Eat Pray Love and a Little Rambling

I usually like to blog about a book when Im completely finished with it but I'm a little bored right now and I only have 30 pages left to go in Eat Pray Love so I'm making an exception.

If you knew me, you would wonder why I'm reading it. But I guess that goes for a lot of books I read. It's just that, even though I am a conservative, I still admire art, poems, good literature, and unmainstream(i know thats not a word) music. Most writers are liberal and they will tend to infuse that logic into their works but I still just have a desire to read good writing. I don't necessarily learn something from this sort of enjoyment but maybe I become more diverse. I don't know. Isn't it crazy how our political beliefs determine our choice of entertainment and appearence? But the unusualness is just on the surface. Really, if you think about it, you'd find it does make sense. I'm a christian therefore I'm against abortion therefore I vote republican therefore I try not to watch shows that constantly make fun of the man I voted for to keep abortion illegal.  And it all makes perfect sense, how our political beliefs can't just be shoved into a corner and be called a small part of us. The reason for those beliefs makes us who we are and those reason shape our actions and thoughts and minds. It's all a perfectly mapped conclusion.

And yet, not on any belief but regarding art(that includes writing, and music) I usually find myself on the liberals side, not ever too much so that I break any of my other logic but I find myself attracted to the beautiful writing that some liberals can make.And I wont let myself put the book down when something I dont agree with is said, though sometimes I can become angry.

So eat pray love- its this woman who i believe to be a little selfish and incorrect but her writing and traveling is alluring to read. She sort of made up what she believes as far as a diety goes. And thats just something I never get. People don't like the rules so they make up their own, or they can feel comfortable about the afterlife, their concience, and they can be comfortable on earth. But it just seems seriously impossible, so stupidly impossible that the biggest truth in life, the answer to all questions is one that some stupid human has created. Don't you know that you make mistakes? The chance that the lie -that you say is truth just because you want it to be true- that you've created is doomed to be a complete utter fail. Don't believe in a God because it's comfortable, or you think that its artisitc, believe in God because God is truth. So Elizabeth Gilbert moralizes everything she does because she created her own religion. What a scary world it is, when men become gods.

It's a nice read, though, I would just advise to not go looking for any answers in it. If that should happen, a soul is at stake.

The Ragamuffin Gospel

Well it took me awhile but I finally finished the ragamuffin gospel by brennan manning. It was really good and really convicting and it helped me a lot. It focused on the fact that humans are worthless and even our good works are pathetic in light of Gods power. This is good though, because it shows the magnitude of His mercy and grace. It lifts an impossible weight off my shoulders and gives me hope and salvation. Because I couldn't do it alone, and when I tried I broke down and thought that I was a lost cause because I couldn't do everything Jesus asked for. I thought for a long time that I was going to Hell because I couldn't be perfect. But He loves me just the same and accepts me with open arms, full of a love so amazing I cannot even comprehend. I can not boast about my invitation to Heaven because I haven't been saved by works but through grace by faith in Jesus Christ.
What a beautiful God!!!

What Just Happened?

I finished life of pi but the ending confused me because I don't know really which story happened? I think his message was that it doesn't matter the story, (journey) it was that he got to the island, which was for his theme that it doesnt matter what religion you are, as long as you believe in a God. Which I don't identify with so that wasn't a great ending for me but the book was really good.

Finally

I was a big reader before this class and that's why I wanted to take it. Naturally, though, my speed in reading a book depended on how much I liked it, but Mr. Hill's idea that "reading boring books are like excercise" really motivated me to keep reading even when it was boring. I didn't have much trouble meeting the weekly quota, although on weekends I did feel a little stressed to get a lot of reading in because I don't have much time for it during the week, because of homework and school. School really does get in the way of education sometimes. I didn't have trouble finding things that I wanted to read but I did notice that I have taken on an extreme bias toward library books. I buy all my books at goodwill and so I dont have a good selection but I like to be able to annote in them so thats why I like to own the books. I like to read in my bed with music on, and if I'm really into the book, I will have no idea what song is playing. I've always had a big desire to talk about the books im reading but my friends don't like to read so i couldnt really talk to them about it so blogging has really helped me let my ideas out. I'm going to continue to blog because of that reason.
Upcoming books I'd like to read:
Finish: life of pi and Angelas ashes, then start sense and sensibility and pride and prejudice
This is not a farewell after all.

Richard Parker. If you wouldnt eat me, I would love to cuddle.

Life of Pi

I took a break from Angela's Ashes (break; I'll come back to it) and started Life of Pi and it is quite amazing. I learned a lot about animals in the first part of the book, because this guy had a double major in zoology and theology. He grew up living on a zoo kind of, and his dad traumatized him when he was eight, into being afraid of tigers. His parents aren't really religious but he practices Hinduism. Then he steps into a church and becomes a Christian. Then he steps into a mosque and becomes a Muslim. Except he retains each belief he has had before when he adapts another one. Its puzzling because he's not just one of those people who say "yeah i'm (insert a religion here)" but don't do anything about it, because then it would be easy to say you believe in three different paradoxal things, but he puts them into practice. I don't identify with this, but I thought it was interesting how his doubts of Christianity made me realize what an amazing God my God is. He thought Jesus couldn't be as powerful as Allah, because he let himself be tortured by humans, but that just shows me how loving and unproud(secure) He is. And I liked that. But religion plays a big role in this book because the boy is on a ship with all his zoo animals and the ship sinks, along with his family, and he is trapped on a boat with dangerous animals. The religion part serves, and this is a prediction, to save the boy. God miraculously keeps the animals from eating the boy, even though they are starving. When I used to look at this book cover and I would see the bengal tiger in a boat with a small indian boy, I thought that it was just metaphorical and could never happen, but the more pages I read, the more possible it becomes.
Great book.

Angela's Ashes

The gargantuan amount of homework I have been consistently getting is really wearing on me. I have like 4-6 hours every night and i really just need a breath. It makes me so depressed because I'm always working and then when i'm not working, I feel miserable because I feel so guilty and worried about the homework piling up in my break. The worst part is that even though I try really hard, sometimes it doesn't show.(I feel like a phony). In AP lit I just got a bad grade back on an essay and it sucks because I don't know how to write better. I spent a lot of time on it and my work just sounds awkward and i dont know how to fix it.
**Okay sorry I just had to vent because I wanted to pout all this melancholy out. I started this book called Angela's Ashes. It's really good and it has this humor that makes all these awful things happening seem less awful. On page 25 it quotes a song that we just talked about in U.S. History, Bill Crosby's "Brother, can you spare a dime?" So you know that the family is going to stuggle with deep poverty because it's during the great depression. Add that to the fact that Frank McCourt's dad is a drunk who spends their money at the speakeasies. Imagine that, you and your wife are so excited because you just got a job so you can feed your starving family and then by the second payday you don't go home to your hungry kids. You spend it on beer. You get drunk for your kid's misery. And the thing that I don't get is that I dont even think the guys addicted- addicted, because he's gone through 4 weeks with no alcohol. So it's not like he's having great physical pains that push him towards that bar, not that that would make it right. It's amazing how many awful people there are in this world, undetected, and labeled as average.

Currently

This week I read The Secret Life of Bees (200), and The Hunger Games (108).
Total pages this week: 308
Sentences of the week:
1."Have you noticed the more you try not to think, the more elaborate your thinking episodes get?"
2."It is the peculiar nature of the word to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening."
3."[...]but it's something everybody wants-for someone to see the hurt done to them and set it down like it matters."
( these sentences were all from the secret life of bees)
I like number 3 the best because I can see it in society and myself how, not nescceraliy trying to be vulnerable, but we want to not go through pain alone, and let it not be in vain, let this pain not eat at you without anyone's aknowledgement.

Germany

I Hate Teen Books

I started the Hunger Games because just about everyone in the world is obsessed with it and my friends kept begging me to read it. I didn't want to, though, because of a few reasons...
A. I hate if the protagonist is an action hero and shes a girl. It just doesn't work, unless you're Angelina Jolie.
B. I don't like Sci-fi, at all. I hate vampires and all that crap. (except Harry Potter)
C. I hate teen books. There's either too much teen angst, or stupid action that doesn't work.
The hunger game is everything that I hate in a book. The characters live in a dystopian society where everyone lives in poverty and there are fights like the gladiator fights that people enter in in order to get food from the government. So it's your typical, guy falls in love with the main girl character but she "just doesn't notice it" so she thinks he's being rude and she is rude back. OH, and then there's the 'Twilight' twist where two guys are in love with her, but she still feels like her life is so terrible. That's got Bella Swan written all over it, and why wouldn't it? Teen books never venture out to new ideas. They just keep the same ideas and wrap them up in different action wrapping paper. So the protagonist whose name is Katniss (I can't stop saying catnip in my head whenever I read it) got picked for the duel with an attractive boy from her "district". The one thing I don't get, though, is the overwhelming emphasis on the fashion. Maybe it's just to take up pages in the book, but it's kinda eerie. I don't get why the author chose to make a whole chapter about the fiery costume she wears. Maybe she'll burn to death in end (I wish- then that'd be a story worth reading) but I'll never know because I'm not finishing the book.
I'm gonna start Angela's Ashes instead.

The Secret Life of Bees

I finished it and it was amazing. Lily finds out a bunch of things about her mother and it's not the predictable "she didn't shoot her mother, it was actually her father would murdered her". Lily really did shoot her mother, on accident, because sometimes life just happens like that. You mess up and you hate yourself and you feel so stupid but nothing can change it. You want to play the victim, you want somebody to blame, to put all your anger and shame upon, but sometimes you've got nobody but yourself. I think that's one of the worst feelings in the world.
May killed herself because their friend went to jail for no good reason and it broke her without repair. She was tired of carrying the weight of the world around.
One major theme of the book was feminism and the symbol for that was Mary, the Madonna. They worshipped a wooden carving of a black Mary that, as the story goes, came to the slaves and helped them. She was chained up, but every night she unchained herself, even though she was just a wooden statue. They were Catholic, I think, or well it was a lot of catholicism and a lot of feminism. I'm protestant, so I don't know how I feel about it. Everything they talked about Mary doing for them, that's what Jesus does for me, so I could see it in that light, but I don't worship Mary so it was different in that way, too. Even though Lily's mom died, in this book she found other mothers. August, the Queen Bee, June, May, Rosaleen, and Mary.
I treated myself with the movie and the book is ten times as good. One of my favorite books.

9/27

I got a little messed up because we didn't have school on Friday so this is meant for Thursday which means I will have had two responses that week. Okay well I started the secret life of bees by sue monk kidd and let me tell you I was so happy to have found it. Its the best I've read in a really long time. It has the perfect balance of elevated diction and good conflict. So its set in south carolina in 1964 where racism runs rampant. The protagonist is white though and she lives with the fact that when she was four years old she accidently shot her mother. Her father is horrible to her so one day she runs away with her black housekeeper to a city where she thinks her mother had been. There they find 3 black sisters and live with them. One of the sisters (may) used to have a twin (april). May and april felt eachothers pain equally and then one day april killed herself. After that day, everything in the world became may's twin sister. She takes on the pain of strangers on the news, burnt pancakes and cockroaches. So she cries all the time so she built a wall like the wailing wall in Jerusalem and whenever she feels sad she goes out to the wall and slips her prayer into it. That was pretty interesting and I'm also learning a lot about the behavior of bees in this book. Its soooo goood!

"Close Reading Bingo"

1. Use of a long quotation: such as, "One of those little English jobs that can do around two hundred miles an hour," destroy any last vestige of formality, further developing the aura of simply telling a story to a friend.- http://ascrapofparchment.blogspot.com/
2. Use of the word "use" and calling the author by his first name:J.D. uses common words to describe his past, such as "crap" and "lousy". -http://maddie17-booklover.blogspot.com/
3. Disscussing the effects of the passage on the reader: With the use of his realistic descriptions, the promt was easily visualized.-http://addie-line.blogspot.com/
4. No puntuation in the quote, and way too long as the subject. "On sunny days like this one, a temporary, steeper escalator of daylight, formed by intersections of the lobby's towering volumes of marble and glass, met the real escalators just above their middle point, spreading into a needly area of shine where it fell against their brushed-steel side-pannels, and adding long glossy highlights to each of the black rubber handrails" -http://theycallmefreshmoney.blogspot.com/

Favorite: http://rivers-thenewzealander.blogspot.com/

Maybe I Missed it

Slaughterhouse five has as much balance as a meth addict. It jumps around and around to different times and different planets. When he dies, nothing happens except a few seconds and then he transports back in time to a random place in his life. As far as the whole antiwar message was, was it just a novel illustrating the heartbreaking effects and damages that a war thrusts upon the world? Was his reasoning the artistry of an awful tone, life's dreary aftermath and the hardships that a soldier must face even after he has "won" or been "saved" from the war? Or was there an economical reasoning with mathematical equations of why we should stand aside from the war when the innocent suffer, or when our freedom is attacked? Maybe I missed it, but it seems like this book is about color. The color grey and not a greater concept. and how the color grey, a continuing grey with no escape, and the bettering of human emotions should be based ahead of war. Sad subject, war is. And no one wins, but what is prevented is the subject matter. And no one can examine what is prevented because it never happens. What is prevented doesn't exist.
Billy Pilgrim never told his wife who he didn't like what tormented him from the war. He couldn't get over the pathetic realness of the war.  
WE don't have to be sad, though. The aliens engage in war just like us.

"Practice Diction Analysis"

In this excerpt from his novel "Catcher in the Rye", J. D. Salinger's common and vulgar diction expresses the irksome discontent the protagonist has for the world. He excessively uses expletives and demonstrates the only implication of a simile is when something is compared to "as hell". This and his irritation of his current situation and Hollywood convey his resentful irritation of the artificiality which lies heavily in society. His employment of the hyperbole that his "parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything personal about them" underscore his hostile attitude toward their preoccupied parenting style and dark secrets they want kept hidden. The easily readable syntax invites the reader into Holden's world of aggravation.

Currently 10/21

Pages this week: 196
Books this week: Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut

Friends Style mapping sentences!:
1. In Neil Gaiman's Stardust, Gaiman writes poetically with colloquial language, using words that are neither dissonant nor melodious, in order to describe the setting. -http://academiczengerine.blogspot.com/
2. On the other hand, McCarthy’s Blood Meridian holds a musical quality to the words, as well as descriptive and distinct linguistics.-http://bookworm-days.blogspot.com/
3. In comparison, Annie Phoulx's The Mud Below, the author makes use of a much lower style, a coloquial and vulgar kind of speech, with a picturesque and figurative language.-http://weber-files.blogspot.com/
4. The narrator describes the houses of Wall with conversational, blunt language such as "square" and "old."-http://estella-havisham.blogspot.com/
5. Dissimilar to Stardust, Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian demonstrates a thorough understanding of classy, picturesque language.-http://star-bellysneetch.blogspot.com/

I really liked these sentences because of their scholarly way of evaluating the diction. They used the graph/chart to analyze where the diction. They also imcluded a vocab word into their posts.

Trudging through

Right now I'm enjoying my book for ap lit better than my recreational reading book. That's kinda sad. Slaughterhouse five is just everywhere, and I just realized that its not the author that's transporting the reader back and forth in time, the actual narrator is capable of time travel and is moving to different times. It tells the story of his encounters with the people from a different planet but obviously that's not happening, right? I guess its really not a confusing as I make it out to be but I just want to be done with it so I can move on to other books that I've been wanting to read. Yeah and it kills me, absolutely kills me to stop a book en medias res. It really does. (Added a vocab word and sounded like holden caulfied. Boom. Roasted.) So anyway this guy has seen awful things in war so he doesn't mind being held captive in a zoo because he hates life so much. That's because he married a fat woman that he doesn't like and has hallucinations and depression. They reference a lot of books in here but I haven't read any of them so I'm not sure what the author is trying to imply when he alludes to them. That kills me. The protagonist has a fascination with sci fi books so that could explain why he has weird hallucinations about time travel and other planets. to those who have read the book you're probably thinking I'm an idiot and not getting it, so sorry. I'm just not interested so I get distracted and then miss abunch of things that tell what's happened. Ill try to give it my utmost attention.

Style Mapping

An excerpt on page 49 of Cather in the Rye's diction is blunt as he casually creates labels for people. It  is also vulgar and common making the story relate to the reader. This contrasts with an excerpt from Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, which is elevated, intricate and fancy. The connotation is figurative and lyrical while the sound melodious as it flows along, defying many grammatical laws. The elevation from an excerpt from Neil Gaiman's Stardust is scholarly but not too advanced, so it is mostly unnoticeable. This is also the same with the connotation because it is higher than journalistic, yet less than lyrical, making it almost invisible to the reader.

Slaughterhouse-five

To be honest I chose this book knowing I wouldn't like it. But Kurt Vonnegut is a pretty big writer and I'm tired of people talking about his books and not knowing what they are talking about. So, for cultural literacy, I guess. The book is kind of confusing so far. It starts out as the author just talking about writing the book. Then he gets to the story and talks about this guy and it starts to sound like a real story but then Vonnegut jumps around his life and tells little parts at a time. And it's not like a chapter from here and a chapter from then, its like 2 paragraphs and then it switches to another spot on the timeline and tells something that happened then. So yeah it's really confusing. Also, it talks about weird torture devices that this one guy collects which is really creepy. Oh yeah, and whenever someone dies or something tragic like that, the narrator always says "So it goes" like dying in the world [(of war) is vonnegut's message, I suppose)] is a common thing.  In the beginning someone said when he heard that vonnegut was writing an anti-war book that he might as well write an anti-glacier book because war will always be here. I thought that was kind of funny. Yeah, well sorry I'm rambling. I just don't like the book that much and I don't really know how to talk about it in an organized fashion. Maybe or hopefully it will start getting better.

Quarterly

I'm a little dissapointed in myself for reading so many not-challenging books. The msot challenging so far was The Big Short, and I didn't even finish that. I'm hoping to read better books the next nine weeks and I hope one of those will be 100 Years of Solitude. I think the most pleaurable book I've read so far this nine weeks was The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette. I've noticed in the past couple weeks that I really enjoy reading in the morning. I kind of got in that habit because my friends would be still sleeping in the morning of a sleepover and I would be bored, so I'd read. And then I just got to doing it all the time because my mind is fresh and it can take being challenged because it has just gotten so much rest. I'll read anywhere, mostly. My bed is obviously the most comfortable place to read but when my litttle brother is playing a video game I'll sit beside him on the couch and read so I can spend time with him.

Poetry Out Loud

Check this out, folks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0snNB1yS3IE
                                Really good and really inspiring ^

The Execution

Everyone's stomachs are bloated and glistening from starvation. Isn't it interesting how people's bodies do that? The protagonist in the story is chosen to be a soldier begins her training. She is away from all her family but one day she has an epiphany that she needs to see her mother and baby sister, but she doesn’t know why. When she gets to her old village where her father was killed a woman tells her that her mother and sister were last seen being lead off by a Khmer Rouge officer into the woods. That’s the same way her father was killed, and many others. The communist reign is so wide that you can’t even catch an animal and eat it, because no one can own private property. I used to think that we shouldn’t go to war with other countries to protect their own people but honestly I would feel so bad that this was happening I would probably be in favor of it now. 

There is a chapter in the book that talks about when the Vietnamese soldiers catch a Khmer Rouge solider and the Cambodian people in the nearby village attack the prison because they want to execute the prisoner. The soldier is released into the villagers’ custody and they debate on the most painful way to kill the soldier. It reminded me of how when an animal or bug like a spider bites you, and you want to make it feel the pain you felt, but then once you get it and it’s all vulnerable and helpless, you kind of feel bad when you kill it. When reading the book I wanted all the Khmer Rouge soldiers to die but once he was totally helpless, I felt bad for him.

In the end, the Loung Ung is saved by the Vietnamese soldiers and reunites with her family (the ones who are still alive).  She and her brother are sent to America because of American church organizations. The plan is to make money for her family to come over to, but they never do it. Really good book.

First They Killed My Father

So I found this really good book at Goodwill called First They Killed My Father. It's about this little girl starting from age 5 to 9 during the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. She is in the middle class before the communist takeover and she is happy. Then, the Angkar takes over and everyone's lives turn to Hell. Everyone is moved to labor camps where they are treated "equally" . Which means that everyone's possessions are burned, their religions are burned, and they all have to work all the time. No time off because that would be unequal. Everyone who worked for the previous governemnt, along with his families are killed. Eventually, everyone who had any skill or intelligence is killed, until onl.y the farmer/peasants are left. When they go to the infirmary, there are fake doctors because all the real ones have been killed. 25% of the population is killed during the Khmer Rouge-  2 million people.
The victims of this government have to worship those who are directly causing them all the pain, which is the worst part about it. It's disgusting how the Pol Pot killed and tortured so many in the name of Morality and Equality.

Currently

This week I read The Choice by Nicholas Sparks.
Pages this week: 240


Favorite lines:
1. "Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it."- The Road

2. "Happy is the distanc

e between public and private!"-How to be Alone

3. "The details of death are the fabric nightmares are sewn from."-Perfect

I like number 3 the best because its an ode to about all of Ellen Hopkin's sentences. Every line of hers is a work of poetry.

First Kiss Scenes

The Notebook: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnhZxj6UWRw&feature=BFa&list=HL1318192355&lf=mh_lolz
Dear John: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGAC2R52GSg
The Titanic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MDPeL8lpzo

The Maudlin Nicholas Sparks

I read the prologue when I was 191 pages into the book. It would have ruined it for me (or maybe not because the book is so predictable anyway) but it also probably would have made me not want to read the book. I thought it was just going be some feel-good nice uncomplicated love story but it had to take a nicholas-sparks-turn to a mushy maudlin story. Turns out the title "the choice" didn't refer to the girl choosing between two men, but a husband choosing to abide by his wife's wishes and let her die after she has been in a coma for three months. I should have known it would take a turn for the worse when everything was fine and dandy and there was still 100 pages left in the book. But see, I never read the backs of books or a small summary of what a book is about because I feel like it ruins the whole book. My friends think I'm a little psychotic about it because I don't even watch the trailers for movies. And believe me, its really hard to guard your eyes from the many trailers that happen so often when Harry Potter is coming out. But anyway, I cried in this book, and dang-it, I didn't want to. I just wanted to be happy. Maybe this is a lesson to read the prologues, but honestly I don't think I will.
I should really read something with substance.

A Last Resort

Don't judge me, but I'm reading a Nicholas Sparks book. I like to read a book a week and i was behind on this week's reading because I couldnt get into any of the books I started. I started 5 and and read approx 20 pages in each but it wasn't flowing and in order for me to finish a week it has to be flowin'. Anyway, the book is called "The choice" and it's kind of stupid and predictable, but I can read it for a long time because I don't get bored, and I'm excited about getting time to read it. It's obviously a romance, and the time frame is very short. I'm at 160 right now and it's only been 4 days. That's because Sparks doesn't want to infuse a question into the reader's mind, or an argument about society, he just wants to write a story that will make women all over the country go maudlin (proper usage?) over. In the story this girl met her attractive nieghbor and she likes him but she has a boyfriend, and bam! theres the big choice.
I really hope it's a happy ending, just because if I'm going to read an easy book, I want a happy ending.
Loves like magic. And it's just nice to read and by doing so, put yourself in love.

Currently

 This week I read Perfect by Ellen Hopkins, and How to be Alone by Jonathan Franzen.
Because Hopkins' books do not have many words on the page, I divided the number of pages read by 3.
Pages this week: 281

Favorite Sentences:
1. "Happy is the distance between public and private!"-How to be Alone
2. "The details of death are the favbric nightmares are sewn from."-Perfect
3. "I mourn the eclipse of the cultural authority that literature once possessed, and I rue the onset of an age so anxious that the pleasure of a text becomes difficult to sustain. - How to be Alone

I like number 1, I guess, because of the evidence and detail he went into describing it. He showed that privacy is very important, and the world isn't safe when privacy isn't.

Flawless

How to be Alone: Still in Question

I finished Perfect. There were 622 pages in it so when I divide it by 3, it comes out as 207 pages. It ended in destruction, and there wasn't any other way to end it. There was an arrest, a hospital visit, and a funeral but that’s Ellen Hopkins way of ending her books. She shows that her characters are on a rocky road and the only way for it to get better is for them to reach rock bottom. It's like the Phoenix in Harry Potter, how he has to catch fire and burn to ashes before he can become healthy and new again. But then again, that’s a common motif in life, so there could be a lot of examples for that. I also started this week, "How to be Alone", by Jonathan Franzen. It's a collection of his essays that he's written in kind-of-large span of years. He's a very good writer, but I couldn't get too interested in it because nothing is happening. The first essay that I read was about his dad's Alzheimer's disease. Weird things happened in his life and he captures those moments very beautifully and usually I like that, because I read so many memoirs, but I just couldn't get connected. The next essay was about privacy, or the lack of, and how he is happy there can be a possibly 'fake' public, so there can be a comfortable privacy. Like how “There had to be dark and muddy waters so that the sun could have something to background it's flashing glory.” –Betty Smith

Perfect: Understanding the Broken

I've read all of Ellen Hopkins' novels, and this week I'm reading her latest, Perfect. Her books are kind of in poem format, so there are not very many words on each page. Because of this, Im dividing the number of pages I've read by 3 to be fair. Anyway, Perfect tells the lives of 4 teenagers (pop fiction!) who feel the pressure to be perfect in their unique ways. Cara's brother couldn’t handle it and tried to kill himself. Sean uses steroids that cause several problems and the reader can see how they are going to ruin his life. And Kendra is slowly starving herself to death. Hopkins' novels always introduce a feeling of hopelessness. Sometimes it will filter into my life and I'll go through some silly teen angst phase until after I've finished the novel. It's really funny actually. The characters always have many flaws. I think that the author tries to make them more relatable to readers, and it probably is to a lot of people, but for a goodytwoshoes like me, I feel so frustrated. All I think is "YOU IDIOT. YOU IDIOT. Can't you see you're ruining your life?!" On a softer note, the reader also gets a glimpse at that mysterious road which takes you to the depths of your life. Sometimes you wonder how a person got to where they are, and sometimes it’s a slow fade; for others it could be a nightmarish incident that left them irreversibly changed.  At the end of the story I feel more understanding and forgiving because I see how twisted, confused and hopeless they felt. How they didn’t know of, or didn’t have another option but the one that puts their life in ruins. And how can I blame them for that. Hopkins didn’t strain herself enough to spice up her usual routine in this latest novel, but something about the way the lyrical words jump around the pages makes all her books so alluring, even if it doesn’t bring the biggest challenge. So I’ll read on!

Currently #5

This week I read 224 pages from Roya Hakakian's memoior, Journey to the Land of No and 19 pages from On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Total pages this week: 243
Total pages this semester: 1340

No new sentences this week, but here are my favorite sentences of the past 4 weeks:
1. "Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it."- The Road
2."Though chains be of gold, they are chains all the same."- The Shack
3. "When we're all gone at last then there'll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too."- The Road

Be Careful What You Wish For

I finished Journey from the Land of No. The revolution happened and everyone was very excited. They all thought it was the greatest thing until the new government, the Muslim brotherhood made new, devastating rules. Roya and other Jewish people were segregated in ways similar to those during the holocaust, and 1950's America. Their teacher spoke of the deepest sin, one that cannot be erased, the showing of a woman's hair. That seemed really strange to me; I just don't understand it. Things that made Roya hate The Shah turned out to be a lie after he had been killed. Roya's best friend's life is torn apart. Her uncle dies of grief, her brother dies of war, her sister is imprisoned, and her mother goes insane. She tells Roya that she has to stay is Iran, though, because she is a Muslim. I see some deep parallels between this revolution, and the French revolution. Both wanted to take away the monarchys, and it concluded in a terrible amount of unnecessary violence. Also, this seems like it is happening today. The people of Libya want to take down the evil dictator Gaddafi, but who knows what will happen if he is gone. Will the Muslim brotherhood take over? If so, the consequences could be as disastrous as they were in Iran. This novel gave insights to parts of these people's lives that I didn't know about. The way they value poetry so much is perplexing. They've made a god out of it, and the best poet seems to be the most pious man. The author only allowed some information to be told, and I'm interested in what else happened, especially because of her dedication: "Between 1982 and 1990 an unknown number of Iranian women political prisoners were raped on the eve of their executions by guards who alleged that killing a virgin was a sin in Islam".

My favorite claims:
1. Leonid Afremov's vibrant use of color, flowing appearance, and realistic, silky texture illustrates a feeling of whimsical relaxation and majestic euphoria. -Bud in the Garden
2. The painting's gritty texture, balanced use of space, selective use of colour, and dark tone leave the viewer a sense of depressing realization leading to a climactic finish.- JimmehFTW
3. In Todrick Hall's "I Wanna Be On Glee," Hall's plea to Glee creator Ryan Murphy shows Hall's inventiveness and artistic talents through the music video's cleverly pariodistic lyrics, assertive instrumentals, and effervescent choreography.- ZENGERINEgoesacademic

Favorite artifact:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emy9R7zxAlg -Bakeface Space

Observe/Infer

Space: Overwhelming, eternal, uncontrollable

Color: brooding, pasty, colorless, brewing, ardent, aggressive

Actions: perilous, tragic, doomed, desperate, chimerical, foreboding,

Claim:

In the album art for United Paper People‘s Kisschasy, the foreboding colors, overwhelming space, and perilous actions reflect a sense of destructive loneliness and irrational wonder.  

Roya Hakakian

Journey from the Land of No

I started Journey from the Land of No by Roya Hakakian yesterday. The story starts when the girl is about 12 years old and tells of her religious background. Her family is Jewish in a Muslim country so it is difficult even though they live in a Jewish neighborhood.  Her father is a well respected poet and two of her brothers speak out against the oppression of The Shah. All her brothers and her uncle are shipped out of Iran. Her uncle goes to Israel because he fears when he goes to court, he will be sentenced to death. Then Hakakian portrays the hardships that women have to face with a beautiful passage:
"Motherhood was a melancholy affair. Mothers were martyrs [...] no one expected less of them. Men suffered and sacrificed themselves only in poetry for the sake of love. In real life, women were the ones to perform those legendary acts."
Farah, her cousin, isn't in love with her suitor but she is forced to marry him because when she tells her dad of her desire, he throws a glass jar at her and she starts to convulse in an epileptic seizure. When Hakakian's uncle wants to be married, his family disapproves and a chess game unfolds. He tells his mother that he has to marry the woman of his dreams, or he will convert to Islam. Then she grabs a knife and points it at her heart, saying she will thrust it if he is married to a Muslim. Consequently, he gets in a car wreck and has to flee the country. It's a cycle of destruction. Hints of the story’s plot rise with Roya and her best friend’s siblings. They are both engaged in the disapproval of the Shah and SAVAK. A childhood story’s meaning is finally revealed to Roya and she is mesmerized.

Poet of the month: check

I chose to search X.J. Kennedy poems and found "For Allen Ginsberg". I copied it into my moleskine.

Currently #4

This week I read 29 pages from The Big Short, by Michael Lewis, and 280 pages from The Wednesday Letters, by Jason F. wright.
Total pages this week: 309
Pages this semester: 1097

These are the top sentences this week:
1. "From the point of view of the history of the universe, Max's death was not a big deal, Said Eisman. "It was just my big deal." -The Big Short
2. "You're a different fish in a sea of sameness." - The Wednesday Letters
3. "[...]the one Malcolm thought Van Gogh dreampt of at night but never used because he couldn't paint a face beautiful enough to match." - The Wednesday Letters

In number 1, Max is Eisman's son. I like it the best because it relates to our lives. When something tragic happens, we want the world to stop, but it can't. And thats tough to deal with.

The Wednesday Letters

This week I started and finished The Wednesday Letters, by Jason F. Wright. You can definitely tell it was pop-fiction because it was so easy to read.  It was about a lot of things; the reader ends up in a lot of people's heads and a lot goes on. This married couple dies in each other’s arms one night. The husband has written his wife a letter on every Wednesday since they have been married. A couple days before the funeral, the kids find these and read them. They think they find out that their mother has had an affair because they find out Malcolm is not the man's son. Then they find out that their mother was actually raped. The rapist was drunk and he asks for forgiveness and is sincere, even from the eyes of the victim's husband. How hard would that be--to forgive your wife's rapist? All this went on while the drama of Malcolm being in love with Rain, the woman who is (kind-of) engaged to the man who is in charge of putting Malcolm in jail. Romance- where would pop lit be without it? See, he and Rain were high school-sweethearts and she’s the only one he’s ever loved. When they break up for a sad reason, he gets in a fight with the man who attacks her. He almost killed him and flees from the law by traveling to Brazil to relax and write his book. When his parents die, he has to come back to face Rain and the sheriff (Rain’s fiancé)

This was an easy, relaxing, feel-good read, but I don't feel guilty about reading it because I enjoyed it. It made me smile a simple smile.
It's a story about small town relationships, black sheep, unrequited love, everlasting love, and, most of all, forgiveness.

P. S. How cool of a name is Rain?!

My Big Short

From my dad's suggestion, I started The Big Short, by Michael Lewis. It's about these guys who predicted the stock market crash of 2008 and found out that a lot of subprime lending companies committed fraud. It's kind of interesting because you get to see these guys' personality flaws and irregularities. These 'weird' characteristrics allow them to focus on something, and be really brilliant, but weird in social situations. My dad really liked this because he's a commodities trader and he says he's really good at it because he's a little weird (I agree). Unfortunately I was struggling with the vocabulary because it was a lexicon of a profession that I am not a part of. I knew the definitions of the words, but I didn't understand how they were applied, and the motives of companies for doing things a certain way. I told my dad of my problem and he told me to read it beside him and ask questions as they formed. This is how it went:
I read: "Subprime mortgage lending was still a trivial fraction of th U.S. credit markeets-a few tens of billions in loans each year-but its existence made sense, even to Steve Eisman."
I asked, "Dad, what does that mean?"
Next sentence: "I thought it was partly a response to growing ineuality. The distribution of income in this country was skewed and becoming more skewed, and the result was that you have more subprime customers."
I asked, "Dad, what does that mean?"
I did learn a lot, but because it happened about every sentence, I only got to page 30 in 3 days. I'd like to read it sometime, maybe when I'm not under an obligation to read 100 pages a week. Also I would like to have finished economics so I can be familiar with the voabulary.
I quit. Sorry :(

Currently #3

Pages this week: 306 : 287 (all) pages of The Road, and 19 pages of Ragamuffin Gospel
Pages this semester: 788

Sentences from The Road
1. "There is no prophet in the earth's long chronicle who's not honored here today."
2. "When we're all gone at last then there'll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too."
3. "Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it."
4. "This the day to shape the days upon"

Favorite: Number 4. I like this because the man logically knows that he and his son are going to die, but he persists despite the fact.

A Road to the Physical Nowhere

McCarthy didn't reveal the names of the protagonist or the boy throughout the entire novel. There were no chapters, which gave it a monotonous feel. It was like one big story with no different parts, just a continuous drag of dreary life.
The characters finally reached the shore, their destination for no reason other than that it was warmer there, and nothing great happened. They still lived in fear of cannibalistic cults finding them. When they saw a Spanish ship and looked in it, there wasn't anything great enough to end the story with. It was still cold, so they continued walking south and finally the foreshadowing of the man's cough came to action. When they were walking a man aimed a bow and arrow at the characters. The protagonist leaped to cover his son and was shot in the leg. This led to excessive bleeding which weakened him a great deal. He knew his days were numbered long before that but now his death date sped up. He told his son that he must go on without him. He gave him advice and love and told him to not give up hope in such a hopeless world. That night the boy wrapped him in blankets and hugged him while he slept but in the morning the man was cold. Thus, the author confronts the finality of death. The boy sobbed but a man appeared and offered to take the boy with him and his 'clan' which included another little boy. The boy wanted to take his father with him but the new man said he couldn't. The boy gave in, because he knew his father would want him to go.
McCarthy showed the strength of love between a father and son, and the power of not losing hope or sensitivity in a place that insists on bruising you to the bone.

How to Kill Your Son

The Road is a novel set in a postapocalytic world. I'm not sure how or what happened, but a man and his son are alone, traveling south while hiding from other humans. Almost everyone is dead so they go through empty house to try to find food or blankets for survival. They have to hide from the "bad guys", though, the word bad does not do them justice. These men take humans of all ages and genders as sex slaves. They eat other people and the protagonist's wife kills herself out of fear from getting caught by them. She urges the protagonist to do the same to himself, after first shooting his son. He doesn't follow either of her wishes.
There is a scene (that reminds me of the movie Brothers) in which the man and the boy are hiding from the bad people and the man believes that they will be caught. He makes a plan to give his son the gun, and run in the other direction so they catch him and not his son. He tells his son how to kill himself if they find him but then he realizes his son won't be able to do it. He stays with him. He fears that the gun wont work when he tries to kill his son, and wonders how else he could crush his son's precious scull.
That's hard to write.
I wonder how old the boy is, and hope he is older than 10 because the younger he is the more horrific the tale.
An interesting note about McCarthy's writing style is his dialogue. There are no quotation marks and it helps develop a simple, lethargic mood. The two characters comments are sad and accepting of the horrible, shown by the over usage of the word "Okay".
I hope the ending isn't so depressing!

Currently: Week 2

Pages this week: 341
Pages this semester: 482

1. "if France is to be calm again, two hundred thousand heads must be cut off."
2. "Cultivated people have caught the fever of critizing the governement."
3. "But his heart, like mine, will remain in another realm entirely, a realm we share together."

I like number one the best because it is morbidly funny in its irony.

A Violent Revolution

The peasants are becoming violent and wreckless. They want a revolution to end the monarchy. King Louis tries to get the people on his side by saying he is on their side. He wears their symbols and colors which is comically ironic. But Marie Antoinette does not honor The National Assembly or the Parisians, so she does not flatter them. When addressing the people, the king tells her to wear her simplest clothes but she wears her most elegant, and wears a beautiful diamond. A fake diamond, because it was sold to pay the debt of France. So oddly enough she doesn't want the people to know she has sacrificed for them, yet she has. Her husband was so cowardly that she had to make all the decisions. And the people call her nasty things, making up rumors about sexual taboos that she hasn't done. But she doesn't want the people to know she is helping them, because then they would think she is on their side, and then they would think she didn't believe in the monarchy.
Advisors tell the king that he should move with his family to a safe place, but he wants to act bravely and say, 'my people need me', which is strange becasue he never wanted to be king in the first place. And he isn't a good one. Eventually the people take over the castle and many people are killed. Marie and her family are put in a sort of prison and then her husband is executed. She still has hope that she will get out because Axel will save her. Axel has been seeing her and intends to save her but the plan goes wrong. Marie is split up from her family and hears about the awful rape and torture of her best friend.
Marie Antoinette is executed.

Marie Antoinette

I started a book called The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette. It is fiction but the author is a historian so she used her knowledge of Marie Antoinette's life, and then added some of her own details to pull it all together. The story begins when she is 13 and her last entry is written in jail when awaiting her execution. She is born into royalty in Austria. At that age men come to assess her ability to be married. To their disagreement she tells them she hopes she and her husband can be equal, but they think she will be fine anyway because she is already beautiful. Marie develops feelings for Eric, a servant, who tells her he likes her too. But when she turns 15 she is sent to France to be married to the prince. Louis the fourteenth is shy, awkward and doesn't want to be king. People urge Marie to become pregnant but Louis turns his back to her in bed. A couple years later, Louis unwillingly has a surgery and then they have a child. At the birth of the baby everyone not hopes, but assumes that it will be a boy. To their great dissapointment it is a girl so she needs to have another child. Marie begins an affair with a heroic, charismatic, beautiful, Swedish man. They are completely in love with eachother. Throughout the story, the peasants suffering is alluded to, and so is their anger. The palace gates are knocked down and mud is thrown at royal carriages passing by. Marie's second baby is crippled. Her third is a perfect boy and her last girl is dying. Her lack of morality is shown by the absence of writing on her children. It is clear she loves Axel more than any one of them. She is greedy and angry when the king has to take one of her jewels because there is so much debt.
I don't hate her, but I feel detached from her, as if I am willing myself not to feel  because I know her life is ill-fated.

Currently

I started on page 87 of The Shack and I finished the book, which left me at 248. 167 pages in total.
It was difficult for me to narrow down the best sentences to only 3, because there were so many.
1. (page 198) "It is true that relationships are a whole lot messier than rules, but rules will never give you answers to the deep questuions of the heart and they will never love you. "
2. (120) "Sin is its own punishment , devouring you from the inside."
3. (122) "Though chains be of gold, they are chains all the same."

I like number 2 the best becuase it isn't the way we look at religion. We think God punishes us for our sin, but He doesn't want us to sin so we won't be punished.

Thats what I take from The Shack.

"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."

     This post will focus on one particular chapter of The Shack. Mack (the protagonist) meets a beautiful woman named Sophia, a personification of God's wisdom. Mack has lived a life judging almost everyone. He wants justice for the people who sell their children into war or slavery. He wants justice for the men who murder innocent victims. He wants them to go to Hell, so Sophia tells him he must see how it feels for God to send some of his children to Hell, so Mack must pick three of his kids to go to Hell.  After a minute of screaming that he wont do it, or cant, he asks to go instead. He cries and begs to go in their place. She says, "Now you sound like Jesus. You have judged well." "But I havent judged them," he replies. "You have judged them worthy of love, even if it cost you everything."
     Sofia tells Mack that humans' faults result from the brokeness of their souls. Then he blames God for the broken souls. He blames God for the tradgedy in the world, his father who brutally beat him and his mother, and the twisted man who killed his 6 year old daughter. Mack wonders if God creates the bad so he can create good, because if his daughter had not died, he would not be with God right now. But God says, "Just because I work incredible good out of unspeakable tradgedies does not mean I orhestrate the tradgedies [...] Grace doesn't depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors. So, yes, God doesn't create the evil, but can't he still prevent it? But we demanded our independence and now we destroy the world with it. "So why doesnt He do something about it?" "He already has- He chose the cross where mercy triumphs over justice because of love. Would you prefer he'd Chosen justice for everyone?" Sophia asks. "No, I don't," Mack replies, "Not for me or my children."
Judgement is not about destruction, but about setting things right.

The Shack: A Philosophy on Gender

**Note: This is not particularly what The Shack is about, and it does come across as a little rude to males, but I do not mean to be a feminist.

The Shack is mind bending, and changes the way one would look at the world, but then it is also popular, and it has a popular subject. So I'm not sure if it is classified as lit or pop fiction, therefore I am reading 150 pages just to be safe. I say it is mindbending, though, because it portrays God as a black woman.  Most people percieve God as a white male, as did I, and so this, sad to say, shocked me. I wondered why Young chose to present Him this way. I thought it was an attempt to raise the african american race or the female gender, a direction I did not expect the book to take. But then the character of God says this: "I am neither male nor female[...] For me to appear to you as a woman  [...] is to help you keep from falling so easily back into your religious conditioning." This stuck out because it felt like it was meant for me, my visions being so narrow.  And so why does God seem to claim the male gender in the Bible by using the word "father"? Young's answer ="Both [genders] are needed- but an emphasis on fathering is necessary because of the enormity of its absence."
Just because this has the same subject, I'll throw this comment in the mix : When the protagonist says to Jesus, "I've always wondered why men have been in charge [...] males seeem to be the cause of so much of the pain in the world." Jesus answers, "Women turned from us [God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit] to another relationship, while men turned to themselves and the ground." The truth in this statement if deafening. Men are straight-forward, they want what makes them happy, and they have less emotion, where women strive so hard to be loved, adored, talked about and admired.

We are broken in our own ways.

Friday

Personality test
The test did a pretty good job at describing me. There was one part that I didn't think worked well but then there was another detail that shocked me because of it's accuracy. It didn't discuss my flaws, but I think the test was just trying to suck-up to me. Those things always do.


This is my first post, so I'm just testing this website out. I'm currently reading The Shack by WM. Paul Young. It's about a man whose daughter was murdered, and he consequently distances himself from God. Then, he gets a chance to experience God, and that is what I will be telling you about.