To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Hello lovelies! So I read To Kill a Mockingbird but felt the post would be a bit more at home on my personal blog. Please wander over there to read my post about this amazing book that I read as part of a read-along hosted by Adam of Roof Beam Reader.

You can find my post here!

Thanks for reading :)

Austen in August

Hello everyone! So here is my announcement. I will be participating in Austen in August hosted by Roof Beam Reader. 

The goal is to read as many Austen or Austen related works as possible in the month of August. So you can read the classics or something different like Austenland by Shannon Hale (a personal favorite!) The point, read Austen! Love Austen! Live Austen! Love Mr. Darcy... mmmmmmm.

So good. So. Good. 

If you would also like to sign up to participate, go to the Austen post found here by leaving a comment on the original post. There's gonna be prizes given away and chatting on twitter using #AustenInAugustRBR

Make sure if you participate you get a button and put it somewhere on your blog to help spread the word about this awesome event! 

Button button whose got the button

Austen is perfect for the winding down of summer. It's such a romantic time. I can't wait!  

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

For my June classic, I wanted a short story that packed a lot of punch. That's how I feel about June; it's a light, breezy month that always seems to pack a lot of surprise power. 

I chose the most perfect June read. 

First lines:

"We didn't always live on Mango Street. Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keeler it was Paulina, and before that I can't reemmber. But what I remember most is moving a lot. Each time it seemed there'd be one more of us. By the time we got to Mango Street we were six- Mama, Papa, Carlos, Kiki, my sister Nenny and me.

The house on Mango Street is ours, and we don't have to pay rent to anybody, or share the yard with the people downstairs, or be careful not to make too much noise, and there isn't a landlord banging on the ceiling with a broom. But even so, it's not the house we'd thought we'd get."

This book is about Esperanza Cordero, a young girl trying to find her place in the world while growing up in her house on Mango Street. The story is told in a series of vignettes, none longer than about six pages. Through these seemingly simple stories, you truly get to know Esperanza through her words and the haunting visuals that take root in your mind.

This was quite honestly some of the most beautiful writing I have ever had the privilege of reading. The entire book reads like an epic poem, the most epic story that could ever be told. A story that every person alive shares: the journey of growing up and becoming who you are. It's the story of what shapes all of us, which is where we grow up. Those people, those places, those rooms, those halls. They stay with us like this book will stay with me. 

Cisneros has some of the most beautiful turns of phrase. She made me see things in a different way and she made this book so alive and so beautiful. Her mind must be so vivid and lovely; I'd like to live in her mind and surround myself with her words and ideas. She just made the whole world new for me. 

Like in this section, Esperanza is talking about having to be friends with her baby sister out of sisterly duty although she wants her own best friend. She says of her situation:

"Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor."

I just. I just... I can't with this book. 

Like when she describes going through puberty. Specifically, getting hips.

"One day you wake up and they are there. Ready and waiting like a new Buick with the keys in the ignition. Ready to take you where?

They bloom like roses..."

Speaking from first hand experience here... this is 100% what happens when you get hips. You wake up and BAM. Suddenly you sway when you walk and suddenly boys are watching you. Oh puberty, you testy mistress. 

Although this is an incredibly short book and the vignettes so small, I felt incredibly connected to Esperanza and each character she introduced me to. You watch her grow through these stories and you can sense her growth with the words. The stories change from not wanting to play with her sister, to going through puberty, to longing for kisses, to longing for a future away from a past she is anchored to. Her story is my story. Her story is your story. There is a reason this book is so prolific although it is a new arrival into the classic canon. Everyone can relate to the fear and desire to grow up, and how hand in hand those two emotions are. 

I chose to read this book at a very interesting time. I'm preparing for a few huge life events. I'm finishing school, getting a real people job, moving into the city. Like Esperanza I've spent my whole life pushing myself forward, wanting to leave my past and the house I never wanted for the house I dreamed of and the autonomy I've longed for. But now that my time has come, I'm nervous and thrilled at the same time. 

This story was an amazing reminder as to how connected we are to our roots. No matter how much we try and fight where we are from, it's ingrained into our souls and imprinted on our hearts. 

This book made me want to write and I was inspired the entire time I read it. I finished the book and immediately wanted to read it again and relish those words once more. This book was a huge comfort to me too during this crazy times in my life. Especially the last lines.

"One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One day I wills ay goodbye to Mango. I am too strong for her to keep me here forever. One day I will go away. 

Friends and neighbors will say, What happened to that Esperanza? Where did she go with all those books and paper? Why did she march so far away?

They will not know I have gone away to come back. For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out."

I too must now pack up my bags of books and paper and get ready for the rest of my life. But as of now, at this moment, I very much enjoyed my brief stay on Mango Street with Esperanza. Please please please take a visit there yourself. You'll love your time there. 

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Every month I choose one classical book to read. I feel that as a writer and a reader it is crucial to see what it is about these books that have made them classics. Why do readers keep coming back to these books? Why is it important that these books are read? What did these books do that those before them didn't? WHY WHY WHY.

This month I selected Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. This is my first little foray into the world of Vonnegut, which is ridiculous. I hear so much about him and the black humor he is known for. I love me some dark humor and even more than that, I love satire. I've been meaning to grab a Vonnegut for some time now and I figured why not start with what is probably his most well known book. And I wanted to use this book as a way to get to know Vonnegut himself seeing as this book is semi autobiographical.

The book is about Billy Pilgrim, an optometrist, a soldier, an abductee, and an exhibit in an alien zoo that has the ability to become unstuck in time, living his life in one moment and then suddenly finding himself in another moment in his life. Billy gains this ability after he is abducted by aliens and taken to the planet known as Tralfamadore where he is taught about what death really means. Also, he is placed in a zoo with another Earthling named Montana Wildhack where they have a child and put their foreign way of life on display.

First lines:

"All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his. Another guy I knew really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war. And so on. I've changed all the names."

The first chapter of the book is told by Vonnegut himself, discussing how this book was close to being unwritten and his own travels back to Dresden after the war had ended. It discusses how he got a three book deal, Slaughterhouse being the first book of the three. I was really surprised that he talked about how hard it was for him to write a book of this nature and subject and how he felt the book wasn't very good. Well Vonnegut, I feel like it did alright.

After that chapter the book doesn't have much of a linear storyline at all. The first of Billy Pilgrim's story begins with:

"Listen:
Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.
Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day. He has walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941 He has gone back through that door to find himself in 1963. He has seen his birth and death many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the events in
between."

What you could call the main storyline follows Billy's journey through Germany first with a small group of three other soldiers and then as a prisoner of war and finally in the slaughterhouse in the city of Dresden before it is horrifically bombed. It took me a second to get accustomed to the jumps throughout the book through time and space and galaxy but as you keep reading the jumps feel natural and real.

The plot of the novel is clearly secondary to the writing and the experience the reader walks away with. War is fragmented and jumbled and so is the writing and storyline in the novel. What at first felt unreal with the time jumps soon began to feel incredibly real and plausible. I began to think that although I had never been abducted by aliens and given the ability to become unstuck in time, I had the ability after all. In every moment in our lives that are as vital and shocking as going through a war, I believe that all of us sort of jump through time. On the day I graduated High School I vividly remembered my first day of High School. When I see someone sick, I remember the times I was sick. When someone hears of the birth of a child, they jump back to the birth of their own.

It's our human way of coping. Our own lives are fractured and jumbled and the lives of those in a war zone are even more mixed up. This novel shows one man trying to cope with his life during and after the war, an experience that is clearly hard to get past. Seeing so much will change you. Being touched by death makes your life shift dramatically. This book was dramatic and real and true art.

The book feels incredibly intimate. It's a relatively small book and even as it remains Billy's story, I loved how in some moments Vonnegut pointed out that he also was there. When Billy is captured by the Germans and is watching a colonel from Cody, Wyoming utter his last words Vonnegut says plainly "I was there. So was my old war buddy, Bernard V. O'Hare." This book read like an autobiography even if it was mostly Billy's story. I saw Vonnegut always close by, traveling through time in his own way.

This book is called one of the world's great antiwar books. I would agree but it was also so much more than that. It was a book that looked at war with true eyes. The men weren't treated as heros, war was anything but idolized. What is there to idolize about war anyway? It's a horrible affair. This book was loyal to that idea. But what I loved about this antiwar book in particular was the extraordinary level of hope it carried with it. It shows Billy and Vonnegut coping with life after and during such a horrible experience. It is continually pointed out that war is not fought by men, but boys. It's a Children's Crusade, as Vonnegut painfully terms it.

But as Billy is able to see himself in different times and with the wisdom of the Tralfamadorian race, he is able to see beyond the horror he is experiencing and remember the good times in life. I adored the Tralfamadorian vision of death. It's probably one of the most inspirational things I have read in a book in recent years.

"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them, It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. 
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I miself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is 'So it goes.'"

Near the end of the book Vonnegut in his own voice says,

"If what Billy Pilgrim learned form the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still- if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice."

I think that in this world of war and life, this is the perfect attitude to have. His optimism is real and he fought for it valiantly through the war he fought in real life and the war he fought in his own mind. The book left me wanting more of how he wrote with hope hidden among the shadows. I'm thrilled to continue reading more Vonnegut.

Overall, I loved the book. It left me changed, which is what I would want from a classic as treasured as this book. The best way I could describe it is with a quote from Life Magazine.

"Splendid art... a funny book at which you are not permitted to laugh, a sad book without tears."

This is an important book, a delicious book, a must read.

Until next time, happy reading! I'd love to hear any recommendations you have for me, or your thoughts about anything I've read. Leave your comments below; I'd love to hear from you.