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.