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Monday, April 30, 2012

Hard to Choose

Pin It When I was a kid, I was invariably drawn to books that were "above my pay grade." The librarian would be offering a shelf of Apple paperbacks or Choose Your Own Adventure, while I'd be perusing Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. After a while, they gave up and let me have at it. The thing was, I truly loved those books, and for some odd reason, considering it was the nineteen-eighties and I was a little material girl, I identified with the heroines in them.

It's difficult to identify just one book to call my favorite. In looking back, I can see some trends in my literature preferences. They began at an early age, with Grimm's fairy tales, and tend to linger even now, with the occasional (I admit it--I'm a sap) romance. They all seemed to have that Heroine In the Tough Spot...an orphan, perhaps. She was in need of a hero, or at the very least, a happy family. She, while not conventionally beautiful, was possessed of an unconventional intellect that picked her up and carried her forward. She really didn't need that hero...he was just whipped cream, you know?

After Grimm's, I found these conventions in such wonders as the Anne of Green Gables series and Jane Eyre. I devoured Wuthering Heights, but didn't like that one as much as Jane Austen in general, which I would discover toward the end of middle school. And then there was that one book that was just a little different from all the rest, the one that captured my heart, somehow, to my family's unending amusement.

Gone With the Wind. Three inches thick. The cover: a torrid depiction of Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler caught in a clinch, Scarlett's green curtain dress falling away. The back: words worn away by the rubbing of my fingers as I held the book to read, a hole literally worn through the paper cover by the placement of one finger in particular.

I read GWTW thirteen times in my thirteenth year. With distinct, deliberate intent. I could quote whole passages. I knew full family lineages, had all but been to Tara and Twelve Oaks. I wept when Melanie died, each and every time. I wept when Bonnie died and Rhett went a little crazy, each and every time. I cheered when Scarlett got herself together and grew up.

This book was my soap opera. It was a history lesson, however inaccurate. It was a lesson in Hollywood, as I was also inspired to watch the film several dozen times. (Poor Vivien Leigh.)

I guess GWTW fits the conventions of my other preferred childhood books--a heroine in need, a hero, a sharp intellect. The difference, and the thing that drew me more than the others, was the flaws. The characters in Mitchell's work were so human, and so beautifully, painfully flawed.

Bottom line--it's genuinely hard to choose, but I guess the book whose cover I wore a hole through would best qualify for favorite.



Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The Four Perspectives - We're Back...and Better than Ever

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Dear Friends,

To those of you who’ve faithfully kept us in your readers—and maintained your subscriptions over the stint where we all went to radio silence—we thank you.

You’ve probably been wondering where we’ve all gone; well it’s been life you see. Each of us has been so preoccupied with our own daily happenings that Four Perspectives was kind of put on the back burner—but not forgotten.

This is a post to let you know that Lori, Mel, Gerb, and I got together and rethought the purpose of Four Perspectives. We wanted to freshen it up—as well as give ourselves topics to write to. You see, in the past we all wrote whatever we felt like and very seldom—if ever—did our topics coincide with each other’s. Well, we decided to start rotating a job of picking topics between the four of us, and then each write to that area of focus—every other week (or more often if we feel up to it).

I know, crazy isn’t it?

We’ll let you know a week in advance (just under that amazing top bar) what the upcoming theme will be, and we invite you to write to whatever it is as well. The readers’ posts that are selected will be run on Friday, as well as days of the next week when we aren’t running our own posts. If we only decide to run one guest for the ensuing week then yours—if chosen—will ride the limelight until we upload our posts to the next topic.

Sounds like a trip to Wonka’s chocolate factory, doesn’t it?

So what’s our first topic?

I’m so glad you asked: “Tell about your favorite childhood book and why it means so much to you.”

Our first posts to this subject will run next week (starting on the 30th) and we’ll go in the same order as our photos on the sidebar. If you feel like submitting a post geared to this topic, we’d love to read it...and you never know, it could wind up getting picked for a guest post. We’ll update the topic for the following set of posts once these start to run.

Also, if you would like to suggest a topic for the perspectives to write about, either email us at fourperspectivesblog.gmail.com OR simply click on the ‘submit topic’ button under the topbar photo. 

Until next week,

The Four Perspectives
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