Literary Blog Hop, July 7-10

It's a Literary Blog Hop week! Um, yay! Even though I am slightly scared by this week's question, I am going to attempt to answer it as best I can. Please be kind.

What is one of your favourite literary devices? Why do you like it? Provide a definition and an awesome example.

Do I really have a favourite literary device? Did I, in fact, even remember what a literary device was until I started reading everyone elses answers to this question? I'd have to say, that's a bit of a no. The only question I can really answer yes to right now is 'are you currently looking up literary devices on Wikipedia and trying to find one that you a) recognise, and b) like?' I'm going to say, though, that I really like foreshadowing when it turns up in a text.

Foreshadowing, which I'm sure you know because it's been used in numerous books, movies, plays and so on; and is a pretty effective technique, is where there are clues and markers throughout a story that something bad is going to happen at the end, and things keep building up and building up until the bad thing finally happens, and it's almost a relief when it does. The best example of this I can think of is in The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, where there is a constant ominous feeling as you're reading that something bad is going to/already has happened, and yet you're not quite sure what it is, or how bad it is until very near the end. This makes reading this book a really stressful experience, but ultimately a rewarding one, since it's completely and utterly excellent, and the best thing to read in a sultry summer heat.

There are plenty of other books that use foreshadowing to excellent effect, including To Kill a Mockingbird (the thing with the rabid dog and Atticus being the only one to stand up to it? Awesome), Of Mice and Men, and I'm pretty sure that Donna Tartt (author of The Little Friend and The Secret History) is the Queen of foreshadowing- those books both just build up the smallest details to culminate in awful acts or revelations that change everything. I've actually just realised that I might have just been describing building up tension rather than just foreshadowing (which I've just remembered/possibly researched a little bit more) is something slightly more subtle than just tension building. So you should probably just ignore everything I've just said! Other than the goodness of these books, which should never be ignored, and which you should probably definitely read, if only to tell me that I'm a moron and there's actually no foreshadowing in them at all!

Well, that was a bit of a fail. But I definitely look forward to reading everyone else's responses to the question, because they might actually know what they're talking about! 

Devouring Books: An Education by Lynn Barber

Reading An Education brought up some extremely mixed feelings for me, because on the one hand it was well written, everything in its right place and so on, but I just honestly and truly didn't like the author at all. When what you're reading is said author's memoirs, this presents a bit of a problem, because everything is from her viewpoint and, I have to be honest, it's usually irritating, sometimes snobby, sometimes (it seems) completely uncaring. Barber may be the nicest woman in the world, but the way she presents herself in her memoirs, to me she sometimes seems like the worst. But I'll get back to that later.

It is important to know, from the outset, that An Education, is unlike the film, a memoir of Barber's entire life (so far) rather than just one incident that happened to her when she was 16. This makes for a much more interesting memoir, and obviously a much fuller idea of Barber's life, but this doesn't mean that the film was wrong for just focussing on one chapter of it- An Education, the second chapter of the memoir, is probably the most self-enclosed story in the book, and the one most suited to film, and then it is fun to find out what happened to Jenny (or, I suppose in this case, Lynn) after her whole debacle with an older man.

Unfortunately, real life, as it tends to be, is nowhere near as good as the film. As I may have mentioned, I really didn't like Barber (I kind of had the opposite reaction to the author that I did when I read Julie and Julia), and while it is perhaps unfair to compare a real person to a fictional character, I couldn't help but compare Barber to Jenny in the film. Barber was a lot more smug, a lot more snobby, and a good deal more judgemental and just plain rude really than it seemed that Jenny had the ability to be. Both show contempt towards their parents, but in Barber's case it seems to be quite nasty- she refers to her mother as having a 'beta brain', and doesn't really ever say anything nice about them. She does things for them grudgingly, but never really shows any love for them. I'm not one to say that you should necessarily love your parents no matter what because I think there are some things that are unforgivable, but to me, Barber's parents don't do any of these things. Would, for example, Barber have even gotten into Oxford without her parents' pushing and making her work hard? And would her life have been as good without that education? It's unlikely, but clearly she doesn't see it that way.

I think the main problem I had with Barber was her major attitude in life, which was this: if something goes well in her life, then it's all down to her and her input, and if something goes wrong, it is everyone else's fault. Case in point: her relationship with Simon (the older man). She blames her parents for letting her go out with him, and for encouraging her to marry him (although, surely, that more than anything is the one choice that was hers above anyone elses), but her eventually going to Oxford is all down to herself and has nothing to do with the hard work that her parents had been encouraging for years. I also hated her objections that working at Penthouse, and that Penthouse itself wasn't demeaning to women because "the pets [I mean, they were called PETS, for Gods sake!] were always treated well, as far as I could tell," which sort of misses the point of the fact that Penthouse's existence at all is sexist because it treated women as objects (or, you know, pets) rather than living, breathing, thinking individuals. But that's ok, because it doesn't directly affect Barber, and so it's not an issue at all.

The thing that I found most irritating about Barber, though, is that she behaves as though she is the product of a traumatic childhood, and that it is something that she can't break away from or change about herself. I'm a big believer in being able to change yourself and the way you act pretty easily, but she acts as though the things that she had been taught as a child were inescapable from. This ranges from hating her accent (honed through years of elocution lessons with her mother) which, I would have thought, if you'd changed once you could change again; and culminates in her, essentially, not being able to love properly because her parents 'always taught me to equate love with duty.' I mean, can she just get a grip? If she knows that love and duty are not interchangable, then why does she not just live her life according to that rather than 'what her parents taught her'? She seems to dislike her parents so much that it would be easy for her to do, surely? And, if she does think that love and duty are the same, then why does she resist spending time with her husband while he's really ill? I mean, we all hate being in hospitals, but we do it for the people we love who don't have a choice about being there- we don't leave as quickly as possible and fob them off to friends because we don't like being there. Just sayin'.

I realise that this reads more like a character assassination than a book review, but when said book is a memoir, it's difficult not to have a gut feeling about their personality and their actions. Like I said, I can't definitively say that 'Lynn Barber is a horrible person' or anything like that because obviously I don't know her- she could honestly be completely wonderful, and in that case I would apologise for all I have written. But, if this is the case, then why would she not choose to present herself in a nicer way, why would she not be less of a snob, and why would she feel the need to demean people that she doesn't think are as clever as her? I would suggest that you read this book for yourself, however, and decide how you feel about her yourself, because one person's Lynn Barber is another person's Julie Powell (if you know what I mean). Just don't expect to find Jenny between the pages of this book, because that's not who Barber is.

This is a review for the book of An Education. To see my review of the film (which I am far less grumpy about!), please click here.

Top Ten Tuesday

Tuesday? Already? Actually, my thinking that Tuesday has come around fast is a complete lie, since I was in a meeting at work yesterday that felt like it was actually 5 million years long (and I can't confirm that it wasn't!) So only the day at the top of my screen convinces me that it actually is Tuesday. And, as we all know, that can only mean that it's time for Top Ten Tuesday, hosted, as ever, by the wonderful The Broke and the Bookish. And this week's topic iiiiiiiiiiiis:

Top Ten Rebels in Literature


1. Atticus Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee- I mean really, this man risked social exclusion (which, considering the society, wasn't really that big of a deal) and even his own life to do the right thing, and, as a natural side effect, to teach his children the right thing as well. All other rebels have nothing on Atticus.

2. Tyler Durden from Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk- I know Tyler Durden is basically a psychopath, but he is a pretty big rebel is he not?! As the narrator tries to pull him back, Tyler just keeps getting more and more outrageous, and tries to make the things that he thinks should happen, happen, no matter what other people, or, you know, the law, might tell him. Total rebel!


3. Roland Deschain from The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King- Roland is a rebel in that he is completely focused on his goal and is physically unable to give up on it, to the extent of pigheadedness and, sometimes, foolishness. Nonetheless, this tunnel vision means that he must rebel against any obstacle to his path, because that path is the only right way for him. He is to be both pitied and admired for this, but he is still a completely awesome rebel.


4. Snape from Harry Potter by JK Rowling- Snape, who we thought had rebelled in one direction, actually ended up rebelling in the other, and all for love. Awwwww, basically! It's really difficult, having been induced to hate the man for 6 books, to suddenly have to completely and utterly love him, but that's what happens, all because of the whole unrequited love thing.


5. Cry Baby Walker from Cry Baby- If you haven't seen Cry Baby then I really don't know what to do with you! But Cry Baby is clearly a tongue-in-cheek rebel, complete with motorcycle, tattoos, and like totally square girlfriend. Combine that with some fascinating/disgusting kissing lessons, and Cry Baby is probably my very favourite rebel of all!


6. Robert Thorn from Soylent Green- This guy risks his entire life to try and save the people of a horrifically overpopulated future New York City. He does it only because of the people he could save, without a second thought to what revealing to everyone what he knows could mean for him (i.e. his death). Even though he's played by Charlton Heston, he's still pretty bloody amazing.


7. Reverend Casy from The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck- The Reverend is probably the deepest thinker in The Grapes of Wrath, but as well as that, he converts these thoughts into actions, and tries to make a real difference, which the authorities definitely don't like, but I really really do.


8. Salman Rushdie- This guy stood up (and continues to stand up) for his own work, believing so completely in the power of free speech that he refused to even let a fatwa (an essential death threat) stop him. Totally rebellious and awesome.


9. Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty from On the Road by Jack Kerouac- These guys, of all my rebels, are probably who I would most like to be. They are almost completely free- as long as they've got a little bit of money for gas and food, they can go anywhere they want and do anything they want. I'm not without reservations for the book (it's pretty sexist, for one thing), but the way these guys live seems to me to be the ultimate way to live, and yet it's not what society expects of you. To rebel, then, seems to be the only way to live the life that you actually want.


10. Winston Smith from 1984 by George Orwell- Well, he was at the start anyway. I know that he sort of chickens out of the whole thing (and my god, how depressing is it that he does?) but while he is rebelling, he's sort of awesome. Fight the power and all that stuff etc!

So these are my favourite rebels. How about you? Getting ten this week was a bit of a struggle, so I'm sure everyone else's lists will inform me of the amazing rebels whose identities have eluded me thus far! I have in the course of writing this just thought of two more (Bret Easton Ellis, and Frank Abagnale Jnr from Catch Me If You Can) so I can tell that today's going to be really annoying for me! But anyway, yes, tell me your rebels, or maybe just rebel and don't! Whatever. You know.

Summer Mini-Readathon

Just yesterday I signed up for the Summer mini-readathon, hosted by Sarah Says. Taking place on 10th July, it's basically an excuse for me to read as much as humanly possible, but it is also achievable and will avoid my unfortunate readathon FAIL of three months ago (which, to be fair, was a readathon hosted on my birthday...) But anyway, this is a readathon for 12 hours, which means that I can totally sleep a normal amount as well as reading an abnormal amount, and still go to work on Monday (yay..?)

So, yeah. That's what I'm going to be doing next Sunday! Pop over to Sarah's blog if you feel like doing the same, and you can sign up for challenges and all sorts of things like that! Sarah's going to be reading from 10am-10pm Eastern time, which would be 3pm-3am my time... so I'm probably not going to be doing the same hours, except that I might do the same hours (well that's a sentence and a half, but obviously I mean I might do 10am-10pm my time- you all got that, right?!) But I'll decide by what time I actually wake up on the day, I guess! Yay for reading!!

IMM/Mailbox Monday

I did it again... Book buying, not on the scale of last week's escapades, but still pretty naughty. But fear not! I am going to do something about this whole book buying catastrophe that I've got going on, and that is this- I'm not going to buy any books for the whole month of July (!) unless I see some good value Stephen King books because of my whole Stephen King book collecting thing I've got going on. But I'll try not to buy those either. I came to this decision after realising just how many books I've got and haven't read yet when I was organising my room ready for the new bed I got yesterday, so I'll hopefully just concentrate on getting some of those read before I even think about buying any new ones (but not all of them, obviously, because I have about a zillion!)

Anyway, so this is my last IMM/Mailbox Monday before my hiatus from book buying, so I'm trying to make it good! I got 4 new books this week:

Firestarter- Stephen King- So this was the next book on my Stephen King challenge list, and I didn't own it, and my local library didn't have it, so I had to pay full price for it, which I'm not sure has ever happened before, at least in my Stephen King collection! I'm not best impressed by this, but needs must I suppose. I've started it already and it's pretty good, so there's that at least!

Christine- Stephen King- On the plus side, I did get Christine for about £1.30, which I guess makes up at least some kind of portion of what Firestarter cost me (am I ever going to let this go?! Probably not...) I have read Christine before, and I remember it being relatively creepy, so I'm looking forward to revisiting it whenever I get to it! Exciting stuff, this Stephen King business...

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol- I've seen two film versions of Alice in Wonderland, and have been to this Alice in Wonderland themed shop in Oxford, and yet I've never actually read the book. This is an injustice that needs to be rectified, and so I bought this which I should read pretty quickly considering it's teeny tiny cuteness!

The Help by Kathryn Stockett- I read a review of this quite a while ago and thought it sounded really interesting, then promptly forgot about it afterwards. Then last weekend I entered a giveaway to try and win it, and became rabidly obsessed with reading it. I may not have won that giveaway, but I got the book anyway, so all is good with the world!

So, these are the books I got this week, how about you? As well as buying these books, I also found some time to do some blogging, and here are some things you might have missed this week:

Tuesday: Top Ten Tuesday, where I talk about my favourite followees on twitter and implore you to go and seek them out too.
Wednesday: I reviewed A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.
Thursday: I reviewed The Dead Zone by Stephen King
Friday: I hopped around a bit and told everyone my favourite book couples!
Saturday: I wrote a eulogy for United States of Tara... Oh how I'm going to miss that show!


AND, potentially most excitingly, I WON A BOOK! That's right, I won Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by F C Delius, from Tony at Tony's Reading List!!!!! I can't even tell you how excited I am by this, or how many times I'm going to be checking for the post (i.e. about 10 times a day!) before this arrives! But yes, eeeeeeee! And thank you so very very much Tony!

So, that was the week that was. I hope that you all had equally good weeks, and that you enjoy the upcoming one!

A Eulogy for United States of Tara

Ah, Tara. I can't begin to tell you how excited I was about your arrival on TV, written by the amazing Diablo Cody, starring the incomparable Toni Collette, dealing with a mental illness that no one knows much about, and that some people don't even think exists. From the very beginning you stood out from what can only be described as a lot of utter crap, managing to be funny and yet sensitive; extremely deep, and yet incredibly watchable. Have any TV shows been as good as you? Some, but not many. I can't even say how much I'm going to miss you, but let me tell you why I loved you.

Firstly, there was your cast. Toni Collette, who I already knew was an extremely versatile actress, just became something so good that one person probably shouldn't be allowed to be as talented as she is. She plays out the alters so well, but it is as Tara that she shines, apologetic for something that she can't control, and wanting so badly to just be like everyone else. She really steals the show, but there is still room for a whole load of equally talented actors, who create characters that anyone who watches can't help but love. John Corbett plays the long suffering but always supportive Max, the perfect husband that anyone who saw him as Aiden in Sex and the City always knew he could be, and Rosemarie Dewitt is Tara's flaky but lovable sister Charmaine, who tries her very best to help Tara, but doesn't always end up succeeding.

A really integral part of the programme, I think, are Tara and Max's kids, and the role that their mother has ended up playing in their lives and development. They were so well drawn and their reactions so well considered that it made it really interesting to see their reactions to all the crazy shit that they didn't ask for, and didn't have a choice in. The main result of this seems to have created 2 reasonably well-balanced teenagers, who know to stick close to each other and value each other's advice because they are the only two people who know what it's like to have Tara (and T, and Alice, and Buck...) as a mother. In series 3, I started feeling like Marshall was being unfair to Tara, but then it occurred to me that, actually, he was acting in a similar way to Kate in the first series, when, she was at (I think) the same age, whereas Kate had matured so much that she had become the much more accepting child. I think, in fact, Kate's development throughout the series was the most striking, and made her possibly my favourite character overall (kind of sort of want to be her a bit).

But United States of Tara was not all about the actors, it was about the stories too. And such stories they were! I can't remember being bored at any point in any episode, and along with the individual story of each episode, there was also the running theme throughout all the series of what exactly it was that had triggered Tara's condition, and how, if at all, she could be helped to become whole again. We have been brutally denied the answer to that question, but I think we all want to imagine a life for Tara where she can be happy, above all else. We still have those wonderful three seasons of television, though, and it is such cleverly structured and written television, of the sort that you don't normally have the pleasure to watch. Just one of the things that I found so clever was the way the alters acted, at times, like complete defence mechanisms when Tara couldn't cope with the situation. Hence, when Kate was having problems, T would come out (this is also why we saw less of T as Kate grew up), when Tara thought she was failing as a mother and an all round housewife, Alice would manifest herself, and Buck, I think, was a way to cope with marital problems, and a way to completely desexualise herself to her husband. This is not to say that I don't believe in DID, or that Tara did these things on purpose, but just that Cody used the alters to create the best storylines, and to the greatest effect.

So why did United States of Tara have to leave us? I can't think of one good reason for dropping such an engaging and thought provoking programme, when programmes like Hung (I watched the entire first season of this and honestly lost the will to live. I mean what was the point of it? Was it supposed to be funny?! Or sad? I just don't know!) and so many dreadful reality tv shows are still being made. Season 7 of Weeds has just started airing on Showtime, when everyone knows that it hasn't been good since season 3, or, at a push, 4. So why drop Tara? I can but assume that its viewing figures weren't great, which just makes me so depressed that no one wants to watch tv that is actually good, while they inanely dial in for their favourites on American Idol (or whatever) and drool idiotically all over the floor. Television bosses in England are so short-sighted that we haven't even seen a glimpse of Tara on British screens, and, considering her rude and abrupt exit from American tv, it doesn't look like we're going to get to ever. Thank God for Megavideo, is all I can say.

But anyway. I come to praise Tara, not to bury every other tv show. I will probably always resent Showtime for cancelling United States of Tara (and for letting that appalling 'road trip' season of Weeds to happen) but I must save my energy for hating on politicians and stuff like that rather than tv networks. But please people- stop watching crap and start watching the good programmes so I don't have to go through this kind of emotional anguish again, yeah? But, for now, under duress, I guess I'll just say goodbye to Tara and Max, Marshall and Kate, Charmaine, Neil and Wheels, to T, Alice, Buck, Gimme, Shoshanna and Chicken, and to everyone else who made United States of Tara so so fucking amazing. At least we'll always have boxsets.

Hop Along, There's Nothing to See Here...

Except, oh wait, these blog hops I'm going to be doing today! And may I just say, TGIF! Even if this weekend is going to see me building a bed, probably with hilarious consequences (for everyone else, obviously. For me it's obviously just going to be traumatic.) But while I'm not being crushed by a bed frame, I'm going to make the most of bloggerising and participating in the ever exciting Friday blog hops.

Firstly is #fridayreads, hosted by the picky girl, in honour of the twitter tradition (is twitter even old enough to have traditions yet? Who knows...) where we all say what we're reading at the moment, and everything is all good and happy and stuff. So, since I've just finished two books that I was reading simultaneously, I thought, why not start reading three new books..? I wish I was kidding about this, but I'm really not. I should probably be put down. But anyway, today I'm probably going to try and finish An Education by Lynn Barber, and then (and then, Laura, not at the same time as!) I'll probably move onto Firestarter by Stephen King, which I already started last night like a complete moron. Ahem. Moving on...

Crazy-for-Books this week asks: What keeps you reading beyond the first few pages of a book, and what makes you want to stop reading a book and put it back on the shelf? Being literally incapable of not finishing a book pretty much keeps me going throughout the whole thing! I seriously have to finish a book if I've started it, and there are only a very few times when this hasn't happened (Tristram Shandy and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I'm looking at you...) Other than that though, I always give books a fair chance to get good anyway because, I'm pretty sure you've probably read the first Harry Potter book, and the first few chapters are really not that good, and then the rest is so utterly amazing that I can hardly stand it! So there's not that much that would make me put the book back on the shelf once I've started reading it.

And, this week, at GReads, the question of the moment is: Who are your favourite book couples? This is a tricky one because there are so many couples in books that I really love and continually root for. I think the obvious answer has to be Mr Darcy and Lizzie Bennet from Pride and Prejudice, because, let's face it, they're utterly brilliant, but then I also adore Scarlett and Rhett from Gone with the Wind, and Eddie and Susannah from The Dark Tower series by Stephen King (you knew he was going to come up, didn't you?) So I guess my answer is them and then some! There are too many fabulous couples in books to name them all.

So, I hope you're all having a wonderful Friday, and that the weather is as nice for you as it is here! And happy July! If you're a new visitor, then welcome! Please have a little look around, and if you see anything you like then feel free to follow- more of the same is sure to come! Happy hopping everyone!