Would you like a cocktail to go with your literature?

A friend bought this book for me as a thank you for watching her dog and I just had to share this. It is both amusing and instructive, while simultaneously answering two questions:

What cocktail should I make? 

and 

What book should I read?

And let's face it: haven't we all struggled with both of those questions from time to time? In case you couldn't tell by the title, this book is a recipe book for cocktails, but each cocktail is named after famous novels (mostly literary, but there are a few popular fiction titles mixed in).

The book is the perfect size to stash on the top of your bar, has lovely vintage illustrations, and includes drinking games both for when you are alone: "Slam a Red Bull every time you turn the page in Wuthering Heights. Just to stay awake, actually" (Federle 134) and with friends: "Smuggle booze into a library. Pull book titles out of the card catalog at random, playing 'Never have I ever' with the classics - 'Never have I ever read The Great Gatsby,' etc... All who have read the book in question must take a swig from the bottle. Scholars get smashed" (Federle 135).

I am not going to give away all of the wonderful and hilarious delights of this book, mainly because I don't want to infringe on copyright and I also might buy this book for everyone I know for Christmas. But if you want more, here is a link to amazon for you, where you too can purchase and enjoy this treasure.

I will leave with a parting gift: a list of my favorite cocktails from the book (based on their name, anyway, I just got it yesterday so I haven't made them all yet).

5. Lord Pimm

4. Are you there God? It's me, Margarita

3. Rye and Prejudice

2. Paradise Sauced

1. A Cocktail of Two Cities

Enjoy!

Shameless Plug: Goodreads!

Goodreads is without a doubt a must-visit website for the avid reader.

Think of it as a social networking site that is all about books. You can create lists of books you've read, books you want to read, and books you are currently reading. (I wish they had this when I was a kid, because I don't remember half the books I read when I was younger.) Once you finish a book you can rate it and even write a review.

Similar to Facebook, you can find people you know and "friend" them so you can see what they are reading or have read and read their reviews (if they write any). You can also read reviews written by people you don't know to learn more about a book and to see if you might like it (watch out for spoilers though).

Goodreads is great for finding books to read and is a great way to start discussions with friends: ["Why did you give A Christmas Carol 2 stars? You probably hate puppies too, don't you?"]

PLUS: Goodreads will compile recommendations of books for you to read based on your preferences and what you've read. It's a win-win for everybody.

So if you haven't yet, check it out by clicking here.

Book Review: Boneshaker By Cherie Priest

Time for a book review!
I recently finished reading Boneshaker, Cherie Priest's first book in her Clockwork Century series.

Three things you need to know about this book:
1: There are zombies.
2: It takes place in an alternate history steampunk universe.
3: It is over-the-top in a very good way.

I could just stop right there couldn't I? You are already so curious that you are probably going to go read the book right now. But just in case you want a little bit more...

I hate summarizing plots. Often, kind-hearted people who try to take an interest in what I am reading ask me, "What is your book about?" To which I give a grumbling reply, "Why don't you read it and find out." But as I understand it, it is common for book reviews to explain a little bit of what the book is about. So here you go:

The story is set in the late 1800's, during a prolonged Civil War (remember what I said about alternate history?). The story begins with a mad scientist, Leviticus Blue, who invents a machine (three guesses what it's called) that can drill through thick layers of ice for gold in Alaska. Something goes terribly wrong and the machine is set loose in Seattle. It cuts so deep into the earth that it strikes a vein of some gaseous substance - called the Blight - which begins killing people and then eventually turning some people into the living dead. The area is obviously evacuated and people rebuild their lives outside of the walled-in, blight-infested area of Seattle. Then one day, the mad scientist's 16 year old son, Ezekiel Blue, decides to enter Seattle in search of answers. After learning where he has gone, his mother, Briar Wilkes, must follow him into downtown Seattle and battle zombies as she attempts to save her son.

That plot synopsis really didn't do it justice, but you get the idea. I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars on Goodreads.
I loved reading this book for two reasons. First, it was very refreshing to read about a heroine who wasn't 18 years old and in love with two boys. Briar Wilkes is a passionate, no-nonsense kind of woman who cares about her son and will do anything to save him. She is also somewhere around 30, so her thought process and the choices she makes are more focused and mature.
Second, I love the world Priest built. She went steampunk with complete abandon. Even the character's names are delightful. There are pirates in airships, cool gadgets, a female bartender with a mechanical arm. Lots of fun.

My one complaint about the book is towards the end, she kind of lost me. I usually read the end of books ravenously, barely stopping to do anything, but this one I took my time with. I think it was a bit anti-climactic and I think something happened with the prose. All I know is I would be reading and instead of words clicking together and making sense, they were awkwardly phrased; the descriptions didn't seem to match what was going on. This might be the fault of the reader, not the writer, and the rest of the book I found her prose very refreshing and original.

Overall, I recommend this book to anyone who likes zombies and/or steampunk and/or strong female protagonists (she and Zeke are both protagonists in this story though - it is third person, but switches back and forth between the two characters).

Side note: If you aren't familiar with steampunk, google it. It is rather beyond my powers of explanation, though if I may steal the words of a representative of the Steampunk Society at Comicon, one of the best descriptions is that it is Victorian science fiction.

Stock Characters and Their Eternal Popularity

I have been pondering writing quite frequently lately, and have found myself returning again and again to the same question: how on earth does Dickens do it? He wrote stories about characters that have endured long past his lifetime, yet if you read his books he is culpable for one of the most horrific errors a writer could make: many of his characters are what we now call “stock characters.” 

You might not recognize the stock characters in Dickens at first read, primarily because you will inevitably be overwhelmed by the vast amount of narrative exposition which occurs (the other so-called error that Dickens could be accused of is a heavy authorial presence throughout all of his books, except maybe David Copperfield, which was written in first person and was an autobiography of sorts and therefore the authorial presence was part of the story anyway). The reason you wouldn’t recognize these stock characters at first is because they are so different now. Think about the last movie you saw. Did it have a slightly whiny side character that was the first to get killed off because he was wasting his time complaining instead of paying attention? If it was a comedy, did it have the slightly weird side kick that was really way funnier than his prince-charming of a best friend, but too funny-looking to get the girl? These are the travesties that our society calls "stock characters."

We don’t value stock characters; we are usually offended by them. Good authors don’t use them and good movies don’t have them. The AMC channel touts that “characters are welcome” on their channel, which is why they played a John Wayne marathon, possibly one of the greatest characters ever, the cranky old womanizing cowboy who always wins in the end…oh wait. I’m pretty sure that a very similar character is in every western ever made. Or written. 

Maybe the characters that we love are more common than we think they are. Harry Potter is a good guy who is fighting evil despite great personal loss in his life and he is certainly not the first to do so in a novel. Voldemort is the bad guy that chooses power and evil over love and goodness... wonderful characters, but hardly original once we peel back their layers.They may not necessarily be stock characters - which is quite a negative term - but they are definitely archetypal characters, and that is essentially a more positive take on the same idea.

Maybe it is impossible to write a new character at all. Maybe they have all been written already and all the writers in the world should either give up or just write sequels to other people's books.

Not surprisingly, things worked out so that after thinking about all of this, sometimes intently and sometimes just in the back of my mind like a running commentary, I stumbled upon a blog written by my friend. This blog was not about stock characters, it was about friends and meeting together and about great authors, but my friend quoted G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. I am pasting the quote here, it is long, but worth the read:

“All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork.
People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance.
This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstasy of his life would have the stillness of death.
The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction.
Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.
The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.
It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical ENCORE.”

Maybe this is why stock characters will forever endure and forever be loved. Because repetition is not lifelessness, it is not a lack of creativity, it is an encore of creativity. It is the essence of life to repeat and repeat and repeat…after all, there is nothing new under the sun.


And so Dickens, I tip my hat to you in honor of your love for human nature, your love for the characters you wrote and the characters you played, and to the vast wisdom that you showed when you created story after story filled with young innocents, evil old villains, crotchety misers, and benevolent benefactors. One day, maybe I will have the honor of following in your footsteps and so may stretch the very laws of proper grammar and how many commas can be fit into one sentence in my supreme delight at contributing to the world’s vast collection of stock characters.

Outstanding Metaphors

Metaphors are the bane of every high school English student’s existence. “Why can’t they just say what they  mean?” students often complain.

“Because metaphors are beautiful,” I would reply. 

I was wrong – well, partly wrong.

While reading the book Sunshine by Robin McKinley, I had a metaphor-related epiphany. [ Side note: If you haven’t read anything by Robin McKinley yet and you like fantasy, I am delighted to recommend her; she is one of my favorite authors. The Blue Sword is my personal favorite out of all of her novels, but Chalice is good as well.] The main character is a baker at a local café. One day she is sitting in her car and a leaf lands on her windshield. I don’t have the exact quote – alas! I had no idea how this minor metaphor would change my life – but she compared the leaf to a slivered almond. I paused – which is a big deal when I am reading, because I don’t even pause to eat sometimes. I pictured the leaf perfectly in my mind, not because I knew what leaves looked like (though I do) but because I knew what slivered almonds looked like, and I could imagine a leaf that looked like that. And I realized that I was picturing EXACTLY the same leaf that McKinley had been picturing. She could have just said leaves. She could have said autumn leaves and been trite. But she had used a metaphor that communicated her idea perfectly.

Then it dawned on me. As teachers, our job is (wait for it) to teach students new concepts. One of the very big parts of teaching is something called scaffolding which, as I’m sure you could figure out yourself, means you take what you want your students to learn and use their prior knowledge to help them learn it.

For example, if my students don’t understand what dramatic irony is I say, “You know how in every scary movie there is a scene where a girl dressed in her pajamas decides to go explore the basement to see what all those creepy noises are about, but we know that a vicious killer is down there because we saw him break into the basement in the previous scene? And everyone in the theater wants to scream at the stupid girl to go back upstairs and call the cops because there is a madman in her basement? That’s dramatic irony.” I took something they didn’t understand – dramatic irony – and explained it to them using something they did understand – horror films.

That is exactly what an outstanding metaphor (or simile – it works the same way) does. It takes an idea and explains it clearly – and uniquely – using something we know.

The major difference between scaffolding and metaphors is that usually metaphors don’t introduce completely new concepts, but instead introduces familiar concepts in completely new ways. Here is an example:

“Hands, like secrets, are the hardest thing to keep from you.” [“Dismantle” by Anberlin]

Here, the songwriter doesn’t think that his listeners have never been in love or wanted physical contact with someone they love; instead, he isn’t sure they’ve experienced it the same way. So he uses a simile to help communicate his experience. For him, restraining physical touch is as impossible as restraining from communicating. From this simile, we see complex layers of a relationship that involves not just desire, but an emotional connection, a friendship, a sharing of life together in multiple ways.

And, I must admit, he says all of that much more beautifully and succinctly than I just did simply by using a simile.

This is why cliché metaphors are so meaningless – they don’t show things to us in a new way or reveal new complexity because they are overused. When someone says their heart is broken that doesn’t really tell me anything other than that they are sad. I have heard that metaphor so much that it doesn’t communicate anything more than literal language would. But if someone tells me that their “heart is an empty room” (Death Cab for Cutie) I learn that they feel they have no one to love, they feel desolate, they feel perhaps abandoned.

Thanks to Robin McKinley, I no longer torment my students by telling them that authors only use metaphors because they are pretty. Now I say, “Authors use metaphors because they are beautiful, but most importantly they use metaphors because we learn through metaphor. We can only learn something new by using what we already know to build that new knowledge. Metaphors help you understand something new, something different, something better.”

What outstanding metaphors have you stumbled across in your reading?

One of the reasons why fiction sparks discussion...

Saving the world through fiction

Welcome!
I am glad your internet travels have led you here to this humble blog. Perhaps your attention was arrested by the wildly catchy title of this blog post: "Saving the world through fiction." Perhaps you are thinking that is an absurd claim and you are about to navigate away from such silliness, but wait! If you give me a few minutes of your time, I will convince you that reading fiction is healthy, will improve your life and the lives of others around you, and might just SAVE THE WORLD.

I used to read for fun, when I was younger. My parents decided to make me a leper by giving away our television so I had nothing better to do with my time than read. It was one of the best decisions they ever made.

Reading transports you to a different world, similar to the way movies or TV shows do.  The difference, I believe, is that you learn to appreciate story when you read, whereas watching television without being an experienced reader is nothing more than vapid entertainment. Appreciating story means learning to empathize with a character, learning to put yourself in the setting of the book, learning to suspend disbelief and learning to imagine.

So when I was little, I read for fun. Then I went to college and I read for school. Then I took a break because I thought I didn't have time for reading and I hadn't yet realized how important it was. But one glorious day I picked up another book and by the time I had finished, I was wondering why I had ever stopped making time for reading. The difference between little me, reading for fun, and big me, reading as a grown up, was that I realized how powerful literature was. I wasn't reading for fun anymore - though it was fun - I was reading for other reasons. To escape. To understand. To imagine. To believe.


That is beautiful, you think, wiping away a tear, perhaps, at my touching commitment to literature, but it still doesn't explain how reading is healthy and can improve my life.

Well, alright. If you insist:
How can reading fiction be healthy?
It can be healthy because it taps into the emotions, offers consolation and joy, offers an outlet for stress, and helps you communicate with others about both the difficult and wonderful things in life. As Brian Viner points out in his article "Well Read," "words on a page can sometimes reach the parts the medical profession cannot." You can read that article here. It examines the non-profit initiative Get Into Reading (based in the UK) that is using literature as a form of group therapy for various troubled souls, including high-security psych ward patients.

How can reading fiction improve my life and the lives of others around me?
Reading teaches empathy. I have seen it in classrooms myself and heard many teachers talk about this phenomena. There was a recent study done that examined the connection between fiction and empathy, finally determining that reading fiction makes people more empathetic with others around them. Here is the link to another blog that also discusses this study. I don't think I need to state how much we could use more people who were more empathetic in the world.

There you have it. I'm sure you are smart enough to figure out that people who live healthier emotional lives and are more empathetic can make a very big difference in the world; it isn't too much of a stretch then (notice I said "too much") to believe that reading can, albeit indirectly, save the world.

Before I let you go, I must offer a disclaimer: I am not a doctor, I am not a therapist, and I am not trying to suggest that you read a book INSTEAD of seeking counseling if you feel that you need it. I am merely suggesting that fiction can improve your life and help you deal with reality. And I'm also suggesting that fiction makes the world a much better place to live in.

Now go get a book off the shelf, crack it open and feel the slide of the crisp pages between your fingers, contemplate the first page and the tantalizing hints that the title gives you about what might be contained in its pages. Then turn to chapter one...and start saving the world.