#contemporary literatures

[thenowherejournal]

A Chapter in Jelaine’s Life: Some things About being a Reader

An Interview Article by Francis and Nad (February 2024)

Readers have different approaches to picking up a novel and have varying tastes– and for a bookworm, you could imagine all the stories that had accumulated during their journey in the vast spaces of a library. Each shelf, rows and rows of stories that came from people all over history and realities. For this interview, we found someone who can share their experience with literature. Our resident bookworm for this article is Jelaine Dio.

BACKGROUND

The 25-year-old graduate of Bachelor of Science in Psychology found herself reading stories in her past time during 5th Grade. While the other kids in her class were playing outside during break time, she was exploring her English textbook for the short story collection; that is when the world opened up to her. Now, she reads novels from the likes of Sally Rooney, John Green, Jandy Nelson and Coco Mellors—some of her current favorite authors that she noted. Her current read is The Guest by Emma Cline, previously followed by Jenny Mustard’s Okay Days.

A lot of these books share a similar genre: Contemporary fiction. She stated that it was her favorite genre in fictional literature because she found herself easily visualizing the story if it is closer to real life or based on certain personality traits. 

KEY EXPERIENCES

“Summer Time: A Book A Day”

Only after a few years of falling in love with the short stories, she managed to read over 7 books a week during her summer vacations. Although some readings are motivated by school credits, she still read an impressive amount during that time. She noted that she has read over 200 books since then. As life goes by, people get busy with their time. Even if life gets busy, she always tries to slip in a moment to read. She said “I read my book if I was waiting for something or if there’s a downtime—whether in public or at home. Because I do not have any cellular data on my phone when I leave the house, I always bring my book for times when I must wait.”

We asked her what was the first fiction she had read and she directed us back to her 3rd year of Junior High. She asked her classmate for a recommendation for a book to start reading fiction “She is also a bookwork and reads her book on an iPad. I asked her ‘What ‘s a good fiction to read first?’ and she let me borrow a copy of ‘The Little Prince’”. She noted that before that, she was not reading much then. After picking up the book, that is when she started being a book fanatic again.

On average, outside of summer time when she finishes a book a day, her average reading time then lasts for two to 3 days per novel. Now, she slowed down to finishing a book in a week but if she has work, then she finishes a book in a month. After she finishes a book, she takes a day to take a break and she picks up another book to start. 

I’ll See It Through, Always

When she reads a book, she sees through it, even if it is average “It’s like in the movies, for example. I watch a movie and I find myself enjoying it but when I see some bad reviews, I don’t find it as a waste of time because I enjoyed the work”. She also added how she also thinks about the effort the author took to finish their story. That’s why sometimes when she finds a story in BookTok, a community in TikTok that shares content about literature, she reads it because of how it was marketed. Sometimes, she ends up reading erotic fiction without realizing it because of how the synopsis was advertised. During the interview, she laughingly said that she found that it was her guilty pleasure to read those types of stories

INSIGHTS

Eenie-Meenie-Miney Book!

When entering a bookstore, some people may feel overwhelmed when offered a lot of options. Jelaine is one of these individuals. Because of this, she has devised three ways to choose the next book she will indulge herself in. One is looking at its cover. As ironic as it is for a bibliophile, she does not really follow the famous saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover." When she sees that a book has an aesthetic and eye-catching cover, she will pick it up and read it. Though on some occasions, she will go through the book’s synopsis before buying it. 

Another way is through recommendations in social media’s “BookTok". She follows countless book lovers on Instagram that post their recommendations in their feeds. When she sees these posts, she will buy two to three of those novels and put them on her shelf of books she will later read. Lastly, she picks up and buys the next novel that she will read by browsing the books of the same authors as the previously finished novel she enjoyed. With these three ways, she has fortunately bought novels that she considered a “good book".

"A Good Book"

It is fair to think that a bookworm that has read hundreds of novels would have a grasp of what makes a "good book". In Jelaine’s viewpoint, a novel that has a striking and grand plot is not important, but what is important is the story’s overall flow. She also added that “ A good book is something you can genuinely relate to the character even though that character has a different experience compared to you." Jelaine also mentioned that when she underlined and bookmarked a lot of lines and parts of a book that she is reading, then that novel is exceptional for her.

LESSONS TO SHARE 

A Wider Vocabulary And Getting In Touch To One’s Feelings And Emotions

For almost half of her lifetime, Jelaine has been “sticking her nose" into numerous books in various genres and lengths. With all these consumed fictional works, she has gained extensive knowledge in vocabulary. She quoted, “Due to reading, my word bank is overflowing". As a result, she can understand words in novels that are unusual while also understanding each sentence that she reads quickly.

Reading has also helped her to become more empathetic, since she is able to know and feel what the characters are going through and understand them as the story goes on. Hence, when a person reads, they can be in touch with their emotions and process them in a healthy manner. 

Something for Readers

Jelaine’s go-to book recommendation to whoever asks her is Celeste Ng’s first novel, "Everything I Never Told You". She deemed this as a good recommendation since it has themes that will make a person feel multiple emotions throughout its entirety. As she shares what the book is about, she mentions that it circles around the idea of family dynamics and how grief affects each member. She said, "This novel is heavy and heart-wrenching". Another book recommendation she mentioned was "Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine" written by Gail Honeyman, which is also a heavily emotional novel.

In addition, she mentioned a quote from one of the books that genuinely made an impact on her. The line was “They teach you growing up that you are only one thing at a time-angry, lonely, content--but he's never found that to be true. He is a dozen things at once. He is lost and scared and grateful, he is sorry and happy and afraid. But he is not alone.” This is from V. E. Schwab’s, "The Invisible Life Of Addie Larue. With these few pieces of line, she feels comforted and loved since it tells the reader that it is good to feel emotion and not to invalidate one’s feelings.

 “When you read, it’s not just printed words on a paper, it is a mixture of the character’s experiences, feelings and views and in turn, you also experience what they have gone through and feel their emotions. With reading, you gain new experiences without physically experiencing them, but through words on a piece of paper." - Jelaine Dio

[soulmaking]

"Mirror" by Rita Dove

[echoesoftheinfinite]

I'm a pile of unfinished things, unsaid feelings, unthought thoughts, and unlived lives.

[uwmspeccoll]

Cannupa Hanska Luger, New Myth, Future Technologies, 2021

Dana Claxton, Headdress-Jeneen, 2018

Teresa Baker, Hidatsa Red, 2022

Raven Chacon, For Zitkala Sa Series, 2019

Caroline Monnet, Echoes from a near future, 2022

Marie Watt, Skywalker/Skyscraper (Calling Sky World), 2021

Anna Tsouhlarakis, The Native Guide Project, 2019

Meryl McMaster, Harbourage for a Song, 2019

Marie Watt, Companion Species (Calling Back, Calling Forward), 2021

Staff Pick of the Week

An Indigenous Present proposes that a book can be a space for community engagement through the transcultural gathering of more than sixty contemporary Indigenous and Native artists. Published by BIG NDN Press and Delmonico Books in 2023, An Indigenous Present was conceived of and edited by Mississippi Choctaw and Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972) over the course of nearly two decades. 

In Gibson’s own words, “An Indigenous Present celebrates the work of visual artists, musicians, poets, choreographers, designers, filmmakers, performance artists, architects, collectives, and writers whose work offers fresh starting lines for Native and Indigenous art. But the book does not attempt comprehensiveness. Rather, those included here are makers I admire, have collaborated with or been inspired by, and who’ve challenged my thinking. . . . These artists and what they make will guide us to Indigenous futurities authored by us in unabashedly Indigenous ways.”  

An Indigenous Present features over 400 pages of color photographs, poetry, essays, and interviews resulting in a stunning visual experience for readers and a shift towards more inclusive art systems. The front cover art shown here is by Canadian artist Caroline Monnet entitled Indigenous Represent. 

View other posts from our Native American Literature Collection.

View more posts featuring Decorative Plates.

View other Staff Picks.

– Jenna, Special Collections Graduate Intern 

[soracities]

I wasn’t supposed to live like this. No one was supposed to live like this. The problem was that I simply didn’t know how to make it right...no one had ever shown me the right way to live a life, and although I’d tried my best over the years, I simply didn’t know how to make things better. I could not solve the puzzle of me.

Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

[ladycatashtrophe]

"Let people enjoy things", "It's not that deep", "Stop being a hater", No.

You are capable of criticizing something and still enjoying it. Criticism should add to your enjoyment of the thing. Contextualizing and analyzing media is the only true sign that you enjoy it instead of just consume it. Stop selling the straggling iotas of your final brain cell to a fascio-capitalist system that wants to gorge you til you burst. Not consuming anything is better than blindly inhaling whatever is put in front of you without discretion.

Be an intellectual and have respect for yourself so you can have some sugary Wattpad fanfic and a Netflix reality TV show for dessert.

[juan-francisco-palencia]

Veneration of the Life.

Who was it who said that sex was something dirty? It is we who make it dirty by defiling it.

—  Juan Francisco Palencia. „Eine Blume auf dem Weg“.

[megairea]

I think houses live their own lives along a time-stream that’s different from the ones upon which their owners float, one that’s slower. In a house, especially an old one, the past is closer.

Stephen King, Bag of Bones, 1998

[metamorphesque]

How cyclical and bittersweet for a child to retrace the image of their mother. For a subject to turn back to document their archivist.

― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

[tamsoj]

Jane Hirshfield, from Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, "The Envoy"

[torpublishinggroup]

This advertisement is for The Lies We Conjure, the new contemporary supernatural thriller from Sarah Henning.

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

Knives Out but make it witchy. A magical whodunit following two ordinary sisters who find themselves trapped in a mansion with thirteen witches after a dinner party turns deadly.

[writingwithfolklore]

Making Meaning, Not Sense

                I took a contemporary creative writing class last semester, and one of my prof’s favourite things to say was “Make meaning, not sense.” What she meant by that is that by just putting two elements next to each other, they form meaning, even if they don’t necessarily make ‘sense’ next to each other.

We spent the entire semester making meaning without making sense. She encouraged us to not ‘over-explain’ ourselves—to let the readers interpret the meaning of our work in their own way.

While I would argue clarity is an important thing to consider when writing for others, this idea of allowing the readers interpretation can be a freeing exercise, and open up some unique creative decisions!

I rewrote the same piece twice—the first time trying to give context to the things I was talking about, and then the second time, letting those things just sit without trying to smother them. The first one was a good story, but it was my story—and may be forgettable for someone just passing by. The second allowed the readers their own interpretation—in a way, making the piece as much theirs as it was mine. I let up control in order to create meaning for the individuals who would read it.

                All this is to say that while clarity and ‘sense’ is important in a story, there is a point where you may be smothering your meaning by attempting to make too much sense. Try experimenting by letting up the reins a bit and allowing your readers to take the work in their own unique direction. You can sacrifice a bit of sense to make a lot of meaning.

                Good luck!

[blurrymerzsblog]

“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.”

Nora Ephron

Christian Schloe

Via @ravenous_butterflies

“Sobre todo, sé la heroína de tu vida, no la víctima”.

Artist: Nora Efron

[galina]

Whale Fall, Elizabeth O'Connor – I was sent an advance review copy by picador, it comes out later this month. A powerful short novel with themes of environment, relationships with nature, colonisation, fascism, community, loss, grief, the impact of biased documentation and archiving, and the role of gender in society.

I really liked this, it hones in on a young girl coming of age on an unnamed island off the coast of wales, in the weeks leading up to war being declared in england.

What struck me was how precise and unflinching the language is in this text where images of island life are shrouded in a blanket of dramatic irony. Whales as literary allegory could feel overdone but not here, where the urgent message against fascism, against humans selfishly taking and appropriating for their own gain – whether from nature or other humans – is frank but not overwritten.

[literatureaesthetic]

i find books centred around middle-class white women “struggling” to navigate life to be so difficult to get through

i'm one "sad white girl in la" novel away from a breakdown

[soracities]

I needed to make something happen, anything. I couldn’t keep passing through life, over it, under it, around it. I couldn’t go on haunting the world like a wraith.

Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine