Reading Journal || January & February

This blog is turning into more of a reading journal and less of a YA book review blog, and I’m okay with that. This year in general I’ve been focusing on expressing my thoughts because I want to express them and not because I want other people to know them. When I read my posts from last year, I was really happy that I took the time to write them and I was glad that they look pretty and easy to find in the format of a blog. So, I want to keep up my blog for those reasons.

Let me recap my 2016 reading journey so far.

After listening to The Heart Goes Last (Margaret Atwood) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Ken Kesey) during the turning of the year, my mood swung to things that were equally disturbing but in a slightly different genre. Horror manga.

I read both the Uzumaki and Gyo series by Junji Ito. Ito is known as the patriarch of horror manga, and really, these books are bad dreams. Each chapter in Uzumaki functions almost independently and focuses on a spiral pattern that drives people to mental and physical insanity. The Gyo series is about a mutated fish invasion, and if you weren’t already jumpy about things touching your feet while you are swimming… this will convince you.

I think each person has their own idea of what truly inspires fear and horror. When I had a book club that discussed The Shining (Stephen King), the three of us discussed which parts of the book were the scariest for us personally. I am claustrophobic, so the part where Danny gets stuck underneath the snow in a small tunnel was the part that got the most sensory reaction out of me. For me, Ito’s nonsensical illustrations are disgusting (imagine my facial expression when I watch a medical show on TV), but the stories are not scary. In my mind, manipulative stalkers are true horror.

Speaking of true horror, I listened to Dark Money: The Hidden History of Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Political Right (Jane Mayer) after I heard an interview with the author on NPR. It’s loquacious and has its flaws (not citing sources of minor information), but it legitimizes the feeling that US politics has become more polarized than it used to be. This book made me feel more wary of “organic” political movements and skeptical of opinion articles. It also made me think more than ever before that I am being manipulated by a system that is out of my control, and the only solution that I have in my grasp is to read and write (or create) more. If you love hating Monsanto, Sallie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Seven Sisters, then read this book.

After that glut of heaviness, I read a bunch of fluff: How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are (Anne Berest et al), some smutty manga in Portuguese, and Carry On (Rainbow Rowell). Carry On makes my second m/m romance read, and though I still haven’t heard a good explanation for why straight women like to read it, I guess I fall in that group.

Also in the romance category, 11/22/63 by Stephen King surprised me in all the right ways. The only other King book I’ve read is The Shining, and that book disappointed me in a mass-market paperback sort of way. Forty years of prolific writing later, 11/22/63 completely redeemed King. Every single aspect of it is en pointe—characters, pacing, action, feelings, plot rhythm, originality. As a plus, the audiobook narrator was mindbogglingly fantastic. I can’t recommend the audiobook enough.

After over a year of being on the hold list, it was fiiiiinally my turn to listen to Cinder (Marissa Meyer). I’m a few years behind on The Lunar Chronicles bus, but I’m glad I got to see for myself what all the fuss is about. Cinder was good. I thought it was cute, creative, and I adored the characters. Scarlet and Cress came in soon after, and I was excited to listen to them as well. Scarlet had some big issues for me regarding character development (the thing I loved the most about the first book) or rather, lack thereof. The plot was yawningly predictable, and I almost didn’t stick it out to the end. I kept finding more things that annoyed me, and that’s when I decided I probably have had too much YA in a row. I’m going to wait to read Cress until the next time I feel like being in a tub of book fluff.

My ongoing project of reading In Search of Lost Time has been progressing very slowly. I keep getting caught up in other books! I’m a chronic multi-book reader.

How I Learned to Like Poetry

Three years ago I made a new year’s resolution to learn to understand and appreciate poetry. I went about it in a fairly academic way. That’s how I learned to adore contemporary art—taking art history classes with some brilliant and endearing professors until I was one class short of an art history minor. Those classes were a great investment of my time, because I learned a hobby (devotion? meditation?) that I have taken with me around the world and continue to use to enrich my mental health and personal life.

I figured since that since the academic route to enjoying visual art was so successful, poetry wouldn’t be much different. Western art survey classes usually start with those famous cave paintings in Lascaux, France, and go forward from there. Poetry’s equivalent of cave painting is Beowulf, I supposed, so that’s where I started.

I supplemented my Norton Anthology of Poetry roadmap with The Poem and the Journey. I’m sure, as advertised, it’s a fantastic book that teaches people a lot about the beauty of poetry. I didn’t get past chapter 2.

I heard a poem on the radio by Billy Collins, the then U.S. Poet Laureate. It was funny, accessible, easy to take in while hurling through space at 80 miles per hour. My poet friend Jeevan Narney chose to look at the wall rather than my face when I told him that I had checked out all of the Billy Collins books from the library. He pursed his lips and suggested that I try Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal, and Li-Young Lee.

I did, and he was right. I read white-bread poets because they were easy to get ahold of, not because I actually enjoyed them. I enjoyed the act of appearing to enjoy poetry. But honestly, there’s a whole world of poetry out there that is more intriguing than your garden-variety hothouse-tomatoes poetry, and that’s when I started to be able to fulfill my resolution.

Three years later and here’s what I’ve come to learn about my tastes:
I like poems like I like art. Preferably written after WWII. Knowingly and carefully breaking the rules. At least two paths of discussion from one object. Aware of history, yet not ostentatious about it.

I like poems like I like authors. I am fascinated by Asian and Asian-American authors. I know the word Asian encompasses millions, literally millions, of cultures, and I haven’t found a boring one yet. I like how Asian religions and cultural priorities tinge the perception of the world in a way that is very different from my own.

I like poems like I like puns. Two meanings for the price of one. A period in the middle of a line is just divine. If you don’t read poetry very much, oftentimes punctuation in the middle of a line means that the words that come before the punctuation finish the thought of the previous line, and start the thought of the next one. For example:

The river is raw tonight. The river is a calling
aching with want. The woman walks towards it
(excerpt from How to Prepare the Mind for Lightning by Brynn Saito)

I like poems like I like scriptures. When I read the Bible in the mornings, I usually need to read a passage two or three times, just to get my mind to settle, to focus, to absorb its density. When I meditate or run, I can usually only think about a few heavy words, and that’s enough for me. If I don’t want to read a poem twice or three times in a row, I probably just don’t want to read that poem.

I subscribe to A Poem a Day in my email and it’s been wonderful. You get contemporary poetry during the week, and more traditional poetry on the weekends. It’s become meditative for me to read it in the mornings. This morning on the bus I was so happy that I was able to be mentally closed off to everything that was going on around me (it was chaos, I assure you), and I focused on the poem for 20 minutes without breaking my concentration. Not because I was forcing myself to do that, but because it happened naturally. Because I learned how I like poetry.

A Letter to My YA Self

Ginger @ Greads had a great idea: write a letter to yourself when you were a young adult. Give your ghost of teenage past encouragement, advice, and a pat on the back. I’ve been loving reading all the letters as they are published, and decided to play too.

Dear Alisa,

The year is 2003 and you are thirteen years old. You are starting high school in the fall, and right now you really really really wish your parents would let you go to public high school like all the other homeschooled kids are doing (do yourself a favor and stop caring about that. You’ll not care about it in a few months anyways). You aren’t stylish, you’re naive, and you’re nervous about joining the public school’s swim team a year before everyone else on your club team. Your family is hosting two exchange students this year: one from Japan, and the other from Finland. Savor these moments, and treat them with all the grace and kindness that you can muster… being a foreigner is really freakin hard, as you’ll find out after you graduate university!

Stop worrying about if your life is exciting enough, and wishing that it was as fun as the older kids’ lives. Trust me, in 10 years your hard work and courage is going to give you so much more excitement than you could ever dream of. You’ll break the habit of comparison by the time you’re my age, and you’ll be able to hear your inner voice, trust your intuition, and keep your mind happy and healthy. Start trying that now! (HINT: journaling helps.)

Spoiler, you visit Greece! Did you know that you'll have
to get a passport expansion because you travel so much?

Regarding your reading: I’m glad you volunteer at the library and joined a teen book club led by an awesome librarian (whom I now recognize must have been going through culture shock to be placed in that conservative Arizona town that is something out of Breaking Bad). The little scoops of insight that Chris gives you about the book industry, publishing, and YA books are going to stick with you for a long time. Yeah, shelf-reading is brain-numbing, but pay attention to your interests now, because they are clues to finding happiness in the future.

I’m so grateful that you read everything and anything that is vaguely interesting. You still will when you’re 25, btw. As Professor Jenkins will tell you in three years, hold on to your innocence. It’s okay that you have no idea what the “must-reads” are for certain genres, that you are oblivious to the word “trope”, that the YA section is complete hit-or-miss but your determination to finish books forces you stick with the misses (most of the authors haven’t really figured out teenagers yet… except for JK Rowling). All of these stories are going to make you a better person.

Speaking of Ms. Rowling, there is one thing you need to know, because it’s our biggest regret: break the rules and read Harry Potter. Break all the rules and read all the forbidden books. You have your own library card, a backpack, and your own room… like, hello, your little brother smokes weed and you are too afraid to read a book because mom said not to?

This is a key to one of the most important life lessons you have to learn: rules, sometimes repackaged as advice/approval, that restrict learning are rules that you should break. Adults are going to verbally try to stop you from going to university. Bosses are going to tell you that making such drastic life changes is bad for your future. When deciding between quitting a job and disappointing people or letting your education suffer, quit the job. Oh, and nowhere in the Bible does it say to not investigate, question, and analyze, so be wary of the church people that do.

Keep up the good work!

Alisa

p.s. I'd post a photo of 13 year old you, but I lost all of them when one of your hard drives crashed and the other one was stolen. You'll get over that loss. 

Life Update || April 2015

Seeing
I visited Santos, Brazil over the three-day Easter weekend. It was fun to see where my boyfriend and his family grew up. Santos is beautiful and more laid-back than busy São Paulo, and it is the southernmost place I have ever been.

Smelling
Popcorn! Lots of street vendors sell popcorn in the afternoons and evenings when I’m on my way to and from work. I usually don’t carry cash, but the other day I happened to have something that works equally well: Easter chocolates. Guess who successfully made a trade with the popcorn man!

Tasting
While in Santos, we strolled along the beach and I decided that this was the time to finally try a traditional Brazilian caipirinha. It’s a drink made from sugar cane alcohol (pinga), lime juice, sugar, and crushed ice. I liked it, but it was too strong for my lightweight body. When my Portuguese improves, I’ll ask for it to be half soda water.

Hearing
I’ve been listening to The Fountainhead during my commutes. It really takes my mind off of how much time I spend riding the metro. I'm so close to finishing it, but my loan expired and someone else was in line for it. Curses!

Touching
Wool blankets! The nights have been much cooler as we shift to later in the fall here in the Southern Hemisphere. Unfortunately, it’s not cold enough yet to kill off the mosquito population.

Interesting Links
Do not miss this series of posts about teen-girl representation: About the Girls
Some goodies found on the awesome #VeryRealisticYA 
Why I Need a Break From Books About Dead Girls
Can’t Get Enough of that Trope

Life Update || March 2015

Seeing
New angles of São Paulo. I got a job teaching business English in companies around São Paulo! So far I don’t mind travelling all around because I get to go to parts of the city that I would otherwise never see. My new job is the reason why I wasn’t able to be so active in the blogosphere this week. (The other reason was that I got an awful case of the flu!)

Smelling
Rain. One of the most famous Brazilian songs is Águas de Março, and it gets its title from the rainy season of March in this part of the country. We have been getting rain every afternoon since early February, which my friends say is one of the effects of global warming - an earlier start to the “Waters of March”.

Tasting
I’ve been missing Arizona a lot lately, which manifests itself in the form of wanting Mexican food. Unfortunately, it’s been impossible to find an authentic tasting restaurant (read: Taco Bell + Brazilian flavorings), and even avocados to make guacamole are out of season right now. I’ve been making lots of pico de gallo with some kind of pepper that tastes like a Thai Chili but is called “finger peppers”.

Hearing
With my daily commute being at least one hour each way, I have plenty of time for audiobooks. I finished A Tale for the Time Being and started The Fountainhead this month.

Touching
My pens, more than usual. Between journaling in English, starting a new journaling habit in Portuguese (using prompts from The Life: Captured Project), prepping for classes, and teaching, I used a lot more ink this month than I did the previous month.


Interesting Links
Things I Can Say About MFA Writing Programs Now That I No Longer Teach in One 

Manga for Beginners: My Journey into the Big, Mad World of Japanese Comics

Can This Small Publisher’s Radiohead-Style Plan Change the Way Books are Sold?

Dear People Who Defend 50 Shades with “It’s Just a Book”

Book Blogger Love-A-Thon 2015 || Getting to Know Me

I am participating in the 2015 Book Blogger Love-A-Thon this year! It’s a fantastic idea hosted by Alexa Loves Books to increase camaraderie within the book blogging community, make some new blogger friends, and share the love. Let’s start!

What’s your name? Alisa

Where in the world are you blogging from? São Paulo, Brazil.

How did you get into blogging in the first place?
I’ve been blogging off and on since I was eight years old, but I decided to start book blogging so I could have a legitimate reason to start getting ARCs (just being honest here!).

How did you come up with your blog name? I like double entendres and puns (Go figure that I love books and my favorite type of humor is wordplay). I thought it would be cute to refer to getting paper cuts from reading so much, even though most of the books I read are e-versions. There are some clever people who already made blogs called Papercuts with one T, so I decided to go the hipster route and use three T’s.

What genre do you read and review the most on your blog?
Contemporary YA lit. An extremely influential youth library turned me onto the genre when I was 12. She said, “The reason I like YA is because it’s so unpredictable. Adults have a hard time knowing what young adults like, and they usually get it wrong. But if they get it right, they get it very, very right.”

What other types of posts do you do on your blog, apart from reviews? My blog is pretty new so I’m still experimenting with features that I enjoy and want to stick with. Top Ten Tuesdays hosted by The Broke and the Bookish and New on the Stack hosted by The Deliberate Reader are fun to write, and I will probably keep with them this year.

Best blogging experience so far? After I posted my review of Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn, one of the authors linked to it on her social media account and said how much she valued and appreciated the feedback. Besides making my day, it made me realize that our blogging community is made up of real-life people, doing things that are important to them, and the words we type can be powerful and useful. Be kind!

Favorite thing about the blogging community?
The online conversations about books and movements in literature that I don’t get to have in real life. I can count on one hand the amount of real-life friends that will talk about books, but I subscribe to hundreds of book blogs that are full of jokes, new ideas, news, analyses that I never would have thought of, and personal reflections. It’s wonderful.

Name the 5 books you’re most excited for this 2015!
A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab, Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman, The First Bad Man by Miranda July, The Marvels by Brian Selznick, and Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee.

I got to play Jane Austen's piano
on my birthday <3

What’s an underrated book or series that you think everyone should read?
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. It takes discipline to read, but I the pace and the topics in it are the closest I’ve seen to meditation in a fiction book. It gives such a sense of peace and contentment.

Which book boy or girl would be your book BFF? Hermione Granger. We’re basically twins.

Apart from reading, what are your other hobbies or interests?
I study Portuguese everyday, since I live in Brazil. I also love journaling and crafting beautiful letters. If I have free time, I explore my city (or new cities!!).

Apart from book shopping, what else do you like shopping for? Stationery!

At a party, the DJ suddenly changes the song – and it’s your song. What song would be playing? Hmmm, I don’t listen to music very much, but maybe something by Heath McNease.

Pick out either a book you want turned into a film/TV show, or a film/TV show you want turned into a book.
I would like Breaking Bad to be a book series. The TV show was way too violent and tense for me to enjoy, but I think it’s exciting if I’m reading.