#1B1T

I've recently put aside Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy (review of the second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire, coming soon!) to take part in One Book One Twitter, a worldwide book club that is currently reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods. A worldwide book club! What a great idea! I've always found it fun to read books at the same time as other people, and then talk about what we've read (which is why I loved being an English major in college). And anyway, American Gods has been on my to-read list for quite a while now, so I thought this would be a great opportunity to read it. Right now I'm halfway through chapter ten (this week's twitter discussions cover chapters nine through eleven), and I'm liking the book a lot so far.

The basic premise of the novel is this: throughout history, immigrants arriving in America have brought with them their various religious beliefs, and with these beliefs came gods. European gods, African gods, Caribbean gods, you name it. Unfortunately, as the immigrants assimilated, their belief in their traditional gods declined, leaving the diminished deities to fend for themselves. Now a storm is coming: a war between the Old World gods and the new gods of technology and progress. And our hero - an ex-con by the name of Shadow - is caught in the middle of it. 

Here's the discussion schedule, in case you would like to participate (the twitter hash-tag is #1B1T):

Week 4 : May 26-June 1
Discuss Chapters 9, 10, & 11

Week 5 : June 2-8
Discuss Chapters 12, & 13

Week 6 : June 9-15
Discuss Chapters 14, 15, & 16

Week 7 : June 16-22
Discuss Chapters 17, 18, & 19

Week 8 : June 23-30
Discuss Chapter 20 and Postscript

PS - Neil Gaiman is on twitter (@neilhimself) and has been participating in live question and answer sessions about the book. Awesome!

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO by Stieg Larsson

ISBN: 9781847245458 (UK)

Generally I don't read a lot of crime fiction. But once every couple of years I'll pick up mainstream thriller just for a change. When I was working in a book shop last Christmas, Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy caught my eye. Firstly because the titles sounded strange to me: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire, and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. When I looked into the books, I learned that they were translated from Swedish, and that the author had died unexpectedly shortly after submitting the finished manuscripts of all three novels to his publisher in 2004. This, along with the fact that the books were enormously popular, intrigued me enough to want to read them.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo tells the story of Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist from Stockholm who has just been convicted of libel for an exposé he authored about crooked captain of industry Hans-Erik Wennerström. Discredited and depressed, Blomkvist is about to step down from his position at Millennium, a magazine he co-founded, when he is contacted by aging industrialist Henrik Vanger. Vanger offers him a job in the secluded island town of Hedestad, writing a chronicle about the Vanger dynasty, and secretly investigating the 1966 murder of Henrik's teenage niece, Harriet.

Enter the girl with the dragon tattoo: Lisbeth Salander. She is 24, has no academic qualifications (though plenty of tattoos), and barely possesses the social skills to function in society. She also has a photographic memory and is the best researcher at Milton Security. Not to mention she's an elite hacker and can break into almost any network in the world. 

When Salander and Blomkvist are thrown together in the investigation of Harriet's disappearance, they find that the case isn't as cold as it first appeared to be. In fact, someone in the extensive Vanger clan is trying to foil their investigation, and that person happens to be a sadistic murderer.

Something I really enjoyed about this book was the simple, straightforward narrative style. It's written in short chunks, with the focus switching back and forth between characters, mainly Salander and Blomkvist. The attention to detail is sometimes so minute that it's amusing. Everything is identified according to brand name, and the specs of each computer are thoroughly related, from the size of the hard drive to the width of the screen. I was once told in creative writing class not to identify items by brand name. However, in this book, with Larsson's precise narrative style, it seems to work perfectly.

Another thing I liked: unlike some of the other crime novels that I've read, this book has strong, deep characters. The two main characters are seriously flawed, but that makes them all the more sympathetic. Salander especially comes across as a sympathetic character. She is tough and super intelligent, so she can take care of herself (using violence when necessary), but her social problems make her isolated, and an easy target for those in positions of authority. It's not made clear what Salander's disability is - she refuses to cooperate with any attempts to diagnose her - but Blomkvist speculates that it may be Asperger's Syndrome. I think that Larsson using an autistic character not only as a main character, but also as the story's heroine, is fantastic.

There were only two things I didn't like in the novel. One was a description of a rape, which I found disturbing. The other was an animal coming to harm, which I hate under any circumstances. Overall though, despite these two things, I liked the book. It's fast-paced, thrilling, and has the right amount of suspense to keep the reader hooked until the very end. If you're looking for a good summer vacation book, this could very well be it. 

Online Writing Resources

Over the years I've collected a few good grammar books, like The McGraw-Hill Handbook of English Grammar and Usage, and Strunk and White's classic The Elements of Style. But the source I find myself checking most often in my everyday writing life is Paul Brians' simple website, Common Errors in English Usage. What I like about this site is that it lists common errors alphabetically, making it easy to scroll through and find what you need quickly, whether it's checking the spelling of "mother lode" or looking up the difference between "discreet" and "discrete."

Another good online resource is Purdue University's Online Writing Lab, which has sections on grammar, punctuation, and academic writing. I use this one frequently as supplemental reading for my grammar class.

So, what's your favorite grammar/writing resource?

Grammar Girl

Sorry for the recent radio silence, Blogosphere, but there's been a lot going on lately and frankly I've been pretty exhausted.

Aside from a new job, one of the things on my plate right now is an online grammar class. It's part of a  copy-editing certificate I'm doing through the University of California. Apart from improving my grammar and editing skills, I'm hoping that the certificate will eventually help me to get a job in publishing.

Now, we never actually learned grammar in the California school system. We learned that a noun was a person, place, or thing; a verb was an action word; and an adjective was a describing word. That was pretty much the extent of it. My grasp of English grammar was good, but almost entirely instinctual, gained from reading a ridiculous amount of books at a young age. In fact, it wasn't until my senior year in college that I took a grammar course and began to learn about parts of speech in any real detail.

My question is, why? Why on earth are children not taught grammar in school? Judging from what I see on a daily basis, kids today are in desperate need of grammar lessons. When there are high school graduates who don't know the difference between "to" and "too," who use "your" and "you're" interchangeably, who have no clue about punctuation or capitalization, then there's something wrong with the system.

Can anyone shed some light on this? Why is PE mandatory while grammar, apparently, isn't worth our time?

WHITE TEETH by Zadie Smith

ISBN: 978-0140276336 (UK)

"'Keepers of the Eternal an Victorious Islamic Nation,' repeated Millat, impressed. 'That's a wicked name. It's got a wicked kung-fu kick-arse sound to it.'

Irie frowned. 'KEVIN?'

'We are aware,' said Hifan solemnly, pointing to the spot underneath the cupped flame where the initials were minutely embroidered, 'that we have an acronym problem' (page 295).

White Teeth, Zadie Smith's debut novel, is the last of her three published books that I've read. Of the other two, I picked up The Autograph Man in 2007 (my eco-criticism professor knew Zadie Smith at Harvard, and I was curious), and I read On Beauty last year when I stumbled upon the large print version of it at the little library at the foot of the road (the library is mainly patronized by elderly women, so most of the fiction is large print). 

Having now completed the Zadie Smith triumvirate, I feel I can sum up her work in one word: multiculturalism. But to add a few more words: multiracial, multinational, multifaith, and multigenerational families. Interracial couples with biracial children, either British or American. And another word: London. Having grown up in London, Smith writes the city with such intimate knowledge, such detail and love that you end up feeling like you grew up there too. And just one more word: humor. Lots of it.

White Teeth is the story of Archibald Jones, ordinary, bland, and predictable Englishman; and Samad Iqbal, a Bengali soldier who served with Archie in World War II. Samad and Archie are each other's best and only friends, both living in London, both working in dead-end jobs, both with wives over twenty years younger than them, and both with children they don't understand. Archie's wife is Clara, a Jamaican immigrant and recovering Jehovah's Witness. Samad's wife Alsana is a fiery and opinionated Bengali, chosen for him by an agreement between their families. Archie and Clara have a daughter, Irie, an awkward, intelligent girl who often acts as the voice of reason for the other characters in the book. Samad and Alsana have identical twin boys, Magid who wears neat button-down shirts, and Millat, who is a born hell-raiser. 

When the white middle class family of one of their classmates decides to mentor Irie and the two Iqbal boys, the three families are thrown into chaos as race, class, religion, science and morals collide, with far-reaching and unpredictable consequences. 

I have to say that, while it took me a while to get into this novel, in the end I really enjoyed it. The book spans three to four different generations of the different families, and there is a lot of backstory to cover. Some of the sections, such as those describing Archie's and Samad's experiences during the war, I found a bit tedious. Others, especially those told from Irie's point of view, I liked much more. I did like the way that all of the threads of plot come together in the end, including things from earlier in the book that I had forgotten about. The foreshadowing is subtle and really well done. There are also a lot of themes tying the different strands of the story together; among them: fate and chance, fundamentalism, and nature versus nurture. And then there is the motif of teeth: Clara's are knocked out, Irie's are uneven, and the Iqbal twins' are perfect. And always in the background there is that Western ideal of beauty and success: straight, gleaming white teeth.

Although Zadie Smith writes in a style that most creative writing instructors would discourage (extra words everywhere, informal tone, elegant variation), it seems to work for her, and it gives her novels a truly original feel. 

So, if you want something different from most mainstream novels, or you like character-based, multicultural stories and/or sprawling family yarns, you might want to give this book a try.

SPIRITED AWAY by Hayao Miyazaki

Last weekend Big Chimp and I watched the coolest movie. Why bring this up on a book blog? Well, this particular film was recommended to us as an example of good storytelling by our creative writing professor a couple of years back. Of course, the same professor recommended that we study Mikhail Bakhtin's literary theories, so he doesn't have the greatest track record (I love literature, but chronotopes this and unfinalizability that, yawn).

Anyway, the film was Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away. I've never really watched anime before, so I didn't quite know what to expect, but wow it was good! I'm not a huge Disney fan (aside from The Lion King and Mulan, which are awesome films), so it was refreshing to see a cartoon that didn't involve a formulaic plot peppered with gender stereotypes randomly bursting into song (Disney did handle the English dubbing and US release of Spirited Away, but they stayed true to the original version, making only a few minor adjustments for the sake of clarification for Western audiences).


The film tells the story of ten year-old Chihiro, who is upset that she has to move to a new area away from all of her friends. The movie opens with Chihiro and her parents in the car on the way to their new house. Her father misses the turn off, and they end up on a dirt road in the middle of the woods. When the family decides to explore a strange-looking tunnel, they find what appears to be an abandoned amusement park, but is actually a spirit town whose chief attraction is a bathhouse for the spirits. When her parents are imprisoned by the sinister witch, Yubaba, Chihiro must work with a motley band of spirits and humans to gain freedom for her family.


Visually, the animation is beautiful. It feels like the creators have really taken the time to make it look nice, with vibrant colors and intricate details. We watched the English dubbed version, which sounded fine, though hardcore anime fans tend to prefer the original Japanese with subtitles. The plot is wonderfully bizarre, and at points a bit unsettling (I found myself exclaiming "What the f---?!" at regular intervals, but in a good way). I wish I had an imagination like Hayao Miyazaki's. I really do.


See this film! That's all I can say. You won't be disappointed.

Career choices for English majors

I had this epiphany during my first quarter of college. It's the only time in my life I can remember having an honest-to-God epiphany. The thing is, I had always loved reading and writing. From the day my sister taught me to read when I was five, I read everything I could get my hands on. I wrote poems in my journal when I was little, and was always making up stories in my head. I even had my first attempt at novel-writing at the age of 12 (it was about giant, super-intelligent anthropomorphic rats from outer space). I took AP English and got a high score on the test. I did very well on the verbal part of the SATs. And yet, someone had told me that English wasn't a real major; that I really should do a useful, non-humanities subject. So I entered college as a pre-biology major.

Back to the epiphany: it happened in my first quarter of introductory chemistry. There was the professor: an ancient man with a speech impediment, a southern accent, and a problematic rotator cuff. And he had tied a pair of scissors to a string and was swinging them wildly over his head as students in the front row ducked nervously (it was a practical demonstration of how electrons circle around the protons and neutrons of an atom). And that's when it occurred to me: there were people sitting in classrooms in other parts of the campus, discussing literature. Reading and analyzing novels and poetry! I felt like I needed to run out of the lecture hall. I've never had such a strong feeling of being in the wrong place.

I called a family member right after I got the papers signed that made me officially an English major. I felt like a great weight had been lifted from me. "Ohhh," came the voice at the other end of the line "but you can't do anything with an English major."

I think the reason people are skeptical  about the English major (and humanities majors in general) is that there's this old notion floating around that says the only thing someone can do with a degree in English is become an English teacher. This can be really frustrating if, like me, you majored in English but have no desire to become a teacher. I mean, English teachers are great, brave people. I have a friend who is an English teacher, and several other friends who are training to become teachers. That being said, it's just not for me. So it was always annoying when in college I encountered people who gave me a concerned, confused look when I told them that, despite studying literature, I had no plans to go into teaching. Sometimes they would even try to persuade me into being sensible. "You could teach until you write your first best-seller," a friend's well-meaning but rather patronizing father once suggested.

This bothered me so much that I discussed it with my (amazingly awesome) Early Modern Literature professor during my senior year. She told me that the reason people have the idea that you can't do anything with an English major is that the English major doesn't prepare you for a specific type of job, like engineering or architecture does. What it does do is give you the basic skills for a wide range of different careers; skills like communication, creativity, research, and analysis. It's not a vocational degree, and it is very much what you make of it.

So, in the spirit of breaking through myths about English literature students, here is a list of a few of the jobs suitable for English graduates, courtesy of prospects.co.uk. Some of these require specialized skills, which is why it's a good idea to do internships while you're still in college or after you graduate, and to take some practical classes to learn things like software programs.

(One of the careers missing from this list is lawyer. Students who take an English degree tend to earn among the highest scores on the LSAT and the best grades in law school, along with philosophy, history, economics, and political science graduates).

• Advertising account executive - acts as a link between three to four client accounts and an advertising agency and has overall responsibility for the smooth running of a campaign; coordinates the activities of the advertising and administrative teams.
• Advertising copywriter - usually works in a creative partnership with an art director to conceive, develop and produce effective advertisements. Copywriters are usually involved with creating the slogans, messages and straplines and may also have a role in the production process of a campaign.
• Arts administrator - provides administrative support for a wide range of arts and cultural organisations.
• Academic librarian, Information officer, Records manager - responsible for the acquisition, organisation and dissemination of information and materials within the library system or information unit.
• Charity officer - has responsibility for aspects of marketing, public relations, organising events, finance.
• Editorial assistant - assists senior editorial staff in the administration of the commissioning, planning and production of books, journals and magazines. This role is a recognised starting point for editorial and publishing careers.
• English as a foreign language teacher/English as a second language teacher - teaches English to international students either in the UK or overseas.
• Lexicographer - writes, compiles and edits dictionaries, monitors and records uses of language and uses databases to interrogate a wide range of evidence. Lexicographers consider both the meaning and usages of words and compile definitions in a structured manner.
• Marketing executive - involved in business development, market research, planning, product development, pricing, packaging, advertising, PR and sales. Marketing executives may also be known as marketing assistants or coordinators
• Newspaper journalist- researches and writes stories for publication in local, regional and national press.
• Press officer - acts as the official media contact for a specific public or private organisation, handling all media interest.
• Primary school teacher and Secondary school teacher - teaches in state and independent schools, sixth form and further education (FE) colleges.
• Programme researcher, broadcasting/film/video - supports the production team, collects, verifies and prepares information for film, television and radio productions. This can be seen as apprenticeship for a production role.
• Public relations officer - uses all forms of media and communication to build, maintain and manage the reputation of companies and organisations.
• Runner, broadcasting/film/video - fetches, carries and does any small jobs needed for the production department of a film, video or television company. This is an entry-level role.
•  Writer - may write in a number of wide and varied forms including prose, poetry and material for the theatre, screen and radio and reviews. Most writers work freelance and are self-employed.