Category: Language News

No excuses book blogs…

Illustration from The Seattle Times
Illustration from The Seattle Times

Please don’t ever say to me you can’t find SOMETHING to read. After we’ve exhausted the possibilities in my classroom library, and in the school’s library, you may want to check out these blogs. In reality, you should be checking them out anyway to keep up with new titles, authors you love, new authors, new genres, etc.:

Featured book blog: http://missprint.wordpress.com/

Glancing over a few of the reviews on this blog, I had the feeling that here is someone who really reads the books, and enjoys YA (young adult) literature (that would be you, kids).

One of my other favorite book blogs is: Dog Ear, which goes under the URL: http://nicolepoliti.wordpress.com/

Wannabes, posers, and the real deal.

This is something that’s been nagging at me a little bit–have you ever noticed that a hit book will come out, and then there comes a slew of wannabes? For example, when the Harry Potter series was published, and J.K. Rowling made more money than the Queen, publishers would have sold their own mothers to publish titles that were very similar genres and plots. Twilight has bitten millions of readers, and now anyone with a keyboard is dreaming up other traditional monsters to transform into anti-heroes with ripped abs and swooning heroines.

Well, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Like plots, readers are, more or less, individuals. And even in a vat of vanilla ice cream, there are nuances to be found. (There’s French vanilla, homemade, Mexican vanilla, and birthday cake vanilla.) So, just because one kind of vanilla isn’t to your liking, perhaps another will be. And maybe you can have your cake and eat it, too–meaning, you can find novels that entertain, and add a little more to your life than before you read.

No matter what anyone tries to convince me otherwise, I still go back to Harry. I will defend the Potter series–no amount of sparkling vampires can compare. Sorry, Ms. Meyer–I know you’re secure enough in your belief in your talents and your bank account to take a little criticism. But it’s a flick of the wrist and a know-it-all bookworm witch, and jester/joker twins who enchant me.

the ring

However, if you really want to go back to some authors who influenced the fantasy genre the most, you’ll have to go to the kings: Tolkien and Lewis. My grandmother was a fan of CS Lewis, but I never really delved into his works as much as I should; but Tolkien…oh yeah. The Hobbit, and the Lord of  the Rings trilogy was my first taste of being transported to another time and place, completely and wholly, in my mind.

From the Writer’s Almanac, January 3, 2010:

 

It’s the birthday of J.R.R. Tolkien, (books by this author) born John Ronald Reuel Tolkien in Bloemfontein, South Africa (1892). His father, a banker, had moved to South Africa for work, but he died when Tolkien was four years old, and his mother moved the family back to England. They lived in a rural village outside the city of Birmingham. Train tracks went right beyond their house and young Tolkien was drawn to the Welsh names on the sides of coal cars, names like Nantyglo and Senghenydd. And his mom tutored him in Latin, and as a young child he was fascinated by the way that language worked. When he was eight years old, his mom converted to Catholicism, and her family was so upset that they disowned her. Now the family, which hadn’t had much money anyway, had even less.

And then, when Tolkien was 12 years old, his mother died from complications of diabetes, and he and his younger brother were put in the care of a Catholic priest. He went to a good school, started inventing his own languages, and formed a literary group called the T.C.B.S., friends who exchanged ideas and critiqued each other’s work. He graduated, got into Oxford. But before he started, he took a summer trip with friends hiking in the Swiss Alps, and much later when he wrote about Bilbo Baggins hiking the Misty Mountains, he used his memory of that summer in the Alps.

But as a teenager starting at Oxford, he had no desire to write fantasy novels. Instead, he was interested in language. He studied Classics, Old English, Finnish, Welsh, and the Germanic languages. He went to fight in WWI, spent four months on the Western Front and then got trench fever and was sent home to recover. All but one of his friends from the T.C.B.S. literary group were killed in the war, and to honor them and also to help work through his own awful war experiences, he decided to write down some stories. They were stories about elves and gnomes, but they were not cheery fairy tales — they were filled with war and violence and trenches dug under battlefields.

Rome wasn't written about in a day…

This writer obviously had a burning question that became the focus of his life’s work. The question is: what will be your passion and focus?

From the Writer’s Almanac:

It was on this day in 1764 that Edward Gibbon (books by this author) thought up the idea of writing The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. His six-volume work, published between the years 1776 and 1788, covered more than a thousand years of Roman history, from 180 A.D. to the fall of Constantinople.

Gibbon wrote in his autobiography: “It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted fryers were singing Vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City first started to my mind. After Rome has kindled and satisfied the enthusiasm of the Classic pilgrim, his curiosity for all meaner objects insensibly subsides.”

Rome had cast a spell on Gibbon. He wrote that he was not very “susceptible [to] enthusiasms” and never pretended to be enthusiastic when he didn’t actually feel it. “But at the distance of twenty-five years I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered the Eternal City. After a sleepless night, I trod with a lofty step the ruins of the Forum; each memorable spot where Romulus stood, or Tully spoke, or Caesar fell, was at once present to my eye; and several days of intoxication were lost or enjoyed before I could descend to a cool and minute investigation.”

Gibbon became known as “the first modern historian.” He tried to write objectively, and in departure from his predecessors, he relied heavily on primary source documents rather than on secondary sources such as official Church histories. He made extensive — and eccentric — use of footnotes.

Gibbon argued that the Roman Empire’s decline and fall were a result of a couple of major factors: changing military practices and the spread of Christianity. Rome had begun outsourcing its military jobs, hiring paid mercenaries from around the world to defend the Empire, and Gibbon argued that this made them susceptible to the “barbarian invasions” to which Rome fell victim. Additionally, he argued that Christianity’s emphasis on the heavenly afterlife reduced the incentive for Romans to sacrifice for the cause of their Empire and the accompanying earthly riches and glory.

http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/romans/

Reader's Bill of Rights, and Batgirl was a librarian?

Batgirl was a librarian...who knew?
Batgirl was a librarian...who knew?

  Defend your rights as a reader! Whether or not you choose to wear a purple polyester costume and mask is entirely up to you! 

 From: The American Library Association (ALA)

Everyone has the right to read. Here’s The Reader’s Bill of Rights to help you make the most of that right: Readers have:

  1. The right to not read.
  2. The right to skip pages.
  3. The right to not finish.
  4. The right to reread.
  5. The right to read anything.
  6. The right to escapism.
  7. The right to read anywhere.
  8. The right to browse.
  9. The right to read out loud.
  10. The right not to defend your tastes.

—Pennac, Daniel, Better Than Life, Coach House Press, 1996.

I love them all, but am especially fond of #10 – the right NOT to defend your tastes…think about it – you read for your OWN LIFE, not someone else’s!

Still looking for something to read? Check out: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/teenreading/trw/trw2007/booklists07.cfm

Fail.

No, I don’t mean you’re all going to fail.

What I’m referring to is a new use of the word, a verb, “fail.” A verb is an action word. It’s something someone or something (the subject) does, did, or will do. Example: I failed my math test. (Bummer.)

Now, “fail” is also being used as a noun, or interjection. An interjection is an exclamatory remark, such as, “hey!” Fail has come to mean something didn’t work.

Example:

My cousin Lee's cup of coffee, as posted on his Facebook page
My cousin Lee's cup of coffee, as posted on his Facebook page

He titled this photo, “Fail.”

Coincidentally, and with a great amount of serendipity,  this morning when I opened up my Visual Thesaurus account, there was an article about the word fail. Along with that, there was a link to a New York Times article on the Buzzwords of 2008. This led me to think about how language changes over time, sometimes slowly, sometimes overnight. I was pleased to see Jack Black’s Kung Fu Panda “skadoosh” made the cut.

Skedoosh....
Skadoosh...

Changes in language sneak up on us. We don’t really keep track consciously, and then, voila! We’re using words we weren’t a year, a month, or even a day ago.  Think of developing your vocabulary that way, too. Add new words, use them, understand them, and build your brain. Think about it: when someone says “skadoosh,” you know exactly what they’re talking about, because you’ve seen the movie, you have BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE, it’s part of your SCHEMA.   The more you know, well, the more you can know.