Oops...

The other night, I purposefully started three new books. I think I might have a problem. (This puts my "actively reading" list at 6. I think. Unless you count the books I have on my iPod. Well, I suppose that just puts the list to 7.) 
I suppose I should back up and say I've been struggling with some of the books I've been picking up to read. I'm currently/actively reading Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende. I know it has an Oprah book club sticker on it, but the summary on the back sounded really good! Don't judge me! 
But the more I read, the less I care. Parts of the story are beautifully done and are interesting. Other parts...just feel like filler. Possibly because they are. I'm not a writer, but I think even if things are filler, they shouldn't feel like it to the reader. 
Take Tolkien. (Or honestly, almost any author you love. Or pick a story you love. Or a movie you love. I think this works on anything story-like.) In Lord of the Rings, you have 23407 story line happening at any given time, but the BIG story is this: Frodo has the ring and it needs to get to Mount Doom. Does Tolkien plop Frodo, Sam & the Fellowship by the Gates of Mordor and say, "Good luck!"? Does he make it an easy journey? No. No he doesn't. He gives them trials and troubles, but good times too. And stuff you think might be filler (possibly for instance, Faramir) actually has a purpose in the BIG STORY. 
Daughter of Fortune is not full of Tolkien's kind of "filler"; it is full of the bad kind of filler. The kind that maybe sorta tells you something about the character, and maybe if/when I finish, I will find that it was important to the BIG STORY. But right now, it feels tedious and a little bit boring. I'm not sure I'll finish this book honestly. I have invested a lot of time in it and I'm not even half way through. 

"But wait," you say. "Didn't you just start three more books? What are they? What else have you been reading?" 

You didn't ask those things? Too bad. 
I'm pulling out my Jane Austen again. I am tired of reading/trying to read Persuasion. I don't like the story. I don't like the characters. I understand that it is probably a commentary on letting people make their own decisions when it comes to love and relationships, but I just can't do it right now. I will say that I do like Wentworth's letter at the end. That didn't quite make the book worth it, but it was a huge asset to the bool. Rachel started reading Northanger Abbey so I decided to read it too. So far, so good. I will say it is much different from Persuasion. I wonder if the fact that Persuasion was Jane's last book makes a difference in the writing. (I believe she died shortly after finishing it so maybe she didn't get to edit it the same way she edited her other novels? Whatever.)

I picked up The Man Who Loved Books Too Much completely by accident. I was shelf-reading at work. I saw the long title squished on the spine and thought, "Hmm...this sounds like JUST the kind of book I would like." And that is how it found its way home with me. Totally by accident. It has a kind of Mr. Penumbra's 24hour Bookstore feel to it, so I'm pretty excited about this one. 

I know absolutely nothing about A Treacherous Paradise except that the cover is cool and the story sounds like it should end poorly. Except. See, the story goes to a lot of dark places so the ending has to be good, right? The whole thing about the good ending happily and the bad ending unhappily. Right? Ha. Right. I'll keep you posted. 

And if you are following me on GoodReads you will see I read The Fault in Our Stars  in a single day. There was much crying but let me tell you. Such. A. Good. Read. I have said it already, but that John Green fellow has a gift. He can put human emotions into readable words that don't feel fake or put on. Bonus? He's funny. I want to write like him when I grow up. If that never happens, I still wanna keep reading his books. Even if they make me cry like a baby. 

That has been my reading life over the last few weeks. I think because I'm having such a hard time with Daughter of Fortune, I have become a little wary of other books. Because of that, I have been slowing down on my reading. TFioS has kind of jump started my love of reading again so prepare for the last leg of the book challenge race for 2013! 

Simple reading & Slowing down

According to Goodreads, I am 10 books ahead of my reading schedule and 55% done with my challenge. I'm really excited about making progress with this years challenge, but right now, I'm going to take a bit of a break.

I still have at least 5 books I need to review to be totally caught up, but I'm not going to do that right now. Right now I'm going to tell you a little bit about my relationship with books.
I already told you a little about how I fell in love with books last year. How that one book and the simple act of rereading it brought me into this crazy world. When I was in sixth grade, I read Gone with the Wind. I was inappropriately proud of this accomplishment because it was HUGE. I mean, seriously. This book is like 800 pages. And I read and understood it, mostly. I think that is when I fell in love with BOOKS. Not just books "oh how I love to read" but "it's huge and I'm gonna read it all and I'M BETTER THAN YOU because I can."
So, okay, a bit of an attitude problem there. I think I'm over that now, but I still get an insane sense of accomplishment when I finish a book over 400 pages. I love detailed stories that NEED that many pages to tell a story. 

Stephen Lawhead wrote a series called The Pendragon Cycle. It is five books long and even though each book is only about 450 pages (as a comparison, books 3-7 of the Harry Potter series are anywhere from 400-700 odd pages), it takes FOREVER to get through. In fact, I still haven't finished. I think I just got my hands on Pendragon (the fourth book in the cycle) around senior semester and didn't get very far.
I hear you saying, "Well okay, Harry Potter is seven books and by your own admission the last few books are huge. How does it take you forever to read a cycle of five books that have fewer pages?"
And this is when I tell you about the brilliance of Stephen Lawhead. He takes the story of Arthur and Camelot and pulls it back at least three generations. Before Arthur, before Merlin--long before any of them. He writes with such attention to detail and story. When I describe his writing, I usually liken it to Old English tales, like Beowulf. Sometimes it is hard to get through, but when you do, it is worth it.

And yet, sometimes, that is not what I need to read. I love ... and the only word I can think of here is "trudging" through a long series. The word choice alone shows that at times it is a bit of a chore. And that is part of the reason why I think I love young adult literature. The writing style is at times simple, (not stupid) but the content is not. Plus, as a rule, I can blaze through them in no time at all. Enter John Green novels. 
But unlike some adult series, young adult novels (especially John Green) speak to the reader in a very real way. The Pendragon Cycle is a good story; An Abundance of Katherines speaks to me about love and loss. I think that by nature, no matter how story driven Young Adult novels are, they always tell us something about ourselves. See also, Harry Potter. I think that is something you tend to lose in adult fiction. 
I almost went this entire post without owning up to my Nicholas Sparks weakness. Oops. There it is. 

At the end of the day, I love reading books that make me think. Books that make me USE the very expensive four year degree I earned. But sometimes, I need a break. And sometimes, that looks like young adult books, Nicholas Sparks books, and lots and lots of TV. 

PS I've finally finished Eureka. If you haven't seen the show, please. Do yourself a favor. Go watch it. It is hilarious. 

An Abundance of Katherines by that John Green fellow

So...after the whole "John Green, you make me cry ugly tears! Why would you do that! AND thank you!" thing, I decided to keep reading John Green books. I'm a glutton for punishment. I emailed a friend after I checked An Abundance of Katherines out of the library: I am nervous/excited that it will be the same amount of pain as Looking for Alaska. I press on timidly. But with great hope.
Because when you read John Green, it's not if there will be tears, but when. 

Colin Singleton has dated 19 Katherines...and has been dumped 19 times. Colin, a child prodigy, feels he's peaked too soon and is looking for meaning to his life. And if he could just figure out why he keeps getting dumped...well, that would help a lot. He takes his best friend, his beat up car and all the money he has and goes on a road trip to find himself...whatever that actually means. 

I'm not an expert on John Green books, but so far they are coming of age stories. Figuring out who you are as a person, what you like, what you don't like, how you handle intense emotional situations, how you grow. I hesitate on this next sentence...but it's very Holden Caulfield. Except, if you know me, I hate Holden Caulfield. What I love about John Green is his characters feel more real. To me, Holden was an angry, spoiled dude who swore too much and didn't take time to understand other people. But Colin...Colin is different. He is the nerdy geek in all of us who, no matter how hard he tries, just can't fit in. He understands that he is different and fine with it, but at times, life is just too confusing. Is he a washed up, has been child prodigy? 

Maybe instead of bringing up Holden Caulfield and one of my second most hated book of young adult literature (the prize belongs to Lord of the Flies. Or maybe it's actually a tie for first place...) I should have just called this book a coming of age story. Or to let you all know that I really did pay attention in my critical literature & young adult literature classes, it is a bilsdungroman. That's right, I'm breaking out the German vocab! It's a coming of age story, simply put, and it's beautiful. It's a story about love and loss, heartbreak and healing and trying to make sense of the ever changing world around you. Well, as best you can when you are a washed up child prodigy, newly graduated from high school, who has just been dumped by your nineteenth Katherine.  

PS If you haven't figured out that I think John Green is pretty cool, well, just stay tuned. I just got two more of his books from the library: Paper Towns & Will Grayson, Will Grayson. So either get ready to tune the next few posts out, or get on the bandwagon! 

Looking for Alaska

before
Somewhere between my sobs over the Lizzie Bennet Diaries ending and tumblr exploding with feels, I found John Green. 

That isn't entirely true, but it's true enough for this story. 

His newest book, The Fault in our Stars, had just come out and the interwebs were full of everything tfios, LBD and John Green. 

Fine I said. Fine. Let me find out for myself what this John Green fellow is all about. I took home Looking for Alaska and my life changed. 

after
I hate you, John Green. But. Of course when I say "I hate you" what I really mean is "thank you." Thank you for putting love, hate, pain, forgiveness, hilarity, the good, the bad and the horribly ugly, and gut wrenching grief into understandable words. Sometimes those emotions (love, hate, grief, etc) can only be expressed with smiles that break your face, clenched fists or silent tears down your face. Somehow (I think magic was involved, you Hufflepuff) you were able to translate the truth of messy emotion.

I read Looking for Alaska like I would any other young adult novel. Just picked it up and dove in. I loved it. Loved it. The characters, the antics, the school, the pranks. Miles Halter doesn't fit in. Anywhere. He has zero friends at his school and he finally decided to do something about it. He decides to enroll in the boarding school his father went to and sets off to search for the Great Perhaps. Even if he's not so sure what that entails, it is what he has decided to do. Shortly after arriving at Culver Creek Boarding School, he meets his roommate, gets a nickname and falls in love. Hard. Her name is Alaska Young and she is a force to be reckoned with. 

I loved it so much that I paid no attention to the days that were passing or the pages that brought me closer to "After." When I finally came to "After" my days caught up with me. And I cried. I cried so hard I had to close the book and just exist with my tears. I couldn't read it for days after that. I was too afraid that the words would pick at the scar my pain had left, reopening something I was trying to let heal. Maybe not quite a week later I thought it would be okay to pick it up again. It wasn't. But even through the pain and the tears I was reminded why it was all okay.Because, as C. S. Lewis said, we read to know we are not alone. Someone else understood the pain of loss. Someone else knew what it was like to realize your memory of a person was fading, and that that realization brought a completely different wave of grief. 

Sorry for the overly emotional response to this book. Even if I hadn't been dealing with something personal, this book still would have struck a chord with my emotions. It's not just the content; it's the style. John Green has an incredible storytelling gift. He has a certain way of drawing you in through fiction, connecting with you on a real level and then releases you with words of wisdom that you realize aren't just for the story; they are for you, the reader, to take home with you and think about. Find truth in and incorporate into the way you view life. Just like the gem he left at the end of Looking for Alaska: The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.