Florida Winter

Depending upon where you are reading this from, I will start off by apologizing for all the gloating I am about to do over the insanely awesome thing that is a Florida Winter.

 Today is the coolest day of the winter season so far and that means, no joke, a high of 52 today. Oh it's not just that it’s only 52 degrees, there is also not a cloud in the sky and the sun is shining so brightly I could use a hat and sunglasses.

 These are the kind of Florida days where us locals look around and wonder why more people don't live here. It isn't until the summer months that we are reminded of the answer to that question.

 This brilliant weather is supposed to last through the weekend which means I will be lying in the park, in a sweatshirt and shorts with flip flops on reading my book which right now happens to be The Mime Order by Samantha Shannon. It is the second book in what is scheduled to be a sever part series that started with last year's best seller The Bone Season.

The ends of Friday work days are always exciting but I am looking forward to this one even more this week because of what is ahead.

 No matter if you're in the sun, stuck under the clouds, or snowed in, a book is always a good companion that can make you feel warm from the inside out. Take some time this weekend to slow things down, put your feet up, and enjoy a good story. Your body and soul will thank you for it.

 

Write on. -T

Valentine's Day

One of the only days on the calendar that I know of which is so strongly both love and hated. Poor St. Valentine whose name has been written is swirling script across balloons, stuffed animals, candy and cards in the commercialized attempt of people showing how much they care for one another based on the gifts that they exchange.

 

 

I'm sorry that is a bit pessimistic but coming from someone who never had a valentine until last year, I get why people have mixed feeling about the day. The worst was in middle and high school when it fell on a school day. Thankfully adolescents are spared that humiliation this year.

Valentine's Day is all about love and there have been no stronger portrayals of love than in books from the beginning of the written language. Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Margaret Mitchell along with so many others made love something more than clichéd words on a candy heart.

If you don’t have that romance in your life or you feel lonely this Valentine's Day I encourage you to pick up a book. Maybe treat yourself to that brand new one at the bookstore that you've had your eye on or take yourself for a coffee date and get comfortable in a big plush chair. You can get swept away by a romance as big as Gone with the Wind or escape it all completely into a land of aliens and time vortexes simply by turning the page.

No day on a calendar should make you feel alone or that you are missing out on something. I have been there and I remember it well. The only thing I know for absolute certain is that a book has never failed to make me feel something. If I want to change my emotional mind set or escape from my daily life I can always crack open a book and be someone, somewhere, anything else for a while.

 

Valentine's Day 2015- Date a book.

 

Write on. -T

100 Books That Will Make You More Interesting

           Reading has and will always be my biggest passion. There has never been a time when I couldn’t find a book that would fix or help me forgot about what I was feeling. Some of my best friends have been in books, the places I long to visit described in their pages, and all manners of things I wish I could have been, there for me to imagine I can become them.

           

A huge part of being a reader is the culture surrounding it. Everyone has their favorite book (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) everyone has the suggestion for the next book ‘you absolutely have to read!’ and everyone has an opinion about every book you will ever mention.

The most awesome and most devastating thing about books is that you’ll never get to them all. For every one that you finish, six more get added to your list which makes it impossible sometimes to decide what to read next. I am a type A list maker and I often look to lists, such as the New York Times 100 Best Novels list to suggest new books for me to read. The NYT list is dense with the classics (Les Miserables, Gone With the Wind, multiple Jane Austen’s) which are books that should be celebrated and have stood the test of time but they are not the most readable of stories. That’s when I came upon this list of ‘100 Books That Will Make You More Interesting.’ This list is referenced on GoodReads.com where they cite the source to be GMHS Media Center. I found it by general search engine searches for ‘Book Lists’.

When I took a look I was presently surprised to say that I had read a good portion of them and I also was encouraged by the fact that these books ranged over a wide variety of genres. There are several graphic novels on the list, some Sci-Fi, some YA, non-fiction, a few of the classics, and a lot of modern fiction. It is a list that will garner much more enjoyment from reading them as opposed to just the satisfaction of saying you had troughed through all the books on another list. If you are going to spend the time with them, might as well enjoy it.

 

For me some of the stand outs on the list are:

Lord of the Flies,

The Great Gatsby,

One Flew Over

The Cuckoo's Nest,

Night by Elie Wiesel.

            This is a great jumping off point for book club suggestions, getting your feet a little deeper into some substantive literature that you may otherwise have written off because of a bad high school experience, or it may just deliver on what it says and you will end up a more interesting person... maybe even the most interesting person in the world.

            I think that if you read, you are all ready interesting. What you read says a lot about your open mindedness and your personality. Most people that I have met who have had a book in their hand are people I continue to want to be around.

http://www.granby.k12.ct.us/uploaded/GMHS_Media_Center/Documents/100_Books_That_Will_Make_You_More_Interesting.pdf

Page to Screen

            Ah, the ever present adaptation. This topic is one of those that I am so torn about that depending upon the situation I will feel differently each time someone asks me about it. I will say off the top that I have never seen a movie that was adapted from a book that was better than the original book but there is quite a range on the acceptable scale that has come from these productions.

            The magic in seeing a beloved book come to screen is the chance to see the mannerisms of the characters, to hear the voices in their dialogue and to see the places described in visual detail. It has the ability to put all of your mental imagery into motion and when done right it can be magical.

            The obvious downside of that is as a reader you imagine these aspects in your own way and if when it comes to life it is not as you had imagined it you could feel disappointed. Let's take the Harry Potter series to start with. There is no series more impactful on my life than the seven book wonder by JK Rowling but I will say that every time after leaving a midnight screening of the latest movie I was disappointed.

 

            As standalone movies they are great. We see dragons, castles, flying brooms and epic villains come to life; all things that make for a great fantasy film. But it’s all the connective tissue that gets severed that leaves me as a reader left feeling like the movie makers missed the point. Yes, I know all the details cannot be in the movie, they would be hours long but that is the sacrifice the movie studios make and the ones the movie goers risk when they see their favorite books come to the screen.                         

 

            Some books adapt to screenplays much better than others and depending upon the vision of the writers and directors can be made it a masterpiece of its own. Some that come to mind are 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'. Both are Academy Awarding winning films that did full justice to the writers of the books. These movies are not without their omissions or flaws but they got something right.

            With the recent trend in Hollywood being to take any book and run with it, I think as readers we need to change our approach to the cinemas. Are you going to study every detail frame by frame so that we can feel superior by saying 'that's not how it is in the book' or are we going to appreciate our beloved stories as they are suited to the big screen?

            In some cases, like Harry Potter, I cannot help grouping myself in with the former because I know all the details of the stories so well that any changes or omissions are overwhelming to my senses but I can also appreciate and be thankful for the opportunity to see Harry battle Voldemort in vibrant color.

            When I approach a movie for a book I've read I am going to sit back and enjoy the show. Something may be different, some things may be changed, but if it is a good movie they will capture the essence of the characters and remind me of why I enjoyed the book in the first place.

 

Here are some of the ones I am looking forward too:

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2

Insurgent

Wild

Paper Towns

Paddington

 

Enjoy the Show. Write On. -T

To Read or to Write? Tis my Dilemma

           One of the most unfortunate side effects of my blossoming creativity is that I have hardly read a page of recreational reading in months. I don’t think I've gone this long without reading a book since I first learned to read.

I typically am a book a week reader, if not two. I love diving into stories and not wanting to come up for air. It allows me to escape my real world and become a wizard, a detective, a lady in waiting at King Henry VIII's Court, or a time traveling companion to a mad man in a blue box. Reading lets me appreciate the craft that I cherish so deeply and drags me even further into the literary realm that I have always found to be a place of comfort.

You would think that such joy would be something I’d go back to as often as I could and up until 12 months ago I would have told you that was exactly how I was spending my days.

But more and more writing has become a requirement of my recent life that takes a lot of my time and attention. Writing lets me empty my mind of the all the thoughts that are constantly buzzing and banging around in my brain. Where reading allows me to escape, writing allows me to create. I can create a world where things make sense, I can type into reality a place where things are fair, people get what they deserve, or where the wildest of wild dreams are possible.

As much as escaping gives me a chance to catch my breath, writing gives me strength and helps me believe again.

It’s ironic how the act of reading which made me fall in love with writing in the first place is the one thing that I cannot do simultaneously. I’ve found that if I read and write in coinciding time frames I start to blend the two things together and it muddles each of the individual parts. The words I read I start to examine for language and lost the emotion and the words I’m writing start to take on some of the characteristics of another writers tone and verbiage.

In order to be true to both processes I need to do them separately. I need to read only in between writing projects or write only when I have walked away from the bookshelf for a while. As I continue putting effort into becoming a better writer I need to never neglect nor forget my first true love of reading.

One helps the other but only when they are given the attention they deserve. I plan to give both what they need, in their own time.

 

Write on -T

 

Soapbox: Open Letter about Bullying

Because this is my blog, I am going to use this post as a soapbox. I want to talk about bullying.

Being only 25 years old, I can remember very well the times, in middle school especially, when I was bullied, teased, and made the butt of the jokes whispered behind my back just loud enough for me to hear.

            My one true saving grace through all of my school years was that I was and am still insanely athletic so I was grouped in with the athletes as opposed to the losers, which believe me, without my talent to hit a big yellow ball, I would have been in.
 

            It seems like every day when I turn on my computer one of the first headline stories I see is about a young person, I mean 9 and 10 years old sometimes, hurting or killing themselves because of relentless bullying.

 

            My era of school was a lot less pressure because the social media outlets where a lot of this bullying is living didn't exist. MySpace was just becoming a thing early in my high school years and even then it wasn't yet a widely used outlet. There was no Facebook, no Instagram, No Snapchat; nothing that could follow me home. If we were being bullied in school, at least we knew when we got off the bus or got into our parent's car it was over until the next day.

            Kids today do not have that luxury and it really has started to make me uncomfortable and fearful for the future. I do not have any children but someday I hope to and I cannot fathom what the world will look like at that time; the uncertainty is terrifying.  

            Most people believe that bullying comes from a sense of overcompensation on the part of the tormentor and I guess I would agree but I truly think that some people are just not good. Even at a young age some people were just born with anger and hate in their soul and often their upbringing only fuels the flames.
 

            I don't know what to tell the kid that only encounters hate or judgments. Stay strong, and It'll get better are clichés that can only go so far. Being bullied leaves mark so strong that they will shape the adults these kids are too come and worst of all may be that they will only then encounter adult bullies at the other end of adolescence.
 

To the bullied: Take the odds that are stacked against you and use them as your stepping stones in life. Look inside to find and nurture the things you like about yourself. Use the tough skin you will develop to not be afraid of scraping your knee when you embark on amazing adventures. Look at your bullies with pity and sadness knowing they are misguided and lost. Find peace in your interests and what makes you unique. Foster relationships with people who 'get you' and learn to lean on them. It will not be easy but it will never stay the same. There is always the opportunity for change around the corner and one of those turns will bring better things than you left behind. Even though there are more than 6 billion people in this world you still matter. You are something that truly cannot be replicated or replaced. Keep that in consideration when it feels like a mass of sameness. Being rare is more valuable than mass produced replicas.

To the bullies: Try to step back and put yourself in your victim's shoes. No one likes feeling isolated; no one likes the façade of a tough guy or a mean girl. Your act of cowardice in trying to convey dominance is so transparent. You are showing your weakness and short comings. Be brave enough to confront yourself in the mirror and truly ask if you like the person you see reflected there. If not, you can change. An apology does not change the past but it can alter the future. There is always an opportunity to be better than your upbringing, better than your past self. Breaking someone else does not make you stronger. Hate fuels hate and there is enough of that in the world without your contribution. Different does not equal wrong and disagreement does not equal consent. If you don’t agree or don’t like what/who someone is, fine. But it gives you no right to make a case against them, just don’t join in. Use the effort you expend towards putting people down to, if nothing else, make yourself better. You don’t have to be the saving grace to the whole world but you can save yourself and positively impact people around you.
 

            Seeing all of the negatives in the world today it is a wonder anyone can be positive and selfless but that's what we need. We need people to see beyond their 20/20 vision of the world and open their eyes to the impact a smile can have, a well timed compliment or a random act of kindness.

 

It can be different. We can be different. I can be different.

 

 

Anti-Bullying Resources:

 

StopBullying.Gov http://www.stopbullying.gov/

 

PACER: http://www.pacer.org/bullying/

 

Bullying.org: http://bullying.org/

 

 

"All ears yearn for a voice to lead them through the darkness."

It's been a while since I have posted a traditional book review but I have one that I just finished reading and I thought I'd share it with you.

The book was Red Rising by Pierce Brown. Depending on who you ask it can be classified as a Young Adult or a Contemporary Fiction. The themes are quite adult and there is some harsh language but I do not believe in censorship so if a teen wants to read it then good for them; there are a lot worse things they could be doing with their time.



Red Rising is the first book, in what is planed to be a trilogy, about Darrow, a Red, who has been instrumental in the colonization process on Mars. Humanity has overwhelmed the capacities of Earth and they have ventured out in a substantial way to prepare Mars for human habitation. The pioneers are divided into castes defined by color with each color providing a service to the new life on Mars. Reds, like Darrow, make up the lowest caste on the color scale with their principle job being to mine below the surface for the energy source that powers the settlement above. Teenage Darrow enjoys the mines and is a prodigy with a quick hand and a sharp attitude.

Darrow and all Reds like him are led to believe that their work below the surface is an honorable task and will one day lead to humanity colonizing the surface of Mars. But Darrow is soon shown the truth; people have been living on the surface for hundreds of years. The Reds have been enslaved with lies and political power and have toiling away in dangerous circumstances at poverty's threshold for an elitist civilization.

After learning the truth, combined with witnessing the brutal execution of his father for speaking out against the government years earlier and his wife, Eo, asking questions and challenging authority he begins to be swept up in a political chess match he wanted no part of. He was told he could be the change, he could make a difference for the people of all colors and be the start of a revolution to bring all colors to the surface.

Darrow is a strong male lead in the vain of Katniss and Ender, and even a bit of Harry Potter circa Order of the Phoenix days, who gets put through enormous transformation on the journey to playing his part in making the world a just place for all colors. He is strong, impulsive, likable, and feared. His transformation as a person both emotionally and physical will have you ensnared by his story. The action and violence of his trials and tribulations will, at times, make the Hunger Games seem like a children's nursery rhyme.

If you are still mourning the end of the Hunger Game series and you love a moderate amount of science fiction then there can be no better book for you. Red Rising took me by surprise and had me cringing, cheering, depressed, and angered along the way.

The second book of the trilogy is called Golden Son and was released earlier this month. If you want to be taken in by a series again and follow a characters journey, there is no one better to place your trust in than the Golden Son himself, Darrow.