My 26 Favorite Authors, Part Two

A bit of an explanation: this post is inspired by the Weekly Geeks Challenge for Saturday, April 23, which asks participants to come up with a list of their favorite authors A to Z. This is easier than the task of narrowing down my selection to just one or two authors – how can an avid reader realistically be expected to have just one favorite author??

I’ve set some ground rules for myself, though: In order for a writer to truly qualify as one of my favorite authors, in most cases I have to have read many (if not all) of their works, and loved almost all of their novels. I’ve made an exception in a few cases, for a couple of authors that I am just now discovering – but I can somehow just tell that I will come to love them.

Note: I have to admit that I have no Q author! I’ve never read a single book by Anna Quindlan or anyone named Quinn. I’m not sure that I really need to rush right out and find a Q author, either, since my TBR stack is already gigantic, but writing this list did make me a little bit curious about Quindlan. If anyone is a fan of hers and wants to give me an endorsement/recommendation in the comments section, I’ll take note and add one of her novels to my Amazon wishlist.

If you’re interested, check out Part One of my Favorite Authors List. And now, for the next eight authors on my list of favorites:

J is for Jane Austen: I have to admit that I avoided Jane Austen almost as long as the “dead white males” (re: everyone from Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe to Charles Dickens and Henry James), which I discovered was a mistake when I finally got around to picking up her novels. And the (sad?) thing is that it took the 2005 movie version of Pride and Prejudice to entice me to even try reading Austen’s oeuvre (read my praise for the film here, which I think is under-appreciated amongst literary fans of Austen). But once I could really hear the rhythm of the witty banter that Austen had penned (thanks to Keira Knightly, Matthew Macfadyen, Donald Sutherland and the rest), then I was able to really understand what was going on between Austen’s characters and appreciate all the layers of complicated gender politics underlying the drawing-room flirting.

K is for Kate di Camillo: Similar to my inclusion of Brian Jacques on the A through I portion of this list, I am including di Camillo despite the fact that I have only read one of her novels thus far. The Tale of Despereaux is so ridiculously adorable and entertaining that I am very likely to love The Magician’s Elephant, The Tiger Rising, Because of Winn-Dixie and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane just as much.

L is for Lewis, Clive Staples: Lewis was a true Renaissance Man; he wrote Children’s fantasy novels, theological essays, poetry, novels for adults in several different genres – and I love them all. His novels reflect his wonderful imagination, while his essays show the depth of his knowledge and brilliance. In my opinion, he was not just a literary giant, but a philosophical genius. I haven’t yet read his Science Fiction Trilogy, but I highly recommend The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, A Grief Observed, Reflections on the Psalms, and Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer.

M is for Montgomery, Lucy Maude: Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables novels and other stories from Avonlea make me happy, pure and simple. I always have a smile on my face when I re-read the descriptions of the imaginative Anne’s escapades. There really aren’t that many other characters in all of literature that are quite as vivid and precocious – perhaps Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, but they lack Anne’s literary sense of drama. There are very few readers who can resist Miss Shirley, least of all me.

N is for Neruda, Pablo: “Neruda is my god,” I have declared to my poetry professors in graduate school, my freshman composition students, and anyone who will listen to me on the internet. “I’m thinking of starting a whole new religion.” What else can you do but worship a man who wrote both an Ode to an Artichoke and some of the most romantic sonnets since Shakespeare's sonnets? If you want to hear more praise for this talented poet, read my review of his 100 Love Sonnets.

O is for Ondaatje, Michael: Ondaatje is another provisional inclusion on my list; I have only read his deeply thoughtful novel Anil’s Ghost and have not been able to get to the more famous English Patient or the recent Divisadero. But I appreciate so much the focus on a woman in the medical profession, which it turns out is actually incredibly rare in Literature outside of Science Fiction, that I’m willing to believe that Ondaatje’s other novels will similarly include unusual characters and thoughtful subjects.

P is for Pullman, Philip: I still have not read a large portion of Pullman’s oeuvre, but I love both Ruby and the Smoke and His Dark Materials (The Golden Compass Trilogy) that he definitely qualifies. I am looking forward to re-reading these at some point this year, plus some of his other fantasy novels and the three sequels to the historical fiction novel Ruby in the Smoke. His writing is dark, detailed and intelligent; his plotting is complex and intriguing. If you like Harry Potter and/or the Chronicles of Narnia, definitely check out The Golden Compass – but do yourself a favor and stay away from the horrible movie version. Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman were pretty wonderful choices, but the scriptwriter and producers botched it big time.

R is for Rowling, J.K.: This one is a no-brainer. I’ve not only read and re-read the Harry Potter novels several times and had many marathon viewings of all the movies, but I wrote my Master’s Thesis on Harry’s grieving process in The Order of the Phoenix. The only reason that I haven’t reviewed the series here on my blog is because I figure that everyone has already been inundated with ten million reviews of HP. But I can’t resist the opportunity every once in a while to extol Rowling: I love her ability to mix fantasy, complex characterization and plotting, humorous dialog and situations, combining them all spectacularly with dark and serious emotions such as grief and rage. I really appreciate that despite the fact that Harry Potter was (is?) supposed to be a Children’s/Young Adult series, Rowling doesn’t shy away from portraying real evil – greed and hatred that go beyond normal selfishness and desperation. Voldemort may be terrifying for some readers, but evil is a reality with which children need to learn how cope, since the world is unfortunately a randomly cruel place. I wish more authors would be honest with young readers about the more arbitrary and painful aspects of life – and still manage to be as truly creative and entertaining as the talented Rowling.

Check back to catch the final installment of my favorite authors, letters S - Z.

Book Review: A Wizard of Earthsea

Although I have strong feelings on the subject of judging each work of art based on their own merits and avoiding comparisons as much as possible, I’m afraid I’m going to make myself into something of a hypocrite with this particular book review, since my obvious and unavoidable frame of reference for Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea is J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Please try to forgive me for making frequent comparisons between the two, which is unfair to Le Guin for several reasons – first and foremost because she published A Wizard of Earthsea in 1968, a good thirty years before the appearance of Rowling’s boy wizard. In fact, some fans of Le Guin were not pleased when Rowling was hailed as being original and creative, given that Le Guin’s novel similarly tells the tale of a powerful young wizard who attends a school of magic and must face off with a terrible nemesis before becoming one of the most powerful wizards in his world.

Despite the similarities and the obvious basis for comparison, though, there are some key differences between the work of Le Guin and Rowling that make A Wizard of Earthsea a very different reading experience from Harry Potter. First of all, there is the nature of the prose itself – Le Guin’s phrasing is much more somber and lyrical than Rowling’s witty, even sometimes comical style. Whereas Rowling’s serious tale of good versus evil is often includes sketches about students’ antics (namely Fred and George Weasley) that will bring a smile to your face or even cause you to laugh out loud, the first of Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle sounds much like the ancient ballads often mentioned throughout her tale. A Wizard of Earthsea is the origin story of Ged, a very powerful wizard with lowly origins and a dark indiscretion in his past. He ultimately becomes Archmange (head wizard) over all of Earthsea, though – sometime after the conclusion of this novel. Referencing these later events a few times at the beginning and end of the tale, the A Wizard of Earthsea reads very much as though a narrator were relating this story of Ged’s early adventures to the reader before a campfire. The cadences of Le Guin’s language are both ancient and universal, so that we feel almost as though we are listening to Homer’s The Odyssey or some other classical myth. The only thing that disrupted the rhythm of the prose for me was the names of Earthsea’s cities and inhabitants, which often felt disingenuous to me. It often bothers me, though, when authors slap together consonants and syllables that are extremely difficult to pronounce, thinking that this indicates that they come from a wholly different world. If that kind of thing doesn’t bother you, though, you’re sure to enjoy the prose of the novel without fear of disruption.

A second point of comparison between Le Guin and Rowling’s novels is the comparison of their main characters – Harry and Ged himself. While Harry is the classic do-gooder who will not bend his principles for any reason, Ged is much more prideful and especially early on, is bent on acquiring power and showing up his schoolboy rival. This difference, in and of itself, doesn’t necessarily make Ged less sympathetic then Harry, although it is often more difficult for a reader to identify with a protagonist whose main characteristics are negative. I personally think that characters driven by petty jealousy, greed and even hate can be extremely interesting and even sympathetic – if their emotions are explained to the reader in enough detail. But because Le Guin’s tale is written much like a ballad, the reader isn’t given long passages of insight into Ged’s state of mind. We are told that he is jealous, and then the story keeps moving. For me, this made it more difficult to identify closely with Ged, who simply came off as being power-hungry and ill-mannered at times. I wanted to like him – and I certainly did not want to see him bested by his rival, but when the “good” guy is less likeable and his rival is only somewhat snotty (certainly not as odious as Draco Malfoy), it is hard to be wholly invested in the conflict between them.

Despite the fact that I didn’t find Ged very sympathetic, the tale itself is fairly absorbing and I found myself lulled into different passages of the lyrical story. Ged’s own pride leads him to make several bad choices early in his career as a wizard, and then he must attempt to put right the shadowy evil that he has introduced into the world. This quest leads him on a long and dangerous journey through many different lands; his encounters and adventures are all well-imagined and interesting.

I not only enjoyed the novel for its own sake, but it also made me want J.K. Rowling to get back on the horse and write a couple of novels that detail Dumbledore’s adventures prior to becoming such a well-respected Headmaster at Hogwarts. In Deathly Hallows, Harry ends up digging through a lot of different stories and rumors about Dumbledore’s early days as a wizard, and those mysterious circumstances and famous battles could be a lot more interesting if presented as Le Guin has presented Ged’s early days – as a prideful, vulnerable young man instead of the great wizard that he one day becomes.

Another thing that I really enjoyed about A Wizard of Earthsea was the way that the novel discussed the use of magic and rules governing the supernatural. Le Guin relates a lot of information about the interconnectedness of the earth and all its inhabitants; the balance or “equilibrium” of the world; the power of knowing the true name of a man, a beast or an element; the difference between an act of magic that creates a harmless illusion and an act of magic that alters the fabric of the world, even in a small way. I found these passages to be particularly absorbing.

I have to say, though, that at no point did I find A Wizard of Earthsea quite as engrossing or riveting as Harry Potter. I’m fairly certain it’s because I just didn’t identify with Ged the way that I do with Harry and his friends, who are all unpopular misfits at school. Harry, Ron and Hermione may be the clichés of Children’s/YA Literature – the smart, nice outcasts that remind you of your own awkward adolescence – but there’s a reason that type of protagonist sells so well. If the author develops them with skill, then we identify with their teenage angst. Ged, being a quiet and driven character in a lyrical ballad-type novel, just didn’t project enough emotion for my taste, I guess. That isn’t to say that I didn’t like him or root for him, or that I didn’t enjoy the novel – just that I didn’t enjoy it as much as I could have. It’s still an excellent read which I highly recommend, and I can imagine that it would be great to read out loud to kids as well as being a novel that you can curl up with yourself.

This post participates in my Focus on Fantasy Reading Challenge. To learn more about the challenge or to participate, check out my original post about Focus on Fantasy.

Some Thoughts on Series Novels

When I was in elementary school, I used to read a lot of series novels. I started out with mysteries: The Boxcar Children, Nancy Drew, and The Hardy Boys were my all-time favorites. I ripped through every new installment of these classics of mass production with a fervor that dazed most of my classmates. Then I moved on to those staples of the Young Adult section in the library: Fear Street and Sweet Valley High. To me, all of these series function sort of like comfort food, or a favorite song that you want to play over and over and over again when you’re in a certain mood.

The most attractive thing about these types of series is the way that readers can inhabit their worlds so fully and for such a prolonged period of time (since the texts are never-ending). The characters represent certain things – for example, Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield from the idyllic Sweet Valley lead the epitome of perfect contemporary teenage lives, while Nancy embodies (a much more admirable) womanly independence. Readers want to have the kinds of experiences that these characters have, and live these kinds of romantic or adventurous lives; we want to be these characters. We step into their worlds over and over again because we enjoy putting on their skin. I’ll admit it – I went around pretending to be Elizabeth Wakefield for a while. She was the less-flirtatious twin who liked to read and was the editor of the school paper, but still managed to have a lot of friends and a cute steady boyfriend. I envisioned her as a prettier and more well-liked version of myself, which gave me hope that perhaps I would blossom into a more popular person in high school. And who didn’t want to be as cool as the adventurous Nancy Drew? I kept pestering my mom to let me take judo lessons so that I could kick some bad guy butt, just like her friend George Fayne (another independent female, for the uneducated in our audience).

But there’s another type of series – the kind that likewise allows readers to inhabit a world more attractive then their own, but doesn’t exist in some kind of time warp. The characters age, change and even occasionally die. While Nancy Drew, Elizabeth Wakefield, and all their friends remained immortally frozen as eighteen-year-old-blonds, other characters graduate high school, go to college, get jobs, watch parents and godfathers and headmasters die, and even (shock!) get married and have kids. Kids would have been the death of the Nancy Drew series, unless our heroine could figure out how to hide herself in the trunk of a roadster with a baby strapped to her chest in a sling. Nancy Drew was never really about reality – but many of the series that later became my favorites don’t indulge their readers by freezing time. Even many contemporary series fiction featuring immortal characters such as centaurs, vampires and werewolves have started dealing more realistically with the concepts of aging. (Check out Bella's fear of growing older than Edward in the Twilight series...)

Nancy Drew was definitely my favorite series while I was growing up, but while the character will always remain amongst my most important role models, several more emotionally developed series have surpassed her franchise in my heart. Topping the list are: The Chronicles of Narnia, Anne of Green Gables, His Dark Materials and most importantly, Harry Potter. I appreciate the way that L.M. Montgomery and J.K. Rowling in particular depict the complexity of adolescent emotion and do not shy away from series topics that other YA authors have typically avoided.

Montgomery created a eccentric, dramatic and ultimately lovable young literature fanatic – and then followed her through high school, college, career, marriage and motherhood. While the publishing industry and Hollywood both seem to believe that life after marriage brings death to the narrative, Montgomery understood that marriage and family simply bring about new types of conflict and drama, including grief. Anne is confronted with choices about career as both a teacher and a writer, and deal with how those will work in conjunction with her marriage. She also must face the deaths of first Matthew and then Marilla – and while children’s literature is awfully fond of presenting us with orphan characters, it doesn’t usually like to depict the actual death and grieving process too often. I love the fact that Montgomery managed to write a series that doesn’t shy away from the realities of marriage and death, but still makes me constantly laugh out loud.

Likewise, Rowling’s Harry Potter is clever and funny, yet seriously confronts loss, death and the resulting grief. (This is, in fact, the subject on which I wrote my Master’s Thesis.) It may seem odd to label a fantasy series like Harry Potter as “more realistic” than so-called contemporary fiction, but in my mind, Rowling’s novels are far more emotionally genuine than anything produced by one of the many Carolyn Keenes and Francine Pascals.

I hesitate to say that this makes Montgomery’s and Rowling’s novels better than the Sweet Valley High Series or Nancy Drew (although I certainly think they’re better than Fear Street, hands down). Despite the fact that both types of series are written to entertain the reader, one is meant to lull the audience into a comfort zone so that we return again and again for the same kind of adventure. The other series boast more emotional complexity; novels like Anne and Harry likely have more to teach us and provide a more cathartic experience. In one, we rehearse our ideal lives (as a popular high school student or an amateur sleuth) while in another, we rehearse the realities of life that we are not yet prepared to face – loss, death and grief. Although I once believed that one purpose was higher than another, I think I am coming to see that both have value to all kinds of readers.

What are your thoughts on series fiction? What were your favorites growing up, and what are your favorites now? Please leave me a comment and/or a link to your post on a similar subject!

This post is inspired by the 30 Day Book Meme that I've been seeing on several other book blogs, but I've modified it somewhat. Here's the original meme, in case you'd like to participate:

Day 01 – The best book you read last year
Day 02 – A book that you’ve read more than 3 times
Day 03 – Your favorite series
Day 04 – Favorite book of your favorite series
Day 05 – A book that makes you happy
Day 06 – A book that makes you sad
Day 07 – Most underrated book
Day 08 – Most overrated book
Day 09 – A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving
Day 10 – Favorite classic book
Day 11 – A book you hated
Day 12 – A book you used to love but don’t anymore
Day 13 – Your favorite writer
Day 14 – Favorite book of your favorite writer
Day 15 – Favorite male character
Day 16 – Favorite female character
Day 17 – Favorite quote from your favorite book
Day 18 – A book that disappointed you
Day 19 – Favorite book turned into a movie
Day 20 – Favorite romance book
Day 21 – Favorite book from your childhood
Day 22 – Favorite book you own
Day 23 – A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven’t
Day 24 – A book that you wish more people would’ve read
Day 25 – A character who you can relate to the most
Day 26 – A book that changed your opinion about something
Day 27 – The most surprising plot twist or ending
Day 28 – Favorite title
Day 29 – A book everyone hated but you liked
Day 30 – Your favorite book of all time