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Find the books
Try your public library, or order through your local indie, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble. Now that they're available in paperback, they're more affordable and easier to track down.
Save the dates
Volume I:
introductory post - Friday, February 1
discussion - Monday, February 25
Volume II:
introductory post - Monday, April 1
discussion - Monday, April 29
Volume III:
introductory post - Monday, June 3
discussion - Friday, June 28
Volume IV:
introductory post - Friday, August 2
discussion - Friday, August 30
Volume V:
introductory post - Wednesday, 2 September
discussion - Wednesday, 30 September
Read to share
Jot down anything that sparks your interest and join the discussion! And please spread the word. Twitter hashtag #lmmjournals
Here's a look at everything I've read this year!
Clear Off Your Shelves Challenge
Debut Author Challenge
Re-Reads
** Read Alouds
- The Story of Beautiful Girl - Rachel Simon
- Agatha Christie: An Autobiography - Agatha Christie (NF)
- Scarlet - A. C. Gaughen (YA)
- One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are - Ann Voskamp (NF)
- Swindle - Gordon Korman (MG)**
- Breadcrumbs - Anne Ursu (MG)
- Wonderstruck - Brian Selznick (MG)**
- The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie - Wendy McClure (NF)
- A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke - James Horn (NF)
- Wonder - R. J. Palacio (MG)
- Circle of Secrets - Kimberley Griffiths Little (MG)
- A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar - Suzanne Joinson
- Chained - Lynne Kelly (MG)
- Starters - Lissa Price (YA)
- The Fault in Our Stars - John Green (YA)
- Toilet Paper Tigers - Gordon Korman (MG)**
- Zoobreak - Gordon Korman (MG)**
- Love in Mid-Air - Kim Wright Wiley
- The Bee-Loud Glade - Steve Himmer
- The One and Only Ivan - Katherine Applegate (MG)
- Wildflowers in Winter - Katie Ganshert
- Touch Blue - Cynthia Lord (MG)
- Under the Never Sky - Veronica Rossi (YA)
- A Voice for Kanzas - Debra MacArthur (MG)
- The Gathering Storm - Robin Bridges (YA)
- A Summer to Die - Lois Lowry (YA)
- Where the Broken Heart Still Beats - Carolyn Meyer (YA)
- The No-Brainer Wardrobe - Hayley Morgan (NF)
- All Over But the Shoutin' - Rick Bragg (NF)
- New Found Land - Alan Wolf (YA)
- If I Lie - Corrine Jackson (YA)
- Sister - Rosamund Lupton
- Emily's Dress and Other Missing Things (YA)
- Hound Dog True - Linda Urban (MG)
- Second Sight: An Editor's Talks on Writing, Revising, and Publishing Books for Children and Young Adults - Cheryl B. Klein (NF)
- Glory Be - Augusta Scattergood (MG)
- A Breath of Eyre - Eve Marie Mont (YA)
- The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie
- Sanctuary - Agatha Christie
- The Thank You Room - Serenity Bohon (NF)
- Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
- The Wild Wood - Julie Anne Nelson (YA)
- Selkirk's Island: The True and Strange Adventures of the Real Robinson Crusoe - Diana Souhami (NF)
- Crossed - Ally Condie (YA)
- The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains - Nicholas Carr (NF)
- The Ruins of Us - Keija Parssinen
- Where Things Come Back - John Corey Whaley (YA)
- Grave Mercy - Robin LaFevers (YA)
- Small Medium at Large - Joanne Levy (MG)
- The Mapmaker and the Ghost - Sarvenaz Tash (MG)**
- Chime - Franny Billingsley (YA)
- The Case of the Deadly Ha-Ha Game (MG)**
- Horton Halfpott: or, The Fiendish Mystery of Smugwick Manor; or, The Loosening of M'Lady Luggertuck's Corset - Tom Angleberger (MG)
- Cryer's Cross - Lisa McMann (YA)
- A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness (YA)
- Remarkable - Lizzie K. Foley (MG)
- Paper Covers Rock - Jenny Hubbard (YA)
- Code Name Verity - Elizabeth Wein (YA)
- Small Damages - Beth Kephart (YA)
- Temple Grandin: How the Girl Who Loved Cows Embraced Autism and Changed the World - Temple Grandin, Sy Montgomery (MG/NF)
- Summer of the Gypsy Moths - Sara Pennypacker (MG)
- One for the Murphys - Lynda Mullaly Hunt (MG)
- The Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg (NF)
- Liar and Spy - Rebecca Stead (MG)
- Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking - Susan Cain (NF)
- The Head in Edward Nugent's Hand: Roanoke's Forgotten Indians - Michael Leroy Oberg (NF)
- Fracture - Megan Miranda (YA)
- Inside Out and Back Again - Thanhha Lai (MG)
- Writing the Breakout Novel - Donald Maas (NF)
- Ender in Exile - Orson Scott Card
- The Unnameables - Ellen Booraem (MG)
- Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
- How to Save a Life - Sara Zarr (YA)
- Auracle - Gina Rosati (YA)
- The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction - Sinclair Ferguson (NF)
- All is Well - Kristin Embry Litchman (MG)
- The False Prince - Jennifer Nielsen (MG)
- One Thousand White Women - Jim Fergus
- The Absolute Value of Mike - Kathryn Erskine (MG)
- The Brides of Rollrock Island - Margo Lanagan (YA)
- The Girl of Fire and Thorns - Rae Carson (YA)
- The Great Unexpected - Sharon Creech (MG)
Stats for the year:
adult titles: 13.8%
I made a point to read more adult titles than I did last year, and I plan to continue to do this. These last few years I've let this aspect of my reading lag, and I've felt the ramifications of feeling undernourished as a reader. Never again!
non-fiction: 19.5%
- faith: 2.4%
- research : 2.4%
- craft : 2.4%
- pleasure read: 12%
Though not the genre with the highest percentage, this is truly the year of non-fiction for me. I'm not usually one who reads non-fiction for pleasure, yet look at all those books I read just because they piqued my interest! I'd love to keep this balance in my reading for the rest of my life.
middle grade : 34%
My fist love and my primary area of study, this is no surprise to me.
young adult: 31%
Almost every young adult title I've read has either been a debut or recent release. Interesting.
debuts: 18%
If you're looking closely at my list, you'll see the numbers and percentages don't jive. That's because two books that didn't qualify for the 2012 Debut Challenge were still debuts.
picture books: ??
Foolishly, I've never kept a steady record of the picture books I've read. The last two years have been gap years for me, as my boys have started to move beyond this phase in their personal reading, and together we read middle grade. I've spent the last few months brushing up on titles I've missed and have enjoyed immensely what I've read.
Goals for next year:
Only two. I'll discuss these during my next post.
What have you read this year? What patterns have you seen emerge?
One of the things I think has made Gillian Flynn's GONE GIRL so successful is voice.
Voice is always one of those tricky things. Scholastic editor
Cheryl Klein defines it "by using the formula VOICE = PERSON + TENSE + PROSODY + (Diction + Syntax + Tone + Imagination + Details). Defining the imagination of Voice, Cheryl says, '[t]he imagination of a voice sets the range of subjects, images, diction, kinds of and examples of figurative language, and references that the voice can include.'”
Agent and author
Donald Maass says voice is "the thing...every novelist already has... . It may be comic, deadpan, dry, pulpy, shrill, objective, distant, intimate, arty or a thousand other things. It comes through in the story that an author chooses to tell and the way in which they choose to tell it."
Here are some quotes I highlighted while reading GONE GIRL. You'll notice they're not big statements on the plot (except for the last one, which sums up the entire story in all its twisted wonder), but tiny observations -- metaphors used to paint a picture of characters, of setting, small things that were fresh and interesting and right. In other words, great examples of voice.
characterization and metaphor:
"They have no hard edges with each other, no spiny conflicts, they ride through life like conjoined jellyfish -- expanding and contracting instinctively, filling each other's spaces liquidly. Making it look easy, the soul-mate thing." (p 27)
setting and metaphor:
"It was the best time of day, the July sky cloudless, the slowly setting sun a spotlight on the east, turning everything golden and lush, a Flemish painting." (p 31)
characterization:
"His shirt wasn't wrinkled, but he wore it like it was; he looked like he should stink of cigarettes and sour coffee, even though he didn't. He smelled like Dial soap." (p 33)
characterization and metaphor:
"He spoke in a soft, soothing voice, a voice wearing a cardigan." (p 199)
and the quote that sums up the entire crazy ride:
"Our kind of love can go into remission, but it's always waiting to return. Like the world's sweetest cancer." (p 392)
Have you read GONE GIRL? What were your impressions? Any other authors or books that get voice just right?
Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of the Anne of Green Gables series and two dozen more books, kept a journal from the time she was fourteen until she died in her sixties.
I first discovered her journals (available in five volumes) with my dear friend, Jamie C. Martin, back when I was teaching, was a soon-to-be mama, and was pursuing the writing life with as much vigor and passion as I was able to muster while figuring it all out alone.
If you've read any of Maud's books, the journals might come as a surprise. Much of the sweetness you'd expect from the author of Anne, Emily, Pat, and the Story Girl isn't present. Her life was a challenge in many ways. But for me, seeing Maud's daily struggles made her somehow more real and made her hopeful books that much richer.
I have always felt an affinity for this woman. We share a lot in common as teachers, mothers to two boys, pastor's wives, authors, women who have lived with depression. These journals are insightful, funny, painful, full of longing, and brimming with the anecdotal stories you'd expect from an author of over 500 short stories. Through these books I've learned about women's schooling in the late 1800's, a bit of Canadian history and geography, societal norms, women's fashion, beginning and sustaining a writing career (in the midst of babies and a male-dominated publishing world), advancements in technology, the impact on the individual of the first and second World Wars. I can go on and on.
It has been some time since I've read these journals, and I've found myself longing to re-read the books that so deeply spoke to me over a decade ago. I'm inviting anyone who's interested to read along. This is the only reading goal I'm setting for myself in 2013.
Expect to see a lot on LM on the blog next year.
Jamie? Marissa? Serenity? Want to join me?* Anyone else?
* Unfortunately, the journals are not easy to find. Try Amazon or your local library.
For those of us living the writing life, whether we realize it or not, we are constantly learning as we read. Often I'll find myself engrossed in a book where the author's voice becomes so familiar I swear I'll never forget its rhythms and style. And while I sometimes can hold onto a general sense of these things, I'm finding I need to be more intentional with my reading if I want these impressions to last.
This year I've started using my
commonplace book as a place to record quotes that have struck me as important. Sometimes it's a fresh simile, other times just a sentence to remember the atmosphere an author has so wonderfully invoked. I've recorded the last few pages of novels, those key moments when everything comes together. I've written down scenes when the protagonist reaches the end of his or her self and must become something new.
It's in looking for and taking note of things that I'm learning to grow as a writer.
Here are a few similes and metaphors I've collected these last few months:
"Alice's stomach was rumbling like an empty garbage can rolling down a hill..." PIE, Sarah Weeks
"I try to stuff myself between the seats, like coins." EMILY'S DRESS AND OTHER MISSING THINGS, Kathryn Burak
"Majid had a family network as complex and secretive as a walnut shell." THE RUINS OF US, Keija Parssinen
"Her voice sounds as hollow as the empty wasp's nests." CROSSED, Ally Condie
"The day is collapsing into dusk. The Gypsies in their white shirts are the only lamps. The moon is coming in like a pan on fire." SMALL DAMAGES, Beth Kephart
And some darn
beautiful truths:
"I lay my hand on my heart. Our parents teach us the very first things we learn. They teach us about hearts. What if I could be treated as though I were small again? What if I were mothered all over again? Might I get my heart back?
My heart is unfolding." CHIME, Franny Billingsley
"That taste is still in my mouth. I know what it is. It's the taste of pretending. It's the taste of lying. It's the taste of a game that is over." LIAR AND SPY, Rebecca Stead
"In spring, Amherst changes into a storybook. The students grow wings from their heels and run through town spinning and singing. You get the idea that some parts of life are pure happiness, as least for a while. The toy store in the center of town puts all its kites outside, on display, so that the tails and whirligigs can illustrate the wind." EMILY'S DRESS AND OTHER MISSING THINGS, Kathryn Burak
What helps you process what you learn as you read?
Sometimes we wish we'd been the ones to write the magnificent books, as if there are somehow now less stories to tell, as if someone else's talent subtracts from our own.
I cannot feel that way.
These four books could only have been crafted by the authors who wrote them, and their creation is a gift to us all. They have shown me what it means to write brave.
For those of you who've followed here a while (and even for those who are rather new), you might have caught that I'm a Laura Ingalls Wilder fan. My book, MAY B., was partially inspired by my desire to create my own strong pioneer girl who would feel, in the spirit of Laura Ingalls, both familiar and brave.
If you, too, are a Laura fan, you have to get a hold of Wendy McClure's THE WILDER LIFE: MY ADVENTURES IN THE LOST WORLD OF LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE. As an adult, Wendy rekindles her Laura love and determines she'll learn as much as she can about the Ingalls and their world. Wendy embarks on a butter-churning, midwestern-prairie trekking adventure, where she visits all of Laura's homesites (excluding the Wilders brief stay in Florida), experiments with homesteading techniques (sourdough starter, anyone?), and digs deep into what is real, what is fiction, and what is memory.
Those of us who grew up loving Laura Ingalls have memories of our own. For me, I remember Laura being the first author I "knew." Sure, I'd been exposed to plenty of books before the Little House series, but it was while listening to my father read that I came to understand Laura the girl and Laura the writer were the same person. I was convinced that Laura had actually typed each page in my book, stuck everything together, and sent it to the bookstore.
Wendy's book covers a lot -- the television series fans vs. the book fans (some of us are both, but lean more one way or the other), the way Laura's books are more fictitious than many realize (For example, LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS actually covers the time before and after LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE; the Ingalls, like many pioneers, had to backtrack before being able to move west again), and the expectation -- and disappointment -- a fan might experience while visiting, as Wendy calls it, Laura World. How much of the books comes from true events? How much of our memories of the Ingalls were partially formed by our own childhood impressions? Where is a fan left in the midst of it all? And why did TV Pa solve so many problems by throwing punches?
For this Laura fan, this book was incredibly satisfying. Wendy, like it or not, you've made a new friend.
Has anyone else read THE WILDER LIFE? What were your impressions? If your name happens to be Stephanie and you babysat me as a girl, don't buy your o
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Loved her book as a child. Can't wait for this!
Glad to hear it!