The Silver Linings Playbook

I have a love-hate relationship with first person narratives. I first realized this when I read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I loved the premise and the characters but the way it was written detracted from the story. Instead of being able to see the various ways the districts were revolting or even how the 'game' worked and what President Snow was up to, you only got to see and hear Katniss's story. While she's an amazing character, I can't say that it helped the book. Instead the movie flushed out those details.
Back to the point,  I don't think writing in first person is the easy or lazy way out. I find it limits the way a story is being told, and it keeps facts and other events away from the reader. Some stories require the first person, because it's a personal story. But I firmly believe not every story should be written in this format.
I mean... Can you imagine reading Harry Potter as a first person narrative?
This is not to say a first person narrative severely injures a good story either, simply by the way it is written. It can be a major pitfall, but it can be made up in other ways. Incorporating letters, having an interesting narrator, or even just creating an interesting atmosphere adds to the book, which is why I loved The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye. The voices within those books are so unique and the stories they told were their own. I'd like to believe that's why their considered classics, and every 11th grader has to read these book in the English classes. The Silver Linings Playbook does exactly what The Great Gatsby did and The Catcher in the Rye.

At this point I'm assuming everyone knows the general idea of this story, due to its movie adaptation being nominated for several awards and winning many, but either way...
The main character, Pat Peoples, believes his life is a movie created by God. He believes that his life's silver lining is to be reunited with his wife, who has left him. After coming back from his stay at a mental institution and he is forced to move back in with his parents. Since coming back, he has no memories of why he was at the institution and for what reason. To win his wife, Nikki, back, Pat decides to become a better person by practicing being kind instead of right. This includes all facets of his life including his physical appearance and his knowledge of literature. Pat strikes up a deal with a woman named Tiffany, in which he would be her dance partner for a competition in order to reconnect with his wife.
This is the plot of the movie and the book, but the book explores the confusion of a mental disorder. This is what I really enjoyed about the story. I loved the way it was told, and it flowed really well. It was written in a way that seemed very natural and understandable. It wasn't heavily descriptive but it definitely wasn't the case of a self-insert story. The characters are incredibly believable, as our their motivations and desires. The book does portray some characters not as likable as some others, unlike the movie.
Some of the themes that are present in the book are not in the movie either, but I believe it would have been hard to portray that. The Peoples' family ties are definitely more intriguing, and the dynamic is brilliant. There's a lot of secrets and hidden stuff going on that Quick was able to reveal in the end. Unlike most stories where there is a major twist in the story, you can kind of see what is going to happen. (If you've seen the movie, the twist is the memory Pat describes within the first 30 minutes of it.) But reading it in Pat's voice and just understanding his train of thought will make you as anxious while reading it.
I can definitely say this is one of my favorite books I've read. It's different and funny but not overwhelmingly so. I love the positive message of the story even if not everyone got their happily ever after.
One favorite passage:

“Why is this dance competition so important to you?” Cliff asks me. I look up at the sun painted on the ceiling of his office and smile.
“What?” he says.
“The dancing lets me be that,” I say, and point up. Cliff’s eyes follow my finger. “It lets you be the sun?”  
“Yes,” I say, and smile again at Cliff, because I really like being the sun, exactly what allows clouds to have a silver lining.

Bossypants

Disclaimer: I completely love everything Tina Fey has done and love it blindly. So rather than this being a "What a great book!" and thoughtful this will unfortunately sound like a fangirl love letter to Tina Fey. I'm not sorry.

After reading The Fault in our Stars, I needed something that was hilarious because that book broke my feelings. (If you're interested in how it broke my feelings, read here!) I found that Bossypants became more than just a memoir and was inspirational, silly, incredibly quotable, and very relatable.

"To say I’m a troll, when you have never even seen me guard a bridge, is patently unfair."

I've always been told that someone's a great writer if you can hear their voice through their writing.   Reading her book, you can definitely hear Tina Fey in it. Best example? Read the chapter "The Secrets of Mommy's Beauty" and tell me you don't hear Tina Fey reading it in your head. The most prevalent theme in her book is about her job as a writer. She starts from how she worked at a desk job and poured all her money into improv classes, and builds upon that. But not linearly, she breaks it up between her home life, stories about her family, and random Q&A's with the internet. It's the way she can change the topic is great, and something I've always admired in watching 30 Rock.

"‘The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30.’ This is something Lorne has said often about Saturday Night Live, but I think it’s a great lesson about not being too precious about your writing. You have to try your hardest to be at the top of your game and improve every joke you can until the last possible second, and then you have to let it go."

Speaking of 30 Rock, her chapter about the show will make you love it even more. She introduces the writers of 30 Rock and a little bit of their background, and you can see some of the similarities with the ones shown in the show. After reading Bossypants, I've noticed that 30 Rock has a very improv-y feeling. The jokes per scene, sight gags, and how the characters play off of each other does seem very SNL-ish, but not overtly so.

“One afternoon a girl walked by in a bikini and my cousin Janet scoffed, “Look at the hips on her.” I panicked. What about the hips? Were they too big? Too small? What were my hips? I didn’t know hips could be a problem. I thought there was just fat or skinny. This was how I found out that there are an infinite number of things that can be “incorrect” on a woman’s body.”

And like a lot of Tina Fey's works, there's a lot about being a feminist and views on women. Throughout her chapters dedicated to improve, her stint on SNL, and working on 30 Rock, she talks about women and their role in the media. How women aren't seen as funny, getting women to turn on each other, etc. We've all seen this, especially if you've seen Mean Girls. (Which surprisingly was not mentioned at all during this book. Please for book 2?) But some of the most inspirational bits about her view of women was that it's all encompassing. It's okay to be progressive and work 70+ hours per week. She wrote some real truths about how it's okay to cry, how you shouldn't be mean to people to get things to happen your way, among other things. As someone who likes to be nice to people and cheery, that was so good to read because so often I come across people who seem to just want to ruin my mood. 

Anyway, other little tidbits I noticed/want to mention:

• The fact that Tina Fey seems to swear in every other sentence was actually great. She used it in a way to be funny, and not annoying. Although, I can see that putting some people off. 
• As I mentioned before, Fey didn't mention Mean Girls. Which is strange because that's what made me hear of her first. I mean I don't know what she could have written about, but I'd love to hear what she thought about writing that movie and how big of an influence it's had on us. 
• "Don’t concern yourself with fashion; stick to simple pieces that flatter your body type. By nineteen, I had found my look. Oversize T-shirts, bike shorts, and wrestling shoes. To prevent the silhouette from being too baggy, I would cinch it at the waist with my fanny pack. I was pretty sure I would wear this look forever. The shirts allowed me to express myself with cool sayings like “There’s No Crying in Baseball” and “Universität Heidelberg,” the bike shorts showed off my muscular legs, and the fanny pack held all my trolley tokens. I was nailing it on a daily basis. Find something like this for yourself as soon as possible.” -- One of my favorite passages ever actually.
• Tina Fey can't drive and that makes me feel okay. She went out of her way to mention this, and I figure if she's successful in life without a driver's license, than so can I. (Who's thinking bad logic? Anyone?)

Anyway that's just about it. Sorry for the word vomit. (This might be my longest entry yet? Oh man) The next book I'll probably talk about is going to be The Silver Linings Playbook. I'm almost done with it actually. (On the last 100 pages.) So yay! :)

The Fault in Our Stars

So I'm starting the summer strong-- got one of my books I wanted to read for a long time off my list. I started with The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.

Usually I don't go for the romance genre-- at least not after I read The Twilight Saga and felt my brain turn into mush. I just found written romances a bit too stereotypical, and often failing to deliver the emotions that I really look forward to when I think of a love story.
In the past, I've always gone for the mystery of the fantasy world, or delving into fictions about a dystopian future. Usually romances written in these stories are not completely forced upon the reader, and they seem to come off a little more naturally. (And if I don't care about it, it's not what I have to focus on.)  I'm also quite obsessed with classic books like The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye because I absolutely adore the hidden meanings the authors snuck into their books. When I heard of The Fault in Our Stars, I really thought it was just going to be another YA novel. I was pleasantly surprised.
Going into The Fault in Our Stars, I found the beginning a bit dull. Typical girl who can't see how beautiful she is, and her cancer is the backdrop of the story. Enter cute boy with a flaw, and off we go. There's the rejection, the "I love you's" and the inevitable relationship.
Once you realize you've reached a happy conclusive ending, you still realize there's 100 pages left. And within those last 100 pages, John Green takes the story and creates something wonderful. There's little lines, and moments in the story that I didn't pay attention to much when I started it. But the little lines and the moments, they build up. There's foreshadowings, hidden meanings, little throwaways that give you a satisfying story.
Well done, John Green.

Little things I noticed/want to mention:

• Amsterdam and the way John Green describes it makes me want to go there. There's a lot of meaning behind the place, and that I thought was incredibly clever. 
• I was slightly annoyed by the "Okay?" "Okay." bit throughout the book. Guess I'm not too much of a mushy romance person. 
• I'm glad Green acknowledges the promise made between the writer and the reader. So many authors these days refuse to acknowledge that pact.
• If you end up reading the book, and you're still feeling a bit underwhelmed, I would suggest reading John Green's FAQ about the book. You'll see some genius things that John Green snuck into the book, and you'll appreciate it more.