Diary of a Word Nerd

Enter the Fantastic World of The Night Circus

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Julia Tomiak / 6 Comments

Chocolate mice. Cinnamon pastries. A cloud maze to explore. These are only some of the exciting treats waiting for you in The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern. After reading the sober, but worthwhile, Unbroken, I couldn’t wait to devour every fantastical page of Morgenstern’s wonderful story. Great for reading, very bad for getting adequate rest!

Here’s the premise: near the turn of the 20^thcentury, two young magicians, Celia and Marco, are chosen by their masters to compete in a challenge staged at The Night Circus. At the onset, Celia and Marco don’t know the rules of the game, but as “play” progresses, they realize two important things. First, many people’s lives have been affected by their challenge, and, second, they have fallen in love. Unfortunately, they do not know until it is almost too late that the game must end with only one survivor.

Morgenstern’s narrative jumps around in time, which reminded me of The Time Traveler’s Wife, another favorite of mine. It’s different and a little confusing, but mirrors the disorientation visitors feel when they enter The Night Circus. Instead of presenting acts to seated observers, The Night Circus invites patrons to wander the concentric paths around its tents, allowing them to choose what they would like to see, yet at the same time manipulating their perceptions.

Like those patrons, we as readers see many different perspectives on the circus and the game, and Morgenstern invites us to determine what is real and who to trust. Ironically, everything in The Night Circus, from the costumes to the tents to the food, is either black or white, suggesting simplicity and clarity. Yet, in this color scheme, the circus achieves its biggest illusion.

The Night Circuscloses with an interesting commentary on the nature of stories. A character complains that modern tales no longer have clear winners and losers, or heroes and villains. The notions of good and evil have evolved into a complicated web that readers cannot easily untangle. Ultimately, truth is determined by perspective.

Do you agree? Have stories in modern literature gotten more complicated, or can we still find and enjoy straightforward tales of good versus evil? Does the much loved Harry Potter series fit neatly into the format of good versus evil, or does it allow for some gray? (think Professor Snape)

I enjoy a book that challenges me to think, even if I have to flip back and forth between pages and reread certain passages to pick up important clues. (Note: Do NOT read this on an eReader!) This book has so much fun and mystery, I would like to read it again. It’s an excellent example of a novel that uses setting to compliment its plot.

Please click on the comments button below to add your thoughts about The Night Circus or the nature of stories. Thanks for stopping by!

PS: For our book club meeting, I made these delicious strawberries that follow the color scheme of The Night Circus. Here’s the recipe for Tuxedoed Strawberries. Special thanks to Crystal for helping me brainstorm the idea!

Julia

How to encourage reading

Honoring National Poetry Month

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Julia Tomiak / 13 Comments

In last week’s post, I tried to get you in touch with your inner poet by sharing some great works of poetry to read. This week, I’m going to encourage you to write some.

Breathe. It’ll be okay. In fact, I hope it will be fun. If my 10 year old daughter can do it, surely you can at least try. You don’t even have to show anybody (but I’d love it if you did, especially here.)

The poems I cited in my last post were quite long: 12 lines of iambic pentameter with a specific pattern of rhyme. That’s a sonnet for you. Today, since we’re thinking about actually creating our own poetry, let’s try a shorter form. How about Haiku?

Modern Haiku started in the late 19th century with Masaoka Shiki, but the form has deep spiritual and cultural roots in its home country, Japan. Various rules and forms have existed over the years, and in it’s most basic structure, Haiku is deceptively simple. Three lines, no rhymes, but a syllable requirement: 5, 7, 5. It should also have a “cutting” component, a sense that there are two parts to the poem with a clear splitting point. Traditional Haiku often uses nature as a muse, but poets can focus on any theme. (This brief description does not address all of the subtleties of the form; for more information see haiku.com or Haiku for people)

Seventeen syllables. Now, that’s not a whole lot of space to work with, so you have to choose your words carefully. And yet, what a great exercise- shouldn’t we be doing that all of the time, anyway?

I love my daughter’s fourth grade science teacher, Mrs. Susan Jones. When the class studied plants, they didn’t just read about them in a textbook. They went outside to the school garden and dug some up. Then they did leaf rubbings. Finally, they wrote poems about the leaves- for science class! Cross – curriculum instruction is such a beautiful thing.

This January, as the class studied weather, Mrs. Jones invited her students to write Haiku poetry about winter. And here’s what my daughter came up with:

In winter snow falls

To form a polar bear’s fur

So penguins can play.

Now, it’s our turn. I’m not a poet, nor have I ever taken poetry writing classes, but this is how I suggest starting:

· Think of a topic – weather, seasons, a specific emotional event

· Brainstorm words about that topic, especially lots of verbs and adjectives

· Link a few of those words together in phrases that fit the syllable structure for each line

Don’t laugh, here’s my attempt:

I empty myself;

Precious head against my chest

Fills me with peace.

Now, your turn! Let the words flow and don’t allow that critical voice to stifle your creativity. Also don’t be afraid to share your wonderful poems with us here. I can’t wait!

Note: those sweet baby fingers are now almost six years old. Turned in kindergarten registration forms today. *Sigh*

Julia

How to encourage reading

Exposing My Family to National Poetry Month!

Posted on April 13, 2012 by Julia Tomiak / 12 Comments

Poetry.

Does this word make you smile, or cringe?

Word nerds should love poetry. It’s concentrated language, without all of the articles and prepositions to interrupt the flow. With poetry we hear the rhythms, the musical quality of words. Remember iambic pentameter?

My husband does not share my enthusiasm for poetry. During college, I read him profound lines of Keats or Wordsworth, hoping to foster some interest. Invariably, he wrinkled his brow, shook his head, and went back to memorizing the structure of Benzene rings.

Nevertheless, I suggested that our wedding ceremony include a poem. I knew the perfect piece: Shakespeare, Sonnet 116, the one I’d memorized for class:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O, no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

The enduring power of love. Perfect, right? My betrothed did not think so. “Nobodywill understand it,” he argued. So, I went with the more modern, less cryptic, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet 43:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Fortunately, I’ve had better influence over my children. When I pull out Julie Andrews’ Collection of Poems, Songs, and Lullabiesat bedtime, they cheer. (My husband leaves the room.) Andrews gathered a wonderful and varied collection of poetry, including pieces from Shakespeare to Silverstein, Dickens to Dickenson. She grouped the poems by categories like “Growing Up”, “Talk to the Animals,” and “Accentuate the Positive.” There are short and funny selections mixed with longer, more thoughtful verse.

The current favorite: a fun little poem called I Didn’t Eat Your Ice Cream, by Jack Prelutsky. And we all chuckle at a good Shel Silverstein.

I like it best when the kids read poems to me. Reading poetry aloud forces them to find the right rhythms, the places to pause and add emphasis. Frequently when reading prose aloud, they rush and skip words. But with a poem, if they miss a word, it ruins the rhythm, which naturally cues them to go back and try again. (And I don’t have to nag…)

I’m pulling out the poetry more these days in honor of National Poetry Month. The American Academy of Poets established the tradition in 1996 to celebrate poetry and its importance in our culture. At www.poets.orgyou can find resources and programs, or sign up to receive one poem each day in April!

Hopefully sharing poetry with my kids will help them enjoy reading it, even if it’s not April. Better yet, they might feel inspired to WRITE some… I think it’s working on my daughter… more on that next week.

Do you have a favorite poem or book of poems to recommend? Do you remember reading poems as a child? Please share in the comments below.

My favorite poem from childhood: Jimmy Jet and his T.V. Set by Shel Silverstein. I had to memorize it and recite it in sixth grade, in front of a video camera! Yikes!

Improving Vocabulary with The Night Circus

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Julia Tomiak / 7 Comments

I’m currently reading Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, a magical read with dark, mysterious undertones. It’s giving me plenty of words to add to my vocabulary list.

A sign that hangs at the gates of the Night Circus reads:

Gates Open at Nightfall and Close at Dawn

Trespassers will be exsanguinated

Doesn’t exsanguinated send a chill down your spine? It should. It means: to drain of blood. Creepy, right? Would definitely keep me out of the Night Circus. Here’s all the info:

exsanguinated: \ek(s)-‘san-gwə-nāt\ verb, from the Latin ex + sanguine- blood

My years in health care (as a P.T.) gave me a clue to this one- I knew sanguine referred to blood, and with the “ex” in front, it couldn’t be good.

To balance the dark themes, The Night Circus also offers plenty of extraordinary, magical fun, including cloud mazes and wishing trees. Characters think and talk a lot about their ability to alter perception and see into the future or the past.

After one performer in the circus gives birth to twins, a fellow performer announces that the twins’ hair, bright red, is an auspicious color. Of course it is! (If you can’t tell from my profile pic, I’m a red head.)

Auspicious: \o-‘spish-əs\ adj, from the Latin auspic= diviner by birds (avis- bird + specere- to look)
Affording a favorable sign, propitious

I’m curious about how we got from bird watching to predicting favorability. Word etymology is so fun!

Word Nerd Workout: Try using one of the new words in a sentence. I’m going to stay away from blood.

The warm, clear weather at our first stop marked an auspicious beginning to the trip.

Now it’s your turn; click on the comments to flex your word nerd muscles. Remember, if you don’t use ‘em, you’ll lose ‘em.

Review: I was listening to “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me”, the NPR news quiz, and one of the panel members used the word mellifluous. Can you remember what that means? If not, check the vocab page.

Julia

How to encourage reading

What Makes a Great Character: Katniss Everdeen

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Julia Tomiak / 7 Comments

I’m a people person. I enjoy striking up a conversation with a shopper behind me at the Walmart check-out. Or swapping fun and useful tweets with people in cyberspace. Add my “people person”-ness to my “word nerdy”-ness and you get a reader who wants to find great characters. If I’m going to spend hours of my precious free time with someone, even if that someone only exists in the pages of a book, I’d better like ’em.

So I’ve decided to make “Great Characters” a regular blog post topic. And who is the hottest character to discuss right now? Yes, Katniss Everdeen.

For those (three) of you who don’t know, Katniss Everdeen volunteers to represent her district in a brutal fight to the death in the dystopian YA novel, The Hunger Games.

Why does everyone LOVE this girl? Usually, YA books attract female readers, but The Hunger Games has managed to draw young men as well. How does Katniss do that?

Photo of Jennifer Lawrence
from Wikimedia Commons

Last week during an NPR interview, Jennifer Lawrence, who plays Katniss in the recently released The Hunger Games movie, explained what she likes about her character:

“She’s not a hero…She’s just a girl standing up for what’s right when something is wrong, when it’s hard and when it’s scary.”

Great message, especially for the many young adults who have devoured this book, who undoubtedly face overwhelming pressures and temptations to NOT do the right thing. Katniss proves that one person can be powerful, something that naturally resonates not only with adolescents, but also with all of us who feel manipulated or controlled by our circumstances.

But Katniss also impresses me for almost the opposite reason: her sacrifice. Without much deliberation, she steps up in place of her younger sister to spare her from a violent and potentially lethal situation. And Katniss never regrets her choice. In fact, she spends most of the time worrying about her family and how they will cope if she dies. In a society ruled by immediate personal gratification, we need more examples of characters who show such remarkable humility and love.

Katniss also demonstrates compassion and integrity in a world that isn’t black or white, but very grey. She debates protecting herself (for the good of her family and her district) with trying to help some of opponents survive. She never loses sight of how cruel the games are, and inspired by her competitor Peeta, she struggles to remain “herself” in a terrifying situation that could fundamentally change her.

So, why do you like Katniss Everdeen? Can you add any other outstanding qualities to define her? What about faults? Every good character has a weakness – what’s Katniss’s? Add to the discussion by clicking on the comments link below. And thanks for stopping by!

Julia

How to encourage reading

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand: Nonfiction Inspiration

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Julia Tomiak / 4 Comments

Honestly, I don’t like non-fiction. Give me plot, dialogue, metaphor! When I flop into bed at night, I want an escape, not facts. But that’s the great thing about a Book Club– it forces you to read books you might not choose on your own. So, since “the club” picked it, for the past few weeks, I’ve plowed my way through Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (author of Seabiscuit).

Unbroken doesn’t give me great dialogue, but it does give me an extraordinary character, Louie Zamperini. This amazing man grew up fighting the world around him- he stole, pranked, and caused mayhem as a kid in the small town of Torrence, California. Nothing could contain him. As a teen, he channeled his boundless energy into running (specifically long distance), and he earned fame competing for America in the 1936 Olympics and the 1938 NCAA Track and Field Championships. After his spectacular showing at those events, experts predicted he would run the mile four minutes, and Louie planned to prove them right.

Then World War II interrupted his training plans.

Unbrokenchronicles Louie’s experiences on the Pacific front of WWII, something I never learned much about in history classes. I’m aware of it mostly because my father spent several years of his young life as a POW in a Japanese camp in Indonesia. I can only hope the conditions were better for him than they were for Louie.

Louie launched bombs from cumbersome planes, survived a horrific crash, floated for weeks (let me repeat, WEEKS) in a poorly stocked life raft on the Pacific, and suffered for years in various POW camps.

This isn’t lighthearted reading.

But, I read not only for entertainment but also inspiration. And Louie inspires me. I don’t necessarily enjoy the gory details about air battles or the beatings in POW camps, but stuff like this causes me to pause and think:

Though they (Louie and his pilot friend Phil) both knew that they were in an extremely serious situation, both had the ability to warn fear away from their thoughts, focusing instead on how to survive and reassuring themselves that things would work out.

I’ve never faced anything as challenging as Louie did. The struggles that currently push me to my limits seem mild and petty compared to Louie’s, but I still can learn from him. By the end of Unbroken, I understood that Louie’s perception of his experiences ultimately determined how much power they had over him. During this season of Lent, I appreciate the potent reminder I can control my reactions to the stresses of life, and through the graces of humility and perseverance, I can attain peace.

Do you have a favorite inspiring character, either fictitious or real? Can you recommend another inspirational read for the rest of us? Please add your thoughts by clicking on comments below, and thanks for stopping by!

Julia