Booking Through Thursday

Booking Through Thursday: A weekly Meme

April 19, 2012
What are your literary pet peeves:
Two: Run on sentences. Learn to use a period! The second is writing a book based on a movie!  I have seen it done often enough and it is just plain dumb!





March 29, 2012 questions about relating to characters:
 
Are there any fictional characters whom you have emulated (or tried to)? Who and why?
 What literary character do you feel is most like you personality-wise (explain)?

Probably a "no or none" for both questions. Though I do try to think about life the way different books portray the life of their characters.  I recently read The Kneebone Boy by E Potter, a book for middle schoolers and I loved the way she portrayed persons with mental illness and how the father in the book tried to honor those people with his talent as a painter...really got me thinking about how we as a society fear mental illness and those who are mentally ill....it was a sweet book and I like to think it will forever shape some of my thinking....

March 22, 2012
Ever read a book you thought you could have written better yourself?

Whenever I participate in critiquing books I always give some points or  at least one “star”  for the simple fact that the person wrote a book…actually finished the writing and got it published.  Those are monumental tasks that deserve a star. 
But I am a harsh critic. I definitely would have and could have done a better job of editing some of the stuff that is out there…a sentence is not a paragraph people (or visa-versa)!  While a novel should be rich in detail all too often new writers drone on with laborious descriptions of points that are not key. Where is the editor?
Since I have never written a book I feel compelled to say NO as my answer to this week’s question.  BUT, being totally honest, I would have to say that there have actually been times I think I could have done a better job with a book.  One book in particular comes to mind. It was popular about 15 years ago. It was about a Jewish mother raising her African-American children. While the first third of the book was good, the rest of the book just rehashed those stories which appeared earlier on in the text…sometimes verbatim!  The author must have stated at least 20 times that his mother, despite poverty, was able to put all five of her children through college. A great achievement indeed but I simply could not believe that this book, written as it was, actually was published (and this was long before the days of mass self-publishing or e-books).  So while many of my fellow memers are definitely more humble, I will go out on a limb and say Yes!

March 15 2012
Have you ever used a book to instruct someone of something or is there anyone for whom you would like to do that? (I don’t mean a text book for a class, but a work of fiction or non-fiction that would get a certain message across either through plot or character). What is the book and what do you wish to impart?


I give a lot of books to my nieces and nephews and I am always looking for books that are engaging as well as educational. I have given one of my favs: Between Shades of Gray Ruta Sepetys. This is a great historical novel about the Soviet invasion of Lithuania during WW II and the suffering of Lithuanians. While many young readers are familiar with the Nazi atrocities but not too many are aware of the evils of Stalin. It’s an important read on the harrowing  rule of Stalin and his secret police and the death of millions of Lithuanians and others in the Baltic states. Along the same lines, I recently gave the book entitled  Breaking Stalin’s Nose by Eugene Yelchin. The story focuses on a young boy growing up in communist Russia under Stalin. He is the son of one of the members of Stalin’s secret police and grows up believing that Stalin is the world’s greatest hero. Over the course of 48 hours he comes face to face with lies of communism under Stalin. as his family is accused of being an enemy of the state. For the first time he realizes the poverty and paranoia  that surround him.


And keeping with my theme of giving historical novels as teaching tools I have given The Bread Winner by Deborah Ellis which does an amazing job introducing young readers to Afghanistan under the Taliban…

March 8

Which non-series book would you most like to read the sequel to? Do you have any wishes for what might happen in it?
The Orphan Master's Son. Its a new book by David Johnson about North Korea. Creepy how scary that country is. Spoiler Alert: Some of the protagonist's flee to the US (though any reader would pick up on this pretty quickly into the book, so its not much of a spoiler nor is it the main plot point). But I would love to learn what happen to the woman who made it to the US or about how any person who grew up in North Korea could make the transition to life in a Democracy or anywhere outside that closed country.
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