The Red Queen Philippa Gregory - Explain the Reason for Reading the Book

In a earlier post of mine, I had finished reading Lady of the Rivers, which was about Japquetta and her journey through the Royal Court of England and the people she met. One of the people she met was Queen Margaret, who was married to the King while she was in court. The Red Queen, is about Margaret and her journey to the English court with a backround of French. When I read the Lady of the Rivers, Margaret was introduced later in the book so I did not get to know that much about her past and that only she was desperate for an heir to continue the throne in her name.

Li Cunxin Mao's Last Dancer

"Mao's Last Dancer" is a auto-biography that Li Cuxin wrote. The begining setting of the book is the country side of China during Dictator Mao's reign. Li lived with his entire family and his extended family as well. His family lives in near poverty, starving nearly every day while being taught in class that Mao  has done greatness to China and that no one would be hungery, but as he soon becomes to realize his entire village was starving. The main conflict begins to occur when he is chosen along with 10 other children to attend the Beijing Dance Academy which the second main setting of the book. He was sent there to learn ballet and other folk dancing to bring honour to China under Mao's name. As he lives at the academy he struggles to understand the manderin dialect and to understand dance. During this time he pushes his body to the limit and pushs himself in studies to help his family. Eventually he gets the rare chance to go to America and perform which was nearly impossible because you need the dictator's permission to go.

Gregory Maguire Wicked

         Elphaba is the main character of the novel "Wicked". If you haven't seen Broadway or read the book she's more known as the Wicked Witch of the West from the famous movie/book "The Wizard of OZ". In the movie/book all that was told about her was that she was the villain and water causes her to melt. So L. Frank Baum never really gave her a back story where the audience could really understand what was going on in Elphaba's mind when she attacks Dorathy.

           So before reading "Wicked" I never liked the Wicked Witch, I thought she was like all the other villains in movies, just there for confict and didn't have a beginning or a reason, she's just there. Than again there were some questions that I wished to know the answer of at the end of the movie. Why's her skin green? Did she have a family like her? Was she always this person? Well, while I was reading "Wicked" I found out a lot of answers to these questions which made me feel like watching the movie again to make sure that all the answers made sense.

             For the question about her skin it turns out she was born green while neither of her parents were green, but apparently Elphaba was born on a very peculiar day. Which the author may be suggesting that maybe some unknown force or some sort of Munchkinlander folklore caused this to happen to her. On the topic of her physical odds it turns out that from the day she was born she hated water in general and to cope with that she used coconut oil so her skin didn't dehydrate.

            Her mother and her father were part of a missionary to the country side. Both knew that their daughter was odd but they kept her and had the mother's old nanny help with the upbringing. Elphaba also had a little half sister that was related to her through her mother ( you will have to read the book for this), and she had no arms but her skin tone was normal and she was considered pretty. When reading about her childhood I noticed that she didn't fair well with other children and her parents didn't even try to get her to interact with others which I found interesting. Seeing that Elphaba 's older self was living alone in a giant castle with monkey guards.

           At one point in the book Elphaba is sent to a boarding school where she meets Glinda, which was actually being pretty snobby at this age in my opinion. Once settling down Elphaba makes some aquetances but not anyone that she would really talk to. Showing that she already didn't like to socialize very much. 

          Reading "Wicked" did not exactly do what I thought it was trying to do. Which was get me to symphasize with the main character but it didn't, it allowed me to be more informed of her allowing me to understand a bit more of Elphaba's actions in the movie. Instead it made me admire L. Frank Baum for his ability to make villain that you had to imagine what thierry beginning was like.


           

Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

In the first 50 pages of this book I have come to understand the main character's basic thoughts, actions and life. Using the knowledge that I know he is confused about his Grand Father's last words about betraying his people durring the Civil War and how that relates to him. I also know that his actions in the boxing ring and his desicions when reading his speech to say "social equality" instead of "Social Responsibility" had him understand that he had to be more carefull when reading in front of other people. I also know that he is African American and how he is seen in society. So because all of these things I know, I can guess that he is eventually going to do an action that has him infront of scores of peolple, whither it to do a speech or do a violent act or a peaceful protest, so he can help stop segregation and make racisim and descrimination less powerful. In the first chapter he presents a speech to powerful white buisness men that live in his area and becuase his first act against segregation is during that speech it makes me think that he is going to use more of a peaceful approach to spread his ideas rather than a violent act.

The Lady of the Rivers

 Philippa Gregory,
         My favorite genre is historical fiction and The Lady of the Rivers is now a prime example in why I perfer historical fiction over other genres. The story of Jaquetta was throughly researched and because of that you were able to make events in her life so much more understood and known seeing that I bought the book in a diffrent country. For example in scene where Jaquetta tells William de la Pole that she married without the King's permision was very tense and would have seemed to have been poor planning but since her resoning was explained early on I was able to understand where she was coming from and why she made this desicion.
          I also found it intresting that monarchy at this time period was not as strong as I thought it was. For example King Henry VI and Queen Margaret had to fight to keep thier power through out the land and to crush revolts against the crown. I suppose kings and queens in this time period needs to be older and wiser to understand what must be done to keep the crown then of the age that King Henry VI and Queen Margaret were. By the way you were writing about Margaret's actions it seems that without Jaquetta the English Monarchy might be diffrent then it is today because of the advice that Jaquetta gave to Maragaret.
          When I read your authors note I was surprised that you were researching her daughter and not Jaquetta first but I admire that you did change to Jaquetta because many strong independent females are not mentioned that often in this time period in history and instead over shadowed by other powerful figures. I also found the way you inserted Jaquetta's magical family history to be very interesting because I read the tale of Melusina before reading this book and I wondered if the tale continued through the three children that Melusina had and I was surprised to find the answer in this book.
          I look forward to reading your other historical fiction novels and will be hunting them down in the library very soon, particularly The Other Boleyn Girl because I find Queen Elizabeth I's mother, Anne Boleyn's, family to be very mysterious because I don't know much about it. I also look forward to reading the other Cousins' War novels as well.

                                                                                                          Sincerely,
                                                                                                                  L.T.