to happen somewhat. I read a review in Entertainment weekly that criticized the movie for not being psychological enough. Unless Katniss was narrating, I don’t think that would have been possible to see even more of the psychological aspect (which I think was still there in the movie). It would have been annoying to have Katniss narrate. I love the books, and love that we see everything from Katniss’s point of view, and that we see her internal struggle. However, one of the things I loved most about the movie was the fact that we got to see different sides of the story, not just Katniss’s perspective. The scenes with Seneca and President Snow were brilliant. And Donald Sutherland wrote those scenes in. How cool is that? I love how invested all of the actors were (and are) in the integrity of the book. It’s one of the things that has made this a real box office hit.
All in all, a fantastic movie.
If you have a chance, check out the “unscripted” interviews between Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, and Elizabeth Banks here. I want to be friends with all of them.
Also, I realize that this post is almost all about the movie. To see how I feel about the book, check out my review on GoodReads.
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Cracking Down.
OK, so I have been out of control with my books recently, and I’ve decided that I need to get some control. I have to set some ground rules for myself in order to not feel so overwhelmed and to actually make some progress on my book-reading. I set a goal to read 100 books this year, and dammit, I’m going to do it.
The Rules:
1. I cannot read more than three books at once. You can’t imagine how often I get myself into this situation.
2. I cannot check out more than five books from the library at once. I own library cards to three different libraries. It can really be problematic.
3. No buying new books. Unless I find a really good deal at Half Price Books or a new book comes out that I’ve been waiting for (I’m looking at you, Mark Titus).
These rules don’t seem so hard. And they are actually pretty lenient. Let’s see if I can do this. No, I can do this. I can do this.
Books I am currently reading:
1. The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith. I should be able to finish this one in the next day or two. It’s very good so far. Plus she’s a Nerdfighter.
2. A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. God I can’t seem to get through this book right now. I love it, and love where it’s going, but my mind is making it a slow go. I’ve actually been listening to it in my car as well, which seems to be helping.
3. F’em! by Jennifer Baumgardner. I saw this book at Barnes & Noble and decided to check it out from the library. I’m very interested in feminism in our current era, and I love reading literature that can give me a better sense of this. On Monday, I saw the documentary Miss Representation, and it really gave me a renewed vigor for exploring my own feminism and how others fit into feminist theory. I’m especially interested in how feminism does/does not work its way into teen literature, especially when books like Twilight do so well; these books in which the sole purpose of the novel is to find a hypermasculine man to love and protect the protagonist. I’d like to explore how this has an effect on our culture and the ideas of feminism in teenagers, or if our culture is the thing that is being reflected in these books. Most likely, though, it’s a combination of both.
My next set of books to read:
1. Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James.
2. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.
3. Liesl & Po by Lauren Oliver.
For the record, I currently have about 16 books checked out from the library. I have so many checked out that I can’t even keep an accurate count of them all. This is why I need some rules and some control in my life.
Let’s see if this works.
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Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.
Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.
She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.
Buy her another cup of coffee.
Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.
It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.
She has to give it a shot somehow.
Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.
Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.
Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilightseries.
If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.
You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.
You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.
Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.”-Rosemary Urquico
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John Green's tumblr: Hi, Tumblr. This is a thank you.
I just found out that The Fault in Our Stars will be #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for the SEVENTH consecutive week.
This is ridiculously wonderful news, and I could never have imagined my book would have this kind of life (particularly given that none of my previous books has been…
