Kristen Barenthaler
Bio
Curious adventurer. Crazed reader. Librarian. Archery instructor. True crime addict.
Instagram: @kristenbarenthaler
Facebook: @kbarenthaler
Stories (370)
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What Makes 'Lost in Translation' a Great American Novel?
As Americans, we seem obsessed with discovering the next Great American Novel, which is simply a fancy way of asking for “any novel that is regarded as having successfully represented an important time in US history or one that tells a story that is typical of America.” (The Great American Novel) Eva Hoffman did not set out to write the Great American anything when she started her memoir Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language. She is Polish Jewish, originally immigrated from Canada, and only spent her life in America during and after college. However, looking at the definitions of what constitutes a “Great American Novel,” Hoffman’s story parallels with every part. Technically, she wrote a memoir, which is not a novel, but her story is still “a story that is typical of America,” (The Great American Novel) which should give it standing room as a member of the literary canon of Great American works.
By Kristen Barenthaler7 years ago in Geeks
What Is the Point of 'The Point?'
A little background, I used to watch The Pointevery year at Thanksgiving at my grandparents’ house in Buffalo, NY. I don’t know why and I don’t remember how the tradition started. But the real twist is that no one outside Buffalo ever seems to have heard of the movie! And trust me, I’ve asked. It’s like a vortex of only Buffalo people’s memories.
By Kristen Barenthaler7 years ago in Geeks
What Constitutes American Literature?
If you Google search “American literature,” you get results from Mark Twain to Edgar Allan Poe to Ernest Hemingway, but where is the diversity that makes America? Where are the female authors? The African American authors? Anyone of a minority? Honestly, they are not what comes to mind when someone says to tell them about great American literature. We think of Hemingway or Twain as American literature because that is what we are taught, giving them the biggest audience and the chance to become well-known. The only definition given for what constitutes as American literature is, “literature in English produced in what is now the United States of America.” (“American Literature”) It is as simple as that. Which means, that novels such as Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, should easily be placed in the American canon, finding its own audience to reach out to.
By Kristen Barenthaler7 years ago in Geeks
'A Simple Favor' - Movie Vs Book
By now if you haven't seen the advertisements for A Simple Favor (the movie) then you've probably been hiding out at the cabin with Emily. But a little less known fact (at least until it was recently shown on movie posters) is that the movie is based on the book of the same title by Darcy Bell.
By Kristen Barenthaler7 years ago in Geeks
Vampirism Within 'The Fall of the House of Usher'
What is it that scares readers most about Edgar Allan Poe’s literary works? Is it the fact that Poe leaves so much of the horror to develop in the reader's minds? In one of Poe’s most famous works, The Raven, the horror is in the unknown darkness surrounding the narrator, but what each individual reader sees in the darkness is up to them. In The Fall of the House of Usher, which was first published in 1839, Poe again does not tell readers what to fear. Is it the House of Usher itself? Is it the Usher siblings’ strange behaviors? Or is it their diseases? Ultimately, it is the Usher siblings’ disease, which is subtly revealed to be a form of vampirism, that is meant to scare readers the most. Poe delicately uses vampirism in a few of his works to show, “the essentially vampiric nature of human relationships, including love and lust both normal and incestuous, and develops his theme to observe the lesion of vitality inherent in the creative or artistic process. Vampirism, with its terrible energy exchanges and exactions, is ultimately Poe's analogy for a love that persists beyond the grave - an all-consuming, necrophiliac passion that cannot be sated until an undead reconciliation is effected” (Dead Brides). Roderick and Madeline have been each other’s only companions for so long, that neither can imagine their life without the other, so while the setting of the House of Usher may add to the creepiness of the story, the vampiric nature of Roderick and Madeline Usher is Poe’s ultimate scare-tactic for his short story The Fall of the House of Usher.
By Kristen Barenthaler7 years ago in Horror
'A Simple Favor' Book Review
Well, I already warned you about spoilers, so let’s just jump right in. If you like neat and tidy endings where the bad guy gets punished and everyone lives happily ever after...this isn’t the story for you. She gets away with it!
By Kristen Barenthaler7 years ago in Geeks
Loving the Evil of Vampires
We are all guilty of it as much as we may deny it. We have read Twilight, or The Vampire Diaries, or Vampire Academy, which all had spin-off movies and television shows. But when did vampires become lovable creatures that readers want to have bite them? When vampire stories first emerged in the Victorian period, vampires were scary, awful, creepy creatures. People were afraid of them, not in love with them (Stevenson 198). Now however, vampires are a part of popular culture with people fawning over Team Stefan or Team Damon or any of the other vampire love triangles adorning our bookshelves and televisions. Perhaps this is because society itself has changed over the last two hundred years since “Some of what Victorians found horrible now seems pretty cool. For example, where they (vampires) once seemed creepily strange and deviant, they now seem freethinking and uninhibited” (Stevenson 207). A vampire’s unwillingness to submit to common societal graces during the Victorian period made them outcasts and were thus scary to those on the inside of society, whereas now, being the outcast is considered cool and interesting (Melton xvii). Joanna Russ’ short story, My Dear Emily from 1962, shows the beginning of this transition from fearing to loving vampires through the character of Emily.
By Kristen Barenthaler7 years ago in Horror
'Love and Other Things I'm Bad At'— Book Review
If you’ve been reading my other reviews, I bet you can guess that I like the young adult romance novels, and this may come as a surprise, but this IS another one. Catherine Clark has written many young adult novels and I have read most of them, so whenever I hear she has a new one being published, I quickly log onto Amazon and buy it. Which may be why I like this one since this novel is actually a compilation. There are two books in one! What could be better?
By Kristen Barenthaler7 years ago in Geeks
The Witches of 'Macbeth'
William Shakespeare is one of the most well-known playwrights, but most people today have not read many, if any, of his plays because they are considered difficult or boring. Ask a room full of people which Shakespeare plays they have read and chances are that most will say Romeo & Juliet and Macbeth or maybe a few say, Hamlet. Almost everyone read them in high school, but the thing most specifically remembered about Macbeth itself is the witches because they are entertaining and different than the murderous tragedies surrounding them. Everyone has a fascination with the supernatural, especially during Shakespeare’s time, “when interest in witchcraft bordered on hysteria. Witches were blamed for causing illness, death, and disaster, and were thought to punish their enemies by giving them nightmares, making their crops fail and their animals sicken. Witches were thought to allow the Devil to suckle from them in the form of an animal” (Atherton). The fact that so many people remember the witches may seem strange since they only appear sporadically throughout the play for short periods of time, but the witches themselves are a driving force of the action in the play, especially when they play with Macbeth’s choices of free will vs. the destiny they prophesy for him.
By Kristen Barenthaler7 years ago in Geeks
'Confessions of a Not It Girl'—Book Review
I’ve read some other novels by Kantor, but none compared to Confessions of a Not It Girl in my opinion. Originally published in 2004, the story still holds relevance for today’s teenage generations of being true to yourself, falling in love for the first time, and so many other problems faced by high schoolers every day. Jan (the "not it" girl) and Rebecca (the "it" girl) are best friends at their school in Brooklyn. Both girls have normal lives and are ready to enjoy their senior year of high school. "Privilege aside, Jan's life is pretty normal for a teenage girl. She's studiously avoiding French class, and college applications while trying to avoid looking like an idiot in front of her newest (possibly biggest) crush, a classmate/neighbor named Josh” (Miss Print’s Amazon Review).
By Kristen Barenthaler7 years ago in Geeks
'Forbidden Boy'—Book Review
Overall, I greatly enjoyed reading Forbidden Boy. The basic plot line runs along the theme of a modernized Romeo & Juliet. A young girl, living in her family beach house, meets a charming boy at a party and they fall in love after a few weeks of dating. Meanwhile, a rich family, next to her house, is trying to make her family sell their home so that the rich family can have a gym on the waterfront. Turns out, that the young boy is the son of the thieving, rich family. Neither of the families is happy about the young couple’s relationship, but they still continue seeing each other in secret. The difference between Romeo & Juliet and Forbidden Boy is that at the end of the novel that families accept the children’s love and they live happily ever after, whereas in the play the young lovers kill themselves to be together and only then do the families accept each other.
By Kristen Barenthaler7 years ago in Geeks
'Bite of Silence' by Mary Hughes - Book Review
This short story (and I do mean short since it was only about 50 pages) was a bit strange, erotic, and at some points downright unpleasant, at least to me, to read. I thought it would be a vampire story, which it is, but I did not expect more than three-fourths of the novel to be sex scenes. Books should better prepare you for what is inside when you read the back cover blurb or research a book online. Obviously, I don’t want them giving away all the surprises, but when the back cover of the book says the novel is about a vampire and the love of his life saving the world on New Year’s Eve, I thought that would be it (because yes, I am one of those who jumped on the vampire story craze). Even the Amazon blurb for the novel simply says, “Times Square. New Year’s Eve. This year, it’s a Countdown to Death. Twyla Tafel has uncovered an insane plot to unleash vampires on the unsuspecting revelers. She’s armed only with her great admin skills, her useless art degree, and Nikos—a seriously hot vampire she’d love to paint as a Spartan king roaring his muscular challenge at the Persians.” Seems like a vampire fight story with some romance thrown in, right? Instead, the entire book, until the last 10 pages, is spent in the vampire’s bedroom, hence the eroticism of the novel. Only in the last few pages do the vampire and the woman go off and save the whole world from doom, so it was unexpected and thus unpleasant for me to read, but if you like those kinds of stories, then give this book a try.
By Kristen Barenthaler7 years ago in Filthy
