From 4pm this afternoon until 4pm tomorrow afternoon, I’m joining in on the 24 Hour Read-A-Thon! It’s sort of a reading challenge, only everyone participates at the same time. For 24 hours, we read books, post in our blogs about our reading, and visit other readers’ blogs. We also participate in mini-challenges throughout the day.

This is my sixth time participating in the read-a-thon. This time, I’m only reading, no cheerleading or mini-challenge hosting. Normally, I would be at work tomorrow, but I have the day off to attend a job interview – so I’ll actually get to participate in more of the readathon this time than I did in the fall!

Here’s what I’ve got in the house to choose from over the next 24 hours:

• Twenty Years After (a little over 4 hours left in the audiobook at the start time)
  
• Sex and God at Yale (audiobook)
• Cemetery John (audiobook)
• Confessions of an Arabic Interpreter
• Running With Scissors
• The Taqwacores (which I started a few weeks ago in Beirut)
• Sex and the Citadel
• “?? ???” (an Arabic children’s book)

Updates

Hour 1: 4-5pm

Introductory Questionnaire:

1. What fine part of the world are you reading from today? - I’m reading today from my partner’s house in Dubai.
2. Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? - I’m looking forward to Confessions of an Arabic Interpreter. I heard the author speak at a bunch of events at the Emirates Festival of Literature this year and haven’t gotten to picking up his book that we bought yet.
3. Which snack are you most looking forward to? - Last night, I spent hours (upon hours) preparing Warak Enab Bi Zeit. The batch is on the stove right now cooking, and will be ready to eat by late this evening!
4. Tell us a little something about yourself! - I really should be spending this weekend addressing wedding invitations rather than readathoning.
5. If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to? - I’m not going to worry so much about how many hours I read. Today’s mission is to read as much as I can, but still keep it balanced with enough sleep to be functional (and un-grumpy) tomorrow.

For about half of the first hour, we had people over, so I didn’t get to start reading right away like I would’ve liked. Once they left, though, I went on to start listening to Twenty Years After.

Hour 2: 5-6pm

Listened to Twenty Years After while Zaid went to visit at his parents’ house.

Hour 3: 6-7pm

Continue listening to Twenty Years After while Zaid visited his parents. I also had a very short nap.

Hour 4-6: 7-8pm

Continue listening to Twenty Years After while Zaid visited his parents. Finished cooking the stuffed grape leaves.

Hour 5: 8-9pm

Continued listening to Twenty Years After. Ate stuffed grape leaves for dinner while watching an episode of The Big Bang Theory to break up my reading.

Mini-Challenge Re-Title Your Current Read: I would probably re-name this book Twenty Naps Later. Seriously. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad in dead-tree form, but this narrator has been killing me since I first picked it up. And the whole audiobook is 28 hours long.

Hour 6: 9-10pm

Continued listening to Twenty Years After. And had a shower.

Hour 7: 10-11pm

Put down the Dumas for a while to pick up a bedtime story. Zaid read me La Akhafu (I Am Not Afraid), my first Arabic-language children’s book. We picked it up a few weeks ago to use to help me with my reading fluency – I know the alphabet but am very slow to decode it – and tonight I finally remembered to ask him to sit down and read it with me.

Hour 8: 11pm-12am (pre-written because I’m in bed with the lappy off…)

Now is the time when I give in for the night. One of these days I’ll be able to read for 24 hours again! But not while I’m living in a country where Sunday is a work day.

Hour 9-16: 12-8am

Sleep.

Hour 17: 8-9am

Sleep, and then listening to Twenty Years After.

Hour 18: 9-10am

Listening to Twenty Years After on my way to a job interview.

Hour 19: 10-11am

Job interviewed, followed by listening to Twenty Years After as I hunted down breakfast.

Hour 20: 11am-12pm

Continued listening to Twenty Years After.

Hour 21: 12-1pm

Went to a meeting with Zaid and someone he met last week.

Hour 22: 1-2pm

Finished reading Twenty Years After. Finally! Started listening to Cemetery John on my way home from grabbing lunch.

Hour 23: 2-3pm

Now that I’m back at home, I’m going to move on to read an actual paper book. (I know, I know … shocking.) So for this hour I’m going to read The Taqwacores, see if I can get it finished by the end of the read-a-thon. Wish me luck!

Hour 24: 3-4pm

I’m continuing to read The Taqwacores right through the end. I’m on a roll!

1. Which hour was most daunting for you? - Probably the hour before I went to sleep last night. I wasn’t really tired yet, and a part of me wanted to do the proper 24-hours-reading thing, but I knew I needed to sleep before my interview in the morning. So it was an internal struggle.
2. Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year? - Definitely not “Twenty Years After”. Ugh.
3. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? - Maybe have a way to check if there are people who ended up participating but who hadn’t originally signed up, and thus nobody like cheerleaders notices them? That’s what happened to me this year.
4. What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon? – Most things. It’s a pretty well-oiled machine.
   
5. How many books did you read? - I finished one that’s been weighing on me for a while, and have about half-finished another book I’ve been keeping on the back-burner.
6. What were the names of the books you read? - I finished reading “Twenty Years After”, started “Cemetery John”, and am currently working through “The Taqwacores”.
7. Which book did you enjoy most? - Definitely “The Taqwacores”. I should’ve moved onto this one ages ago when I was feeling bored.
8. Which did you enjoy least? - “Twenty Years After”. To be fair, though, I was already having a hard time with it before the read-a-thon.
   
9. If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders? - Not applicable.
10. How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time? - I’ll definitely be participating again. Not sure what role I’ll take – it depends on when the October event falls and if I’m working through it again like the last one.

24 Hour Read-A-Thon: Rakem Sitta is original content from: Reading Through Life

On the weekend of March 7-9, I went to quite a few sessions at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature. Today, I’m going to write about what I heard (and learned) at a session called “Creating Compelling Literary Characters: Good, Evil and Lolita’s Fingers”.

Find out how, in both Ashes of the East and his latest novel Lolita’s Fingers, renowned author Waciny Laredj engages with the struggle between good and evil and the creation of compelling characters. 

Although the topic of this session was ostensibly the creation of compelling characters, it really ended up being more of a general talk about Laredj’s background and his writing. He spoke about his upbringing in Algeria in a very unprivileged and poor area, and how he would smuggle tomatoes and oranges into the country from Morocco. He talked also about the transfer of duties in his family and how that affected his upbringing: how his father was not there, so his mother replaced his father, and his grandmother replaced his mother. He spoke about how his grandmother was adamant that he learned Arabic for “his identity”, and how Arabic became the language of his soul, his spirit, instead of the language of his background. Laredj acquired Arabic by working hard for it, and so he wants to preserve that feeling. He said that he feels comforted when writing in Arabic instead of in French. He began writing about his daily heroes, such as his mother, father, and grandmother. He said that the spirit of his novels is taken from the stories that his grandmother told him as a child.

Laredj said that authors shouldn’t work on reconstructions of history because then they will become bad historians as well as bad novelists. He said that, in France, “we area always talking about constitutions and we forget that freedom can be more than just about the commercial sense”. He pointed out that women cannot be free when they are dressed in stringent Victorian style, for example.

The moderator said that Laredj has lived on the borders of two countries and doesn’t write conventional novels, biographies, or histories. In response, he said that the concept of “border” is a restriction that has been imposed on us. Laredj said that when you live between borders you must comply with the decisions of a regime, and that he has a desire to transcend these borders imposed on us. He spoke about “escaping” from the French language to the Arabic language in his writing.

Laredj spoke about writing through the metaphor of building. He said that you can give builders the same materials but you will not get the same building, because it’s not about the materials or the tools that you have. He said that if it were up to him, he would only work on confused or mystical characters, that there is a fine line between good and evil.

At the end, an audience member commented that Laredj had been the only author to mention International Women’s Day the previous evening (in another talk I was in), and asked how he relates to the women in his life. Laredj said that he was raised in an environment surrounded by women. His village was evacuated of men – through immigration and martyrdom in the Algerian revolution – and that he built a certain bond of relationship and sympathy with women. He also commented that he has a certain “feminine aspect” in his personality, a feeling of belonging. Laredj said that macho rhetoric is an empty thing that he doesn’t believe in, that he doesn’t understand fanatics. In his words, “how can you hate your mother, your lover, your sister, those who gave you life? God created us but through a means, a woman.” He said that he sees women as a very integral aspect in our lives.

I haven’t read any of Laredj’s books before, but I’m looking forward to finding an English translation of one soon. Have you read anything he’s written that you can recommend?

Sunday Salon: “Creating Compelling Literary Characters” is original content from: Reading Through Life

Title: Love Is the Cure: On Life, Loss, and the End of AIDS

Author/Narrator: Elton John

Publication Year: 2012

Pages: 256 (audio length: 5 hours 6 minutes)

Genre: Non-Fiction

Source: Audiobook version purchased from Audible.com

From the cover:

In the 1980s, Elton John saw friend after friend, loved one after loved one, perish needlessly from AIDS. He befriended Ryan White, a young Indiana boy ostracized because of his HIV infection. Ryan’s inspiring life and devastating death led Elton to two realizations: His own life was a mess. And he had to do something to help stop the AIDS crisis.

Since then, Elton has dedicated himself to overcoming the plague and the stigma of AIDS. The Elton John AIDS Foundation has raised and donated $275 million to date to fighting the disease worldwide. Love Is the Cure includes stories of Elton’s close friendships with Ryan White, Freddie Mercury, Princess Diana, Elizabeth Taylor, and others, and the story of the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

This is the first book that I’ve read from the non-fiction category of the Audie Awards. I kind of expected the book to be a personal reflection of Elton John’s experiences during the AIDS crisis (particularly in the beginning, since he was probably at his peak of popularity then). It is this, in part, but not completely. A large focus in the book is on the AIDS policies of governments, especially the United States, and on the politics surrounding the epidemic.

I found certain parts of the book more engaging than others. For example, I enjoyed the bits where John discussed the personal connections he had with people who had dealt with AIDS, such as his relationship with Ryan White. It really felt like it put a specific face to the issue. Personally, I was also happy that John dealt with the stigma that certain HIV/AIDS sufferers have to deal with because of not being seen as “innocent” by the general public, such as intravenous drug users. I also found it interesting that John has taken such a strong view on the responsibility that the US – and other countries – play in the fight against the disease and the failure to have eradicated it. He makes it very clear that he holds certain groups more responsible than others and lays out things they could have done to halt the spread of AIDS but have chosen not to do.

Having said that, I would recommend this book to people who are interested in reading about John’s foundation and the contributions that are being made to help support people who suffer from HIV/AIDS, and to those who want to know more about how the US responded in the beginning of the crisis. It’s not as much of a comprehensive view of things as I had thought – and hoped – it would be, though. Love is the Cure is an interesting personal statement, and I enjoyed listening to it, but I’m sure there are other books out there that are more interesting, detailed, and useful regarding the topic, and that don’t rely quite so much on “star power” for promotion and interest.

Rating:

Love Is the Cure: On Life, Loss, and the End of AIDS (Review) is original content from: Reading Through Life

Title: The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food

Author/Narrator: Adam Gopnik

Publication Year: 2011

Pages: 336 (audio length: 11 hours 4 minutes)

Genre: Non-Fiction

Source: Audiobook purchased from Audible.com

From the cover:

In this work, Gopnik charts America’s transformation from being simply aware of what they eat to being obsessive about it. This fascinating culinary journey will transport listeners from 18th-century France and the origin of America’s popular modern tastes to the kitchens of the White House and beyond.

There are quite a few different things that Gopnik does in The Table Comes First, some better than others. One of the things that he does particularly well is chart the evolution of food and culinary thinking in France throughout the ages, and explain how the history of how people have seen food has influenced the way we look at food now. He also does a good job of talking about some of the concerns in restaurant cuisine (versus home cooking), particularly in recent years as French cooking has undertaken some very drastic shifts.

Although the jacket copy of the book suggests that he will delve into the transformation of the way America looks at food, I thought that this was done less well. It was a bit spotty and wasn’t as detailed and as well-explained as the bits about the history of French food had been. There was also this thing he did where he “wrote” imaginary emails to a long-dead woman who had been a food writer or cook of some sort, which I actually found kind of annoying. I get where he was trying to go with it, tying his personal experiences and cooking into what he was writing about, but I just found that personally, it didn’t flow for me. I did find it a bit interesting when he described recipes and things he had made in these “emails”, but I think they either could have been separated off into their own sections or, perhaps, that they’re well done but just don’t fit into this book. At least, in my opinion, that might have been better.

Overall, though, The Table Comes First was an interesting look at how our ideas about the function of restaurants and of what constitutes “gourmet food” have evolved, and included some interesting personal anecdotes and touches. It wasn’t the best book I’ve read about food and food culture, but you might enjoy it more if you have a special interest in French cuisine or the history of France.

Rating:

The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food (Review) is original content from: Reading Through Life

Title: The Handmaid’s Tale

Author: Margaret Atwood

Narrator: Claire Danes

Publication Year: 1998 (this audio version: 2012)

Pages: 311 (audio length: 11 hours)

Genre: Fiction, Dystopia

Source: Audiobook version purchased from Audible.com

From the cover:

After a staged terrorist attack kills the President and most of Congress, the government is deposed and taken over by the oppressive and all controlling Republic of Gilead. Offred, now a Handmaid serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife, can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name. Despite the danger, Offred learns to navigate the intimate secrets of those who control her every move, risking her life in breaking the rules in hopes of ending this oppression.

I first read this book in my freshman year in university. The only other Atwood I had been exposed to at that point was Alias Grace, so I was still fairly naive and didn’t know what to expect in this book. It was part of the reading syllabus for a course called “Literature For Our Time”, and it was one of the only Canadian texts we were to read.

The Handmaid’s Tale blew my freaking socks off back then, and it did it again now.

The basic premise of the story seems a bit far-fetched … and yet it isn’t, especially as years go on and the conservative Christian right gets stronger and more militant in the United States. In particular, the so-called “war on women” of the last few years, which has seen numerous states and government officials trying (and sometimes succeeding) to pass laws that limit the control a woman has over her own body and/or tried to codify a limited set of moral beliefs into the legal system, makes the Republic of Gilead seem just a little bit closer to reality.

I’m not saying that it’s going to happen, but I do think that we really need to think of The Handmaid’s Tale as a cautionary tale of what can happen when we let things slip too far in that direction. I think that this audio version was rather timely, in that it promotes the book to readers who might otherwise not have read it. Claire Danes, in particular, does a fantastic job as the narrator: she doesn’t quite “act” it, it really does feel like a “reading”, but at the same time, she manages to reach through the pages and touch your heart strings. She really manages to help Offred’s voice leap off the pages and come to life for the listener, and I appreciated the choice.

This was a really great re-read at this point in my life, and I’m glad that the Audies-nominated version caught my eye and made me interested enough to pick it up and give it another once-over. If you haven’t read The Handmaid’s Tale before, or if you’ve been thinking about a re-read, now would be a good time for you to do so – and this would be a great version to pick up.

Rating:

The Handmaid’s Tale (Review) is original content from: Reading Through Life

On the weekend of March 7-9, I went to quite a few sessions at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature. Today, I’m going to write about what I heard (and learned) at a session called “The English Language: Hero or Villain?”.

For many decades and for many people, the English language has been considered the passport to education, diplomacy, business success, political aspiration and cultural cool. But beneath the obvious advantages of this alleged lingua franca, is English actually the villain of the piece? Does it disadvantage and inhibit the bloom and strength of other languages?

Chairing the discussion is Arabist and interpreter Leslie McLoughlin who is joined by historian and author of The Arabs: A History, Eugene Rogan, and Abdulla Al-Dabbagh, professor of English Literature at UAE University and author of Literary Intellectuals: East and West.

This was probably the session that I was most looking forward to on LitFest weekend. Zaid was supposed to meet me after work to attend, but unfortunately didn’t manage to make it, so I was there alone. It was my first experience with the three men who made up the panel, though I heard them all speak at least once more during the weekend. I have to be honest: the introduction was quite long and a bit rambly.

The panel started out with the question: is English responsible for the problems with national language in the UAE? (For those of you who might not know, there is an ongoing debate in the UAE – and, indeed, in many other countries including in the Arab world – about the loss of traditional languages as this generation learns English instead.)

Al-Dabbagh responded by asking, instead, what it means to be a world or universal language. He pointed out that we have had this problem before: in the Renaissance, Latin was the common language and was threatened by modern languages. He commented that we are now in a similar situation with regards to languages in the world, and wondered what English would eventually be replaced by.

Rogan said that English is threatening the languages of just about every country in the world, not just the UAE. He said that English is growing by about 8500 words a day, and McLoughlin added that the way language changes is very fluid, and that you cannot pin down vocabulary. Rogan gave the examples of Irish and Welsh as essentially dead languages that are struggling against English. Most importantly, he said that the “English problem” is part of a much bigger issue in the UAE, as many students aren’t really fluent in Arabic or English.

Al-Dabbagh raised the question of the supremacy of English. In the 1970s, the key words in higher education in the Middle East were “Arabic” and “Arabization”. Schools tried to teach all subjects in Arabic. In the last 10-15 years, there has been a radical shift to teach everything in English as it was thought to be the best preparation for students. Now, the focus is on both languages. He said that, as long as there is not one clear common language, people will really need to learn more than one language; in the meantime, mono-lingual speakers (including those of English) will be at a disadvantage.

Rogan went on to an important point, which is that students all over the world are unmotivated to learn other languages. He spoke about the “impoverishment of intellectual enterprise when we don’t expect people to speak more languages than just English”, giving examples of history students who can’t read basic primary texts because they’re in German, French, or other languages that university students used to be expected to understand. He also pointed out that the best window through which to appreciated another culture is through their language. The most important point, in my opinion, was when he said that “the more the English-speaking world becomes dominant, the more vulnerable it will be because it doesn’t have a clue how the rest of the world sees it”.

What do you think? Was there anything in this talk you’d like to discuss?

I really agree that there should be efforts to maintain traditional languages even when students are being taught English. I wish that I spoke more than one language fluently. I didn’t feel the problem as much when I was living in Canada, but now that I live elsewhere, and have travelled to quite a few other countries, I definitely feel like I miss out on a lot because I’m not able to speak anything except English.

Sunday Salon: “The English Language: Hero or Villain?” is original content from: Reading Through Life

Title: Welcome to Bordertown: New Stories and Poems of the Borderlands

Editors: Holly Black and Ellen Kushner

Narrators: Cassandra Campbell, MacLeod Andrews, Holly Black, and Ellen Kushner

Publication Year: 2012

Pages: 544 (audio length: 18 hours 8 minutes)

Genre: Fiction, Short Stories, Poetry, Fantasy

Source: Audiobook version purchased from Audible.com

From the cover:

Bordertown: a city on the Border between the human world and the elfin realm. A place where neither magic nor technology can be counted on, where elf and human kids run away to find themselves.

The Way from our world to the Border has been blocked for 13 long years. Now the Way is open once again — and Bordertown welcomes a new set of seekers and dreamers, misfits and makers, to taste life on the Border.

Here are 13 interconnected stories and eight poems — all new work by some of today’s best urban fantasy, fantasy, and slipstream writers: Christopher Barzak, Holly Black, Steven Brust, Emma Bull, Cassandra Clare, Charles de Lint, Cory Doctorow, Amal El-Mohtar, Neil Gaiman, Nalo Hopkinson, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Annette Curtis Klause, Ellen Kushner, Patricia McKillip, Dylan Meconis, Tim Pratt, Sara Ryan, Delia Sherman, Will Shetterly, Janni Lee Simner, Catherynne M. Valente, Terri Windling, and Jane Yolen.

Apparently I’m one of the few book people who hasn’t heard of the Bordertown books. Maybe it’s just not from my generation? Or perhaps it’s because my parents weren’t enthusiastic about letting me read fantasy books? But whatever the reason, I hadn’t read any of the books in the series until this one was nominated for an Audie this year.

What really helped me out here was that Welcome to Bordertown eased the reader into the world between the US and the Realm. It gave enough background information for the reader to understand the basics and to simply assimilate into the story world, but not so much background as to be overwhelming. It felt like I had about as much as any human going to Bordertown might have, and not much more, which helped with trying to put myself in to the shoes of the characters.

I really loved that there were all kinds of different narrators and other characters, that there was quite a bit of diversity apparent from the outset. I’ve read so many books, particularly fantasy works, that are supposed to stretch our minds but that are really all the same: stories about mostly white, mostly middle- or upper-class, average characters. Instead, Welcome to Bordertown included characters from different nationalities and sexualities, and from varying life experiences. The narrators really helped to bring this to light, particularly in some stories where an accent was needed. Reading this as an audiobook was also helpful when recognizing characters that crossed over between stories, since the narrators made them sound the same … so even when they weren’t named, it was possible to tell who they were.

The one thing that I would’ve liked – but didn’t get to read – would’ve been stories written from the perspectives of elves. There were many human narrators and a few non-human characters (like a really lovely werewolf-type character), but I don’t think there were any stories told from the perspectives of elves, or even really from the perspectives of “halfies”. Maybe this was done in previous books? I’m not sure, but if it hasn’t been done before, I really think it would be interesting to add into the mix.

I enjoyed Welcome to Bordertown as an introduction to the series, and I might even look for another of the books to read. Even if you haven’t read any of the books, this would be a good place to start.

Rating:

Welcome to Bordertown: New Stories and Poems of the Borderlands (Review) is original content from: Reading Through Life

Title: Memory Mambo

Author: Achy Obejas

Narrator: Ruth Oakes

Publication Year: 1996

Pages: 200 (audio length: 8 hours 39 minutes)

Genre: Fiction

Source: Audiobook purchased from Audible.com

From the cover:

Memory Mambo describes the life of Juani Casas, a 25-year-old Cuban-born American lesbian who manages her family’s laundromat in Chicago while trying to cope with family, work, love, sex, and the weirdness of North American culture.

Achy Obejas’s writing is sharp and mordantly funny. She understands perfectly how the romance of exile – from a homeland as well as from heterosexuality – and the mundane reality of everyday life balance each other. Memory Mambo is ultimately very moving in its depiction of what it means to find a new and finally safe sense of home.

I read this book quite a while back as part of the Literary Others event in October, but didn’t get around to reviewing it until now. (Sorry! There’s still one more of these to come, actually, next week.)

Let’s start with what I loved about this book. I loved the way that Obejas wove Cuban and Cuban-American culture so integrally into this Memory Mambo. I loved the cultural and linguistic references, and I just generally found it extremely satisfying to read a story about a woman from her own perspective, talking about how her life and her choices affect (and are affected by) her culture and family. I found it particularly interesting when she spoke about her sexuality in this context, because I know from my experiences in Hispanic/Caribbean countries that this isn’t exactly something that is generally spoken about.

In this vein, by the way, I think that Oakes did a fantastic job as the narrator. At first I wasn’t sure about her – her voice is a bit raspy and almost a little whiny – but as the narrative progressed, it really seemed to fit. It was lovely to hear the book read in a Cuban accent, as well, because it helped to really bring Juani and the other characters to life.

I didn’t love some of where the narrative went, especially near the end (I don’t want to spoil it, but let’s just say that there is some seriously heavy shit that goes on). I also didn’t love the suspense about what had happened to cause such a rift between Juani and her ex-girlfriend, or how it ended up being explained in the end. I think that’s my own personal taste, though, and not really a comment on the quality of the writing or a validity of the experiences that are represented. I think that was also part of the point, though: it seemed like Obejas didn’t want Juani to be a completely sympathic character for the reader, and I respect that choice. It makes things more interesting when not every protagonist is as free of blame as they make themselves out to be.

If you’re interested in Cuban(-American) literature, books about queer characters, or just like to read realistic stories about the lives of real people, you might want to give Memory Mambo a try. I’m glad that I came across it as I enjoyed reading it and I feel as though it has broadened my reading experience in so many ways.

Rating:

Memory Mambo (Review) is original content from: Reading Through Life

Title: When It Happens to You: A Novel in Stories

Author/Narrator: Molly Ringwald

Publication Year: 2012

Pages: 256 (audio length: 6 hours 18 minutes)

Genre: Fiction, Short Stories

Source: Audiobook version purchased from Audible.com

From the cover:

When it happens to you, you will be surprised. That thing they say about how you knew all the time, but just weren’t facing it? That might be the case, but nevertheless, there you will be.

Molly Ringwald mines the complexities of modern relationships in this gripping and nuanced collection of interlinked stories. Writing with a deep compassion for human imperfection, Ringwald follows a Los Angeles family and their friends and neighbors while they negotiate the hazardous terrain of everyday life – revealing the deceptions, heartbreak, and vulnerability familiar to us all.

Normally, this book description would kind of put me off. I don’t normally go in for those slices-of-family-life type of book, but I gave this one a shot for three reasons: it was written in the form of short stories (which I love), it was nominated for an Audie award, and I was curious to see whether Molly Ringwald could actually write (and narrate) a book.

When It Happens to You made good on its promises.

For starters, Ringwald can actually write. I loved – and hated – the nuanced characters and the ways in which they interacted with each other. She found a way to interlink the characters through the different narratives, while at the same time, giving each of the primary characters a distinctive voice of their own. The fluidity with which Ringwald shifted between perspectives and the way in which she managed not to trivialize any of their issues pulled me into their stories and made me want, desperately, for everything to work out in the end. In particular, I loved a minor character in the book named Oliver, but who prefers the name Olivia since he feels that he is really a little girl. The raw way that this character’s hopes and pain were brought through the page was something that I hadn’t been expecting.

Also, When It Happens to You was one of the few books where I actually felt like the author did an amazing job narrating their own (fictional) work. It’s rare for me to listen to a novel where the author feels like the perfect “fit” as the narrator, but Ringwald pulled it off. Perhaps it’s because she’s an actor, or maybe just because of the intensely emotional nature of the stories and the connection she must have had with them in order to write them that way, but she really managed to bring them to life through her narration. Her inflection was just what the stories needed to make them even more accessible and poignant for the reader.

Finally, even though it wasn’t the type of narrative I usually enjoy, I found that there were enough unexpected elements to the narrative to keep me interested. It wasn’t quite as much of a conventional family tale as the jacket cover might lead you to believe. I found myself wanting to hear more, to go beyond the edges of some of the stories to find out more about what happened to each of the characters. I didn’t want When It Happens to You to end.

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When It Happens to You: A Novel in Stories (Review) is original content from: Reading Through Life

On the weekend of March 7-9, I went to quite a few sessions at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature. Today, I’m going to write about what I heard (and learned) at a session called “Page to Screen to Page”:

Readers are often passionate about how their literary heroes are translated from page to screen, so is it a daunting task for a screen-writer to attempt the adaptation? How to decide what to cut and whose is the vision behind the screen version? After a blockbuster movie, whose is the task of producing a novelisation and how successful are these as works of fiction? Join our illustrious panel to discuss the excitement and fear behind adapting from page to screen to page.

This panel was made up of Deborah Moggah, Ian Ranking, Lynda La Plante, and Alan Dean Foster. I have far fewer notes from this panel than from last week’s (I bet you’re happy about that), but it wasn’t because the panel wasn’t interesting. Rather, I took less notes because the discussion was more personal – each person talked about their personal experiences and their work, and I felt more like it was a conversation than a straight “panel”. So I’ve got some things that I noted down, but otherwise, I just really enjoyed hearing more about these people’s experiences with writing, television/film, and adapting works.

Something interesting right from up front was that Rankin said that he hasn’t watched any of the films based on his Rebus novels. He said that this is because he doesn’t want the actors and voices to replace what’s in his head. La Plante pointed out that she likes producing because “if you produce it, you can control it”, and Rankin admitted that he has a huge ego and so would be a control freak about the films if he got involved. He said that film is a very different way of telling a story and that he wants to stick to writing novels.

La Plante said that she started off screenwriting in order to write herself a leading role, and that she didn’t realize until she was finished that she’d written herself out. She said that the primary difference between novels and television dramas is the budget. She also said that you need to learn how to pace a television show, to move it, and that a lot of strategy needs to go into making a television script (though this is less true of film scripts).

Moggeh said that, when novel writing, your relationship with your characters is completely private, that you have complete control over a secret world. In contrast, she said that when screenwriting, you work with people and have to be adaptable, that even though they’d be nowhere without you, you are their servant as they’re putting up the money. She said that when adapting a book, after the first draft, you never look at the original text again. Moggeh also said that in film and television adaptations, the actors have to give you the interior world that you have in the novel through their expressions, something which is difficult to do but that a good actor can pull off.

When asked what advice he would give an author whose work will be adapted to the screen, Foster said: “take large amounts of drugs and stay comatose until the project comes out”.

La Plante said that the gift of writing a series is that you get to grow with the characters. On the downside, though, she said that in a short series you lose the “breathing room” for the characters.

Foster said that he regards adaptation from film to book as a collaboration between himself and the screenwriters even though they have no direct part in it. He said that he gets to show what the characters thoughts were unlike in the film. He is also “very aware of the fact that [he's] working with someone else’s work and they have no control over it”, and so tries to be respectful. He said that he tries to go back to the original work as much as possible. Finally, he said that the studios have become more involved in the books than they used to be, so now they want him to change the book to match the final cut of the movie when possible. Even though it’s not in his contract to make these changes, he says that he does it anyways because he feels like it’s his own director’s cut of the movies, and that “from a fannish standpoint it’s fun”. I found it rather interesting that he maintains a fan’s point of view while writing books that go along with movies.

I feel like this talk just brushed the surface of the issues when adapting books or screenplays between genres, but it was an interesting primer. Do you have any thoughts about adaptation that you’d like to share?

Sunday Salon: “Page to Screen to Page” is original content from: Reading Through Life