What is your favorite book from childhood?

Every Wednesday we are going to give you readers a chance to tell us about different aspects of books and reading in your life.   One or more of the Page Turners will answer the question and then we would like to hear from you!

YAY Grover!

My favorite book growing up was “The Monster at the End of This Book,” by Jon Stone.   I had a huge bookcase when I was growing up, I have always been a big book nerd. I think the books I read as a child were probably the most applicable to adult life. Really, when it comes to life, the rules/guidelines are pretty simplistic. We just make things harder than they need to be. Here is a brief description of the book from Wikipedia

In this book, Grover is horrified to learn that there is a monster at the end of the book, and begs the reader not to finish the book, so as to avoid the monster.

Fearful of reaching the end of the book, Grover constructs a series of obstacles, such as attempting to tie pages together and laying brick walls, to prevent the reader from advancing.

Increasingly frightened (and also in awe of the reader’s strength at overcoming the obstacles), Grover pleads with the reader to stop reading as the book nears its conclusion.

However, the monster turns out to be Grover himself

This book made a profound statement, that what we are scared of in life is 9 times (plus 1) out of 10 within ourselves, or made up in our own mind.   I am realizing the monster at the end of the book, was just lil’ ol’ me (and Grover).

 

What is your favorite book from childhood?  Don’t be scared, we don’t bite!

Teaser Tuesdays: Group Post

As part of a new weekly feature, The Page Turners are here to share a piece of what we’re currently reading. Anyone can participate! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title, page number & author, too, so that other readers can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

“If you took away all of the pieces that made up George Orson – his lighthouse Motel childhood and his Ivy League education, his funny anecdotes and subtly iconic teaching style and the tender, attentive concern he’d had for Lucy as a student – if all of that was an invention, what was left?  There was, presumably, someone inside the George Orson disguise, a personality, a pair of eyes peering out; a soul, she supposed you might call it, though she still didn’t know the soul’s real name.”

[no page number, reading via Kindle], Await Your Reply
By Dan Chaon
–Shydel

This, like so many other things, was not a joking matter for Julius, who preferred to instigate and to control his comedies.  More than his friends, Julius was interested in power; It wasn’t a focused preoccpation: there wasn’t a type of power that he sought, just the absolute, brute fact it.

pg. 28, The Emperor’s Children

by Calire Messud

–Alise

 

“We were the kind of girls who would always be very pretty if but if never seemed to happen. If Jasmine’s skin cleared up and she could keep her hair done and she did something about her teeth, which were a little crooked, and if I lost five pounds and got contact lenses and did something about the way my skin was always ashy, maybe we’d be the prettiest girls in Mount Vernon, but we weren’t, we were just us”.

pg. 10, “Virgins”, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self

by Danielle Evans

–Nakia

 

“I even bragged to my friends how good I felt about the whole matter. When they were at my apartment during times when there wasn’t any food to eat, I told them that even though I starved, my time was my own and I could do anything I wanted with it.”

pg. 81 , “Revolutionary Suicide”

by Huey Newton

–Alex




 

 

“As the smoke entered her lungs, she seemed to return to who she really was, who she was now. A forty-eight-year-old who was a receptionist for a plastic surgeon and rented DVDs and videos and looked for herself in the backgrounds of old movies.”

-pg. 5, “Third Girl From The Left” by Martha Southgate
–Malca

 

 

 

 

 

What are you reading???

Book Review: “The Secret History

 

The book I chose to review today, The Secret History, by Donna Tartt  is actually not in my niche, but I got so caught up in it that I had to share it with you all.  The funny thing is that I almost gave up on the book about a chapter in, but I kept dutifully on.  It had a lot of obscure references to Greek and Latin language as well as history so at first I was daunted.

First of all, I am not a Greek or Latin scholar or a student of comparative literature. Nor did I attend a fancy New England Ivy League school. I didn’t understand the occasional lines of Greek, Latin, and French in this book, and I’m not an intellectual snob (Okay, maybe I am just a little bit). But these small details don’t detract from the thoroughly enjoyable experience of reading the Secret History. If you appreciate a well-written, well-told story that entertains, has good character development, an intriguing story, and reveals more than a little about human nature, you’re going to like this book. As if that weren’t enough, there’s also a liberal dose of contempt for the rich, and who doesn’t enjoy that?! For those who’ve studied Greek, Latin, French or the classics, the story will be even more rewarding.

Tartt uses Richard, the most accessible character, to tell the story with ease and authenticity. The six main characters (all in their early twenties) live in their own insular world at a small New England upper crust college, studying the classics with one solitary professor. There’s Henry, the leader and probably the one most likely to succeed as a true scholar; Francis, the skittish hypochondriac; Charles and Camilla, the twins; Bunny, the obnoxious and ill-fated one of the bunch; and Richard, the California kid from the most humble background of all. At first, Richard can’t believe his great luck to fall in with such a gilded clique, but as usual, things are not as they appear.

Soon, the outer world intrudes (they bring this upon themselves, of course) and things fall apart. It’s the telling of the unraveling that grips you as Tartt deftly controls how much to tell and when. I marveled at her lush descriptions that rival a poet’s, her skill at narrative and dialogue, and her most revealing descriptions of human mannerisms and behavior. She repeatedly builds intrigue and tension all the way to the end of the 500+ pages of the novel. This is no easy task, but she makes it look effortless.

Don’t be put off by the setting and character types in this book. You don’t have to be a literary snob to understand or enjoy the story. It’s worth the time to read the book, and if you’re an aspiring writer, there is much here to educate and marvel at. I highly recommend the The Secret History.

 

Teaser Tuesdays: “The Secret History”

The Page Turners have decided to participate in Teaser Tuesdays, a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title, page number & author, too, so that other readers can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

It’s funny, but thinking back on it now, as I stood there blinking in the deserted hall, was the one point at which I might have chosen to do something different from what I actually did.    But of course, I didn’t see this crucial moment them for what it was; I suppose we never do.

pg. 188, The Secret History

by Donna Tartt

 

Any teasers you’d like to share? Post them in the comments!

Sigh… bad books.

 

So a lot of our focus on this blog will be about books that we love or at least like a little, but what about bad books?  Funny you should ask:  I have read some great books and definitely some bad books.  Some I half expected to be bad, and some were huge let downs that made me extremely upset that I wasted the tine and/or money.  I realized in these bad books there was a common vein in them that lent to their lameness.

Here’s a short list:

• Nonsensical story lines and characters permeate the world of bad “literature.”  I have read books where none of the characters are realistic; they just kind of do whatever was in the authors head after a cocaine bender.  I like twists and turns in books, but make it believable and make it have a point.

• Underdeveloped characters are just as bad as the contrived ones.  I have read books where I couldn’t tell you more than one or two things about the main characters.  What part of the game is that?  Isn’t a big part of the point of a story about the characters themselves?  I want to build an emotional bond with character(s) in a book, it helps me get lost in the story or sometimes feel like I am part of a story.  I read to get that emotional experience, it’s what makes it fun or meaningful.

• Overuse of slang/patois/foreign language irks me to no end.  I understand that some stories require slang in the dialogue, but I am not talking about in the dialogue.  I am talking authors who write the entire narrative in that way.  It is distracting, bad writing, and will make me put a book down tout de suite(immediately/quickly).

• Overly simplistic writing….. I feel my side-eye flaring up.  I have read books, particularly “urban literature,” that read like a remedial English class project.  Now keep in mind, I don’t feel an author has to use overly colorful language and complicated indecipherable metaphors, but please give me something that makes me think past a 2nd grade level.

• BAD F*CKING GRAMMAR and misspellings. Here comes my pesky side-eye again….  Have you heard of an editor?  Was your editor taking shots while reading your book?  There is nothing worse than reading a book and finding excessive amounts of errors.  I should be thinking about a character’s unrequited love and not the proper use of there, their, they’re , noun/verb agreement, or how you say irregardless 4 times in the first chapter.  Not a good look.  Not a good look at all.

This is just a short list, what are some things that irk you and make a book unreadable?

Alise Revisiting “Mama Day”

 

My favorite book EVER!

Hi, it’s Alise again!  Like I mentioned in my introduction, my niche is reviewing books that I read as a child/teenager and sharing how they make me feel re-reading as an adult.  So let’s get into it!

In the 11th grade I thought I hated my English teacher Mrs. Taylor.  She was an older black lady, late 50’s/early 60’s, who was the epitome of the  old-school no nonsense teacher.  She did not play!  This was secretly liberating though, being that she taught at a predominantly white school filled with bratty elitist kids.  She would straight shut those kids down.  Anyway, my love for her began when she assigned us to read “Mama Day”, by Gloria Naylor, introducing me to my favorite author.

What I loved about Mrs. Taylor was her “eff the curriculum” approach to teaching.  She had been in the teaching game for 30 years so she could care less about anyone’s opinion about the reading material she assigned.  At first I was intrigued to read a black author in school that was outside of the few very familiar authors we normally read.   I loved reading as a kid, but school books never did it for me until this book.

A story with roots in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (Ms. Taylor made that connection for us, lol), Mama Day recounts the lives of Miranda, “Mama” Day, her sister Abigail, Abigail’s grown granddaughter, Ophelia (Cocoa), and her love affair and marriage to George. Told in the voice of George (from the grave), Cocoa’s voice, and a narrator’s voice, the novel explores the tragic past of Mama Day’s forebears as well as the present in which Mama Day functions as healer and wise woman of the small community of Willow Springs  just off the coast of Georgia.

Never have I ever read a novel so richly fulfilling to the human soul, and to the human sense of what matters in life as “Mama Day.”   It  is an amazing love story, but on a different level than most. Gloria Naylor uses her normally powerful language to create a rich storyline that will captivate the readers.

In Mama Day, she combines love, magic, superstition, and sacrifice all into one cohesive plot loaded with strong, well-developed, distinct characters. She brings modern day ideas to the traditional residents of the island of Willow Springs, which makes for interesting reading.

This book brings together many extraordinary beliefs and instills the factors involved in having good strong family values. Mama Day is a wonderfully written book, mainly because you bond with the incredible characters all the way through to the amazing climax.

When first reading this book with good ol’ Ms. Taylor I entered into it resistant because I was not thrilled about reading another school book.  However, my 17 year old mind was blown after a few pages.  This book was written in a style I had not yet encountered so I was instantly drawn in.   I had never gotten so invested in characters before, they all felt familiar.  The thing I did not pick up on at such a young age was understanding why the characters made certain decisions.  My sheltered mind did not understand the deep feelings of loss, true love, or even fear.  Reading now, each character’s life choices make perfect sense to me.  The book explores the human spirit in a way that only a seasoned adult can fully grasp, hence why this had to me my first review here. I learned that even through loss there can be tremendous gain.  Also, that sometimes bad things just happen, and you just have to cope.  Both valuable lessons to learn and to read about.

 

Gloria Naylor is my favorite author EVER, be sure to check out “Linden Hills, ” “Bailey’s Cafe”, and “The Women of Brewster Place.”  You can also find me at poetry, love, & laughs

Introducing The Page Turners: Alise’s Niche

Me!

I am Naturally Alise.  I am a poet, spoken word artist, blogger, social network junkie, budding web designer, and total  book whore.  I live in Durham, NC, aka  the “Bull City”.   I write poetry, social commentary, and foolishness over at my blog poetry, love, & laughs. Enough of all that, let’s jump into this!

I find television to be very educating.  Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book.  ~Groucho Marx

I am what one would call a reader with a voracious appetite.  Yup, I read a lot.  When I say a lot I mean I read a new book every couple days, sometimes more on the weekends.    I even went without television for a large chunk of time. It is amazing what cutting back on television can do for your life….you should really try it by either getting rid of your TV or detoxing for an extended period of time, real talk…

A good book should leave you… slightly exhausted at the end.  You live several lives while reading it. ~William Styron, interview, Writers at Work, 1958

I become so emotionally invested in the books I read.  I have even dreamed about some of them, and act like a crack fiend needing to get back to them. (i.e. the 1000+ page book I read in 2 nights).  I get sad when I am get to the last 100 pages of a book.  I am not being figurative; I really do get to feeling some kinda way.  I have even been brought to tears by some of the selections I have made lately.  Maybe it was just allergies; yeah, I am going to go with that.

If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.  ~Toni Morrison

A few of the books I read have disappointed me with their endings.  Either the endings were far fetched, or the author left no sort of conclusion that satisfied me.  This realization has kick started me to wanting to improve my writing, and be the author that writes books the way that I want to read them.   However, I have discovered this is no easy task.  So when an excellent book crosses my path I respect it on a new-found level.

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.  ~Franz Kafka

If you do not know I am a poet and spoken word artist and reading so many books has also made me want to write more.  I have been pumping out poems left and right, usually inspired from a line or a scene in what I am reading.  My new focus on literature and art has made me a better performer, a better listener, just better…

A house without books is like a room without windows.  ~Heinrich Mann

I am not partial to any particular genre.  I read books scattered over the whole spectrum.  Sometimes I go for very serious subject matter, at times I love a good quick easy commercial “beach read”, and sometimes I love a nice suspense filled mystery.  It all depends on what day you ask me, I tend to be random in that way.  Here are some of the books I have read over the few months… if you are my friend on facebook, check out my Visual Bookshelf:

Some People, Some Other Place, J. California Cooper
The Hour I First Believed: A Novel, Wally Lamb (read this thick monster of a book in 2 days, such a page turner… this is one of the books that made me cry…)
Stalker, Faye Kellerman
Any Known Blood: A Novel, Lawerence Hill
The Book of Night Women, Marlon James
Currently Reading: One Fifth Avenue, Candace Bushnell and Betsey Brown: A Novel, Ntozake Shange
Currently Re-reading: Mama Day, Gloria Naylor (actually re-reading this for my first review for this site!)

Thrift Stores are my best friend, you can’t beat $0.25-0.50 for books (I don’t like library books, I like to own my books, because I am also a re-reader)  Speaking of re-reading my niche will be re-reading books that I read as a child/teenager (I read lots of very adult books) and giving my new found insight and critique as an adult.  Should be fun….  Welcome!