Fairy Tale Survey

Mel over at The Daily Prophecy created this survey based on fairy tales, and I thought I'd join in.  Thanks to Mel for creating the survey and to Deb over at Debz Bookshelf for pointing it out to me.  

PART 1. CLASSIC Tales.

Pinocchio – The boy whose nose grows when he lies.
Is there are book you lie about, because you feel ashamed for liking it?
Jane Austen novels.  I don't lie about them, but since people tend to assume that Austen novels are just fluffy romance, I sometimes feel a little silly calling them my favorites.  But they're not just fluff; there's a lot of biting social commentary in there.

Beauty and the Beast – The girl who fell in love with personality.
Which book do you love that has a hideous cover?

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson.  I don't care for high fantasy covers.  They weird me out.  Luckily, Words of Radiance has a better cover.

Snow White – Hunted down for her beauty.
Do you ever buy a book based on the cover alone and if so, what is the last one?

No, I'm too judicious with my book buying, and even if the cover is gorgeous, I won't try a book if the jacket blurb doesn't sound interesting, I won't try it.  But the last cover beauty I was drawn to was The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate.  I love scroll work.

Sleeping beauty – Cursed to sleep, awakened by true loves kiss.
 What is your favorite book couple?

Anne and Gilbert from Anne of Green Gables.  No competition.  They're intellectual equals and best friends.  They make sacrifices for each other and make each other better people.  And it's just fun to read their interactions.

Little Mermaid – Gave up on her old life for love.
Do you ever branch out to new genres or do you like to stick with the ones you know and love? If you try new things out, what is the latest book?

I like to try new genres both because I eventually get tired of fantasy and because I'd otherwise miss out on the gems in other genres.  And because I need to be able to recommend all sorts of books to my students. Friends with Boys is my latest favorite atypical-for-me-book.  It's a contemporary graphic novel with a dash of the supernatural.

Cinderella – Who lost her shoe after midnight.

What is the last book that made you stay up all night?
I don't pull all nighters.  I value sleep and my ability to function the next day too much.  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the only book I've pulled an all nighter for, and really, that was a special circumstance.  However, I will often stay up reading into the wee hours of the morning.  Sometimes I regret it, but it's usually worth it.  The last book I stayed up late for was Words of Radiance.

Rapunzel – locked up in a tower.
What is  the worst books you read last month?
It took me all of last month to read just one book (in my defense it was over 1000 pages long and I had a lot of teacher stuff to do), so I'll go back further and choose Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen.  I could easily lock it in a tower and leave it there to rot for all eternity.  I know a lot of people about the blogosphere love it, but I had some major, major issues with it.

PART 2. MIX-MATCH.

Aladdin – The poor boy who found a genie.
What is the latest book treasure/gem you found?

The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen.  I wanted to use it in my book groups unit, but another teacher is already using it.  Curses!

Alice in Wonderland – The girl who fell through a rabbit’s hole. 
Which book made you really feel like you landed in another world?
Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatake.  I could spend a very long time looking at the illustrations and noticing every little thing going on in the crowd shots with all the bizarre space creatures.  The alien planet is such a fun world to explore.

East of the sun and west of the moon – where a girl embarks on a journey to save her love.
Who is one of your favorite kick-butt heroines?
Lo from Fathomless.  She can't exactly be described as kick-butt, but she's one of the most fascinating female characters I've read about recently.  She's strong in a way that doesn't involve beating people up.

The Frog Prince – where an enchanted prince becomes human again.
What is a book you thought you would hate, but end up loving?
Crash by Jerry Spinelli.  I fully expected to get nothing out of a skinny little book about a middle school bully football player, but it was actually quite good.

Hansel and Gretel – left alone in the woods and captured by a witch.
Which duo (sister/sister, brother/sister) is your favorite and why?
Cinder and Iko from Cress and the rest of the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer.  They're technically not sisters, but they're close enough, and their relationship is too fun to leave out.

Little Red Riding Hood – almost eaten by a wolf dressed as her grandmother.
What book disappointed you after falling in love with the cover and blurb?  
Ironskin.  I wanted so much more out of a fey Jane Eyre adaptation.  The cover was really interesting, the premise was intriguing, the beginning of the book was good, and then the rest of the book didn't follow through.  I had to watch episodes of The Autobiography of Jane Eyre to console myself, not that rewatching AoJE is ever a bad thing.

Rumpelstilskin – nobody knows his name.
Which book do you love that doesn't get enough attention?
Okay for Now.  Just go read it.

Review: Ironskin by Tina Connolly

Ironskin--Tina Connolly
October 2012 by Tor Books
304 pages--Goodreads

Jane Eliot wears an iron mask.

It’s the only way to contain the fey curse that scars her cheek. The Great War is five years gone, but its scattered victims remain—the ironskin.

When a carefully worded listing appears for a governess to assist with a "delicate situation"—a child born during the Great War—Jane is certain the child is fey-cursed, and that she can help.

Teaching the unruly Dorie to suppress her curse is hard enough; she certainly didn’t expect to fall for the girl’s father, the enigmatic artist Edward Rochart. But her blossoming crush is stifled by her own scars, and by his parade of women. Ugly women, who enter his closed studio...and come out as beautiful as the fey.

Jane knows Rochart cannot love her, just as she knows that she must wear iron for the rest of her life. But what if neither of these things is true? Step by step Jane unlocks the secrets of her new life—and discovers just how far she will go to become whole again.

---

A steampunk fey reimagining of Jane Eyre, Ironskin worked so well until it didn't.  

The first two thirds of the book were great.  It was an adaptation like Cinder, where the base story was important to the plot without being a crutch; Connolly had her own story to tell.  She fundamentally changed Jane by giving her a loving childhood, but it worked for the story, especially with her rage curse.  Helen was too greedy* to deserve her name, but I could cope with it.  I liked how Adelle/Dorie's story was progressing as she developed her fey powers.  Grace Poole got a new and interesting back story. The only thing that really needed improvement was the development of the Jane/Rochart romance.

Then everything fell apart.  As we approached the climax, Jane and the other characters started doing things that didn't make any sense, didn't develop the plot, didn't heighten the suspense, and that were included only because Connolly was crutching on the original plot.  Why did Jane suddenly go back to the city during the siege?  Nothing was accomplished that couldn't have been done back at the estate.  The only way it made a particle of sense was to see it as a shoddy adaptation of Jane's post failed-wedding flight.  And things just got worse with the faces and the fey queen and demonic possession.  

After a strong start, Ironskin was a disappointment.  I'll just go watch this episode of The Autobiography of Jane Eyre instead.


*In an earlier draft I accidentally typed "Helen was too groovy."  Now I need a disco adaptation of Jane Eyre.

Vlog Adaptations of Classics

As you can probably tell from some of my posts this spring (1, 2, 3), I love the Lizzie Bennet Diaries.  I'm a huge Austen-ite.  I've read her books and seen the movie adaptations more times than is probably healthy.  I thought I knew the story of Pride and Prejudice, but The Lizzie Bennet Diaries took the story in a whole-new-while-still-true-to-the-book direction.  The writers brought a depth to Lydia's character that I didn't know was there.  It is a fantastic adaptation that totally deserves the Emmy it won, and I'm sad that it's over.  However, while LBD may have reached an end, it has inspired a bunch of new vlog adaptations of other classic novels.  I prove my English nerdiness by freaking out every time a new episode comes up in my subscription feed, which is pretty much every day considering how many adaptations I'm following.  Today I am sharing these adaptations with you.  

The Autobiography of Jane Eyre--episodes on Wednesdays and Saturdays

This is probably my favorite adaption.  The actress is Jane.  She totally channels Jane's contemplative seriousness without being gloomy about it.  This Wednesday's episode was the best so far.  Meanwhile, Rochester is a rude, inconsiderate, jerk.  This is more a problem with the source material than the adaptation.  Rochester is supposed to be that way, but it's more problematic in a modern setting than it was in the 1800s.  So far the writers have kept him true to character without making him too easy to hate.  However, I don't see how they're going to deal with some of the issues later in the book.  

For example:  Bertha.  Today's mental health care is words better than what was available in the 1800s.  Back then, it was merciful for Rochester to keep Bertha in his attic where she would be well cared for and comfortable rather than banishing her to an asylum where she would be, at best, horribly neglected.  But modern Rochester could easily find quality care for a crazy wife.  This makes me think that Bertha's not going to be crazy, but then what will the insurmountable Bertha problem be? 

An even bigger adaptation challenge is Jane's flight from Thornfeild.  People can't disappear anymore, not in our internet-saturated world.  But she has to do so without losing viewers.  Jane can't go internet silent, because viewers would get bored and we'd miss all the St. John story and we can't miss that.  If she changed to a new channel, she'd lose the viewers who would miss the memo and Rochester could still track her down.  I can't figure out how they're going to make this work, but I can't wait to see how they do it.

Nick Carroway Chronicles--episodes on Mondays 

I think The Great Gatsby is one of the classic novels that most naturally translates to vlog form since the book is basically Nick telling us what happens to other people.  He's a built in narrator.  Since there is only one episode per week, we're still at the very beginning of the story and have hardly seen Gatsby, but I'm liking it so far.  Also,I love Jordan.  She's hilarious.  I don't even know how to describe her.  She's not goofy, just funny.  This series deserves way more attention than it's gotten.  

Emma Approved--episodes on Mondays and Thursdays

This series comes from the same team that made The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and Sanditon (Sanditon has its own post here).  Emma Approved just premiered on Monday, so it's way too early to judge whether this will be as good an adaptation as LBD, but so far it looks promising.  Emma's characterization is perfect.  She's confident to a fault.  She thinks she reads people better than she does.  She's self centered and falsely concerned about other people.  She's so Emma Woodhousey.  I was unduly excited about this when it premiered on Monday.  

Also, does anyone else think Alex Knightly is very Edward Denhem-like?  His voice and personality seem very similar.

The Emma Project--episodes on Tuesdays and Saturdays

I discovered this one just the other day.  It will be interesting to watch this series and Emma Approved at the same time.  They've done a good job of setting up the class distinction with the college seniority and Emma would totally be a psychology major.  I love that Robbie Martin is a farmer going to to community college; we totally get why Emma would think Harriet is above marrying someone like that as well as why Emma a jerk for thinking that.  And we've started seeing more of Emma influencing Harriet in her decisions.

However, The Emma Project doesn't have the same professional feeling that the other adaptations have.  I'm not talking about lighting and sound.  I can ignore that.  I mean that instead of coming across as Emma the character telling us about her life, it feels like an actress reciting memorized lines, so it doesn't feel as real.  They also seem to be rushing through the story rather than taking time to establish the characters.  I'm still interested in it, but it's not the best adaptation I've found.

Notes by Christine--episodes on Tuesdays and Fridays

I found Notes by Christine just today.  I like it so far, but I haven't had time to see how well I like it.  They're taking a risk by having episodes that are just Christine singing opera music.  It's true to character and the story of Phantom of the Opera (book not musical), but it doesn't move the plot forward at all.  So it'll be interesting to see whether or not Youtube audiences latch onto it.  Also, the opera ghost has his own channel where he, without showing his face, offers Christine private lessons.  So that's creepy.  It'll be interesting to see where they take this story.  They could really play up the creepy stalker aspect by making him an internet predator.  We'll see. 

Anyways, go check out these series for yourself and let me know what you think.    Also, are there more vlog adaptations of classic novels out there that I missed?  I must find them all!