I finished Kite Runner this week and highly recommend it!
I have recently started a new book. It is called "the Memory Keeper's Daughter" by Kim Edwards. I chose this book off the shelf partially because of the creative cover (yes I judged a book by its cover...)

I am only on the first chapter but already I can tell a lot about the author. Edwards uses a very descriptive style. She puts you right in the room when the babies are born and describes the emotions and the atmosphere perfectly. The first 3 paragraphs establishes the setting and a little bit of background about the characters in this novel. Below are the first few lines which give insight into her descriptive style:

"Th snow started to fall several hours before her labor began. A few flakes first, in the dull gray late-afternoon sky, and then wind-driven swirls and eddies around the edges of their wide front porch. He stood by her side at the window, watching sharp gusts of snow billow, then swirl and drift to the ground. All around the neighborhood, lights came on, and the naked branches of the trees turned white."

I love this introduction because I could picture this happening, vividly, in my imagination. I also love how she makes everything seem calm and perfect, just before the stressful labor, without a doctor, begins. I also love how the author is "all-knowing" about the characters. The fact that she knows so much about the characters helps us understand them and gives them a realness that would not be as clear otherwise.
In this first chapter, I start off very impressed at how well everything is going, despite the hectic surroundings of the babies being born. Everything is going perfectly and then the father of the two children realizes that his daughter has down syndrome. He sends her off with the nurse who helped deliver her and tells her to put his daughter in an institution. He then lies to his wife and tells her that the second child died as she was born. This part made me very upset and also made me more interested in the book. I'm looking forward to reading!

     For my short story group, we read victory lap. This was one of the coolest pieces of writing i have read in a while. There is no dialogue in quotations, or in the story anywhere. I think there might be some implied dialogue but in this story, telling reality from the imaginations of the three people from the story is difficult. One aspect of this story that makes it difficult to completely follow is that the entire story exists in the minds of three different people. Not only are the perspectives of the three in the form of a "stream of consciousness," they each have their own distinct styles and word choices. George Saunders really put in time in thinking about the different people. 

     In Alison's head, Saunders uses "Pas de chat," "changement," "pas de bourree." These are all words that a dancer would use as they are thinking about an upcoming dance performance or dance class and trying to remember their dance. She is a dancer and so Saunders recognized that putting in these words enhances the uniqueness of Alison. 

     The next character that we are inside the mind of is Kyle. Saunders again uses word choice to let us know more and more about this character. Kyle thinks faster and and he asks himself lots of rhetorical questions. "What is?" Why? Who?" Kyle also hears his parents reprimanding voices in his head. His parents are overbearing and so now when he knows he is doing something wrong, he hears his mom or dads voice in his head. This is shown in the excerpt below.

     EXCERPT:

     "Swearing in your head? Dad said in his head. Step up, Scout, be a man. If you want to swear, swear    

      aloud. 

      I don't want to swear aloud.

     Then don't swear in your head"

     The third person we are in the mind of is the abductor of Alison and the victim of Kyle. He uses obscenity obsessively and he has a much angrier tone. He even considers suicide to avoid jail. He has a morbid and scary stream of consciousness. Saunders developed his characters thoroughly and I hope to bring the depth of character that George Saunders uses through these three perspectives to my own short story in enhancing Betty and Earl. 

     I also read Nine Lives by Ursula K. Le Gumn. This story was the first of its kind that talked about cloning. The many many themes inside this story are crazy and mesh together so well. She really went outside the box and in my story I think I stay way to far inside my comfort zone. I want to try to create depth and write about things I do not fully understand.