Book Review Blitz

In the last month, I've been reading voraciously, binging on lighter fare than college classes usually allow, and enjoying every minute of it. I review things rather rarely at Catherine the Greatest, but I plan to do more of it, so I think it's time to introduce an official rating system: the royal crown! Let's use a 1-5 crown scale. Here are the highlights of what I've read.

Title: Thirteen Reasons Why
Author: Jay Asher
Plot: High-schooler Hannah Baker committed suicide, but before she did, she recorded and mailed 13 audio tapes to each person who played a role in the circumstances of her suicide, for better or worse. Audio tape transcripts are intermingled with the narration of Clay Jensen, one of Hannah's classmates and a recipient of the tapes. He spends an afternoon and night listening to all of the them, visiting the locations Hannah tells him to, and listens to her story unravel. Clay was always friendly to Hannah, and is tortured by thinking that he could have made her depression worse. Asher succeeds in writing a heartbreaking, affecting story that readers won't soon forget.
Takeaway: I didn't realize when I ordered the book from half.com that it was a young-adult novel. It soon became obvious through the level of writing, but adult readers shouldn't be steered away. It's a compelling, gripping novel that I finished in a couple of afternoons, and is definitely a must-have for high-school libraries. It will make you rethink the way you treat other people, and remind you that you never really know anyone's whole story. Asher is brave to cover such a heavy topic that all too often is ignored.
Rating: ♔♔♔♔

Title: I am the messenger
Author: Markus Zusak
Plot: Nineteen-year-old Ed Kennedy is a cab driver who feels like a directionless failure. After being held up at a bank, where he proves himself a local hero, he starts receiving playing cards in the mail with no explanation. Each card has three clues or addresses, and Ed has to find out what message he must to deliver to every person. By helping others, Ed find himself and a new confidence that comes with feeling needed. All of his missions are heartening and the relationships he builds are realistic. Zusak has knack for explaining the human condition simply and beautifully in just a few sentences, while other authors spend lifetimes and fill reams of paper trying to get it just right.
Takeaway: My friend's mother teaches high-school English and says she divides this novel in sections, as if each of Ed's mission is its own short story. It's an effective way to teach this novel which ultimately fails to hold itself together. The book ends abruptly and disappointingly, after having maintained taught suspense throughout. I only really read it because I'm obsessed with Zusak's The Book Thief. So if you're going to read anything, read that one. It will be the best thing you read all year.
Rating: ♔♔♔

Title: The Year of Magical Thinking
Author: Joan Didion
Plot: John Dunne, Didion's husband, dies suddenly on New Year's Eve, after the couple returns from visiting their comatose daughter in a New York hospital. Didion chronicles her year of grief, and the constant struggle to think logically during a time when she admits she was hardly sane.
Takeaway: One of the most beautifully written books I've ever read. Didion is one our greatest living authors, and you'll see why. She can put words to some of the most unspeakable, senseless human emotion, making your heart ache and mind reel. At times, I put the book down just so I could absorb the sheer weight of her words.
Rating: ♔♔♔♔♔

Title: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society
Author: by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Plot: Author Juliet Ashton is researching topics for a new book, and gets in touch with several residents of Guernsey, an English Channel island that was occupied by Germany during World War II. The book unfolds through the letters she writes to the island's residents, and those they right back. At times the letters jump from subject to subject, from weightier war stories to charming tales of island living, but they're always lively, absorbing and entertaining.
Takeaway: You have to read this. It is an intellectual's answer to light reading, filled with researched history, simple love stories, and vibrant, lovable characters. You'll be sad to leave them when you finish this book.
Rating: ♔♔♔♔

Title: My Sister's Keeper
Author: Jodi Picoult
Plot: Thirteen-year-old Anna was originally conceived to be a genetic match for her sister Kate, who was suffering from leukemia. Having spent her entire life saving Kate's by giving marrow, blood, and now a propose kidney, Anna decides to sue for medical emancipation from her parents. Anna, her mother, father, brother Jesse, sister Kate, lawyer Campbell, and a court-appointed guardian at litem take turns narrating this page-turning medical/legal drama. The toll Anna's case and Kate's illness take on the family is explored in fascinating emotional depth, and will leave you thinking about how easy it is for family members to become so emotionally and morally distant from each other, and what it takes to fix it.
Takeaway: I'd heard a lot about Jodi Picoult but never read one of her novels, thinking they were a fluffier than what I usually am drawn to. But after reading this one, I'll be seeking out all of her other books. Her characters are so richly drawn, you empathize with all of them, and the quality of her writing is unmatched by most other bestselling authors. My Sister's Keeper is a perfect summer read; it'll have you up until three o'clock in the morning.
Rating: ♔♔♔♔♔

More abominations from your local Kiss station

I've written before about my confusion and distaste for crass pop-music lyrics. Do people not think about what they're singing? Are listeners just bopping around, thinking that it's okay to hum along to the overtly sexual lyrics pulsating through the virginal ear drums of the soccer team in the back of the minivan? I hate to sound like an old codger, but I'm already thinking that if I ever have children (ick), I'll be one of those parents who only lets them listen to the family-friendly soft rock stations. I don't want my eight year old to so much as ask me to kiss them thru the phone, nevermind asking when they'll be old enough to date go-go dancers and rent yachts. Who am I kidding? By the time I have kids, maybe radio will be dead. Looks like they'll be hearing the 7-hour long Celine playlist I have so lovingly crafted. If you remain unconvinced of the rapid degeneration of pop music lyrics, please join me as we take a stroll through the sordid modern day Top 40 Scene.

I'll start with the song I find most egregiously offensive, Lady Gaga's "Love Game." It's a well-known fact that Lady Gaga is certifiably insane, so maybe we can't expect her to have a conscience, or a brain...or integrity. Let's look at the following:

I'm on a mission
And it involves some heavy touching, yeah
You've indicated you're interest
I'm educated in sex, yes
Now I want it bad, want it bad
A love game, a love game

Uh, alrighty. Well, in case you weren't entirely sure what Lady G had been leading up to in the preceding verses, she's here to let you know it involves some heavy touching. I do wish that whoever wrote these fine lyrics had just kept in the original phrase, which we know they were thinking of, "heavy petting." It has been so underused, almost entirely forgotten, ever since we wrapped up the miniature sex-ed unit taught by gym teachers in fifth grade. You know I'm right. And of course, Lady Gaga must too, as she says she is educated in sex. Do you have a degree, my Lady? Or is this more of a life experience/apprenticeship situation? I assume the latter, but nevertheless I'm still curious. However, the real reason I object to this song is this line: "I wanna take a ride on your disco stick."

Are you serious? Can this really mean what I think it does? How, in one or two musical generations, did we go from The Beatles' innocent, "I want to hold your hand" to THIS. I tend to think if there is something you would never say to someone in real life, it should not be the chorus of a pop song. If you said to someone, "I wanna take a ride on your disco stick" and he responded affirmatively, that should be a sign to stay away. That is a sentence no one should say or hear.

Moving on, before I get too upset. The following song was blasting through the radio in a friend's car recently, when everyone suddenly got up in arms about a particular line. However, in my extensive research for this entry, I have found even more objectionable material in "Blame It (On the Alcohol)" by Jamie Foxx feat. T-Pain.

a) Baby I would rather show you
What you been missing in your life when I get inside.

Good lord. If you are going to be a presumptuous womanizer, could you at least do it discreetly? Perhaps employ some literary devices to keep your motivations somewhat shrouded in mystery?

b) Fill another cup up
Feelin on yo butt what?

I guess not. The lyrics to many popular songs theses days fail to exceed the intellectual levels of most sixth-grade boys. Yo butt what!! Speaking of, where on earth is Sisqo?


c) She look me dead in the eye
Then my pants got bigga

This was the lyric that sent the girls in the car squealing. And not in a good way. Remember the swirling romance of Frank Sinatra's "Fly me to the moon" or the understated sexiness of Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay"? THIS SONG IS NOT LIKE THAT.

I was going to close this entry with another song dissection, but after reading Flo rida's "Right round" lyrics, I am just completely exhausted. I know many of these songs are meant to be played in clubs, so singing about strippers and drinking is apropos. But am I the only one who feels her soul whither sometimes? When I'm driving around suburban Massachusetts, passing school children, historical sites, and Girl Scout bake sales, am I the only one who wishes for a little more Simon and Garfunkel and a little less Jesse McCartney and Ludacris?

Leave your favorite lyrics in the comments.

Beyond Belief

A good documentary should leave you unhinged.

It could blow your mind by exposing a new culture, or uncovering the the unfamiliar in your own. Maybe it strikes an emotional chord, reverberating in a dusty, forgotten recess of your heart. Maybe it confirms something you always knew but never considered closely enough.

You should watch Beyond Belief . It will do all of these things, and it will unhinge you.

The film tells the story of two women, Susan Retik and Patti Quigley, suburban moms from Massachusetts whose husbands were killed in the planes that hit the towers on September 11. Both women were pregnant at the time. The documentary delves deeply and intimately into their grief, showing the endlessness of the heartache that follows the unfathomable death of a loved one.

But what makes Beyond Belief so remarkable is how Retik and Quigley transform their sadness into a cross-cultural journey to help the widows in Afghanistan, who have suffered through decades of war and a lifetime of oppression. Retik and Quigley founded Beyond the 11th, a foundation to raise money to support Afghan widows by providing them with chickens, coops, and incubators. With such simple tools, women can feed their families, and forge some economic independence by selling the eggs. With the money they make, most send their children to school.

You'll follow Quigley and Retik on their trip to Afghanistan, a country which before 9/11, Retik confesses she couldn't have found on a map. You'll watch as they realize the remote country is inextricably linked to their own, and the universality of the grief they find there. The warmth with which they are received, and the candor with which the Afghan women tell their stories of loss and hardship will leave you both wildly hopeful and devastatingly discouraged.

More than half a million women in Afghanistan are trapped in cycles of poverty, because they are illiterate, economically disenfranchised, and the sole caretakers for their children. (In Afghan culture, if widows remarry, their children must go to the deceased father's family. Women stay single in order to stay with their children.)

This is a must-see movie. It will reveal the nuanced, painful truth behind the triumphant headlines of Al-Qaeda captures and little girls going to school. It will remind you to look for the human faces that are all too often left out of war coverage. It will make you feel guilty for forgetting them in the first place, and implore you never to forget them again.

(image from: http://www.principlepictures.com/beyondbelief)

Book Review: On Writing Well

It's impossible to teach someone how to be a good writer. You can explain split infinitives, dangling modifiers, and talk about the importance of a good opening until you're blue in the face, but you'll never be able to tell them exactly how to write something great. As a journalism major, I am frustrated by the intangibility of a "craft" that is so subjective and abstract. If this is something that takes a lifetime to get good at, how can it be a college major?

But I love to write, and though I've mostly abandoned the idea of doing it professionally, I'll always have that creative itch to share what I see, hear, and think. My love of writing extends to reading about writing, and for anyone who's with me, I'd like to point you toward William Zinsser's On Writing Well.

This is the most cleanly written, accessible guide to writing available. If only Newhouse professors could teach like Zinsser. He covers all of bad writing's most egregious faults: clutter, poor usage, lack of unity, you name it. The best part is he tells you exactly how to fix them. He makes the case for clean, simple prose and shows the difficulty in reading verbose, flabby writing. Every time I read this book, it makes me want to go through everything I've ever written to prune and re-arrange it. Maybe that's just me.

Any writer, whether professional or recreational, will love Zinsser's dedication to the principles and methods of writing. But my favorite chapter is titled "Enjoyment, Fear, and Confidence." One enduring memory of my j-school classes will be when a magazine professor told us that every writer doubts herself, and that at one point or another, is convinced everything she has ever written is crap. That came as a relief to me. Zinsser echoes my professor's sentiment, and offers advice about sticking it out in order to get good. He emphasizes the importance of writing about what really interests you, and staying curious. A favorite quote: "Living is the trick. Writers who write interestingly tend to be men and women who keep themselves interested. That's almost the whole point of becoming a writer." This also sounds to me like an excuse for freelancers to step away from their computer and go to the beach. Living is the trick.

So, to all my dear friends who are sallying forth into the journalism world, read this book if you haven't already. I am slightly ashamed to say this is one of my favorite things to read before bed, because it eases me into a tranquil state of contentment. As impossible as it is to teach writing, Zinsser comes as close to perfect as humanly possible. I'd offer to let you borrow my copy, but I love it too much.