The summer has officially begun! And not because classes are finally, finally over. No. The summer has begun because my co-blogger Grace and I went to our annual library sale this weekend! This tradition, in which I force Grace to take me to her country house (which was built in the 1700s'!) so we can go to the Stone Ridge Library sale, is quite central to our friendship and, furthermore, provides me with a security net of books that I can dip into at any time for the rest of the year. It's MUUUCH cheaper than going to Barnes and Nobles every time I finish a book, that's all I can say. So this is a list of what I picked up this year! 1. From Rockaway by Jill Eisenstadt - Rockaway is my beach! I spend pretty much all summer there, so I had to read this. 2. Handbook of Short Story Writing: Volume II , edited by Je...
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I know much less about music than I do about books, but I can definitely tell you that my taste in music is influenced by my appreciation for good writing. I especially love songs with wordplay or that take on a slightly different meaning the more you listen to them. With this in mind, I've compiled a list of my favorite poetic singers in the hopes that they will confound and delight you, too. 1. Marina Diamandis aka Marina and the Diamonds - She's probably my favorite singer of all time. "Mowgli's Road" is one of her most poetic and clever songs, but I was totally mystified by it for a while. It's pretty clear that she's feeling pressure to conform to what the music industry wants from her, but then there's also this weird silverware metaphor about how "the cutlery will keep on chasing me" and how the "spoons are metally mean and "the knives are bloody cold". It took me weeks before I suddenly had a eureka moment l...
So, I have been a very happy camper in English class this month because we have just started the POETRY UNIT!!!! Yay!! And what makes a sophomore English poetry unit so wonderful is that we don't even have to write poems for it. Now, you might think that I would be upset by such a restriction, but actually I couldn't be happier with it. After all, high school is full of kids who are full of feelings and lacking in experience. What I'm trying to say is that a poetry-WRITING unit would have resulted in a slew of terrible, TMI-inducing poems. (I must say that none of the above sarcasm means that I am exempt from the crummy-teenage-poetry-writing crew of America. I just, you know, keep my poems in a file where no one will ever see them :P) But all of that aside, we were asked to pick a poem to memorize for this unit, and I chose "February" by Margaret Atwood. And thus I became aware of the wonde...
What an excellent question, people! Magical realism is a type of fiction that goes along like any average realistic/historical novel until suddenly the character starts talking to her mother's ghost or bursts into flames at the sight of her one true love. This kind of book has scenes of magic that highlight the book's themes and heighten the drama of the story, without completely turning it into a work of fantasy. I started reading a magical realism memoir recently and it's reminded me of how much I love the genre, so here is a list of my favorites! Just to give you an idea of how many Post-Its I need to keep up with Woman Warrior 1. Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston- This book is the inspiration for this post. The writer interspersed stories from her life with stories from her family past, Chinese legends, warped oral histories, and allegories. It's super confusing and trippy, but with...
So, recently I was doing a spot of (mandatory) community service for my gym teacher when I experienced a rare instance of karmic payoff. Me and a bunch of other temporary bond-slaves were unloading this huge file cabinet onto the gym floor, sorting everything from Dance Revolution DVDs to pamphlets on Your First Visit to the Ob-Gyn! into neat piles, when I uncovered quite by chance a crumbling copy of Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. Elated, I carried it around for the remainder of the period until my teacher took pity on me and offered to let me borrow it. It's falling apart before my very eyes I swear... I fell in love with this book the moment I heard its title quite a while ago - Naked Lunch ? What the hell kind of weird awesome twisted name is that? I am only now realizing how twisted it really is. The book is a compilation of notes that Burroughs took while under the sick influence of heroin. ...
I have some terrible, terrible news, everyone: my blogging partner Grace is away at sleepaway camp, where she will be deprived of Wifi, cell service and electricity (?) for the whole summer. This means that, despite my crippling loneliness, the job of keeping this blog going will fall to me and only me for the next two and a half months. I am very much afraid. But don't worry! We can make this work. In honor of my current desolate state of mind my first post of the summer is going to be a list of great books about heroes who travel in time and space - a very lonely occupation, I've heard. 1. The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams: I am currently reading this crazy collection of 5 novels and enjoying every minute. The book follows the adventures of a group of hitchhikers of various species as they make their across the galaxy saving planet...
This is our first recommended reading list!!! We will put out a new one every Friday. All the books on this list are flawless and majestic and the reading of these books should become your #1 priority from now on. The Cold Awakening Trilogy 1. Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys: This is about a 15-year-old girl named Lina who is taken to a labor camp in Siberia under the rule of Stalin. 2. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green: The love story of two teenagers with terminal cancer - but, the characters' words, this book should not be mistaken for a 'cancer story.' 3. Before I Fall By Lauren Oliver: A girl who dies in a car crash finds herself repeating the day of her death until she figures out what really important. 4. On Writing Well by William Zinsser: This should be every writers' Bible. 5. Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitchell: While very long, a timeless classic about southern views throughout the Civil War....