Water for Elephants: 24 Hour Fairy Tale
Title: Water for Elephants
Author: Sara Gruen
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: I read from the Algonquin Books, a division of Workman Publishing, movie cover edition
Length: 445 pgs.
When I first see a book, I mentally catalogue it. I see On What Grounds, Cleo Coyle, mystery by author, C’s. I see On Art and Life, John Ruskin, philosophy by philosopher, R’s. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen, general fiction by author, G’s. I see Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, general fiction by author, R’s. I see Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire, Amanda Foreman, History, British biographies by subject G’s.
At second glance, it becomes a more personal catalogue: bubble bath, afternoon, 24 hour, week, over time.
A bubble bath read is a Cleo Coyle Coffeehouse mystery series. Roughly 200 pages, usually purchased in paperback format, I can read it in an hour to an hour and a half. John Ruskin’s On Art and Life is part of my Penguin Great Ideas books collection, they are small, but involve a little more brain power than a fun, cozy mystery, I will spend an afternoon on one of these books. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen? I saw ladies pick this up for their book clubs, I weighed it in my hands, and thought: I’ll read that… looks like a romantic 24 hour fairy tale. You see the pattern.
Yet I waited. I impulsively buy many things when it comes to books… bubble bath reads because I read them often; Great Ideas books because I collect them; week longs because work like Carlos Ruiz Zafon is heaven to me; history and science books because I have an insatiable thirst for knowledge. But 24 hour reads get brushed under the rug fairly often. They are often times catalogued as fluff I don’t have time for.
The movie came and went, the movie edition came by the hundreds. Still, I passed it up.
Finally, my best friend bought a copy during a Valentine’s Event hosted at the Half Price Books in Humble (Buy your favorite love story, get a chance to win a dinner for two at Italiano’s). Now, for a book reviewer, blogger, and aspiring novel writer, you’d think I had a best friend who reads with me. You probably envision a girl that goes and gets coffee and pours over reading material only to gab about it later with her bestie. Well, I have very close friends that I do that with, but Danielle isn’t one of them. My best friend absorbs books on her own, stews over them in her mind, and then cherishes them and tries to not breathe a word of them with another soul lest she ruin the magic of the experience. Point? She wont read with me. But I found out what book she bought at that event, and I picked up a copy of my own on clearance.
24 hours of entertainment for 25 cents – heck yeah!
Now, granted, I wasn’t reading Water for Elephants for 24 hours straight. Just between baby, husband, event planning, house cleaning, playdates, meals, emails, pampering, and dog walking, it took me 24 hours to finish it. If however, you are going on a vacation and have a chance to read it all in one sitting… I HIGHLY recommend doing so.
The New York Times Book Review calls Water for Elephants “An enchanting escapist fairy tale” and despite the sociopathic husband of the love interest who gets off on beating animals and people and lording over a small community of travelling circus hooligans, it really is a bit of a fairy tale, and its definitely an escape from your own reality.
Water for Elephants reads a bit like a Kate Morton novel, but at a quicker pace, with lots of layers, old age, storytelling, and flashbacks. Unlike Kate Morton, this first person narrative is written from the perspective of the man in the saga – rather than aged ladies. Where Kate Morton’s fabulous books strike me as having a very female target audience, I feel that marketed a bit differently, Sara Gruen has the potential to engross a population of male readers who have missed out under the impression that this fairy tale is a romance novel.
Gruen has done extensive research into depression era, of circuses, and of elephants, and it shows. Although Water for Elephants is about two people finding their fairy tale life in the midst of harsh circumstances, its ultimately the greatest coming of age story I’ve read in a long time. You’ve got a virginal college boy experiencing the death of his parents and loss of all his future plans, running away to join the circus, telling you the story of his life, all his trials and tribulations, from a nursing home at age ninety – or ninety three. From becoming room mates with a dwarf, losing his virginity, learning the fine art of train hopping, planning a murder, witnessing a murder, and falling in love, and becoming an unsung hero, Gruen leads you effortlessly through the life of an ex-circus vet, and its wonderful.
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but when I do, I’ll tell you all what I think.
Fantine
Notes from a Les Miserables Readalong
I am reading from the Modern Library edition
On History
As a reader, I am captivated by novels about the Napoleanic Wars, or more accurately, set during the Napoleanic Wars. Long have I loved Jane Austen heroines, had my heart pitter patter to the feats of Horatio Hornblower, and kept such writers as Alexander Kent and Patrick O’Brian on my TBR pile. But I’ve never take the approach of a historian to these wars, and certainly never contemplated the affect they had on the countries involved. So with a copy of Les Miserables sitting on my night stand, I am now admonished for my previous ignorance. So much pain, so much chaos, on every level of the human experience: politics, religion, the whole of society has been torn apart. And just a few pages into Les Miserables, I can’t help but wonder: Is Hugo going to put it together again?
On Writing
Reading old letters in novels always has struck me. So often characters end with something along the lines of running out of paper or their paper being filled up. Even as a child, reading all the historical pieces I could get my hands on, this concept amazed me. The idea of running out of paper! What luxury we have in this modern age of ours! (Yes, in a book about people starving and not having enough to keep a fire in winter, the luxury I am stunned by is paper, not the fact that I am always well fed!) Never am I out of stationary or cards to write letters; never am I out of journal space, always buying the next one when I see that I am thirty pages or so near the end. How spoiled we all are that now we are even less likely to run out of room to express ourselves with all the unlimited cyberspace at our fingertips – unless of course while on Twitter, confined by 140 characters.
On Personal Experience
“being in the mountains, the evenings of October are cold there.” – pg. 54
Its always the little things I get hung up on when I’m reading, often distracted by my own experiences. I see cold and October in the same sentence, I swear, for nearly ten minutes I stop reading and think of all those excrutiating Halloween nights in Texas. I distinctly remember, and most often recall, that one muggy night spent in a pumpkin suit noisily shifting the newspaper so my chest and belly could breathe. “Who thinks about pumpkin suits while reading Les Miserables?!” is the thought that occurs to me, bringing me back to the page… only to see traveller and innkeeper and start thinking about Christmas. That train of thought wasn’t done any favors by the fact that the innkeeper tells the traveller, “Monsier, I cannot receive you […] I have no room.”
On The Bishop
Of course, I adore him.
“In such moments, offering up his heart at the hour when the flowers of night inhale their perfume, lighted like a lamp in the centre of the starry night, expanding his soul in ecstasy in the midst of the universal radiance of creation, he could not himself perhaps have told what was passing in his own mind; he felt something depart from him, and something descend upon him; mysterious interchages of the depths of the soul with the depths of the universe.” – pg. 49
That description is so beautiful. The man himself is so beautiful. I envision him sitting around endless vines of jasmine under the moonlight communing with God and its just a very pretty image that resonates with me and does not leave. Then, later, I nearly cried the moment the bishop ordered the woman to put clean sheets on the bed for the convict.
On Felix, Fantine, and Cosette
Felix is such an irresponsible jerk! And the girls to praise him such with laughter! Fantine is such a fool, never met such a naive character in all my life. And poor little Cosette, the victim of their faults. Its true that while reading this book your heart just breaks and breaks over and over again. Hugo doesn’t help matters, the moment I get attached to a character – even in their woe and distress – I am whisked away to be introduced to another.
On Jean Valjean
The story of Jean Valjean is quite possibly the most depressingly awful thing I’ve ever read, until I read about all the escape attempts and deem the man an idiot for not just waiting out his sentence patiently. For his intial nineteen years in prison, I have no sympathy. However, he redeems himself and earns my care later, but I don’t want to post any spoilers at the moment… not until everyone dives into the book and gets more than their little toes wet.
Favorite Quotes
“Table talk and lovers’ talk equally elude the grasp; lovers’ talk is clouds, table talk is smoke.” – pg. 115
“He loved books; books are cold but sure friends.” – pg. 142
“Some people are malicious from the mere necessity of talking.” – pg. 155
Fantine Posts from the Kate’s Library Readalong Blog Hop
Kate’s Library http://kateslibrary.blogspot.com/2012/03/les-miserables-victor-hugo-post-1.html
Southern Bluestocking http://southernbluestocking.com/2012/01/07/les-miserables-book-1-fantine/
A Room of One’s Own http://jillianreadsbooks2.wordpress.com/category/authors/victor-hugo/
If you’re in this blog hop too, please leave a comment below with a link to your post about Part I: Fantine.
Next Les Miserables Blog Post by Anakalian Whims: https://anakalianwhims.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/les-miserables-readalong-update-50412/
Celebrating Earth Day, April 22nd
While gathering up promotional items for Half Price Books Earth Day Celebration Goodie Bags (Humble Location), one of the participating business owners described me as “earthy” to one of his associates. I’ve worked for a company I hear people refer to as “hippie” in nature for five years now, but I never thought of myself as being a hippie myself… I always just thought of myself as bookish. But I suppose working with people so dedicated to reusing and recycling, some of it had to sink into my being in an observable way.
Since I’m so “earthy,” I thought I’d share a little bit about what I do as part of my daily routine. I’m not out to save the world, just out to minimize my footprint when its convenient to do so.
1. Recycle cans. Its as easy as dropping your can items into a separate trash container. Sometimes loading them up and dropping them off at a recycling center is a hassle, that’s where nieces and nephews come in handy. Most kids will jump at the chance to earn some spare change (I know I LOVED collecting and selling crushed cans as a kid), so even if you don’t haul them off yourself, its probably pretty easy to find someone willing (and eager) to do it for you.
2. Reusable shopping bags. I don’t have a recycle pick up in my neighborhood. So rather than acquire a mountainous number of plastic bags I am too lazy to deliver to a recycling dispenser, I just use reusable ones instead. It saves me a lot of grief and guilt, and is surprisingly simple once you get in the habit of keeping a stash of them in your car. My favorites are Pat’s Bags at Half Price Books. They are $1.98, made of recycled water bottles, and have cute art designed by one of the store’s founders Pat Anderson.
3. Dump coffee grounds and egg shells in the garden. Instead of dumping my coffee grounds and egg shells in the trash, I make sure to mix it into my garden soil. Coffee grounds help keep nutrients in the soil, fight off diseases your plants can get, and keeps the garden soil looking dark and fresh. More specific information about coffee grounds can be found on this blog: http://groundtoground.org/2011/08/28/coffee-grounds-for-your-garden/. Egg shells are more specifically good for your vegetable garden, so I crush those up and put them with my tomatoes. More specific information on eggs shells in your garden can be found here: http://www.allotments.ie/?p=515.
4. All natural cleaning products. This habit benefits me two fold: I am allergic to everything, and its better for the environment. I am a huge fan of homemade mixes (using baking soda, vinegar, and essential oils), Seventh Generation, and J.R. Watson. As for my personal hygene, I love soap from Connie’s Bath Shack in Old Town Spring – http://conniesbathshack.com/.
5. Reuseable water bottles. I have reuseable water bottles galore from all the Earth Day Celebrations of Half Price Past. I don’t buy plastic water bottles in packs at the store, I diligently refill my Half Price Books bottles. Water bottles are a simple, yet awesome thing of genius, and you can get them anywhere, I think even Starbucks sells them.
As you can see, that’s not a lot, but I think it makes a big difference.
But, this is a book blog, so I’ll get to the bookish parts.
I love this very green ad from hpb.com!
Half Price Books loves to celebrate Earth Day, and in working there for five years, I can proudly say it was my favorite time of the year in the four and half years I worked in the store. The displays are full of my favorite color (green), the nature and gardening sections become a little more prominent, people seem more interested in buying books to read outside under trees in parks… I love that. Smack dab in the middle of Spring, people just seem cheerier in general, and with Mother’s Day around the corner, and lawn projects in the works, I always felt like I had a better chance to help people out. One year, I even got to participate in a tree planting for Trees for Houston. Half Price Books sent a group of volunteers to the planting, as part of my working hours, to plant trees! That was an all out blast.
Visit your local Half Price Books on Earth Day, they just might be doing something cool that day. But even if there’s not too much out of the ordinary happening, its good to get your books reused! One of my favorite HPB purchases is actually featured in that ad to the left, Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods
A Walk in the Woods makes me desperately want to go hiking. This was my first Bryson, I find the author surprisingly witty and fun, although perhaps a bit truthfully cruel in the beginning. I have to admit, prior to reading this I knew very little about the Appalachian Trail – it was a trail I had heard of but didn’t really have a clue about its length (Georgia to Maine, 2200 miles), its fame, or its history. This is the perfect blend of traveling memoir and a true survival/ adventure story, and I was completely captured by the weather conditions, the terrain, the fellow hikers, and the long nights in cold shelters. Its definitely an adventure I’d like to take, even if it means I only finish 39% of the trail like Bryson himself.
Another little favorite of mine is Don’t Throw It Out
Also, one of my most recent purchases, is Generation T
So whether you pop into a used bookstore and pick up some new resources, ride your bicycle that day, take a gander in the public park or local arboretum, or start a new earth friendly habit… be a good steward of your resources and respect your world, take a moment, sniff the roses, and celebrate Earth Day!
*Disclaimer: Although I am currently an extremely part-time, work from home, employee for Half Price Books (about 20-30 hours a month to organize events like booksignings, raffles, and other fun stuff), this blog is purely my own. What I say here is always of my own volition, and is not backed or on behalf of the company. This is my personal blog of all my personal interests. Those personal interests just often include everything HPB as its a huge part of my world.
Weekly Low Down on Kids Books 4/17/12
11 Experiments That Failed Deemed Awesome
“That was great! It was hilarious. It reminded me of myself. People should read it because its really, really, really funny. Its not really a story, its more about things you shouldn’t do at home,” my eleven year old niece, Ashleigh Raine, says as she finishes 11 Experiments That Failed
I brought a stack of library books with me to my sister’s house to watch five of her six children, along with my own kid, while they rushed Alexandrea (the 3rd in line) to the ER for a broken arm (compliments of the fabulous climbing tree in their backyard). After completing their chores, the kids got to sit down to a few episodes of Transformers, and then it was off to nap, rest, and reading time according to their respective ages.
The youngest asleep upstairs, the two eldest bee-line for the bag of books from the library – new books, ones they don’t see every day, like most kids in a toy store their eyes light up with glee.
I talk to Ashleigh about whether I can quote her in my blog, and as we discuss the book Ethan Blaise, age nine, asks about an illustration on an open page. “What is that kid doing?”
“You should read it,” Ashleigh pushes the book across the carpet to him. Ethan immediately stretches out, belly down, on the floor, kicking his feet while audibly snickering throughout the book.
While Ethan reads, he intermittenly laughs aloud while Ashleigh reads over his shoulder, distracted from the book she picked up to read second, apparently she would rather re-read 11ETF with her brother.
“You think its funny too?” she asks him.
“Yeah,” he grins, smacks his gum, and continues to flip through the pages while laughing and reading the best parts aloud.
When he finishes he tells me, “This one is funny!”
“Is it the most hilarious book you’ve ever read?” Ashleigh asks him.
“Yes, it is the funniest book I’ve ever read. ‘What you need is a message, a toilet, a bottle…’ ” This last bit I assume is a quote from the book as the two continue to quote the book from memory for about ten to fifteen minutes before they remember they are now hungry and flee to the kitchen to raid the pantry for crackers.
I initially checked this book out to read to Ayla, but I haven’t got around to it yet. I am posting this review solely on the reactions of my niece and nephews recommendation. If you are shopping for nine to eleven year olds, I think you’ll have a winner.
Interview With Author Tanya Egan Gibson
Tanya Egan Gibson, photo from article: http://www.marinij.com/lifestyles/ci_12499312
I read How to Buy a Love of Reading
- Fitzgerald is obviously a heavy influence for you, who else were among your first literary loves?
Kurt Vonnegut, for sure, in high school. Slaughterhouse-Five changed the way I thought about what a novel “should be.” C.S. Lewis in elementary school. I loved the Narnia books. I wanted a wardrobe. Oh, and between that, all of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales. I had a serious crush on Holmes—the more eccentricity the better.
I should probably clarify, too, that it took me a really long time to appreciate Fitzgerald. I didn’t like The Great Gatsby in high school or in college. It wasn’t until I was assigned to teach it at a high school in California that I saw it differently. One of my students asked, “So why is Daisy such a bee-atch?” Which snapped me out of concentrating on the book’s famous symbolism (The Green Light! The Eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg!) and refocused me on the people (characters) and their desperation to be loved.
- My favorite part of HTBALOR is how raw Hunter comes across, how much his character development rings true. That’s rare for a female author to write a male character so well. Is he the character you identify with most? Or did you fall in love with him a little? (Admittedly, I did a little of both.)
As a lifetime watcher of shows like Beverly Hills 90210 (the original one) and its successors, I always found the rich-kid-who-lives-alone-in-a-posh-hotel-or-other-parentless-situation to be a cool trope. (Yeah, we can call it a stereotype, but the literary ring of “trope” sounds much more forgiving.) I’m fascinated by stereotypes because it seems to me that people (real people, not just characters) often end up becoming them of their own volition, giving up on some of their most interesting dimensions for the safety/security/ease of neatly defining themselves.
The rich-kid-who-lives-alone is nearly always a misunderstood “bad boy” who (when we meet him at, say, the beginning of a CW television series) is engaging in self-destructive behavior and has a mean streak. Usually, as the series progresses, the character cleans up his act (usually for the love of a good girl) and he learns to become a responsible person (with, perhaps, a couple of dips into recidivism when the ratings need a boost) and discovers his inner poet/artist/recycling advocate/vegan.
So, when I wrote Hunter, I kept wondering what such a character would be like the other way around: What if the character was originally a responsible, mature-beyond-his-years person who knew who he was? What if living alone with too much money and little supervision hadn’t turned him into a spoiled, self-destructive brat? What if he liked to cook and knew how to clean and didn’t act or feel embarrassed about being a book geek? What would it take for that character to end up turning himself into the self-destructive-kid-with-a-mean-streak stereotype? Looks. And being looked at.
I suppose that’s a long preface and I still haven’t answered your question—sorry! What fascinates me about Hunter is that being so highly visible (an overnight hottie who never meant to be a hottie) deprives him of being himself. He wants to be kind and gentle and loving and loved. At his core these—and privacy—are what he most values. But these aren’t qualities valued in an appearance-obsessed community or expected of him as the community’s golden child.
So many of the good things Hunter does for other people are quiet, under-the-radar, private. Yet he’s constantly getting the message from his parents and peers—and even his college application essay prompts–that nothing matters if people can’t see it. (Thank you, reality TV society.) So he kind of splits himself into public-Hunter and private-Hunter. And in so doing, unravels.
Which, finally, brings me to answering your question: Yeah, I probably understand Hunter the best out of my characters because he’s desperate to reshape his world into something lovely and full of love—and also made to feel embarrassed about such inclinations. Like private-Hunter, I’m hopelessly thin-skinned and I get crushes on authors (even dead ones) and I daydream about them being kind. I’m very self-conscious, an introvert who pretends to be an extrovert because I really like people and like to talk with them—even though they often scare me. I write about love and loveliness; I believe there is much love and loveliness in life waiting to be discovered. (I’ve been called a Pollyanna. To my face.) But I’m no longer embarrassed by it.
- It’s clear you have a love/hate obsession-like relationship with meta-fiction. It’s also clear how beautifully you write the layers of a book, like a rose in bloom or an onion being peeled. When you are writing, do you find that meta-fiction lends itself to these unfolding layers or does it work against it?
Yup, I wrote a novel that makes fun of meta-fiction while taking the form of meta-fiction. So yeah, I do both love and hate it. Oh, and thank you for the compliment. Back to the love-hate relationship: It’s complicated. Self-consciousness tends to get in the way of emotion. (Have you ever watched a play where one of the actors is supposed to say something like, “I swoon for you!” but is too embarrassed to go all the way with it, his self-consciousness turning it hollow?)
Meta-, of course, is about consciousness of self. But it also invites the reader backstage, saying, “Slip in behind the curtain. It’s okay, there’s room. Check out that actor’s insincerity!” Maybe this affords the reader the opportunity to observe up-close that the actor is shaking, and gives him or her clues to the emotion behind the hollow “I swoon for you.” Maybe the real story isn’t the play on the stage, but rather the story of why that actor is too terrified/nervous/exhausted/ill to embody the emotion of that line. So the question is whether it’s worth sacrificing the outer story (the story being played out onstage with the supposedly swoon-worthy damsel) to this inner story.
For me, the answer is sometimes, and only if I’m sure that the main narrative (swoon-worthy damsel) is ultimately deepened, emotionally, by that meta- jolt. When you go meta-, you’re sacrificing the readers’ waking dream—plucking them out of a world and then asking them to willingly reenter it. That’s a lot to ask.
The short answer to your question: I cut way more meta-material than I ever use.
- One of the characters, Bree McEnroy, writes a meta-novel. Do you have a favorite book from another author that fits this genre? If so, what is it and when did you first discover it?
Waterland, by Graham Swift, is one of my favorite books ever. I discovered it in graduate school, where my love-hate relationship with postmodernism and all things meta- broke down into way more hate than love. Waterland was assigned in a British Literature course I did, in fact, love–a respite from talking about literary theorists with difficult French names.
The novel is about a history teacher who is supposed to be teaching his students about the French Revolution. But who, because he’s sort of losing it, starts telling his students about his own personal history instead. Among other things, the book calls into question the difference (if any) between story and history.
- Your book references several fictional characters as authors and includes excerpts from their work. Do you have full manuscripts of these books lurking away somewhere? Like J.K.Rawling’s Tales of Beedle the Bard and Quidditch Through the Ages, do you have plans to publish these?
No full manuscripts exist of Between Scylla and Alta Vista or Unwritten. I promise. I did write small excerpts of them for my website, though, where a few pages of each of these books “exist” on a virtual bookshelf. In “Hunter’s journal” (on my website)—the story he wants to write about a girl and boy going on a ski trip in fact existed as a large flashback in an earlier draft of HTBALOR. (It was originally the story of how Hunter and Carley, the protagonist of HTBALOR, met. Later, it was replaced by a shorter flashback near the end of the book where they bond over an incident on the Long Island Sound.)
- As a writer, I dread asking this question (I have no idea if I will finish my own novel this year or this decade), but as a fan I am dying to know: when can we expect another book?
HTBALOR was published eight or nine years after I started writing it. I’m hoping the novel I’m currently writing (the working title is LANDS) won’t take quite that long. Like HTBALOR, it contains a meta- element, and getting all the layers of it to line up (while at the same time making each layer emotionally true to itself) is, as I indicated above, kind of tricky. Plus, I’m balancing writing with taking care of my two wonderful children, ages 7 and almost-4. One nice thing about LANDS: it takes place at a fictional theme park, so my children love coming along on amusement park research trips and think the pictures in my shelf full of amusement park research books are very cool.
- The cover art of the Dutton hardback edition, also featured on your website, is the reason I picked up your book. As a writer and art fanatic with a Bachelors in Marketing, I can’t help but wonder: Were you involved in picking out this art, or was it all Dutton? If so, what was your level of involvement?
Dutton chose the cover design and illustration, which were done by an artist named Ben Gibson (no relation). I think it’s beautiful, and I was particularly happy about the way the girl’s body. The spine of the book kind of becomes her spine, but the rest of her body seems to blend into/disappear into the couch. Weight is overly important in the fictional community of HTBALOR—the protagonist, according to the personal trainer hired by her mother, is 57 pounds overweight—and this rendering of Carley honors the conclusion of the book, in which the reader is never told what “size” she ends up.
- Does the cover art for this book represent your own art tastes? Who is your favorite artist? (Or what is your favorite piece?)
I’m kind of a Philistine when it comes to art. Not a three-dogs-playing-poker or velvet-Elvis glow-in-the-dark wall art Philistine—but still pretty unknowledgeable. (I did, at least, learn something from doing research for Bree’s never-to-be-completed book about art patronage.) I’m particularly fond of my seven-year-old daughter’s pastel rendering of two orange Amazon rainforest frogs and my three-year-old son’s multi-colored blob paintings that he insists are either trucks, dinosaurs, or me.
- Carley and Hunter are both only children. Did you have siblings growing up?
My brother wasn’t born until I was ten or eleven and we were raised in different households—after my parents divorced, my father remarried, so we’re half-sibs who were kind of each raised as only children. While it’s wonderful to have a sibling as an adult (my brother is very cool), I definitely wondered, as a child, what it would be like to have someone there to do things with. My daughter likes to tell people that my husband and I had her little brother “so I’ll always have someone to play with.” Which is not exactly untrue.
- What is one thing you want your readers and fans to know about you?
I love reading and writing so much, and feel unbelievably fortunate to have a book out there in the world. I love to write emails to authors when I enjoy their books, and when I receive emails/Facebook messages/Tweets from readers who connected emotionally with HTBALOR, it makes my day. Reading, for me, is all about connection, and when people take the time to tell me that my novel made them feel something, I’m thrilled beyond words.
Please follow Tanya Egan Gibson on Twitter @tanyaegangibson.
Follow this link to purchase How to Buy a Love of Reading
Guest Blogger Carolina Ciucci
on The Name of the Rose
I knew next to nothing about The Name of the Rose when I first decided to read it. I knew it was set during the Middle Ages and that it was an accurate portrayal of the way people perceived the world back then, but I had no idea what the plot was, what the characters were like, and so on and so forth. You could have told me I’d be reading a chronicle about the slow progression from the Roman latifundium and into the feudal system and I’d have most likely believed you. And I certainly wouldn’t have imagined it to be both a gripping thriller and a thought-provoking treatise on philosophy and theology all at once.
The story is told by an elderly monk who reminisces on the week he spent accompanying William of Baskerville, his mentor and father’s friend, at a monastery. Baskerville’s initial mission is to intercede before the Pope’s men in order to get him to acknowledge Franciscan poverty as a legitimate Christian doctrine. However, he’s quickly swept up into a whirlwind of deaths, all mysterious and apparently all connected to the abbey’s library- a library the otherwise very open abbot has forbidden them to visit.
Everything about this book blew me away. From the painstakingly detailed description of a XIV century West European abbey and life within its walls, to the portrayal of the conflicts shaking the once upon a time unmovable Christian Church right to the core, passing through the way it reflected upon books; it was all so brilliantly crafted and depicted that it left me staring at the final page for several minutes before closing the book, more than just a little dazed and not quite sure how I was feeling. Now, a couple of days later, I think I’m ready to elaborate on the effects The Name of the Rose had on me.
Image of Library found on blog.christianitytoday.com
On one hand, it helped me get a better grasp on notions I had seen in class but had not really understood, finding them much too abstract and complicated at the time. It was an invaluable company to my Europe I and Spanish Lit classes, only a lot more fun and a lot less restrictive- don’t get me wrong, I like the material I read for class. But my inner ‘I-want-to-read-what-I-want-when-I-want-it’ rebellious reader is often put off when I’m on a deadline. Especially when I’m supposed to analyze and dissect texts I’d like to absorb slowly, at my own pace. So yeah, it was a relief to sink into a work of fiction I didn’t have to analyze, one I could simply enjoy and wonder and work out theories about. And of course, because of that, I absorbed said notions, said mindset, without even realizing that I was.
And then there’s the numerous passages dedicated to books. Oh, my. I didn’t just read these, I devoured them. Books were still such a novelty back in the XIV century, and it was enthralling to explore different opinions on something that is now an intrinsic part of my life, hell, an intrinsic part of who I am, but was once almost a taboo. It made me wonder- Why do I read? Why is the information contained in a book so precious to me? It reminded me of the fact that a book is nothing without a reader, that the words held in it are nothing but syntax if somebody doesn’t open it and is willing to give it the time and effort required to make it something more. It showed me, more than anything, the unique relationship between writer, reader and book. It reminded me of what a powerful, somewhat threatening tool knowledge is- and therefore why books have been both cherished and destroyed throughout history. The ‘library-as-a-labyrinth’ metaphor will certainly go down in my books as one of the most beautiful, accurate descriptions of the mysteries and wonders a library holds.
This was my first time reading this novel, but it won’t be the last. I want to come back to it after taking Latin next semester, after learning more about medieval politics and religion, after having the time to let the seeds it planted grow and want more.
To Eden Phillpotts
Agatha Christie opened her novel Peril at End House with a dedication:
To Eden Phillpotts
to whom I shall always be grateful for
his friendship and the encouragement
he gave me many years ago
Immediately, I was intrigued.
Eden Phillpotts
Eden Phillpotts was an English author, poet, and dramatist born in 1862 in India. He lived near the Christie household when Agatha was young and still unpublished. She visited him reguarlary under the advisement of her mother, so he could mentor her and guide her writing into a lifelong career. Phillpotts was the first professional writer to read any of Agatha’s unpublished pieces.
A letter survives of some of the advice he had to bestow on the young budding writer:
“You have a great feeling for dialogue… You should stick to gay, natural dialogue. Try and cut all the moralizations out of your novels; you are much too fond of them and nothing is more boring to read. Try and leave your characters alone, so that they can speak for themselves, instead of always rushing in to tell them what they ought to say, or to explain to the reader what they mean by what they are saying. That is for the reader to judge for himself.” ( www.poirot.us )
Phillpotts’ family moved from India when he was three years old. At seventeen, he worked as a clerk for an insurance company, where he fell in love with theatre and decided to become an actor. When he realized acting wasn’t for him, he pursued a career in writing instead. So young when he began, its no wonder he enjoyed encouraging another young talent when he saw one. Phillpotts’ own first publication was his poem “The Witches Cauldron” which kicked off a slew of published articles, reviews, short stories, plays, and novels. Later, he was know to also write under the name Harrington Hext.
Phillpotts was known to befriend many of history’s greats: Arthur Conan Doyal, Henry James, George Bernard Shaw, Arnold Bennett, Jerome K. Jerome, and obviously Agatha Christie. As a sign of both friendship and his faith in Christie’s writing ability, Phillpotts introduced Christie to his agent at Hughes Massie. The dedicated novel Peril at End House was the seventh in the Hercule Poirot series, published in 1932. Its nice to know that she fit in a dedication to a friend and advisor long before his death in 1960, many times friends are not so lucky to appreciate each other prior to memorial memos.
My Very First Giveaway!
I received a copy of Elizabeth George’s Believing the Lie in December 2011 from Dutton Books. Its a beautiful hard back, released to the public January 2012. It has been read twice, but is in excellent condition, and although I am a horder at heart and would like to hold onto and cherish every book I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading, I decided I would use this copy to host my first giveaway. (Get my hands dirty with all this fabulous giveaway excitement, so to speak.)
The conditions of this giveaway are that you (in good faith and on scout’s honor) follow me on twitter, follow my blog, and leave a comment on this post that includes your email address. If you don’t leave your email address I will have no way of contacting you if you win!
This book is the latest in the Inspector Lynley series, but you don’t have to have read previous books in the series to get into the story, George tells you all you need to know. It is the first book in the series that I have read, and I plan to read more once I am done with my Agatha Christie Crime Collection marathon. Believing the Lie follows the investigation of a supposed drowning on a family estate of a clan full of secrets and shocking lies. George’s character development skills are surprisingly detailed and thorough for this genre, and its a good book for general fiction lovers to read if they want to dip their toes in the mystery section for a few days. The 608 pages goes fast.
Along with this book, I will ship a small Scentsy surprise in the form of a Scent Circle. If you don’t know what that is, check out my website here, and fall in love: https://akklemm.scentsy.us/Scentsy. Winner will be announced and contacted on April 30th. Let the comments, twittering, and following begin!
Library Living
Beauty and the Beast, Disney
Every book lover has dreamed of one day living in a library.
Here is the story of a man who did.
(Prior to attending Baylor University, Benny was a Dallas Baptist University student with me. He’s a fabulous guy, with some really unique life experiences.)
Library Living: Baylor alumnus ran low on cash, used study carrel for home
Oct. 2, 2009
By Olga Gladtskov Ball Reporter
Not many Baylor students can say that they have lived in the library for six months, spent a night in a Mexican jail or organized a campaign to bring Kinky Friedman onto the Baylor campus. Baylor alumnus Benny Barrett did all of it, and more, during his time at Baylor.
Barrett’s journey to Baylor began when Dr. Gary Cook, the president of Dallas Baptist University, encouraged Barrett to go on a campus visit to Baylor to consider transferring. While on his visit, Barrett ran into Dr. Robert Sloan, then chancellor of Baylor.
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Jed Dean | Photo EditorBenny Barrett, former Baylor student who had to choose between secretly living inside Moody Memorial library or leaving Baylor, rests his head against the very carrel he lived in for almost two semesters. |
“I just walked up to him and ask him if he was Dr. Sloan because he looked like what I imagined he would look like,” Barrett said. Barrett told Sloan that he had just met an old friend of Sloan’s the week before. Sloan and Barrett discussed the friend, and Sloan invited Barrett to meet with him the next week. After the meeting, Barrett decided to attend Baylor.
Once at Baylor, Barrett ran into financial problems, causing him to research a new place to live: Moody Memorial Library. Barrett began his research in April 2006 and moved all of his belongings to his study carrel in May.
“I would show up to tests an hour late during summer session because the library opened at 9 and had to give some lame excuse about oversleeping,” Barrett said. For Barrett, the most difficult time in the library during the summer was during Fourth of July weekend, where he was not able to leave for days because the library closed for the holiday.
When the fall semester began, Barrett began to work at the library from 4 to 8 a.m. He would then sleep inside his carrel for a few hours before class.
“The libraries are important havens for study and respite, and my faculty, staff and I work hard to make them pleasant and safe student-friendly spaces,” said Pattie Orr, dean of university libraries. “I was not here at Baylor when Benny was in this difficult situation, but if I had been I would have wanted to reach out to him to see how we could help.”
Orr also said that Barrett was the only case of someone living in the library that she has heard.
“I lost weight,” Barrett said. “My eyes were always bloodshot. I would sometimes wear sunglass to class to hide it.”
Barrett hid his food, mostly consisting of Ramen noodles, behind his books. He also had a hot water heater and a sleeping bag hidden in his carrel. Barrett stopped sleeping at the library in December, when Dr. Scott Moore, associate professor in Great Texts, called him into his office.
“I explained my living arrangements to him and he got me placed in a dorm for the rest of the semester,” Barrett said. Prior to the meeting with the professor, Barrett had only told a few friends about his living conditions.
Moore said he was horrified when he found out that Barrett was living in the library. He then contacted others to help Barrett move into a dorm.
“I just got the ball rolling,” Moore said. “I called Frank Shushok (who supervised housing arrangements at the time) and said we’ve got to find this guy a dorm room. Frank called Jackie Diaz in financial aid and the folks in Campus Living and Learning, and they did all the work.”
“Friends invited me to live with them, but I didn’t want to be a leech,” Barrett said. Barrett was given a loan at the end of the semester to pay for the rest of his education.
“I found out about Benny’s secret lair in the library only from my colleague Scott Moore, who also told me that Benny was showering and changing clothes at the Student Life Center, Said Ralph Wood, university professor of theology and literature. “Moore made sure that Benny was able to get a scholarship that paid more than tuition alone.”
During his semester in the library, Barrett spent a night in a Mexican jail with his former roommate Osione Itegboje. Itegboje took Barrett to Mexico with him so that Itegboje, who is from Nigeria, could renew his visa. However, the pair was sent to jail when a guard discovered that Itegboje lacked a Mexican visa.
“It was a crazy experience,” Barrett said. “A whirlwind of a weekend.”
Itegboje and Barrett were released the next day and told that they could not enter Mexico for a year, under the threat of six months in a Mexican prison.
While on campus, Barrett fought another battle — governmental candidate, novelist and country singer Kinky Friedman had asked Barrett if he could arrange for him to speak on campus. Barrett met Friedman at a Willie Nelson concert, and Friedman had expressed interest in speaking at Baylor. Barrett then founded Baylor Independents and began the process to get Friedman to Baylor.
“I have never been called to the principal’s office, Pat Neff, so many times,” Barrett said, “No one wanted him to speak on campus.” Barrett convinced administrators that if Friedman was not allowed to speak, Baylor would be showing favoritism toward Governor Rick Perry, who had already spoken at Chapel.
“They finally let him come on campus but wouldn’t let me have a reception for him so I had it at the Judge Baylor House, which isn’t associated with Baylor, but many people thought it was when they came,” Barrett said. The Noze brothers awarded Friedman with the honor of “Yellow Noze of Texas.”
Barrett, who graduated in 2008, still visits campus often, walking his teacup Chihuahua, Malcolm X, and spending time at his favorite place on campus: the library.
“Would that there were more Benny Barretts,” Wood said.
http://www.baylor.edu/lariat/news.php?action=story&story=62329
Anakalian Whims 