Discovering Myself In a Book

 

Published:  June 1st, 2009

Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading

By: Lizzie Skurnick

Avon Books

ISBN-13:  9780061756351

 

Some people are baffled by re-reading.  What's the point?  There's so much else to read.  With these essays, Lizzie Skurnick has answered those questions.  It's as if a kindly psychiatrist suddenly appeared with a missing sheaf of brain scans.  Does the mere mention of a mink-trimmed coat make you secretly swoon, even though you are rabidly anti-fur?  You have a 'Little Princess' complex.  Do you long to cover your enemies with leeches?  You're having a 'Little House' flashback...  So stretch out on Dr. Lizzie's couch and find out why you think it would be kind of cozy to locked up in an attic with your brother.  Or learn to dissect the subtle class consciousness of Judy Blume's New Jersey.  Ponder the way that Lois Duncan's characters come into unexpected powers, natural and supernatural alike, as they enter adolescence.

 

And most of all, enjoy.

 

Review

 

     In my experience there a couple different types of people.  Those who grow up to be jaded and can no longer find lasting value in anything they deem as 'childish' or too young - and those who return to the comfort and value that they found in those childish things, reveling in reliving it.  Books are not to be excluded from this very un-academic theory of someone with no real data to back it up.  I am the type of person who still reads 'children's' books and loves them, many a time far better than the ones written for so called adults!  I spend most of my summer re-reading Tuck Everlasting, Bridge to Terabithia, A Wrinkle In Time, and Anne of Green Gables on a blanket in the park.  These are the books that have stuck with me my entire life.  I have been reading and re-reading Anne of Green Gables consistently since I was 8 years old.  That is almost sixteen years of my life!  So I definitely find value in these books.  They taught me things as a child and they also can have such a great beauty to them as well, with a depth of writing that might surprise and astonish many nay-saying, snobbish adults who find themselves too 'mature' for them.  So when I found out about Lizzie Skurnick's book of essays about her childhood reads, I knew it was right up my alley.  However, I am also the girl who read Young Adult Literature: From Romance to Realism by Michael Cart FOR FUN!!!  This is an analytical book one of my friend's had to read in classes for her Masters Degree in Library Science!  I am not your average animal my friends.

     I enjoyed myself immensely!  I really liked reading Skurnick's reviews about the books that I had read as a child, young teen and adult.  I also garnered some titles to check out from the library and read for myself (that I somehow missed while I was devouring my school and public libraries as a child - I was and am a book zombie.  Books instead of brains!) that I have never read before.  It was extremely interesting to see Lizzie's insights into some of her childhood favorites, now that she's an adult.  I especially enjoyed the sometimes snarky nature of the book reports.  Nothing is favored by me more in reviews than honesty and a good sense of humor! 

     Sometimes the book did have a feeling of being disjointed, probably due to it's initial incarnation as a column on the website Jezebel.  I did like the fact that all the essays were indexed by theme and sectioned off.  I could easily flip to whichever essay I preferred to read.  Skurnick covers such classics as Jacob Have I Loved, Blubber, A Wrinkle In Time, Are You There God? It's Me Margaret, Harriet the Spy, Island of the Blue Dolphins, Stranger With My Face, Go Ask Alice, and many more!  If you enjoy this sort of book and want a walk down memory lane, I highly recommend reading it! :)  It was a nice change of pace, although I would have liked more in-depth analysis to go with the plot summaries.  I leave you only with my happy nostalgia fuzz and this quote from a constant re-read of my own:

 

“The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.”

Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

 

VERDICT:  4/5  Stars

 

**No money or favors were exchanged for this review.  This book is now available in stores, online, or maybe even at your local library.**



What Matters the Most? That is the question...

Published:  June 2012
What Matters In Jane Austen?
By: John Mullan
Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN-13:  9781408820117


Is there any sex in Austen? What do the characters call each other, and why? What are the right and wrong ways to propose marriage? And which important Austen characters never speak? In What Matters in Jane Austen?, John Mullan shows that you can best appreciate Jane Austen's brilliance by looking at the intriguing quirks and intricacies of her fiction - by asking and answering some very specific questions about what goes on in her novels, he reveals their devilish cleverness.

In twenty-one short chapters, each of which answers a question prompted by Jane Austen's novels, Mullan illuminates the themes that matter most to the workings of the fiction. So the reader will discover when people had their meals and what shops they went to, how they addressed each other, who was allowed to write letters to whom, who owned coaches or pianos, how vicars got good livings and how wealth was inherited. What Matters in Jane Austen? explores the rituals and conventions of her fictional world in order to reveal her technical virtuosity and sheer daring as a novelist. Though not a book about Jane Austen's life, it uses biographical detail and telling passages from her letters to explain episodes in her novels; readers will find out, for example, what novels she read or how much money she had to live on or what she saw at the theatre.

Review

     What are some of the most pressing questions that we as readers, have about Jane Austen's novels?  Well, those questions are what Mullan strives to answer in this book.  It's almost like reading a more detailed and involved version of Austen for Dummies (which could exist, but I don't know about it if it does).  The book takes real examples from Austen's letters to her sister Cassandra and other people, and from her individual novels.  Some of the questions include: How much does age matter?  What do characters call each other and why?  How do Austen's characters look?  Why is it risky to go to the seaside?  Is there any sex in Jane Austen?  What do characters say when the heroine isn't there?  Which important characters never speak?  Are ill people to blame for their illnesses?  How experimental of a novelist is Jane Austen?  These are just the bare bones, seeing as there are 20 questions Mullan tries to touch upon in this book.  One of my only complaints as a reader, was that the same examples were used repetitively for different questions.  It got very dry, very quick when this happened.  I began to lose interest about midway through due to lack of fresh material.  Other than that, it was an insightful and fun nod to the greatness of Austen.  The emphasis is definitely on the fact that the devil is in the details.  Overall, only for the middling Austen fans, or the really devoted ones.  You may never think of the characters and the whole novels the same way again!  I wouldn't give it to someone just discovering Austen though.

VERDICT:  2.75/5  Stars

*I received an Advanced Reading E-book Copy from the publisher, via NetGalley. No money or favors were exchanged for this review. This book was published June 2012.**