New Year, New 30 Day Book Challenge, Day 25

Day 25: The Character to Whom You Most Relate

Gianna:

Today we are finding our literary mirrors, the characters we most identify with...or the closest thing possible. 

Jo March - Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

I have several brothers and exactly zero sisters, and as a young girl I had very little interest in dolls, makeup, pretty dresses, or anything “girly.” I could, however, throw a football as well as the boys on my street, and I was a damn good baseball player. I enjoyed building forts, climbing trees and jumping off of very high things. My goal was to become a stunt person (I am sure I went around and said stuntman, but you get the point). As I got older, my mother’s patience with my lack of girly interests grew and she would either be chasing me around the house with an eyebrow tweezers or let me know, in the nicest of ways, that “a little lipstick would really help.”

Jo March understood me, and I understood her. She enjoyed a boisterous joke, a competitive footrace, and a healthy disinterest in boys. But things change; Jo got married and I have at long last tried to get these god-forsaken eyebrows in check. 

"If Wearing hair up means becoming a lady, I'll wear it down until I'm 100 years old." Jo March in Little Women

...No.

Liz:

Dang. I have no idea. I mean, I already declared that Lizbeth Salander and I were one and the same, but it seems too easy to rest on those laurels. Let's turn to the internet for an assist, shall we?

I took this Literary Character Quiz, and ended up with Wendy Darling from Peter Pan. Apparently I'm mothering to lost boys and caring and this really couldn't be further from how I see myself. 

I like the book part anyway.

So then I took this quiz, and it says I'm Hermione from Harry Potter. So I'm smart and witty and rational and don't let people mess with me. On the other hand, though, I've already stated that I have not read the Harry Potter books, and I'm also not going to fall in love with a redhead. 

It turns out there are a lot of these quizzes on the internet. Let's try again with this one. Really? George Bailey from It's a Wonderful Life? That just happens to be one of my least favorite movies ever. I give up.

I liked Leslie from The Bridge to Terebithia because she played in the woods and died (spoiler?). I liked Turtle from The Westing Game because she was smarter than everyone else and fairly obnoxious about it (and then she won the game--spoiler?). Gianna compared me to Flavia de Luce from The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie because she was actively hoping to poison her siblings. Those are good enough.  

30 More Days Book Challenge: Day 15

Day 15: Favorite Books about Friendship

Gianna:



I am the nerd...who is Gianna?

 The greatest book I have ever read about friendship is The Breakfast Club. It is the intricate and moving story of five students in detention who couldn’t be more different. Ninety minutes later, I mean 400 pages later, they realize they are all the same at heart. They are each the brain, the athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. This novel won the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize, and the National Book Award in 1985, and the author John Hughes went on to become the Nobel Laureate a few years later and then the King of England. The End.

Okay …

The best book about friendship is Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail damn Caldwell. End of story. I wish you people would stop making me write about her book! Annoying.  [I'd normally link to other blog posts in which Gianna mentioned this book, but seriously, it's about every other post.  Take some initiative.  Read through them yourself.]

Here are some other favorites that have great friendships at their core. Not all of the friendships last if memory serves….

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry – this is the story of four friends and it is quite simply one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. Set in India during severe government crackdowns, the book tells the story of four very different people brought together by the changes in India. Great book. [One is a brain, and one is a jock, and one is a basket case....]

I feel I should mention The Color Purple by Alice Walker, but that was more like a “friends with benefits” situation (that’s what the kids call it).

Another favorite is Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie (pronounced just as it is written). This is a really lovely story of best friends who are sent to a re-education camp during the Cultural Revolution in China. They fall in love with the daughter of a local tailor. The two friends decide that they will help educate the seamstress with forbidden foreign books that they have hidden. This has a bit of a twist at the end. This is also one of my favorite book jackets.

You know, I always thought that the best friends to have are the types that help bury the body (Colleen, Stephanie and Liz all have shovels at the ready). But I now realize that a good friend is also the type who puts you out of your misery when needed. Liz often asks me to help her in these situations, but so far I have not been that good of a friend to her. Of Mice and Men –George and Lenny. Now those two were great pals. [I like to watch the rabbits.]

Liz:

Rarely would my mind turn to children's books first, but in the case of this category, my two favorite books about friendship both fall into that category for younger readers.  They also happen to be the two books I most often re-read as a wee Liz.

Anne of Green Gables is all about trying to find connections and family through friendship.  It's about finding community when you're an outsider, and being accepted and loved even though you have fiery red hair and lack social graces and like to read.  It's about forgiveness and supporting each other and learning to belong.  I suspect that the children who read and loved L.M. Montgomery's series as children know how to be stalwart friends as adults.  I certainly count Anne fans among my closest friends now.

The Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson struck a chord with me growing up.  In the summers, my sister and I formed an alliance with the boy on the other side of the neighborhood, and the three of us created adventures in the woods that stretched for miles behind our neighborhood.  We had our own worlds, clubs, perils, and discoveries, and though school was a different world entirely separate from our summer escapades, we remained close.  It's not a childhood you've have in an urban area, and though I have many, many, many criticisms about the town in which I was raised, that pastoral freedom is never on the list.  The Bridge to Terabithia reminded me of those adventures and that friendship from my small town.  The book has a tragic ending; my friendship faded with time and divergent paths in high school and college. 

On the adult book front, I think that Toni Morrison's Sula is one of the greatest books ever written about the complexities of friendship between women. It one of the reasons this is the book I've re-read most often.

I also loved To the End of the Land by David Grossman, and since it's new in paperback, I encourage everyone to add it to their reading group lists.  To the End of the Land is a pilgrimage book; a mother and her childhood best friend--a former soldier suffering from PTSD--set off on a trek across Israel because the mother is terrified that her son serving in the Israeli army will be killed in the latest uprising.  This is a mature book about friendship, loss, love, and the uncertainty of living in a perilous world.  It's also beautifully written.  I struggled with To the End of the Land as I read it, but more than a year later I still regularly think about this story. 

These are the types of friends who, according to Gianna, would help you bury the body.  Or, you know, send you a dirty joke when you're having a bad day, no questions asked.