World Lit Wednesday...

...will be back next week. I'm reading Miss Chopsticks by Xinran (China), and am looking forward to sharing my thoughts on it with you, as I am already liking it a lot.

In the meantime, here is a mixed bag of links to some interesting writerly bog posts I've read recently:

• A guest post about feminism in YA by Stephanie Su over on Kody Keplinger's blog.
• Kiersten White's thoughts on how it feels to be a writer.
• Rachelle Gardner's very helpful post "What the Fiction Editor Looks For" Part One and Part Two.
• And a post from teacher John T Spencer on how schools may be killing the joy of writing in kids (via my super cool English teacher/blogger friend Jeff)

Enjoy! I'll be back at the end of the week. Now I'm going to dive back into my rewrite of chapter three of Water Magic, in which karate meets Shakespeare meets runaway dog meets what's-in-this-abandoned-house-anyway meets oh-crap-it's-the-entrance-to-a-parallel-world-with-faeries-and-dragons-and-magical-trees. And don't get me started on the binturong.

World Lit Wednesday: BY NIGHT IN CHILE by Roberto Bolaño

ISBN: 9780099459392 [UK]

Continent: South America

Country: Chile

Title: By Night in Chile

Author: Roberto Bolaño

First published in: 2000

"...[H]e said: Pablo's going to win the Nobel Prize. And he said it as if he were sobbing in the middle of an ashen field. And he said: America is going to change. And he said: Chile is going to change. And then his jawbone hung out of joint, but still he said: I won't live to see it" (p. 50).

My first South American novel for the Global Reading Challenge is By Night in Chile by Chilean author Roberto Bolaño. Taking place over the course of one night, the novel follows the wandering thoughts of Father Sebastian Urrutia Lacroix, a priest and literary critic who is approaching the end of his life.

Gay penguins are okay with me: banned and challenged books of 2010

Something with which to supplement your reading lists (click the link to the full article to fully grasp the ridiculousness):

The ALA's top 10 most frequently challenged books of 2010
Source: The Guardian, 12 April 2011

1. And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
Reasons: Homosexuality, religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group

2. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Reasons: Offensive language, racism, sex education, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, violence

3. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Reasons: Insensitivity, offensive language, racism, sexually explicit

4. Crank by Ellen Hopkins
Reasons: Drugs, offensive language, sexually explicit

5. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Reasons: Sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, violence

6. Lush by Natasha Friend
Reasons: Drugs, offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

7. What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones
Reasons: Sexism, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

8. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America by Barbara Ehrenreich
Reasons: Drugs, inaccurate, offensive language, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint

9. Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology edited by Amy Sonnie
Reasons: Homosexuality, sexually explicit

10. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Reasons: Religious viewpoint, violence

I pretty much love numbers two, three, five, and eight. I've also reserved And Tango Makes Three at my local library, and will be reviewing it on this blog when it comes in.

So what about you? Did any of your favorites make the list?

(And can someone please explain to me in the comments how The Hunger Games is sexually explicit? I could have sworn there was no sex in that book. Just kids killing each other.)

Kapow! 2011

Before I forget, some photos from the first ever Kapow! Comic Con, held in London last weekend:

It was a nice event, if a bit small (okay, really small, especially compared to San Diego Comic-Con). The up-side of the convention being tiny was that there were much shorter lines (or queues, if you're British). And the food at the restaurant was super yummy. And I got lots of compliments on my Totoro hat (and one "What's your hat supposed to be?" from a dude working in the restaurant). My only complaint is that the aisles between the booths weren't wide enough, so I felt like I was constantly in people's way when I stopped to look at something. Other than that, it was a lot of fun.

World Lit Wednesday: THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins

ISBN: 9781407109084 [UK]

Continent: North America in the post-apocalyptic dystopian future

Country: Panem

Title: The Hunger Games

Author: Suzanne Collins

"I can't go down without a fight. Only I keep wishing I could think of a way to...to show the Capitol they don't own me. That I'm more than just a piece in their Games" (Peeta, page 172).

The idea of the Global Reading Challenge is to read books from every continent, but since there aren't many books to come out of the frozen wastelands of Antarctica, for the "seventh continent" you get to choose your own genre: historical, sci fi, nautical, fantasy, or whatever. I've chosen alternate realities, which is what brought me to Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games. And wow, I'm glad it did.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen is from District 12, the poorest of Panem's districts, located in what was once Appalachia. Life is tough, and it's only Katniss's illegal hunting that keeps her little family from starvation. But things get even tougher when Katniss ends up as a tribute in the Hunger Games, the annual televised competition in which twenty-four kids--a boy and a girl from each district--fight to the death. There can only be one winner. 

Weekend Writing Craft: Do you vary elegantly? Or, a phone is a phone

In middle school, most people learn that repetition in writing is bad. Instead of using the same word over and over, you should make use of some good, old-fashioned synonyms, right? Right!

Or...is it?

What elegant variation is

It wasn't until I was doing my MA in creative writing that I discovered the evils of elegant variation--referring to something lots of different ways in the same scene. For example:

World Lit Wednesday: SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS by Arthur Ransome

ISBN: 9780099503910 [UK]

Continent: Europe

Country: United Kingdom

Title: Swallows and Amazons

Author: Arthur Ransome

First published in: 1930

Swallows and Amazons is a classic British children's novel, one that I hadn't heard of before I moved to the UK. The first time I heard about the novel was when I was working in a book shop over the holiday season a couple of years ago. A customer asked where he could find the book, and proceeded to give me a very funny look indeed when he realized I hadn't heard if it (almost as funny as the look I got when I told another customer that I didn't know what a "Filofax" was--FYI, it's a type of personal organizer).

Swallows and Amazons takes place in Britain's Lake District in August 1929, and follows the adventures of a group of children who are staying at a cottage beside a lake during their summer vacation. The four siblings--John, Susan, Titty, and Roger--are allowed to sail their little boat, the Swallow, to a deserted island where they camp, sail, and have adventures. Their island life is every kid's dream: they sleep in tents, cook over a fire, and go swimming and exploring every day. In the course of their adventures, they meet the curmudgeonly Captain Flint, who lives on a houseboat, and his two nieces, Nancy and Peggy, fierce pirates who sail about causing mischief in their boat, the Amazon.