Tagged: discussion
Discussion: Favourite Books
Yep, the title pretty much says it all. You guys all know about my favourite books, but I know essentially nothing about yours. So what are your favourite books? Do you have just one favourite or many favourites? What makes this book your favourite?
For me personally I can’t pick just one favourite; I’ve read too many books. Usually I pick a favourite of the moment, which right now is Sandra Gulland’s Josephine B. trilogy about the life of the infamous Empress of France. I love Gulland’s take on Josephine and you really get the feeling that she was utterly ruined by history when in truth, she should be celebrated.
Remember the rules for Discussion posts? Well, there aren’t many. My commenting policy still applies of course, but you can engage either with me or any other commenter on the thread. So go on and have fun!
Discussion: Happy Endings
Since I don’t have as much time as I would like to read anymore, I think every once in a while I’ll take a reviewing break on Sundays and start a discussion post where you guys can engage with myself or even other commenters on a topic. This weeks’ topic is happy endings.
Victoria Grefer did two posts this week on endings in novels. The first is: Why authors and readers love their Happily Ever After: and why that’s a good thing. The second post appealed to me a lot more and it was called: Books, Stories, Legends: Happily Ever After is great. Bittersweet can sometimes be better. I highly recommend reading both articles for some interesting viewpoints on happy endings.
I personally enjoyed the second article more. Bittersweet endings are more realistic, I feel, because in life you have to take the bad along with the good. Good things will happen to you in your lifetime and bad things will also happen to you; that’s guaranteed. So why should characters in stories get perfectly happy endings where everyone marries their love interest and then ride off into the sunset? Bittersweet endings where there’s both happiness and a tinge of sadness or a lot of sadness with a bit of happiness really do appeal to me.
But personally, what I really want to see is a sad ending in a mainstream YA novel. Young Adult novels traditionally have pretty happy endings, but I think teenagers know that complete happiness isn’t a reality. Escapism is great, but a little more realism would be nice. And in reality, yes, some people never get their happy ending, so to speak. Will we ever see a truly tragic ending in a mainstream YA novel? I honestly don’t know.
The thing I want to discuss this week is: Which do you like more: bittersweet or happy endings? Why? Does the overall feel of the novel matter to you when deciding if a happy or bittersweet ending was satisfying? (i.e. a humorous novel should have a happy ending whereas a play like Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which is quite dark all throughout should have a bittersweet ending.)