Category: Literary Read Alike


The Lightning Thief

Filed under: Adventure Stories, Fiction, Hi-Low/Quick Read, Literary Read Alike, Sci-Fi/Futuristic, Young Adult Literature by groovygals — 1 Comment
January 24, 2008

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

 The Lightning Thief is quick, easy, good fun. The protagonist, Percy Jackson, is a hero. No, not of the Rambo type. A hero in the Greek tradition—that is, he is the son of a Greek god and a human. Never mind that the story is contemporary. Mount Olympus has been relocated to the 600th floor of the Empire State Building in New York. The entrance to Hades is at DOA Recording Studios in Los Angeles. The gods and other immortals can be found interfering in daily human life, just as they did in Greece thousands of years ago. Of course, their look is up-to-date. Aeres looks like a Hell’s Angel and rides a Harley; Medusa runs a statuary shop (yes, her garden décor is so realistic that it is purchased from all over the world!). 

When Percy, aka, Perseus, is attacked by a monster in the form of his algebra teacher, his mom knows it’s time for him to go to Camp Half Blood Hill for safety and to find out his true identity—that Poseidon, god of the sea, is his father. Unfortunately, Poseidon has been accused of stealing Zeus’s lightning bolt and the fate of mankind rests in Percy’s ability to complete his quest and return the missing property. Check out the modern version of the Labors of Hercules and meet the new rendition of not only Aeres and Medusa, but Poseidon, Hades, Zeus, Procustes, Charon and the Eumenides (Furies). You don’t have to know much about Greek mythology to have fun with this book, but if you do, you’ll love the connections, both subtle and outrageous.

Comment

Ahab’s Wife or, The Star Gazer

Filed under: Adventure Stories, Fiction, Historical Fiction/Historical Element, Junior Project, Literary Read Alike by Ms. Waddle — 1 Comment
November 6, 2007

Ahab’s Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund is the perfect book for the junior English project that starts with a work of fiction. It’s rich with historical as well as fictional characters and takes on several of the social issues of Antebellum New England and America—Transcendentalism, religion (in Unitarianism and Universalism), the rights of women, and slavery. Even so, it’s not a book that all high school students will be able to read. At nearly 700 pages, it’s much longer than the books most read. The old-fashioned writing style and the wood-cut images are delightful in that they pull the reader into the 19th-century New England of the novel, but it is a technique unfamiliar to many students.

For those of you who are good readers, do read Ahab’s Wife. You’ll find adventure as Una, the protagonist runs off to sea aboard a whaler, which sinks after a run-in with a whale (Yes, the book has a connection to Moby-Dick and Una is that Ahab’s wife). She survives the shipwreck, but must live with the dark secret of cannibalism. You’ll meet, if only briefly, many literary giants of the period—Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and even Nathaniel Hawthorne, disguised as one of his own characters (“The Minister’s Black Veil”). Any of them will make an interesting subject for later research as will Frederick Douglass, whom Una hears speak. There’s plenty of romance and heart break as well. Though Una seems a bit modern for her time (she easily accepts her neighbor’s homosexuality), she is a bold and kind woman at once, and has characteristics we all would like to emulate.

Comment

All the Pretty Horses

Filed under: Adventure Stories, Family Problems, Fiction, Historical Fiction/Historical Element, Literary Read Alike, Mature Readers, Movie Tie-In, Multicultural, Romance by Ms. Waddle — 2 Comments
October 29, 2007

 (Revisited December 2011)

 

It’s 1949, and sixteen-year-old John Grady Cole plans to leave Texas after his grandfather’s funeral. His mother is selling the old family ranch, built in 1872. John Grady has a deep love of horses and the ranch life. If allowed, he would try to run the ranch himself, but his mother refuses to consider it. It is clear that he and his mother don’t get along, but that they love one another. John’s father, divorced from his mother, is dying. He and John get along well.

John sets out to Mexico with his friend, Lacy Rawlings. Before leaving, the two run into a girl John has dated. When Rawlings comments that girls aren’t worth the trouble John puts into them, John answers, “Yes, they are.” He seems a modern-day Romeo who will fall deeply and tragically for the right girl.

The two guys have many adventures on their way through Mexico. Of most significance is their meeting with the young Jimmy Belvins. Jimmy, riding a beautiful stolen horse, follows them, and trouble begins. On the run, Jimmy separates from the two older boys. John Grady and Lacey find work at the Hacienda de Nuestra Senora de la Concepcionin Coahuila. The owner, Don Hector Rocha y Villareal, treats them well and entrusts John Grady with breaking wild horses. But Grady is smitten with Alejandra of the black hair and blue eyes. When Alejandra’s great-aunt finds out that the two are star-crossed, she intervenes. She’s a philosophical woman and her stories of the Mexican Revolution and of life are fascinating for the reader. However, she knows what a bad reputation can do to a woman in Mexico, and has decided against John Grady. One day, seemingly out of the blue, John Grady and Lacey are arrested.

The adventures keep coming with jail, the reappearance of Jimmy Belvins the thief and more.

This book was recommended to me in way back time when I asked for ‘guys’ titles. Although I do think this will be a good read for high school guys—and lament the choice of a title, which I think guys will automatically turn away from—I also thoroughly enjoyed it myself. It has the stuff of a great bildungsroman (coming of age story)—an odyssey away from home, death of/break with the parents, a great romance, imprisonment, loss of the loved one, recovery of property, etc. Yet the language is poetic and the description vivid—it draws the reader to its rhythm. Conversations are often metaphysical without seeming unnatural. It’s a great read, and while hardly gentle—in fact, there’s lots of violence—it’s a way to ease into the stunning work of its author, Cormac McCarthy.

In a periodic series on difficult topics for teen reading (violence, teen sexuality, and the like), I’ll be posting on McCarthy’s work. Check back.

 

Comment

 Grendel

Filed under: Fiction, Literary Read Alike by Ms. Waddle — Leave a comment
October 29, 2007

I’ve always thought that Beowulf would make a great movie because it has all the elements of high drama—friendship and betrayal, good v. evil, monsters and murder. Now that a film version of Beowulf is coming soon, I think that there will be COHS students who want to read a book with a Beowulf connection. A great choice would be Grendel by John Gardner. As in Beowulf, many of the great themes are there: the struggle between good and evil, the conflict between order and disorder, the hero and his sacrifice for the common good, man’s achievement of immortality, the importance of art and the artist, who gives meaning to life.

 

To enjoy the novel Grendel, the reader has to be somewhat familiar with the Beowulf epic. Gardner was a professor of medieval literature and quite knowledgeable on the subject. He takes Grendel, the first monster to appear in Beowulf, as the first person narrator of the novel. Though in the epic Grendel is the representation of darkness, death, and the very elements that tear community apart, one might make a case (or write a paper) that in the novel he is the protagonist. I don’t believe this myself, but it’s an interesting point of view.

 

Grendel has as one of its themes the ways in which art and language bring order and beauty to life. Though Grendel’s mother is inarticulate, Grendal can speak. Although he lives with her in a cave under a burning lake, as the more developed of the two monsters, Grendel wants to approach civilization and is affected by the words of the Shaper, or poet. He seems to seek purpose to his existence and the reader will at times sympathize with him.

 

Grendel’s approach to civilization only frightens men, and the king, Hrothgar, throws an ax at him. At the same time the Shaper, a blind poet, arrives at the king’s mead hall and sings of Grendel as one of the race of Cain (evil). Grendel seeks understanding from a dragon (another monster that appears in the epic although not for the same purpose). He only learns that life is meaningless, that the Shaper deceives men. He goes away with a curse on him, so that he can’t be injured by men’s weapons. At this point an outcast, Grendel raids the mead hall with impunity, killing and eating men. Only with the arrival by sea of Beowulf can Grendel be overcome. Beowulf doesn’t use a weapon but rather his own hands to tear Grendels’ arm at the shoulder socket.

 

There is much more to this novel, and it is deeply symbolic so that a reader can enjoy it for the philosophies it exams as well as for the story of overcoming a monster (or sympathizing with the monster who is overcome).

Comment
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.