Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Banned Books Week!!

Woohoo! One of the best weeks of the entire year in my opinion...in the book world anyway...BANNED BOOK WEEK!  It's a great week because we celebrate some of the most amazing literary works of all time who have, at some point in their book lives, offended someone somewhere, proving that even the most amazing of art always offends someone.

Star Line has a great display table this week with some of my favorite books, and my coworker and I quite enjoyed looking up why some of these beloved books were banned in the first place. Note: Banned Books Week also displays the stupidity of some folks. Here are some of my favorite reasons books have been banned --

Brown Bear Brown Bear by Eric Carle: Mistaken for a communist writer
Atonement by Ian McEwan: bad grammar
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson: Witchcraft and lack of parental supervision
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl: Depressing and sexual content
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: Vulgar language and conflicting values
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak: Psychologically traumatizing
And of course, my personal favorite Harry Potter for it's witchcraft and wizardry nonsense. Aka FUN

Some of my favorite books, apart from Harry Potter, are on the Banned Books list: Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, Stephen Chbosky's Perks of Being a Wallflower, Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor and Park, Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, Lois Lowry's The Giver. I'm starting to think that being on the Banned Books List is actually THE list to be on. I'd be honored to be found among names like these, writers who challenge the world around them, who DARE to have an imagination.

So what Banned Book are you reading this week?

Happy Illicit Reading,
       HER 

Friday, September 15, 2017

Adventures of a Part Time Bookselling Author

Since I have begun my new part time job at one of my favorite places on the planet, Star Line Books, I decided I'll start a new monthly post about my adventures in bookselling, which I love but has also showed me how not well read I am! There are so many books in the world...and this is a small bookstore!

Today, I had the tremendous pleasure of selling books for YA author Jeff Zentner (The Serpent King and Goodbye Days) at Heritage High School in Ringgold, Georgia. First off, that's a beautiful school! Very impressed. And secondly, Rhonda, one of their media specialists aka librarians, is one of the most charming people I've ever met! Her passion for her creative writing club and book club was so inspiring! I always wished I'd had a creative writing community in high school, which is partially what led me to starting Chattanooga Writer's Society in college. But Rhonda is just so encouraging of her students' passions and did a fantastic job of organizing Jeff's event.

In the morning, the creative writing and book clubs met in Media Center (library) for a dialogue workshop with Jeff, who mesmerized all the students in a matter of maybe two minutes flat. He gave some great tips on writing dialogue, which I took thorough notes on.
       I once thought I was a good dialogue writer. My lovely editor, in the kindest way possible, told                        me that was not the case :) 
  • Keep your dialogue lines short
  • Don't get fancy with dialogue tags (none of this "he said languorously") 
  • Keep your author mind out of their conversation 
  • Don't try to exactly copy human conversations. They're too messy. 
After 15 minutes to write, Jeff read some of the students' dialogue with them! Such fun! Then the selling and signing frenzy began! I was surprised how many students bought books to get signed, but of course, that's not the only thing they asked Jeff to sign. Because, in case you didn't know, authors are rockstars to readers, nowadays. T-shirts were signed, a cast, backpacks, pieces of paper, but what really topped the cake was the signing of a forehead. That's right. I guess the boy just wanted to soak up Jeff's creative genius with his signature. And I thought my crowning moment was signing a shirt! 

Before the larger presentation in front of more classes in the auditorium, the club students presented Jeff with a "staff" and a club t-shirt signed by all of them! I mean, how freaking cool! Of course, his talk was great. The students asked some wonderful questions than they just got into the silliness of "what's your favorite color, dogs or cats, hogwartz house (which is an important question)." And all that jazz. I'm so very honored that I got to be apart of that event today. I've never been to a school author event that was so absolutely wonderful! Super duper high five to Ms. Rhonda and Heritage High!