By Karen Chambless, Literature Columnist
As an English major and a voracious reader since the age of 'I can do it myself,' I am looking forward to writing the literature column this semester, a relatively new offering for the Lee Clarion.This will be a compilation of things I find interesting in the book world: whether it's author gossip, recently published best-sellers, literature I'm currently reading or events going on at Lee for readers/writers.
For my first column, here at the beginning of 2015, I want to provide readers with some helpful information: Here is a link to the New York Times' 'The Ten Best Books of 2014.'
These people seriously know what they're talking about at the New York Times, and contemporary fiction appeals to most of us in one way or another, so why not check it out? They include five fiction titles and five nonfiction titles on their list. Quite a manageable number.
My love for movies almost matches my love for books, and I am making plans to read all the books on this list: '8 Books to Read Before They Become Movies in 2015.'
No, I'm not one of those snobby book elitists that declare that any movie adaptation of a book will be terrible and offensive to all true readers. Sometimes there are things that just don't translate from words on a page to the direction the author wants to take with the film. The directors on this list all do pretty good work, so I'm excited to read the books and then watch the movies (as totally separate works of art, of course). If it's a good enough book to be considered for a movie, it has to have some sort of redeeming quality ("Twilight" and "50 Shades" excluded).
Also, the English honor society at Lee, Sigma Tau Delta, is starting a book club of sorts. We know that most people don't have time to read entire novels along with their school work, so we will mostly cover short stories and poems, never more than an hour of reading to do and we only meet every other Wednesday. There will be no judgment for any and all lovers of reading that decide to show up. Our first meeting was last Wednesday; we discussed the short story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank" by Nathan Englander. We had a great time and ended up touching on all sorts of topics. Email Dr. Kevin Brown (kbrown@leeuniversity.edu) if this is something you're interested in. Truly, we would love to have you. More people makes for better discussion.
Feel free to check out the four events of the 2015 Lee Writer's Festival here: we have published authors read their work on campus, for free, and it's a really engaging time. Click here for more information.
To close, let me tell you briefly that I am reading "Murder on the Orient Express" by Agatha Christie (one of her most famous books, and when you're the best-selling author of all time, that's saying something'it's also been made into a fabulous movie); a collection of poems by TJ Jarrett called "Zion" (she is coming to Lee for Writer's Festival and she will be wonderful); and a play, "The Hairy Ape" by Eugene O'Neill (awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936). As soon as I find time to pick up a pleasure reading novel, it will most probably be Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings."
I hope that something you read comes alive to you this week, dear readers.
