Princess For a Day

Every girl should feel like a princess at least once in her life. For most of my childhood, I felt like a toad.
However, in middle school, I met people who not only accepted me, but made me feel royal, and now, so many years later, when I'll soon be graduating from high school with those same people, I can't help but feel how lucky I am. A perfect example of this friendship, and its importance to me, is displayed within the preparation for a recent major event in my life: Senior Prom.

Background info: Belle is my favorite princess, possibly ever. It's even on the back of my Daffodil trading card. And yet, it still amazes me when people remember this fact. So when I walked into AP English first thing in the morning about three weeks ago, and all of the lights were off, save for one illuminating a single red rose, suspended within a glass bell jar on my desk, I got excited. When the note next to the display read "Tale as Old as Time, Song as Old as Rhyme, Turn Around and Answer my Question Before the Last Petal Falls..." it got pretty hard to contain the massive smile on my face. And when I DID turn around, and one of my best friends (who is also my official Daffodil escort) was standing there with a bouquet of flowers, and a sign painted to look like a stained glass window that read, "Savvy, Prom?" I pretty much almost started crying. Because it is one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me, and it did make me feel like a princess, and for that day, I got to be one of those girls who walked around the school with a bouquet of flowers that everyone else smiled at. It was completely unexpected and sweet, and showed a genuine care for things that he knew I'd love.

And it was the perfect way to ask a classic romantic like me to Prom. If you look at my bookcase, there's more than a shelf or two reserved for timeless love stories like Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre, and it isn't hard to find that many instances of fairy tales either: The Once Upon a Time YA multi-author series, as well as Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and a hardbound copy of Hans Christian Anderson's tales, can all be found within the cramped space of my book collection (speaking of fairy tales, look out for a forth-coming post about my topic for this year's research essay!).

Anyways, after the sheer wonderfull-ness of the Prom-posal, I felt the need to return to reading this kind of light-hearted fantasy fare... however, with the sun beginning to shine it's face more and more everyday, I wasn't content to simply read your run-of-the-mill romance. I needed action, and adventure. So, I looked around my room, and pulled out William Goldman's The Princess Bride, which I found to be the perfect - wait for it - "mawwaige" of the adventure and fantasy genres. :) 

And it really is. This classic fantasy tale, published in 1973 and made iconic by the 1987 movie (starring Carey Elwes, Robin Wright, and a swashbuckling Mandy Patinkin, to name a few) follows one of the greatest love stories ever written, through such hazardous terrains as the Cliffs of Insanity, the Fire Swamp, and the Zoo of Death, with monstorous creatures like Rodents of Unusual Size, and even more monstrous villains,  like the scheming Sicilian, and the sinister Six-Fingered Man.

Plot-wise, it's reasonably linear - with some slight chronological variance when you reach the climax of the story, you'll see what I mean - and should therefore be easy to follow; however, as in the movie, where the book is read by the grandfather to his sick grandson, the novel is only the "abridged" version, altered from the "original" author - S. Morgenstern - 's by a later storyteller: Goldman. However, in an effort to keep the movie from becoming almost entirely incomprehensible, they left out all of the bits that Goldman, even in his "abridging," had kept in; namely, confusing and silly attempts to set a discernable time period during which the story may occur - like, after hairdressers, and after America, but before Europe, and whatnot. Some of this long-windiness was thoughtful and inventive, and humorously helped explain the background to the story (for instance, the history of the feud between warring countries Guilder and Florin). However, some of it was a little to lengthy for my tastes, and occasionally too dry to swallow good-naturedly.  For the most part, it kept the action at a pretty fast pace, but those few spots where the back story started upstaging the real plot, were a little chaotic.

But that, my friends, was pretty much my only criticism. The small fraction of the story I have a problem with by no means detracts from the work as a whole, and in fact, the book is one of my favorites. Like the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series back in middle school, this novel is openly traded and discussed among my friends, in the hopes that we can all share in it and its story. Because this book is one of the few that holds the trans formative powers that bend space and time, placing you directly in the world of the novel and within arm's reach of the characters.

And as it is a love story - and as I said in the opening of this blog post - because I am one of those that feel every girl should feel like a Princess. <3

#25. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

AP Testing: A Half-Hearted Retrospective, aka, Confessions of a Study-Plan Hypocrite

Sweet, glorious freedom was once again mine at 11:35 am this morning, as I closed the AP English Literature and Composition testing booklet, and headed outside with my friends, into the sunshine. Well, not exactly the sunshine: the weather around here's as ready for summer as we are, but still seems to be subjected to some kind of regulation, like we are, so it's stuck in springtime mode (like we are). Anyways, the last AP test of my high school career was today. Now I'm all done. And as I data-wiped months worth of now-useless information from my brain (jk, there was nothing there in the first place :) ) I realized that I could actually read books again! Hooray!

Wait a second, I thought to myself. That sounds familiar.

It was definitely what I talked about in my post-AP test blog post, just last year. (read it here )

After the fact, I realize I messed up a little when it came to AP Prep... but not taking my own advice is probably the most embarrassing mistake. However, I am another year older and another year wiser, and I can definitely tell you that there are quite a few more things that I would have done differently. Which means it's time for my AP Advice, Part Two! (Feel free to participate as is applying to your level of apathy and actual free time. )

1. Read. Read like the Wind! aka, How Your Learning Style Affects Your Score.
I learn best when reading. That's why I got such great scores on my AP US History and AP English last year: I could get by on reading the material and the study guides, studying review sheets, and hand-writing a lot of notes. However, numbers, and how to interpret them, has never been my strong suit, which is why, when it came time to study AP Calc and AP Chem, I was thoroughly overwhelmed. Both of my teachers in those sections operate using a lecture-type method, with minimal handouts or take-home notes. I realized that if I had started taking notes from my study guide alongside the lessons we learned in class, it would have been easier to review the material. Woops. Moral: Study the way you can best benefit from it.

2. Google Counts as a Bosom Friend, aka, Utilize and Be Familiar With All Possible Resources.
There's your textbook, duh. Your class notes. Any other study notes or handouts you get during class.  Study guides available at the library, bookstore, and often, with your teacher. Online databases. Additional notes you can take outside of class. And let's not forget that all of the past free-response questions are available online, too. You just have to take the initiative to explore every possible avenue of prep.

3. Robots Would Be Happy, If They Could, aka, When It's Okay to Stop Caring About Anything but ABC Family Original Movies and Not Studying for AP Calc
There's a point when, if you continue to study, you simply have no room in your brain. Try any harder, and you may start forgetting things, like your address or middle name. This is when you just need to step back, take a breather, and watch mind-numbingly bad TV to make the headache go away. My recommendations? SyFy's Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files, or anything on The CW.

Learn from me!

The Things She Carried

Recently, we finished reading a book in AP English called The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien. It was the kind of book that your parents had to sign a permission form for you to read. The novel itself is about experiences within a band of soldiers in the Vietnam War, told predominantly in stream-of-consciousness style. The chapters within the book have tangled, circular patterns, and are very jumbled, which, coupled with the serious subject matter and often-used profanity, made the novel a pretty difficult read. I wasn't really enjoying it, simply because I don't necessarily approve of war, and the discussions we were having as a class on the topic, weren't either productive or helpful in analyzing the book.

Halfway through reading the novel, it got much more difficult for me to read about guns, death and loss. A great friend, one of my beautiful Princess sisters, the one with whom I was closest, committed suicide, on April 10th (the day of my most recent blog post... we weren't informed of her death until the next day.)
 She and I were together during our Princess Retreat, were in the same car group when driving to all of our many events, and she was my dancing partner. She had even came over to my house, and met my family back in February, the night before a big event, so she could practice the dance with me. She was right next to me every time we performed our dance, and was in the backseat with me on every car ride, and made every Daffodil event seem like the biggest party ever... she was a GREAT friend.

The sudden and tragic loss of her drastically effected my ability to simply go through life, let alone read this book. It was much more difficult to tolerate the guns, killing, loss, and death, often expressly and insensitively stated and approached within the novel. However, it was a school assignment, and my teacher was unable to realize that continuing to read the book was upsetting me, so I just read what I was supposed to, and tried to focus. Automatically, my brain honed in on how death was viewed within the novel - not as weakness, just, something that happens, like an inevitability, almost - and how the various soldiers reacted to it: some, with insensitivity, and almost disgusting behavior, and others, with a deep, dragging guilt, comparable to the state I was in. I left class more than once reaching tears, simply because it was too difficult to handle. (Of course, our English teacher follows up that book, with a poetry unit - the fourth poem we study being Richard Cory, by Edwin Arlington Robinson, because he's oblivious.)

In the end, I know that Alex will stay in my heart and memory forever, because she was one of the best parts about being a Daffodil Princess. However, while it was an interesting and thought-provoking novel, I don't think I'll ever want to read it again. The pain and emotions I'll forever associate with The Things They Carried will be too painful to revisit.

Princess friends forever. I'll never forget, and always love, you. See you in the stars, Alexandria. RIP.

#24. The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien.

Take Me Away

Guess who gets to go to school every single day this week, without missing any classes? This girl! Normally, you wouldn't be expecting an average high school student to praise the opportunity for a week's worth of perfect attendance, but when you acknowledge the fact that I haven't been able to regularly attend classes for a full week for over a month, it seems more the feat. Believe me, there's not much I love more in this world than the opportunity to be a Daffodil Princess, but I'm certainly missing out on the whole "actually going to school" thing.

And in going to classes, I'm finally able to understand my homework assignments, instead of struggling through them on my own. I'm also able to understand how woefully unprepared I am for taking the AP Calc and AP Chem tests come May. So, time for school, Daffodil, and AP prep, has left me with little to no time to actually read at all.

In finding respite from all this Spring madness - What is that? In the sky? I mean, that big, shiny, round thing? Is that the sun??? - I turned to my bookshelf for something that could take me as far away from pages upon pages of testing information as possible. My fingers ended up finding something that had already provided me with sanctuary during a time of crisis: How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found, by Sara Nickerson - my favorite book from when I was 10-12 years old.

Confession time: I was kind of an antisocial kid. Only, replace "kind of" with about ten thousand "really"s. In many ways, I've dealt with the feelings of shyness that kept me in from recess every day with a book in my lap, instead of out on the sports field playing kickball (which I still believe is one of the world's most cruel and vindictive schoolyard pastimes). However, after finding this book again in my hands, I once again felt the need to sequester myself in my room until it was finished. :)

Reading the story, about a young girl's quest to find the answers to her father's mysterious death - connected to a big, creepy house on an island in the Pacific Northwest - felt as right as it did back when I still had braces. Involving running away from home, bullies, and actual comics incorporated into the text, I remember identifying with the main character, Margaret, over the fact that neither of us had many friends. While she also had a pesky little sister named Sophie, a mentally and emotionally vacant chain-smoking mom, and an uncle who thought he had turned into a rat, I had all the time in the world to read and reread this book, which you can tell I did, based on the amount of wear and tear on it's bindings.

Viewing it again, this time, with the additional knowledge and viewpoints I've gained since graduating middle school, and almost having completed high school, I can say that the story still stands up. I had been afraid that, being a different person now than I was then, the story wouldn't be as thrilling, suspenseful, or emotionally-involving as it always had been. Instead, I can definitely say that this kid's novel is still as unique and different as I remember it being.

#23. How to Disappear Completely and Never be Found, by Sara Nickerson (Scholastic Inc, 2002)

PS. And you see those carefully arranged packages beneath my copy? Those, my friends, are my cap and gown, and graduation announcements! I'm almost outta here! :)

Shield Me

Life has a way of throwing curve balls. Some, like AP classes and prep, are fierce, and not so easy to face square on. Some, like my work with the Daffodil Festival, are exciting, and give me the opportunity to hit it out of the park, by being a part of a very special game. However, this inning has been full of both hits and misses, and I've been praying for a chance to hit the bench and just read for a while.

(Please forgive me for the super-lame extended baseball metaphor. The thing is, my Dad is waiting for me downstairs to watch this night's episode of Castle, which means I have ten minutes to post this before he starts without me. Besides, I didn't like this book much anyways. )

Okay, okay, I liked it, a LOT actually, for it's deeply complex and twisting political intrigue, suspense, and, of course, just the fact that it was a really well-written fantasy, which is something I don't get to enjoy all the time. However, there were some severe issues I had with it, mainly having to do with the fact that it offended my modesty.

Going into reading the first in the Game of Thrones series, a friend had warned me, "Don't freak out, but these books are brutal." I heeded her warning... to an extent. However, as the daughter of a Roman Catholic Sunday School teacher, I don't think anything could have prepared me for the content of this book. All I can say is this: practically every other page was people humping each other or someone having their guts spill out of their stomach. I'm not a prude, I don't think, but I draw the line at a certain point.

But let me remind you, it was well-written and the relationships between characters were very interesting, and something you had to sort through. I also really enjoyed the fact that, at the close of the book (or at least at the last finger-swipe across the screen), I could only say that I even liked four of the characters, while hating the rest, but still managed to care what happened to everyone else. Barring John Snow, Tyrion Lannister, Bran Stark, and his brother Robb, I extremely disliked pretty much everybody else... and yet, I was emotionally attached to every single character - feeling empathy or hatred by turns, basically - and could appreciate the mechanics set in place, through them, by the author.

I would read the other books in the series... if the characters wouldn't act so gross.

(And don't get me STARTED on this Fifty Shades of Grey popularity trend... eccch.)

#22. Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin

Laugh Riot

I apologize for my absence... both in terms of my time spent on this blog, as well as the absence of mind recently. I am having an immensely hard time just keeping myself together... which is probably why I've been continuing to search for books that would have me busting at the seams.

After finishing Steve Martin's autobiography, I was led deeper into my father's bookshelves, where I found this: Live from New York, an Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller. While I searched for more of the funny, lightheartedness I had so begun to lack in myself, I found more of the serious work that Martin's book had contained. It was almost easy to see why SNL is lauded for its impressive political satire, because the extraordinary amount of politicking behind the wings would have made anyone an expert in the subject.

Starting with the show's inception in the mind of Lorne Micheals and the hand-picking of the original cast, this nonfiction circus - made up of carefully curated tidbits from the likes of cast members, guest hosts, producers, etc. - travels through the high points and the low points of its more than 30 seasons, from the Doumanian period and cast member deaths, to Wayne's World and Will Ferrel. While various historical moment's in the show's duration were remarked upon, and singers and guest hosts were celebrated and put down regularly, the book kept turning back to Micheals, the king of the show. All in all, it was a well-rounded peek into one of the best sketch-comedy shows of all time.

The book was good. However, I should really stop reading books about comedians, or I'm going to wind up more depressed than I was before.

#21. Live From New York by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller

Self-Concious Comedy

I, Savannah, have been drowning in a sea of homework, Princess duties, and social drama. After falling into an emotional sinkhole as our English class switched from Pride and Prejudice to Heart of Darkness, I was left lacking laughter, and went searching through the house, to locate some lighter reading to buoy my spirits. Whilst printing a chapter outline for APChem, I knocked over an untidy stack of books on the desk by my parents' computer. After picking it up off of my foot, I figured that I would give Born Standing Up: a Comic's Life, by the masterful Steve Martin, a chance to be that buoy.

Published by Scribner in 2007, the book actually was bought by my Dad, a self-considered comedian. In fact, I was raised to believe my father was the funniest man in the world. I realized that he wasn't, of course, as I grew up, but I don't think that he ever did... grow up, I mean. :) You can especially tell how devoted he is to comedy whenever he talks about performing as a kid. He was, at one point in time, in three choirs at once, and relates tales of his experiences, like that of perching himself in front of his school, with a guitar in hand, pronouncing a song dedicated to his then-girlfriend, getting ready to launch into musical euphoria, then shrugging, and mumbling into the microphone, "I forgot the words."

Hearing him tell stories like this, feels similar to reading Martin's book: funny, personal, and well-remembered. His early story is easy to relate to, and, even if you haven't ever pursued the dream of performing stand-up, the feelings expressed are easy to understand. The book, which focuses on the talented actor/writer/performer's rise from wide-eyed citizen of Disneyland, haunting the magic shop and Golden Horseshoe Revue stage, gleaning new tricks, to a man who wrangled crowds both into and out of a theater with similar mastery, and sold out stadiums to people who flocked from across the country to see him and his "happy feet."

One of the things that surprised me the most about his book, was that it wasn't just simply funny. Not that I had expected it to be the equivalent of a hardcover stand-up act, printed and bound. And it definitely wasn't completely lacking in jokes or his light-hearted style, by any means. It was an incredibly intelligent and introspective account of a career that spanned decades, and easily expressed not only anecdotes of his time on the stage, but also gave a deep and personal look at his political and artistic interests, as well as his interest in the opposite sex. :) He name drops famous friends throughout, and mentions his time spent of television - including early days with guest spots on SNL - but the real interest, and heart of his story, is present when the spotlight's on, and he feels the pressure and anxiety that comes with the silence of an audience. His brief anecdotes on drugs, a difficult childhood, his dealings with an agent, and playing on the road, all make this man out to be a rockstar, while his passion for art and poetry brands him an intellectual. His humor, however, reminds me of my Dad, and his love of the Happiest Place on Earth is something I will always manage to identify with.

That was probably my favorite part about reading this book: he isn't just the "funny man" to me anymore - not just the guy who hosted the Oscars a few years ago, or the jokester my 10th grade World History class bewilderedly observed singing about a dead pharoah, born in Arizona. He is not only the evil dentist (in one of my favorite musicals, ever). He is a multi-faceted, multi-talented person... one brave enough to stand on stage by himself, and offer up everything he's got for your entertainment. The world is not full of enough men, similar to Mr. Steve Martin, still brave enough to play the banjo. And I applaud him, for trying as hard as he can, to make us all laugh.

#21. Born Standing Up: a Comic's Life by Steve Martin