What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Mark Twain

Finished The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn!  True story.  I did it just now.  I was wearing reading glasses and everything.

I've already told you how much I love Twain's writing.  His characters are so alive it's like they want to reach out of the text and slap you upside the head, saying ... I don't know, but something about how they deserve a birth certificate.  Plus, I think Tom would love the adventure of leaving the books he's in.

Amazing book.  I don't know, though, if I would recommend it to a young reader.  It takes an attention span a lot of kids just don't have.  But maybe to read it to them, that would work.  The story is full of adventure and, to anyone paying attention, it is hilarious.  Mark Twain is always hilarious, at least from all that I've read of his books.

Even though Mark Twain threatened all his readers about looking for deeper meaning in the story, it is there and easy to find.  The book addresses racism, courage, and honesty, but it teaches about them in a manner that is not didactic.  I don't feel that I learned a lesson, per se, from reading this book.  It just made me think.  And that, my dear reader, is one of the main reasons for reading: to think.

On another note, my computer is fixed!  I'm excited. :-)

What's Elizabeth Reading? ... Michael Scott ...Also, computer problems

I'm taking a Young Adult Fiction class this semester, and the professor asked all of us to pick a book to read which wasn't already on our reading list.  I called up one of my younger brothers, who is 15, and asked him for a book recommendation (and a loan of said book).  Looks like I'm reading Michael Scott's The Alchemyst.  Yes, I'm still reading Huckleberry Finn.  I'm an English major.  I read three or more books at once.

I've started The Alchemyst and have three thoughts up front.  1) I like the cover.  Hope y'all don't think that's too shallow of me.  2) This story has potential, I hope Scott does a good job with it.  My brother absolutely loved the book.  3) The writing is deplorable.  It's made me realize why this brother of mine thought the book I wrote in high school was absolutely amazing, even though I look back and think, "Dang, I am sure glad I write better than that now."  At some point, I hope to go back to that story and rewrite it, because it was original and, well, good.  Scott keeps telling me things that are obvious and drawing out key points painfully.  For example, the protagonists are twins.  This is mentioned and pointed at, oh, I don't know, about five times in two pages.  That's what it feels like, anyway.  Everyone's all "they're twins?" "Oh, they're twins." "Think they're twins?"  Annoying.  You've told me once, don't tell me again.  Please have some confidence in your reader.

Then again, maybe I'm being too hard on Scott.  For all I know, most Young Adult Fiction is like this.  It makes me want to go back to my favorites from middle and high school to see how good my favorite authors' writing was.  My favorites included J.K. Rowling (of course), Tamora Pierce, and T.A. Barron.  Yeah, I was really into fantasy.  I don't when it was that I started branching out, but I know it was largely because of my desire to become well-read.

We'll see how this pans out.  For now, I'm reading Huck Finn to keep myself sane and attempting to see past the writing (as result of the age group or is this really how Scott writes?) in The Alchemyst.

On another note, my laptop has decided to throw in the towel.  I have some connections in the university's tech department, so I have a couple people doing what they can to fix it.  I literally cannot get to my desktop.  The computer (named Austen, by the way) will let me log in, but it won't go further than "Welcome," except for once, when it got to "Preparing Desktop."

Saturday was the day that I wrote my short story, and it was on Monday morning that my computer gave out on me (today is Friday).  For now, I'm using a computer at the newspaper office (did I mention I work for the campus newspaper as the Opinion Editor?).  Luckily, I have a habit of saving my documents not only on my computer, but also in the cloud, so my story was not lost.  It just means that I was trying to edit my story while the person next to me was watching Arrested Development.  This also means I haven't watched the latest episode of Once Upon a Time, which saddens me.  I guess I could follow Development's example, but so far I haven't.  I'll catch up later.  Sometime.  In the meantime, I'm just happy most of my homework is reading, and I'm glad that I love reading as much as I do!

The Yellow Songbird

She loved to wear yellow, and she had a habit of touching plant leaves as she walked past them, as if she were saying "hello."  Whenever it rained, she would race for her umbrella and go stand in a puddle beneath the smudgy sky.  If she had lost her umbrella, it was all the better, because then she could spin in circles with her arms forming a horizontal pinwheel.  The force of the spinning would carry her into the air and she would sing a harmony to the melody of the plopping raindrops, drowning the sound of her mother's scream for her to come down.

Oral Storytelling?

Last night, I went to sleep with a headache.  Woke up, and surprise surprise, it's still here.  I woke up slowly (best way to wake up!) and lounged around in bed for a little while, listening to the end of a inspirational CD my grandma gave me for Christmas and then a bit of David Copperfield.  After lying there for a while, I decided I wasn't going to do that all day in the hopes the headache would leave.  Instead, I was going to write.

I'm pretty sure the headache came because I have been reading so much lately and causing eye strain.  That being the case, I didn't want to cause more eye strain.  So I performed an experiment.  For the first time, I recorded myself orally telling the story as I wanted to set it down on paper.  I would say it while recording, then transcribe the recording into my Microsoft Word.

So yes, I did do some reading today.  I can't help it, really.  And yes, I'm writing this today, too.  I'm pretending the headache has not affected my ability to think straight.

I was impressed, actually, with how my writing turned out.  I usually agonize over each sentence and try to word it just so, but today I did that a lot less.  My narrator, who had a British accent for some reason, had character, even though they weren't a character in the story.  I haven't finished it yet -- "it" being a short story for my Fiction class -- but I am pleased with how it is coming along.  I was able to write a lot more than I would have thought possible while lugging a headache through a story line.  I will be finishing it later, and then editing.  One thing I love about having a Fiction class is that we are in writing groups, and my group will be able to help edit.  If I am lucky and smart in the future, I will institute a writing group (or join one, if one is handy) wherever it is I end up after college.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Mark Twain

With the spring semester going, I am no longer choosing my own reading material, unless surfing the Internet counts.  This does not mean that I am reading a textbook, though.  I am an English major, and that means I get to read lies, otherwise known as fiction.  It's fun, if you like that sort of thing.

My American Lit. class has me reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.  I read this book a few years ago, but my memory of it is a bit fuzzy, meaning it is almost like I am reading something new.  Or like I am watching a movie I have heard about all over the place.

I am a little antsy about reading this particular book for school, and the reason why is found at the beginning of the novel:

PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. - BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR

Wouldn't you be a little antsy, too?  To be completely honest, though, I absolutely love that Twain opens the book this way.  I can only wish I had thought of it first.

I just read the chapter where the duke and the king show up, but so far my favorite thing about this novel has to be Twain's language.  It is so alive and beautiful in its reality.  If I ever need to explain to someone what voice is in writing, I will tell them to read Mark Twain and be done with it.  It's not just in the spelling, but it's in the word choice, the phrasing.  The words come to life; there really is no better way to explain it.  Take this section, and hopefully you will see what I mean.  This part made me laugh out loud.  It's in Chapter 15, and Jim and Huck are discussing King Solomon.

"But hang it, Jim, you've clean missed the point -- blame it, you've missed it a thousand mile."  "Who?  Me?  Go 'long.  Doan talk to me 'bout yo' pints.  I reck'n I knows sense when I sees it; en dey ain' no sense in sich doin's as dat.  De 'spute warn't 'bout a half a chile, de 'spute was 'bout a whole chile; en de man dat think he kin settle a 'spute 'bout a whole chile wid a half a chile, doan' know enough to come in out'n de rain.  Doan' talk to me 'bout Sollermun, Huck, I knows him by de back."  "But I tell you you don't get the point."  "Blame de pint!  I reck'n I knows what I knows.  En mine you, de real pint is down furder -- it's down deeper.  It lays in de way Sollermun was raised.  You take a man dat's got on'y one er two children; is dat man gwyne to be waseful o' chillen?  No, he ain't; he can't 'ford it.  He know how to value 'em.  But you take a man dat's got 'bout five million chillen runnin' roun' de house, en it's diffunt.  He as soon chop a chile in two as a cat.  Dey's plenty mo'.  A chile er two, mo' er less, warn't no consekens to Sollermun ..."

Atlas

Stars –
They fill the heavens
like torches from the past.
Yet city lights obscure our direction
and buildings hide the constellations.

But when Atlas shifts his shoulders,
so our lives meet with disaster,
we find ourselves staring at the sky,
because the jostling reminds us
why we make the choice
to breathe.

I can climb a mountain
and see through Atlas’ eyes.
Whether I see manmade stars
from the city at my feet
or distant gleams in the sky above,
there is glory in the sight.

When you go to sleep tonight,
pause for a moment
and look at the sky,
because somewhere out there
an alien child is looking in wonder
through his bedroom window
at the diamond in space
shouldered by a Titan.

A disappointment

The Theatre Department at my university has a group called 2nd Studio Productions, and every semester this group has what they call the 24-Hour Theatre.  The idea is to write, stage, and memorize a 10-minute play before performing it 24 hours after the writer receives the writing prompt.  Students sign up as writers, the tech crew, directors, or as actors.

Last semester, I signed up to be a writer, and it was a great experience.  Seeing the play performed before an audience that soon after writing it was like instant gratification for a writer.  Most of the mini-plays were  sub-par, as I bet you can imagine.  The writers had grand ideas for what this mini play could be, and they tried to squash a huge, complex plot into this 10-minute play.  The audience was left confused.  I can remember three of the plays from last year which actually worked, one of which was mine.  I'm not saying this because of conceit or anything, because other people mentioned it to me.  I knew a comedy would work best for such a short time frame, and I knew the plot could not be too complicated.  So I wrote a mini-play which had an entire story line and no strange concepts the audience would not understand.

Anyway.  I signed up again this semester because last semester was so fun.  I showed up to the first meeting and they pulled all the writers aside (there were around eight of us) to tell us that they had decided to add a social for everyone after the show.  Cool, right?  This meant they were only going to have five mini-plays, so three of us couldn't be writers.  The guy talking to us asked if any of us could be actors, but none of us said we would.  Then he asked which of us had written a script before.  We all raised our hands.  Props to him for trying to narrow it down, right?  He asked who was a freshman, and none of us were.  Then someone said they "didn't want to have to play this card, but this will be (their) last 24-Hour Theatre," because she will be graduating.  Some other people chimed in with similar comments, and then the guy talking with us picked five writers, randomly but taking into account those who wouldn't be able to do it again.  I was one of the three who was cut.  Another writer caved and said he would act instead, and the third person was asked by another writer to tag-team a mini-play with them.  The guy talking apologized profusely, I said it was fine, and I walked away.

I'm disappointed.  Not devastated, but I was looking forward to doing this.  I was going to write a fun blog post, too, giving updates along the way.  Instead, you get to read this.  One thing that makes me feel better about it is that the guy who chose did not take writing skill into account, so maybe I would have been chosen then; I'm not sure.

Something that tries to improve my mood: I submitted a poem to the university literary journal a while ago.  I have a friend who helps decide which submissions get into the journal.  When they read the submissions and decide, they do not look at the name of the person who submitted it.  The other day, my friend asked me if I had submitted, I said I did, and then she asked what I had submitted.  When I told her, she told me they had all thought a professor had written the poem. :-)

Spears of Grass

A science lab you’re lost in
where you’re both subject and
Scientist the experiments you
perform are up to You
for myself i’ve tested love Honor

and weight Problems
i think i’ll test them all Again
they require further
Scrutiny
life
on a

why
A hand of time
spears through the
middle of eternity Maybe we
could Flick it out of

our Faces see that things
will never end then
we would stumble over
the second hand Time takes
a lot of Restraining before
it will Back Off

my pocket dialed
i guess it Wanted to
talk did it have Anything
to Listen to
a wall Listen

Carefully
you might learn
something
winter in spring cookies ‘N’
Cream ice Cream
scooped into the

gutter This is the
snow people don’t
find to be Tasty trounced
only by the lemon
Variety

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Dante

After posting about it last night, I decided to spend a half hour this morning finishing the Inferno.  So now I am left praying that my professors will assign something entertaining to read so I won't feel compelled to go to the library.  As an English major, I read so much I have no time for reading, if that makes any sense to you.

My biggest thought on the Inferno was how well Dante melded together the mythology of his culture with Christianity.  In Dante's Hell, there is a River Styx and too many monsters for me to bother counting, including Medusa herself.  Christ and the idea of one Supreme Being are mentioned time and time again.  Some people might not like the juxtaposition of two polar religions, but I loved it.  The mythology was Dante's culture; of course he would include it in his vision of Hell.  Besides that, I think a lot of the Roman and Greek mythology was actually metaphor, just like a lot of Dante's Inferno.  He assigned torments based on the sins committed -- for instance, people who were gluttonous on Earth were being continually eaten in Hell -- and I wonder whether he truly believed in the mythology, or if he just took Christianity as equal to the other stories of his culture.  It would be too hard to tell without interviewing the guy.

I was startled to read that Dante had placed many of his own heroes in Hell (at least, I assume they were his heroes).  Socrates, Plato, Ovid, all those famous people we still revere all were found in Hell.  I wonder where Dante would have placed himself?

Off to classes now.  Crossed fingers for a fun reading assignment.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Dante

I am starting this blog so I have somewhere to put my writing where everyone can enjoy it.  Of course, I cannot hope to produce good fiction as quickly as the Internet can send it out.  What may take me weeks to write may only take you a half hour to read.  I won't complain about how unfair this is, but I will say that it is why I will not be posting my fiction every time I write a post.  To get me going, then, I'm going to start a little game called "What's Elizabeth Reading?"  Every time I start -- or finish -- reading a book, I will post about it on here, kind of like a book review.  Of course, it might not end up being a book review.  It might just be what the book made me start thinking about!  After all, books are made to make people think.

I haven't decided yet whether I will only post about books I am reading for fun or if I will include the ones I read for school.  I am working toward a bachelor's degree in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing.  This semester, I'm going to be reading a lot of Young Adult literature and American literature between the Civil War period and World War II.

Over the Winter Break, I borrowed my older brother's copy of Dante's Inferno.  I keep hearing about it all over the place and I decided it was about time I pick it up.  I am almost finished with it, and to be honest it is fast reading.  I would have finished it much sooner, but alas, Christmastime is family time and I had social engagements.  I have two canto's left.  I've never heard of a "canto" until picking this book up, so I looked up the definition: a "canto" is kind of like a chapter for an epic poem.  Simple enough.

Of course, when the break ended I had to give my brother the book back, so I had to look it up online.  Luckily, Dante is old enough that his work is free to the public, no pirating involved.  I also had to look up a map of Hell as Dante describes it, because I got kind of lost.  Here is a link to a map. To be honest, I can get lost pretty much anywhere, even in a store at the mall.  For Christmas, I got a GPS.  I have no car, but I have a GPS; I guess this means I'll just walk around with it.  What I really wish they would make is a GPS for the grocery store to tell me where to find the ingredients I need.  Now that would be a useful invention for us pedestrians.

But I digress, as my friend Tim would say.  Dante's Inferno is really only a portion of his Divine Comedy, which isn't actually a comedy in the colloquial sense.  In the ancient sense, a "comedy" is simply a story with a happy ending.  If he meant it as a humorous tale, Dante has one twisted sense of humor.  Travelling through Hell and looking at people undergoing various types of torment is not my idea of a funny story.  It has given me a cool idea for a story, though.  The idea came right on time for my Advanced Fiction Writing class, in which I will be writing two short stories.

More on Dante later.  In the meantime, I should grab some ice cream and go to bed.  I'm a morning person and it is getting late.