Summer Swallowed Us Whole: Where did July go?

Those of you who know me personally know that I'm ambitious, but I procrastinate.  I recently wondered what my life would be like if I wasn't a procrastinator.  I put off imagining what I'd be like, and I made Black Raspberry and Peach Cobbler instead.

Picked the black raspberries myself and the peaches are from a farm in RI.

Gooey, peachy, messy joy

I also went on vacation.  Here's the thing, I will turn 26 in late March.  I haven't yet had a full time job-I currently have five part time ones.  I'll need to get a full time job once I'm 26, but until then, I've decided to 1) finish my thesis and 2) have as much fun as humanly possible and that involves vacations when I can manage them, music always, baking every chance I get and yoga after yoga after yoga.  It also involves run-on sentences.

Magic in the Morning

Grandma's 80th birthday celebration meant matching tee shirts!

See how nicely they matched?

I made some really ambitious new year's resolutions in January.  One of them was to try a new recipe each week, and I have come really close! How many have I written about? Hmm..it's gotta be close to zero, I think.  I also decided to make an effort to see more live music...now that's one I can check off my list.  The Lumineers, The Milk Carton Kids, Old Crow Medicine Show, Feist, The Brotherhood of Thieves, Newsies on Broadway-all amazing performances.  St. Vincent and David Byrne September 23rd, Minus the Bear September 27th, Third Eye Blind/Kevin Devine September 29th, Ben Folds Five! October 13th all add up to a really efron amazing musical year.

13 musicians on stage at once: the milk carton kids, the lumineers and old crow medicine show

I also intended to read a book a week.  I went on a Janet Evanovich binge right around the beginning of December that brought me through to March.  Dangerous addiction.  It meant 18 books, though, so I'm not doing too poorly-plus all the other books I read!  John Green's The Fault in Our Stars is my favorite so far but I read some great historical fiction, Winnie-the-Pooh (again) and what feels like one thousand scholarly articles about Francelia Butler, fairy tales and science fiction.

Unreal brunch.  I need to make this, right?

Everything is Illuminated at the beach

Felt patriotic on a ferry

Summer's not ending in my book

What happens next?  I think I'll make some gluten free rolls, pack for my next yoga teacher training, and think it over...

Music in Two YA Novels

This is my first ever blog entry! I've been meaning to write one for ages-it took me well over a year, but here it is. Anyway, I'm getting my MA in children's lit. I'd like to be a children's librarian. The category Children's Literature doesn't apply only to picture books, but to middle grade novels, nonfiction, YA (young adult) literature. There's so much out there! Since my first summer at Hollins University, I've been keeping track of what I read. I love contemporary fiction and classic literature as well, so I've been aiming to read 5 YA books to every contemporary adult novel I read. It was going well, but lately I've only been reading YA. Which has been delightful.

So I'm writing today because I just finished If I Stay by Gayle Forman and had a really great experience with it. It reminded me a lot of my all time favorite YA novel, Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly which came out last October but I was lucky enough to read in June, 2010. I could write forever about Revloution, and I will next semester when I work on a critical analysis of it as part of an independent study. I needed to write today because I am sort of furious. (It's totally possible to be only sort of furious...I think.) The only review on the front cover of my paperback copy of If I Stay is from USA Today and reads, "Will appeal to fans of Stephanie Meyer's TWILIGHT." First of all, it's rude to suggest that all Twilight fans are the same and like the same books. Secondly, I read Twilight, (because I felt an obligation to read it), but that has nothing to do with why I read If I Stay. I'll admit that I got caught up in it, but I didn't like it enough to read the rest of the series. The characters in Twilight are one-dimensional. Bella is weak and falls for an abusive guy. He's gorgeous (don't get me started on how unattractive I find the actor who played him...) and cruel. Ultimately the reader deduces that he acted that way because he was protecting her, but do 5th grade girls understand that? Do 8th grade girls even get it? True, it's not written for 5th grade girls, but there's no denying that they're reading it. And let's be honest, even if you're totally comfortable with being in love with a vampire who's 70 years older than you are, it's NEVER okay for the person you're with to sneak into your bedroom without you knowing and creepily watch you sleep. That's not love. That's having a stalker.


If I Stay is like Twilight in that both books have female main characters and their stories take place in the Northwest. I'm tempted to say that the similarities end there. Mia in Forman'solds that they are. Maybe what I love most about them is how much they love music. Mia's a classical cellist whose father was a drummer in a punk band and mother always went to his shows. Adam is a guitar player in a punk band whose entire life has been music, until he meets Mia. I should point out that Mia's story isn't really a love story. It starts with tragedy and we read the novel knowing that Mia faces an unbelievably difficult decision. I suppose it is a love story-but not just romantic love. Familial love, friendship love, the overwhelming love of music. However, Adam is a huge part of her life and their relationship to music and to one another is really meaningful. I'd go on and on about this, but it would get out of hand quickly. novel comes from an incredibly loving family, which is rare in YA literature. She's in a relationship that is certainly not flawless, but it's honest, and neither of them is creepy. Her relationship with Adam seems genuine and they act like the 17 and 18 year

If I Stay and Revolution both use music really well. Mia loves classical music and Forman writes about it beautifully. Andi from Donnelly's novel is a guitar player who loves The Beatles and The Decemberists and is writing her senior thesis on (the fictional composer) Amadé Malherbeau: "...if there was no Amadé Malherbeau, there would be no Radiohead" (83). Be still my heart. "The Decemberists come on the radio. 'Grace Cathedral Hill.' We both lunge for the volume...The DJ plays two more songs from Castaways and Cutouts. We don't talk, we just listen. Most people can't do that - just shut up and listen. I close my eyes, play some air chords. It's so amazingly beautiful, that album" (134). Okay, maybe I LOVE this because of how much I adore that album, but I really think it's beautiful. Jennifer Donnelly's writing is really moving and beautiful. Both books incorporate music so much into their main character's lives and perhaps this is why they seem so vivid. Both Mia and Andi are living through tragedies - their lives are in pieces, but music keeps them alive.
I suppose that I've said some of what I intended to. To sum up, (this isn't a paper, so I can be lazy and say "to sum up") If I Stay is nothing like Twilight. Revolution is incredible. I suggest that everyone read them. I cried. Maybe that's embarrassing, but I felt a major connection to these characters and I think about them as though they're real people, which I think is the testament of a truly great book.


What I want to know now is what others think of them....