Stopping for Strangers

Stopping for Strangers is a well-crafted collection of depressing stories. Someone always seemed to be dying or getting their heartbroken in the end. People were constantly losing something. I just wanted Daniel Griffin to give us some kind of hope. They were engaging, involving, rounded, full stories. I just wish there was a happy-ending occasionally or some kind of positive feeling mixed in with the rest of the story, even if the end isn't happy.

I won this slim volume of short stories from the 49th Shelf ages ago. (There was a mix-up too, where I didn't received the book for months.) I'm sorry I didn't read is sooner. As I often do, I'm going to comment on the stories that really stood out to me.

Promise
That ending blew me away. One sentence and it darkened the entire story. It was brilliantly placed. The timing was perfect. The story was just long enough for that sentence to have impact, for it to slap you across the face.

The Leap

The Leap is painful, heart wrenching. Depressing. I wanted to be done, but I also wanted to know how Marv was going to turn his life around. The story was so full of pain. 

Stopping for Strangers

Stopping for Strangers was weird. I was scared for a bit, the story had a horror element to it. But there was something else underlying everything too. So much was left unknown. 

Mercedes Buyer’s Guide

A stand out for me, Mercedes Buyer’s Guide was interesting and probably least depressing of all the stories. There was still something missing from the lives of the characters. The husband was missing some kind of life satisfaction. The wife was working towards a better education. The children were missing time with their mother. Barbara was missing maybe the things she wanted. Something about the end though, left the story with a different tone than the others. The tone said to me that maybe this family would stay together and maybe they would all be alright. 

I liked Stopping For Strangers. Though dark, it was interesting. I'm happy that I won it and glad I finally read it.

Literature For All

It’s been a long time since I participated in the Literary Blog Hop from The Blue Bookcase.  It’s also been a while since I reviewed anything “literary”, but I do have a couple things in the works.  I just couldn’t resist this week’s question:  What work of literature would you recommend to someone who doesn’t like literature? 

Two novels immediately came to mind, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and 1984 by George Orwell.  Both are dystopian.  Both are literary.  Thought I love Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, I think 1984 might be more accessible to a casual reader.  I think it’s because 1984 is the source for so many of today’s clichés and expressions, that someone who only reads fantasy or science fiction might find it really interested.  Both stories are also gripping and frightening.  Literature doesn’t have to take place in the present or past; it can push us into a possible future that’ll give you chills.

What would you recommend to the non-literary minded?

What’s The Meaning Of This?!

This week The Literary Blog Hop over at The Blue Bookcase wants to know: Should literature have a social, political, or any other type of agenda? Does having a clear agenda enhance or detract from its literary value?

I’m going to try to keep my answer simple this week: It depends on the author. The example of what an author shouldn’t do that Connie gives is excellent. Even though it’s from a book I really enjoyed, Jane Eyre, Brontë’s stopping the story to push her agenda takes away from the work. I also liked the examples Connie gives of how a social/political agenda works in literature. Like 1984, I think The Handmaid’s Tale as well as Margaret Atwood’s other dystopian works, Oryx and Crake and The Year Of The Flood have agendas or are at least commentaries on social issues. I believe H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine falls into the same category. The Eloi and Morlocks are how he saw the evolution of the class system. I’d like to use a literary example that isn’t dystopian or science-fiction, but none come to mind right now*.

What books do you think do a good or bad job at presenting a social or political issue?

* I blame the baby brain for any lack of mental function right now. After the baby is born, I’ll be blaming lack of sleep.

I Don’t Want To Know: What Influences Your Reading From The Literary Blog Hop

This week, Meagan at the Blue Bookcase asks and answers her own question: “What other outside influences affect your reading experience? Do you think these influences enhance or detract from the experience?” Meagan goes on to describe how she came to watch the movie The Secret Garden then read the book. This changed her experience reading the book and enjoying it as it was intended.

I try to never watch the movie before reading the book. Most times, if I’ve seen the movie, I don’t end up reading the book, even if I’m told how amazing it is. I’m not going to read a book if I know the ending. It takes away from the experience for me. I like to be surprised. I like to not know who’s going to end up together, die or be the villain. I hate knowing the ending, whether it’s a book or movie. Someone ruined the endings of The Sixth Sense and Fight Club for me. So I haven’t actually watched either of those movies, even though I know they’re great and I haven’t read Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club either. I’ve been told that reading/watching Fight Club more than once let’s you pick up on new things you didn’t notice the first time, but I didn’t get a first time and now I think I’m bitter.

The only exception to this rule (and I’m not excluding future exceptions) is Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone. I watched this movie before I read the book. My husband (then boyfriend) had the books, but they were so overly hyped, that I didn’t bother with them. Then I saw the movie with him and loved it! So I read the books and I happily jumped onto the Harry Potter bandwagon. The movie did influence my reading of the books, however. Though I tried, I had a really difficult time not imagining the actors as I read the books. It was different if I was reading about a character that I hadn’t seen in a movie yet, but I think I will always imagine Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter.

Honestly, hype influences how I read a book too. I go in expecting them to be great, but initially I’m resistant. I didn’t read Harry Potter when it first came out because of the hype. It took me ages to read The Hunger Games trilogy for the same reason. Hype, I think, falls into the “Others’ Opinions” category. Harry Potter and The Hunger Games had positive opinions, but when I was a teenager, I was against reading Margaret Atwood. I had some friends who had read Cat’s Eye, The Edible Woman and The Handmaid’s Tale in high school. Somehow I missed all those classes and never read one of her books. These friends of mine hated them. They couldn’t stop talking about how bad they were. So I never picked one up. It was only until I was assigned The Handmaid’s Tale in University that I realized what I was missing. Now, Atwood is one of my favourite authors.

I think that you should try as best you can not to let outside influences detract from your reading of a book. I can’t really think of any that have enhanced my reading experience, except that a good recommendation can often lead me to a book that I otherwise would not have picked up.

I also thought about non-bookish outside influences, like culture, history and personal experiences. There’s also noise, quiet, mood, etc. Then I looked at how long this post was and decided to just say, I try to be in as much of a cocoon as possible when reading, so that I get the full experience of the story and I try to be objective. Does this always happen? No.

Do you let outside influences get to your when reading?

Why I Love Margaret Atwood: Finding What Is Unique About An Author for the Literary Blog Hop

Another essay topic! That’s what I thought when I read this week’s Literary Blog Hop prompt from The Blue Bookcase. Talk about one author that you love and why his or her writing is unique. Please be specific. The first author that came to mind was Margaret Atwood. (I don’t think I’ve read enough of her stuff; I have a healthy stack of her work on my shelf and of that I think I’ve only read half.) Before I began my post on why I think Margaret Atwood is unique, I thought I would first read the response on The Blue Bookcase from Christina. What struck me most about her response comes in the second paragraph. She writes:

“It's about the word "unique," and the fact that it is an absolute. Absolutes, like "equal" and "perfect," technically cannot be used with modifiers like "more," "very," and" less." Something is either unique (totally one-of-a-kind, unlike any other) or it isn't. And yeah, I know that language evolves and nowadays everybody uses absolutes just like any other adjective and blah, blah, but just humor me for a minute. Let's assume that in order for an author's writing to be unique, it has to truly be UNIQUE. The trouble with that assumption is that I would have to have read everything anyone has ever written in order to know whether the elements I consider to be unique are actually unique. Get it? Obviously I'm not going to be able to make that kind of a judgement… . Real uniqueness is a pretty tall order.”

After reading Christina’s take on the word “unique”, it made me question my response. While I think of Margaret Atwood as a unique writer, how do I really know? I suppose I don’t. What I do know is that of all the authors I read, I find her unique and I hope that I can explain why. I’ll try not to make this an essay, unlike my Hop post on April 28th.

I’ll keep to one aspect of Atwood’s writing. What I find unique about Margaret Atwood’s work is her ability to write in different genres, while keeping all her work literary. She writes intense dystopian novels, my favourite being The Handmaid’s Tale. She then moves from the future to the past with a work like The Blind Assassin. She then goes further back into the past with mythological works like The Penelopliad. All three are works I thoroughly enjoyed and recommend. She also writes poetry and children’s literature. Though her work is often called feminist, I don’t think that matters. Men and women alike can relate to the characters in Atwood’s books. It’s about the quality of literature.

It’s not an essay! Now if only blogger was working I could have this post up Thursday afternoon…. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Who is your loved/beloved unique author?

Literary Blog Hop

This week’s question is an interesting one; I struggled to answer it.

What books have you read that have been hyped as literary and, in your opinion, were not?

First I tried to think of books that people said had literary merit, but just turned out to be a mystery, fantasy, romance, etc. In that regard, the first book that came to mind was The Da Vinci Code. Though it uses a lot of art and history in its story, I don’t think it’s really “literary” in what is meant at the Blue Bookcase or this Hop. To me, The Da Vinci Code is a mystery. It’s a very long, researched, involved mystery, but I wouldn’t call it literary. It was also one of the most hyped books of the last decade.

What books do you think have received too much literary hype? Or hype in general?

I’m In Love versus I Can’t Live Without You – Sentimentality in Literature from the Literary Blog Hop

This week the question from The Blue Bookcase is: Discuss your thoughts on sentimentality in literature. When is emotion in literature effective and when is it superfluous? Use examples.

I feel like it’s an essay topic for an exam in one of my old University classes! Ingrid’s response is excellent and detailed. Her two examples of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Twilight are well chosen. They reflect what I thought of when I first read the words “sentimentality” and “emotion” in this week’s question. I think there is definitely a difference in meaning and in execution in literature and other media.

When I think of sentimentality or being sentimental, I think of indulgence. I think of emotion overriding reason in an extreme sense. Using Ingrid’s example, that is definitely Bella in Twilight. Edward too; after all, he was willing to kill himself in Italy when he thought Bella was dead.

In another “vampire” series, (though this one definitely for adults) Betsy Taylor, the Vampire Queen of MaryJanice Davidson’s Undead series , is ruled by emotion while those around her beg for her to be more sensible. Betsy’s emotions give her power, but they are also a weakness, causing for her to fall into traps laid by her enemies.

When I think of sentiment, there’s almost a sweetness to the word. There is less of the extreme; the thoughts and feelings of the characters are deeper. One of my more recent reads, Timothy Findley’s The Wars is filled with emotion. Robert Ross makes many choices based on emotion, like joining the military after his beloved sister dies. Once the decision is made, reason is used to carry it out. The Wars has characters showing a range of emotions, from love to hate and betrayal.

Margaret Atwood’s The Year of The Flood is also filled with emotion. Toby and Ren experience longing and sentiment over the loss of their previous lives. Are the emotions of the characters in this novel as controlled as Robert Ross in The Wars? I don’t believe so. I think emotion drives Ren to do foolish things, like work at a sex club as they drive Betsy Taylor to mouth off to a pack of werewolves while she’s on her own. Do I think The Year of The Flood and the Undead series are on the same literary level? No. The Year of The Flood, like The Wars uses emotion to enhance the story, while the vampire books use emotion to get a reaction out of readers or a simple plot device.

I could go on and one with more examples and comparisons, but I think that’s enough for now. If this was an essay in school, it would have all kind of quotes and specifics. Today I have a smattering of thoughts. In the end, I think emotion in literature is necessary, even a lack of emotion can show a character’s coldness. Even in works not seen as literary, I don’t know if sentimentality is superfluous. A character’s emotions are a tool that help the reader get to the end of the story.

Literary Blog Hop: Believing Literary Hype

This week the Literary Blog Hop asks: Do you find yourself predisposed to like (or dislike) books that are generally accepted as great books and have been incorporated into the literary canon? Discuss the affect you believe a book’s “status” has on your opinion of it.

I don’t like a book just because other people like it, literary or not. I may choose a book based on others’ opinions, but I always reserve judgment until after I’ve read it. I also don’t find I like all books found to be part of the “literary canon”. I’ve mentioned this book several times before, but I couldn’t stand it and barely got through it. William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair is regarded as a literary classic. I enjoy many of Thackeray’s contemporaries. I loved Dicken’s David Copperfield and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. I just couldn’t deal with Vanity Fair. Sometimes I’d rather forget it, but it’s the best example I have.

I can’t imagine anyone liking all books in the literary canon.

The Book(s) to Read Before You Die: The Literary Blog Hop Makes Me Think!

This week Debbie Nance from ReaderBuzz asks: What one literary work must you read before you die? I’m going to follow the example of our hosts at The Blue Bookcase and talk about two books. The first is the book I recommend to everyone, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. I’ve spoken of it a few times on this blog. I just think it’s amazing.

What book do I need to read before I die? I think I’d like to read War and Peace before I die. It’s just so huge; I always turn my gaze away and head for something else.

Literary and Funny?

This week’s Literary Blog Hop asks: “Can literature be funny? What is your favorite humorous literary book?”

I think any story can be funny or at least have elements of humour. Douglas Coupland’s Eleanor Rigby and The Gum Thief are great novels that I consider literary and they have moments of being funny, but they aren’t funny stories. I agree with Lucia’s response also; Pride and Prejudice is full of humour. Shakespeare is a literary giant and Taming Of The Shrew is a fantastic and hilarious piece of work, not to mention his other comedies.

However, when I think of funny books, where then entire story has the reader laughing, I think more of Chick Lit or even types of Contemporary Fantasy. So just from experience, literature can of course be funny, but the overall book is not usually thought of as humourous.

Who agrees/disagrees?

Literary Blog Hop: Where would you like to go?

Each week the Blue Bookcase hosts the Literary Blog Hop. Each week they give us a question to answer. This week they ask: What setting (time or place) from a book or story would you most like to visit?

I had to think about this for a while. Where would I like to go? I’ve read a lot of good books lately, but I don’t think I’d want to go to those places. The kid in me wants to go to C.S. Lewis’s Narnia. It’s magical and beautiful and the animals talk. The crazy adult in me wants to go to Mid-World, the land of Stephen King’s Dark Tower. Even though that world has “moved on”, there’s so much there, history, myth and magic. I wouldn’t like to live there, but it would be a fascinating place to visit.

Literary Blog Hop – Books I Was Forced To Read

This week’s prompt: Discuss a work of literary merit that you hated when you were made to read it in school or university. Why did you dislike it?

The Blue Bookcase prompt is difficult for me for two reasons. I don’t like discussing works I don’t like; University was a while ago and I tend to block out books I don’t like. Part of me feels bad about not liking a novel, especially a literary work that has somehow stood the test of time, that is studied and that other people adore. I do agree with Lucia at The Blue Bookcase, however, not liking a book does create more lively discussion.

One book I’ve mentioned here previously is William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. I read it during my “Victorian Literature” class (the class wasn’t actually called that, it gave some dates, but it was the Victorian era, so that’s what I call it to make it easier). I read some great books by Dickens, the Brontës and Hardy. When I started reading Vanity Fair I couldn’t get into it. I found the characters flat and the style boring. It was made into a movie a few years ago, which I didn’t see and flopped at the box office. It was the most disappointing read in a class full of wonderful literature.

So that I’m not constantly harping on Thackeray, I thought I’d mention Canadian author Hugh Hood. I took a wonderful 20th Century Canadian Literature class. It was one of my favourite classes in University. I discovered so many fantastic authors; it made me want to read more by Canadians. In that class, we were assigned to read Hood’s A New Athens. It was boring. I don’t even really remember the plot. There were landscapes and wilderness and so much boredom packed into such a little book. I looked up a synopsis on Wikipedia that was vague; I looked at amazon.ca and it didn’t have one; I looked at chapters.indigo.ca, which had a short synopsis and it actually made the book sound interesting. I don’t know if I wasn’t “ready” to read that book or if it was just very different from the other books in that class, but I didn’t like it. Unlike Vanity Fair I’d be willing to try reading it again.

Do you like one of the books I don’t? What don’t you like?

Literary Blog Hop: Poetry

 

I didn’t expect this question from this week’s Literary Blog Hop. I don’t read enough poetry anymore. For the past couple years, I tend to read novels. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a favourite poem. I heard it first in first year university, an English Narrative class. We studied a couple of the Romantics. I read some great work from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but my favourite was from his contemporary, William Wordsworth. A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal. Why is it my favourite poem? I’m not exactly sure. It’s the words he uses, the meaning behind them, the rhythm they produce when you read the poem out loud. 
 
A slumber did my spirit seal;
  I had no human fears:
She seem'd a thing that could not feel
  The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
  She neither hears nor sees;
Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course
  With rocks, and stones, and trees.

I also enjoy Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
  And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
  As any she belied with false compare.

Do these poems have any similarities? What are your favourite poems?

Literary Blog Hop – Thoughts on Literary Non-Fiction

I absolutely believe in Literary Non-Fiction. I do like most of the definition given to us by Connie at the Blue Bookcase. Self-help, how-to and recipe books are not literary. I would hesitate to discount all histories though. I think it would depend on how they are written. Textbooks would not be literary, but perhaps a book that describes the story of a land or a people. Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth I think falls into this category.

In the category of Literary Non-Fiction would include Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I don’t think I would even consider that work not literary. I’ve also been reading The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys. It’s what I would consider creative non-fiction and I believe that it’s literary. I’ve often thought of different philosophical works as literary as well, such as Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy or Plato’s Meno. I think there can be different genres of non-fiction, just as there are different genres of fiction.

What are your favourite works of Literary Non-Fiction?

Literary Blog Hop

Deb at readerbuzz has given us a great prompt for this week’s Literary Blog Hop. What is the most difficult literary work you've ever read? What made it so difficult?

I thought this would be difficult because I could only think of one book that I read recently and I didn’t know if that was fair. Then I started looking at my past reading list and found several books, so many that I didn’t know which one to pick. I think it would actually make a great Top Ten Tuesday topic over at The Broke and The Bookish. Do I pick a book that I liked, but was difficult or one I couldn’t stand pretty much all the way through? A new book or an old one?

I decided to go with one of the books, perhaps the only book, I can never find anything nice to say about, Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray. I read it at a time when I was reading many classics (Dickens, the Brontës) and I just couldn’t finish it. Well, I did finish it, sort of. I read the book, but when it would get boring or the characters were too annoying I would skip chapters. I found the writing dense and the characters flat. It didn’t evoke any feelings of sympathy or anything really except annoyance. I read it years before I started blogging and though I still have my copy, I don’t think I’ll ever re-read it.

I hope I didn’t offend anyone. What was your most difficult book?

The Literary Blog Hop

There is always an argument going on somewhere about what makes a book “literature”. Is it a timeless quality? Is it the exposition of universal truth? Or is it simply a book that is non-genre? One of my favourite books is definitely considered literary, The Handmaid’s Tale, by one of my favourite writers, Margaret Atwood. I’ve spoken about how much I adore this book and how the story has stayed with me even though it’s been too many years since I read it.  A Thousand Splendid Suns, all of which I am happy to discuss at length any time.

Our hosts at The Blue Bookcase talked about Revolutionary Road and the fact that it is still socially relevant. I also think The Handmaid’s Tale is socially relevant. You want to know what could happen if fundamentalists (of certain religious persuasions) take over? Read The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s set in the future, so is arguably a form of science fiction, but it is the not-so-distant future, which can run chills down your spine. George Orwell’s 1984 is similar in that regard, is considered to be literature and is another favourite book. Other books that I love, (that don’t take place in the future) are The Lovely Bones, Jane Eyre and

I like to think of my blog as literary, but also eclectic. Regarding my most recent reviews, some may argue the literary standing of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, but most people wouldn’t think of Dead and Gone or The Dark Tower: Treachery, a graphic novel, as literature. So I’ve joined this event, thinking I’m mostly literary, though my love to read takes me everywhere.

What are your favourite literary works?