My Foot is Too Big for the Glass Slipper

I just read my foot is too big for the glass slipper by Gabrielle Reece. It is just a book on her thoughts and advice even though she isn't really an expert or anything. She is a great volleyball player who married a surfer and she wrote a little about how she thought a woman should be submissive with her husband at times. It got a lot of media attention because everyone thought that was awful to say and so that's why I picked it up. I believe a woman has to be feminine and a man has to be masculine or there can't be any respect in the relationship.
I can't really say much about it because it's not that type of book, you know? But she did have a whole chapter on exercising because she says it's "the key to everything" and I dont know about everything but I think it can solve a lot of problems.

Brave New World

                     



 

I just finished Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. In general it was strange and some of the scenes I had to skim through because they were so terrible (in a violent way, not in a literay way). It is a dystopian society that relies too heavily on technology and material happiness.

The literary world seems to be dominated by liberals and socialists but this book was quite the opposite and I really appreciated it's logic.

The logic is is that we cannot let the viviparous life be abandoned. A married mother and father is what a child needs. The promiscous life is immoral and terrible for society.

The logic is that we cannot have the government telling us what to do, where to work. We cannot let the government determine how much we earn or if we are allowed happiness. Even so far in the future, with all the advanced technology and science, a socialistic government is terrible. With capitalism, you can go wherever you want. If you are born poor, you may rise from that pit and become rich, if only you work for it. There is individual responsibilty, because the individual is important. Society is seondary.  And we cannot let the government be our god. There needs to be a seperation, because man is fallible and God is not. Christianity is vital to society's happiness.

 

The only thing I didn't like was the savage's flogging of himself. His overall motiff is Christianty, but in that event he was representing sacrifice(success tastes sweetest to those who ne'r suceed) and not love, which is what Christianity is truely about.

 

Sometimes I wonder about the idea of having to choose between happiness and high art.

The rational and irrational.

The easy and the passionate.

 

 Sometimes we forget that Christianity is raw, unmatched, beautiful art.

The Hobbit

 

I read Tolkien's The Hobbit, because I watched the first movie, which is the first third of the book. I think the movie was better than the first third and I think the next 2 movies will be better than the last part of the book. I don't like it that much because Tolkien seems to appreciate quantity over quality. He just lists the dangers and obstacles that the characters have to overcome but doesn't really describe them or tell how any character is feeling, and therefore little character development occurs. I know this is bad to say, because Harry Potter isn't respected in the literary world, but I just feel so strongly that Harry Potter is so much better than The Hobbit. One of the reason's there has to be 3 parts for a 330 page book is because so much happens, but there is no detail so it doesn't take long. The movie, though will create the details so it will be a lot of hours. It is very anti-climactic, too. Because the "plot" was that they had to get their home away from the dragon, but someone else ended up killing the dragon before them. And then there was a whole war in like 4 pages!!!
I'm glad I read it because it is such a popular book, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Lincoln the Unknown

It's been a while since I blogged anything. I read 50 shades of grey but I didn't want to make a whole post out of that because of course it was stupid and not worth reading

But I just finished a book by Dale Carnegie called Lincoln the Unknown and it was marvelous!

It was purely biographical but it was short and I'm sure I missed out on a lot of interesting things but what I did learn was shocking. For time purposes, I will just write about the women in his life. Lincoln fell in love with a woman, and she with him, and they courted for a while, but eventually she got sick and died.  That caused him to go into a severe depression that never truely left him. His love for her is so famous that Americans still go to her grave and weep for her.

Then he met Marry Todd and she wanted him to marry her because she thought he might have become president. But she was the most awful woman on the face of the earth. I hate her with so much of who I am after reading the book. I cannot explain with words how terribly awful she was, and how sad he was. He tried to leave her but she cried and so he proposed and then he went insane as the wedding date approached because he knew what a terrible life he was entering into. He didn't show up to the wedding and was found mumbling incoherently in his office. But, trapped by his consience telling him to stick to his promise, he decided to go through with it. 

She terrorized his life and ruined it, along with any other human being she met. He was sad all through his life, and I suppose I don't truely understand the depths of that inconsolable sadness. That makes me hurt, to know a man of such character had to endure that awful witch and his depression, but he did it with a Christ-like strength.

I believe his burden has been lifted and he has found relief and happiness. I hope to meet him one day.  



WEAR

Penny Lane from Almost famous and Lisa Rowe from Girl, Interrupted are two of my favorite movie characters of all time, and I just realized that they have really similar coats. If I ever want to be cool someday, I will buy this coat.

Girl Interrupted

 

I read Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen. I didn't even know it was a book until I saw it at Goodwill, much less know it's a true story. I loved the move a ton so I decied to read it. The book is good but surprisingly it's not as good as the movie. They really played up Lisa (Jolie) in the movie and made her one of the main parts. I love the story though becasue I'm really fascinated by the thin and obscure line between the sane and insane. I don't really wanna explain it because thats what the movie and book are for and I know I'll just ruin it by summarizing. Sometimes I wonder how far I am from crazy and I wonder what takes us there and I wonder how we can heel from that.

Some of my favorite lines:

"Endogenous or exogenous, nature or nurture- it's the great mystery of mental illness."

"When you're sad you need to hear sorrow structured into sound."

"What is it about meter ad cadence and rhythm that makes their makers mad?"

"You can flit back and forth between thes perceptions and ecperience a sort of mental vertigo. And if you do this, you are treading onthe ground of craziness- a place where false impressions have all the hallmarks of reality."

 

music

http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/forum-test/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=26395

Hole in my Life

I just read Jack Gantos' memoir A Hole in My Life. It tells the story of how he got into crime and what prison was like. I liked him a lot better than you're usual addict book (they always end up being criminals) because he wasn't a total idiot like the character's in any of ellen hopkins drug addiction books. He has some self responsibility and even though he was a criminal I didn't hate him becasue I saw what brought him to that and he also didn't try to cover up any of his flaws or mistakes. He layed it clear as day and was vulnerable because he was truely regretful for his actions.
He was a good writer- definitely better than a lot of famous ones like Suzanne Collins or James Patterson or Nicholas Sparks-  yet he kept talking about how all he wanted to do was write and that was his passion and I just thought it was weird becasue he wasn't that great. But maybe thats because he didn't really have a good high school education.
Another thing I was dissapointed in is the fact that he writes childen's books now. I figured with such a traumatic and adventurous and deep life, he'd be doing something more fulfilling. Maybe he's happy but because he's suffered a lot I just wish he was more famous and stuff, you know? But maybe because he realizes that he is a criminal he accepts that life can never be great.
I enjoyed reading it.

The Alchemist Failure

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho was said to be a "modern day classic." It is Julia Roberts favorite book and Bill Clinton was photographed reading it. (I suppose this should forebode to the negative). Even on the first page I was confused because I noticed how poorly it was written. Seriously so bad. He writes at a middle school level and it's funny because you can tell he is trying so hard to write with literary merit.
The whole book says dumb things like "find your Personal Legend," "the Soul of the Universe", the "Language of the World." And I'm thinking "Are you kidding me?! Is this book for 6 year olds?!"
The philosophy is so elementary. Basically it says, go after your dreams and they will come true. So childish. And you'll get a kick out of the introduction also because he is boasting about how his wonderful book became so popular and how he thinks that makes it a revolutionary book. Then he says "heres why.." 1. "We are told from childhood that everything we want to do is impossible." No one says that! Thats such old thinking. People are realistic still but honestly if a little kid says he wants to be a pro football player when he grows up people will say "thats great" and they will let him find out on his own that its probably not gonna happen.
2. "Love." So stupid.
3. "Fear of defeat" Holy crap I didn't realize I was scared of doing that! But now I'll do it now that I know I'm scared! Thanks!!
4. "Fear of not having a dream anymore" This is I suppose not completely worn out but still it's dumb because its not true. Would you rather be happy or be unhappy and dream of being happy? Stupid question, I know.

This guy says he is a Catholic but he's nothing more than a pagan. He capitalizes the word Universe and says everything is one and it is all helping you out. B.S.
This guy is an idiot.

I pretty much agree with everything that this person says( I went searching for someone else that was flabbergasted by how terrible it is!):
http://www.stirringtroubleinternationally.com/2012/04/08/the-alchemist-an-ode-to-modern-capitalism/

Witness by Whittaker Chambers

I don't really know how to start my great multitude of thoughts on this book, so I will let Chambers speak first. Here are only a handful (I have five pages worth of highlighted passages written in a notebook) of my favorites.
"Thus we crossed that bridge from death to life which faith said "Try" but cold reason said "Even to think of trying is hopeless."
"Of course, we do not simply step from evil to good, even recognizing that any human good and evil is seldom more than a choice between less evil and more good. In that transition we drag ourselves like cripples. We are cripples. In any such change as I was making, the soul itself is in flux. How hideous our transformations are, wavering monstrously in their incompleteness as in a distorting mirror, until the commotion settles and the soul's new proportions are defined."
"In that change, practicality and precaution are of no more help than prudence or craft. It is a transit that must be made upon the knees, or not at all. For it is only to the graves of dead brothers that we find ourselves powerless at last to bring anything but prayer. We are equally powerless at the graves of ourselves, once we know that we live in shrouds."
"At the end, all men simply pray, and prayer takes as many forms as there are men, without exception we pray. We pray because there is nothing else to do, and because that is where God is- where there is nothing else."
"What immunity can the world offer a man against his thoughts?
"Men have never been so educated, but wisdom, even as an idea, has conspicuously vanished from the world."
"[Communism's] triumph means slavery to men wherever they fall under its sway and spiritual night to the human mind and soul."
"I know that he and all his generation may soon bear witness of a kind before which every other shrinks in humility; and I want him to have a standard as simple as stepping into the dark and raising his eyes whereby to measure what he is and what he is not against the order of reality."

Note: This review minimizes the greatness of this book because I cannot say what I feel about 800 pages into a single blog with an utter completeness.

Whittaker Chambers had a twisted, eerie, and fantastically tragic childhood. The peculiarities and depressing moments of his youth give deep insight into what horrible events and emotions foced him into such a terrible regime, what made him believe in a philosophy of atheism and slavery. As a strict capitalist and believer in free market principles, I am sad to say that I honestly do not know what path I would have chosen if I had his childhood, and I believe that is a testament to the emotional torture and confusion he was compelled to battle with.
And because Chambers is a phenomenal writer, his childhood, one which Americans haven't heard about nor care about, was one of the most interesting parts of the book for me to read, even though I intended to only read about the case. I cannot articulate the full extent of my thoughts on his brother's death, but they resonate very well with Chamber's own words: "I never questioned that my brother's death was due to great weaknesses in himself. But it was also due to strength and clarity- his undeflected vision of his own weaknesses and of the world in which, they had come to light and to grief. That world was dying of its own vulgarity, stupidity, complacency, inhumanity, power and materialism-a death of the spirit. The toxins of its slow decay poisoned all life within it- but first of all that life which was most gentle and most decent because its sensitivity(that is to say, in part, its weakness), made it most sucseptible and most incurable."

One of the points he made about the new dealers that I loved was that they are socialists and communists. The New Deal was a genuine revolution, only one of economic instead of violent proportions. And the reasons liberals feel so wildly malicious to anti-communists is that they see no diffrence between the philisopical principles of what they believe in and what the communists believe in. The innate ideas and philospohies are the same, the only reason they can exist is that the liberals try to keep their extremely radical ideas swept under the rug.

This book has racked me up and has obliged me to rethink my beliefs on religion and politics. And I still haven't found my answers yet and I'm left exceptionally confused. Chambers' beliefs were the complete opposite of Ayn Rand's, which I was supposed to believe in after I read Atlas Shrugged. But they definitely do not agree, as Chambers wrote an essay ridiculing Atlas Shrugged called 'Big Sister is Watching You'. I agreed with his logic of the flaws in the book only at the surface. Things like how it is weird that there are no children or the laughable fact that every "good" person in the book was unfathomably beautiful. But he disagrees with her in a very large way, too. Not because of the fact that he was a communist and she a capitalist, but because he believes in God. Rand has a whole chapter in her book that condemned the idea of a paradox because she believed they did not and could not exist by matter of reason and logic, but Chambers quoted this of his most personal statement:"Christian faith is a paradox which is the sum of paradoxes. Its passion mounts, like a surge of music, insubstantial and sustaining, between two great cries of the spirit- the paradoxic sadness of 'Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief...I believe because it is impossible." So, if he believes paradoxes can exist in the most miraculous of ideas, and they can be pious, he therefore believes they exist very surely in life. Does the existence of God grant a truth that paradoxes exist? I don't know. Because God means that humans are more than beasts; they have freedom from slavery because their minds are wonderful and God-given (power of mind= no paradox because paradoxes do not exist with logic) but then if God exists than things are illogical(in the sense that humans cannot reason it) which means paradoxes do exist.... Maybe I just answered it then.. Because in saying that it can be neither becasue it has to be both means that there is a paradox.
So then does that mean I have to believe in what Chambers believes? Because he seems like the greatest pessimist that ever lived and I think of him cowardly when he tried to kill himself. And he believes that man should live simply, hard working and loving because he has been given life by God, so he is belittled, nothing more than a dirty rag at best. But then that seems like a sort of communist way of thinking...that he is not unique and not important so he should not stive to succeed (excluding the God part).
I suppose my larges question in that it has the most direct effect on my life(and afterlife) is does God hate wealth? Chambers believes so. As the senior editor of time he chose to be a farmer because its those kinds of men "whose habitual labors hold the crumbling world together." (communist view again!) Because its the big business owners to create jobs and wealth and inventions, but it is the farmers who grow the necessities and don't deal with the ungodly stuff, instead with the raw earth in its purest form.

I'm at a loss.

The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-time

By Mark Haddon. Short and exceptionally quick read. The narrator is a 15 year old boy with severe social problems and they don't exactly say in the book what it is but I think he has a serious degree of autism or aspergers, but it helps him focus on things so he has incredible mathematical skills. Anyway, it was a little strange letting myself be the persona of the story, like I normally do. The narration reminded me of perks of being a wallflower or cather in the rye but it was more socially awkward. I got mad at him a bunch too and it was kind of a tragic story because he is such a hassle to live with and he really doesnt feel love so he cannot appreciate his fathers efforts. And so no one really wins in the end because its kind of a story of unrequitted love. Yes, the story is hopeful in the end because they are probably going to live with eachother and Christorpher will stop being so afraid of his father, but the reader knows their lives will still be rough. His dad will feel guilty when he feels burdened by his son but he will also never be able to have a relationship with a woman because of his son.
Sometimes I connected with the kid because I'm socially awkward I guess and I feel like him sometimes in social situations being so overwhelmed and stuff. The difference though is that I don't start rolling around on the ground screaming. But then again I'm not as academically gifted as him and I would definitely like to be.
The book was okay and I'm glad I read it, maybe just because it was so short.
Makes you think!

Read This!

If you ever need suggestions...
http://bookreviews.me.uk/rory-gilmore-reading-challenge/

Reading still

I just read a political book. I don't wanna say who by because I don't wanna start a mob, but it was good. Real good. Peace.

Perks of Being a Wallflower

I just finished Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. I know I'm terribly late on this one but I have been wanting to read it for a while- I just never had the chance. It was really good and it was a whole lot like Catcher in the Rye, which i loved also. Maybe, though, it was too much like Catcher in the Rye- maybe the author pretty much copied Catcher. Both books, and I'm not sure how it's done, have a very likeable tone, a real voice that is almost childlike and innocent. The tone of catcher and perks is like the familiar, cozy tone of Junie B Jones, and I absolutely love that. Holden Caulfield was a little more funny and Perks was a little more sad. But they both battled with depression and had strange encounters with people because they both looking for more substance in the world and they both ended up in mental hospitals. I read Perks because even though I'm not a liberal, i know it is pretty much the hipster's Bible so I wanted to be culturally literate and that's why I read it. Sometimes I'm a wallflower because the quote really got to me that "people use thought to not participate in life" and that's what I do. My family calls me a hermit crab and I've been okay with that because I've always said to myself "im busy doing other, more important things; I'm busy thinking." But is it worth it? To be proud and let life go by? I think that's what this book is saying.

I think the movie for Perks is gonna suck an awful lot. I probably won't see it.

Love always,

Mallory

This is to remind me to read it

http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/why-i-write.htm

^George Orwell essay

Triangles

Just finished Triangles. With Ellen Hopkins, you can read a 600 page book in one day, easily. It's so refreshing. The teen fiction novel is a bungle of adjectives: entertaining, poetic, innapropriate, depressing and anticlimactic. She usually tells the stories of some pretty flawed characters, and you know you would just absolutely hate the person, if you did not hear the story told in first person. It helps you understand people and why sometimes they do the terrible things they do. She is a good writer, too, because every page is a a really unique poem, kind of. And for me, it would take a long time to create 600 pages of poems that create a story. but she does it, everytime and I enjoy it everytime because I have read every single one of her books. Even the ones about middle aged women (this one) that no one reads. Hopkins probably should have stuck with teen personas though, because the women basically sound and act like teenagers and the whole thing seems so silly because these 40 year old women are engaging in completely wreckless and immature activities.
Oh, well, though. She took a chance, and ultimately it was entertaining.
P.S. I hate the cover art.

June 4th 2012

I haven't posted anything in a while because I haven't been reading lately. School's ending so I've been getting a lot of projects and have had to study for finals. But there's only two days of school left so I'll definitely read a lot and post a lot this summer because I'm doing the summer reading program and I don't have any summer reading this summer! Yay! I think I will read a lot of classics, though, just because I want to prepare myself for college and the adult world.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo finished!

I read this book instead of doing homework because I was so enthralled. It was seriously dark and distrurbing but I'm excited to see the movie because Daniel Craig is in it, yo. I wished the author had cut out the last 100 pages and the beginning 75, because it was about a personal plot with the protagonist that was really boring and at the end there was a big climax and the murder was solved but then there was another 100 pages of garbage! He also wasn't very well-versed in his grammar knowledge and I caught a lot of mistakes, but that's pop fiction for ya. The author died shortly after he had delivered the manuscripts for this trilogy which is kinda creepy but mostly sad because he wasn't given the chance to see the wild success of the novels. I'm glad I read this book to say I've read it, given it a chance, and will be literate when the book comes up in conversations but I will not read the other two books because there would be no purpose. I may enjoy them but I will have gained nothing from reading them.
Until next time!

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

So i know i said i hate pop fiction but i made an exception with the girl with the dragon tatto by stieg larsson because its a mystery. It is really dark but really interesting so I'm hooked and all I wanna do is go home ( im at school) and read it. Also, I'm excited to see the movie, partly because Daniel Craig is in it! Yeah so, there's not that much i can say about it because its just a pop fiction book but i do detect some socialist ideas and its kind of annoying because the author hates all things business. But i love it!

S/O to Darby Cook