My Summer Reading List Part 1 and thoughts on the *ahem* plagiarism debacle

Wow, the blogosphere has been pretty fucked up, huh?

So what better way to distract myself than making a summer reading list. This way I can keep the whole summer mapped out and finish off a large chunk of my to-read pile.

So here goes, 

1) Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

Why it is on this list?

Kafkaesque Underworld. Surrealism. Unicorn skulls. 

Wait, I need to say that again. 

UNICORN SKULLS. 

As if the book didn't have me eating out of it's palm at Kafkaesque. 

2) The Summer We Read Gatsby: A Novel by Danielle Ganek

I am not very fond of the cover but the title wins brownie points. I mean, what's a summer reading list without books that have the word summer in the title?

And it's supposed to be a delightful comedy of manners set at the Hamptons. Hamptons are pretty summer-vibe inducing too. 

:) 

3) Suicide Notes by Michael Thomas Ford

Light breezy romances are great for summer and all, BUT I NEED TO GET MY DAILY INTAKE OF DEPRESSING SUICIDAL READZ ON.

4) Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

Speaking of depressing as shizz but uplifting books, I am super excited about this one. I already started it and it's great so far. And I love the cover. So quirky.

5) The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart by Mathias Malzieu

I am so lucky to have come across this book! 

I first saw the original version which is in French and needless to say my French isn't so good that I could read an entire novel. Anyways, I was happy to know it was translated in English. 

But this cover is pretty fancy. 

Okay, so I noticed that almost all of the blurbs of these books describe them as "poignant". 

:/ 

We are lurking into pretentious book territory.

What to do? 

.

.

.

.

Oh look, problem solved.

6)  Sixteenth Summer by Michelle Dalton

How is that for jazzing things up? That's definitely a non-poignant book. And possibly the most summery of the bunch. 

I mostly want to read it because I love the cover. I mean, I love beaches. And, I totes want that dress. And, possibly the guy too. As long as his face looks like Jesse Eisenberg. 

So, now that the quintessential cheesy summer romance book has been added, the PART 1 of my Summer Reading List is done. 

The whole list is like 30 books, so I am gonna divide it into a few parts and put it up. 

And now onto the plagiarism bit,

It's wrong as hell. I get it. In the blogging world it's the shittiest thing you can do. If someone did it to me, (I mean with all this eloquent shizz I pop out here, it could happen :P), I'd be super angry too. But this, what is happening, what I am sure we are all aware is happening, it sucks. It's just sad. It's one thing to say someone did something wrong and demand an apology, it's another to rally around attacking them on every possible level and write huge posts damaging their reputation. I am not taking any sides. I just feel like some people are not so much angry at the plagiarism per se, as they are overfilled with schadenfreude. 

Well, that was my two cents on the matter. 

“What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.” 

- John Green

Paper Towns by John Green

When Margo Roth Spiegelman beckons Quentin Jacobsen in the middle of the night - dressed like a ninja and plotting an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows her. Margo's always planned extravagantly, and, until now, she's always planned solo. After a lifetime of loving Margo from afar, things are finally looking up for Q . . . until day breaks and she has vanished. Always an enigma, Margo has now become a mystery. But there are clues. And they're for Q. 

Printz Medalist John Green returns with the trademark brilliant wit and heart-stopping emotional honesty that have inspired a new generation of readers.

Published October 16th 2008 by Dutton Juvenile

10 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT PAPER TOWNS

1) Dear John Green,

 You had me at, “Maybe all the strings inside him broke.”

2) Meet the characters:

Quentin: Nerdy, Alternative and Hipster. Basically, every John Green character.

MaRgO:  She capitalises random letters because otherwise it’s not fair to the other letters.

She is mad as a hatter and odd as a bat.

In Ben Starling’s words,"She's the kind of person who either dies tragically at twenty-seven, like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, or else grows up to win, like, the first-ever Nobel Prize for Awesome."

Also, the show Revenge should drop Emily or Amanda or whatever and follow Margo because hell hath no fury like Margo scorned.

Radar: Nerdy, Obsessed with Omnictionary which is a site like Wikipedia and LOOK, IT EXISTS. http://www.omnictionary.com/index.php/Main_Page

 Oh, and owns the largest collection of Black Santas EVER.

Ben: Funny Ben is Funny.

3) Pop Culture references.

Example: "The last time I was this scared," Radar says, "I actually had to face a Dark Lord in order to make the world safe for wizards."

Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and Wilco make a special musical appearance.

And THE BELL JAR! THE BELL JAR! MY The Bell Jar. 

Also, Emily Dickinson.

4) The entire novel is weaved along with Walt Whitma’s Song of Myself from his book Leaves of Grass.

5) This book followed major themes of Perception and the Mirrors vs Windows concept.

6) Urban explorers.

7) Quentin is the book version of every character Jesse Eisenberg and Adam Brody have ever played. ( Except Zuckerberg in The Social Network. He would fit too, if he were ever so slightly dumbed down. :P ) And if nothing else, that in itself is enough for me to love the movie.

8) The novel is divided into 3 sub-parts, each providing insight into a major metaphor.

So we have The Strings, The Grass, and The Vessel.

And the only thing I like more than awkward, hyperintellectual, neurotic guys (Read: Woody Allen, Jesse Eisenberg, Adam Brody) is METAPHORS. I can eat metaphors for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

9) I loved this paragraph.

“Here’s what’s not beautiful about it: from here, you can’t see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You see how fake it all is. It’s not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It’s a paper town. I mean look at it, Q; look at all those cul-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning thing. All the thing paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too.”

10) THE ROAD TRIP. THE BLOODY ROAD TRIP. It was all types of awesomeness and coolness and I can forever fangirl over the road trip. And honestly, it made me wonder why I haven’t read any books on road trips before. Picked up On The Road by Jack Kerouac the very next day. Any other recommendations? 

I don’t know how a book filled with pranks, clues, mystery, beer and naked graduation manages to be philosophical, but this one does. 

I Am Back and Friday Follow.

Okay, so I know I was MIA for like a month or so, but that does NOT mean Blogger can go all Facebook on my ass by changing the interface COMPLETELY. 

WHAT IS GOING ON?

WHY DOES MY POST BOX LOOK SO DIFFERENT?

I guess I'll just have to put on my big girl panties on and deal with it. People have had it worse. They had to run from Voldy No-Nose Lord for seven bloody years, fight in The Hunger Games whilst people with whisker's and dyed skin with gems implanted in them watched , or worse still, become a princess in an awesome funny book which Disney RUINS by making it into a lame movie where MICHAEL-FREAKING-MOSCOVITZ ISN'T EVEN THERE. And MIA ISN'T EVEN BLONDE.AND GRANDMERE ISN'T EVEN SCARY. Oh, and Boris and Tina are a no-show too. Grr, okay now I am just upset. 

So, (FINALLY) moving on, I am here to apologize for my long absence, which was because I was super busy with my exams and shit. However,it's the first day of my summer vacations and so I am back to blogging, and am gonna post several book, movies and TV Show recs soon.

Q: Fight! Fight! If you could have two fictional characters battle it out (preferably from books), who would they be and who do you think would win?

Cheshire Cat and Fat Louie. Fat Louie would just sit and laze about and be fat, while Cheshire Cat impresses with his wit and smile.

So, maybe there would be no fight. Mmmm.

How about Arnold, the pygmy puff and Pigwidgeon, the tiny cute owl?

Their fight would be all cute and adorable, like two small furballs rolling about. It would be more like a fur-fest, than a fight. 

So for reals, Gandalf and Dumbledore and I'll never know who won because I can't tell one from the other.

Also, Walt Whitman could have joined if it wasn't strictly fictional characters. 

Ho, Ho, Brandish those beards.  

Q. Book Blogger Influences: Has there been a particular 

book blogger who's influenced what you read? Share with us a review/book blog 

that convinced you to pick up a certain book.

Before I started blogging or knew that Goodreads existed, I read tons of books based on The Story Siren's reviews. Kristi just had this large number of YA books in her archive, so I used to go about leisurely through them and make a to-read list. It didn't influence my reading choice per se but when I was in the mood for YA, it helped. I still do that sometimes, like once a month or something.  Everything is just so systematic and regular in that blog. (Unlike this one :P) 

However, these days I just use Goodreads. I fucking love that site. 

Please drop by links to your answers. 

XO

P.S- You can also follow me on Twitter for my incessant whining or on Pinterest which I LOVE LOVE LOVE and haunt regularly.
http://pinterest.com/thebellejar/
https://twitter.com/#!/WickedWillow666

Guest Post by Author of Freshman Year & Other Unnatural Disasters: Meredith Zeitlin

Five of My Favorite Books!


The Time-Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. This book is magic. It destroyed me – first, because I simply couldn't believe that the author had gotten it all to work out so perfectly. I would go flipping back to previously read scenes, thinking, “There's no way there isn't a mistake here somewhere..” but there were no mistakes. The humor in this book, the language, the images, the raw emotion, the sex, the visceral pain of loss – it's all there. I cried so hard when I got to the end (and, FYI, I almost never cry, period) that a woman on the subway asked if I needed help. This is probably the most perfect book I've ever read.
(Do not ever mention the movie of this book to me. No, I haven't seen it, and I certainly never will. There's simply no point.)


Lafcadio, The Lion Who Shot Back, by Shel Silverstein. Yes, everyone loves Uncle Shelby. But for me, this is his best book, and one I have loved for a thousand years. Go read it right now, if you haven't. It's about what it means to be human, and what it means to fit into your own skin. It's funny and strange and brilliant.


French Relations, by Fiona Walker. I bought this book at Heathrow Airport when I was 18 and wanted something juicy and fun to read for the flight back to the US. Little did I know I had stumbled on the BEST BOOK EVER. It's just everything about a fabulous chick-litty, beach read only more – fashion! Scandal! Drunken midnight romps! Misunderstandings! Puns! Horses! English people! It's like Bridget Jones if she lived in a Judith Krantz world. Seriously, I know it sounds ridiculous and very unliterary, but everyone I have ever loaned my copy to (on pain of death if it not returned, btw) has agreed. Best. Book. Ever.


Wicked, by Gregory Maguire. People who are only familiar with the (in my opinion, totally awful – and I say that as a fully-fledged and knowledgeable theatre geek, btw) musical version of this need to go buy the book AT ONCE. It's totally different. It's a political manifesto, and so complicated, so nuanced, so brutal... every time I read it I discover something I completely missed the last time. I think it's the best of his books (and I've read them all) - but that might be because it's the first one I read and I don't know if anything could compete afterwards.


The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, by Rebecca Wells. I love Rebecca Wells' writing. I love the way she makes sentences, the ways she creates characters, and the way she tells a story. Her words are delicious. Her point of view is so specific. I think she has one of the purest voices in fiction – and I love Southern fiction. The Prince of Tides was a favorite novel when I was growing up, and her stories remind of it in all the best ways. (And no, I haven't seen the movie version of this either! You can't make me!)

Meredith Zeitlin is a writer and voiceover artist who lives in Brooklyn with two adorable feline roommates. She also writes a column for Ladygunn Magazine, changes her hair color every few months, and has many fancy pairs of spectacles. 
"Freshman Year and Other Unnatural Disasters" (Putnam, March 2012) is her first novel. 
You can learn more about the book here: www.kelseyfinkelstein.com  

Guest Post by Deborah Hopkinson, Author of Titanic: Voices From the Disaster

Last year, at the beginning of episode one of Downton Abbey, when I watched the words “April 1912” flash on the screen after the opening scene in the telegraph office, I knew exactly what had happened.  For I’d just spent the last two years immersed in that very time period, researching my new nonfiction book, Titanic: Voices from the Disaster.

            This year, of course, marks the centennial of the Titanic sinking, and thanks to Downton Abbey many more of us are revisiting Edwardian times and, of course, those beautiful clothes (at least the ones the upper class women wear; though Anna has some walking outfits I wouldn’t mind having!)      

But during the writing of Titanic: Voices from the Disaster, which draws heavily on the personal accounts of survivors, I didn’t need a costume to put me in back in time.  The heartbreaking stories and terrified words of those on the Titanic were enough to make the tragedy as vivid as a recent news report.

 “The first touch of our lifeboat on that black sea came to me as a last goodbye to life,” said a governess named Elizabeth Shutes, who, like many others, was at first reluctant to leave the ship to be lowered 70 feet to the ocean on that cold, clear night of April 15. “…and so we put off – a tiny boat on a great sea – rowed away from what had been a safe home for five days.”

Jack Thayer, only 17 at the time, was traveling with his parents. Separated from them in the ship’s final moments, he contemplated his own death. “I thought of all the good times I had had, and of the all the future pleasures I would never enjoy; of my father and mother; of my sisters and brother. I looked at myself as though from some far-off place…”  His story is made all the more poignant to know that years later he committed suicide after the death of his own son in World War II.

Titanic: Voices from the Disaster was written primarily for young readers, but, at 300 pages, it can, I hope, also appeal to adult readers wishing to revisit one of the defining events of the early 20^th century, and a tragedy that still fascinates us today.  The book includes a wealth of resources, such as historical photographs, bios of passengers and crews, a timeline, and excerpts from survivor letters written aboard the Carpathia which carried the 712 survivors (out of 2,208 on board) to New York.

“I escaped in my nightdress and coat and petticoats; everything has gone,” wrote second class passenger Edwina Trout to friends. “I dare say you all have lots of sympathy for me, but believe me, I am one of the lucky ones.”

I feel lucky to have had the privilege of writing this book and getting to know some extraordinarily brave individuals.  And I look forward to sharing it with readers. 

As it happens, I have a book signing coming up to which some nearby elementary school classes have been invited; I hear the kids have been encouraged to dress in period clothing. That’s all the excuse I need: I may not be able to pull off a hat like Maggie Smith, but at least I’m getting myself a pair of lace-up boots. 

To read more about Deborah Hopkinson’s books visit: www.deborahhopkinson.com      

  

Follow Friday #11

Q: What book would you love to see made into a movie or television show and do you have actors/actresses in mind to play the main characters?

Paper Towns by John Green into a TV Show because they are way awesome-r than movies.

Adam Brody as Quentin "Q" Jacobsen.
I reeeeeeealy miss Seth Cohen and Brody needs to get back in my TV Screen.

For Margo Roth Spiegelman, I honestly couldn't think of any actress. 

Maybe a cross between Kristen Stewart and Zooey Deschanel i.e Strange and sullen meets Manic Dream Pixie Girl.

Donald Glover as Marcus "Radar" Lincoln. GEEEEEEEKTASTIC!

And the effervescent Dianna Agron as Lacey Pemberton.
Because I hate what Glee is doing to Quinn Fabray and Lady Di deserves much much more. 

Book Moments: What has been your favorite moment (scene) in a book that you've read so far in 2012? Please be kind & not include spoilers.

"He looked into the water, then he looked at back at her, and simply shook his head as he raised a hand to cover his mouth. By this gesture he assumed full responsibility, but at that moment, she hated him for the inadequacy of the response. He glanced toward the basin and sighed. For a moment he thought she was about to step backward onto the vase, and he raised his hand and pointed, though he said nothing. Instead he began to unbutton his shirt. Immediately she knew what he was about. Intolerable. He had come to the house and removed his shoes and socks—well, she would show him then. She kicked off her sandals, unbuttoned her blouse and removed it, unfastened her skirt and stepped out of it and went to the basin wall. He stood with hands on his hips and stared as she climbed into the water in her underwear. Denying his help, any possibility of making amends, was his punishment. The unexpectedly freezing water that caused her to gasp was his punishment. She held her breath, and sank, leaving her hair fanned out across the surface. Drowning herself would be his punishment. When she emerged a few seconds later with a piece of pottery in each hand, he knew better than to offer to help her out of the water. The frail white nymph, from whom water cascaded far more successfully than it did from the beefy Triton, carefully placed the pieces by the vase."

- Atonement By Ian McEwan ( THE FOUNTAIN SCENE!! @@*LE GASP* *LA SIGH* *INSERT HEARTS*@#@)