Reading Wishlist

I'm a person that wants to read everything. Well, almost everything. But there has to be a reason there are 21 books on my bookshelf at home that I haven't read and 68 on my "want to read" list on goodreads (thanks for that, by the way). So instead of listing things out, I'll direct you to the side of the page and the widget that says "I want to read..." Because if I actually typed out even half of that? Well we'd be here for a long while.

Book Talk

Book 3: Review

                Inkheart by Cornelia Funke and Three to Get Deadly by Janet Evanovich are two very different stories pursuing very separate themes, but they’re both still stories about struggle and work. Meggie was trying to live until tomorrow and help her father while Stephanie was attempting to capture a few hard-to-find F.T.A.’s, but they both required tremendous strength from the main characters. Finding out your father can read characters and objects out of books? Not exactly the same as being short on money and taking on whatever cases can from your sleazy cousin Vinny, but both are hard. And both books provide very good reminders on how this is a part of life. They give the reader a reminder that anyone can overcome the greatest of struggles if they try hard enough and utilize their support network.

                In Inkheart, without giving too much away, you see fantasy elements arise. Meggie reads Tinkerbell and the Tin Soldier out of books, her father read her mother into one, and these are clearly things you don’t see in life. But is this story really about the fantasy? The ability to read oneself into a book? No. At the end of the day what Meggie and her father were fighting for was family. They both did it in their own separate ways, with words, weapons, fire, and intelligence. Stephanie Plum was also fighting for family in a way. Mo was an integral part of the Burg community she grew up in. Mo was like that favorite uncle to many of the kids in the area and seeing him in a bad situation was hard for every member of the Burg. These familial struggles (or the struggles of those who feel like family) are hardly new. Everyone goes through hard times and everyone has the ability to get through them if they fight for what they want to get out of life and these books really showed you that.

                Inkheart dealt with this matter in such a way that the reader sees how a mother’s disappearance internally impacts the child. While this is an almost cliché way to look at this theme, you can also see the stress in Mo’s life. Yes there is action. Yes there is fantasy. It’s hard to not see those elements and it’s hard to have them not completely overtake the story. But boil the book down. Remove the plot, unnecessary characters, literary genius (or failures), and what have you got left over? The theme. And the theme of this novel is family and what happens when you lose someone close to you. It doesn’t matter how the family member is lost, when you really think about it. Divorce, death, they left, you left, it doesn’t matter because it still hurts and it takes time to heal and recover. Trying to “reunite” your family, as Inkheart explores, is a different struggle altogether and it’s a struggle that can drive people apart or pull them closer. Inkheart also looks at the perspective of a child in these situations and how they cope. Meggie read. “There was another reason Meggie took her books whenever they went away. They were her home when she was somewhere strange. They were familiar voices, friends that never quarreled with her, clever, powerful friends -- daring and knowledgeable, tried and tested adventurers who had traveled far and wide. Her books cheered her up when she was sad and kept her from being bored.” Books became her family when Mo was driving or when her mother was gone.

                Three to Get Deadly (or TtGD from here on) explores the struggle of a family member doing something stupid or getting into trouble (which can actually be the same thing). Moses Bedemier, a well-liked and a respected member of the Burg community got into some trouble. And when a member from the Burg gets in trouble, everyone in the Burg will try to help them get out of it… By refusing it ever happened or what they did wasn’t wrong. A part of the family aspect TtGD explores is the aspect where everyone knows that the job must be done. Something needs to change and it needs to change now, but it’s family you’re dealing with.  As Stephanie so elegantly put it, “I make lots of mistakes. I try hard not to make the same mistake more than three or four times…” is what everyone wants to hear. It’s expected that someone will try their best to change their life and getting them to do that can be the real struggle. Showing this can be important to many people as it’s a very real problem people have to deal with. Getting through to someone can be one of the greatest feelings in the world and that’s the type of hope many people need in their lives.

                All in all, Inkheart and TtGD were both very good books and appealed to me in different ways. If you were to use a rating scale of 1-10 (because I’m lame like that) Inkheart landed at a solid 6. If you take into consideration the audience it was intended for (i.e. not 16 year old high school sophomores) it would be rated higher, but at this point I really appreciate writing style more than I used to. As much as I love Cornelia Funke and her books, it’s just aimed for a less advanced audience.  Three to Get Deadly lands more at a 7 due to the humor factor and the reliability factor in the way Stephanie lives and acts (due to the fact that it’s very similar to the way I live oops). Overall they were fairly decent books.

Book Trailer

The Characters in Inkheart and Three To Get Deadly

When looking at the character structures in Inkheart they're almost exactly what you would expect. Main villain is extremely very not good (that was definitely not an obscure Doctor Who reference) the main hero saves the day happily ever after and all that jazz you would normally expect. Except for the fact that Capricorn is literally a character pulled out of a book and Meggie is 12. Capricorn fits the typical wronged villain (that wrong being he was born into the lower class in a Middle Ages setting) and he ended up isolating himself from his own mother even though she was with him constantly. He fits his role well enough and gives you what you expect. Meggie, on the other hand, shows courage and strength many people don't typically see in children of only 12 years of age. And following this pattern of unexpected traits, let's take a look at the ever wonderful Stephanie Plum. In the first book she loses her job at a lingerie store. So instead of searching for a more "suitable" job in retail or at the button factory, she elects to become a bounty hunter for her cousin Vinny. By the 3rd book she's starting to get a hang of this whole thing but it's still in Stephanie's nature to dislike guns and try to be diplomatic when in all reality that bond jumper is going to run away in 3... 2... In Three To Get Deadly, Stephanie is getting a hold of herself, sees herself as a "fugitive apprehension agent." and to be quite honest, is doing a fairly decent job at it. She's still a girl while not being stereotypical. She asks for help when she knows she can't do things on her own and isn't ashamed of it (unless Morelli is involved). You don't see many of the heroes in stories asking for help throughout their entire journey.

My Thoughts on Memoirs

Non-fiction is a genre I admittedly don't read very often. Non-fiction and memoirs don't move fast enough for me and I typically get bored with it. If I wanted to read a book about someone's life they had better have lived a very interesting life and have done things with it that I admire, find interesting, and/or want to know the psychology of. But I want all of a memoir to be true. Finding out that the Little House series wasn't entirely true absolutely crushed me as a small child. I can understand why you would embellish facts and stories because those embellished bits can be a large part of why a book sells, and I'll admit it has worked on me more than once. I feel lied to if it wasn't entirely true and honestly it puts me off the entire genre for months if not years. But non-fiction will always have elements of fiction and it's the picking out those elements and understanding that some things will seem greater than they were. I understand this and accept it because even looking at the way I tell stories I leave bits of information out or exaggerate things (ignoring the stories I flat out refuse to tell). So I suppose stories don't have to be perfect because the person isn't perfect. My memory is the opposite of perfect and having to memorize a piece for orchestra or a speech for APUSH is actually extremely hard to do, so if I can't do it and remember everything perfectly why do I expect authors to? My biggest problem is the changing of things and facts that the author knew were incorrect or altered, that's when you cross the line.

Readicide

Readicide is a problem in schools and you see it everywhere. I mean how many times have you had to work with a student who hadn't read the last 10 chapters or any chapter of the book? How many times do you look around and see kids getting the needed information about the plot off of SparkNotes? A lot of my peers are losing that enjoyment of reading I saw in many of them in earlier years. I think most of the problem is in our own schedules. "Do this," "go here," "practice practice practice," "don't forget to eat dinner," "did you do that homework?" "Hey that television show you really love is airing RIGHT NOW," and when you think about what a lot of people are doing you don't think of their reading habits. A lot of my friends used to love reading, and many of them still do, they just don't have time anymore. But there are those who loved reading and it got to the point where they were/are only reading the books assigned in school and just hated them. I've seen it in acquaintances all the way to close friends. And the problem is not only the lack of personal reading time these people get but the books they do read are all literary fiction. Now don't get me wrong literary fiction can be amazing, I personally loved Jane Eyre more than I'm willing to admit, but when it's the only thing you read it can be hard to swallow. Integrating good genre fiction in place of certain texts that no longer convey the meaning they were intended to may not be a bad idea, especially as society makes leaps in multiple areas such as feminism. Integrating more books into the curriculum and not teaching quite as in depth as some of my previous English teachers have could be beneficial for kids both educationally and socially. It could help teenagers grow into adults who don't hold antiquated views that don't hold well in society anymore and help us know what our own society is and how we want to change it.