Book Kaleidoscope: My Top Five Best Book Covers

This is the second category of the 2012 Book Kaleidoscope, the rewinding of bookish aspects of books we have read during this 2012. After a little #fangirling in the 1^st category: Top Five Book Boy Friends yesterday, now we are switching to artistic aspects of a book: Covers! Here I rank my five most favorite books covers that I had read for 2012…

5. The Great Gatsby

I have posted about this particular The Great Gatsby cover for a classics challenge, and I don’t know why, this post became quite popular with 598 pageviews (when I wrote this post). This is a translated version of The Great Gatsby, and I like it even before I read the book. I like the overall color tone: beige, and the classy nuances. I’ll quote what I’ve written for this cover:

There are three persons, two men and one woman are standing in the middle of a party took place in a mansion. That was my first impression of this cover, and it turned out to match the book theme. The luxury party and the snob expression of those three persons could reflect the moral decadency of the “Jazz Age”. It seems that the woman (Daisy) is torn between the two men. She perhaps will choose the man in the front (Gatsby I presume), but she is somehow still attached to the man behind (Tom I presume), who is staring at her sharply, afraid of losing her.

Aesthetically I love the cover, it can reflect the theme of the book, but I think it still could not reflect the whole story. I could not even guess which one is Gatsby from the two gentlemen in the illustration.

4. Nobody’s Boy

This one is translated version of Nobody’s Boy from one of the biggest publishers in Indonesia. I like the old parchment color for the cover background, the illustration is nice too. Remi was pictured as a tiny and helpless boy, patting the dogs’ heads he loved—and the dogs loved him too. In the background, there was Signor Vitalis with the monkey on his shoulder, illustrated as if they were looking at Remi from a far before they both vanished. The illustration reflected the story very well.

3. Lord of The Flies

Red is my favorite color, so when I saw this new edition of Lord of the Flies in one of The Book Depository’s hourly sales, I just grabbed it without further consideration :) I liked the cover from the beginning, and after I read it, I loved it more. Firstly, the red color represented the fighting spirit of the characters. The illustration of the primitives fit with the story’s theme, and the bright colors (in leaves, animals) represented youthfulness. All in all, the cover tells the whole story of this book, about how youths could become savages, and how they fight against it. And the cover fits well with young adult readers.

2. The Color Purple

Not only because there were purple flowers in the cover that makes The Color Purple’s cover one of my favorites, I loved it because the cover reflected the story and the emotional aspects of the story. I have written about it here, let me just quote it now.

I think this certain cover speaks a lot about the book. First, there is a portrait of a black woman’s bare legs, standing at the porch (leaning on a pillar from rotten woods). The lack of shoes and the body language of the woman already brought the sense of poverty and powerless. The grayish color of the portrait only added a sense of hopelessness (and reflected the non-existence of women in the world) to the scene. However, there are also three purple flowers, as if from the helpless ground the flowers had grown to bring a new brighter and more colorful scene to the world (and to women in particular). The purple flowers represent the new hope of happiness that awaits Celie at the end of her long waiting.

1. Beloved

From the moment I held this book, I have been intrigued by the black woman’s picture. At first I thought the woman was so black that her face was almost disappeared. However at second sight, I began to realize that the half right of her face was completely transparent, as if half of her face dissolved to the red background of the cover (it’s a brilliant idea to choose red as part of the background so that the transparency effect became more distinct). And that was not intended to be just an effect (the transparency), or otherwise her hat and clothes would be transparent as well. It’s not until after I have finished reading Beloved—and it’s a very powerful book too—that I realized how clever the illustrator was in designing the cover. I could not say as much as I like without revealing the whole story, but I think that “Beloved” was exactly as what this cover is reflecting, mysterious, dark and made you think whether everything was real or was it as what you’ve been thinking. Genius design of a cover!

And….that makes Beloved…

Fanda’s Most Favorite Book Cover
of 2012!

*Put your post in the linky at Book Kaleidoscope Master Post*

*We still have one final post of the Top Five Most Favorite Books on December 31^st! (see the details in the Master Post)*

Mr. _____ on The Color Purple: Character Thursday (14)

Character Thursday is a weekly meme that requires you to post on every Thursday, your character choice from the book you are reading or you have finished with. It can be the protagonist or the antagonist, characters that you love the most or hate the most. You can pick any book of any genre as you like. Please feel free to grab the button below and paste it in your post. Last but not least, please add URL of your post in the linky at the bottom of this post.

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Mr. _____ (Albert)

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

You might be wondering, why I didn’t mention the actual name of my Character Thursday. Well, that is how Alice Walker wrote about this character from the perspective of Celie, the main female character of this book. From the first time Mr. _____ appeared, I have already disliked him. When he came to Celie’s house at the first time, it seemed that he was just looking for a woman for his household, not for his wife. He actually picked Nettie for his wife, however after Nettie run away, he must satisfied himself with Celie. So from the beginning, it’s neither love nor attraction.

Danny Glover as Albert (Mr. _____)

Being a husband, Mr. _____ was far from ideal. He often beats Celie even when Celie did nothing. He was harsh in bed, and never treated Celie as a wife nor a woman. And the worst of it, he was openly having an affair with his lover, Shug Avery, without hiding the fact from Celie. For Mr. _____ Celie was just someone to look after the children and do the household. That’s all. Why did he do that? I presumed that it was the habit or the culture among people at that time. Or perhaps, being a minority, Mr. ____ (and other African-American at that time) was used to be under oppression of white people, so that they need a kind of impingement from the feeling of their inferiority. They found a need to show someone (or themselves) that they still have the control over their life. So, Mr. _____ beat and did rude things to Celie, who (he thought) did not have the power to fight.

However, Mr. _____ has wrongly judged Celie. His wife turned out to be a brave and strong woman—thanks to the love she had and received. With the help of her best friend, Celie slowly built her own life. She moved from Mr. _____ house and started her sewing business. I think the fact that Celie had the courage to leave him, quite struck Mr. _____. And on this point, he changed for the better. He started to contemplate about his life, and here is his conclusion:

“I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ast. And that in wondering bout the big things and asting bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accidents. But you never know nothing more about the big things that you start out with. The more I wonder, the morel love.”

I know it’s quite confusing if you haven’t read the whole story, but what Mr. _____ (or we can call him ‘Albert’ now—the name which Celie had finally the courage to mention after her ‘rise’) wanted to say is, that after Celie left, he done a review of his own life, and finally decided to rebuilt it after he learned about love. After the transformation, Albert treated Celie as a friend, they could speak and even sew together for hours. Albert also offered Celie to renew their marriage.

So, Celie’s transformation actually brought another transformation in Albert too. What a wonderful character we have here, but what about you, who’s your Character Thursday for this week?

The Color Purple

How do you say that a book is a wonderful book? For me, it’s when everything from the book keeps ‘haunting’ me long after I finish it. It’s when I feel quite affected (in a good way of course) by the book, that it somehow changes a bit of me—what I think and what I feel. And that’s how I feel about this book: The Color Purple.

At the beginning, I thought this book is just going to be a story of pains and sorrows, racisms, and hard times for African-American women; a kind of story that you would perhaps put down halfway because it is too sad and frustrating to keep on reading. But I was wrong. On the contrary, The Color Purple—although it did tells stories about pains and sorrows—it tells more about love and friendship, faith and hope. And Alice Walker has written them all in a series of letters. Through that letters, we came to know about Celie and Nettie—the two sisters who love each other even though their lives have been separated, and all they must have gone through to keep their hopes on each other, in the middle of a turbulence era in America in 1910-1940s.

I love how Alice Walker emphasizes many remarkable things within the letters which were written by a non-educated African-American woman like Celie. I mean, those letters are not just ordinary letters, they contain deeper and stronger meanings, and a lot of life philosophies too sometimes. For example, the first sentence that opens the story: ‘You better not never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy’. I detect terror or shame in it, as if the person who has written it has done something very wrong or shameful—a big secret—that she couldn’t tell anybody but God. What a great way to start a novel! It already speaks the overall theme of the story, because that’s how Celie must have felt nearly her entire life.

Unlike Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin—where Uncle Tom was portrayed almost like a saint, Celie is not that ideal, not perfect. However I love Celie better than Uncle Tom because she’s just an ordinary human being just like most of us, who can be bitter and weak upon the tortures of life. At first Celie seemed to be faithful to God, she poured her sorrows into her letters to Him. She didn’t run away like Nettie, she didn’t fight like Sofia. She just gone through every pains she got from her Pa and then from her husband, Mr. _______. However at certain point, that was when she knew that Mr. _____ has hidden Nettie’s letter from her, she stopped writing to God, and began to write to Nettie instead. It’s interesting to read how Celie felt about God at that time, from her conversation with Shug:

Celie: “What God do for me?”

Shug: “Celie! He gave you life, good health, and a good woman that love you to death.”

Celie: “Yeah, and he give me a lynched daddy, a crazy mama, a lowdown dog of a step pa and a sister I probably won’t ever see again. Anyhow, the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgetful and lowdown.”

Shug: “Miss Celie, you better hush. God might hear you.”

Celie: “Let ‘im hear me. If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you.”

Well, there were times when we were in hard times, we might think the same way, that God has forgotten us and left us, so we also left God. It’s not strange, because—like Celie—we are all weak. At her hard times, Celie turned to the one she love the most, her sister Nettie and her best friend Shug. It’s them (especially Nettie) who have saved Celie from throwing God away for good. Because in people you love, and love you in return, you will find God’s presence. And at the end (to my joy!), Celie can finally repair her relationship with God in her last letter. We also experience the ups and downs of our faith, and now we know—thanks to Celie—that the only way to keep us from falling is to open our heart for love.

The same thing happened to Mr. ______. His philosophy is quite deep, and I think, very interesting:

“I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ast. And that in wondering bout the big things and asting bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things that you start out with. The more I wonder, the morel love.”  

There are several things that I don’t get quite well, though. For instance, why did the African reject all the missionaries, although they were also African (Samuel, Corrine and Nettie)? And why they dislike Africans that had been sold for slavery to America? Is that because of their being narrow minded?

And why do you think Celie kept calling his husband with Mr. ________? I think Alice Walker wants to emphasize how women’s status upon men’s at that time. Men have full authorities to women, that even after their marriage, Mr. _______ placed himself as a master, and Celie as a slave. Or, it might be that Celie hated his husband so much that she can’t spell his name, as if to say.. hey, he who used to beat me and treat me like a slave is not a friend, so I won’t call him as if he’s my friend. Because at the end when everything got better for Celie, she could finally call Mr. ________ with just ‘Albert’. What do you think?

I have also been wondering about the color purple itself. Has it a certain meaning that Alice Walker wanted to tell us? Or is it just Celie’s favorite color besides red? I remember that Celie asked for color purple or red when Shug brought her to a store to buy cloth for her first dress. The cover of the copy I read (borrowed from a friend) is also intriguing me, as it has purple flowers on the grayscale image of a black woman. I have discussed it here.

Last but not least, through The Color Purple we can see the danger of racism. I learned it from the scene of Sofia and Miss Eleanor Jane, when Eleanor Jane tried to make Sofia say something good about his baby. Eleanor Jane could not understand why Sofia can’t treat her just as a friend. Sofia knew that Eleanor Jane loves her despite of their different races, but there will always be an invisible curtain that separates them. And I think it would take a very long time too before that invisible curtain could vanish completely from our society.

Five stars for The Color Purple and Alice Walker!

Title: The Color Purple

Author: Alice Walker

Publisher: A Harvest International Edition

Published: 2007

Pages: 294

A special thanks to Bettina from Liburuak blog, who has hosted this lovely read along. Without it, I might not have been found the greatness of Alice Walker's writing, as well as the great female character such as Celie...

*This is my 1st review for The Classic Bribe 2012*

The Color Purple, Between Post-Modernism and Contemporary: A Classics Challenge May

Although it is not clearly stated in the book, I believe that The Color Purple is first set around 1910 or 1920, and stretched to the beginning of civil rights movements, around 1950s. However, I prefer to put this work of Alice Walker by the values she brought at the time she wrote this novel, rather than the time setting. So, although the original time set is within the first half of 20^th century, I think the best place to put this book is between the post-modernism and contemporary literary movement. Post-modernism is a historical period that began in the 1940s, a style of literature, philosophy, art, and architecture, or the situation of Western society in a late capitalist or post-capitalist age. Social issues as writers align with feminist & ethnic groups, are among this movement.

At the time Walker wrote The Color Purple, America has been struggling with both African-American racism and men-women discrimination and gender minority. The Color Purple is also the sign of African-American literature rising. Besides Alice Walker, Maya Angelou and Zora Neale Hurston were among the female authors that brought up the same values as The Color Purple. Their works shows the hardships of African-American women.

The story of Celie (female protagonist of this book), her hard times under the dominancy of his step father and husband, and the story of African people under the white people power truly reflect the focus of the post-modernism movement, especially the rising of African-American. As a woman, these issues are quite intriguing and emotional, so I might read other similar works, such as Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings in the future.

Celie on The Color Purple: Character Thursday (13)

Character Thursday is a weekly meme that requires you to post on every Thursday, your character choice from the book you are reading or you have finished with. It can be the protagonist or the antagonist, characters that you love the most or hate the most. You can pick any book of any genre as you like. Please feel free to grab the button below and paste it in your post. Last but not least, please add URL of your post in the linky at the bottom of this post.

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This week I pick a wonderful female character:

Celie

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Being a poor and uneducated African-American woman in 1910-1940s, Celie had been struggling in her life as a female in the domination of males. First abused and raped by her step father, and then abused and treated badly by her husband, a Mr. _______, yet Celie survived. At first she put her hopes on to God, through series of letters addressed to God, which became sort of her diary. After being separated from her younger sister Nettie, Celie did not have anyone to share her love. So, when a female singer with an independent mind named Shug Avery came into her life, she fell in love with her in no time, despite the fact that Shug is Mr. ______’s lover. From then on, it is Shug who became like a mother to Celie.

I think Celie loves Shug not only because Shug was a compassionate person to Celie, but because in Shug, Celie saw a person (or a woman) she’d like to become: assertive, independent, brave, sensual and attractive. One reason why Celie wasn’t quite jealous when Shug and Mr. _____ slept together under her nose, was because Celie never loved or even hated her husband.

Thanks to Shug, Celie learned not only passively accepted what men done to her, but to fight back. Her first attempt was by leaving Mr. _____ and moved to live with Shug in a new city. At the new place, Shug planted thr idea to build a business of producing pants to Celie. This was the first sign of her new life. When later on she came back, she was a different woman, stronger and braver. She was no more just a housemaid to Mr. ________, she was a companion. She can sit and talk equally to men. This only shows that friendships between females are very important, and often has a great impact on a woman’s life.

Besides Celie’s personal character swift, it is also interesting to see the change in her relationship with God. Although at first she has a strong devotion and can talk to God in her letters, in a certain point of her great disappointment, she run away from Him. This was when she began to address her letters to Nettie. However, when things finally got better for Celie, she returned to God in her final letter. It’s so typically us, human. We looked for Him in our difficult times to look for hopes, but we weren’t patience enough to wait till the hope come, and just runaway from Him.

I love Celie, the main character of The Color Purple. She is not a heroine who’s done heroic acts, she is just like most of us with all her weaknesses. Yet, she can survived through hard times, thank to God (yes, even when she runaway from God, God still took care of her through her dear friends: Shug, Sofia and Nettie).

Whoopi Goldberg, I think, is a perfect choice to perform Celie

So, who’s your Character Thursday of this week?

The Color Purple’s Cover

Discussing covers of books with a strong value is always interesting. The copy I read belongs to my friend, however I love this cover more than any other covers of The Color Purple.

From the time I started reading this book, I have been curious why Alice Parker picked ‘purple’ as her book title. What does the color represent? What does it symbolize? This is my little research has resulted:

In the meaning of colors, purple and violet represent the future, the imagination and dreams, while spiritually calming the emotions. They inspire and enhance psychic ability and spiritual enlightenment, while, at the same time, keeping us grounded. [source: Empower Yourself With Color Psychology]

It makes sense, considering the value that Alice Walker brought in this novel. I myself prefer to think that the color purple speaks about two main themes: spiritual connection between Celie and God, and the spirit of freedom.

So, from the above thoughts, I think this certain cover speaks a lot about the book. First, there is a portrait of a black woman’s bare legs, standing at the porch. The lack of shoes and the body language of the woman already brought the sense of poverty and powerless. The grayish color of the portrait only added a sense of hopeless to the scene. However, there are also three purple flowers, as if from the helpless ground the flowers had grown to bring a new brighter and more colorful scene to the world. The purple flowers represent the new hope of happiness that awaits Celie at the end of her long waiting.

What do you think?

Weekend Quote (2): The Color Purple

For this weekend, I am sharing a quote from a wonderful and inspiring book: The Color Purple by Alice Walker. It contains letters written by Celie, a poor African-American woman who were struggling in male’s and whites’ dominant world in America of the 1930’s. In one of the letters, Celie—with her limited skill of language—wrote this simple but deeply touching sentence:

“Never mine, never mine, long as I can spell G-O-D I got somebody along” ~Cellie

That is what Celie told her little sister Nettie, who worried about how Celie would do after she left. Although she is not well educated, Celie has a strong faith to God, why with the impossible situation like what she faced at that time, she wouldn’t make it without her faith. With his father abused her, her mother died, her husband didn’t love her, and her babies were separated from her, who will love her? It’s only to God she can address all her sorrows. It is to God either that Celie addressed most of her letters. And that quote showed us that in the loneliness of life, we will never walk alone, God will walk with us, we will ‘get somebody along’ just as Celie felt.

So, what’s your favorite quote of this weekend? Share with us in Weekend Quote meme:

The idea is to pick a quote from a book or author you read, like, or hate, and write your comment about it. You can post the “Weekend Quote” article every weekend (Saturday or Sunday), or at any weekend suits you best.

Here are the rules:

• You have to pick one quote and comment about it. It may be the reason why you agree or don't agree with it, or why it is interesting for you. I can also be your experience that reminds you of that quote. Feel free to use your imagination. :D
• Please put the picture of “Weekend Quote” on either your blog sidebar or everytime you post the quote. (It helps people to know what we are doing).
• Please give a link back to Listra’s blog at your post.

My First Impression Of The Color Purple

The Color Purple by Alice Walker has been known to be one of the most influencing works of the 20th century. It tells stories of the struggle of African-American women in America. I have put this book in my wishlist in Goodreads as well as in myClassics Club list. However, I still don't have the 'courage' to read it, realizing that reading books about pain and suffer always require my deep passionate and emotional involvement.

So, I was glad when one of the participants of The Classics Club was hosting a readalongof this book. It's encouraging to know that there others who are reading the same book as what you're reading at the same time. I also thank Annisa who lent this book to me. And here I am on page 63 (of 294), but has already been struck by the story...

The story is written as a series of letters addressed to God, by an African-American young woman named Cellie. She was fourteen years old when she was forced to have sex with his father. Becoming a wife didn't make things better either for Cellie. It seemed normal for men at that time to beat their wives just to make them see who the boss of the family is. Some of them just struggled to survive, just as Cellie:

"I don't know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive."

But some of them would fight, like Sofia:

"All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men."

It struck me how men could be so cruel to their wives and children. Men, who were supposed to be family protector, have become the enemy in their own household. However, considering what had happened at the time which this story used as a setting, everything seems reasonable.

1930’s has been noted in history as a hard time for African-American in America, especially in the Southern. Racism was still strong at that time, although some organizations such as Ku Klux Klan had had declined. It’s also hard for African-American women with exceedingly low position in American social culture at that time. Those circumstances are the background of The Color Purple. I think the inferiority of African-American to white people made the situation worsen for African-American women. When the men were intimidated by white people, they found the need to compensate it by intimidating their women (and children) to prove to themselves and to the world that they still have power. The Great Depression also occurred at the same time, which only worsen the situation.

So far, I’m enjoying this book, although I was confused a little bit at first with the language used by African-American, but I got used to it after several pages. Next week I will publish a character analysis from this book in Character Thursday meme, and will post my review at the end of the readalong, on 31 May 2012.