Flowers in the Attic/Petals on the Wind Winners!

Many apologies for getting back to you all so late on this! I got in a fight with a migraine yesterday and it won, so I've spent much of my time being unconscious. Anywho, the reason you are all here....the winners are:

...My Name is Eleni and I am a Bookaholic
Maybeimamazed02
Aimee
Celi.a
Sadako
Mari
MJ
Stargirlreads
Jannie aka Girl Talk
Funky*soul

Congratulations, you all! Now I just need you to send me your names and addresses (my email, if you don't see it on the sidebar, is thechickmanifesto@gmail.com) as soon as possible so that I may alert the fine friendly people at Simon & Schuster.

If you didn't win, never fear -the cool new cover is available to purchase and I definitely recommend doing so since getting two books for the price of one is a great thing.

Win One of TEN New Copies of Flowers in the Attic/Petals on the Wind by V.C. Andrews!

Guess what? Not only am I giving away ten copies of a Flowers in the Attic and Petals on the Wind, but for the first time, the two have been combined into one edition with a brand new cover! Sure, I'll miss the keyholes, but I really like the new cover. What are your thoughts?

The contest ends Monday November 16 at 3pm central. You get one entry just for commenting in this post, another for linking to me, telling me you posted about this contest somewhere (like your blog, facebook, or twitter), one for becoming a follower of this blog, and two if you were a follower of this blog before today. If you don't mind, can you leave a seperate comment for each of your entries (i.e. this is my comment for posting on twitter, etc.)?

Good News and Bad News

Hi everyone! I'm sure by now (at least if you're a regular reader to this blog) you've noticed that I haven't been posting lately. After taking a couple of semesters off from school, I'm back in college and the workload has been kicking my butt. It's hard to reconcile reading for fun when I still haven't read Light in August yet, you know? So yeah, the bad news here is that I won't be able to post often, if at all, until the end of the semester.

The good news, however, is pretty fun. For my Southern Lit class (where I have to read the aforementioned Light in August) I have to write a term paper on something to do with the genre. It's pretty open ended -book, author, whatever, as long as it fits within the confines of Southern Lit. I've been racking my brain, trying to think of something to write about. Then, last night, it came to me. But no, no, I thought. My professor will never let me write about that. After thinking a bit longer and still not being able to come up with anything better that would be enjoyable to write about, I thought screw it, I'll ask and the worst he can do is say no. But he didn't. He said yes! And that means...

I'm writing my term paper for Southern Lit on V.C. Andrews! It's perfect. She was born in Virginia, her books are Southern Gothic, and I can totally make the case that Flowers in the Attic is about the decline of the aristocracy (not unlike Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher) and that her books regularly feature characters and elements that are grotesque (just like Flannery O'Connor). There's not a lot I can do with race, since it's not really an issue, other than the fact that every single African American character is a servant. I'm going to try to keep it with just the books she wrote, but if it's November and I'm still struggling with just what aspect to write about, there will probably be some Landry series/Kate Chopin comparisons in there somewhere. Obviously, I've had VCA on the brain all year. I've been making fun of the books for so long that I think it could be quite fun to approach them from a scholarly perspective. In other words, I think I can spin that shit into gold.

Twilight Fans Dissatisfied with Wuthering Heights

If you've read the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer you'll recall that Wuthering Heights is mentioned in one book as being comparable to the love story between Edward and Bella. With the publication of the 5th book in the series on hold indefinitely, some fans have decided to pick up the Brontë classic in hopes of finding an epic, sweeping, swooningly wonderful love story. Unfortunately, to their chagrin, the story (now repackaged with a snazzy new cover and a tagline describing it as "Bella and Edward's favorite book") isn't quite the happy go lucky tale they were led to believe.

Hey, I've been there. Watch the Yul Brynner/Joanne Woodward film The Sound and the Fury and then read the Faulkner novel. My teenage self was livid that the book wasn't filled with kissing and smoldering and hot little bald Yul Brynner (shut up, I know I have weird taste).

That's why I've taken it upon myself to make some recommendations to the Twilight fans who had no idea that Wuthering Heights wasn't the romantic story they were led to believe.

If you're looking for a good romantic comedy (the couple meets cute, complete with familial shenanigans) check out Romeo and Juliet.

If you're interested in a faith based novel, about a dutiful priest, might I suggest The Thorn Birds?

If you like stories about little girls with carefree childhoods and playful shenanigans, you'll love I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Finally, after all that reading you're going to want to sit down with a good film. You simply must watch that great comedic classic Schindler's List.

*In the interest of full disclosure, I personally believe that Edward/Bella Heathcliff/Cathy share a lot of relationship similarities. The words hateful, possessive, co-dependent, and unhealthy come to mind.*

Girl at Sea by Maureen Johnson

Clio Ford was looking forward to spending a quiet summer at home, working in the local art store where her crush also happens to work. Things changed suddenly and now she's stuck on a boat in the Mediterranean with her kooky dad, his best friend, his new girlfriend and her daughter, and the girlfriend's quarrelsome, albeit attractive, assistant. No one will tell her what they're doing out there and the only emotion stronger than her curiosity regarding that is her need to get off the boat and back to civilization. However, as she begins to uncover the reason for their mission and a romantic possibility is revealed, Clio starts to see that there might be worse things than being out in the sea.

For the first half I really didn't enjoy this book. I felt like Clio was a brat -not just because she had other plans and had to change them, but because of her (needlessly in my opinion) whiny attitude toward everyone and everything. It's obvious from the get-go who her romance will be with and though I love a good "fight until you fall in love" story as much as the next person, their romance felt forced. Aidan the assistant says a couple of snarky/sarcastic things to Clio and suddenly he's "the enemy"? Clio is unpleasant to Aidan until he finally admits he's into her and all is well. For most of the romance lead-up I really wasn't convinced.

The second half, however, I started to enjoy more. The Maureen Johnson humor that I love really started to show through. Clio as a character became more likeable. It's not that I can't handle whiny -I just don't care for it as a constant persistent character trait. Someone who I felt was consistently awesome was Elsa, Clio's dad's girlfriend's daughter. The character would have been so easy to write as a dim-witted and vacuous bimbo, but instead she was well-written, hilarious, and sweet.

All in all, Girl at Sea was pretty hit or miss for me. Like I said, I love Maureen Johnson's humor and wit. I just wish it hadn't taken so long to show up.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Susie Salmon is fourteen and she has been murdered. From Heaven, she watches her family below struggle with their loss and try to move on. From this mystical place called Heaven, which somehow resembles a suburban junior high school, she sees the boy she loved blossom and grow into a man, not even knowing herself that she they are soon to share a special experience. She also sees her murderer, from his childhood to each of the other murders he's committed, as he calmly covers his tracks under the suspicious gaze of her father, who knows he killed his daughter, but has no way to prove it.

I can't believe I've never read this book before this week. It's been on my shelf for ages and after watching the trailer for the upcoming film I knew I had to read it right away. What can you say about this book that hasn't already been said in the years since its release? It's haunting and so beautifully written. I spent the first half of my time reading it feeling as though I was taking continuous punches to the stomach, so heartbroken was I over the Salmon family's loss and the lfie Susie never truly got to lead.

Susie was the best kind of narrator. Totally omniscient, she could see a person's past and present and read their thoughts at will. However, she also refrained from being judgmental and let a person's actions speak for themselves. In the years following her murder she follows several people extensively: her parents, her siblings, the boy who gave her her first kiss, the girl her spirit touched as it was leaving Earth, and, of course, her killer. Each deals with her death in a different way -some consumed by it, others trying to forget. She, too, is consumed by them. As she's been told by her counselor in her Heaven, she'll never move on in Heaven to the place where she can reunite with her deceased love ones if she continues to worry about the people she left behind.

There's no way I could do this book justice and I won't try. It's something you'll just have to read and experience for yourself. I urge you to do so.

Everything Sucks: Losing My Mind and Finding Myself in a High School Quest for Cool by Hannah Friedman

Hannah Friedman's school years were anything but ordinary. She was home-schooled on a bus full of musicians while her Rock and Roll dad was on tour and food was thrown at her head during public school. It was only at a private boarding school, the prestigious Danforth Academy, that she found the acceptance and popularity she always wished for. Of course, popularity comes with a price. Her drug addiction and eating disorder are a piece of cake compared to the Great Eight, a sea of real life mean girls . Join Hannah as she navigates high school, gets published in Newsweek, is ostracized by her peers, and is finally accepted to her dream college.

Hannah's voice is such a blast to read. I love her descriptions of researching pot and oral sex because she's willing to give them a shot and how annoying it is to have your mother's pet monkey be the star of your family. She's funny and sarcastic, which is brought out as she comments on some of the more absurd events in her life, most of which, like the aforementioned tour bus incident, aren't exactly common to most people.

I felt like the first half was a lot of fun. Even when she's describing some pretty bad events, her humor keeps you interested and not just full of pity for some of her less enjoyable experiences. The second half, however, I didn't feel was as strong. There was so much concentration on her drug use, in one form or another, that it just felt repetitious and occasionally boring and uninteresting. Maybe I was supposed to feel shocked and outraged at the lengths to which the group of pampered rich kids went to keep themselves caffeinated and prepared for college applications. I wasn't -I mean it's not like drug use among teenagers is that surprising anymore, is it?

All in all, Everything Sucks was a fun non-traditional memoir that most of us can relate to in some form or another. If you've ever wondered what it was like to be a part crowd, girls who count to ten after one of their own leaves the table before trashing her, this book is for you.