Today’s Holidays: National Authors’ Day, World Vegan Day, All Saints Day, National Go Cook for Your Pets Day, National Men Make Dinner Day
Website of the Day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UlzK3X9ddQ
Fact of the Day: Tennessee Williams lied about his age to enter a writing contest for contestants 25 years and younger when he was 28.
That time of the year is finally here: the one I have an ongoing countdown on the Countdown!! App for. This is the day, November 1st, that I wait for each and every day of the year, my most favorite holiday (except my birthday and National Cheesecake Day). I may be exaggerating just a little; I don’t actually have a countdown, but today we celebrate all authors and their writing on National Authors’ Day. Where would we be in life without F. Scott Fitzgerald’s eloquent warning of the past’s power to hold us back from the future: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”? How would we know just how great love is without Nicholas Sparks’ words: “The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds, and that's what you've given me. That's what I hope to give to you forever”? Authors are more than just writers; They are analysts of the world, examiners of life. They captivate us in beautiful language and complex, relatable characters as they unfold a story that just may tell us something about who we are, who we want to be, or how we matter. If you couldn’t tell by now, I really like to read. So, without further ado, here are my all-time, favorite authors who have had an impact on who I am today:
Let’s begin with the author who truly made me fall in love reading: Sara Shepard. Actually, it was the Judy B. Jones and the Magic Treehouse books that first got me into reading, and maybe even before that was Curious George and Dr. Suess, but Sara Shepard manifested this interest in books into a passion. I read all 19 Pretty Little Liars books in a span of three weeks, then I moved onto The Lying Game series, and I finished with The Perfectionists series. These dramatic, mystery novels introduced me to a new world of thrill and excitement that made me flip through the pages, sometimes as fast as a book a day. And sure, The Pretty Little Liars books aren’t Anna Karenina or The Scarlet Letter, but they will always have a special place in my literary history for the way in which they drew me into the story.
As I followed John Green’s epic love stories of The Fault in our Stars, Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns, and An Abundance of Katherines, I also fell in love with Green’s style of writing. The way in which he was able to put words and phrases together in such a way that made me feel every emotion that the characters felt and see everything that they saw not only enhanced my love for reading, but it taught me so much about writing. I had always loved writing since kindergarten, but Green introduced me to writing as a craft: an abstract, individualistic expression of oneself that culminates into a powerful effect on others. There are few authors that I can quote by heart, mostly due to my poor memory, but Green, in Looking for Alaska, writes words that I will never forget, words that have made me question the world and redefine what I have known to be true, and yet have given me an endless strength:
“We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.”
Moving to the author who taught me both how to craft dimensional characters and setting as well as the value of friendship: Elena Ferrante. I read My Brilliant Friend on the train ride to UPenn for a lab internship last summer, recommended to me by my English teacher. Every time the train would stop, all I wanted was to keep reading and the last thing I wanted was to pipette in lab (maybe a sign that a lab internship wasn’t really for me). Ferrante demonstrates how post-war Italy society develops a unique female friendship between Lila and Elena, and yet also drives them apart. The setting and characters are not simply separate elements of a story for Ferrante; they are intertwined as one, which is why the story is both impactful from an emotional standpoint and simultaneously redefines the stereotypical genre of “chick-lit”.
And finally, as one of my current favorite authors, Zadie Smith writes both novels and short stories that have had the greatest impact on my writing as well as the way in which I analyze books. I read Smith’s Swing Time over this past summer, and as I read, I found myself asking questions, like the kind we would talk about in an English class. And so I decided to type up all of these chapter by chapter discussion questions after writing them in the book as I went, culminating in, essentially, a large lesson plan.
Smith explores the rich complex of power that exists in the world, among other ideas of love, poverty, time, hardship, and the common struggle to find meaning. I had never before read a book that tackled so many aspects of life at once. I felt connected to the narrator as I saw the world through her eyes, as well as questioned it from my own perspective. Smith forces us to question how we matter right from the beginning, when the narrator states in the prologue: “A truth was being revealed to me: that I had always tried to attach myself to the light of other people, that I had never had any light of my own. I experienced myself as a kind of shadow”. It is because of Smith that I have developed further skills for analyzing a book, in which the book is not this distant text in front of me, but rather another world, one that I get to be a part of for however long I choose, even after I read the last word. Smith’s Swing Time, as well as her short stories, have sparked a deeper understanding of myself and others, and it is for this reason that I celebrate her today.
National Authors’ Day not only means so much to me because I love to read, but one day I hope to be someone who is celebrated today. Becoming an author is my dream: it always has been and it always will be. Although, technically, I guess you could say I fulfilled that dream in sixth and seventh grade (check out my “books” on Amazon: Something Called Luck and Something Called Hope - the super embarrassing attempt of my younger self to be a published author). But, in all seriousness, writing, both the words of others and the words that I have written, have impacted me in ways that I can’t ever quite explain or articulate to others.
I will forever be grateful for writing, and I owe so many authors, the four I mentioned above included, credit for showing me the beauty and power that words can have. Happy National Authors’ Day! How did you celebrate? Comment below or send in a picture to nationalholidaymovement@gmail.com ! #Books #Read #Write #BeHappy #Celebrate