Book Project Three: Book Review

Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult

As a first time reader of Jodi Picoult, I didn’t know what to expect when reading the book. Would late nights be in the future, or would the book get shoved in a corner and never get read again? After reading the first chapter as the reveal was made, I knew the book would be read until it was finished.

Vanishing Acts starts as Delia, after a long day of work (she helps find missing children with her bloodhound, Greta), answers the door to the police from the New Hampshire town she lives in  with her father, Andrew, her fiancé, Eric, her daughter, Sophie, and her best friend, Fitz. The police have arrived to arrest Andrew on kidnapping charges occurring 28 years ago in Arizona. Delia discovers that her father kidnapped her when she was four years old after he divorced her mother. She also discovers that she isn’t named Delia, but Bethany Matthews. “Why are you doing this to him? How could you be so mistaken? But the one question that comes out, even as my throat is closing tight as a sealed drum, surprises me. ‘Who is Bethany Matthews?’ My father does not take his gaze off me. ‘You were,’ he says.” This comes as a shock to Delia because she has no recollection of her former life. All she remembers is living with her “widowed” father in New Hampshire.

As the book progresses and the trial starts in Arizona (where the crime first took place), Delia reunites with her mother and recovers part of her memory about what happened before she was brought to New Hampshire. “Eric”, I announce, “I remember.” The revelations that Delia has as she starts to remember what happened when she was younger are shocking and make readers wonder “Can you really forget something that major?”

One major theme that applies in this book is whether or not kidnapping a child if one parent isn’t able to take care of the child is an acceptable reason to take a child. By the end of the book, the answer to that question is given by the judge and jury in the traditional trial sense, but also makes readers think about what they would do in the same situation. The book makes you wonder what would happen if you simply packed up and vanished in order to start over again in a town where no one knew who you were. The feel of the book is the gasp that involuntarily leaves your mouth when a new plot twist is revealed every so often.

Picoult does a good job of developing her characters. By the end of the book, I want to reach into the book and hug Delia because of what happened the last few months, slap Eric because of what he did during the trial, and tell Andrew I think he did the right thing. However, she constantly drops “plot bombs” and by the end of the book, it’s hard to keep everything straight that happened in the book.

This book leaves you turning the page until you reach the end, and once the end happens, you want to smack yourself on the forehead for one event that happens in the book and exclaim “I should have known!” The book is for someone who wants to possibly form an opinion on something that no one wants to think about for long, and this book isn’t for those who don’t like court room dramas, because there certainly is a lot of that in the book. I award this book 4.5 stars out of 5. The book was good, but there were too many surprises for me to handle in almost every chapter.

My Top Five

Blog Post Seven

To be considered nonfiction, a book needs to be completely true, although there are some allowances that are allowed to be changed, like dialogue as long as it’s close to the original. Also, I don’t need to know every single detail about what was happening. I’d love to hear the moment you fell in love, but please do not tell me that you wore a green turtleneck, dark washed denim jeans, and the diamond necklace that your grandmother gave to you after she died of pneumonia when you were eighteen.

Half-truths and three-quarter truths aren’t acceptable, but something as close to 100% is a good thing. If it’s 100%, bonus points for the book. For me, I’d say the acceptable range is probably 95-100% true is a good memoir. If you’re telling the book over a long period span of time and it starts when you were born, of course there might be a little discrepancy of the truth and what you wrote. But also, don’t embellish a detail that people have a record of. If you got arrested for something, don’t build it up to be something that it wasn’t. If you steal a candy bar and go to jail for an hour then pay the fine, do not say that you shot someone and blacked out and forgot what happened but as you are about to be killed by the death penalty have a sudden revelation that you killed the person in self-defense and the proceedings get halted and they figure out that yes, what you said is true. That’s an embellishment I can’t deal with. But going back to stealing the candy bar, if you say you were in jail for two hours when it was really an hour and a half, I’m fine with the time difference. It’s almost like the same thing right?

I think that we do need genre lines. There are some books where you can definitely tell that it’s a fiction book because it’s never going to happen in real life (think teenage girl falling in love with a vampire here . . .), but then there are some books where they are proven and credible facts that this happened and everything the author says is 100% true. That’s when you know it’s a nonfiction work.

Blog Post 6: Readicide

I think that there are some works that are not only popular, but also great. Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951, 61 years ago, and is still popular today. While it is a book taught in English III, it’s been published multiple times and shows how a teenager’s life is, but Catcher is a little more extreme. Plus, at one point, the book was on the censored list, which would make me want to read it even more to see what all the fuss is about. J If schools want to make reading more enjoyable for everyone, I think they should let students read at their own pace and stop putting page limits on what you want to read each night. For some kids, it’s easy to read 30 pages each night, while for others, they may not be able to read that many pages. It’s high school, people should be able to read as many pages as they want to in the night. Teachers should just say “Make sure the book is finished by this date and you’ll have a test on it the next day.” High schoolers know they have some days that are busier than others. They could read more on a night they aren’t busy so that way they don’t fall too far behind if they have a busy day of the week. I think that there are times when students should be able to choose what books they want to read from a list that would fit into whatever period of English literature is being studied (Puritans, Rationalists, Transcendalists, etc.). If the student gets to choose the book, they may be more excited about reading the book than being forced into reading The Great Gatsby or The Crucible. People enjoy reading more when they get to pick what they want to read.

Book Two Project--Dear John

Blog Post 4: Adapting the Book

Some of the challenges that a filmmaker would have in adapting Dear John onto the big screen would be some of the war scenes. While we never actually see John fighting, he is stationed overseas in both Germany before 9/11 and Iraq after 9/11. I think this would be challenging because it’s a war scene, it would require many actors and extras, hours of learning actual fighting styles, and having the main actors go into the mindset of “I’m about to fight for my country,” which might be a difficult place for many actors to get to.

One scene that needs to be kept in the movie is when Savannah tells John that she thinks his father might have Asperger’s. It’s when john and Savannah have their first big fight, and that’s a pivotal moment for John because he starts  to realize why his father is silent and is follows the same schedule every day, the same schedule he’s had since John was born. At one point in the movie, Savannah, John, and his father take a trip to see Savannah’s parents. Mr. Tyree is somewhat uncomfortable with the change in his schedule, but agrees to go along. Once they are close to her family’s ranch, he panics and asks to be taken back home.

While this isn’t a scene, there is a specific detail that needs to be kept the same. John meets Savannah for the first time before 9/11. When September of 2001 comes along, John is about to be discharged in December of 2001. However, after the events of 9/11 take place, John re-ups for another two years of service. The filmmakers need to keep that the same because after 9/11, John and Savannah’s relationship takes a beating because he’s still in the army for another two years instead of getting out in three months.

Another scene that needs to be kept the same is when John and Savannah talk about meeting for the first time. She asks him why he jumped in to get her purse and if it was two years in the past, would he have gotten the bag for her. After thinking about it, John says he would have stood there and laughed, which shows how much he’s matured since entering the army.

One part that I would exclude is the months that pass after John and Savannah break up, because all it talks about is how he stayed in the military. For me, a flash forward with a voice over briefly explaining what happened since the breakup would suffice.

Another part I would exclude was when John sold his father’s coin collection after he died. While he did it for a noble cause (helping out Tim), the coins were a big part of his father’s life, and through Savannah, the coins started to bring John and his father back together. Since John sold them, it’s like he’s neglecting one of the only things that brought his father happiness.

Book Project One: The Crooked Shelf

Come Visit The Crooked Shelf!

       Imagine that a pivotal setting from your favorite book. What was it? How would you set it up? For fans of the book Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater, one of the pivotal places the book takes place in is the bookstore, The Crooked Shelf.

The Crooked Shelf is the bookstore where Sam sees Grace for the first time as both of them are the same species (finally!). So, for the avid teen paranormal romance reader, why not re-create the book store where Sam watches Grace in Shiver?

At the beginning of the book, Grace and her two friends go to the bookstore during the summer. Grace doesn’t realize it, but the werewolf that saved her life is human again, and is working at the same bookstore that she just entered. “I had planned a thousand different versions of this scene in my head, but now that the moment had come, I didn’t know what to do . . . her gaze headed in my direction, and I looked away hurriedly, down at my book. She wouldn’t recognize my face but would recognize my eyes. I had to believe she would recognize my eyes.” (page 9).

Also taking place at The Crooked Shelf, near the middle of the book, is where we learn that Grace and Sam both have an affinity for the books they sell there. “I let him walk me down the stark concrete block to The Crooked Shelf, a little independent bookstore; I hadn’t been there for a year. It seemed stupid that I hadn’t, given how many books I read, but I was just a poor high schooler with a very limited allowance.” (page 198).

Inside of the bookstore would be the candy shop that Sam took Grace to when she was fed up with her parents. “It was incredibly cute that he’d driven us an hour just to go to a candy shop. Incredibly stupid, given the weather report, but incredibly cute nonetheless.” (page 278). As a reader of the book, I want to experience what Sam calls the best hot chocolate and caramel apples ever made. Plus, it makes book buying much more fun if there’s some form of treats involved.

This idea would work because there are some people who still like to go to the bookstore to get a book instead of ordering online and waiting for the book to arrive at some point, or who don’t have the patience to deal with an eReader. And for teenaged girls looking to meet the love of their life, finding the perfect guy could be in the independent bookstore in town, just like how Sam and Grace eventually met as they were both humans. For people have already read Shiver, the bookstore will also stock other Maggie Stiefvater books, whether part of The Wolves of Mercy Falls series to any of her other books. Also, when the movie version of Shiver is released on DVD, The Crooked Shelf will have copies of the movie that you can buy.

The bookstore was a big part of Sam and Grace’s relationship, so it makes sense that it be made into a real bookstore. It’s where Sam saw Grace for the first time when they were humans, it’s where their first escape from life they take as a couple, and later in the series, Grace gives Sam what he calls “the best birthday present of all (it was an invoice for five hours of studio time to record a demo).”

For those who want to know more about The Crooked Shelf, you can get updates by following them on Twitter (@thecrookedshelf), on Facebook (www.facebook.com/TheCrookedShelf), or check out the website (www.thecrookedshelf.livejournal.com).

In order to stay up-to-date with author Maggie Stiefvater, you can visit her website at www.maggiestiefvater.com to get more information on The Wolves of Mercy Falls and any of her other books.

The Crooked Shelf: The Place to Fill Your Maggie Stiefvater Obsession