Blog Post #6 Chiefs by Stuart Woods

Because I've been writing about Wicked for so long, I'm going to start writing about another book I've been reading lately.  I plan on finishing Wicked because I'm actually very interested in it now, but for the sake of keeping my posts fresh, I'm going to move on to writing about a book called Chiefs by Stuart Woods.

Woods is one of my favorite authors to read purely for enjoyment.  He writes mystery novels starring characters who live fabulously charmed lives.  The mystery keeps me interested in the plot while imagining myself living the jet set lifestyle of his main characters keeps me comfortable.  Because I've read dozens of books by this guy, I do consider myself something of an expert on his writing.  But that's the thing.  Dozens of books.  This guy came out with about 3 new books last year.  Any author pumping out three books a year might not be producing top-quality literature.  He's trying to make money not win any awards.  However, I recently discovered his first published novel, which is what I've been reading recently.  First books, like first albums, often enjoy the "first phenomenon", which is when the "first" thing produced by an artist is fantastic because the artist might have had YEARS to perfect it while he or she was waiting to be discovered.  Once discovered, however, the artist is pressured to produce more and on a deadline, so the work that follows is often less awesome than the work that came first.

Anyway, my point is, I recently discovered Woods's first book, so I was stoked and had to read it immediately even though I was really supposed to focus all of my free reading time on Wicked.

Blog Post #6--Due Friday, February 27th

Part 1:  Post three pictures and one word that capture the setting of your new book 

My word is: Delano.

This is the name of the small town, and Woods mentions Delano, Georgia in many, many, many of his other books.  It's barely a blip on the map, but in the world of Woods, all roads lead to Delano.

 The book starts when a cotton farmer in rural Georgia in 1916 decides to sell his farm before the boll weevil can render his farm useless.

 Then he convinces the city council of the newly-formed small town to make him chief of police.  Considering the town is so small, and the year is 1916, this wasn't such an outlandish move.

 

  The book is divided into three sections and follows the lives of three different police chiefs over three generations as they all attempt to track down the same serial killer, who, the reader finds out very early on, is the only other applicant for the police chief job when the story opens in 1916.

Blog Post #5 Wicked by Gregory Maguire

First off, full disclosure:  I did not finish my book by the due date.  That is going to have to be ok.  I was attempting to do my work AND the work I assign you, but I was unable to get it done.  Do I get credit for trying? 

At any rate, I am going to attempt to do blog post #5 (do I get credit for writing the blog posts each week?) but my recommendation is going to be based on what I've read so far.  I bet I'm not the only one doing that this week.  Winky face.

Blog Post #5--Due Friday, February 20th ***First book completion due date!!!

For this week, I would like you to write or speak (in a video that you upload to the blog) a book review of your completed book.  Here is a link to two helpful examples. You book review must be-

• At least 200 words written out.
• Contain enough background information so that the reader can understand the book but not be a summary.
• Contain your opinion of the book backed up with evidence and examples.
• Extra Points for posting your review to Goodreads or Amazon.  Provide the link to the page in your post. 
   
   

Wicked is the story of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West.  However, unlike The Wizard of Oz, which depicts an un-named witch as an evil character, this story casts Elphaba as a misunderstood hero. 

This book has been hugely popular, and I am beginning to see why.  Some of the most popular current books and films deal with an independent character in unhappy, unstable, unpleasant circumstances, fighting against the big, bad people in charge.  For example, think of Katniss in The Hunger Games series.  Whatever it is about that type of dystopic underdog story that appeals to readers is also present in Wicked.  However, Maguire makes this book more expansive by not settling for telling us merely about Elphaba and her life, but by also fully developing the history, politics and unrest of the society in which she lives.  Therefore, the main character of this book is less Elphaba than it is Oz itself, and Elphaba is simply the vehicle through which we see Oz.  Because he made a place his focus rather than the life of a single person, Maguire writes about the lives of several characters and times within that place.  The result is a fantastically complex and rich description of a flawed society.  Rather than taking us somewhere over the rainbow, Maguire shows us the rainbow's filthy underbelly, and there is nothing we love more than learning about the dark side of the things that seem so perfect on the surface.

Blog Post #4 Wicked by Gregory Maguire

In the last few weeks, several students have asked me, "is that a good book?"  I haven't really come up with an answer yet.  I don't looooooove it the way many people have, but I don't hate it either.  Also, I AM still reading it, which is significant because I am quick to abandon books I don't like.  Within the last week, I have really started to get in to it. In books, characters are really important to me, and the more I get to know these characters, the more I like them and the book overall.  Now that the action is starting to take off more, maybe I will start to love the book.  Now on to this week's prompt:

1. What is the author of this book saying about life and living?  What is the theme of the book?  How do you know?

I think that one of the author's more obvious points is something like the old cliche "every story has two sides".  Because Maguire decided to re-tell a familiar story from an "evil" character's point of view, he seems to be suggesting that it is important to understand the perspective of the people we judge.  Further, because Elphaba, the "wicked witch of the west", is an intelligent, but poor and unfortunate girl, the reader almost has no choice but to sympathize with her.  By forcing us to sympathize with an "evil" character, we realize that our initial judgments, based on The Wizard of Oz, were wrong.  

In the book, there are two kinds of animals.  Animals, with a capital "A," have basically the same abilities of thought, speech and consciousness that humans have while animals, with a lowercase "a," are more like the way we think of animals in our world today.  At this point in the book there is great unrest because there is a political movement on the rise to discriminate against the Animals and force them back to the roles of mere animals.  Although this is dealing with animals and Animals, the disagreements and political tension are very similar to the problems between groups of people when various races or religions clash.  I can't yet say exactly what point the author is trying to make about this kind of discrimination and oppression because I don't yet know the fate of all of the characters involved.  However, the main characters are working on behalf of the Animals, and a highly respected Animal was just murdered, probably because he was trying to scientifically prove their equality to humans.  Therefore, I suspect that Maguire is trying to show us that equality is an important cause to support. Moreover, I think that he is trying to show that stepping up and working for any cause that you believe in is important, be it equality or something else.

Blog Post #3 Wicked by Gregory Maguire

I've been torn this week.  Just as my book was getting good, I've had 100 essays to read, so I've had less time for reading.  It might be odd to imagine, but during reading time I LIKE to read with you guys and try to as often as possible.  This week, however, the essays demanded my attention.  All the same, I'm on 127, so I did get my 75 pages in for the week.

On to the prompt:

What do you notice about the author’s style of writing?  

• What person is the book in (1st, 2nd, 3rd)?  
• What makes the author’s writing interesting.  How does he use description, figurative language, sentence structures?
• Include on great line from the section you read this week.

This book is told in 3rd person with a focus on Elphaba, the "Wicked Witch of the West" although her wickedness is not yet evident, nor is she actually from the West.  So... I imagine some of the inconsistencies will be sorted out by the end of the book.

When I first started reading this book it grossed me right the heck out.  I don't think a year is ever indicated, but I imagine this story taking place long ago, before proper sanitation and hygiene were recognized as important and connected to a healthy lifestyle.  In the first section (of five) there were WAY more vivid descriptions of bodily fluids and general filth than I was quite comfortable with.  I didn't understand why the author spent so much time on such disgusting details that were really relatively meaningless to the development of the major story line.  During the first section, I wasn't sure I would finish the book because of the writer's style.  However, now that I'm in to the second section, descriptions are no longer gross, so I am enjoying the writer's style more now.

In general, the longer a sentence is, the more difficult it is for the reader to keep track of its point.  Maguire's sentences are often quite long, so I find this book challenging to read.  I am not having trouble understanding it, but it definitely requires more effort than most of the books I usually choose for my own enjoyment.  I think that it is this kind of challenging, but not impossible, reading is the kind of reading that makes me a better reader.  It's a mental workout, and I feel good about reading something that is good for me.

Finally, as utterly squalid as Maguire's descriptions were in the first section, he's delivering some real beauties in this section.  Here's a lovely little nugget I read this week:

"They both gazed and the green and flowery spectre reflected in the watery old glass, surrounded by the blackness, driven through with the wild rain beyond.  A maplefruit leaf, shaped like a star with blunted points, or like a heart grown lopsided, suddenly whirled out of the night and plastered itself on the reflection in the glass, gleaming red and reflecting the firelight, just where the heart would be-- or so it seemed from the angle at which Galinda stood"  (Maguire 101).

On a dark and stormy night, two girls are standing before a window, looking at their reflections in the glass.   Then a red leaf blows to the glass and sticks there, so it now looks like the reflection has a glowing red heart... THAT IS AWESOME!! Look at all the participle phrases in those two sentences!! Look at all those concrete details!! That is sophisticated language use and beautiful imagery.. This... THIS is why I'm an English teacher: because sentences like those fascinate me, and I thought it would be fun to make a career out talking about earth-shattering sentences and how to write them.

Blog Post #2 Wicked by Gegory Maguire

I have chosen the first "making connections" prompt to respond to:

1.  Write about the connections you see between the book and your world, another book you have read, a film you have seen or a song. Add pictures or links to the things that you connect this book to.

I have been abnormally afraid of traditionally frightening things as far back as I can remember-- ghost stories, haunted houses, scary movies.  One of my earliest memories of being terrified by a movie involves me working up the courage to make it through the Wicked Witch's appearances in the Wizard of Oz without scrambling under the blankies, where I would be infinitely safer.  Naturally, as I am now reading about this woman who haunted my childhood, I am connecting what I remember about this villain from the movie to what I am learning about her as a... hero?  Well, I'm not sure if she'll be a hero yet, but she's the protagonist, so it's looking like she might turn out to be heroic.

When the baby Wicked Witch, Elphaba, is first introduced, she is quite horrifying and violent-- like a ferral cat but with shark's teeth and a penchant for biting.  That seemed to fit with the image of the adult woman she would become according to the film.  She ends up as an awful adult, so OF COURSE she was an evil demon baby.  However, now that I am about 100 pages in, I am seeing the Elphaba as a poor young woman off to school and being picked on by the other, wealthier and more popular girls.  Now I'm staring to feel for her.  She doesn't appear cruel and vicious.  She is shy, alone, and the target of the mean twinkies she's surrounded by.  This is the first place in the book we actually get to see Elphaba speak, which I expect will lead to revealing much more about her character than I currently know.

More than The Wizard of Oz, I am connecting this book to the 1985 movie Return to Oz.  Where the original was a family favorite, full of warm scenes and charming characters, this follow-up was nightmarish.  Don't be fooled by the light-hearted cover, this movie scared the snot out of all seven people who have seen it.  Dorothy wakes up in an insane asylum, and basically things get worse from there.  Dark, depressing, squalid-- the tone set in this movie is the exact one I get from the book.  Additionally, one of the characters is now referring to Ticky-Tocky brass, robot people.  In the pic at left, the rotund gent is just this sort of character, who, I believe, is called "Tick Tock".

The other thing I keep trying to connect this book to is the recent musical of the same name, which I have not seen and know nothing about save there is some song about defying gravity.  So far, this book is all squalor and meanness, which I have a hard time imagining set to music and jazz hands.  However, if producers managed to pull it off with Titanic the Musical and a Green Day album, I guess a re-imagining of a Hollywood classic shouldn't be beyond belief.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that I was also in the play The Wizard of Oz, when I was in high school.  My goodness, I didn't realize I had quite so many Oz-related connections.  That rendition of the story is much like the movie, but with a few different scenes.  The story with the Witch, however, was pretty much the same.  Although a former Munchkin, whose stage direction was to hide from the terrifying witch when she appeared on the scene, I will do my best to give Elphaba a chance to be this book's hero.

Blog Post #1: Wicked by Gregory Maguire

In class it took me about 20 minutes to read 15 pages.  The fantasy genre is difficult for me, and I am often distracted when I read in class because I am also trying to pay attention to whether or not students are on task.  As a result, I often end up re-reading sentences and paragraphs multiple times.  At home, I might read faster, but I haven't timed myself there yet.

This week I read some of Wicked on the couch in my living room.  My brain can't focus on words on the page if I can hear other words around me, so those I have to minimize.  When I read, it usually looks like this:

Lying on my right side, I clutched my book in my left hand and tucked my right hand under my pillow.  I held the book close to my face so that it's almost like I've got blinders on.  This way, I have a direct view into the world painted with the words on the page.  Since it was chilly this week, I also curled up with a comforter, pale green and poofy.  Because Penelope cannot resist the blanket, before long, she was circling in the routine she performs before settling in for quality cuddle time.  Beyond the immediate silence, I hear Penelope purring and the distant blasts of Battlefield 4 my husband is playing in the other room.  Once in a while I'll also hear a "A tank!! Jason, there's a tank!!", but other than that the house is hushed.

I'm having a hard time picturing what is happening in my book.  There is a Time/Dragon/Clock/Idol thing, a baby with green skin, a stranger with red skin, elves and other oddities.  These things don't exist in real life, so I am having trouble connecting what I'm reading with things I've seen before.  Since I can't do that, I have to create each image from scratch.  For me, that process is much more difficult than reading the realistic books I'm used to.  Further, I usually read books that occur in lengthy series (20+ books in a series!).  When I read those, my mind calls up the images I've already created for the characters and places in the books.  Beyond that, I am enjoying losing myself in a completely opposite world for a while.  This has been a very stressful few weeks for me, so I appreciate escaping to the world of the Munchkinlanders for a while.

I'm not convinced this book is for me, but I started it yesterday, and I'm 48 tiny-print pages in, which is pretty impressive for me.  Images are becoming more clear as I go, so I think I'll be able to stick with it.  More than anything, I think that what will drive me to follow through is my desire to know what all of the hype is about.  People LOVE this book, this story, this musical.  I'm hoping to see what is so great.  As of right now, I'm pretty grossed out by the rank descriptions of dirty characters.  It's kind of a minor aspect of the book, but it's something that is really bothering me.  Especially with the baby.  She can't get wet--we all know what will happen to the Wicked Witch of the West if she gets wet--so how do they keep her clean?!  All of this has me wondering, what do you people love so much?!  I guess I have another 490 pages to figure it out.

Welcome!

During our first marking period together, you will use Blogger as a way to write about the books you are reading.  I am new to Blogger, as I'm sure many of you are, so I am really excited about exploring this new communication tool together.

Please click on the "Assignment" link in the upper right for details about the blog project.