The Sparks Oeuvre: The Best of Me (novel)

The Best of Me is Sparks' 10th novel, released a year after Safe Haven. He's definitely gotten into a certain mode at this point, but also trying to mix things up just a bit and trying his hand at larger casts, more tragedy, and outright villains. The Best of Me has all of that, but it's also essentially the same story as The Notebook. 

Dawson and Amanda meet as teens in small town Louisiana. He's from the well-known for all the wrong reasons Cole family, and Amanda is from the upstanding Collier family. Despite social and economic divides, and the strong opposition from her family, Dawson and Amanda fall in love. After an incident with his family, Dawson is taken in by Tuck, a local widower who becomes a loving paternal figure to both of them. Tragedy strikes, though, and Dawson is the cause of the death of a local doctor after a car crash one night. He gets sent to jail and him and Amanda lose touch. 

Until twenty-five years later, when Tuck dies and his lawyer contacts both Dawson and Amanda as they are requested to spread his ashes at his requested place. Is this their second chance? Dawson has never lost his love for Amanda. Amanda is married to a man who became an alcoholic after their youngest daughter died of cancer. Over the weekend that they spend together, orchestrated by Tuck from the grave, they know that they still love one another. BUT. 

Amanda is married. Y'all, I know that marriage is a big deal. But I also know that sometimes people shouldn't be married anymore. It's not a failure to recognize that one's marriage is no longer working and it can't be fixed. That's especially true if you love someone else. Amanda admits to Dawson that on her wedding day to Frank she was thinking of him. If her and Dawson hadn't been reunited due to Tuck's passing, she would just go on living her life with an unfulfilling marriage. 

Her weekend with Dawson is a chance for her to assess what she really wants and make a choice. But she doesn't do any of that. She tells Dawson to tell her what to do. When she goes through the reasons why she can't end her marriage they are all based on the emotions of others and not what she wants or needs. Frank wouldn't be able to handle it, he'd drink even more. The kids would be traumatized. She'd be breaking up her family and leaving them.

None of that is true though. Of course she shouldn't be callous to Frank's feelings, but his reactions and how he handles a possible divorce are on him. The kids would likely not be traumatized, as long as her and Frank are still both committed parents. And she would not be breaking up the family. It's not as if her and Dawson are planning to run away together to Italy and never see her kids again. Getting divorced isn't "breaking up the family"; you're still a family regardless if you're divorced. As a child of divorce myself, I know that it can be hard. But it's truly better for everyone in the long run when it's the right choice to make. Parents are people outside of being a parent, and they deserve happiness too. Life is too short to be in a relationship that isn't right. It's good for kids to see their parents be in healthy relationships (be that with another partner or staying single). 

But Dawson and Amanda don't talk about any of that. They choose to be martyrs, as if it's virtuous of them to neglect their own happiness and well-being to "do what's right." That's not virtuous, because at some point the kids will grow and move out of the house and then it's just these two people who aren't right for each other. 

So, unlike Allie in The Notebook who realizes she can't marry Lon even though she made a promise to him because she loves someone else, Amanda chooses to return to her home and husband. Just in time for her son to get in a car crash and need a heart transplant. At the same time, Dawson is involved in a family altercation which, sadly, makes him an organ donor. You can deduce what happens next. 

Sparks fills his story with a large, yet mostly unimportant, supporting cast. Where he used to keep his stories limited to his main couple with a few people around them (generally disapproving parents or a close confidant), he now spends time with Amanda's son and husband, Dawson's cousins that are out to get him even still, his cousin's girlfriend, the widow of the local doctor he accidentally killed in a car crash, plus her son. It is A LOT and most of the time I don't enjoy Sparks' characterization of supporting characters, and it always feels a bit silly when he writes "bad" language or describes a character's sinister thoughts. I would have preferred a story that was confined to Dawson and Amanda, but then I guess it would have really just been a retelling of The Notebook. 

Since I didn't grow up in a small town and I never had a high school romance with someone who was from "the wrong side of the tracks", I always feel like the emphasis on those things are super extreme. Do parents really forbid their children from seeing someone because they are from a bad family? Are the strict social roles that people adhere to really a thing? It just always rings so false to me. 

I thought I wasn't going to like this book because I had seen the movie and considered it "the cheating movie." Well, first, I thought I had seen the movie but when I watched it last night it turns out I hadn't seen it other than maybe twenty minutes. And second, it's not really a cheating movie, depending on what constitutes cheating to you. Dawson and Amanda don't cross that line (even though Sparks makes us think they did until several chapters later) but they do kiss and share emotional intimacy. 

If I'm meant to believe that Dawson and Amanda are soulmates who have carried torches for each other for over twenty years, then of course I'm rooting for them even if Amanda is married. Which is a weird thing to do. I don't condone cheating, however I also see the intricacies involved that led these two people to make the choices they did. I'm not here to judge them on that; I'll just comment that if Amanda was truly happy and fulfilled in her marriage a weekend with Dawson would not have posed a problem. 

I didn't dislike the novel, but I oftentimes felt frustrated with Dawson and Amanda for not being more assertive and honest in their feelings for one another. Amanda's mom straight up tells her that she's too afraid to make a choice and wants someone to do it for her, which is basically the worst person in the world making a correct statement. And in the end Amanda doesn't actually have to make a decision anymore, because Dawson dies. The tragedy was a bit much in this one and I honestly just wanted them to be happy together. 

The Sparks Oeuvre: The Notebook (book)

Well, I've made it to THE Nicholas Sparks book--The Notebook.  It was Sparks' first published novel, arriving in 1996 and becoming an immediate bestseller. It's the standard that all Nicholas Sparks novels (and movies) are compared to. Since I'm reading in order of the films being released, I'm reading this third and it's interesting to read this knowing what comes after. 

The Notebook is about love. First love, reunited love, and forever love. Noah and Allie meet one summer when her wealthy family is summering in his town. They quickly fall in love, but get separated due to class, miscommunication, WWII, and just time. Fourteen years later, Allie is engaged and, when she sees a photo of Noah in the paper with a home he refinished, impulsively decides she needs to see him. Despite being engaged, she and still has feelings. So does Noah. Their young, first love is the real deal and Allie has to make a choice between her fiance, Lon, and Noah. The story then goes back to the present, with Noah reading the story to Allie from a notebook because she has Alzheimer's and reading to her is his daily task. Of course Alzheimer's is degenerative and memories don't come back, but this is a story about love and how it can create miracles. For brief moments Noah will get Allie back. But Noah is also old and his body failing, and the two share their final(?) moments together laying next to each other. 

Sparks is able to fit in all the stages of love by skimming over over Allie and Noah falling in love (seriously, it's like 2-3 pages) and spending the bulk of the story on their reunion. This mostly works, and probably is helped because I have the movie in my mind while reading and it spends a lot more time on the falling. But he nicely works in background details through their conversation and inner thoughts. He then spends the last quarter or so of the book with older Noah and Allie. They married and had kids and were happy, until she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and eventually had to be placed in a care center. They're past the passionate, reunited love stage of their relationship that dominated most of the book and are in caretaker mode. It's no less full of love though, as it's Noah's love for Allie that keeps both of them going. She wrote out their love story before her memory was completely gone and asked him to read it to her. 

It has become clear that Sparks has a few storytelling devices he likes to use. First, he loves to start a story in the present day and then spend the book having a character(s) look back on the past and their relationship. Theresa does it with her and Garrett's story, Landon with his and Jamie's story, and now Noah does it with his and Allie's story. However, with The Notebook, the device actually feels integral to the story. Noah is reading his and Allie's love story because she is suffering from Alzheimer's and actually can't remember their love story. This is inspired. The other books use the device as a crutch, either to lend some mystery to what happened or just because he wanted to set a story in the 50s. 

I don't think the fourteen years between their reunion works. I get that WWII probably hindered Allie's dating life a little, but it seems fairly unrealistic that a woman of her class and wealth would still be unmarried at 29 in the late 1940s. Noah, as a man in a world that catered to men (especially in the post-WWII America) could absolutely still be single at 31; he wouldn't need a wife to enjoy or participate in society the way Allie would need a husband. 

In this first novel, Sparks really sets a tone for what kind of stories he wants to tell. He hits all the best marks that have become his calling card. There's a reason why you never forget your first. 

The Sparks Oeuvre

The past couple weeks I had conversations with two different groups of friends about Nicholas Sparks movies. I guess I'm somewhat of an apologist, because I have generally enjoyed some of the films. I go into the theater knowing what I'm going to get. At this point, more than a decade after the first movie adaption came out, "a Nicholas Sparks movie" is a type of short hand for a romantic and melodramatic movie (exclusively, at this point, about attractive and thin white people) that involves love, time, lost connections, and almost always death. Sometimes it's done and well and sometimes it's not, but my bar for judging them is always based on "for a Nicholas Sparks movie". 

Between one of the conversations with friends I watched The Lucky One. After I did what I normally do-- check to see if Roger Ebert had written a review of it. He HAD! Surprisingly (but also not surprisingly because Ebert was a very fair critic who loved film) he gave it a very decent review; he recognized it for what it was and judged it based on that. 

Nicholas Sparks has a good line in stories like this. They usually involve the triumph of love over adversity, are usually set in beautiful natural settings, usually involve such coincidences as finding a message in a bottle, and usually make me stir restlessly, because such escapism is shameless. Still, credit must be given to a film that delivers the goods, and if you've ever liked a Nicholas Sparks movie, you're likely to enjoy this one. I've seen him in interviews where he's better-looking than some of his leading men and comes across as sincere. I think he really does believe in his stories, and I think readers sense that.

After that, I ended up watching Message in a Bottle after the second conversation with friends. I decided to start at the beginning of the Nicholas Sparks oeuvre, and while I was watching I thought back to my freshman English class at Snow College. The theater department was putting on a staging of "Of Mice and Men" and the teacher had us read the John Steinbeck classic, watch the '92 film with Gary Sinise and John Malkovich AND watch the play and then write up a paper comparing and contrasting. 

So I decided to do that with Nicholas Sparks movies and novels. I was sure The Notebook had been first, but it was the first novel whereas Message in a Bottle was the first movie (The Notebook was the third film adaptation after A Walk to Remember). I'm going to go in order of the movies. I don't know if I'll watch the movie first then read the book, but that's currently the status for Message in a Bottle. I'll have a writeup of the movie and book when I finish. Follow along with #TheSparksOeuvre 

    

		Movie Release	Novel Release	Novel Order
1	Message in a Bottle	1999	April 1998	2
2	A Walk to Remember	2002	October 1999	3
3	The Notebook	2004	October 1996	1
4	Nights in Rodanthe	2008	September 2002	4
5	Dear John	2010	October 2006	5
6	The Last Song	2010	September 2009	8
7	The Lucky One	2012	September 2008	7
8	Safe Haven	2013	September 2010	9
9	The Best of Me	2014	October 2011	10
10	The Longest Ride	2015	September 2013	11
11	The Choice	2016	September 2007	6

Hamilton

Hamilton the musical is the hottest thing since sliced bread these days. It just won 11 Tonys after being nominated for a record-setting 16. It's kind of a big deal.

Back in 2005 I bought the Hamilton biography by Ron Chernow. I was extremely excited to buy this book. I have always loved American history, and this book was fairly popular at the time I purchased it. I even remember where I bought it - at the Sears Grand in Jordan Landing because I had a coupon. I started reading it. But never actually finished it. Not even close.

When I moved to New York, I was still quite taken with Alexander Hamilton even though I had not come close to finishing the biography in the year I had it. Even still, when we were in Philadelphia on our way to New York I insisted on getting my photo taken with the First National Bank.

The caption I put with this photo on Facebook: Big fan of Alexander Hamilton, so this was a big deal for me. 

While in New York, I took a couple opportunities to visit Hamilton landmarks. The first was a statue of him in Hamilton Heights and the home he lived in while uptown (where it's quiet).

A little bit later I took a day to travel the Staten Island Ferry and check out the grave site of Hamilton and Eliza in the Financial District.

 

I lost my interest in Hamilton and the biography has sat unread on my bookshelf. Lin-Manual Miranda, however, did not lose interest and read the biography all the way through. And then he created a fantastic hip-hop musical about the life and legacy of the bastard, orphan, son of a whore, Scotsman. I've taken the biography off the shelf, and have listened to the Broadway cast recording on repeat.

My Best of 2015

Here's my personal "Best of" lists for 2015.

Movies
I see a lot of movies (well, I think it's a lot, but it's likely fairly average). I try to write about all the movies I see, but I've been a major slacker about blogging this past year. I also keep all my ticket stubs; however they all go into a container with previous years. I also have a dreadful memory. So what I'm saying is that this list will likely be filled with only movies I blogged about (it's in no way, though, all the movies I saw this past year).
The Good
The Martian
Spotlight
Jaws (obviously not released this year, but I saw it this year, so....)
Steve Jobs
The Not Good
Trainwreck
Jurassic World

TV
I don't watch a lot of TV anymore. At least not "appointment" television. 
Downton Abbey   I watch this every January, however the plausibility of the show has fallen steeply since Season 2/3. My interest in it this season hinges on Matthew Goode.
Jane the Virgin caught my attention quickly when I discovered it on Netflix. It was funny and clever and a nice send-up of telenovelas. But then it started relying too much on the love triangle (I abhor love triangles) and I have very quickly lost interest in Season 2.
Parks and Recreation ended this year, but it's been awhile since this was appointment television for me. However, it's still one of my favorite television shows and I enjoyed the finale.
I spent a month or so rewatching The Good Wife to catch up on Season 6. This show really was fantastic...until Season 6 when Alicia ran for State's Attorney. They also completely wasted Matthew Goode. 

Music
I don't listen to the regular radio much, so I don't quite know what the newest music is (I shazamed I song I was listening to at an event and discovered it was Justin Beiber). I'm very glad for KXT 91.7 for introducing me to the following two songs:
"Midnight" by Tor Miller - it's about NYC and sad lovers, and is therefore perfect.
"Things Happen" by Dawes

Radio
I discovered "Serial" a few weeks ago and it was amazing. I would listen to it on my lunch break as I walked at the Civic Center. I loved finding out new information and angles each week to the story of Adnan.

Books
Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. I saw the movie first and then immediately went out to buy the book. As is generally the case, the book gives more character details and there were many passages that I underlined.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel tells the tale of a group of survivors after a world-wide flu epidemic has decimated the population. The story is told non-linearally and it works really well. I especially enjoyed how all the character stories eventually came together, but also that nothing was cliche.
  

Big Tex

The Texas State Fair is a three week event that takes over the art deco buildings and facades of Fairpark fairgrounds in Dallas. I knew I wanted to attend when I read this list of "39 Things You Should See in Texas Before You Die."

It lasts for three weeks, and I found the time to finally go on the second to last day. decided to do the "Dr. Pepper Half Price after Five" deal - bring a can of Dr. Pepper any day and get in for half price starting at 5pm. This good idea also seemed like a good idea to a lot of other people, too.

I had to stand in line to first get a coupon in exchange for my empty can. And I use the term "line" very loosely, as it's really a mass of people moving towards the same point. Once I got the coupon, I had to enter another "line" to redeem that coupon for an actual ticket into the Fair.

I was finally in though, and sort of already wore out. I'd been there almost an hour but hadn't done anything yet. However, I had to stand in another line to purchase coupons for food and rides. I was glad a friend from work told me about this - the Fair does not accept cash or cards in exchange for food. Coupons/tickets must be bought, and everything is sold for a number of tickets. This line ended up being longer than it needed to be because one of the three person-less ticket-dispensing machines ran out of tickets, meaning that line needed to merge with another line.

This may sound super complainy, and I guess it is. I'm just used to other Fair experiences. And a lot of it was of my own doing, as I chose to go on the second to last day at 5pm. Next year I think I'll take a half day from work and check out the Fair with more time.


I did get to see Pig Racing and other animals on display, which is my favorite part of any Fair. And ate a lot of fried food, including deep fried pecan pie (which I don't recommend....it's a little too much!)

And, I took the train to the Fair, which was a win-win choice: I didn't have to bother with finding parking/dealing with traffic; and was able to read a large chunk of a very great book, Station Eleven. Transit reading is the best.

Read The Grapes of Wrath

A few years ago, I bought a copy of The Grapes of Wrath at the Borders in SLC that was closing. It's the "Steinbeck Centennial Edition" with the awesome cover and pages that I love. I started reading it a few months after I purchased it. But I never got farther than the second chapter.

A couple months ago I came across on article on NPR about a world-wide book club they were hosting to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the publishing of The Grapes of Wrath. I took my long-unopened copy off my bookshelf and started reading. And reading and reading.

The book earned Steinbeck a Pulitzer and National Book Award, and it's worth those awards and more. Steinbeck writes like a poet when he describes the land. He makes you see the sun and the weathered crops and the rain as it falls. You see the devastation and feel the heartache; he somehow finds words for the feeling of farming and working the land and being cut down and being so tired but trudging on.

Then there's the people--the Joad family, who make the trek from their desolate, family farm in Oklahoma to the rich lands of California. Their hope and optimism for what the state will bring is sad. The trek brings loss to the family, but they also experience kindness and generosity. They experience what it's like to be looked down on as an "other" and "Okie". The treatment of migrants is so awful that I couldn't believe it. What someone will do for food, to feed your family, is not something you should ever have to know.

Ma Joad, to me, is the star of the novel. She takes charge and does what needs to be done. She knows the importance of family and staying together. She is quite simply amazing.

Many lament the book's critique of capitalism. But it's a fair critique, at least for the time frame. Sometimes I'm still idealistic in believing we can live like those in the government camps--taking care of ourselves and all working together. At least read it so we can have a good discussion.

The Fault in Our Stars

Last week I randomly came across the trailer for the film The Fault in Our Stars. It's based on a book, which I remembered having seen on a display at the book store, so I knew it was fairly well known. However I didn't know anyone who had read it. The trailer made me want to read the book. I went to Barnes and Noble the next day and bought it.

And then I read it in less than a week.

It's the story of two teens who meet at a cancer support group and become friends. The book really is lovely and beautiful. How can it not be when the main characters are named Hazel Grace and Augustus and they go on a quest to meet a reclusive author who lives in Amsterdam? You'd think the book would be sad because it's about kids who have cancer. But it's not sad, and it's not "about kids who have cancer." It's about two people relating to each other and they just happen to have cancer. Read it, you will not be disappointed. I'll lend you my copy.

Annie and Tess

I recently finished reading two books that had two female leads that, while not necessarily similar, reflected similar aspects of being a woman that I found interesting. I always over-identify why anything I'm reading.

The first is Joy in the Morning by Betty Smith (who wrote the lovely and beautiful A Tree Grows in Brooklyn). This is a simple book about Carl and Annie, two crazy kids who decide to get married when they're 20 and 18, respectively, the summer before Carl starts his last year of law school at a college in the Midwest. What's really sweet about this story is that it's the love story that's generally not told--the one after the couple gets married. It really is just Carl and Annie dealing with their first year of marriage, getting pregnant, and wondering how they'll make everything work. There's nothing earth-shattering or exceptional in the novel, and I suppose that's what life is like in general. Right after they get married, Annie says, "But it was so quick! It takes longer to buy a hat than to get married. I don't feel married." This sums up exactly my thoughts on marriage. Annie is quite strong-willed and friendly to everyone. I just really love her. Carl is afraid that if his wife starts reading she'll start having thoughts of her own and then  not need him anymore. I suppose I can forgive this for the time period it's set in, and Carl actually realizes the lame-ness of thinking that.

The other I recently finished is Tess of the d'Urbervilles. This story is really quite tragic (it's written by Thomas Hardy so what do you expect). Tess, a pretty country girl, is forced to make a connection with her wealthy relatives. She unfortunately gets taken advantage of by her "cousin" and ends up with an illegitimate child who dies before he's one. She vows to never get married because she does not feel worthy of it. However, she is pursued by a gentleman at the dairy farm where she works and, against her better judgement, decides to accept his proposal of marriage. When she confesses to him, on their wedding night and after he's confessed to his own "sins", he decides she is not the person he fell in love with and leaves her. He goes off to Brazil and leaves Tess to fend for herself. She's so shamed to admit to anything, for fear she'll sully her husband's name, that she must endure many difficulties. It is really quite tragic to see how tied her life is to her husband's, and that she essentially has no path of her own. She's certainly capable of making her way through life, but she defends and defects to her husband so often that I just want to shake her. Obviously the late 1800s were a different time period than now, but I really just feel sad for Tess.

There were aspects to both Annie and Tess that I could relate to. Their stories are both happy, sad, tragic, beautiful, and incredible. I think that women and their roles and what is expected of them have come a long way and for that I'm glad.

Your Favorite Book Book Club

When I left Salt Lake I left behind a book club that I loved. To sort of get that going again, but without the hassle of recruiting members and picking a book and then feeling guilty for not reading the book, I decided to have a "book club" where everyone would bring their favorite book. I also wanted a chance to have people over to my loft.

Last night my friends descended and we all shared our books. Some people didn't have their actual favorite (many of my friends are students at KU so they don't have all their belongings with them), but brought a book that they liked anyway. Here's what everyone brought:

• Me: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (I shared a lengthy introduction on why I loved this novel and Jane and Mr. Rochester, relating how I bought it in highschool but didn't really read it until I lived in New York.)
• Andrew: Locked On by Tom Clancy (follows the story of Jack Ryan's son, Jack Ryan, Jr.)
• Janae: A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park (a true story)
• Aaron: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (a classic, but no one else had read it)
• Will, brought a bag of books to share, a few of them: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky, The Natural by Bernard Malamud, A Separate Peace by John Knowles (this is the one he decided to share an excerpt from)
• Paige: Elephants on Acid & Other Bizarre Experiements by Alex Boese
• Tomas: Times Alone: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado (he read a poem to us in English and Spanish)
• Steven: Angels & Demons by Dan Brown (the book is crazy but a fun read)
• Emma: Silas Marner by George Eliot (I've never heard of this book) and, for fun Flirting 101 which we all had fun with
• Sherri:  The Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder (she's visited the home of Ma and Pa in South Dakota and shared pictures)
• Jessica: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (the most political book of the night, although we steered clear of political discussion)
• Kate: Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type (she read it aloud to us librarian-style; it was a perfect book to end on

 

 

Also, upon first seeing Biscuit everyone exclaimed how large she is! Yeah, she's fat and I love her.

Ticket Stub Tuesday

I just finished reading The Time Traveler's Wife (which I got at the thrift store for a dollar). This book was crazy popular a few years ago. So popular that it was made into a movie starring Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams. I saw this movie (obviously). This was the summer I moved back to Salt Lake. I had no job and no money, but my sister and I made the trek down to The District to see it.

The movie was fine, but if you read the book you'll get, as usual, a lot more from the story. As I was reading it, I wondered if it would be nice to know your whole life who you were going to marry. It would certainly take the stress and worry out of dating and all that. But also the surprise and fun...and the stress and worry. While I do dislike stress and worry, I really like surprises and would hate to give that up.

Birdsong

I told my friend Pam that one of my New Year Resolutions was to read a book a month. This seemed a pretty simple resolution to keep, as I had a few books that were already on my list. What I didn't realize, however, was that I made that resolution in the mindset of a person who is in grad school; co-workers at book club once told me that they stopped reading for pleasure while in grad school. I am fully out of school now and with tons of free time to read, and have realized that my one-book-a-month goal was fairly tame.

January is just ending and I have already read three books! And really, Pillars of the Earth can count as two! In my quest to watch anything and everything Eddie Redmayne has been in, I have been led to various novels that his film choices have been adapted from. Pillars of the Earth led directly to Birdsong (which will next lead to Tess of the D'Urbervilles), which I finished just tonight while devouring it during my time spent at home being sick over the weekend.

Birdsong tells the story of Stephen Wraysford, a young man who embarks on a passionate love affair with his employer's wife in France and then must endure the brutality of the First World War. The first part of the book is so beautiful and passionate that you can feel the sun and smell the French countryside. You get swept up in the love affair and then are placed square in the hell of war. And it's awful, the tragedy and despair and death and dirtiness and ugliness of war that was faced by men who had no idea what they were doing. The utter aloneness the soldiers feel when in civilian society is perfectly described, and the bond between men of war is expertly told.

Stephen is such a lovely character. I felt his sadness and awe at the savagery of war. He's kind of a loner, but cares for the men in his battalion. I was brought to tears on numerous occasions. This book is just great. My only quibble is that in the last thirty pages the author introduces some new characters, which I feel was extraneous; it dragged out the last moments of the book a bit too much. Overall though, the writing is wonderful.

Bittersweet Endings

Whenever I finish a really good book I'm always left with a bittersweet feeling. I love having spent time in another world with exciting characters, and I always feel a sense of satisfaction on completion. But I also feel sad that I'm done! Never again will I be able to experience the story again for the first time. I no longer get to inhabit the places the characters live or go through their struggles and triumphs.

I just finished Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth after a week of consuming it in every spare moment I had. This book is nearly a thousand pages long! The story is incredible and spans decades as a cathedral is built in England during The Anarchy when King Henry I has died with no lawful heir besides a daughter and an illegitimate son. The fight for the crown is the secondary story which propels much of what the main characters must go through. There's fighting, pillaging, beheadings, cursings, religious strife, true love, evil bishops, witches, cathedral building.

This book has some really strong women, which I like. Aliena, the displaced Earl's daughter, endures setback after setback, but always finds a way to rise above it. She is resourceful and strong and doesn't take crap from anyone. She knows what she wants and she does everything in her power to achieve it. Unfortunately, this does cause her to make one astoundingly bad choice, but even that she overcomes.

There's a fair amount of violence and sex in the book, so I recommend it with those caveats. There's also a Starz miniseries production of the book. I of course became interested in it because Eddie Redmayne stars in it. The miniseries is good as well, but the book will give you more detail and nuances. The miniseries also has taken some liberties with the book to make it more cinematic and to move the story along a little faster.

Five Books

My friend Pam shared on her blog the five books that changed her, and asked for ones that had changed her readers. I shared mine, and now I want to go into detail about them.

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin This book was read in my sixth grade class, and I can still hear my teacher Ms. Gillespie reading it aloud to us when we were doing art time. I immediately got caught up in the mystery of who was Mr. Westing and how the tenants of Sunset Towers were connected. The writing was funny and clever, sometimes breaking that fourth wall and talking to the reader. I loved it, and still do--I own this book and try to read it once a year.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte I think I've already professed my love for this book and Mr. Rochester a couple times. The story of plain Jane who sticks to her morals and still gets everything she wants in the end--love, fulfillment, stability, independence--just hit me when I read it. Lots of times people don't get everything they want, but why should we strive for anything less?

John Adams by David McCullough  I got this book from the New York Public Library and couldn't put it down; early American history and the Founding Fathers has always been fascinating to me. I was amazed at the amount of research that went into the book. John Adams was stalwart in what he believed and was truly integral to the building of America in the early years. The author describes events so beautifully that it was like poetry. The letters written between John Adams and his wife, Abigail, are lovely, and makes me wish that we still wrote letters.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee I don't know how anyone can not love this book. I had seen the movie first, in a Film and the Law class as an undergrad, and just loved Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. It was a few years later when I picked up the book and realized that the source material was beautiful. Atticus, Gem, Scout, Boo Radley--wonderful characters. Such an excellent portrait is drawn of the South, families, learning, and understanding others that it should be a must-read for everyone.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck My first brush with Steinbeck was ninth grade honors English when we read The Pearl. My fourteen-year old self didn't really get Steinbeck. Then, while at Snow College (in another film class) I had to read Of Mice and Men and then compare it against both move versions and the play that the theater department was putting on that semester. Even at eighteen, I don't think I quite got Steinbeck. Then, while waiting in Port Authority for a bus to Washington D.C., I read it again. It's a short book and I read it while waiting all morning for the bus, and was so caught up in the tragic tale of Lenny and George. Now, I think I get Steinbeck.

Honorable Mention: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger Not because I liked the book, but because it was the book that introduced me to Pam.

All but one of these books was read while I lived in New York. I don't think that's a coincidence. It was a time when I felt like I was discovering who I was, so the books I read while there influenced me a lot.

What are the books that changed you?

Book Club: Entwined

This month's book club was Entwined by Heather Dixon. It is a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses fairy tale (which is Pam's favorite fairy tale). We all enjoyed it and had a great discussion about it, especially the confused identities, family vs. romantic love, and the act of dancing as a way to tell if someone would be a good partner. We also learned that Pam would make an incredible audio-reader.

Book Club: Snow White and Rose Red

My friend Pam started a Book Club. Our first book was "Snow White and Rose Red" by Patricia Wrede. It's a retelling of the Grimm fairly tale of Snow White set in Elizabethan England. I enjoyed the book and its use of dialogue and the fun tale. Two of our book club members are writers so it's fun having their viewpoints in our discussion!

Our next book is "Entwined" by Heather Dixon.

Book Signing

Saturday afternoon my friends, Pam and Cat, and I went to a book signing at The King's English for Shannon Hale and her new book, Midnight in Austenland. Books are awesome, authors are awesome, my glasses are awesome, and my friends are awesome.

Books and Music

Mockingjay, the third and final book of The Hunger Games, came out on Tuesday and my two awesome friends, Cat and Pam, and I went to Barnes and Noble at midnight to get it. That's why these girls are awesome--they love to read just like me and we're always getting books for each other and lending and borrowing from our personal libraries. I finished the book on Thursday. I loved it, probably because it ended just how I wanted it to. But also because I've come to love the characters and the story.

On Thursday Pam and I headed downtown to catch the last Twilight Concert Series in Pioneer Park. The act was She and Him, and I loved it, despite it being hot and crowded (but that's what you get when it's a free summer concert!). The music was super cool; Zooey Deschanel has a crazy cool voice and plays the piano and ukulele. The best part of the night was when their (totally awesome) band left the stage and it was just she and him (haha, funny I know) with their voices and guitar. I love simple and stripped down music.


The end of summer is pretty much here now, but I'm glad I got in one last good book and outdoor concert!

My Weakness for Books

Tonight, against my better judgment because I know myself, I went into Barnes and Noble to get a book for my nephew for his birthday (I am that aunt that always gives a book for a present to encourage their love of reading at a young age). I say it was against my better judgment because I know that whenever I go into a bookstore with the intent to just buy a book for someone else, I inevitably end up buying one for myself. I just can't control myself. There's always a billion books that I want and a billion more that I think I should have read by now.

So after I perused the children's book and found one for Mo and his five-year-old self, I started looking around for myself. I happened upon a table of the ever-popular-and-even-more-so-now-because-of-the-movie, Eat, Pray, Love. I took it over to a comfy chair and started reading. I was hooked, and, even though in my poorer New York days had once read an entire book in multiple trips to Barnes and Noble, decided I had to have it for my own personal collection and promptly headed for the register. Forty pages in and I am sufficiently intrigued.

This happens very regularly. Most often with their "Classic" collections that are usually buy two get one free. That's the best way to stock up on classics. It's also a great way to get way behind on your personal to-read list. I currently have four books that I'm reading. Good thing I have a break before classes start again....

Tears for The Book Thief

Tonight I cried on the bus. I haven't taken the bus home from school in awhile, but tonight I didn't mind. I wanted the time alone to read and think. I sat on the bus with tears in my eyes as I turned the last pages of the story of the Book Thief, death, an accordion, war, and love. I was sad to see it end and glad to be able to take the journey.