New Pretty Town Sounds Fun

 

In his series, Uglies, Scott Westerfeld introduces readers to Tally Youngblood, a young heroine (I mean, I’m assuming that she’ll turn out to be a heroine, giving her the benefit of the doubt here by upgrading her from ‘protagonist’ to ‘heroine’) who is about to turn sixteen. In her weird and messed up society, turning sixteen marks a rite of passage in a young person’s life. At this point, they undergo extensive plastic surgery to correct all of their natural “ugly” features, surgically replacing them with idealized ones. Whose ideals, you ask? I’m not entirely sure. Apparently, it doesn’t matter because humans are biologically wired to respond to a “certain kind of beauty”:

There was a certain kind of beauty, a prettiness that everyone could see. Big eyes and full lips like a kid’s; smooth, clear skin; symmetrical features; and a thousand other little clues. (Westerfeld 16)

I mean, that does sound like Beyonce and I do have a biological response to her soooo

BUT LET’S BE SERIOUS. This is a load of crap. There is no “certain kind of beauty” that everyone biologically responds to. I would buy that everyone is socially conditioned to respond to “a certain kind of beauty,” but even then my use of “everyone” is flat and problematic so…

OKAY BUT THIS IS A PIECE OF FICTION, CATHERINE. You know, “fiction,” as in not real.

Right. Fine. I was just saying.

So in this FICTIONAL world, after you turn sixteen and undergo this transformation, you become what’s known as a “Pretty”. Before that, in all of your natural glory, you would be an “Ugly.” The Pretties live in New Pretty Town and the Uglies live in Uglyville.

Uglyville sounds like a police-state ghetto, whereas NPT sounds like what would happen if you turned an entire town into a VR night club. There are fireworks, parties, sex and alcohol everywhere. Everything appears to be free. Pretties appear to have zero responsibilities. Party robots patrol the town to encourage people to party harder. Everything is rigged so that people can’t hurt themselves or each other. All the fun with none of the consequences. God I am so worried for everyone in this town.

I gotta say, Westerfeld, I hope that your lack of creativity on the nouns in this book is an indication of greater effort spent on the story’s formal elements because *holy lord dyin’* these are bad:

• Tally Youngblood is primarily defined in the beginning of the book as too young to be a pretty
• Society is divided between attractive people called Pretties and unattractive people called Uglies
• Pretties live in New Pretty Town and Uglies live in Uglyville

It’s as if he put these names in as place-keepers until he finished writing the rest of the book and then, once finished, he thought “Aw, screw it, good enough, let’s get this puppy published already”. That’s purely conjecture, of course (Does anyone know if this happened for real? Because I would 100% believe it)

In terms of plot, I’m only four chapters in, so not much has happened. I’ve met Tally who wants to be a pretty so bad it hurts. Not because she wants to be “pretty” per say (she does, though) but because she wants to be reunited with Peris, her BFF. She wants to be pretty for him. I think I know where this is going.

SO. Peris is three months older than Tally and has already been mutated into this “pretty” thing. Tally sneaks over to New Pretty Town, where Uglies aren’t allowed to go, and finds Peris—she had to talk to him, you guys. REASONS—and he promptly tells her to GTFO of there and to only come back when she’s pretty like he is: “I want to see you pretty” (18), he tells her.

I don’t know about the rest of you but this sounds a lot like high school.

Whilst attempting to escape NPT (she’s being chased at this point because she’s been discovered as an intruder), Tally meets Shay, fellow soon-to-be-pretty trespasser and they manage to get back to Uglyville without being caught. They bond over their ostracism and estrangement from newly-Pretty friends and Shay teaches Tally how to ride a hoverboard.

That’s it, you’re caught up.

Now it’s time for everyone’s favourite: PREDICTIONS!

1. Tally will not become a Pretty
2. She will try to ‘save’ Peris from being a Pretty, she will try to get him to see her inner beauty and understand that “beauty is not just skin deep” but he’s too far gone. She has to leave him behind.
3. I’m betting this whole “Uglies” and “Pretties” thing is the result of a reproduction crisis of some kind, a la Children of Men
4. Shay and Tally fall in love (this probably won’t happen but the text is PRIMED for it so I’m putting it out there)
5. Tally gets arrested for something, meets “Uglies” who think that this whole Ugly vs. Pretties system is a bunch of BS
   • Shay is already one of the leaders of this underground resistance. That’s what she was really doing there that night.
6. Tally starts/joins a rebellion against the Pretties/Uglies system

That’s all for now! Coffee beckons.

The “Dust Land” Series aka Hunger Games aka Abstinence Fiction

As per my Goodreads review – these books are so very problematic. They are essentially an abstinence pamphlet disguised as a YA trilogy. How so? Well, it turns out that the only thing more dangerous than giant eyeless, clawed desert worms is female desire. Who knew?

I’ve read the first two books in the series and of all the deaths which have occurred so far (wich is a lot) all but two of them result from female desire. The two exceptions are the protagonist’s parents who die in childbirth (which, actually, is kind of related to female desire and sexuality) and in an attempt to protect their children from kidnappers.

From the moment Saba leaves home, it seems all deaths and bad decisions are the result of her being tempted/blinded/seduced/distracted by sexuality/romance/love/desire. Sure, give her some fire and the girl can last a full night in a Dune-esque desert with hordes of giant sandworms with claws attacking her, but put an older & shirtless man in front of her and she’s defenceless against him.

I’ve decided to walk away from this series after the first two books. I started Book 3, Raging Star, but I’m not going to continue reading it. The second book ended on a note that suggested that the whole thing is going to come down to a jealous boy whose feelings were hurt by romantic rejection and that the fate of the world rests in this boy’s ability to deal with said rejection (hint: he’s not). Either that, or the fate of the world rests in Saba’s ability to resist giving in to her sexual desires (just don’t sleep with the bad man, Saba, and everything will be okay! or – Just don’t make Tommo jealous, Saba, and everything will be okay!). After that, I found I had simply lost the motivation to keep reading.

The other side-reason why I’m walking away is because, to be honest, thank you but I’ve already read The Hunger Games so I don’t need to read it again. I can draw a straight line between characters and key plot points between these two series. Except I loved The Hunger Games.

Ultimately, Young’s books show flashes of technical writing skill and style. This is a shame because otherwise her ability as a writer is buried by a distracting dialect which distracts from the plot.

I’ll see what Female Rebellion has to say about these books and then move on. I’ve got Judy Bloom on deck and just picked up Uglies from the library. Then there’s the List too, which is being very patient with me…

Anyhoo – off to work!

image source: Goodreads

I missed it

I’ve ditched…no halted?…no…strayed…yes, strayed from Jane Eyre in favour of Jim Butcher’s Captain’s Fury (Book 4 of the Codex Alera series) and Milk and Honey, Rupi Kaur’s book of poetry.

I know, I know.

I said I wouldn’t.

I know, I know.

I already did when I read Interview with the Vampire, and Anatomy of a Girl Gang, and Hag-Seed.

I know, I know.

I’m still working on Female Rebellion in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction and if I’m going to diverge from the List AND my “On Deck” lists AGAIN don’t I want to prioritize the primary texts discussed therein?

I know, I know.

But.

I missed it.

I missed that feeling of being hungry for a book. I missed day-dreaming about “what’s next?” and being entirely distracted by a plot. I missed nodding “yes” and saying “uh huh” feigning attention in a conversation while secretly all I’m actually doing is thinking about the book and waiting for the next break in whatever-it-is that is demanding my attention so that I can escape back into that world.

And I’m not hungry for Jane.

I wanted to be absorbed, and so that’s what I’m chasing right now. That’s why I picked up the next book in Butcher’s “Alera” series. They are long, but they’re easy to read and they’re fun and they pull me in.

Fun Fact: I read online somewhere that the “Alera” series was born out of a bet for Butcher to write a story based on Roman legions and Pokemon. Crazy, right? There is no way that’s true, right? That’s what I thought, too. But, as it turns out, IT IS TRUE! Isn’t that so much nuts stuff? I found an interview Butcher did with Fantasy Literature.com where he confirms the whole thing! (You can read it here).

To those of you out there thinking “Ummm, yeah, Cat…we already knew that…this news is like…eight years old…keep up, GAWD” Well, you would be right, but this is still new to me and therefore it is exciting to me and this is my blog so THERE.

I’m still listening to Jane in the car sometimes just so I can say that I’m still making some progress there. And, admittedly, to get me closer to Wide Sargasso Sea a little bit faster.

I’ve also picked up Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur, because it’s been on my shelf since Christmas and it lends itself better to short, fragmented reading sessions, such as over lunch or five minutes in the morning.

So. Yes. I’m straying. Again. And I don’t care because I missed it, and the List will still be there waiting for me after I get my fix.

 

Image credits:
Captain’s Fury cover: Goodreads
The Wedding Singer: TuneCore Canada

Now What?

Finishing the coursework portion of my MA means that I’m back to free-reading and HOLY LORD DYIN’ I want to read everything. I am overwhelmed by choice. I *thought* I had prioritized a short list of books to read first. I even made a shelf on Goodreads for it – I called it “On Deck”:

For those of you keeping up, which of course is all of you, naturally, you already know that I decided to read Interview with the Vampire first because I’ve always wanted to and I failed the first time around. Then I picked up The Tempest and Jane Eyre because I was reminded oh-so-many times throughout my MA that I needed to read these. I finished The Tempest in about a day (I think – you can read about that here) and am still slogging through Jane Eyre. 

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Charlotte is not my favourite. Her writing lacks energy and pizazz (yes, “pizazz” is a legitimate literary measure. I almost have an English MA now, so you can trust me). It doesn’t help that I already know the story, and so there is no suspense. I’m basically going through the motions with that book so it feels more like a chore and less like fun (Hey, Cat, do you think maybe your attitude is the problem and not the book? Nahhhhhhh). I’m also reading Day/Green-Bartlett/Montz’s Female Rebellion in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction because, somewhat astonishingly, theory and criticism are still interesting to me.

A side-effect of reading literary criticism: you want to/need to read the primary texts discussed. So that’s added about thirty new books to my ever-growing “To Read” list. For the most part, these are YA titles though, so they should take me no more than a few weeks to inhale.

Shortly after finishing the winter term, I also read Anatomy of a Girl Gang by Ashley Little. I intended to read this book during my MA as it is written by Laurier’s current Author in Residence. I prioritized course reading at the time, however, and this one fell to the bottom of my stack. I did get it signed by the author, though!

In addition to these books, there’s also the books that are still on my shelf from before my MA waiting for me to read them. Books I purchased or obtained eons ago which I haven’t gotten to yet because I keep getting distracted by shiny, new Others.

Case in point: according to my “On Deck” list, I need to finish Jane Eyre and then get into Wide Sargasso Sea – a book I’m actually really looking forward to after reading so much of Gilbert and Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic. Despite this, I’ve managed to get distracted by Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed which is part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series, which is basically the coolest thing ever. Despite my personal feelings towards Atwood, my love of Shakespeare has me intrigued by this series and as a result, I have been waiting for titles to publish. Sometime before my MA began, I became aware of the project and Atwood’s contribution to it; a modern retelling of The Tempest, which provided yet another reason why I needed to read that damn play. At the time, Hag-Seed was the only published book in the series of which I was aware. Since I recently checked The Tempest off the list, I couldn’t resist picking this one up from the library (therefore satisfying my curiosity without giving Atwood any more money – haha! Moral loopholes for the win!). And now there are seven more titles added to the series – one of which has been nominated for a Lambda Award! So, again, my To Read list keeps on growing.

Add to those this year’s Canada Reads books, the books I keep adding to my reading list whenever I go in for one of my shelf-reading shifts at the library, the books I have independently developed an interest in reading, and, oh yeah, that List of 145 books I’m still working my way through, and you can understand why I am struggling to focus on one book at a time.

I just want to read everything. And I will. Just you wait. You’ll see. I’ll show you all!

 

I read all the things! Again!: MA Winter Term Recap

The card is right – I did do it. Shortly after submitting the last paper of my winter term, and therefore completing all assignments for the coursework portion of my MA, my partner surprised me with this card (which preceded an excessively extravagant gift) and made me cry, which was nice. That’s how you know you’ve got a good one – when they keep secrets and make you cry for good things.

Other things that are amazing: doing an MA in a discipline you’re passionate about. Term 2 was amazing, just as this entire experience has been. I read 6,970 pages, made up by twenty-one books, two plays, two books of poetry, and a stack of theory & criticism and wrote submitted 32,552 words (about 108 pages by my calculation). Those numbers seem low to me, though. While this term seemed (to me) to have a heavier workload than the fall term, the numbers are, in actuality, near identical (6,923 pages and 30,584 in the fall). Weird.

Now, what you’ve all been waiting for: here is what I read in the Winter term:

Here is a list-version, in the approximate order they were read. Favourites indicated by an asterisk(*):

1. Oedipus the King, Sophocles
2. The Father and Daughter, Amelia Opie
3. Canadian Crusoes, Catharine Parr Traill
4. i is a long memoried woman, Grace Nichols*
5. Anne of Green Gables, LMM
6. The Polished Hoe, Austin Clarke
7. Unity (1918), Kevin Kerr
8. Emma, Jane Austen
9. Hold Fast, Kevin Major
10. Autobiography of My Mother, Jamaica Kincaid*
11. Heave, Christy Ann Conlin
12. The Pagoda, Patricia Powell
13. Kiss of the Fur Queen, Tomson Highway*
14. A Small Gathering of Bones, Patricia Powell
15. Hiroshima, John Hersey
16. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë*
17. Return to Arcadia, H. Nigel Thomas*
18. Lives of Girls and Women, Alice Munro
19. Cereus Blooms at Night, Shani Mootoo
20. The Children of Men, P.D. James
21. land without chocolate, Faizal Deen
22. Olive, Dinah Mulock Craik
23. What We All Long For, Dionne Brand
24. Tongues on Fire, Rosamund Elwin
25. North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell

Fun observations about the list above: (1) Anne is a (way) better author than Charlotte. Sorry, Charlotte, you can’t win ’em all. I haven’t read any of Emily’s stuff yet, though, so she’s still in the running to be Literature’s Top Brontë; (2) Elizabeth Gaskell was both the first and the last author I read for my MA – happy coincidence since I had never heard of Gaskell before and it would appear that she is a big deal; (3) The Tempest is the most alluded-to text in literature and therefore should be prerequisite reading for any English or Lit program; (4) The Taming of the Shrew is one of the most adapted plays of all time – I’m pretty sure both Emma and Tenant are adaptations/retellings.

I also read a heap of poetry as part of the assigned reading for the first-year course I TA’d:

• “On an Occasion of National Mourning,” Howard Nemerov
• “History Lesson,” Jeannette Armstrong
• “The Convergence of the Twain,” Thomas Hardy
• “The Iceberg,” Charles G.D. Roberts
• “The Lost Worker,” Billeh Nickerson
• “Erosion,” E.J. Pratt
• “In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’,” Thomas Hardy
• “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Wilfrid Owen
• “Munition Wages,” Madeline Ida Bedford
• “The Second Coming,” W.B. Yeats*
• “The Hollow Men,” T.S. Eliot
• “Höfn,” Seamus Heaney
• “Darkness,” Lord Byron

And a couple of short stories:

• “Jesus out to sea: a Louisiana lament,” James Lee Burke
•  “Diary of an Interesting Year,” Helen Simpson

So, that’s it, I’m done now. Well, the coursework portion, anyway. I begin my professional placement next week, which gives me the opportunity to work for a literary magazine publication for six weeks as part of my program. Amongst other things (showering, dressing like a real person every day), this means that for the first time in nearly ten years, I will have regular work hours. Wish me luck!

 

 

Did I mention I have a dinosaur?

It’s true. She hangs out with my books.

A Selective Reading of The Tempest

I give The Tempest 8 out of 10 magic brushstrokes. This play was shockingly readable for a Shakespearian comedy which sets out to fool the audience from the get-go. It was interesting to read AND I understood everything that was going on, so that’s 2/2 on my Shakespeare scale.

Question: who would win in a fight, Prospero and his magic cloak, Harry and his invisibility cloak, or Joseph and his amazing technicoloured dreamcoat? FIGHT OF THE CLOAKS!

A: This is a great idea for a new broadway musical.

ANYWAYS.

I read Peter Holland‘s introduction to The Tempest in my titanic edition of The Complete Pelican Shakespeare. At the time of writing the intro, Holland was the Director of the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham, so I guess this guy has some credibility. I should have waited until after I read the text to read Holland’s piece because as it stands I did not understand much of it (as I had no context for it) and remember very little of it. Hang on, I’m going to go scan it again…*scanning*…okay, to recap his article: colonialism, nationalism, performance, ambivalence, and time scale. My recap game is strong.

I can definitely see why the initial exchange between Prospero and Caliban in Act 1, Scene 2 is pilfered by po-co scholars for material. It’s awful and perfect! Especially English language po-co scholars: “You taught me language, and my profit on’t/ Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you/ For learning me your language!” (1:2:54). Right?! Full disclosure: I am choosing to privilege the ‘po-co/slavery is bad’ reading and ignore the fact that Prospero says he only enslaved Caliban after buddy tried to rape his daughter: “I have used thee/ Filth as thou art, with human care, and lodged thee/ In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate the honour of my child” (1:2:53). To which Caliban basically replies “But, babies!” I have to be honest, if I pay too much attention to that little detail, I start becoming WAY more sympathetic to Prospero than I want to be. Because Prospero is a selfish ass-hat and a terrible human being. It’s easier to just ignore details that don’t adhere to my overall sensibilities and preferred reading. I can do that here, because this is my blog, not an academic paper. SO THERE!

One thing I did not understand is how the play ends with Alonso, King of Naples, saying to Prospero: “I long/ to hear the story of your life, which must/ Take the ear strangely” (5:1:117). ERMMMMMM You know the story of his life. You banished him, remember? That was you and his brother, Antonio. You guys did that, together, as a team. Or do you just screw over so many people out of their dukedoms that you can’t remember this one who you put on a boat (with no sails) and set it out to sea (for him to die)? Look at buddy over here, making like this is the first time they’ve met, and Prospero is just going for it, letting it happen. I feel like there’s a murder in their future, for sure.

I digress.

Pro tip: do not watch The Little Mermaid before reading this play. If you do, you will have to constantly remind yourself that Ariel is a male nymph, not a red-headed mermaid who wants to be where the people are.

That’s all for now, I have to get back to research.

Image Sources:
The Tempest: JY Productions, http://www.jyproductions.com/theatre-the-tempest.php
Homework vs Fly: College Xpress, http://www.collegexpress.com/articles-and-advice/grad-school/articles/life-grad-student/20-steps-graduate-researchtold-cartoons/

 

 

 

Brad Pitt messes with my creativity

I saw the film adaptation of Interview with the Vampire way back when and fell in love with it. Since, it’s always been one of my favourite movies, and Brad Pitt stole my heart.

Tom Cruise freaked me out a bit – oh, how little I knew then how he would grow to freak me out even more…and Kirsten Dunst performed perhaps her best on-screen role of her entire career. I might be biased. But she was so good!

The result is that, now, some thirteen-ish years later, I finally have read Anne Rice’s book, which inspired it all. Louis’ voice, in my mind, was exactly that slow, smooth, detached drawl that Pitt uses in the film, and that was wonderful. It was like having Brad Pitt in my brain for a few days, reading me a story about vampires and the human condition.

Point being: I wasn’t able to separate my film viewing experience from my book reading experience. Do you remember my post about Troilus and Cressida? Why do you do this to me, Brad? Let my imagination go, and run free! Are you so possessive that once you’ve inhabited a character in my mind, nobody else can? Damn you!

It’s interesting that in the film *spoilers* Lestat does not return until the very end, and he’s the one who seeks out the reporter. In the book, Lestat reappears at the Theatre des vampires. He’s the one that gives them up, rather than Santiago figuring it out on his own. The novel also ends with the reporter heading out to find Lestat, rather than the latter dropping out of the sky into his red convertible as he’s driving at highway speeds.

Also, Armand and Louis run off together in the text, whereas in the film Louis goes on the road solo after Kirsten’s death (I think I’m remembering that right – can someone corroborate this?).

Lastly, the film puts a lot of emphasis on Louis’ refusal/grappling with feeding off humans. At one point, Lestat finds him after he’s spent weeks in the gutter, feeding solely on rats and vermin because Louis can’t stand the guilt from taking human lives. Once he learns that he can live off animal blood he’s like “WELP. It’s an animal-based diet for me from now on!” but this doesn’t happen in the book at all. His foray into animal-based eating is brief, and he quickly returns to feeding off of humans. He doesn’t enjoy it, he complains about it a lot, but he does it.

All told, the book was pretty good. Brad Pitt Louis is a fairly self-indulgent and philosophical narrator who muses and moans more than he tells a story. But the story he does tell is pretty good. Surprisingly, the first book does not make me want to read Prince Lestat, the second installment in Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles series. I know they are canonical to the vampire genre, which I do love, but at this point, I simply have too many other books tempting me, of whose quality I am more certain.

Speaking of which, I finished The Tempest last night, so there’s a blog coming for that. Stay tuned! For now I’m off to mark and write papers.

Image Sources
Claudia (Kirsten): Media Giphy
Lestat (Tom) and Louis (Brad): The Clinton Street Theatre

Okay, Tempest, You’re Up.

A surprising number of the texts I’ve read in my MA have made allusions and references to The Tempest. An exhausting, relentless number of them. It’s been ridiculous, folks.

Having not read The Tempest yet (despite having read METRIC TONS of Shakespeare) this was frustrating for me. Very frustrating. I get it, everyone loves The Tempest.

So now that I’m done my course reading, have some breathing room between papers, and have finished a quick fun read (Interview with the Vampire), I’m listening to the universe and am reading this freakin’ play.

Bring on the storms, boats, islands and magic, Shakespeare!

Dear March Madness: I win!

March Madness,
YOU HAVE BEEN DEFEATED!

I had a collection of images selected for this post, but I edited it down because I feel that the one below captures the true essence of how I feel right now: proud and sweaty.

March Madness is OVER as of tomorrow when I hand in the last assignment I have due this month! Seminars? Check. Proposals? Done. Papers? Written. Books? Read ’em all! Micro-Teaching Session? Nailed it. Mini-Lecture? Delivered. Guest Lecture? Slayed. Essay Marking? Well…I’m still working on that one…but it’s started! The rest of my marking is done so I’m calling it a win!

Only two more final papers to write and I will be finished all of my coursework for my English MA. Bananas.