In Defense of Sookie

Well, I find myself in the unfortunate position of having to backtrack slightly. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about books as mind candy; my example was a series of books by Charlaine Harris - the True Blood series. I believe I argued in favour of reading books of substance, and I didn't feel that these books had that substance. Since then, I've been involved in a Facebook conversation with someone who has such a low opinion of the books that she won't even read them. I found myself defending them. Whoops. What happened? How could I go from suggesting that the True Blood series is mind candy to defending them publicly on Facebook?

I guess, when it comes down to it, a little candy isn't too bad. I would never suggest that the True Blood series is great literature, but I don't think there is anything really bad with it either. It's fluff, but so what? Is it expecting too much of myself to only read 'good' literature? Should I have these really high standards for myself? Does that lead to disappointing myself? Should I just accept the fact that I have low standards for reading, or try to 'improve' myself.

I'll have to come back to this, I think I have a lot to think about.

Brilliant! Absolutely Brilliant!

Faerie

Time for yet another confession. I love faerie stories. Notice the spelling. I'm not talking about fairy tales, but rather, faerie tales. Celtic mythology, although I really know very little about it, really appeals to me. Stories of the ancient Celtic gods, of the Seelie and Unseelie courts, of kelpies and brownies, all these are really appealing to me. I've recently finished reading three YA books that tell stories of faerie, as well as reading a most definitely adult book of faerie. Wondrous Strange and Darklight are the first two books in a trilogy by Lesley Livingstone that revolve around Kelly, a young actress who discovers that she is the long lost daughter of Auberon, king of the faeries. I really liked Wondrous Strange, but was not as impressed with Darklight. The premise of these stories is linked to Shakespeare stories, and I found it worked really well with the first story, but was weaker in the second. The story just didn't stand up. That's when I was introduced to Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr.

One of the women in my course told me that Wicked Lovely was a much better book than Wondrous Strange, and boy, was she right. It tells the story of Aislinn, who attracts the attention of the Keenan, the Summer King. It is a much darker story, but in the end, it was much more satisfying. I can't wait to read the next book(s) in the series.

I think I'd like to read more stories about faerie in the past. The books I've been reading have all had faeries in the modern world; I want to know where the stories came from. I need to look up some Irish/Celtic mythology. I want to know where the stories came from. I know that Shakespeare is the one who changed our perceptions of fairies, but I'd like to know what they were like before.

Face, Meet Palm

Yes, I need a good face palm. I wrote a long, long entry about my favourite books, and I left out one of my all-time favourites. How could I have forgotten To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. Somehow, I did. It wasn't even on my list of books to go through. I was horrified when I realized that it wasn't there, and I decided it wasn't enough to simply add on to my last entry, so I'm creating an entire entry about To Kill a Mockingbird.

The irony is that when I first read Mockingbird, I really didn't like it at all. I can still remember it - I was in Grade 5 at Hawthorne Public School in Ladner, BC, and I was buying books from Scholastic. Does that still happen? We would get a brochure every month with the latest books from scholastic, I would select the ones I wanted, and my mother would write a cheque which I would bring into the school. My teacher would then send in the order, and a couple of weeks later, my books would arrive. One month, Mockingbird was among the books I order. I would have been 10 or 11 at the time, and although my reading level was exceptionally high, I don't know that my maturity level was developed enough to understand the book. When I read it then, I really hated it. I didn't pick it up again for another 14 years or so.

When I moved to Colombia to begin teaching English there, To Kill a Mockingbird was one of the books I was expected to teach. I re-read it, and fell instantly in love (14 years later). I loved the story, the characters, the lessons ... really, I loved everything about it. I really loved Atticus Finch. When he was named the number one hero from the AFI, I really understood it. I taught Mockingbird for three years in Colombia, and another couple of years when I returned to Canada. I haven't taught it as a class novel for a number of years now (mostly because I've been teaching history), but I would love to teach it again.

Although it was written in the 1960s, and set in the 1930s, I truly believe that it is not dated. The lessons it teaches are still as valid today as they were forty or seventy years ago. Racism still exists, an unjust justice system still exists, people fighting against prejudice still exist. In some ways, teaching this book may be more important than it was twenty or thirty years ago. Unfortunately, a number of people seem to believe that the issues brought out in Mockingbird are not issues any more. I wish I could agree.

My love for To Kill a Mockingbird reached a new level when I read the book Mockingbird by Charles J. Shields. I had never known how much of her own life Harper Lee had put into her novel. The fact that the character Dill was based on Truman Capote just blew me away. Sometimes, learning more about an author or their inspiration for their work can lessen my enjoyment of the novel itself, but that didn't happen for me in this case. This is also one of the rare instances where watching the movie didn't take away from my enjoyment of the novel. The movie version is amazing. The scene where Atticus has just lost the court case brings a lump to my throat every time.

I love, love, love, this book.