Interesting

7 Women Writers Who Wrote Under Male Names [International Women’s Day]

 in Books / Interesting by

Throughout history, women have chosen to write under male names to get more publicity and to be taken seriously. As today is International Women’s Day, I think that some of these lovely ladies should be recognized.

I wonder if these’s any male writers who write under female names – such as if a guy is writing a romance book. Do you know any?

1. The Brontë Sisters

These ladies originally posted under the pseudonym names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. As some of their books were pretty edgy for the time, like Wuthering Heights, it is completely understandable why the decision to take a male author name was chosen. Additionally, during this time, writing was not seen as something that a lady would do, so the decision to write under a males name was chosen.

2. Mary Ann Evans aka. George Eliot

The writings of George Eliot are up there with works by Charles Dickens! Dickens himself even believed that works under the name of Eliot were written by a female as he had never seen writing so beautiful!

3. Joanne Rowling aka. J.K. Rowling

This one is pretty commonly known now, but as it’s a modern book, you’d never think that writing under a males name was still needed. Part of the reasons was to help bring more males into the world. I guess men don’t want to read books written by women, or they may find the writing too girly. As Harry Potter is one of the most famous books out there, I guess she did pretty well for herself!

4. Pamela Lyndon Travers aka. P.L. Travers

Best known for her book Mary Poppins, it took two names before arriving on the better known P.L. Travers. She was born with the name Helen Lyndon Goff and later renamed herself Pamela Lyndon Travers. Fun fact: she hated children, really disliked the Mary Poppins film and was rumored to be quite a grouch!

5. Karen Blixen aka. Isac Dinesen

Best known for her book Out of Africa (which has a fantastic movie adaption by the way) she used her pen name, especially for her Gothic writings which were published in America. She used various pen names for various works.

6. Louisa May Alcott aka. A.M. Barnard

Best known for her work Little Women, which she published under her real name, she used her male pen-name to write her Gothic novels. This was because Gothic novels were seen as not being feminine but she wanted to write anyway!

7. Nelle Harper Lee aka. Harper Lee

Lee dropped her first name as she felt that it was too feminine and so opted for the second and third parts of her name. Best known for her novel To Kill a Mockingbird, she chose to write under a more gender-ambiguous name as all the popular authors during her time were men!

How many on this list were you familiar with?

New Website – College Survival 101 16

 in Interesting by
I’m very proud to announce my newest website, College Survival 101.

As a college student, I used to write little posts about college life on here. But recently, I’ve realized that I have so much more information that I’d like to share, as a college student to another college student.

So much information out there is shared by adults to students, from what they used to know, but I, personally, haven’t really found much written by students, barring some lifestyle blogs where they share tips on how to be organized and such. However a lot of it is just them wanting to present themselves as a perfect college student.

College is difficult and you will be far from perfect, which is which I started College Survival 101.

It’s full of information to survive and to get through the beginning of freshmen year, things you need to remember, tips to do well in the long run and reiterating what your parents said (maybe if someone else says the same thing you will listen).

Things have changed since your parents were in college and that’s why you may not have listened to them, or don’t want to. I was like that, so I do know.

So, here you can find all the information told to you by someone who has survived it and thrived.

Right now the website will be focusing on prospective students and freshmen but I will start to cover Masters life once I fully get into that (I’m heading that way soon!).

I hope that you find the website interesting and find something useful there. It’s perfect for college kids, so if you have a kid, or know someone, please share.

I am not writing this information just because I want to write stuff. I’ve realized how much college kids don’t know – which is surprising with the amount of time they have their noses buried in their phones. The website was created to genuinely help others and support them. And trust me, if your kid spends less time complaining later in college about wish they didn’t know, the better life will be!

www.collegesurvival101.com

Classic Versus New: The Art of Taking Your Time 14

 in Books / Interesting / Loving Language / Opinion by

Have you ever received a book recommendation from an adult of a classic that you were told you needed to read, but when you picked it up you were disappointed to find you struggled?

Then you get a recommendation from a friend for a YA or new adult book and you flew through it?

Why is that? Why can you more easily read one than the other?

When I was in High School, I had to read a lot of classic works as my English teacher really loved old novels. For the entire class, we generally loved the story, but just struggled with the reading. Class discussions helped us fall in love with the story but homework sucked.

If you ever take time to look at how books are written now versus how they used to be written, you’ll see the difference.

When you look at classic novels, like Anne of Green Gables,for example, you’ll see that the first page is all one sentence, just with lots of punctuation.

You look at the first page of most YA and adult books, you’ll see maybe 8 short sentences in the first paragraph alone. And that doesn’t even take up the full page.

Classic Versus New: The Art of Taking Your Time

Short, bite sized sentences.

Most books now is just like that. It has short sentences, short chapters and lots of action. There’s always something going on – there’s no quiet time to just reflect on the book and writing itself.

The Essex Serpent  is a fantastic example of a new book that’s written in an old style.

  • The book moves much slower.
  • They will spend pages just describing a town
  • You really just experience the atmosphere as it’s built slowly and carefully – there isn’t lots of action going on.

You don’t need someone to die or for there to be sex scenes on every page for it to be good writing.

Just because a book doesn’t have you racing to the end of a chapter to find out what happens next doesn’t mean it’s a bad book!

It’s a writing style, that’s all.

People now are always so busy, running around, used to short info (ex: tweets) that they need short sentences. Sitting down and reading complex sentences, big words and ideas takes too much effort. It’s a mental discipline that many now are lacking. I’m guilty of it too, but the challenge of classic novels is good. It helps you to write better and just become more rounded as an individual.

Is it difficult? Of course!

Is it worth the challenge? Definitely!

Overall, my advice to you would be to not to be discouraged.

Pick up a classic book and struggle through it. Take 15 minutes to read one page. Not all reading should be relaxing.

Sometimes you have to put in a little effort to take something away.

 

Where Do You Want To Visit Book Stores? 2

 in Books / Interesting / Travel by

I find that a bookstore can really represent a culture.

No, I’m not talking about going to your local B&N or conglomerate bookstore.

I’m talking about the small bookstore that is a hole in a wall, crammed full of books and smells old!

I have a dream of falling into a Parisian Bookshop and just spending my afternoon there shopping around.

That being said, I got to visit an incredible bookstore in Tokyo, Japan while I was there. Kitazawa Book Store! It even made a list on BookRiot of one of the most beautiful bookstores in the world!

Where Do You Want To Visit Book Stores?

It was full of classic novels, all in beautiful condition but almost nothing was new. It was all pre-owned or vintage. The best kind of book store!

I relived some of my journey to Japan today on Instagram, as this time last year I was enjoying my study abroad!

I was so honored when they commented back and shared my photos on their story (check their instagram out here)! Honestly, it was a fangirl moment. I went all the way around the world to visit their bookstore and then they thanked me. It doesn’t get much better than this honestly. I’m still so excited and honored beyond belief!

But my question to you…

Where do you want to visit bookshops?

For me, I want to go back to Japan and visit all the store on the street that Kitazawa was on. There were so many.

Of course visiting bookstores in England is always so enjoyable for me.

But on my bucket list….Paris!

Banned Books in 2018?

 in Books / Interesting by

I feel that the idea of banned books, or censoring books, is something attributed to the 80’s. But, it may not be so far into our pasts.

Police Officers in South Carolina are trying to get two books removed off of a summer reading list because they feel it displays the police in a negative light.

BookRiot first reported it this morning.

The Comic Book Legal Defense fund reported it a few days back, on June 28th.

The two books in question are The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (Amazon, B&N, Ebooks.com) and All American Boys by Jason Reynolds (Amazon, B&N, Ebooks.com).

Now, I haven’t read either of the books, but thankfully BookRiot clearly showed what the books were about. While there is violence against minorities in the books, specifically instigated by the police, it isn’t about what the police do. It’s about acceptance of what happened and not countering violence with violence. Read the BookRiot post here.

As reported to WCBD news,

President of the Fraternal Order of Police Tri-County Lodge #3, John Blackmon, says, “Whether it be through social media, whether it be through text message, whether it be phone calls, we’ve received an influx of tremendous outrage at the selections by this reading list.”

Now, I haven’t read either of these books, but one of them is a #1 NY Times Best Selling book, and I’ve heard wonderful things about it. I get if you have a book that may be anti-government and quite obviously calling for the rallying of a population, but these books are non-fiction and are addressing issues that are important to so many in an easy to understand format. I find it to be an exaggeration that the local police department is getting ‘hundreds’ of calls complaining about this book. The issues represented in the book are very important. If something is grotesque with the violence or sexual content, that is one thing, but just because you don’t like what a book has in it, doesn’t mean you should remove it from a list because you feel uncomfortable.

Books can make you feel uncomfortable, especially when you don’t agree with what is being written. But saying that it is going to cause violence in your community when you read it? I think that’s absolutely ridiculous!

If your community is brought up well, and you have good families, there is no reason that a book should incite you to violence. I’ve read many violence books over the years, but never once through I wanted to go out and do anything I read about. There’s racism in books and I’ve never once thought about saying, or doing, any of those things that are from books. That excuse, in my opinion, is absolutely ridiculous.

The fact that this is still an issue is ridiculous. I find this really upsetting, but of course, this is just my stance on it.

Do you have any thoughts about this? Do you agree? Disagree?