Time to start reacting

Sticking to the Action, Reaction, Reflection theme (ARR), I’d like to reflect on a previous book I read, How to Stop Time by Matt Haig. At first glance, this book seemed very attractive.

Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary forty-one-year-old, but owing to a rare condition, he’s been alive for centuries. (Synopsis)

But, I realized retroactively while re-reading the book that it isn’t the most attractive book. It’s not one of those novels that you pick up, promising yourself to only read a few pages, and then a few hours later, you’ve found yourself halfway through it. In fact, I believe it was a book I put down and came back to a few times. It’s doesn’t have a draw or an allure, and I think I know why. Examining it in respect to ARR, I believe it’s strong in reflection but weak in reaction, and I’d like to present a few examples as to why.

I’ll stop looking at her, and wait for her to go away. Which she does. I feel her anger. And I feel guilty. Actually, no, it isn’t just that. There is something else. A kind of homesickness, a longing for something—a feeling— I haven’t known for a very long time. And when she goes and sits down on the other side of the staff room, she doesn’t smile, or look at me, and I feel like something is over before it has a chance to begin. (108)

If you examine this scene, paying close attention to the items marked in red, this is what I’ve highlighted as a reaction. This is what Tom is feeling as a result of the woman leaving the room, and although it isn’t his kind of reactions that I have a problem with, it’s how they’re described. They’re told, not shown. Notice the types of feelings: guilty, homesickness. The reader isn’t shown this, so we have trouble placing ourselves within the mind of the protagonist, which makes it hard for me to want to keep reading. I’m not attached to the story. This style continues throughout the book, with numerous reaction cliches, like with ‘pounding headache’ or the scene below.

I pulled up my sleeve, took a searing piece of iron, curved into a horse-shoe from the flames, and pushed it against the top of my left forearm. I held it there, as my skin hissed and cooked beneath it, and I clenched my jaw and eyes tight, and contained the scream. (41)

Again, I’ve highlighted the reaction, which is very limited, considering the incredible pain that Tom is going through with this burn, and I’ve heard burns are some of the worst pain you can experience. You’d know if you had a sunburn. For something so superficial, they sure can hurt. And, that isn’t a third degree burn, which is what I imagine this in the book would be. I would’ve liked to see more of this pain, maybe we haven’t seen enough which doesn’t give it enough time to develop. Maybe feeling his revulsion as he smells the scent of cooked flesh, causing his stomach to turn and flip and him to gag, would’ve helped. I’ve heard the scent is disgusting on more than one occasion.

And, I’m sorry to say that there isn’t as much reaction as I would’ve hoped for. It’s more barren than not in here. This isn’t the say again that the book wasn’t good. It does have its strengths. Most of the novel is written with actions and reflections. There is a lot of stream-of-consciousness within this book, and I think that’s what keeps this book afloat. If you need more practice with that, this might be a good book to turn to.

Haig, Matt. How to Stop Time. New York, NY: Viking, 2017. Print.

Practice makes perfect: Reaction

For today’s little procedure, or prescription if you will, I will be role-playing as Amy, the 22-year old woman, who works at her father’s bar because she’s her father’s daughter, and her mother didn’t make it past when she was 8.

Happy.

Action: She looked at the check in her hands.

Reflection: $10,000. It was enough to rebuild the bar back in her father’s image, complete with the spinning bar stools and granite counter top.

Reaction: Her heart swelled in her chest, and the check beneath her began to blur, numbers and letter jumbling until they were a of black of white and she had to wipe the tears from her eyes. She didn’t know what to say. “I can’t—” Her voice broke and warbled. “I don’t know how to repay you.”

Here, there is an internal reaction and external reaction, so I think this is a pretty well-done scene. There are other movements like waves, handshakes, or hugs, but I don’t think this would be applicable given that her hands are occupied by the check. Maybe…

Sad.

Action: “Amy,” he said, his voice breaking. He took a step closer to come behind the bar, his hand hovering in the space between them with just the slightest quiver…

Reaction: …but she retreated until the counter cut into her back. She knew without asking what was going to come next because of how his voice wavered and went soft and delicate. Her hands tightened on the counter, and she found with as much as she wanted to say, language seemed to fail her. All she could do was swallow and turn away, at least so she wouldn’t have to see his pleading expression. She felt her toes curl in her shoes, and all she wanted to do was clap her hands over her ears.

Reflection: She didn’t want to hear it. She had heard it all before.

Action: “Please. Just let me explain.”

Reaction: Her tongue seemed to swell, or maybe her throat grew tight; either way, it was a battle to force the words from her mouth. “You don’t need to say anything,” she said. She turned away before he could see the pain in her eyes, so that she could fight the tears before he saw them. She pulled her arms close to her chest.

Action: “I think it’s time that you left.” 

This one I would think actually has three reactions to some previous event: 1) His regret, 2) Her anticipation and 3) Her sadness. For the 1st, all we see is an external reaction fro the guy, but this I think is fitting since he’s a secondary character, or one we can only see from the outside since he’s not our main POV. Although, I think his scene could be further improved, as shown above. For the 2nd, I think this could be cut/editted since it doesn’t exactly anticipation so much as reluctance. Plus, I’m going to try and incorporate both internal and external reactions. For the 3rd, I think the failure here is because it is more tell than show. Even though it’s a cliche, you should always strive for show, not tell, in order to help the reader empathize and develop a similar reaction in their own body. It’s a lot stronger of an experience to say “her hives burned with the need to scratch” than “her rash was itchy.”

Angry.

Action: He tossed the bar stool across the floor like it was nothing, scattering an array of beer, whiskey, and glass like a sadistic spray of slicing glitter.

Reaction: Everyone froze, mouths half-open, hands paused mid-pour, except Amy, whose hands tightened around around the glass she had been filling. “Get out,” Amy growled softly. She glared at the man and dared him to challenge her on her turf, and he accepted when he took a step closer to her regular. Without a second thought, she threw the glass she was holding, where it shattered against the wall only a foot right of the man’s head. Even as her mind screamed assault, warned her against charges and jail time, a flush of heat forced her to stand tall, forced her hands flat on the counter, which she leaned on for intimidation and presence. But when the man stalked closer to her customer, she slammed the glass she was holding onto the table, clutching it so hard that her fingertips went white.

Action: “I don’t think you heard me. Get out or I’m calling the police.”

Reflection: She wished she had never allowed him inside, but there she was again being a softy, letting people into her bar whose outfits just screamed they were looking for trouble. If she wasn’t so desperate for business, maybe she could control herself better.

Okay, so there’s a little bit of surprise from the crowd, but I’m just going to focus on Amy’s anger. It’s funny a little bit, reading about these reactions, because most internal responses are actually associated with the flight-or-fight response and the adrenaline rush within the body during a stressful situation. Anyways, with Amy I see mainly physical, external responses. 

Scared.

Action: He tossed the bar stool across the floor like it was nothing, scattering an array of beer, whiskey, and glass like a sadistic spray of cutting glitter.

Reaction: Amy threw her arm to her face, trying to block the worst of it, but it still nipped the back of her arm, biting like hundreds of tiny mosquitoes.

Reflection: These things always seemed to happen to her, as if all the crazy people in the world didn’t have anything better to do, but she guessed that’s what happens when you work at a bar and people get drunk. They can’t all be happy-drunks. Some of them had to be the crazy drunks; she just hoped he wasn’t a serial killer or something. and even now, she didn’t know whether it’d be better to hold up behind the counter, pray that he forget that she was here, or call the police and hope the man took kindly to snitches. Boots crunched on broken glass as he moved across the bar, and when the man bent for another stool, Amy knew now was the time to make the tough call: duck and cover or call the police. But when the stool came off the ground and…

Reaction: …her blood roared in her ears, all she could do was stand rooted to the spot and watch as a second stool went flying, this one to shatter against the wall, causing her to flinch and shake, each muscle trembling with the force of a self-contained earthquake. The sting of a thousand cuts faded quickly to the back of her mind as she . Amy bit down hard on her fist, trying to hold back the whimpers of pain or fear, she didn’t know. 

Reflection: She had to run, the sooner or the better. If the idea struck him that she was a witness, she didn’t know what he was incapable of doing.  hopefully before the man got the idea that she should be next too.

Here, the reaction we see is fear. We see an external reaction of hurting herself to stay quiet; we see an internal reaction of blood roaring in her ears and the ability to only focus on the situation at hand. Because both internal and external reactions are present, I think this is a pretty well-done scene. But, I wonder how I can do better. 

Edit 1 (in red): I’d like to go back and buff up the “Reaction” section, using my thesaurus mentioned earlier. My goal is to envelop more than just a single sense during the reaction. 

I think ultimately one of the hard parts of writing reactions is the fact that cliches are present and easy to fall back on. It’s not easy writing reactions because of the fact that there are only so many ways to represent an emotions, and it’s difficult to derive a new way to show an old emotion. It becomes easy to use a cliche, one you’re already familiar with that has already been established, like ‘eyes went wide like a deer in headlights’ or ‘their eyes were as wide as saucers.’ But, I find the more time you spend on this, the more of a reaction you can draw from your reader.

How do you react?

*Stretches* It’s been so long, and I can feel my language muscles shaking off dust from disuse. But, it’s been good. I guess everyone needs a break from everything eventually, and it’s been well used. But now that I’m feeling refreshed, and not so angry at myself for having a to-do list—even if everything on that list are things I want to do, not need to do—I can finally feel productive again. (In case you couldn’t tell, I’m not good at sitting still.)

The first thing I’d like to focus on is reactions. In case you weren’t here earlier, the big thing I like to talk about with writing is “Action, Reaction, and Reflection.” It’s a nice phrase that shows the procedure of stylistic writing, and is also how a human reacts to any given situation, which is why you want to reflect this in your characters as well. And since I’ve focused so much on reflection earlier, this time, I’d like to look more at reactions. 1) Because my latest writing seems to be missing it. 2) It’s quite difficult to duplicate within writing, but I feel like this is one of the stronger pieces that is necessary. If you can write a good reaction, then your reader will feel it as well, helping them identify with your protagonist. (But remember, that’s only 1/3 of the ARR process.) And, to talk about this piece of the puzzle, I’d like to use a book I read earlier this year:

The Art of Starving. 

That’s not to say I’m anorexic although the character in the book sure is. And, that doesn’t count as a spoiler because, come on. The plot’s basically in the title. And, there’s a huge skeleton on the cover. If that doesn’t give you insight into the book, then you probably shouldn’t be starting with adult books. Try children’s fiction instead.

Hunger rumbled in my belly, and I felt like if I reached out hard enough, I could stretch myself taller than any of the trees. Hunger is funny like that. (3)

What emotion is this?

If you said hungry, then you are correct! And if you didn’t, seriously consider my advice—Children’s fiction; you need to practice with picture books before you should be reading the internet. Anyways, yes, this excerpt was a hunger reaction, specifically, the ‘rumbling in the belly’. Other phrases that signify hunger: growling stomach, cramping stomach, a wisp of nausea from an overly empty stomach, your eyes lingering on any picture of food for longer than necessary…Even now you might be looking down at your stomach, or counting backwards to when was the last time you ate because now that I mention it, now might be a good time for a snack. 😉

But, this is a relatively easy emotion and a relatively common one throughout the book. A more difficult one to delve into is instead of a physical reaction, an emotional one.

It hurt, how much I wanted to smash my face against those perfect lips. I wanted it even though I felt pretty sure Tariq did something terrible to my sister. And the wanting got rolled up with the shame and filled me with a sputtering, stupid animal rage. How could it be, that in spite of everything, I still felt lust when I looked at him? Lust, and hate, in equal measure. (6-7)

Now this is actually a balance between reactions like “I wanted to smash my face against [his]” and reflections like “I wanted it even though I felt pretty sure Tariq did something terrible to my sister.” This, as the character has already said, is an evocation of lust. Now, these emotional responses can be harder to picture because different people evoke different types of reactions. For instance, in elementary school, when you like someone, you’re pulling on their hair, tripping them in the courtyard, sending them handwritten notes that have been folded a countless number of times, just so your friends don’t see the name written inside. This is different from when you’re older, and all the sudden, your eyes linger too long on their neck, tracing the way their hair falls over their shoulder. Or, how you imagine running your hand down their arm, following the path of freckles from their elbow to the tip of their index finger.

But, these are just things I think of. What I’d like to do is practice evoking imagery from these specific reactions, physical or emotional, because by strengthening these within your writing, your increasing the emotional response your reader has with your character, increasing their emotional ties and personal identification with them. And, to do this, I’d recommend a daily dose of writing a paragraph tied with a specific emotion, and if you’d deny this prescription, I would recommend something like The Emotion Thesaurus, which lists external, internal, and mental responses for a given emotional reaction. I, myself, am going to be using this to help edit a small piece that I’ve been working on, because I don’t believe my fear-factor has been touched upon quite right.

For example, listed for desire (or lust) within the book, it mentions external responses like damp hands, mirroring the person’s movements, or moving closer to the person themself. It mentions internal responses like being flooded with warmth or fingers tingling with the need to touch and mental responses like a desire to erase all distance or daydreaming about them. (50) I think this could be a huge tool to aid in writing, but again, I really encourage my earlier prescription since practice makes perfect.

Happy Tuesday. Happy writing.

Miller, Sam J. The Art of Starving. New York, NY: Harper Teen, 2017. Print.

Ackerman, Angela & Becca Puglisi. The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression. Writers Helping Writers, 2012. Print.

The Sudden Appearance of Hope

So, I just broke a copyright. I stole the title of the book for my post, but only because it is such a well-rounded title—just like the book. *wink*

Backstory: About a young woman named Hope Arden, she finds herself unable to be remembered. Once someone sees her face, within about one minute after they look away, she finds herself forgotten. First it happens to her teachers, then her friends, then her family. And without a place to call home, she falls back to what she does best:

Be forgotten.

Hope turns into a thief, an easy career when no one can remember her face, and although there are computers and cameras, the people who run them can’t bear to remember to add her to the system and forget between one moment and the next.

And while the book sounds interesting at just this bare minimum, there is Claire North’s name on the cover, well-known author of Touch and The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, which if you haven’t read those yet, then you really should.

AND beyond that, there’s Perfection.

But, I don’t want to spoil the book beyond that, even though I will be eternally bound to spoil it while reflecting on some of my most favorite parts, but still. If you haven’t read this book, you should. I think this will trump my best read of this year already.

The feelings, the things I learned, the ideas I have had today, so many ideas, so many feelings, they will die with my memory. I fear that loss. But more, a terror that I must share with my future self. I fear what this means for me. If you forget the joy of this day, then what joy you give to others will also be forgotten, and your life has no consequence, no meaning, no worth. (74)

There are plenty of these thoughts riddled throughout the book, deep, reflective, and yet applicable to any person reading it. How many times can we relate to this thought? How often do we wonder what mark we can leave behind on this world? I wonder if the only meaning our life holds is how others remember us when we’re gone. What impression do we want to leave behind? Even if only a few relate to this, I love this BIG thought near the beginning of the book. It creates such a real character. #ShowerThought

A woman with Perfection, snubbing the food her partner offered her at the cafe where I ordered breakfast.

A man with Perfection, updating the app on his phone, a sports bag slung over his back, arms bulked up with protein shakes, chest heaving, sweat on the back of his neck.

A teenager with Perfection, looking at the prices for the perfect haircut.

Open your eyes: it is everywhere. (228)

This is the perfect metaphor. I can’t stress it enough, through repetition of the word, the reader creates this picture of what perfect looks like, and yet, the last sentence is what drives it home. “It is everywhere.”

Have you thought of what perfection is? What do you think perfection is? Did you notice who I asked? You. Perfection has no definition. It is only an opinion, a preference, an idea, a trend. Perfection only exists in the eye of the beholder, a common quote, but one maybe people have forgotten to take into consideration. There is no perfection; there is only the idea of what you think it means, and right now society is trying to force-feed you their idea of perfection, through marketing, advertisements, anything to make you the best consumer. Because that’s how this economy sustains itself: Consumption.

This book is riddled with ideas like these, and while I’ve dog-earred many a page, I won’t bore you—or spoil the book—by throwing them all in this post. Just know that this books dives into the metapor of perfection and contemplates what it means in today’s society. It’s one of the reasons I love this book, not only deep and reflective, but then it throws this interesting character with an interesting talent. It leaves me wanting more.

Thank you Claire North.

North, Claire. The Sudden Appearance of Hope. New York, NY: Redhook Books, 2016. Print.

Too many characters to count

I’m up to page 83, and there’s nearly 37 characters in this book so far. So, safe to say that there’s a lot of characters and that this is going to be a complex story, so let me try to keep track with a list—can you tell I’m hyper-organized? It’s especially bad with all the lines of command of the military, and I’ve never been good at keeping track of that.

less power–>Corporal–>Sergeant–>Lieutenant–>Captain–>Colonel–>more power

Kurt Stelling: German Lieutenant Colonel; gay; 6.5 ice Talent; hides Luckenwalde (name for Nazi government Talent facility) with his ice Talent?

Erich von Ritter: German Colonel; SD officer*; tall, dark, and handsome (most characters distracted by his looks); homophobic; an thirty-ish aristocrat from Munich, Germany; cover in England is Pharmaceuticals; SPOILER has a spill Talent; code name “The Chemist”

Kim Tavistock: spill Talent; 33-year old woman; restoring Tavistock estate, or Wrenfall in Uxley, England; journalist; member of Monkton Hall (or Historical Archives and Records Centre—the cover name of the top-secret government research on military uses of Talents); code name “Sparrow”

Mother Tavistock: fifty-nine-years old; remarried for four years; lives in Philadelphia in America

Robert Tavistock: Older brother of Kim; deceased; died at Ypres

Julian Tavistock: Kim’s sixty-two-year old father; SPOILER chief English spy at SIS, whose cover is that he works in the whisky trade; alias Claude Beven

Llewellyn Tavistock: grandparent of Kim

Jane Tavistock: grandparent of Kim

Walter Babbage: father of Rose

Mrs. Babbage: mother of Rose; the cook of Tavistock estate

Rose Babbage: Babbage’s nineteen-year old daughter; SPOILER a supposed ice talent;

Georgiana (Georgi) Aberdare: “a popular and poisonous London hostess” (19); code name “Sunflower”

Hugh Aberdare: Georgi’s brother; also named Lord Daventry

Alice Ward: Kim’s thirty-five-year old friend; owns Dropped Stitch—a knitting store; Trauma view Talent; might marry James?

James Hathway: middle-aged; dotes on Alice; priest of a chapel; also named Vicar (priest); owns used bookstore?

Miss Drummond: fiftyish office manager of Monkton Hall; controls logbook of people’s names and Talents and their correspond levels

Fitzroy Blum: Monkton Hall’s director; large man; natural defender Talent; possible spy for the Germans; used to be Georgi’s lover, but dumped her; confidant of King of England

Emma: Kim’ elementary friend; hyperempathy Talent

Owen Cherwell: caseworker for Hyperpersonal Talents at Monkton Hall, for Kim; previous professor at Cambridge’s Experimental Psychology Department

Stanley Yarrow: “bald and rotund director of Psychokinesis” at Monkton Hall (31);

Sam Reuben: Yarrow’s predecessor at Monkton Hall; small build; his son Michael died; was researching cold cell Talent

Constable Benny: Constable of Uxley

Constable Simkins: ?

Superintendent Oates: from constabulary in Coomsby; short

Dr. Angus Dunn: Doctor at mental hospital (or asylum), Prestwich Home

E (Richard Galbraith): head of the English Secret Intelligence Service (or SIS), also code-named Foxhound; wife has anorexia, who chose E over Drake; being investigated because there’s a information leak; sixty-two years old

Lydia: E’s wife

Wallis Simpson: woman; relationship with Edward VIII; believes in Hitler

Winston Churchill: First Lord of the Admiralty; conceptor Talent

Adolf Hitler: head of Nazi’s; conceptor Talent

Rory: another spy with Julian; code name “Rabbit”

Elsa: another spy with Julian; elderly lady; code name “Egret”

Harry Parslow: eighty-four year old man at Prestwich mental Home; maybe insight Talent?; used to own a Chemist shop

Lieutenant Hass: with Nazi military; Stelling’s adjutant

Field Marshal von Rundstedt: ?

Griffith: Hugh’s butler

Frank: Hugh’s footman?

Peter (Fin): Hugh’s part time footman; SPOILER Julian’s spy; runs two agents in Germany (one being Woodbird & the other Harp?)

Charlotte: Hugh’s maid; blond girl

Sir Edgar Thackeray: guest of Georgi’s

Lady Beatrice (Bea) Thackeray: Edgar’s wife

Sir Simon Harwell: Julian’s lunch companion; provides info for SIS

Heath Millington: Alistair Drake’s right hand man, or undersecretary; with CID (Committee for Imperial Defense); SPOILER replaces E

Alistair Drake: CID; has authority over E; started investigation on E; hates E; sides with the PM, or Prime Minister?

Coporal Breck: Doesn’t look like Stelling

Sergeant Dressler: Looks like Stelling; SPOILER driver for Stelling as he escapes Germany

Andre Francois-Poncet: French ambassador in Berlin; SPOILER help Stelling escape

Andre Marchand: Captain with ambassador

Philippe: Captain Andre’s friend

Dorset Withers: reads the scripture for Vicar James Hathway

Gunter Helmut: Stelling’s second driver during his escape; bland face

Olivia Hennessey: fortyish secretary for E; high security clearance; up-swept hair

Stanley Baldwin: Prime Minister of England; follows the direction of the British people

Woodbird: mole in Abwehr

Reginald Oldstrum: twenty-three years old; trauma view Talent of 3

Theodore Vaughn: Cold-cell Talent of 2

Grace Hull: Cold-cell talent of 4

King Edward: King of England

Theodora: Cousin of Kim

William: Uncle of Kim’s; brother of Julian

Sir Lionel Bowe: owns a house in Mayfair

Harp: British spy in Germany; has a woman mole (named Buttercup) in Luckenwalde

Gordon: Umbrella man; Von Ritter’s driver

Lena Mueller: thin, cross thirty-eight-year old woman; chauffeur; darkening talent at 9.4; accomplice of Von Ritter; alias Helga Osterman or Ines Reinhardt

Oskar: accomplice of Von Ritter

Idina Mae Henslow: ample woman; mistress of E

Mrs. Pengelley: shopper for yarn

Lowry: E’s deputy director

Martin Sempill: Barley and Mow pub owner

Ada: Barley and Mow pub’s cook

John Rennie: administrative officer at CID headquarters; Millington’s assistant

Mr. Vickers: SIS secretary for Millington

Henry Wollaston: admirer of Kim’s mother; gifted a Helbros watch to her mother

Carlisle: Julian’s longtime tobacconist; spy informant with Julian

Bert Doyle: director

Major General Hart: loves fine whisky

*SD: Hitler’s private intelligence service

What have I learned from reading this book? That you don’t have to name every character. I get that it definitely imparts a sense of realism, but it really confused me (as the reader) trying to keep up with who was whom, who was important, and who I had to remember. I would say be patient though. Some names are meant to be forgotten, and as such are only mentioned once. Others, come up frequently, so you get time to learn about them and their role in the story. Then there’s others who come up infrequently, but you should remember them. Like, E’s archenemy. Or, the name of the Prime Minister. The higher up’s that you don’t encounter but should know because they play an indirect role in the story.

That being said, as an after-the-fact, I did like the numerous characters. As a spy book, it makes it kind of cool having a character mentioned once or twice, and all the sudden you find out later in another chapter that the previously mentioned character is actually a spy working undercover with such-and-such agency. So, I think having so many characters actually helped hide some of them in the book.

Kenyon, Kay. At the Table of Wolves. New York, NY: Saga Press, 2017. Print.

PS. I should come back and re-organize this in a chart. It would make it a lot nicer and faster to figure out who’s related to who. First, I have to figure out all the secret organizations…

Distracted Thoughts from Winter Vacation

This is totally unrelated to anything about writing, because, I feel like I should warn you. You being, any person that has unrealistic expectations for the Tongariro Alpine Crossing in New Zealand. So let me tell you, you’ve been warned…

This is from Google, retrieved from YouTube user PsychoTraveller, back in 2016.
…I swear I was never this happy on the hike. Proud when I was done. But not happy. Impressed with the stunning views, but always praying that I survived.

Anyways, in case you have not heard of Tongariro Alpine Crossing, it’s supposed to be one of the best day hikes in the world. First off, it’s supposed to be an accessible hike. Second, it is a challenging hike, so good to mentally and physically stretch yourself. Third, it’s supposed to have beautiful scenery, passing active volcanoes and turquoise green lakes. But, even though their website quotes parts as moderate/difficult. I swear some of these may be under-stressed. (Partially because I think in some deep, deep part of myself, I am a drama queen, and I have to over-exaggerate. That, and I had extreme allergies at the time, and I don’t react well with elevation, and I don’t mix with heights and/or anything that requires balance and stability. So, there’s that.)

So, let me explain with an elevation map.

I borrowed this from The Laws of Travel, and then edited it a little bit to add sections and letters. Mainly to show you what I thought of the hike.

SECTION A: As you can see in the picture below, part A is slightly uphill, in what I would consider relatively easy hiking. It’s paved, some parts are on steel walkways with anti-slip treds on them, and it’s barely uphill. You may feel slightly winded, but you’ll be fine.

SECTION B: The Devil’s Staircase. This part is easy…if you’re good with elevation and staircases. I have to admit with the elevation and allergies, I had to stop like every ten steps to remember to breath. It was bad. There were a #%^$-ton of stairs. Remember that you’re gaining something like 300+ meters. It’s hard and annoying work.

SECTION C: The Tease. This is where you think you’re done with the hard part. You’re walking across basically what looks like a flat desert to see Mt. Doom (from Lord of the Rings), and it looks pretty cool. People are taking a break, and then you look up to see your next series of elevation. Another at least 200+ meters gain. #%@&.

SECTION D: The 200+ meters gain in elevation. By the way, there aren’t any steps. You’re walking up a series of dirt, loose rocks, and big rocks. Oh, and don’t forget there’s a severe drop-off on either side. At least the path is semi-wide. And there’s a rope to hold onto…for only a section of like 10 feet.

The tippy-top—I didn’t include a picture. This is a nice place to stop for lunch, which most people did. But there’s not much to see. Imagine a lunar landscape that’s mainly flat without craters. That’s the very top. They did tell us to be careful. If it’s too windy, you can get blown into the Red Crater. Wanna see? Look below.

SECTION E: Finally! Some downhill. Only, did someone forget to mention how loose the footing is? This section is all loose rocks, like pumice and sand/dirt. Seriously, I lost my footing and fell on my butt nearly 8 times. Not good when the right edge is a cliff into the Red Crater and the left edge is a cliff into a valley. And stupid me, I kept trying to grab onto anything for help, and there was this little ledge for a while, but it was smoking and hot and apparently had its own volcanic activity. AKA don’t touch smoking rocks.

Btw, try to dig in your heels when you walk. And look for the dirt. You have more grip there than on the loose rocks. And be careful, some parts are not as wide.

SECTION F: By now my legs are tired, and thank god I finally get a break. There’s some more downhill, but it’s much easier. There’s a flat area, which I couldn’t be more thankful for. And, then there’s some uphill, which makes me want to hurt somebody, but it’s nowhere as steep, loose, or dangerous as before. So I grin and bear it.

Warning: Around Blue Lake, the signage gets bad, so watch out for which path to take. Me and my husband (and multiple others visitors) took the path most traveled, but it ended up being the wrong path, and way more difficult of the two. Apparently, there was an easier path but the signage was missing, and most people did it wrong. Don’t be me.

SECTION G: By now, it’s around 12 kilometers of downhill, which isn’t hard. The paths are rather wide. There are some steep edges, but it’s not a cliff face. More like a gentle roll down a hill if you fell. And, you’d stop pretty quick. I will say though, when you don’t expect it, your knees will start to go. So be patient with your joints. I stopped for regular intervals to give my joints a break. But one of the men in our group of six, he tore his knee and had to be air-lifted out. Don’t over-extend yourself.

What did I learn? This was one of the best hikes I had ever done. It was also one of the most difficult. My husband and I trained for maybe three months before the hike, running up to 3.5 miles, walking at least 12 miles on the weekend, and we thought we’d be prepared. It’s hilly here in Washington, and we thought we’d be ready for the mountains of New Zealand, at least on the north island.

We were wrong.

This is a difficult hike. I greatly appreciated plenty of snacks, especially my apples and granola bars covered in chocolate. We never had enough water (I blew through three out of the four water bottles we had—my husband was thirsty, and yet I was thirstier by the end. Blame my allergies. And the fact that I’m part fish.) Even though the weather was splendid, the hike was hard on my muscles and joints. Please take into consideration everything before you go on the hike. Don’t be the tourist that wears sandals.

Btw, did I mention that I now have a permanent callous on my toe because of this hike?

Bannerless: Unresolved conflicts

It’s hard to rope in a reader by the first page, but Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn succeeded in pulling me in by the first paragraph.

Enid came downstairs into a kitchen bright with morning sun blazing through the one window and full of greasy smell of cooked sausage. Olive already had breakfast—sausage, toast, cream—set out on the table. In her dress and apron, her dark hair pulled back with a scrap of cloth, she was already at work—but she shouldn’t have been, in Enid’s opinion. (1)

This first paragraph reels you in with 1) an image of the main character’s movement, 2) imagery that expands just beyond the typical visuals, and 3) internal reflection on behalf of the main character. It doesn’t take much but that small hint of Olive doing too much work in Enid’s opinion already sets a small conflict in motion, which propels the reader forward, to want to keep reading, but with this book, because it has a tendency to leave its conflicts unresolved, the book doesn’t live up to the expectations of the beginning.

 CONFLICTS WITHIN BANNERLESS

1. Olive trying to get pregnant (post miscarriage) (2, 8)
2. MAIN: Enid discovering the source of the suspicious death in Pasadan (3)
3. Enid wanting to leave, learning what she wants to do for her life (47)
4. Enid discovering love (46)
5. Enid learning whether she wants a banner (46)
6. Enid discovering why the investigators are in Fintown (111)
7. Enid discovering the source to Pasadan’s false happiness (160)
8. Enid wondering if Tomas is too old to be an investigator (178)

Although the book has one main plot, of discovering the source of the suspicious death in Pasadan, it also has several minor conflicts, most of which are listed above, and at first glance, most of these conflicts don’t see interconnected except they are, connected by a single motif—banners. In this book, everyone wants a banner. A banner means the allowance to have children. A banner means that you have earned your place in the community, that you have worked hard to support another possible mouth to feed.

But while everyone else wants a banner, Enid is not sure she wants one. Someone first asks her about it when shes a kid (46), but at that point, in her young age, she doesn’t think she’ll ever want one, which to me is confusing, because while she denies it, she tears at Olive offering her the banner later in life and she seems constantly focused on babies and banners, insisting that most investigations seem to stem toward people wanting a banner. People would to any extent to earn that banner, even falsifying quotas or overextending their fields. She seems almost obsessive on the subject.

And yet, for how much this book seems to focus on babies, it doesn’t seem to offer any closure on the subject. It dances around the subject, similar to how Enid dances around the subject of love. When this conflict is first initially opened on page 46, with Enid jealous of how people her age are finding love and having sex, she doesn’t seem to understand the allure, although she wants to. And while the book continues with her hooking up with Dak, she doesn’t truly find love until Sam, which leaves me wondering, why is Sam better than Dak? Why do we see five seconds of Sam and half a book of Dak when the resolution to this conflict is her falling in love with Sam. She even admits to him being better in the end!

So while this book seems to wrap up most of its conflicts at first glance, it seems to offer very superficial closure, never completely resolving the heart of any conflict. We never see Enid find love. We never learn why or why not she doesn’t want kids. We never learn why the investigators are in Fintown. We never see her house earn their baby through Olive. This leaves at least half of the conflicts listed above open-ended and unresolved, which brings me to warningly say, always offer closure. At least unless you’re planning on a volume 2.

Over-arching theme: Are children a god-given right? Or are they a privilege that’s earned?

Vaughn, Carrie. Bannerless. New York, NY: Mariner, 2017. Print.

The Stone Sky

I’ve been waiting months for this book to release, and although I hate to admit it, I wasn’t one of those good people who re-reads through an entire series before reading the following (or in this case the final) book. It’s not as tragic as you may think because most  the memory of the characters comes back fairly quickly, and N.K. Jemisin always slips little reminders as to how the main character feels about everyone and what they remember from the previous ‘adventures’. But still, I made a huge faux pas. And, I’m going to have to read through the entire series again and then re-read this book because there are tons of little pieces to relish, which you can only truly understand if your knowledge of the series is thorough.

Still, here’s a few things I enjoyed about this book:

1. Multiple Perspectives

Jemisin loves experiencing other characters’ perspectives, and just as she did in her previous books, she does the same thing here—amazing as always. This time, it’s only* three people of choice: Essun (previously Syenite and then more previously Damaya), Nassun (Essun’s daughter), and Hoa (previously Houwha, pre-stone-eater era). I use the asterisks because she does dip into other POVs throughout other chapters. Watch out for the triple stars within a chapter. This signifies a POV shift. I enjoyed Essun’s chapters because I love to watch her character develop through the struggle of what she emotionally wanted and what she logically wanted. I enjoyed Nassun’s chapters as she struggled, again, to follow what she logically wanted and what she emotionally wanted. And, Hoa’s chapters duplicate these same struggles, except piecing together more information of how this Seasoned world came to be, which I find direly interesting because I need to know how this horrible Earth resulted. So while all three are different characters with different experiences, they all follow the same basic trials and struggles with the end result that they are a tool, and should they follow what’s expected of them, or should they follow their heart?

2. Footnotes within History

At the end of most every Nassun and Essun chapter are the three stars signifying a POV shift, and I enjoyed these a lot because they mostly followed the same basic pattern: disaster strikes, orogene (or the derogatory rogga) saves the day, and mob kills rogga in typical hate-crime fashion. But let me just point this out—I don’t like the people getting killed or the mobs hating on someone. I just like the fact that the theme of racism (or discrimination) is addressed. Because to be fair, even if this is a common theme, we still see it again and again, probably because humanity never learns.

We saw it with African-Americans pre-during-post Civil War.

We saw it with Jews in the Holocaust.

We see it with mutants in X-men.

And we see it now with something as silly as majors. I remember taking an internship with Caterpillar—industrial and waste marketing job—and I was invited to a general welcoming party with all the other interns for Caterpillar in Illinois. And what was I told? ‘Oh, you’re a marketing intern,’ the engineering interns said with a sneer. Their perspective changed when I told them I was an engineer but wanted something else besides that for a job, but this perspective still exists on campus. Why does it matter what you major in? What does it matter what you specialize in or what your skills are? We can’t all be good at everything. But still this discrimination or sneering at differences exists, which is why I think this is a good point to drive home. And these little snippets of how people retaliate against the roggas, even as they’re saviors, helps show that discrimination can be stupid.

3. Second Perspective

Very few authors use second perspective for their characters, so the only author that comes to mind who uses this is Jeff Vandermeer, and even he used it rarely. Only Jemisin is brave (or daring) enough to use the second person perspective for a third of the book, for Essun’s perspective. But between Essun’s second perspective and Hoa’s first perspective, it makes you think a little bitter deeper on who’s the true teller of the story.

SPOILER ALERT. 

Just as Alabaster lost his humanity to using his magic/orogene to create the Rift, we find out that when Essun dares to use sapphire Obelisk, she also aligns all the particles in her body, causing her to turn to stone every time she uses magic/orogene at that point in time and after. SPOILER. The twist is that while you turn to stone, you don’t necessarily die. When Alabaster turned completely to stone, the trick is that while you lose that sense of yourself, you’re also reborn as a stone-eater, where if your partner stone-eater cares for you, they can help transition your past memories to you. Here, Antimony tried and somewhat succeeded for Alabaster, although we see in the books that he struggles a bit with his mind and memories. But with Hoa, because he loves Essun, he tries his very best to help her be reborn with all of her past memories. All of these memories that we are reading now because the twist is, this book is actually of Hoa telling the story of Essun to herself, once she has been reborn as a stone-eater. I loved this reveal at the end. Nothing more than realizing what is the true perspective you’re reading.

4. Earth is alive

This is one of my favorite parts of the book and while this isn’t about writing style, I do think this is an interesting idea. On our Earth, we are ruining the planet in so many ways. We’re acidifying our oceans; we’re globally raising the temperatures; we’re creating the sixth mass extinction—if you haven’t heard of this yet, check out my previous blog post here, and similarly SPOILER ALERT, the people on this alternate Earth were found to be ruining their Earth by using a special six roggas to help capture the Earth’s life source as an eternal power source. So when they attempt to do this, they anger the Earth, which decides to fight back, creating guardians and stone-eaters. And it’s so cool to finally see the Earth take a stance to fight back, which it does throughout the whole novel. You can listen to it fight for control. Fight to live. And, maybe this is a surreal element, but I loved having a normal object turn into a personified character to have its own struggles.
This isn’t to say I loved this book. There were definitely a few quirks that left me feeling…not the greatest. For instance, Essun’s pregnancy? She was so willing to give up a possible child. Or the fact that Nassun gave up her dreams for Schaffa, who followed her to the other side of the world and gave up his sanity, instead for Essun, who had given her nothing but bad memories. It seems somewhat out-of-character. But, it could’ve been the strength of that singular moment. Overall, I still really enjoyed this book. This series has been one of my favorites.

Jemisin, N.K. The Stone Sky. New York, NY: Orbit, 2017. Print.

Spoiler Alert: The Humans did it.

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from The Sixth Extinction, it’s that were one of the worst species on this planet, or at least worse than I initially thought and that’s saying a lot. I have a background in Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (primarily in Atmospheric Sciences, aka meteorology), and anyone who’s anyone in this area knows about climate change and the kind of horrors it presents for our future. This book not only openly acknowledges who’s to blame for it, spoiler alert―it’s us, but goes on to describe some of the catastrophes as they relate to the biodiversity of this planet. And me being a natural-processes kind of girl, I wasn’t even aware the kind of changes we wrought on our animals, except for maybe the dodo bird. Thank you Ice Age: the movie.

Within the first chapter, Elizabeth Kolbert describes the Panamanian golden frog as a symbol of good luck in the town El Valle de Anton in central Panama, even if the frogs themselves are toxic, with enough “poison contained in the skin of just one animal [that it] could kill a thousand average-sized mice–hence the vivid color” (5). Although if I’ve learned over the years in the shadow of my herpetology-obsessed brother, it’s that anything that brightly colored is poisonous and is so colored to warn you. And at one point in time, these frogs were so common, they were often found sunning themselves on the bank of a creek in El Valle, appropriately named the Thousand Frog Stream. Then in the late 1990s, a blight began to spread, wiping out not just the Panamanian golden frog, but nearly all frogs, although the golden frog is said to now be extinct in the wild since 2007 (Wikipedia).

Then there’s the little brown bats, a dominant bat in the northeastern U.S., not more than five inches long, considered once “ubiquitous in Vermont, [it] is officially listed as an endangered species in the state” (216), and probably a million more other species facing the same kind of extinction. Even though we’re not the direct cause of these species extinction, since most of these deaths were due to some kind of fungus, most of these extinctions can be traced back to us. For the American Chestnut tree, it was wiped out due a fungus imported to the U.S., probably from Japan (Kolbert 204). For the bats, it’s probably from the introduction of a fungus at a commercial cave in upstate New York, and has since been traced to Europe, where Greater mouse-eared bats are found to carry the fungus and aren’t bothered by it (215). And for the frogs, it’s probably the same thing, since multiple theories suggest that the same chytrid fungus was probably carried over by shipments of African clawed frogs or North American bullfrogs, for either pregnancy tests or human consumption (18).

These are the secret ways we kill. They’re not as obvious as habitat removal through deforestation or construction, and they’re not as flamboyant as the poaching for elephants or rhinos, but it’s still a sort of murder. Kolbert writes scientists saying as many as a minimum of 9 to 13 percent of species disappearing by 2050 (in the hopeful ‘universal dispersion’ scenario) or a maximum of 38 to 52 percent of all species (in the pessimistic ‘no dispersal’ scenario). This still averages out to about a quarter of all species on the planet disappearing in 33 years, and I haven’t even mentioned what happens regarding our oceans’ waters yet.

If you haven’t picked up a copy of The Sixth Extinction, I highly recommend you do so. I am for one usually never to read a book of non-fiction, but not only is this book highly motivating and eye-opening, it’s also entertaining in a morbid sort of way. Elizabeth talks of facts and figures almost like a history professor, making this an informative read, but she also writes as a reporter, an entertainer, using her personal experiences in each of these information-acquiring endeavors as a unique and personal experience in the progress of the sixth extinction. Did I mention it’s won a Pulitzer Prize?

Kolbert, Elizabeth. The Sixth Extinction. New York, NY: Picador, 2014. Print.

What are we without our memories?

If there was one thing I would say about our species, it’s that were highly vision-dependent. This is apparent when you read a book. The imagery is always very conducive of sight with descriptions like “the rotting bridge sagged under its own weight, leaning perilously to one side so that if I were to step onto it, it would collapse under my feet.” There is very little that conveys to our other senses such as hearing, feeling, or taste, and yet the novel I just read breaks many of these boundaries.

The Chimes by Anna Small.

The chord is death and sorrow and torture. Like millions of people all screaming at once. Just when I think I can’t stand any more, the harshness fades and crumbles. It doesn’t resolve. That is the wrong word. It doesn’t move into harmony, but it breaks, and as it breaks, it shows the possibility of change. It walks forward. It carries the pain into the next chord, but it softens there and there is sweetness again. (276)

Because it’s hard to translate sound into a book’s structure of visual text, this book makes a lot of comparisons between sound and images. It creates metaphors and similes, anything to translate music into something that we can comprehend because this is how the book’s whole world communicates: Through music, sound, and voice. And this is where I partly love the book. I’ve never been one who can understand music. I can’t play instruments. I can’t sing (well). So to ask me to comprehend music is a large jump for me to make especially since each character in this book is given an instrument to learn and master beginning at their childhood.

I love their language, how everyone communicates by song, tunes, and verses.

A plaintive three-note cry from a sweet-potato man who sings as he pedals a bellow wheel. A tune of golden meat pasties sung by a fat woman with a wink. There are tunes for sandwiches and potatoes fried in goosefat, and there is a seabrimmed song sun by a boy with dark hair and a shucking knife. A song with a gleam of pearl in it for the oysters he sells. The oysters are from Essex, the song says. Like me. (7)

I love how music is something that can’t be forgotten even when each person loses their memories each night, driven out by some unseen force. Almost like how modern music refuses to abandon our minds and digs in its own unrelenting claws. People use these tunes to hawk their wares, to give directions.

The boatpeople are already traveling downriver to trade from Richmond. They sing the sightlines of the river and the meter of the tide upstream and down. Their melodies follow each curve of the banks so if you listen close, you can almost see it. Voices low and wordless in the half-song of navigation, a sort of la la leia la that is almost the sound of the river itself. (27)

It speaks of how when an individual’s unique experiences are removed, we become nothing but labor, with no more purpose beyond baker, musician, pactrunner. Even the people within the novel recognize this, always giving out their best piece of advice: To find a prentisship. Their  second advice, more tradition than advice at this point–to hold your memories close–is to relish in the fact that it is only with the addition of our memories that we become individuals, who believe and feel whether that’s pain, happiness, love, tragedy.

This book is unique and original and lyrical, which makes it one-of-a-kind.

Small, Anna. The Chimes. New York, NY: Quercus, 2015. Print.

Edit: I will say as a side note, that it is very interesting to relive average days with the main character as he tries hard to remember, which is very difficult to do given the fact that nobody else within the city can.