Summer Summary

I never got around to blogging about these, but here are the other books I read this summer with a "Mini Blog" about them:

What Happened To Goodbye, by Sarah Dessen

This is a really cute summer-y book (as all of Sarah Dessen's novels are) and an enjoyable, quick read. If you're looking for a chick flick in book form, this is a great option!

Innocent Traitor, by Alison Weir

I'm really interested in the Tudor family of England, and this is a novel about Lady Jane Grey, who was Queen of England for nine days at the age of 16. It's an incredibly well written book, bringing to life all the historical characters; it's well researched, and a fascinating story. As always with the Tudors, it feels like someone couldn't have made up a better story! Weir writes from multiple characters' points of view, which is extremely helpful in understanding the intricate power plays and motives at work behind putting the unwilling Lady Jane on the throne.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer

My whole high school had to read this book over the summer, which I think is really fun, especially since the books we've had to read have been really good so far. This book, chosen by our Science Department, is the true story of a boy, William Kamkwamba, growing up in Malawi who learns how to build a windmill to give electricity to his home, all without instruction and without having gone to high school. Not only is William's drive and invention an inspiring story, but the background he gives on what it's like to grow up in rural Malawi among poverty and famine.

Hannah Coulter, by Wendell Berry

Now this book, I could write a whole long blog post about, but it's one of those books that I feel like there's so much meaning to it, I could reread it every year and understand it better each time. It is told from the perspective of Hannah Coulter, an elderly woman looking back on her life and telling the story of her first husband, Virgil, killed in World War II, and her second husband, Nathan, and the life they built together. It's a sweet story that feels very real, not over dramatized (though the events could certainly be told dramatically). The most important difference between this book and so many other books about romantic relationships is that Hannah emphasizes the importance of people in love being rooted in their community: that their relationship is not only about the other person, but their families and people they have grown up with; they don't cut themselves off from everyone else. A beautiful book.

Wicked

I saw Wicked the musical for my birthday. For years, my friends have raved about this musical. I’ve heard “Defying Gravity” many, many times, heard of how great the music was and been warned of the twist at the end, alluded to slyly but always kept a secret for me; so I couldn’t wait to see it for myself.

It was incredible. Just incredible. Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, was a powerful singer who blew me away. She stood out from all the rest with her incredible voice- almost better than Idina Menzel, the originator of the role (saying that is practically Broadway heresay!). The story itself was equally as good. It’s so cool to look at a favorite childhood story from a completely different angle, and to actually like the scary green witch from my worst childhood nightmares. Wicked tells of Elphaba’s whole life, from being born green in Munchkinland, to her days at Shiz Academy, where she rooms with Glinda (then Galinda) the Good Witch, to her eventual spiral into becoming the Wicked Witch of the West. I was completely fascinated by the friendship between Elphaba and Glinda, and I loved how cleverly everything was explained from the original Wizard of Oz, how favorite characters were woven into the story. I emerged from the theatre glowing with excitement, promptly borrowed the soundtrack from my friend, and stowed the book in my bag for beach reading: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire.

I was expecting similar magical storytelling, interaction of the characters, and an even better and in depth look into Glinda and Elphaba's unlikely friendship. I wanted more behind-the-scenes secrets of the land of Oz. Instead, I got copious political commentary, ungraceful storytelling, and jaded characters, none of whom were likeable. The plot of Maguire's book barely resembles that of the musical, and to be honest, the musical plot is much easier to follow, relates more to The Wizard of Oz, and is more absolute. It was frustrating to know that there was such a wonderful potential for a story that was utterly ruined by the author's overriding political agenda and crude writing.

Wicked begins with an unnecessarily long section characterizing Elphaba's mother as a selfish, shallow girl and her father as a self-righteous and prejudiced missionary to the Munchkinlanders. Elphaba's birth seems a side-note to the vigorous ridicule of her father's religious beliefs and narrow-mindedness. After this painful section ends, we find Elphaba at Shiz Academy, meeting Galinda, who is shallow and preoccupied with her social status. Through a series of muddled events, Elphaba becomes involved in an experiment with her goat-teacher, Doctor Dillamond, that is never fully explained and yet referred to throughout the novel, while Galinda continues with her socialite lifestyle. Boq, a young Munchkinlander, falls in love with Galinda and enlists Elphaba's help in getting to know her, which eventually leads to Galinda and Elphaba's "friendship," though it never appears genuine. It is around this time that Nessarose, Elphaba's disabled younger sister, attends Shiz as well. Nessarose, like her father, is equally ridiculed as clinging blindly to her faith in a negative way. She's cranky and self-righteous. The adventures of Elphaba, Galinda, Boq, Fiyero (a handsome boy from the Vinkus lands), Nessarose, and others are documented, again at great length and without any seeming point except, at times, to be crude. Through even more complicated events, Elphaba meets the Wizard and then goes into reclusion for twenty years, supposedly involved in secret resistance.

Thus far, the musical and book match up enough, though the play thankfully simplifies things (for example, Elphaba's parents have only a couple measures in the opening). But after this, Elphaba has an affair with Fiyero, who suddenly crops up, and he is killed through her resistance work. She embarks on a long journey to visit Fiyero's family in the Vinkus, now with a child in tow. There she stays (mostly) until her death. Again, there are hundreds of pages wasted on uninteresting background, plots that seem to go nowhere, and that don't relate to the Wizard of Oz at all. At this point I was skimming through, wanting to get to the end. Which, thankfully, was what I had been looking for in the book: a neat tie-in to the original story, involving Dorothy and Toto. But certainly, slogging through the whole book was NOT worth that little tiny bit at the end.

The book was hindered by the author's political ideals, and relentless ridiculing of the Christian religion, thinly veiled as a different religion in the book. When a child's story so beloved as this one is simply used as the wheels for an author's opinions on the real world today, he is better off in journalism. Let us have our fairy-tales unsullied by an obnoxious narrator.

March

I am not a fan of "fan fiction:" anything written about some of my favorite characters by an unfamiliar author feels wrong, like Picasso trying to imitate the Mona Lisa. The characters aren't themselves, and the plot is usually happy ending after happy ending, a fan's gratification of their highest hopes for the characters. Breaking Dawn, the conclusion to the Twilight Saga, feels this way. That's why I went into March, Geraldine Brooks' story of Little Women's Papa March, warily. But thankfully, it was wonderful. In March, Brooks has taken another woman's character and breathed individuality and life into him.

Papa March's story spans from his twenties, as a traveling salesman in the pre-war South, to his experiences at war, to his eventual homecoming at Christmas (about 2/3 of the way through Little Women). His experiences with each person and in each place shape his philosophies as they are in Little Women. Along with making some serious statements about war and its effect on principles, on the mind and physically, the book allows fans of Little Women glimpses into Marmee and Mr. March's relationship, from their courtship into their marriage. Little Women's idealized parents are shown more honestly in March, with faults and virtues just as anyone else.

In his youth as a traveling salesman, March visits a Southern plantation, where he intimately learns of life lived with slaves, of the injustices and favors done to them. One slave in particular, Grace Clement, is perhaps one of the strongest and most intriguing characters in the narrative, surfacing often in March's life. She is a house slave, graceful, well-educated, perfectly composed, and she provides an example to March of the people he is working to free from injustice and indignity. March works at a few different plantations, each with their own cast of fully realized characters, with faults and flaws and courage and stories, all combining to wrap themselves around the reader's heartstrings until their eventual fates hold huge emotional sway. I cried at several points in the narrative.

Brooks' writing style is beautiful, a perfect balance of narrative and reflection on the principles she is trying to get across. Because in the end, Mr. March's experiences in war wholly change his moral certainties, till he is uncertain of almost everything he once stood for. War shook his convictions, his mind, his health, leaving him a shell of the man he was before. I wasn't sure if I was satisfied at the conclusion of the novel: I felt as though Mr. March would never be secure or fully present with his children again, and this made me feel as though the second half of Little Women was deceiving me. However, it was a natural reaction to what he had gone through during the war.

I love Little Women, and have grown up watching the movie and reading the book. Getting to hear a new side of the story, with new memories of the children and more background onto the March family, was a treat in and of itself. But the new cast of characters, the writing style, and the morality make this book a beautiful and incredible book. I highly recommend it.

It all Ends: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

Last night, at 12:01 AM, I saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2. I sat with hundreds of other Potter-lovers in a cavernous theatre, all dressed as different characters from the franchise- everyone from Dobby to Lucius Malfoy to Fenrir Greyback; I even saw a Darth Vader & Princess Leia wandering around, shaking their heads and joking, "Am I at the wrong movie?" Those with the best costumes were asked by strangers in the audience if they could take pictures together. The few without costumes (including the two friends I came with) felt embarrassed to be normal! As we whiled away the two hours before the movie started by reading Prisoner of Azkaban, I thought of what people had been saying all day: this is the end of our childhood.

The story of my romance with Harry Potter is not particularly unique or interesting; Harry and I met when I was handed the second book (yes, the second one) by my grandpa, who told me it was supposed to be very popular with kids my age. He could never have predicted how true that statement would become. I can still see the book in my hands, brand new, and feel my anticipation of another good read. As the years wore on, I read each of the books eagerly. I had in-depth conversations with friends and neighbors that lasted for hours on Harry Potter. After Half Blood Prince was released, I must have spent hours guessing who R.A.B. was, what the other Horcruxes were, and whether Snape was good or bad (of course he's good! Dumbledore had to be right!) In the summer of my sixth grade year, I went to the midnight release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with my patient aunt. We waited in line eagerly, discussing how much we loved the series with the other fans in line. I read the book from 6 in the morning to 2 that afternoon, and cried the whole way through. I'm sure many other people have this story: reading the books from a young age as soon as they came out, and seeing the movies as well. I saw the sixth movie in Australia with one of my best friends on the day it came out, and the seventh (part 1) at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park in Florida, again on the day it came out. And last night, for a grand finish, I dressed up and saw the final movie at midnight, a little less than a month before my 18th birthday.

The movie itself was excellent- epic in scale, poignant and emotional. As someone who's never thought that the central actors were unbelievably talented, I thought that Daniel, Rupert, and Emma performed perfectly this time, enhancing the movie where they used to detract from it. This was a movie about Harry more than anyone else, and Daniel Radcliffe carries the movie with ease and sensitivity, embodying the Harry of our imaginations perfectly. The other actors, as well, finish their roles with excellent performances, especially Alan Rickman (Snape). The sequence in which Harry discovers the reason Dumbledore trusted Snape so much is beautiful and heart-breaking, as is Snape's death- at once horrifying and touching. Rowling has an incredible gift to be able to make people cry for Severus Snape: a man so mocked and hated throughout the whole series, and yet who the theater all cried for. As always, the visual effects were spot on, enhancing the magical world and taking it to the next level of believability. The soundtrack was beautiful (that's something I always notice), epic and touched with sadness and a sense of finality. From the opening, the film jumped right into the action, which is relentless until the final 5 minutes. From the Gringotts break-in to Hogwarts, the action is exactly how I pictured it- except for a few crucial details.

These details are my complaints about the movie. In splitting the last book into 2 movies, the filmmakers basically ensured that every detail could be put in the movie. Part 1 did this extremely well. Part 2, not so much. It completely cut out Teddy Lupin, Harry's godson and Lupin & Tonks' son. It's a real loss, as it makes Lupin and Tonks' death that much sadder, and brings Harry's story full circle: Teddy's story is much like Harry's own. But I can understand that the announcement of Teddy's birth might have felt too happy in the midst of planning to break in to Gringotts. Percy Weasley never returns to assist the fight in Hogwarts, and Fred's death isn't shown onscreen, only his body- I sobbed the hardest at that point in the book, and in the movie, too, it was the point at which I (and people all around me) broke down. An added fight between Nagini and Ron/Hermione feels pointless and overwhelming- as viewers, we really just need to see Harry and Voldemort dueling.

But the thing I am the most dissatisfied with in the movie- and it's a big one- is Voldemort and Harry's final duel. It takes place in the courtyard of Hogwarts, which is cinematically impressive, but it takes place alone: just Harry against Voldemort. They are almost wordless as they throw spells at each other, and then, Voldemort's wand flies to Harry, leaving his Killing Curse rebounding at him. Voldemort looks at Harry, and then sort of dissolves into ashy flakes that float gently up into the night sky.

Dissolves? He just dissolves? That's it? Why couldn't he go out with a bang, a finality? Even a hardening to lifelessness, or a collapse, would have been better than just flaking into the air and floating like snowflakes. And he dies in silence. One of the things that makes the duel between Harry and Voldemort so memorable in the book is the dialogue between them. When Harry says, "Think, and try for some remorse, Riddle...Try for some remorse..." It is such a great moment of Harry offering Voldemort one last chance. Harry understands Voldemort, and for once, he has more knowledge than Voldemort. They were equals, before, when Harry sacrificed himself to kill the Horcrux inside him, but now Harry has the upper hand. I so wish that they had talked, even for a moment, in their duel. And finally, I wish that everyone had watched the duel so that they could see Voldemort die and react. There is little to no resolution or reaction to his death by everyone else at Hogwarts, and it would have been a bigger relief in his death to see everyone else relieved.

Despite my problems with it, the movie was still an epic ending to the series. I literally sobbed through the last half hour to hour of the movie, as did many others around me (from what I could hear of the sniffing). I didn't sob only because of what was happening in the movie; I sobbed because it was the ending of something so incredible. So many people love Harry Potter, and for good reason. As I sat there, watching Harry sacrifice himself for everyone in the castle, I was reminded powerfully of first Aslan in the Narnia stories, then Jesus himself. Harry Potter emphasizes the importance of love, but more importantly, it tells the truth of love to millions of people. It shows the truth of our Creator's love for us to every single fan of Harry Potter. It is a true story, one that adds beauty to the world and that will continue to teach people for years and years to come.

Harry Potter is the soundtrack to my childhood, first through the books, and now through the movies. Though my journey with Harry Potter will contain no more surprises, I know I will continue to love Harry and his friends for the rest of my life. I will continue to look to J.K. Rowling as an example of how to create a real world from your mind, with believable details and authenticity; as an example of how to create characters that literally can walk off the page, and are so real you know them like your best friend; as an example of how to tell a true story about the world around you. Goodbye, childhood. Mischief Managed.

One Day

It rarely happens that I see a movie trailer and want to buy the book for it, but that's exactly what happened for One Day. I mean, isn't this the cutest trailer? (It might have something to do with the fact that they play my new favorite song, Good Life, in it...) So my friend Lucy bought the book, having had the same reaction as I did to the trailer. And while we were in Boston last week, I read it.

Basically, Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew met at university in the 1980s, and the book follows their relationship, for one day each year. You get snapshots of Dexter and Emma through the years, through what they each are going through, how they keep in touch with each other, how they change, where they end up. I expected cute fluff, a sweet friendship and eventual "everyone-but-us-saw-it" romance. But that was not what I got.

I got unlikeable main characters. Emma, until maybe the last 3 chapters, is complaining, bitter, self-pitying, self-concious, and sarcastic. She's clever, certainly, but she spends nearly the whole book unhappy, complaining to herself, and suffering through her boring life. Really, the only interesting thing in her life is Dexter, who, by the way, I don't think was sober in the entire book. He literally spends his life drinking, doing drugs, social climbing, all the while blind to his shallowness and mistakes. He's too cocky, too carefree and childish to ever be likeable. So while these two people have an enduring and close friendship, I really didn't like them enough to want them to be happy.

I also got a long, dragged out friendship, with relatively little change. As I mentioned before, Dexter spends nearly the whole book drunk or high or both, and so his portions of the story are all the same: he feels empty, he's half ashamed, half elated to be living the high life. He misses Emma. And Emma, though she travels around, never really progresses in her character enough to make her story change. Though different events occur, she remains static, giving the impression that no time has passed. Actually, by the end, I felt as if neither person was much different or changed than in the beginning.

I got some clever dialogue- in particular, Emma and Dexter's strict "no Scrabble" rule cracks me up. Their banter is cute and amusing, perhaps the only light part of the book. It's also all we're meant to base their relationship on, so it had better be clever, right? And in the classic When Harry Met Sally way, the flirty dialogue shows that Emma and Dexter are never truly just friends; the pair can't feel platonically towards each other, no matter how hard they try and convince us otherwise. This was slightly frustrating, as the majority of the book neither of them admitted this, insisting they weren't attracted to each other outwardly. That gets a little tiring after a couple hundred pages...

Finally, I got an example of how empty relentless partying and life without purpose is. Though Emma is successful eventually, and Dexter too, they don't ever feel fulfilled. They are continually looking for more in their lives. It's such a telling example of the emptiness of a life without purpose; of the "God shaped hole" in everyone's life. Without any higher calling, Emma and Dexter's lives were empty, each driven to despair in the face of a meaningless existence. In being part of restorative work in God's kingdom, I have a higher purpose and calling for my life. I know that what I do is important to the kingdom work. So I don't have to live my life empty, the way Emma and Dexter do. Because at the mini-twist ending, Emma and Dexter don't seem much happier than they were to begin with, more fulfilled or content. And that leaves the book feeling incomplete.

Divergent

I heard about Divergent through the "blogosphere," seeing it mentioned on a couple blogs, watching the book trailer and looking up reviews on Amazon.com. It's summer, and my list of books to read is growing- why not add one more to the list? So I bought Divergent, and dove into it during a long bus ride. Intrigued and hooked after the first couple chapters, I finished the book that day, and continued to think about it afterwards.

Divergent, by Veronica Roth, follows the recent formula of dystopian fiction: strong female character + controlling gov't and/or complicated system + unexpected romance + difficult situation of rebellion. Where Divergent brings something new to the table is in the setup of the futuristic world- divided into 5 factions: Abnegation, Candor, Dauntless, Amity, and Erudite. Members of the respective factions value their characteristic above all others. At the age of 16, the teenagers choose either to remain in their original faction or to switch factions. This is the situation Beatrice, or Tris, finds herself in at the beginning of the story. When she learns, during the pre-choosing aptitude test, that she doesn't fit into any of the factions, but is in fact "divergent," she must choose a faction to blend into, as being "divergent" is dangerous. What follows after Tris' decision is a roller-coaster of the initiation process, romance, friendship, fights- and a dangerous plot.

Tris is similar to Katniss of The Hunger Games, Yelena of Poison Study, and Attolia of Megan Whalen Turner's The Queen of Attolia. She is stubborn, brave, and adventurous, admirably independent. But, where these other strong female characters are likeable, Tris fails. She seems incapable of mercy or forgiveness, even in extreme situations. Among the friends she finds during faction initiation, she forms quick judgements about their character that are immovable. She hates her enemies without restraint, fighting and ridiculing them almost as much as they ridicule her. Her cruelty and disdain for them is unattractive in a main character. And her most repulsive moment is her inability to forgive a friend who made mistakes, even after he commits suicide. She shows no remorse for her actions throughout the book. Hopefully she will continue to improve during the trilogy.

The plot is interesting, never slow paced. During initiation, Tris is required to face her greatest fears in a simulation, and this portion of the book was to me the most interesting- what would my greatest fears be? How would I react in that situation? The evolution of Tris and her confidence is all done very well. Her relationships, with friends in initiation and romantically, are all well developed and real, especially the romance. *SPOILER* Four is a new kind of hero- sarcastic, not sensitive, brave, challenging. Their relationship is unique and healthy, as they encourage one another and build each other up, pushing each other to try new things. My other complaint, small as it may seem, was the names- Molly? Al? Will? Christina? These names don't fit in a futuristic world, where some names seem, well, futuristic, and others seem right out of today. It ruined the feeling of being in another world.

To me, the most interesting part of the book was the corruption of the morals. At first glance, Tris's world seems like a paradise- each faction's chosen characteristic is honorable and noble. But it soon becomes clear that these morals have been corrupted as time has gone on; each faction has taken their value to the extreme, using their value to ridicule the other factions. Pride gets in the way of harmony; winning takes the place of a society working together. Each faction loses sight of it's original creed. For instance, Dauntless once valued teamwork, and the bravery of going against the crowd to stand up for someone weaker than yourself. But it transformed to value cutting ahead of everyone else, to value the strongest physically, to value cutting others down in order to boost yourself up. Veronica Roth said in an interview that morals without direction can be corrupted; this truth is so intriguing to me. The fact that the factions were formed with the best of intentions and were still corrupted by humanity is so telling of the fallen world we live in. Humanity tried to be good and failed, because it didn't rely on something bigger than itself as a guide. No matter their intentions, they failed alone.

Divergent was excellent, a great read for summer. It's a trilogy, so 2 more volumes will follow, and the movie rights were snapped up before it was even released. I'll look forward to the next books, to see where Tris goes next!

The Elephant Man

“If your mercy is so cruel, what do you have for justice?”

This quote, from the play The Elephant Man, sent shivers down my spine. It is John Merrick's challenge, the "elephant man" himself, who is horribly disfigured and has been put on display in the circus for his freakish looks. Set in London in the 1870s, the play tells the story of Merrick's rescue by a young doctor who gives him a home and friends who genuinely care for him. It's a beautiful story that explores what it means to be human and what it means to truly respect someone. The Mason Players at George Mason University staged it beautifully, as well. Directed by Heather McDonald, their interpretation took the themes from the script and integrated them into every aspect of the play. One of the most brilliant and subtle things came in costuming, when every character had a mechanical apparatus attached to part of their costume, be it on an arm or a leg, face or foot. Every character, that is, except one: the "Elephant Man", John Merrick. The purpose of this was to emphasize his humanity. Even though society looks at him as an outsider, an outcast, unusual and deformed, The Elephant Man makes the point that John's deformity doesn’t dehumanize him. By having all characters except him be mechanized, Mrs. McDonald is pointing out that John Merrick has more real humanity in him than the rest of them. He is described as grotesquely deformed, yet Mrs. McDonald chose to have him not wear any sort of prosthetic that looked remotely deforming. For the first act of the show, he wears a white shift and normal stage makeup, which emphasizes his humanity. At first, I was indignant that I would have to spend the rest of the play imagining him a dreadful monster. But I quickly realized that wasn’t the point: the point was to help me, as an audience member, see a little more quickly beyond the mask of his deformity into the person he really was. Additionally, the strongest relationship that the John Merrick has, with Mrs. Kendall, is marked as such because she wears only a few gears when she first meets him. Afterwards, she has no mechanics on her at all. This emphasizes the reality of their relationship, and their ability to relate to each other “inner self to inner self." Mrs. Kendall, within moments of meeting him, instantly recognizes in John an incredibly perceptive and frank personality. She feels they are kindred spirits; and as the play goes on, so does everyone who knows him. In one memorable scene, every character muses over their similarities to John, pointing out the best in him and comparing it to themselves. In a way, John is Everyman, the embodiment and definition of true humanity.

Mrs. McDonald integrated rock music into the play, which sounds more odd than it actually was. The music added to the mood of a scene in a beautiful way. I've always wondered why plays don't come with a soundtrack, as well; music has such power to elicit emotion and draw you into the way a character is feeling easily. It worked so well in The Elephant Man, creating the perfect mood. The fact that it was modern instead of old-fashioned worked perfectly due to the gritty nature of the scenery and subject material.

Religion was a strong aspect in this show. Interestingly enough, Dr. Treves, the doctor who rescues John in the beginning of the play, thinks that the John Merrick embraces Jesus and his sacrifice because he thinks it is the norm of society, when the truth is no one else in the show is portrayed as religious. John isn’t a man of faith because everyone else is; he truly believes that God loves him, even when no one else does. John finds comfort in the fact that God loves him even when everyone else he knows flees from him. As the play progresses, he builds a model cathedral, trying to capture the beauty he sees when he looks at the real cathedral. The slow construction of this cathedral is a ticking clock, counting down the time John has before he dies. When the final piece crowns the cathedral, John cries, "It is finished!": the same words Jesus cried on the cross before his death. This is the last line John says before he dies.

Ironically, the more comfortable and integrated with society John Merrick is, the closer he progresses towards eventual death. His body cannot sustain him anymore; his head is crushing his windpipe. When he dies, all of the characters are onstage, standing still and silently, looking straight forward. He gives them each a silent farewell, showing how he individually touched each of their lives. After they return the salute, they slowly sink to the floor until they are lying down, eyes closed, "asleep." There are several different interpretations of this, but an important one is that he puts them all at rest, makes sure they are at peace, before he is at rest. He dies alone, when no one is watching; after being watched by masses at a circus for all of his life, after being constantly on display, he dies alone and quietly.