The Best of 2014: Historical Fiction

2014 was the year I think I fell in love with history. I have had a really great US History teacher for the past two years, who not only gives us bonus points when he scores over par while playing golf, but whose enthusiasm for the subject has made the AP class comedic and interesting. I also discovered Downton Abbey and Midnight in Paris this year, a TV show and a movie that have helped me realize that the period from 1915-1945 is my favorite to read about. Historical fiction is certainly the type of novel I could see myself writing in the future.  

Of the historical fiction novels I read this year, here are the top six. It was a tight race for the #1 spot!

Top Historical Fiction of 2014: 

6. The Chaperone, Laura Moriarty

5. Life After Life, Kate Atkinson

4. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien

3. All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr

2. Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, Therese Anne Fowler

1. The Paris Wife, Paula McLain   (Scored 28/30)

The Paris Wife fictionalizes the time Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley, spent in Paris during the 1920s.  McLain writes Hadley in a genuine voice that is honest and kind. Hadley captivated me with the simple lens through which she looked at life, and the true feelings she had those around her. McLain's style is historically accurate and detailed, allowing the reader to walk the streets of Paris alongside the main characters. (Read my full review here)

Also read, my "Best of'" Historical fiction in 2011, 2012, 2013 

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The Best of 2014: Autobiography / Memoir / Nonfiction

It's that time of year! Yes, it is the time for some good Christmas cheer, but also for naming the best books of the year. My "Best of"lists for 2014 will be posted over the course of three days, so be sure to check back tomorrow for my top historical fiction novels of the year.

Top Autobiographies, Memoirs, and Nonfiction of 2014: 

4. Standing at Armageddon: A Grassroots History of the United States, Nell Irvin Painter

3. Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass

2. Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell

1. Wave, Sonali Deraniyagala (Scored: 25/30)

Wave is the story of Sonali Deraniyagala, who was vacationing with her family in Sri Lanka during Christmas, week of 2004. On December 26th, a tsunami and earthquake occurred, consuming her hotel in waves. Deraniyagala lost her parents, husband, and sons to the tsunami...she writes in an unsentimental prose that is intimate and angry...Wave  is dark and haunting, and yet vividly sprinkled with light - making her story of recovery universal and hopeful. (Read my full review here)

More "Best of" Lists from Around the Web:

2014 Goodreads Choice Award Winners

The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2014

The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2014

Amazon's Best Books of the Year

Huffington Post - The Best Books of 2014

VIDEO: Wall Street Journal Fiction Picks of the Year

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The Movie vs. The Book: Mockingjay Part 1

"Fire is catching! And if we burn, you burn with us!" 

On November 21st, Mockingjay Part 1, based on the bestselling third book in The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, opened in theaters. 

All of the fan-favorite actors and actresses returned to play their leading roles, but a few new additions needed to be made. Natalie Dormer joined the cast to play Cressida, as well as Julianne Moore to play President Coin. 

The following are some differences between the film adaptation and the book - some for the better, and some for the worse. If you have not yet read Mockingjay, please be aware because... SPOILER ALERT. 

1. Effie Trinket makes an appearance in District 13 very early in the movie, unlike in the book where she does not appear until the end. I whole-heartedly believe in this change because 1) by replacing Katniss's three stylists, Effie works as a symbol for even greater change within the rebellion, as now even Capitol people are siding with the rebels and 2) her silly humor and clueless attitude  would be greatly missed. 
2. In the book, before Katniss consents to becoming the symbol of the rebellion, the "Mockingjay", she negotiates with President Coin three important demands: her sister Prim gets to keep her cat, the tributes captured by the Capital will be given immunity upon their rescue, and she gets to kill President Snow. In the movie, quite surprisingly, Katniss only asks for the first two demands, leaving out the request to kill Snow. Because of this, Mockingjay Part 2 could possibly take on a very different plot, giving the book's controversial ending a chance to change.

"Are you, are you
Coming to the tree?
Wear a necklace of hope, side by side with me. 
Strange things did happen here 
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight in the hanging tree."

Not only is the scene where Katniss sings the song "The Hanging Tree" my favorite part of the movie, but also the part I believe was the most well done. Jennifer Lawrence gives the song a jazzy feel that is both catchy and haunting, causing her voice to echo in your head long after the movie is over. The song continues to play during the two following scenes, scenes that were added in full to the movie whereas they were only hinted at in the book. These two scenes show other Districts joining in the fight against the Capitol - by destroying a dam and attacking a troop of Peacekeepers, the citizens of Panem are shown to be strong and fierce. 

One thing I will criticize is the relationship between Katniss and Gale, it seems forced, and is arguably nonexistent. Although fans of Liam Hemsworth will be happy to see him finally get some well-deserved action, he is still portrayed as a wounded boy waiting for Katniss to realize she is in love with him (readers of the book will realize this is useless).  

Overall, I believe Mockingjay Part 1 did justice to the book, and did a good job setting up the expected more epic and action packed Part 2 which is scheduled for release in November 2015.

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All the Light We Cannot See

All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr
530 pages

"Could they hide here until the war ends? Until the armies finish marching back and forth above their heads, until all they have to do is push open the door and shift some stones aside and the house has become a ruin beside the sea? Until he can hold her fingers in his palms and lead her out into the sunshine? He would walk anywhere to make it happen, bear anything; in a year or three years or ten, France and Germany would not mean what they meant now."   -page 473

France 1944. A sightless sixteen-year-old girl named Marie-Laure LeBlanc is curled up beneath her bed, listening as the Americans shower bombs over her beloved ocean, her town, her house.  The roar of explosives is deafening in her ears, her body shakes. Down the street, an eighteen-year old German private named Werner Pfennig sits in a hotel cellar, one hand on his rife, the other on the radio transceiver he invented. He thinks of his younger sister Jutta, so gentle and pure. He thinks that it is impossible to ever know if he is doing the right thing.

All the Light We Cannot See begins in the year 1934, exploring the early childhoods of both Marie-Laure and Werner, two children who are so different, yet still so alike. When the war begins, Marie-Laure and her father flee from Paris to Saint-Malo, where her reclusive great-uncle lives in a large house by the sea. Although blind, she becomes infatuated with sea urchins, snails, and Jules Verne novels. Hundreds of miles away, Werner lives at an orphanage with his sister in the German mining town of Zollverein. Every night, they listen to a radio program hosted by a French scientist. Soon, his intelligence and expertise at building and fixing earns him a place in the Hitler Youth.

Both stories converge later in the novel, when Werner arrives in Saint-Malo, and everything he has been taught, is flipped on its head. Phrases he has memorized - Führer, folk, fatherland. Steel your body, steel your soul. Eat country and breathe nation - no longer seem to have any importance (137, 257).

The radio is an extremely important element in the novel, in fact, it is arguably the single object that the entire novel revolves around. Werner carries one with him practically in every chapter, and although it is illegal, Marie-Laure and her great-uncle have secretly kept one in their attic, from which they broadcast music and messages to give people hope during the Nazi-occupation. Monsieur Droguet wants his daughter to know that he is recovering well. Madame Labas sends word that her daughter it pregnant (346, 406).

"Everything has led to this: the death of his father; all those restless hours with Jutta listening to the crystal radio in the attic...four hundred dark, glittering nights at Schulpforta building transceivers for Dr. Hauptman...Everything leading to this moment" (338).

All the Light We Cannot See, although too slow-moving at the beginning, is expertly sequenced, so that each scene, like Werner says, accelerates and crashes epically into the most important moment.

Anthony Doerr explores the Earth's greatest paradoxes throughout the novel. Light and dark. War and peace. Life and death. Beauty and destruction. All are interwoven themes that present themselves through Doerr's careful blend of science and history. His beautifully crafted, draw-dropping sentences prance across each page:

“What mazes there are in this world. The branches of trees, the filigree of roots, the matrix of crystals, the streets her father recreated in his models... None more complicated than the human brain, Etienne would say, what may be the most complex object in existence; one wet kilogram within which spin universes” (452).

All the Light We Cannot See - part science, part history, part love story - intricately presents the idea that even in the darkest of times, in the most unexpected of villains, light and goodness still exists.

“What do we call visible light? We call it color. But the electromagnetic spectrum runs to zero in one direction and infinity in the other, so really, children, mathematically, all of light is invisible” (48).

All the Light We Cannot See has spent 26 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller's List, and is currently in the running for a 2014 Goodreads Choice Award.

UPDATE: All the Light We Cannot See has been named by The New York Times one of the 10 Best Books of the Year.

Story Line - 6/10

Narrator's Voice - 10/10

Writing Style - 10/10

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Overall - 26/30

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Thin Yet Thick: The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien
233 pages

“Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.”   (page 36)

In Vietnam, Tim O'Brien and the other members of Alpha Company carried dog tags, two or three canteens of water, and love letters. They carried pocket knives and canned peaches. Plastic ponchos and comic books. An M-60 machine gun and an illustrated New Testament. Grenades and M&Ms. They carried fear, they carried each other. They carried what they could bear, and then some - including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried  (page 7).

 

The Things They Carried is a fictional story based on O'Brien's experiences during the Vietnam War. The novel is broken into short story-like chapters, with titles such as "The Man I Killed", "The Lives of the Dead", and "How to Tell a True War Story".

"How to Tell a True War Story" is the most important part of the novel, as it sets up the message for the rest of the story. This idea of telling a "true story", becomes quite the paradox, considering that all of the stories in this novel are not true. What O'Brien explains though, is that it is not the facts of the stories that make them true, but rather, it is the emotions they convey.

“I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.”  (page 171)

In reading this for my AP English class, I realized that unlike in many other novels, what stands out to the reader of is not the well-developed characters, or the suspenseful plot, (although those two are true as well) but the writing itself. The writing is what is in the spotlight, and more specifically the rhetorical techniques that develop the tone and themes of the novel.  

Short sentences, metaphors, similes, juxtaposition and intense imagery all work together to create O'Brien's interesting style. The use of metaphors and similes also work to connect the reader to the author's experiences. When I was at Alfred University over the summer, the most important writing lesson I took away was the importance of reader participation. Writers can write a story - can write from personal experience or personal emotions - but what makes good writing differ from great writing is whether it explores of the reader to understand, think about, and question that experience that for them is in no way personal.

This idea of reader participation is imperative to The Things They Carried, as the disconnect between author and reader is large, due to the majority of O'Brien's audience having no idea what it feels like to stand in the middle of a battlefield made of rice paddies. He is successful in this quest, through passages like the following:

"They're pretty fried out by now, and one night they start hearing voices. Like at a cocktail party. That's what it sounds like, this big swank  cocktail party somewhere out in fog...They hear the actual martini glasses...all very civilized, except this isn't civilization. This is Nam."  (page 70)

Through metaphor, the reader is immediately connecting the men's hallucinations on the battlefield to a front parlor room they know well, one filled their friends, and the smell of alcohol stinging their noise. The reader can relate, even if just for a little while.

I have called The Things They Carried a "Thin Yet Thick" read, because even though it is only 233 pages long, it packs quite the punch. It's a novel about war, but its also more than that. It's about friendships and enemies, beauty and sacrifice, love and hate, life and death. I'll leave you with three more quotes (my favorites):

“War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.”   (page 76)

 “I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story.”   (page 233)

 “But this too is true: stories can save us.”   (page 213)

The Things They Carried was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist in 1991, and in February 2014, the book was included in Amazon.com's list of 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime.

Story Line - 7/10
Narrator's Voice - 7/10

Writing Style - 10/10

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Overall - 24/30
 

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On My Nightstand: August

 

{“Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably." -C.S Lewis}

 

Hello! It's been a little while, but I am here this week to share what I am currently reading, interested in, and working on this August.

 

Currently Reading

I am currently reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell as part of my AP English summer reading requirement for the upcoming year. The nonfiction story of success has spent 166 weeks so far on the NY Times Best Sellers List.

 

In Outliers, Gladwell argues that it has become no longer enough to look at what a successful person is like, but rather, in order to understand their rise to the top fully, we must look at where these people are from: their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Throughout the book, the author reveals why no star hockey players are born in the fall, why Asians are good at math, and that Bill Gates and the Beatles are more alike than we realize.

 

Interested In

As a blogger, I've learned that it's important to be active within the blogging community. Therefore, not only do I write my own posts, but I read lots of others as well. Sites like Feedly, Bloglovin', and Blogher allow readers to follow numerous Internet blogs, and store them all in one organized location. (You can find and follow Off The Shelf on all of these sites!) 

 

Most of the blogs I read daily deal with books of course, but I also follow a large collection of food blogs. As you already know, I really love to bake. Cookies, bars, brownies, muffins, breads - you name it! I was drawn to all of these sites because of their fabulous photography, quirky and fun writing, and easy to follow recipes.

 

Here are some of my favorites:

my name is yeh

Cupcakes and Cashmere

Erica's Sweet Tooth

Pastry Affair

 

Working On

Although NaNoWriMo is not until November, I've been working on a story of my own since the spring. I honestly haven't written much past the exposition, but I've got most of it planned out in my head. I've written other novel-sized work before, but this time has been different, as I've realized my writing has become stronger. Here are some other things I've noticed:

 

1. I am the type of writer who writes novels and stories out of order instead of chronologically. If I am stumped as to what comes next after a scene I have just written, I don't sit around and wait for the inspiration to pop, instead, I'll write a scene that I know might happen chapters away. When I attended the writing program at Alfred University this summer, I learned that I am not the only one who writes this way. In fact, I met people who write their stories backwards even, starting with the end, and working towards the beginning!

2. Research is so completely necessary! This story is my first attempt at historical fiction, so I'm learning how to write in this genre as I go. It's been difficult, as I've realized that even the little details have to fit historical context if the characters, setting and plot are going to be believable to the reader. And then, because the Internet is just so damn distracting, I have found myself doing more searching and clicking than actually writing!

3. A good pen seriously makes all the difference. It sounds silly, but a really nice pen makes me really happy. Being left-handed, I always tend to shy away from pen when possible, as blotchy ink always gets smeared by my hand when I write. Finding a pen with ink that doesn't blotch or stay wet too long is very hard, but when I do find one, remembering where I put it is even harder :)


On My Nightstand: March, June

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Review: REMAKE by Ilima Todd

First of all I have to say sorry for being SO MIA lately.  Summer is hard, having 2 kids is hard.  I'm still reading, but do a lot of my reviewing on goodreads and call it a day.  Maybe one of these days I'll do a catch up, what I've been reading post, but for now I HAD to share with you this AWESOME ARC I read! 

REMAKE
by Ilima Todd
Hardcover publication Oct 14, 2014 from Shadow Mountain

Placement in the Pile: Top Picks!

Summary:
Nine is the ninth female born in her batch of ten females and ten males. By design, her life in Freedom Province is without complications or consequences. However, such freedom comes with a price. The Prime Maker is determined to keep that price a secret from the new batches of citizens that are born, nurtured, and raised androgynously.

But Nine isn't like every other batcher. She harbors indecision and worries about her upcoming Remake Day -- her seventeenth birthday, the age when batchers fly to the Remake facility and have the freedom to choose who and what they'll be.

When Nine discovers the truth about life outside of Freedom Province, including the secret plan of the Prime Maker, she is pulled between two worlds and two lives. Her decisions will test her courage, her heart, and her beliefs. Who can she trust? Who does she love? And most importantly, who will she decide to be?

Review:
Wow! I absolutely adored this book. I was instantly drawn into the character's world and voice. Nine is completely believable and 100% genuine in her thoughts and responses to things.

The world Ilima Todd creates is so beautifully creepy and unique I was just in love with it, but I think the juxtaposition of that and how life could be. It's very powerful. She doesn't shy away from the stickier subjects involved with the society she creates, but in the end it still has a great message. I think it was just a beautiful poignant novel!

What is "freedom" to you?  What is "choice"?  And what would you choose are all big questions that are presented in this novel. And really in the end it was all about Nine's right to choose who she wanted to be.

I am also so torn about the guys in this book too! Don't worry it's not like a big love triangle. But I love them both. I think she made the right choice, but I hope we get more from the other guy and he finds his happy ending too!

 I am emotionally invested in these characters! And that, my friends is a very good thing! And I am assured by the author that book 2 is coming!  And I am beyond excited about that.

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