Wait, I only get to pick 10??

You've probably noticed  a recent trend on Facebook these days of people posting lists of 10 books that have influenced their lives and then nominating certain friends to make their own lists. I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone tagged me, and it was my friend Sarah from my work book club who got me a couple days ago.

There's a couple rules associated with this. "Don't take more than a few minutes and do not think too hard. They do not have to be the "right" books or great works of literature, just ones that have affected you in some way."

Pish, rules are for losers. If I want to over think something (and I always want to over think things) I'm going to go ahead and do it. So why make a simple list in a status update when I can instead write lots and lots of words about one of my favorite topics? Books, that is. So in a loose chronological order, here are 10 books that have affected me and are pretty much responsible for the current course of my life.

1.  The Berenstain Bears and the Messy Room by Stan and Jan Berenstain

2.  Kristy's Great Idea (The Babysitters Club #1) by Ann M. Martin

3.  From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L Konigsburg

4.  D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths by Ingri d'Aulaire and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire

5.  The Dragons of Autumn Twilight (Dragonlance Chronicles #1) by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman

6.  The Eye of the World (Wheel of Time #1) by Robert Jordan

7.  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter #1) by J.K. Rowling

8.  Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

9.  World War Z by Max Brooks

10.  Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

1.  The Berenstain Bears and the Messy Room.: The first books I remember actively and independently reading were The Berenstain Bear books. I loved the pictures, the stories, the lessons, and how all the characters (including the parents) weren't perfect and often messed up. Sister Bear could be an insufferable know-it-all, Brother Bear acted like a jerk to his little sister, Papa Bear couldn't stay away from the treats...even the mom had some issues (and obviously questionable fashion sense). The Messy Room was always my favorite...mostly because I loved seeing how they organized everything at the end in different labeled containers. I guess it was the beginning of my OCD.

2.  Kristy's Great Idea: Oh, god, the Babysitters Club. It was my gateway drug to Scholastic books. Every month I would get myself to the bookstore for the latest book in the series and I even ordered a bunch from the forms in the back of the books. When that box from Scholastic arrived in the mail it was like Christmas Day. And after I outgrew the Babysitters Club...Sweet Valley High was right there waiting for me.

3.  From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler: This book hit so many of my tween fantasy buttons. Kids run away from their boring suburban existence and live in a MUSEUM. And! Solve a mystery about a beautiful statute, basically saving the day. But saving the day because of their smarts. Guess how they were able to make money? By taking baths in the museum fountain and scooping up all the change people threw in the water. Of course, this was back when a cup of coffee was like 10 cents, but still. How cool is that??

4.  D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths: I went through a HUGE Greek myth phase around middle school. I wanted to read every Greek myth I could get my hands on and this book was my favorite. The stories were well told and the pictures were awesome. Nowadays we have Myths Retold, but circa 1992? This book was my jam. In fact, it's still sitting on my bookshelf (I actually own physical copies of all these books listed here, in the editions pictured).

5.  Dragons of Autumn Twilight: Talk about your gateway drugs...this was my first real fantasy book. We're talking dragons, wizards, elves, dwarves, all your basic Dungeons and Dragons style fantasy elements are in this book. And I loved it. I remember the guy who lent it to me in 8th grade literally saying, "this book will change your life" and me stroking the cover reverently in response. You would think it was the freaking holy grail or something. But you know what? He was right. It did change my life; I loved it and have been a solid fantasy nerd ever since. 

6.  The Eye of the World: And then we come to Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. The Eye of the World was gifted to me at Christmas by my stepmother, probably around 1994. By New Years I had devoured it and the next two in the series. I spent the next....oh, say 18 years reading this series. Jordan died before he finished, but Brandon Sanderson took up the reins and crafted a brilliant ending (basically achieving the impossible). Despite a loss of momentum in the later books as the characters and subplots moved further and farther away from one another, this fantasy series has been a HUGE part of life. The release of the last book was kind of a big deal for me.

7:  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: I got on the Harry Potter train kind of late. I was already in college (I think the Christmas of my freshman year in 1998) when I read the first three books. I remember the son of my William and Mary Women's Chorus director (Jamie B. shout out!) went as Harry for Halloween that year, and while his costume was adorable...I had no idea what the hell he was supposed to be. A wizard? With glasses? And a weird scar who chased after a gold ball called the snitch? Um, ok. Sure. Sounds kind of lame.

Look, I'm not right all the time, ok? Of course once I read the books I was instantly hooked, am now a superfan, and have many fond Harry Potter-related memories. Like when I worked the release party of the 5th book at the college bookstore in law school. Or when I took off one day studying for the bar to binge-read the 6th book. And how a group of friends and I drove down to Richmond for the midnight release of Deathly Hallows....and I stayed up until 4 in the morning reading. Harry, man. What can you really say?

8.  Neverwhere: It was a rainy day in St. Andrews, Scotland. I was studying abroad the Spring semester of my junior year in 2001, and needed to kill some time. So I popped into the Waterstones bookshop on Market Street. I was browsing through the Fantasy/Sci-Fi shelves...and came across this book. I had never heard of Neil Gaiman before and didn't have any real experience with urban fantasy.

It is now my #1 favorite book of all time and Mr. Gaiman is my favorite author. The first time I met him, I took my original copy of Neverwhere (from that rainy Scottish day) and had him sign the inside cover. Sometimes life is really good, you guys.

9.  I didn't expect for World War Z to be amazing. I expected to be funny, a joke, something to read on the Metro while on the way to work. Instead it BLEW MY MIND. This book is brilliant. All the different stories, the different points of view, the way it moves around the world...amazing. As soon as people hear zombies they tend to tune out, but this book is the real deal. If you can't get past the zombie aspect, just think of it as any global viral pandemic. It will affect you.

As for the movie...it's a solid zombie flick. It doesn't have anything to do with the book, but it's an entertaining film.

10. Fangirl: Here we are at the most recent book on the list. I read Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell last year (or, to be precise, I listened to the audiobook) and was immediately bewitched. The main character, who is herself obsessed with a fantasy book series, felt so real to me I just couldn't. stop. listening. I could sit here and go on and on with my glowing review of the book, but that's probably boring. So I'll just say that it is one of my favorite books of all time, I now read anything by Rainbow Rowell, and I can't remember the last time I related so immediately to a fictional person. Read it. Seriously. 

So there we are! 10 books that impacted my life in some way. I swear I didn't put too much thought into compiling the list--all I had to do was walk over to my bookshelves and let the memories pour over me. These books are like members of my family. I mean, it's probably pretty obvious how important they are to me, considering I can pretty much remember the exact circumstances I first found them. Or should I say, the exact circumstances where they first found me. 

The How Novel Bookclub: 1984 Part III

Third time's the charm, y'all! This is it. The end. The third and final discussion of George Orwell's 1984.

I'll pause to let it sink in. And for you to get your hanky in case the emotion gets to be too much.

As far as experiments go, I think this whole blogging bookclub is working out pretty well. Sure, there was a long lag between our first and second discussions, but hey, life happens. And I have to admit: this was not my favorite book.

Don't get me wrong, I liked it. But at times it was a bit of a slog. After all, it was written in the 1940s and there has certainly been a shift in fiction prose in the last 60 or so years. The long dense paragraphs and slow plot movement were a bit of a challenge. But it certainly gets points for its importance to the Western literature cannon and how it basically created the dystopian future genre.

And now on to Part III! (summary from Penguin books)

Winston and Julia are separated and taken to the Ministry of Love where Winston is physically and psychologically tortured by O’Brien until he finally accepts the Party’s views. In a moment of utter terror, Winston betrays Julia, something he was convinced they could never make him do. The final lines of the book show Winston’s complete transformation into a model Party member: “…Everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

The shit, as they say, hits the fan. Part III was a difficult read, but not for the reasons I discussed above. It's just hard to read about someone being tortured. And we're not only talking about physical torture--though that happens and don't even get me started on the rats--but the psychological stuff is pretty horrible too.

I admit it: I was surprised that O'Brien ended up being the big bad guy. In fact, I am surprised at how WRONG all my predictions were regarding the plot of this book. I thought for sure it would be about a man fighting the power and trying to bring down the fascist government. It turns out Winston never even had a chance. The Party always knew what he was doing and everything that he was thinking. This isn't a story about one man's triumph over evil--it's a story about how men are capable of creating evil that cannot be stopped.

Y'all this book is depressing as HELL.

Winston makes a good go of it. He hangs on as long as he can. He even feels a certain amount of pride in not betraying Julia...until he does. But if you were being threatened with having your face chewed off by rats, is there anything you wouldn't betray? And then, even when he can tow the Party line and has learned how to employ doublethink...he still hates Big Brother. Doesn't he? Until the end when the Party's victory is complete. Winston is released back into the world (such as it is) where he spends his days sitting at a desk doing nothing and drinking gin in a bar. On the last page is the final sad revelation. He loves Big Brother.

The scariest thing about 1984 is the utter hopelessness.  There is absolutely no happy ending here. There's a bit of ambiguity here about whether Winston gets his brains blown out, but honestly that seems like a better option. At least then he could be a martyr for an actual cause. But Winston gets turned into another brainless Party drone. Just another brick in the wall.

"Obedience is not enough...Power is inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself...Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm....there will be no love except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated foe. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science." --O'Brien

Yeah, not a world I want to live in thank you very much.

Bottom line: A slow moving plot and theme of hopelessness combine for a tough read. Still, if you consider yourself a fan of dystopian future fiction, I'd recommend it purely for it's importance to the genre. Otherwise--skip it. It's gonna bring you down.

The How Novel Bookclub: 1984 Part II

Welcome back, gentle readers! Yes, it's been a while since we revisited George Orwell's seminal novel of a dystopian future, 1984, but it's time to put on your reading glasses and thinking caps and get back to it!

In our last session, we talked about Part I of 1984 with a focus on the historical context of the novel. I noted that Part I seemed to be more or less all set-up and was weak on actual plot. It was all hella depressing. But now we are forging ahead to Part II!

And NOW we're getting somewhere.

Summary of Part II (from Penguin Books):

Much to Winston’s surprise, the woman, Julia, slips him a note which says “I LOVE YOU.” They arrange to meet secretly and soon become lovers. They rent a room above the antique shop from the kindly owner, Mr. Charrington. At the height of Winston’s affair with Julia, he is approached by an Inner Party member named O’Brien whom Winston has long suspected of being a subversive. On the pretense of discussing one of Winston’s Newspeak articles, O’Brien invites him to his home. When he arrives there, Winston is amazed at the amenities available to the Inner Party about which Outer Party members might only dream. One of these luxuries is a telescreen that can actually be turned off for privacy. O’Brien reveals to Winston that the Brotherhood, a mutinous underground organization, does exist, and he makes arrangements to give Winston a copy of a book which details the control techniques that Party uses. Excited about the prospects of helping overthrow the government, Winston takes the book to the room above Mr. Charrington’s shop. However, before he can make any plans or even finish the book, he and Julia are arrested in the room that had been their refuge. They discover that quiet Mr. Charrington is actually a member of the Thought Police. He and O’Brien had been working together to trap Winston. 

Part II has a lot going for it: sex, intrigue, secret societies, and lots of foreshadowing. Let's just say that it's clear things are not going to end well for Winston and Julia. After all, we spent the entirety of Part I learning how insidious, omnipresent, and omniscient the Party is.  There's definitely a sense of a ticking bomb in the background during all the scenes where Winston and Julia have a tryst. In a book like 1984 if your main character is ever happy and hopeful, it's pretty clear that things are going to go bad pretty soon.

It's a credit to Orwell abilities as a writer that when the axe falls, it is still a surprise. Part II contains a large portion of Goldstein's book (given to Winston and Julia by O'Brien).  This book is essentially a textbook of the revolutionary group, The Brotherhood, and details the rise of the Party as well as it's techniques. Orwell painstakingly differentiates the Party's totalitarian ideology from others the reader may already be familiar, and in a move I thought was interesting, explains that the Party's power and doctrine arose in the twentieth century because "human equality had become technically possible." With the development of machine production, "it was no longer necessary for [human beings] to live at different social or economic levels. Therefore, from the point of view of the new groups who were on the point of seizing power, human equality was no longer an ideal to be striven after, but a danger to be averted."

I have to be perfectly honest though--the large section of Goldstein's book was a bit of a slog to get through. It's interesting in theory, but the plot was just starting to get going in Part II and it feels like it comes to a screeching halt so Orwell can finally explain the origins of the Party and WHAT IT ALL MEANS. However, it does serve the purpose of making the reader forget about that ticking time bomb....so when the Thought Police bust into Winston and Julia's secret getaway and Mr. Charrington is revealed as a party agent it's shocking. If 1984 was a tv show, the end of Part II would be a smash cut to commercial with lots of dramatic music. Basically, it was a big DUN moment.

I also want to take a moment to talk about Julia. I found her a fascinating character. It was not a surprise to me that the first place she takes Winston is a secluded grove in the country. She has a bit of a "child of the forest" vibe where she thinks only of the moment and only commits acts of rebellion against the Party to the extent it serves her pleasure. Sex, food, make-up--all of her acts of revolution are self-centered and serve nobody but herself. But she still is more of a radical than anyone Winston has ever met and joins the Brotherhood as readily as him. Through all of Part II I wondered whether in a normal world (like our world) Winston and Julia would have ever even looked twice at age other. I think the clear answer is no.

And 1984 isn't a love story. Despite the fact that it gets the plot moving, I get the feeling that Orwell doesn't view their relationship as anything more than a means to an end. It fans the flame--not of passion, but of rebellion inside Winston and finally gives him hope. Though even in the throes of his affair, Winston knows it won't last. There was a moment, after his first tryst with Julia, when he looked at her naked body and thought, "In the old days...a man looked at a girl's body and saw that it was desirable, and that was the end of the story. But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred." The Party takes everything. Winston also has a lot of internal monologues about how he constantly expects the Thought Police to catch them at any moment. Not that this is anything new for Winston--from the moment he writes "Down with Big Brother" in his diary in Part I, Winston knows the writing is on the wall. And yet, when the inevitable crash occurs it's still a shock.

Predictions for Part III: Winston gets tortured and then killed. The book started depressing and I don't expect it to get cheery anytime soon. Sigh.

The How Novel Bookclub, 1984 Part 1

Welcome to the first post of the Maggie Cats bookclub: How Novel! Today we are "discussing" Part I of George Orwell's classic novel, 1984. Oh, and I say discussing, because let's be honest. This is a totally one-sided conversation. AND YOU WILL LISTEN TO EVERYTHING I SAY. Heh.

But first, context! I personally feel that context is super important when reading works of classic literature. It's not just what's inside the pages of the 100 Best Novels that makes them so seminal, but where (and how!) they fit into our Western literary canon.

1984 was originally published in 1949. According to SparkNotes (always reliable) Orwell was exposed to a controlling environment from an early age when he attended a prestigious English board school. "Because of his background—he famously described his family as “lower-upper-middle class”—he never quite fit in, and felt oppressed and outraged by the dictatorial control that the schools he attended exercised over their students’ lives." Later, when working as a writer, he traveled to Spain to cover the Spanish Civil War and
"witnessed firsthand the nightmarish atrocities committed by fascist political regimes." So basically Orwell formulated the idea that totalitarianism = bad throughout his own personal life experience.

Along with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (published in 1932), Orwell's 1984 is the gold-standard of fiction set in a fascist dystopian future. This is now a sci-fi/fantasy staple in literature, movies, tv, and comics, and 1984 is basically the blue print for totalitarian world-building. To put it in a modern context, without 1984 there would be no Hunger Games.

Before getting into the meat of Part I, let's review the basic plot up to this point (from Penguin Books):

As the book opens, Winston Smith, the protagonist, is entering his dismal apartment in London. The opening paragraphs convey the depressing tone of the book with a description of the squalid living conditions. The world is divided into three superpowers: Eastasia, Eurasia, and Winston’s homeland, Oceania. Each superpower is always at war with at least one of the others. The perpetual wartime conditions provide a convenient way for the government of Oceania to keep its citizens repressed. Supplies for party members are always scarce and surveillance is a perfected art. In private rebellion against the government, Winston, an Outer Party member, starts keeping a diary. This small, forbidden step begins his life as an enemy of the party he serves. He purchases the diary on one of his forays into the proletarian section. Outside the antique shop where he bought the diary he later encounters a young woman who he has observed watching him for the last few days at his office. Knowing he is not supposed to be there and suspecting she is a spy, he quickly avoids her.

And now for the discussion (yay!): to paraphrase Chandler Bing, could Part I be any more depressing? It was difficult to avoid the trap of thinking that the first 50 or so pages of 1984 is a retread of a story I have already read. As I mentioned above, the whole dystopian future thing is everywhere in our society's pop culture, and that is what makes the context of the novel so important. Because 1984 is the standard against which all the others are measured. So while it seems like a bit of a slog to get through Winston Smith's musings about the squalor of London, the absolute control the Party exercises over people' lives, and the bone-crushing monotony of his work, it's a vital slog.

So I am going to go out on a limb and predict that Part I is all about the set-up. We need to "set the stage" if you will and establish that Winston is never alone. There is always a telescreen or microphone watching and listening, and the past is as malleable as the present. Because that's what Winston's job is in the regime--he works at the Records Department at the Ministry of Truth (insert irony here) and changes the past. "The messages he had received referred to articles or news items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, as the official phrase had it, rectify."

In our modern times, we would call this falsification or lies, but it's actually more insidious. As Winston notes, "...it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another...Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version." In the world of Oceania, there is no truth. People cannot even cling to the righteous anger that can come from being wronged, because nobody even knows that they are wronged. The Party is always right, and there is nothing (not even any past record) that you can point to as proof of anything else.

One of the things that struck me while reading Part I, is that it's clear Orwell loves language. From the very first page, the scene is set with the sentence, "the hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats." I don't know about you, but that certainly paints a picture for me of the kind of world we are inhabiting. The Party also uses language as a tool, or should I say bludgeon, of control. They encourage the use of Newspeak, the official language of Oceania, which "cuts the language down to the bone." One of Winston's co-workers who helps develop the Newspeak dictionary waxes poetic about Newspeak and how they essentially destroy thousands of words in an effort to "narrow the range of thought." "In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it." How can you rebel when the word rebel does not exist?

There's so much more to talk about here, especially just the specific mechanisms of the Party's control, but it's hard to articulate rather than just saying, "oh, oh! This thing here! This is cool! And horrible!" Which makes Winston's act of defiance--the keeping of a diary where he not only thinks but  actually records statements against the Party and Big Brother, all the more shocking. There's no specific law against keeping a diary, but the Thought Police will find you and they will vaporize you. Not just kill. Vaporize. Every trace of your existence is removed, just like you were nothing more than a scrap of paper that is sent down the chute to the furnace.

When we end Part I, Winston is convinced that he is being followed by a member of the Thought Police. He is also convinced that they will come for him in the night...and not because they know about the diary or how he hungers for information about the world before the Party. But because he was walking in the proletariat area of town and went into an antique shop. That's it. Is he going to be vaporized? Is the young woman he sees following him really a member of the Thought Police?? My guess is she is actually a member of the Underground and a follower of Goldstein, Big Brother's arch nemesis. Viva la revolution!

Introduction to the Maggie Cats Bookclub: How Novel!

I'm introducing a new regular feature here on my blog, mostly because I think it would be fun, but also because it will make for an interesting reading and writing project.

The Maggie Cats Bookclub: How Novel! 

I'll be reading my way through selections from the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels List (both the Board's selections and the reader picks), and writing up posts with my thoughts. It will probably break down to approximately three to four posts per book, but obviously that depends on the length of the selection.

Let's just clear this up right now: epic tomes like Ulysses or Anna Karenina ain't happening. I so don't have the time for that.

But there are a bunch of other books on the lists that I have always wanted to read and some that I am eager to revisit. Looking over the list I was honestly surprised by how many I have already read--looks like a public school education is good for something after all. But with more than 20 years having gone by, it will be fun to reread some of the books.

This will also present an opportunity for you all to read along with me! I'll announce what book is the subject of a post and how far I will be reading before the next write-up. If there is sufficient interest, maybe we can even organize an online chat to discuss aspects of the book with one another and I can put a copy of the transcript up here on the blog.

But even without an outside participation, I think this is going to be an interesting (and challenging) experiment. Will the celebrated novels live up to their reputation? How different will my adult perspective be on the books I read when I was a teenager? And can I honestly stick with the consistent blogging? Only time will tell!

The first book selection is.....(drum roll please).....1984 by George Orwell.

I've never read this one, but am eager to see what kind of totalitarian dystopian future Orwell predicted in his landmark novel. Can it rival The Hunger Games? Let's all keep our fingers crossed for a good love triangle in there somewhere.

If you want to read along, I'll be reading Part One of the book and planning to write up a discussion around the middle of next week. If you are interested in chatting about it, let me know!

Until then....happy reading!