Top Five Books I'd Read or Recommend

The only problem with this list is that it calls for a mere five. My to-read list is up to about 60 right now, and poring over recommendations from The English Journal is doing nothing to dwindle that number.

1) Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher-- This book made it to a few lists and has been on my own to-read list for a while. A girl named Hannah commits suicide and leaves seven tapes on the doorstep of a boy named Clay with instructions to listen and pass them on. Each person addressed on the tapes had played a role in Hannah's death.

2) The First Part Last by Angela Johnson-- This story of a teen father was mentioned in the "Summer 2004" article. Poignant and even amusing at times, this is one I can recommend after enjoying it myself earlier this summer. Told from the father's perspective, this short novel plays out far from what is expected.

3) The Plain Janes by Cecil Castelluci and Jim Rugg-- A graphic novel following a group of suburban high school outcasts seeking to liven up their town through artistic display. The art surely adds to this novel which explores the pressure to conform, self-expression, and the importance of art. This novel was on the graphic novels recommendations list, and as one who enjoys graphic novels (Spiegelman's Maus is a legitimately good novel, although the Sale/Loeb Batman comics are crackin' good reads too!) this is definitely going on my list.

4) Bliss by Lauren Myracle--This book was mentioned in the "Great Reads to Start the School Year" article. Bliss in the Morning Dew, daughter of hippies, starts at a prep school and in the midst of learning to make friends is contacted by the spirit of a former student. As the story goes on, she uncovers secrets about her school and is involved in a plot to free the spirit. As a fan of any sort of ghost story, this sounds like an interesting read to me!

5) The Loser's Guide to Life and Love by A.E. Cannon-- As a fan of A Midsummer Night's Dream, this recommendation from the "Shakespeare and YA Lit" list definitely got my attention. A boy named Ed is whiling away the summer hanging out with his two best friends and working at a movie store with a name-tag that claims he is Sergio. Eventually, a girl falls in love with Ed-- as Sergio-- and his friends develop feelings for each other as well, clearly borrowing plot points from Billy Shakes.

Brevity

Rebecca,

What a great site.  I love that the editor is named after a stew; okay, probably not, but c'mon Dinty Moore!  I also liked their link list!  I haven't made my way through those yet, but could see myself spending time here reading once school is finished.  Thanks!

E :)

Opening Doors with Nonfiction

I read everything: books, magazines, text messages, cereal boxes, and so on. I love fiction because of its ability to transport me anywhere I want to go, even the fantastical places. I could be on a quest to Mordor or playing Quidditch just by opening a book. Nonfiction has its merits as well, taking me other places-- the places of reality significant to people because of the impact on their lives.

Students deserve an opportunity to explore the memoirs, diaries, biographies, speeches, and interviews. Real people with real experiences, written out and waiting to be shared with us. Nonfiction is something we can relate to because it happened. We can work through nonfiction as well to fathom some of history's less believable aspects, such as the Holocaust, the Civil War, or Vietnam. While today it seems ridiculous that so much life was lost, reading diaries or memoirs written during those times makes what students are reading in their history books real.

In addition to the benefits of reading nonfiction, students studying the techniques can write nonfiction on their own. Nonfiction is an entire genre to delve into if poetry, short stories, or fiction don't work out. Nonfiction gives students one more way to find their niche and even be creative in the process.

The Truth is Stranger than Fiction (and More Amusing)

I've never been mountain climbing, or hike- hiking (as in more than just my jaunts around Raccoon Creek State Park), nor camping. While road tripping across America is like a siren song to me, I've never done that either. However, there's something immensely appealing to me about the idea. As such, Bill Bryson's account of his trip following the Appalachian Trail in A Walk in the Woods had me hooked just by reading the blurb on the back of the book.I happened to open up to a funny bit about bears in the middle of it that had me laughing aloud in Barnes & Noble, so I bought it.

Don't judge this book by its cover!

Bryson's book had me in hysterics throughout most of the reading. From his wife's reception of his decision to follow the trail to his trip to the camping store, his inviting his childhood friend Katz and the ups and downs of their journey, Bryson recounts everything as if he's telling it over a cup of coffee in his living room. His intense fear of bears is sprinkled throughout the book providing me with laugh-myself-to-tears moments and the need to run out and share the jokes with my family.

In the midst of Bryson's tale, he writes with a motive beyond sharing his hilarious hike with the world: he is speaking out on behalf of nature in America. He writes for the wildlife, the trees, the national parks, the trails. They're on the way to extinction, and it's the fault of humanity. Bryson, seeing everything first-hand, pleads with his readers to become aware of what's going on so that the problem can be stopped. 

Most of my adventures in non-fiction have been either speeches or essays required for class. I was introduced to David Sedaris through Me Talk Pretty One Day and realized non-fiction could be amusing and entertaining too. People sharing their stories in a creative way cast the non-fiction genre in a whole new light. I encountered more non-fiction in my literary journalism class textbook, The Art of Fact, which consists of magazine-length interviews written almost as if they're short stories.

I think it's important to share with students the joy that can ensue from reading non-fiction. Biographies and essays are fine for those who are into that sort of thing-- but in high school, not many are. Students can study and work to attain their own writing styles to record their personal histories in new ways, whether in a journal or in the style of Bryson and Sedaris. Studying these techniques shows them how to be creative with facts, to spin a web and entertain readers with the seemingly mundane experiences of everyday life.

Time to Get Serious

I've heard of all sorts of weird challenges in the past five years (and witnessed a few of them firsthand): the milk gallon challenge, the cinnamon on a spoon challenge, the Slurpee chug. All fairly stupid but relatively harmless, with the worst side effect being regurgitation.

There's a new one now that I heard about while watching the news this afternoon: the salt and ice challenge. Kids are pouring salt into their hands, pressing ice against it, and enduring the chemical burn as long as possible. Some of them are getting second and third degree burns.

Seriously?!?!?!?!

While I tend to be of the mind that adults can't expect kids not to do stupid things (especially when half the adults I see are paying tobacco companies to kill them slowly in the form of cigarettes), I feel like we have to draw the line somewhere.

Can these kids really think of nothing better to do? What happened to playing outside, reading a book, playing video games? Hobbies?

This more than anything makes me almost desperate to come up with ways to make reading exciting to kids and give them something-- anything-- to do besides causing physical harm to themselves and passing it off as fun. A trip to the hospital for skin grafts masquerading as a good time is fooling no one.

Here's a link to the article:
Salt and Ice Challenge article

Music is Poetry Too!

This song has me smitten! It makes me smile every time I hear it, so I thought I'd share :)

Poetry: Sighing and Quoting with Learned Looks

This is how I thought poets looked. Bongos, anyone?

I have a sort of on again, off again relationship with poetry. I love it. I used to write poems in my journal all the time as a child and an angsty adolescent. Poetry was something I never felt I could really get into because my cartoonish mind focused on how a poet should look (thanks "Doug") and I didn't fit the bill.

In reality though, poetry is one of those beautiful art forms that-- to risk sounding cliche-- speaks to me. All the mushy love poems make me sigh, all the nature poems are something I relate to or long to experience myself. The way that poetry can sound so pretty and still say so much, even with form limitations, is wholly impressive. I loved it on my own even though I wilted at the thought of poetry in high school English classes.

I took a poetry workshop class in college as an elective. People have very different opinions on what poetry is, I've learned. Some of my classmates were the snap-your-fingers, sit-in-a-hookah-bar-and-write types, but others just took their experiences and made them real to the rest of us. I encountered Doty, Howe, and Alexie. I was falling in love again, and it strengthened as I read Shakespeare, and was fortified in my Brit Lit class.

I found a poem in the anthology for class when I was flipping through trying to find an assigned poem. It was "Adam's Curse" by William Butler Yeats, and it was moving and emotional, profound and beautiful all at once. Something about it stood out to me, and I find myself returning to it and musing about the old, high way of love and how to attain it.

Adam’s Curse

"We saw the last embers of daylight die..."

By William Butler Yeats
 

We sat together at one summer’s end,

That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,   

And you and I, and talked of poetry.

I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;

Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,   

Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.   

Better go down upon your marrow-bones   

And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones   

Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;   

For to articulate sweet sounds together

Is to work harder than all these, and yet   

Be thought an idler by the noisy set

Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen   

The martyrs call the world.’

                                          And thereupon

That beautiful mild woman for whose sake   

There’s many a one shall find out all heartache   

On finding that her voice is sweet and low   

Replied, ‘To be born woman is to know—

Although they do not talk of it at school—

That we must labour to be beautiful.’

I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing   

Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.

There have been lovers who thought love should be   

So much compounded of high courtesy   

That they would sigh and quote with learned looks   

Precedents out of beautiful old books;   

Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;   

We saw the last embers of daylight die,   

And in the trembling blue-green of the sky   

A moon, worn as if it had been a shell   

Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell   

About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:   

That you were beautiful, and that I strove   

To love you in the old high way of love;

That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown   

As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.