To Kill a Mockingbird, My English Teacher, and Terry Pratchett

“Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.” ― Terry Pratchett

My English teacher has a lot of quirks when it comes to books (which is probably in the job description, but bear with me). For instance, she cannot go into a book store without buying a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, and then giving it to either a student or a random person she thinks should have it. She worships that book, and would marry Atticus in a heartbeat if she was single and had the opportunity.


She also never keeps novels. She reads them, sure, but after she's finished, she gives them away.


I was thinking about that today, and how I own about 300 books, most of which are novels. Why am I hanging onto them, when almost everything I read is from the library or my book club?


Some of them I just haven't read yet.
Some of them are gifts from my grandma, and you can't really just give away a book if my grandma gives it to you. She's just that kind of person.
Some of them are ARCs, so it's harder to give them away.
Some of them are things me/my sisters have/will need for school.
Some of them I want to reread at some point, or save for my eventual children.
Some of them I just need to own. Need. My English teacher is not a fan of Harry Potter (and in telling us this she referred to it as science fiction-- I about exploded), so she apparently does not run into this problem. I am mentally incapable of giving away my copies. Just...no.


And then there are the rest--about 30--which I took to the used book store today. I felt immensely satisfied.


...And then I promptly spent all of the resulting store credit (plus some) on a copy of every Terry Pratchett book they had.


Funny thing: I'm looking at Goodreads' list of Terry Pratchett quotes (because I haven't actually read anything by him yet-- he's just next on the list), and I found this:

“If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you.” ― Terry Pratchett

More About That WSJ Article

“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” - Audre Lorde


About a month ago I wrote a post concerning Meghan Cox Gurdon's article in The Wall Street Journal on the subject of increasing darkness in YA literature. This article instigated a massive Twitter campaign lead by Maureen Johnson against some of her points, and today I listened to the two women debate the matter on NPR.


Maureen did such an excellent job that I was literally applauding at one point, and several librarians and other authors (one of which was mentioned in the WSJ article in question) called in to share their thoughts. The third special guest of the segment was Madeline Kemper, a 13 year old recruited from Figment.  Let it be noted that I am very, very, very, very envious of Madeline Kemper.


One of the callers said that while some YA books are very dark and not for everyone, some teens need them- either so they don't feel so alone or to understand what their friends are going through- and that Gurdon has no right to call for those books to be taken away from them. Gurdon replied that she was doing no such thing. Because saying that such books are too dark to be on the market isn't calling for books to be taken away at all.


As I said in my first post on this subject, it is one thing to acknowledge that certain YA books contain things that not everyone would want to read, but it's quite another to say that those books shouldn't even be available in the first place. And that's something Maureen hinted at but never actually said.


What about the teens who don't cut themselves and have never been the victims of sexual abuse and don't know anyone who does/has, Gurdon asks? Aren't these books just glamorizing terrible things or jading us to the seriousness? I am one of these teens, and while I have been laughed at for apparently giving a summary of one such book with apparent casualness, I do not for one second devalue their existence nor the importance of the issues discussed. I can just talk about them more easily. How can that be considered a bad thing?


When a book is labeled YA, that yellow and red sticker does not say "This book is appropriate for 12 year olds." YA is a wide genre with protagonists ages 12-18. This does not mean that every YA book is intended for all of the ages within that range. Magic Tree House and Harry Potter are at entirely different reading levels, but they're still (at least the first few HPs) both shelved under Juvenile Fiction.


Then there's the whole argument of "parents don't want their kids reading x y and z." Gurdon mentioned something about wanting to "prolong childhood." I have no idea what that means, but keeping kids ignorant just to keep them sweet and innocent and pure is ridiculous. I'm not saying we should hand 12 year olds books full of violence, sex, or other potentially-disturbing content. I'm saying parents shouldn't limit their kids' reading just because they want them to remain their little babies forever.


However, if the reason behind the parental veto is that said parent knows their child (actually knows) well enough to know that he or she isn't ready for a given book, then that's fine. It's not a matter of "he/she has never heard of cutting before so he/she shouldn't read a book about cutting." It's a matter of "my child isn't emotionally mature enough to be able to handle this new information well." There are books I'd never recommend to my 12 year old sister that I read when I was her age because she's bothered by things I took in stride- and that's fine.


I've said it before that I read a few books in middle school that would have horrified many parents if they knew I was reading such things, and kind of disturbed me, too. But I read them and that can't be changed and after I had time to process said books, I was fine. There are things that will be shocking regardless of how old you are when you first discover them, and as much as we as a society prefer to protect our kids from anything that might make them less than happy, it's a part of life. And I'd rather have my kid read about those things in a book and then talk with him or her about it through the medium of literature than have them find out in a less "safe" or more embarrassing ("Olivia's Offspring doesn't know what ____ is hahahahahaha") way.


As for the caller who said "kids are moving straight from Spongebob to Twilight," perhaps I'm not the best counterexample to this claim considering that I started watching Spongebob after I read Twilight...but Daphne Unfeasible (Maureen Johnson's agent's alter ego) already wrote a great post about it. That caller really was just trying to promote his own book on air, which rather annoys me.


And then there's Scott Westerfeld's post about how not only do parents have a responsibility to talk to their kids about books rather than freaking out about articles such as this one, but teens have a responsibility to share their reading with their parents. To talk about books and what they mean to us.

Why I Read

A few days ago I was half-asked exactly why I read. 

A few minutes ago I was putting together a new Abundance of Quotes post and was looking through my Writings on Writing quote book, and two of the quotes I found described the answer-I-never-gave to that question fairly comprehensively, so I thought I'd make them into a post of their own.

"The man who adds the life of books to the actual life of everyday lives the life of the whole race. The man without books lives only the life of one individual." - Jessie Lee Bennett, 1923

Which pretty much sums up why I read. When I was first learning way back in the Time Before My Memory Begins (or close enough to it), I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about it. Then my dad said to me something like "Books allow you to explore whole new worlds." -- and I was hooked.

And here are the other reasons: "The book is the thing. Literature was meant to give pleasure, to excite interest, to banish solitude, to make the fireside more attractive than the tavern, to give joy to those who are still capable of joy, and--why should we not admit it?-- to drug sorrow and divert thought." - Augustine Birrell, 1896

The only other reason would be the exposure to ideas-- books make me think about things I otherwise would not and/or present new perspectives, which I suppose could be sorted under the first quote.

So there you have it: exploration/thought, escapism, and pleasure.

What's The Point?

"Reading is the inhale and writing is the exhale." - Donalyn Miller, courtesy of my elementary school's librarian


I love that quote. So eloquent. So true. Such nice imagery.


WARNING: Spoilers of a book you're likely to never read unless you're a sophomore or have yet to become one!


In English this morning, we were discussing how we felt about the end of the book we were reading: Things Fall Apart, in which the main character commits suicide at the end.


Someone in my class, upon being called on, said "I don't really understand what the point of the book is if the main character dies at the end."


I think I'll stick that in again for extra emphasis. 


"I don't really understand what the point of the book is if the main character dies at the end."


My immediate thought, which I did not voice due to how mean it is: "Oh yeah? Well I don't understand what the point of your life is if you're going to die at the end."


This is the problem with Hollywood. If there isn't a happy ending, there's no point. We want emotional gratification.
The primary purpose of a book is not (or should not be) to entertain (in this case meaning to provide emotional gratification). It should be to make people think. Entertainment is certainly a huge bonus, and its the only way to get a book sold (unless you're writing nonfiction), but it is not needed in order to have a good book. 
Now for the ideal person, a thought provoking book is also almost by definition an entertaining book, but such is not the case.


WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE, and I know that sounds really optimistic and all, but it's true, and if we don't think our lives matter despite that gloomy fact, then we're in some deep waters without boats or gills or any other manners of survival.

My Jingle Spells 4 Song: I Wonder As I Wander

“Like all great cities, Amsterdam brims with contradiction. Maps of the Red Light District are dominated by a church, Swans swim up the canal while on the banks of that canal, a woman stands half naked in front of a glass door waiting for customers. Amsterdam is both the city that hid Anne Frank and the city that gave her up. An ancient city perpetually experiencing new construction, A city full of boats that separate you from water and contain water. These same contradictions are in all of us; they’re in me, at least. And so I forgot that I had been awake for 30 hours and kept walking. Grateful to be a little boat, full of water, still floating.” - John Green


I look at the Stats page and see that I've gotten about 70 views today, which is WAY more than normal. By following the links that those viewers followed to me backwards, I discovered that the song I submitted to Jingle Spells 4 is now available for download. Apparently they didn't want me to go by my name after all (they thought it sounded too much like Oliver Wood of the Gryffindor Quidditch team), so I'm the one labeled "Phoenix Song." 
If you can't stand my singing (it's hard for me to tell exactly how bad it is, since I'm more attuned to my own screw-ups than others'), I will be posting a lyric-less version...at some point soon.


So that's exciting. Hello, people from The Leaky Cauldron!


I think it's been awhile since I talked in detail about a book I'm reading. Last night, sometime before midnight but not too far off, I started The Unseen by Alexandra Sokoloff in a vain attempt to get to sleep. Reading never makes me tired. I suppose I was really just bored.
It takes place in North Carolina, which makes it that much more interesting- to read about my area of the state from a perspective designed for outsiders. More specifically, it takes place at Duke, a place to which I've never been.


The main character, Laurel, is a psychology professor who has just moved to NC to escape L.A., where she had a premonition via dream that her fiancee was cheating on her...a premonition that came true, right down to the last detail.
She discovers 700 boxes full of parapsychology (telepathy, ESP, etc.) research in the basement that has just been unsealed for public viewing. She starts looking into it.


That is what I know as of ~p. 40. While my parents are rather skeptical (which is the nice version of "they flat-out deny") anything of the ESP sort, I have no idea what I think on the subject other than that there are lots of lies and wishful thinking within the field. I figure it could definitely be possible-- just difficult to quantify and measure. Since that's what this book is about... you can see why I like it.


All of her books are very dark. The Harrowing (my favorite) is about five teens (college-age?) alone at a boarding school over the holidays with a malevolent Jewish demon. The Price is about a girl dying of cancer and a deal with Satan, and Book of Shadows deals with a murder that may or may not involve witchcraft (which sounds cliche, but it was actually quite good). Knowing those of you who I know as I do, I thought you might like to take a look at them.

Time For Some Humor

In other news, I got another rejection. Now it's pretty much time to hit the envelopes.
In other other news, elementary school writing club is definitely a go for this year. (Yay.) We're hoping to start in time to do the NaNoWriMo YWP, but I don't have any more details other than that.


I've been hideously good at procrastinating for the past 2 months, so those secret projects I was working on...still aren't anywhere near finished. Hopefully I'll work on that this weekend, but I might just end up reading and playing Elderscrolls IV: Oblivion more than is probably healthy. 


Remember when we were talking in writing club (and I posted about it as well, for those of you who weren't there) about how just because something's fictional doesn't mean it doesn't have a basis in reality/doesn't affect you?
Two days ago, after reading about 100 pages of Mists of Avalon, I was asking my mom why the nuns kept telling people to "pray for so and so's soul" when just a few lines earlier they'd been completely confident he was already in Heaven?
She sighed with exasperation and said "It's just a book, Olivia."
I left.
She doesn't like it when I ask questions about religion. She also doesn't like it when I ask (her) abstract questions in general. Apparently they don't "apply to real life." I disagree, but whatever. I have another parent to discuss abstract things with.


And speaking of that other parent...haha...I have a new story in mind starring a caricature of him-- greatly exaggerated and narrowed, but based off of him, nonetheless. It is funny. Or at least it will be once I've written it.

On Reading

"The beauty of reading (is that) you can do whatever the hell you want and it doesn’t matter at all. You can shut the book and return to normal life at any time. So many more things can be experienced through books than would be possible, practical, or legal in reality."

A Few Little Things

I've been assigned my first actual story to write for class. It's too long the way it is now for the word limit, so I'm going to transform it into more of a bedtime story type thing.
A few more chapters of Clockwork to come on Wednesday. :D Eager for your feedback.
I recommend the latest vlogbrothers video on the hypocrisy of big corporations.

Reading wise, I've got about 300 pages left of The Eye of the World. Next...I might read Dune, or The Time Traveler's Wife, or Stardust or one of my nonfiction books, or the next Wheel of Time book.

Writing Elementary School Style

I've made it my goal to either edit or write two chapters of The Clockwork Experiment per day that I either don't have school or get out at 12:00 or earlier. In other words, that's weekends, early release days, and this past week.
If you look at the time stamp of this post, it will occur to you that I should probably be in school right now. It's a Friday that's not a holiday, and it's almost 10:30. I'm not sick, and I'm not skipping. It's exam week, and I completed and passed all of mine, so I have the day off (yes!).
Since  I didn't complete the above goal for any of the days this week, I'm at my old elementary school where my mom works catching up on the chapters I need to do. She's not in her office today, so I've got full run of the computer. The only downside is that YouTube is blocked here (oh no, whatever will I do?).
I might have mentioned this in a previous post, but I'll say it again in case I haven't: it turns out that I already have a good deal of the infrastructure needed to give the robots a more prominent role (no spoilers for those who weren't there last week). The problem was: I wasn't doing anything with it. I dropped all of these suspicious hints, but they never came to fruition. The entire plot line the title is based around never came to fruition according to the outline taped to my wall at home next to my computer. What kind of a novel is that? Not a very well planned one, that's for sure.
The good news is that I haven't had much trouble changing things around (yet). Actually, most of the changes I've had to make so far are phrasing and grammatical stuff. The plot elements that need altering haven't even come into play yet (as of the beginning of Chapter 15, which is where I'm at now). Note: my chapters tend to be short. Some are scarecely more than a page long.
The even better good news is that I've found I still really like the story itself. I like the idea, I like the characters, and I like the world. My dad is always worrying I'll get bored with an idea before I finish it. So far, he's been wrong. Out of all of the ideas I've abandoned (or put on hold until further notice), it wasn't because I was bored with it. There's always been a different reason. I plan on staying in the Capital for a while yet.
It's pretty fun being here at the school. I kind of feel like a "proper writer" with my mug of hot chocolate and half a cinnamon roll. :) I know there really isn't a definition of a "proper writer," but that doesn't stop me from enjoying it. All I'm missing is a MacBookPro and coffee instead of hot chocolate.
My old principal is giving me a hard time about growing up (actually, he was the assistant principal when I was here), as well as some of the other teachers who knew me before I graduated.
Being here brings back all sorts of memories, both good and bad. I miss coming over here in the afternoons after middle school let out. I'll be coming in for the afternoon on Monday as well, to hang out with my friends who are also teacher's children like we used to do. I just hope there will be some chicken in the teacher's lounge like there was that one time...man, was that good chicken.

When you guys were in elementary school, did they talk to you about personality types? (social, artistic, investigative, and one or two other ones). I never saw that until CFNC, but the video my mom's putting into the computer right now for a teacher's National Boards exam is of a lesson about that.

Speaking of which, I'd like to talk about our way of life for a few paragraphs.

Before we start school, our parents prepare us for school by teaching us things. This is all well and good.
Once we get to preschool, it's about preparing us for kindergarten. More about kindergarten later. The latter half of elementary school is filled with emphasis on "in middle school, such and such and such. It's my job to prepare you for middle school." In middle school, from the very first month, it's about preparing for high school. Now that I'm in high school, all of the emphasis is on preparing for college or "the workforce," or whatever it is we plan on doing post-graduation. I've never been to college, of course, but I'd bet lots of money that the emphasis there is on preparing the student for Adult Life. According to commercials on TV and tips on working I've seen at school, it is considered wise to begin saving for retirement as soon as you start work. If/when one gets married and has children, it becomes about preparing the children for their lives. Where's the actual living happening? It's all about preparing for whatever comes next. What about actually doing stuff just for the sake of doing it? This seems wrong. Preparing is good, but shouldn't we have a chance to stop preparing and jump into the pool? Or, since this is a writer's blog, stop prewriting and begin with chapter 1?

Now about kindergarten. In kindergarten, we had this thing called DEAR time (Drop Everything And Read). There were a few problems concerning this.

1. Many of the kids in kindergarten can't read, or can't read well
2. We were asked to bring in a mat or a towel to lay down on
3. They turned off the lights

How was I supposed to read when the lights were off? This was just a disguised version of Nap Time. I don't know if anyone actually slept, but it was awful for me. I had books. I wanted to read them. But I couldn't see a thing! Fortunately, I found a solution. I would spread my towel out next to the door, so I'd have a sliver of light coming in from the hallway.
In preschool, we also had DEAR. There was a basket of picture books (many of them pertaining to Bible stories, since my preschool was at a church), yet they still turned off the lights. Our classroom happened to have many big windows with open blinds, so it wasn't as much of a problem. Unlike in kindergarten, however, I didn't read during DEAR time in preschool. I could read, but it was much more fun to look at the pictures in the Zoobooks. I couldn't read the Zoobooks, but the pictures of hippos running full-throttle at people with their mouths wide open were fascinating.

Speaking of reading (I've got all day here, so this post is going to be longer than most), you know how kids learn to read by reading aloud to their parents or whoever is teaching them? I always thought that you had to read out loud. When I saw my mom sitting on the couch with a book, not saying anything, I was confused. The conversation, to my memory, went a lot like this:

Me: Mommy, what are you doing?
Mom: I'm reading.
Me: But you're not saying anything.
Mom: I'm reading inside my head.
Me: (incredulously) Oh.

Obviously, I remember learning to read and that there was a time before I could read, but I also remember looking at words, and not seeing them. There's a sign near my house that says "Terminex," and I remember a time when the sign was an orange blur. Then, somewhere in my memory, it becomes words. Is that normal, or do most kids not pay attention to words before they can read?

On a related note, I've started reading Robert Jordan's The Eye of the World for the 6th time. I've never finished it before. I'm currently at Chapter 17 or so (less than 1/4 of the way through), and this is the farthest I've ever gotten. Have I posted this before? I don't think so, but maybe. Every time I started, I liked the book and wanted to finish, but it never happened. I'm noticing that there's some similarities between it and Lord of the Rings and Eragon, but it's not really bothering me. There are 11 books in the series. I'm taking a break after this one to read some books my friend David has recommended to me (Parallel Worlds and Hyperspace, both written by the same physicist (David's favorite) whose name I can't remember because it's hard to pronounce.

I've sort of run out of things to write about now, which is probably good, since this post is pretty long and I have more Clockwork to do.
I will add one last completely unrelated thing that I'm pretty excited about: I scored a 100 on my World History exam (yay!).

Shelfari Widget!

I've just installed the Shelfari widget. Now you can all see what I'm reading. I try to keep it updated...

Now, about Shelfari: Shelfari is a website on which you have a book shelf. Your shelf is organized into three categories: what you plan on reading, what you are reading, and what you have read. You add books to your shelf simply by searching for them and then clicking "add". When that book's status changes, click on "Edit" to update it with things like your review of the book and stuff.

You can make friends with people, too. It's like a social network for book lovers. Fun, right? (I think so!)
The problem is, that I have read far too many books to take the time and add all of them. So I just add as I go. If I finish one book in a series, I add the rest of them as well.

Enjoy my mini shelf!

-Olivia