Category Archives: On Reading

New Favorite, Old Favorite: Just Like the Movies and The Unlikely Romance of Kate Bjorkman

On Reading, Recommended Reading

just like the moviesNot long ago I had the pleasure of reading Kelly Fiore’s Just Like the Movies, the story of two unlikely friends who set out to recreate scenes from their favorite romantic films in their own lives.  Marijke and Lily are two girls with a plan…now if only the boys would fall into line.

(I should mention that I was reading this book while directing Deaf Camp, and that it kept me up for hours reading even after I had been corralling middle schoolers in the woods all day.  That should tell you something about how engrossing it is!)

The heroines of this novel combine heartfelt yearning with a canny ability to analyze the tropes of the movies they adore so much – and that reminded me of an old favorite of mine, The Unlikely Romance of Kate Bjorkman by Louise Plummer.  Though published way back in the dark ages of 1995, Plummer’s novel features a canny, smart heroine who would have been comfortable plotting alongside Marijke and Lily.  (Though I guess she’d be quite a bit older now – so I will just imagine her as their English teacher, watching their antics from behind Tina Fey glasses.)  Kate’s thing was romance novels, not romantic films, but her take on them was just as fresh and funny as Marijke holding an iPod dock unlikelyblaring “In Your Eyes” in her boyfriend’s backyard.    Despite the fact that Kate warns readers in the second sentence of the book that it’s “one of those romance novels.  You know, that disgusting kind with kisses that last three paragraphs and make you want to put your finger down your throat to induce projectile vomiting,” her attempt to tell her tale as a romance novel (complete with revision notes) is involving and funny and something that is still in my mind almost twenty years later.

So do yourself a favor and get a hold of both books to meet Kate, Marijke, and Lily, three girls who discover that grand gestures don’t change a thing in real life,  and that real love isn’t like a book or movie – it’s better.

So Many Books, So Little Time

On Reading, On Writing

As often as I have seen that sentiment on t-shirts and mugs or Facebook walls, it didn’t really hit me until a few months ago how true it is.  When I walk into a bookstore or a library now, all I can think about is the fact that the shelves are lined with thousands of books that I will never get to read.  Of course, some of them are probably boring.  I don’t regret those.  But even taking out the boring and the bad, I find it depressing when I think about how many wonderful, possibly life-changing books will never even enter my awareness.  And when I think about launching my babies into that world where they can so easily get lost in the crowd…well, let’s just say it’s disheartening.

When I was a kid, I read so voraciously that I would finish every book I started, and sometimes even reread books I disliked, just because they were there.  Sometimes I want to go back in time and smack that kid and give her a booklist to work through during all those lazy childhood hours.  Don’t get me wrong – some rereads would be fine.  She could keep her yearly Christmas vacation reread of The Lord of the Rings, which inevitably ended in 2 am bawling as Frodo sailed from the Grey Havens.

I felt guilty when I first jettisoned my rule about finishing every book I started, but there are just too many wonderful books in the world to waste time on something that doesn’t delight me.  And that’s what every reader is chasing, isn’t it?  That sense of delight, of being transported out of our everyday lives.  That can’t-put-it-down, can’t-wait-to-get-back-to-the-car-so-I-can-continue-the-audiobook preoccupation with a fictional world.

When I think about my own stories, it almost seems too much to ask, to be able to create that feeling for someone else.  It feels presumptuous to hope that someone might love my fantasy worlds the way I love Middle Earth or Hogwarts or Eddis, Sounis, and Attolia, to even conceive that somehow someone might find my little books among all the other wonderful stuff out there.

But I keep on reading, even though my reading list will never end.  And I’ll keep on writing, hoping even one person out there will find something transporting in it.  Because, I don’t know about you, but I just can’t seem to give up on looking for magic.