2 Quick Reads/Films Featuring Strong Female Protagonists

1. Allegiant by Veronica Roth

My friend and her daughter invited us to go see the film Allegiant over break. I had read the Divergent series a while ago and saw the first film. I liked the books and the first film; the character Tris, while not completely groundbreaking, seemed original and interesting to me.

But I hated this latest film installment. It was just awful.

I thought, "Was the book this bad or what did the film change from the book to make it so bad??" So I decided to reread the book, and it was very different from the film -- the film takes out all of the reasoning and investigating and discovering that happens in the book, and all of that stuff explains the origins of the world and just adds some depth to the plot. The film strips all of that away and the story becomes boring. Apparently, they also want to be The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, so they're splitting the book into two movies -- an unnecessary move, in my view: there's just not enough there.

I am glad that I reread the book, though, just to cleanse my palate.

2. The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera

This novel is also a reread for me, and I also need to watch the film. We are studying this text in my IB Literature and Performance class -- my students' (and my) homework over break was to read it and watch the film. I like the choices the filmmaker makes in adapting the novel and transforming the mythological stories of the Ancients and the Whales into the magical realism depicted the film. I am looking forward to hearing what my students think about this novel and its adaptation, They will eventually write an exam paper detailing how they would adapt the novel to the stage, and they have been so creative all year that I think this text will inspire their best work all year.

A Book That Is More Than 600 Pages

This week, to further my Hamilton obsession, I read the biography of Alexander Hamilton written by Ron Chernow -- 738 pages long without the notes. Hamilton was a brilliant, mad, haughty, insecure man -- and the biography succeeded in capturing the complex and contradictory sides of him. For me, the book was additionally interesting because I could see places where Lin-Manuel Miranda lifted actually lines or phrases from history to use in lyrics, or in rap battles. It also interested me where he chose to edit or adapt history for his own purposes to create a tighter plot or to enhance the musical's central conflict between Hamilton and Burr. The reading certainly captivated me, and I supplemented it with various internet searches to fill in some questions that I had about minor characters and find interviews with Miranda about the making of the musical. Throughout the entire reading experience, however, I played the Hamilton soundtrack in my head (and listened to it while driving). The musical is also brilliant and mirrors perfectly the story of Hamilton's life in its size, scope, grandness, and irreverence. The words are etched in my brain, and I cannot wait to see it on Broadway in July.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

It's Spring Break, and I wanted to read something fun yet thought-provoking -- my go-to genre is dystopian fiction, and Station Eleven is a book that has been on my to-read list for a while. How can I summarize the novel? It is a story of a post-apocalyptic Traveling Symphony/Shakespeare Troupe. It is the life story of an actor, now dead, and all he touched in his "six degrees of separation." It is a story of what matters in life and what doesn't, although that part is blurry, both before and after the pandemic flu that wipes out most of the world. It is a journey that has a similar plot device and philosophic bent as The Road, but less of its heart-wrenching description and gore. More to simply think about without any of the accompanying nausea.

It was an easy read; I finished it in two days. But it's the kind of book that I want to immediately reread to pick out all the nuances I missed the first time around. There's a lot there and a lot to think about. Based on the content and the style (lyrical, like a symphony), I am left with an expansive feeling of beauty (despite the emptiness and destruction amply depicted in the novel), but that beauty comes with strings attached. It doesn't come with the revelation of the big things in life that matter -- it comes with a question of what truly matters. Do the relationships the actor (either one) has with other people matter? Are they important and were they real? Or are they akin to the collection of ephemera located in the Museum that houses relics like iPhones and licenses from before the collapse of civilization. Do words matter, either the text of King Lear or the dialogue bubbles from the surviving comic book or the last words recorded on a phone message or the strange corporate-speak colloquialisms left over from another era? Two characters cling to words from the comic book, some meaning they try to cobble together from the past, but one character uses those words in a search for connection and the other uses them to condone the violence he forces upon others. As the narrative perspective shifts from person to person, we see those connections being made but also connections lost: many plot elements converge in the end, but others are simply dropped (whatever happened to Elizabeth?). Clearly, this is a theme of the post-apocalyptic world, but the flashes back to life before the pandemic remind us that it is also a theme of the world before even if it was sometimes not examined in their fast-paced, high-tech lifestyle.

I recommend reading this as I did, with the soundtrack from Hamilton playing during the breaks from reading as I drove my daughter around to her obligatory rehearsals. That made for an even more lyrical and philosophical reading experience.