BBAW: Forgotten Treasure

Today’s Topic:  Sure we’ve all read about Freedom and Mockingjay but we likely have a book we wish would get more attention by book bloggers, whether it’s a forgotten classic or under marketed contemporary fiction.  This is your chance to tell the community why they should consider reading this book!

I sat and stared at my computer screen for a long time after coming across today's topic. At first I thought it would be easy to come up with a title (or an author? maybe even a genre?) that I thought was woefully under-read and in need of some blogger-loving, but I had a terrible time narrowing down my ideas. There are so many books I've loved that seem 'out of fashion' in today's reading community. I often feel lost reading other blogs because I'm fairly out of touch with the contemporary/YA lit world-- I love visiting and maybe adding other blogger's favorites to my TBR pile, but I never quite get over the feeling of being a tourist in a strange land... 

Anyway-- here are my final picks for forgotten treasures!

The Big Sea by Langston Hughes. I think Hughes, in general, is horribly under-read at the moment. Sure we usually get a couple of his poems in school (usually in the month of February when teachers are instructed to celebrate African American History month...) and during President Obama's inauguration Hughes quotes were tossed around all over the place... but actually reading his collected works? Or his short stories? His plays? His non-fiction work? Not so much! I was actually guilty of 'forgetting' Hughes (or of never really knowing him...) until fairly recently. A dear friend of mine in grad school is a Hughes scholar (one of the few, the proud) and he basically tied me to a chair and refused to let me up until I'd worked through a couple collections. It was an eye-opening experience. I'd never realized quite how long Hughes's career was-- he was a major voice not only in the Harlem Renaissance, but also throughout the Second World War, the Red Scare of McCarthyism, and the early Civil Rights Movement. He traveled extensively in the US, the Carribbean, Western and Eastern Europe, West Africa, and Japan, and wrote about his experiences every step of the way. He wrote in almost every genre imaginable (even opera!) and was a huge American presence-- artistically, politically and socially-- for over 4 decades.

I would really encourage anyone to dive right into Hughes's work, but if you're only going to read one thing of his cover-to-cover, I would suggest checking out the first volume of his autobiography, The Big Sea. It's a fabulously lyrical account of his childhood (in the US and Mexico) and his growing awareness of both racial identity and the power of the written word. It follows him on his journeys as a young writer in Harlem, on book tours deep into the American South of the 1940s, and over to the artistic community in 1950s Paris. It's a beautifully written, emotionally powerful narrative that gives you an insight into one of the most prolific and influential writers of the first half of the 1900s. I can't shout enough praises...

AND (because I love this one too much to leave out...)

John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead. I know this book got some flack(!!) for being 'overly literary' and Whitehead's complicated prose and kaleidescope of images, scenes, time periods, genres and voices can be messy and confusing, but if you let yourself get lost in the story/stories the experience is really magical. It's a haunting book. It's an ambitious look at the history/development/modern applications of the John Henry myth (a former slave working as a pile driver for the railroads who engages in a man vs machine contest to save his livelihood). The novel playfully, yet dramatically, explores stereotypes and race relations over the course of the past hundred years. It also engages with modern commodity culture-- where history, myth, and tensions have been turned into purchasable 'things' so that we can buy (and own) little bits of the past (a 'John Henry action figure,' 'black face lawn jockeys for the front yard,' 'stereotyped Aunt Jemima syrup bottles' etc.) You may not love the book for its language (though I actually do..) or for it's wildly spinning construction, but the messages and characters will stay with you!

BBAW: New Treasure

It's Day 3 of Book Blog Appreciation Week! Each day we share the blogger-love and describe posts, bloggers, and relationships that have shaped our experiences as readers and writers.

Wednesday’s Topic: We invite you to share with us a book or genre you tried due to the influence of another blogger. What made you cave in to try something new and what was the experience like?

I've added a huge number of books to my TBR pile thanks to wonderfully thoughtful reviews by fellow bloggers, but unfortunately I've only been able to actually read a couple of them :(

I laughed out loud when I read English Major's Junk Food's review of Ophelia Just Joined the Group Maidens Who Don't Float: Classic Lit Signs on to Facebook by Sarah Schmelling, and then I immediately logged on to Amazon to order a copy. I loved the idea of this book (perhaps more than I loved the book itself) and couldn't wait to share it with my students. What a great way to 'modernize' the canon! A couple weeks ago I assigned Hamlet to my first-year English class and then had them read the 'Facebooking' of those characters. It really seemed to bring home some of the relationships and emotions from the play.. plus is was so much FUN to talk about. I asked my students to pick characters NOT represented in the Schmelling book and to write their own Facebook interactions. It was the most energetic and engaged class-period we've had all semester!

The other review that made me jump off my seat and run directly to the used book store was Things Mean a Lot's reading of Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair. The review gave a great, intriguing plot summary without giving too much away, and then gave a list of similar works and provided a number of (fabulous!!) quotes. I was hooked as soon as I read this paragraph:

 "But before I go any further, let me tell you a little more about the alternative world that Thursday inhabits: this is a world where dodos have been brought back from extinction thanks to cloning and are popular pets (Thursday has one named Pickwick); a world where the boundaries between reality and fiction are malleable at best; a world in which a device called a Prose Portal allows people to enter works of fiction; a world in which the interests of the giant Goliath Corporation have pretty much trumped democracy; a world in which Wales is an independent nation behind a sort of Iron Curtain; and finally a world in which artistic and literary matters are the subject of debates so heated that they can lead to imprisonment or to terrorist acts."

I LOVED this idea, and ordered the rest of the series before I'd even finished the first one. I've been sticking pretty exclusively to classic and 'academic' literature, so the playfulness and chaos of Fforde's books was a bit out of my norm... But I'm so very glad I was encouraged to go there!

How about you? What "New Treasures" have your blogging adventures led you to? 

BBAW: First Treasure

It's finally time for Book Blogger Appreciation Week!! I was a lurker last year and promised myself that I would have my own blog up and running in time for this year's festivities. It's such a great opportunity to explore new blogs and to celebrate the bloggers who help to shape my reading and reviewing habits. I'm also madly truly deeply in love with the theme of this year's celebration -- “A Treasure Chest of Infinite Books and Infinite Blogs” -- because I have a minor obsession with pirates and treasure maps. I taught a class last week on the parallels between first-year composition projects and pirate map construction, and I plan to teach next Monday (the day AFTER International Talk like a Pirate Day...) in a full peg-leg/eye-patch/parrot-on-the-shoulder glory.

Anyway! Today's topic is "First Treasure," an account of the blog that first got you interested (obsessed) with book blogging and with the blogging community.  My first blogger-crush was definitely Amanda over at Dead White Guys. She's hysterically funny and often has pointed insights about the nature and relationships of classic literature. I was particularly drawn to her blog because it was the first time I'd seen a blogger try to take on 'classic, high-brow literature.' I'd read plenty of blogs about YA and chick lit, and while I love those genres, I am an academic and feel guilty if I don't engage with the big guns. Dead White Guys turns reading about Hemingway or Thomas Moore into a rocking, rollicking good time.

I'd recommend her blog to anyone interested in an irreverent take on the Old Masters, or to anyone looking to bone up on the big names without getting too intimidated by their dry authority.