The Cider House Rules by John Irving

Some Spoilers- Don't say I didn't warn you--

Like all of Irving's novels that I've read, The Cider House Rules is full of depth and layers and lots and lots of words. The story follows Homer Wells, an orphan who was never adopted from Saint Cloud's (where you can get either an abortion or an orphan). As an adult he finally leaves the orphange with Candy and Wally (who have come for an abortion). He works at their apple orchard and falls in love with Candy. Wally joins the Air Force in WWII and disappears after his plane crashes. He's presumably dead. Candy gets pregnant, and when Wally returns, Homer comes up with the ultimate deceit to protect his feelings. There aren't many repercussions for him. Everything works out in the end, and he finds himself back at Saint Cloud's-- somewhere he can finally be of use.

Even though I didn't find Homer, Candy and their mega-lie particularly sympathetic, I may one day talk about them on my death bed as if they were real characters I actually knew. That's the Irving genius.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I admit it. I'd never heard of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button until the film version was nominated for thirteen academy awards (and no, I haven't seen the movie). I remember really enjoying The Great Gatsby in high school. The premise of Button sounded interesting, a story about a baby born as an old man and grows young. So I downloaded a copy from manybooks.net, and discovered that the curious thing about Benjamin Button is how in the world this story ever acquired any success.

Roger Buttons goes to the hospital to meet his new son, who turns out to be a creepy old man sitting in the corner of a crib. I'm all for suspended belief, but just didn't buy that Roger believed this old man was his baby. The mother didn't even get a mention, even though she is the one who would be able to confirm. He just takes the word of the nurse.

On it went, and I pretty much had the point by page three. No surprises.

Great concept but the delivery fell flat. The movie sounds better.

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse Five is Billy Pilgrim's story of so many things: being a POW in WWII during the bombing of Dresden, his married life as a successful optometrist, time travel, and living in a zoo on the planet Tralfamador with a pornographic model. While there is so much going on in the novel, and because time doesn't exist the way we perceive it to, Slaughterhouse Five is all over the place. Vonnegut manages it well, though. Honestly, the novel makes perfect sense. Of course, an American POW who witnessed a devastation greater than Hiroshima and was given soap made by the fat of dead Jews is going to be abducted by aliens and live with a nudey model. It makes perfect sense, really.

While I appreciated a lot of the aspects of the novel and am glad to have read it, Vonnegut's flippant tone was jolting following The Book Thief. I also felt that his writing lacked suspense. It wasn't exactly a page-turner. And the ending fizzed. Poo-tee-weet just didn't do it for me. So it goes.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

I know I say this a lot, but I really really really mean it this time. This is one of the best books I've ever read. It is absolutely incredible. I'm so glad I didn't let the WWII setting turn me off. This is so different than any other war story I've read. In fact, it's not even a war story. It's more like a story (well, several stories) that happen to have a war in them. The Book Thief is about kindness and friendship, choices, book thievery, Jesse Owens, an accordian, Arslochs, and the Jewish fist-fighter. It's about nine-year-old Liesel Meminger, her foster parents, Rudy Steiner with hair like lemon. It's about a strange small man who decided three important details about his life.

• He would part his hair from the opposite side to everyone else.
• He would find himself a small strange moustache.
• He would one day rule the world.

-Max, the Jew hiding in Liesel's basement

More imporantly, The Book Thief is about the power of words. It is imaginative and thought-provoking and narrated by the only one who could tell such a story. Yes, The Book Thief is narrated by Death. Clever, huh?

A Widow for One Year

Tragic, eccentric, hilarious . . . another Irving masterpiece.

TGIO

Woo Hoo! We did it. My novel and I crossed the finish line with 4 words and 10 hours, 43 minutes, and 12 seconds to spare. How did we do this you might ask? Well the first rule of thumb, as any NaNoWriMoer will tell you is to write absolute crap. The Inner Editor is the first casualty in a NaNoWriMo Massacre. 50,000 words in 30 says does not allow for the pondering of sentence structure and word choice. The other thing that must die is any type of literary merit. There simply isn't time for philosophical musings, allegories, and cleverly thought-out symbolism. Other things that must die are contractions, em dashes, en-dashes, and shortened names.

Things that get to thrive in NaNo Land are coffee, Dr. Wicked's Writing Lab, typos, adventure, and padding. Adventure is very important as it is much faster paced than lit fic. While I'm not normally an adventure person, adventure definitely saved me in NaNo. My ten-year-old fugitives were kidnapped twice. They stole a car, a Harley, a cart-and-buggy, and a barge full of gangsters. They were involved in several high-speed chases, a ten-car pile-up, and an exploding gas-station. Far-fetched? Yes, but apparently more believable than the latest Indian Jones.

If you're still struggling with word-count, feel free to pad a few things. For example, one of my characters broke out into song several times and sang the entirety of Stairway to Heaven. This is well within the white of NaNo Dirty Tricks and is a nice supplement when NaNo's wordcount validator is almost 1,000 words off from Microsoft Word, not in your favor.

That's it for me. I'm off now to see if there is any life left in the Inner Editor.

Princess by Dezi Cutter (age 5)

"Princess"

(Mermaid Princess)/ "Splash Splash Jump Jump Underwater"

(This page is scrambled but says "Under water you can swim to")/ Prince

"Prince" (Sword fight)/ "Surf" (Prince and Princess with hugs and kisses -Xs and Ox on their faces)

"Jumping" (Another sword fight)/ "Kiss and Hug"

(Sword fight- they both die)/ "Princess"- (Princess is sad.)

"The End of the Princess Story"/ "Part 2" (The prince comes back to life, and they get married.)