The Silver Crown - Robert C. O'Brien

So, my blog has been largely neglected for the past forever. Hence, I've decided to post something new.

I bought The Silver Crown a couple of years ago for two reasons: 1.) Robert C. O'Brien also wrote Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (which actually has a really fantastic movie adaptation, in my opinion), and 2.) the book was selling for $2.99. And since then, it's become one of those special books that I read time and time again whenever I find myself in a car hurtling through the Hoosier countryside or on a plane skimming through piles of cumulus clouds (hope you enjoyed that sudden bit poetic writing there).

Anyways, The Silver Crown sort of marks my transition from mystery novels to adventure stories. The story follows a girl, Ellen, who receives a silver crown on the day of her tenth birthday. This, she believes, proves that she is a queen. So she leaves her house and goes to a local park to hold court. Suddenly, she hears sirens in the distance. As it turns out, her house has burned to the ground, and no one made it out. Ellen resolves that she must go to her nearest relative, Aunt Sarah. But to get there, she must travel to Lexington, Kentucky. Along the way, she meets a host of villainous characters who try to take her crown, though why they would want to do that, Ellen does not know. She also meets some friends: a clever boy named Otto, the kindly old Mrs. Fitzpatrick, and Mr. Carver, a man living in the woods alone. Without giving away too much of the plot, the story circles around Ellen, the crown, and the evil forces trying to take her crown.

While The Silver Crown is aimed at 8-12 year-olds, I still find the plot pretty engaging. There's no deeper meaning. There aren't layers upon layers of symbols and extended, social metaphors. It's just the age old battle between good and evil. It's a quick read. It's an easy read. I think I picked it up recently because I've been reading a lot of pretty heavy material, and I needed something that wouldn't make me dive deeper. Just an adventure, nothing else. I mean, I guess there's some degree of character development, but it's not like I need extensive thinking to comprehend basic character development.
Anyways, if you want to read something to the tune of what you might've read ten years ago, I highly recommend The Silver Crown. It's a great break from reading really excellent, deep books. It knows what it is (an adventure), and it does a great job immersing you in its own little world.

Practice Diction Analysis

J.D. Salinger masters the voice of his protagonist, Holden Caulfield, in the first page of his novel Catcher in the Rye, using direct, colloquial, and bluntly offensive diction. Holden starts by saying that while he knows the reader would like to know about his background, he is not going to provide any information on his origins. His gruff, devil-may-care attitude exudes from the page, as he says he can’t be bothered with “all that David Copperfield kind of crap.” Holden’s trademark sense of superiority reverberates within the passage. While Holden’s language is neither profound nor particularly beautiful, it is representative of how a disenchanted teenager speaks. Holden complains that he won’t give his “whole goddam autobiography” and that his prother is far away from “this crummy place.” He has no objection to cursing, a sign of rebellion against the norm through language. Salinger breathes life into Holden by rambling and cussing, providing literature’s favorite teenage antihero with an identifiably meandering and rude voice.

[Side note: If you've never read Catcher, I highly recommend it. People tend to either love it or hate it. I love it. I think it's possibly the best thing I read last year, so if you have time for a great American classic, you should give it a read.]

Snaps for Etymology

Did anyone pick up on the Legally Blonde reference? I hope so because that was a little embarrassing considering that 1.) I can quote proficiently from a chick flick romcom, and 2.) this particular chick flick romcom happens to be a sequel (and not a particularly good one).

Anyways, so I went to a college interview today. Yep. I got to talk with a very nice lady from Smith College, so that was fun. And one of the questions she asked me was "Have you read any good books lately?" And honestly, given my reading record these past couple of years, I probably wouldn't have been able to give a particularly good answer had I not taken Etymology. I mean, it's not like I haven't read anything in recent years, but I had a whole pile of books I could talk about because of our 100/150 page a week assignment. Very helpful. For the record, we talked about Norwegian Wood, Battle Royale, Columbine, A Long Way Gone, and And Then There Were None. A pretty wide spread, if I do say so myself. I honestly don't get that. "If I do say so myself." Of course you say so; you just said it. But anyways. Moving on to the assignment (finally).

Buddha's Hand?

Random post before I put up my paragraph.
So I, for whatever reason, remembered something about this plant called Buddha's hand. And it's a fruit, but it's yellow and segmented into little knotted, gnarly poles that are supposedly Buddha's "fingers." I, again, have no idea why I thought of this, but I think it's a pretty cool fruit, albeit a little creepy. I really want to try one. It's number two on my "Fruits I Want To Eat" List (number one is starfruit and number three is dragon fruit).

Doesn't this look like some creature from the deep? Yeah, I thought so. 

Currently,

Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami

This week: 170 pages
Last week: 163 pages
Semester total: 1297 pages


Favorite quotes from other people's blog posts (in no particular order, of course)


"In a passage from Cherry Adair's "Out of Sight," she uses blunt vulgarity, noisy and straight-forwardness to get her point across." - Twilight

"The stylistics of Meg Cabot's Shadowland prominently feature straightforward, conversational word choice and a devil-may-care tone for the reader." - Look Up... (Now!)

"Dessen’s raw low- key language precisely augments the conflicting feelings and tragic events of her story." - The Blog of Epic Proportions

I really like the post from Twilight because the writer uses some pretty strong language. Though the ending to the paragraph is a little trite, the rest of the paragraph stands strong. I love that the writer says the author uses "blunt vulgarity," though the rest of the sentence needs some restructuring for the sake of parallelism. Overall, it's a really good post, though it could use some fine-tuning.

I just love that the writer of Look Up... (Now!) describes the author's tone as "devil-may-care." I just love it. So. Much. The rest of the paragraph is also very solid, using a fair balance of left and right analysis. But really, I was won over by the "devil-may-care" tone. What a great word.

The Blog of Epic Proportions also had a really strong style mapping paragraph. I love using the word "raw" to describe language. It's just really powerful and to-the-point. "Augments" is another great word, as is "conflicting." There's some really good language here, so I, naturally, really like it.

Style Mapping

 The introduction of a work of literature sets the standard for the rest of the work, showing if the author is eloquent and poetic or blunt and caustic. In Neil Gaiman's Stardust, Gaiman writes poetically with colloquial language, using words that are neither dissonant nor melodious, in order to describe the setting. In contrast, Cormac McCarthy's figurative-language-heavy introduction to Blood Meridian balances both an earthy grittiness and an elevated vocabulary as McCarthy describes the surroundings. By far the simplest of all, Walker Lamond's Rules for My Unborn Son has a no-nonsense and almost journalistic approach to writing. The introductions to these three works reflect the subject matter that follows; for instance, Lamond's Rules is simply a book of short, one-sentence rules for his son, whereas McCarthy's Blood Meridian is a Western epic. Each accomplishes its purpose effectively by using different types of language.

Quartlerly

So this quarter, my reading's been a bit eclectic?

I like to believe that I'm a lot smarter and higher class than I really am. Hence, I like to read books that make me feel educated and cultured, meaning I tend to gravitate towards books of substance as opposed to teeny fiction. Not that there's anything wrong with teeny fiction, but, in general, it's not exactly a worthwhile subject of discussion ("Oh my God, that Edward guy is so freakin' hot"). However, the great thing about pretending to be better than I am by reading excellent books is that excellent books are excellent. They're really engrossing, and I thoroughly enjoy them.

This year in general, I think my reading tastes have definitely branched out. I'm kind of been bounding back and forth between fiction and nonfiction. Prior to this year, my reading was very fiction-centric, so this is a recent development. As far as where and when I read, I do the bulk of my reading after dinner in the living room of my house in front of the fireplace. It's too warm to make proper use of this fireplace, and it's not even a real fireplace, but I like to curl up there with a good book and pretend that I'm just oh-so classy.

Nothing this quarter has really challenged me, as far as my reading goes. The books I choose are pretty easy to understand. My goal for next quarter is to read the Bible. I'm gonna do it, goshdarnit! I always tell myself I will, but I never do. I mean, I'm usually trucking along pretty well until BAM! And then Isaac begot Jacob who begot Seth who begot (these are random names; I'm pretty sure that's not how it happened)... And so on. Anyways, I think it's a pretty good choice since a large chunk of the world live their lives by this book (or at least claim to).
Oh, also, I want to better divide my reading. I always find myself reading maybe 80 pages on Thursday night in order to meet the page requirement. And it's not that I dislike reading; I just always forget that reading's an option. Which sounds weird, but when I'm done with my homework, all I can think of is YouTube and sleep. Say hello to the next generation, everybody.