I've seen a few memes floating around in the past day or two asking how we can celebrate Thanksgiving when the DAPL protestors are being sprayed with fire hoses in subfreezing temperatures, and treated as rioters when they're protesting peacefully.
Honestly, I think we need Thanksgiving this year more than ever.
No, I don't buy into the story of the First Thanksgiving that I learned about in elementary school. I'm not saying that this Thanksgiving, Native Americans should "just get over it" and celebrate what they do have like the rest of us. Because that is bullshit.
But here's a small history lesson for you: Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving to be a national holiday as we know it, celebrated on the last Thursday of November, in 1863. It was a desperate attempt to unite the nation in the middle of the Civil War. Part of his Thanksgiving proclamation read:
"I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United
States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in
foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November
next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who
dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up
the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and
blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national
perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who
have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable
civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore
the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation
and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes
to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union."
Notice that there isn't any garbage in there about celebrating how nice the Natives were to the Pilgrims. It's honestly mainly religious, thanking and praising God for what we have and asking him to heal the warring nation. But even if you take out the religious aspect, Lincoln's proclamation essentially says "Let us as a nation be thankful for what we have, let us be united, and let us as a nation heal from the atrocity of war."
This is what I choose to celebrate this year. A day of peace, love, and unity, as laid out by Abraham Lincoln. This is what we should all celebrate as a nation, every day of every year.
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Saturday, October 22, 2016
I've seen 143/270 movies!
I originally filled this out in 2009. It popped up in my Timehop the other day, and I thought, wow, I've seen a lot more of these movies, so I figured I'd fill it out again! But it was too long for a Facebook status, and Notes aren't really a thing any more (or at least, I don't know how to make a new one), so on the blog it goes. Movies I've seen sine 2009 are in red!
SUPPOSEDLY if you've seen over 85 films, you have no life. Mark the ones you've seen. There are over 270 films on this list. Copy this list, go to your own facebook account, paste this as a note. Then, put x's next to the films you've seen, add them up, change the header adding your number, and click post at the bottom. Have fun!
(x ) Rocky Horror Picture Show
(x) Grease
( ) Grease 2
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest
(x ) Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End
(x) Boondock Saints
( x) Fight Club
( ) Starsky and Hutch
(x ) Blazing Saddles
Total so far: 7 8
( ) The Neverending Story
() The Neverending Story II
() The Neverending Story III
(x) Airplane
(x) The Princess Bride
( ) Willow
( x) Anchorman
( ) Napoleon Dynamite
(x) Labyrinth
Total so far:10 12
( ) Saw
() Saw II
() Saw III
() Saw IV
() Saw V
() White Noise
() White Oleander
(x) Anger Management
(x) 50 First Dates
Total so far:10 14
(x)The Princess Diaries
(x)The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
(x ) Scream
( x) Scream 2
(x ) Scream 3
(x) I Know What You Did Last Summer
( ) I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
(x) The Shining
( ) Candyman
(x) Stand By Me
Total so far: 14 22
(x ) Scary Movie
( x) Scary Movie 2
(x) Scary Movie 3
(x ) Scary Movie 4
() Resident Evil 1
() Resident Evil 2
(x ) American Pie
(x ) American Pie 2
( x) American Wedding
(x ) American Pie Band Camp
Total so far:15 30
(x) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
(x) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
(x) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
(x) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
(x) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
( x)The Wedding Singer
(x) Little Black Book
(x)The Village
(x) Lilo & Stitch
(x) Finding Nemo
Total so far:24 40
(x) Finding Neverland
(x) Signs
(x) The Grinch
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
( ) White Chicks
(x ) Butterfly Effect
(x) 13 Going on 30
(x) I, Robot
() Robots
Total so far:29 46
(x) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
() Universal Soldier
(x) Lemony Snicket: A Series Of Unfortunate Events
( ) Along Came Polly
(x) Deep Impact
( ) King Pin
() Never Been Kissed
(x) Meet The Parents
(x) Meet the Fockers
() Eight Crazy Nights
Total so far:30 51
() Joe Dirt
(x) King Kong
(x) A Cinderella Story
()The Terminal
() The Lizzie McGuire Movie
( ) Passport to Paris
(x) Dumb & Dumber
(x ) Dumber & Dumberer
(x) Halloween
() Surviving X-MAS
Total so far: 33 56
( ) Final Destination
( )Final Destination 2
( ) Final Destination 3
(x) The Ring
( )The Ring 2
(x) Flubber
( x) Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
() Practical Magic (but this one's on my Netflix watch list!)
(x) Chicago
( ) Ghost Ship
Total so far: 35 60
(x) From Hell
(x ) Hellboy
( ) Secret Window
( ) I Am Sam
(x ) The Whole Nine Yards
() The Whole Ten Yards
(x) The Day After Tomorrow
() Child's Play
( ) Seed of Chucky
( )Bride of Chucky
Total so far:37 64
(x) Ten Things I Hate About You
( ) Just Married
(x) Gothika
( x) Nightmare on Elm Street
(x ) Remember the Titans
( ) Coach Carter
() The Grudge
() The Grudge 2
() The Mask
() Son Of The Mask
Total so far:39 68
( ) Bad Boys
( ) Bad Boys 2
( ) Joy Ride
() Lucky Number Slevin
(x) Ocean's Eleven
( ) Ocean's Twelve
( ) Ocean's Thirteen
(x) Bourne Identity
(x )Bourne Supremacy
(x) Bourne Ultimatum
Total so far:39 72
(x) Sixteen Candles
( ) Pretty in Pink
() Lone Star
( x) Bedazzled
(x) Predator I
() Predator II
() The Fog
(X) Ice Age
(x) Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
( ) Curious George
Total so far: 42 77
(x) Independence Day
() Cujo
() A Bronx Tale
() Darkness Falls
() Christine
(x) ET
( ) Children of the Corn
() My Boss's Daughter
( ) Maid in Manhattan
() War of the Worlds
Total so far: 44 79
(x) Rush Hour
(x) Rush Hour 2
(x) Rush Hour 3
() Best Bet
() How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
( ) She's All That
(x) Calendar Girls
( ) Sideways
( ) Mars Attacks
() Event Horizon
Total so far: 45 83
(x) Ever After
(x) Wizard of Oz
(x) Forrest Gump
() Big Trouble in Little China
(x )The Terminator
(x) The Terminator 2
(x) The Terminator 3
(x) X-Men
(x) X-2
(x) X-Men:The Last Stand
Total so far: 50 92
(x) Spider-Man
(x) Spider-Man 2
(x) Spider-Man 3
(x) Sky High
( ) Jeepers Creepers
() Jeepers Creepers 2
(x) Catch Me If You Can
(x) The Little Mermaid
(x) Freaky Friday
() Reign of Fire
Total so far: 55 99
() The Skulls
(x) Cruel Intentions
() Cruel Intentions 2
() The Hot Chick
(x) Shrek
(x) Shrek 2
(x) Shrek the Third
() Swimfan
() Miracle on 34th street
()Old School
Total so far:60 103
() The Notebook
() K-Pax
() Krippendorf's Tribe
() A Walk to Remember
() Ice Castles
() Boogeyman
(x) The 40-year-old Virgin
(x) The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
(x) The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
(x) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Total so far: 63 107
(x) Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
(x) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
(x) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
(x) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
() Basketball
() Hostel
() Waiting for Guffman
() House of 1000 Corpses
() Devils Rejects
(x) Elf
Total so far: 68 112
() Highlander
() Mothman Prophecies
() American History X
() Three
() The Jacket
(x) Kung Fu Hustle
(x) Shaolin Soccer
() Night Watch
(x) Monsters Inc.
( ) Titanic
Total so far: 69 (ha.) 115
(x) Monty Python and the Holy Grail
(x) Shaun Of the Dead
() Willard
() HighTension
() Club Dread
(x) Hulk
( x) Dawn Of the Dead
(x) Hook
(x) Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
( ) Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Total so far: 73 121
(x) 28 days later
() Orgazmo
() Phantasm
() Waterworld
(x) Kill Bill vol 1
(x) Kill Bill vol 2
() Mortal Kombat
() Wolf Creek
() Kingdom of Heaven
() The Hills Have Eyes
Total so far: 73 124
() I Spit on Your Grave aka the Day of the Woman
() The Last House on the Left
(x)Star Wars Ep. I The Phantom Menace
(x ) Star Wars Ep. II Attack of the Clones
(x) Star Wars Ep. III Revenge of the Sith
(x) Star Wars Ep. IV A New Hope
(x) Star Wars Ep. V The Empire Strikes Back
(x) Star Wars Ep. VI Return of the Jedi
() Ewoks Caravan Of Courage
() Ewoks The Battle For Endor
Total so far:78 130
() Re-Animator
() Army of Darkness
(x) The Matrix
(x) The Matrix Reloaded
(x) The Matrix Revolutions
() Animatrix
(x) Evil Dead
(x) Evil Dead 2
(x) Team America: World Police
() Ghosttown
Total so far: 79 136
() Red Dragon
(x) Silence of the Lambs
( ) Hannibal
(x) Wall-E
(x) Batman Begins
(x) The Dark Knight
(x) The Prestige
(x) Cars
( ) Gone With The Wind
(x ) Top Gun
Total seen:83 143
I've seen 143/270 movies. Personally, I don't consider that as having no life! I love movies. I consider it personal growth that I've almost doubled the number of moves that I've seen from this list! Plus, some of these movies have sequels by now, and I've seen those, too. :)
Now put "I've seen "xxx"out of 270 movies" in the subject line (filling in your total in the blank), repost it, and tag some of your friends (including the person who tagged you) to see what they say.
SUPPOSEDLY if you've seen over 85 films, you have no life. Mark the ones you've seen. There are over 270 films on this list. Copy this list, go to your own facebook account, paste this as a note. Then, put x's next to the films you've seen, add them up, change the header adding your number, and click post at the bottom. Have fun!
(x ) Rocky Horror Picture Show
(x) Grease
( ) Grease 2
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest
(x ) Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End
(x) Boondock Saints
( x) Fight Club
( ) Starsky and Hutch
(x ) Blazing Saddles
Total so far: 7 8
( ) The Neverending Story
() The Neverending Story II
() The Neverending Story III
(x) Airplane
(x) The Princess Bride
( ) Willow
( x) Anchorman
( ) Napoleon Dynamite
(x) Labyrinth
Total so far:10 12
( ) Saw
() Saw II
() Saw III
() Saw IV
() Saw V
() White Noise
() White Oleander
(x) Anger Management
(x) 50 First Dates
Total so far:10 14
(x)The Princess Diaries
(x)The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
(x ) Scream
( x) Scream 2
(x ) Scream 3
(x) I Know What You Did Last Summer
( ) I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
(x) The Shining
( ) Candyman
(x) Stand By Me
Total so far: 14 22
(x ) Scary Movie
( x) Scary Movie 2
(x) Scary Movie 3
(x ) Scary Movie 4
() Resident Evil 1
() Resident Evil 2
(x ) American Pie
(x ) American Pie 2
( x) American Wedding
(x ) American Pie Band Camp
Total so far:15 30
(x) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
(x) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
(x) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
(x) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
(x) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
( x)The Wedding Singer
(x) Little Black Book
(x)The Village
(x) Lilo & Stitch
(x) Finding Nemo
Total so far:24 40
(x) Finding Neverland
(x) Signs
(x) The Grinch
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
( ) White Chicks
(x ) Butterfly Effect
(x) 13 Going on 30
(x) I, Robot
() Robots
Total so far:29 46
(x) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
() Universal Soldier
(x) Lemony Snicket: A Series Of Unfortunate Events
( ) Along Came Polly
(x) Deep Impact
( ) King Pin
() Never Been Kissed
(x) Meet The Parents
(x) Meet the Fockers
() Eight Crazy Nights
Total so far:30 51
() Joe Dirt
(x) King Kong
(x) A Cinderella Story
()The Terminal
() The Lizzie McGuire Movie
( ) Passport to Paris
(x) Dumb & Dumber
(x ) Dumber & Dumberer
(x) Halloween
() Surviving X-MAS
Total so far: 33 56
( ) Final Destination
( )Final Destination 2
( ) Final Destination 3
(x) The Ring
( )The Ring 2
(x) Flubber
( x) Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
() Practical Magic (but this one's on my Netflix watch list!)
(x) Chicago
( ) Ghost Ship
Total so far: 35 60
(x) From Hell
(x ) Hellboy
( ) Secret Window
( ) I Am Sam
(x ) The Whole Nine Yards
() The Whole Ten Yards
(x) The Day After Tomorrow
() Child's Play
( ) Seed of Chucky
( )Bride of Chucky
Total so far:37 64
(x) Ten Things I Hate About You
( ) Just Married
(x) Gothika
( x) Nightmare on Elm Street
(x ) Remember the Titans
( ) Coach Carter
() The Grudge
() The Grudge 2
() The Mask
() Son Of The Mask
Total so far:39 68
( ) Bad Boys
( ) Bad Boys 2
( ) Joy Ride
() Lucky Number Slevin
(x) Ocean's Eleven
( ) Ocean's Twelve
( ) Ocean's Thirteen
(x) Bourne Identity
(x )Bourne Supremacy
(x) Bourne Ultimatum
Total so far:39 72
(x) Sixteen Candles
( ) Pretty in Pink
() Lone Star
( x) Bedazzled
(x) Predator I
() Predator II
() The Fog
(X) Ice Age
(x) Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
( ) Curious George
Total so far: 42 77
(x) Independence Day
() Cujo
() A Bronx Tale
() Darkness Falls
() Christine
(x) ET
( ) Children of the Corn
() My Boss's Daughter
( ) Maid in Manhattan
() War of the Worlds
Total so far: 44 79
(x) Rush Hour
(x) Rush Hour 2
(x) Rush Hour 3
() Best Bet
() How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
( ) She's All That
(x) Calendar Girls
( ) Sideways
( ) Mars Attacks
() Event Horizon
Total so far: 45 83
(x) Ever After
(x) Wizard of Oz
(x) Forrest Gump
() Big Trouble in Little China
(x )The Terminator
(x) The Terminator 2
(x) The Terminator 3
(x) X-Men
(x) X-2
(x) X-Men:The Last Stand
Total so far: 50 92
(x) Spider-Man
(x) Spider-Man 2
(x) Spider-Man 3
(x) Sky High
( ) Jeepers Creepers
() Jeepers Creepers 2
(x) Catch Me If You Can
(x) The Little Mermaid
(x) Freaky Friday
() Reign of Fire
Total so far: 55 99
() The Skulls
(x) Cruel Intentions
() Cruel Intentions 2
() The Hot Chick
(x) Shrek
(x) Shrek 2
(x) Shrek the Third
() Swimfan
() Miracle on 34th street
()Old School
Total so far:60 103
() The Notebook
() K-Pax
() Krippendorf's Tribe
() A Walk to Remember
() Ice Castles
() Boogeyman
(x) The 40-year-old Virgin
(x) The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
(x) The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
(x) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Total so far: 63 107
(x) Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
(x) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
(x) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
(x) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
() Basketball
() Hostel
() Waiting for Guffman
() House of 1000 Corpses
() Devils Rejects
(x) Elf
Total so far: 68 112
() Highlander
() Mothman Prophecies
() American History X
() Three
() The Jacket
(x) Kung Fu Hustle
(x) Shaolin Soccer
() Night Watch
(x) Monsters Inc.
( ) Titanic
Total so far: 69 (ha.) 115
(x) Monty Python and the Holy Grail
(x) Shaun Of the Dead
() Willard
() HighTension
() Club Dread
(x) Hulk
( x) Dawn Of the Dead
(x) Hook
(x) Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
( ) Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Total so far: 73 121
(x) 28 days later
() Orgazmo
() Phantasm
() Waterworld
(x) Kill Bill vol 1
(x) Kill Bill vol 2
() Mortal Kombat
() Wolf Creek
() Kingdom of Heaven
() The Hills Have Eyes
Total so far: 73 124
() I Spit on Your Grave aka the Day of the Woman
() The Last House on the Left
(x)Star Wars Ep. I The Phantom Menace
(x ) Star Wars Ep. II Attack of the Clones
(x) Star Wars Ep. III Revenge of the Sith
(x) Star Wars Ep. IV A New Hope
(x) Star Wars Ep. V The Empire Strikes Back
(x) Star Wars Ep. VI Return of the Jedi
() Ewoks Caravan Of Courage
() Ewoks The Battle For Endor
Total so far:78 130
() Re-Animator
() Army of Darkness
(x) The Matrix
(x) The Matrix Reloaded
(x) The Matrix Revolutions
() Animatrix
(x) Evil Dead
(x) Evil Dead 2
(x) Team America: World Police
() Ghosttown
Total so far: 79 136
() Red Dragon
(x) Silence of the Lambs
( ) Hannibal
(x) Wall-E
(x) Batman Begins
(x) The Dark Knight
(x) The Prestige
(x) Cars
( ) Gone With The Wind
(x ) Top Gun
Total seen:83 143
I've seen 143/270 movies. Personally, I don't consider that as having no life! I love movies. I consider it personal growth that I've almost doubled the number of moves that I've seen from this list! Plus, some of these movies have sequels by now, and I've seen those, too. :)
Now put "I've seen "xxx"out of 270 movies" in the subject line (filling in your total in the blank), repost it, and tag some of your friends (including the person who tagged you) to see what they say.
Friday, October 21, 2016
The best TV show episodes for this time of year!
Halloween is the best time of the year, I don't care what anyone says. I usually only watch Halloween TV episodes on the magickal day itself, but this year I've decided to embrace the spookiness all month long! So I've compiled a list of the best episodes from a few of my favorite shows.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Technically any episode is in the spirit of Halloween, because vampires and werewolves and magick and otherwise general demonness. But here are the best Halloween episodes! You can find Buffy on Netflix.- Puppet Show, season 1 episode 9: this one scared the crap out of me when I first saw it because I have an irrational fear of those damn puppets. Also, I was in middle school and it was the middle of the night, so I was spooked.
- Some Assembly Required, season 2 episode 2: Has a Frankenstien-esque plot!
- Inca Mummy Girl, season 2 episode 4: Deals with mummies. Mummies = spooky.
- Halloween, season 2 episode 6: the first of three Halloween-themed episodes, you can't miss it this time of year!
- Killed By Death, season 2 episode 18: Buffy sees Death in the hospital while she's sick. It leaves me quaking in my stylish yet affordable boots.
- Dead Man's Party, season 3 episode 2: Zombies! 'nuff said.
- Fear, Itself, season 4 episode 4: The second Halloween episode of the series. It's my favorite of the three!
- Hush, season 4 episode 10: The Emmy-nominated episode where everybody loses their voices in a dark, wicked fairy tale.
- Buffy vs Dracula, Season 5 episode 1: Ugh, if you must. It's a pretty silly episode, but, it's Dracula, so I guess you gotta watch it in October.
- All the Way, season 6 episode 6: The third and final Halloween episode in the series. It's not as great as the other two, but it's directly tied to Halloween!
- Conversations With Dead People, season 7 episode 7: Lots of creepy shit happens to everybody. Season 7 is a bit hard to follow if you've never seen the show, so I don't recommend this one if you're not a seasoned Buffy fan. But if you know the show, it's a good spooky one!
Psych
Netflix has tragically taken Psych off of its repertoire, but if you can find it elsewhere, there are some great episodes here!- Scary Sherry: Bianca's Toast, season 1 episode 15: The flashback at the beginning takes place on Halloween, and then there's some spooky ghost-y stuff that happens throughout the episode. Also, an abandoned insane asylum.
- Shawn (and Gus) of the Dead, season 2 episode 16: a mummy in the museum gets up and walks out?! eeek!
- Ghosts, season 3 episode 1: Shawn forces Gus to help him on a case that involves a very creepily haunted house.
- Tuesday the 17th, season 3 episode 15: takes its inspiration from Friday the 13th. Also, any time there is an actual Friday the 13th on the calendar, the following Tuesday is on the 17th so I like to watch it on those days!
- The Devil is in the Details (and the Upstairs Bedroom), season 4 episode 4: takes its inspiration from The Exorcist.
- Let's Get Hairy, season 4 episode 8: The suspect in a crime is a werewolf???
- Not Even Close... Encounters, season 5 episode 3: Shawn and Gus investigate an... alien abduction?
- In Plain Fright, season 5 episode 11: Shawn and Gus investigate creepy goings-on at a Halloween-themed theme park, and predictably creepy stuff happens.
- This Episode Sucks, season 6 episode 3: Shawn and Gus are convinced that the suspect in a crime is a vampire.
- Heeeeere's Lassie, season 6 episode 11: this one takes inspiration from The Shining, enough said!
- Lassie Jerky, season 7 episode 3: takes inspiration from the Blair Witch Project, and also Bigfoot and some other scary lost-in-the-woods stuff.
- A Nightmare on State Street, season 8 episode 9: zombies!!! and other scary nightmare things.
I'll be updating this post with other shows throughout the rest of the month!
Sunday, October 9, 2016
Ode to leggings, and other trends that I used to hate
Dear Leggings,
I'm sorry I used to hate you. "YOU ARE NOT PANTS, YOU ARE AN UNDERGARMENT!" I used to say. You're fine under dresses and tunics but if the top doesn't cover the butt, then you don't belong. That was before I embraced what an amazing set of legs I have, and what an amazing ass, too. It was also before I could ever find leggings opaque enough to truly cover my underwear. You first became pants when I was in high school, and the popular girls embraced you first. I didn't like them very much so I didn't like you.
But you're so comfortable. I can find you fleece-lined, opaque and warm and cozy, at my grocery store. Your tops are elastic so they don't pinch my gut when I sit down. You cling to me enough to keep me warm, but flex with me and don't restrict my movements.
To put it simply: I've embraced you as tightly and snugly as you embrace me.
Dear Ombre hair styles,
I'm sorry I used to think you looked stupid. "Why would anyone pay to look like they got their hair dyed six months ago?" I used to think. I didn't realize that people would use you to go creatively from natural to unnatural colors, or from one unnatural color to another. I also didn't realize yet how great you would make my hair look when my dye job did grow out after several months.
I'm too cheap and lazy to keep my roots covered up all the time, you see. And now you're here, making me look trendy when I'm actually being lazy. (It's also stubbornness - I only want my best friend touching my hair, and she lives 600 miles away.)
In short: you're every bit as gorgeous as everyone has always said you are.
Dear High-waisted pants,
I'm sorry I used to rip on you. "They're horrible for anyone with big thighs or a big butt, and I have both!" I used to proclaim. I still have those big thighs and butt, too. But what I also have (and always did have) are love handles. Low- and mid-rise pants sort of make them quelch outwards and I find it unflattering. But High-waisted pants? You cover the love handles, hold them in to make me look a bit more slim. You don't, in fact, make me look like my ass goes up to my waist. Nor do you make my thighs look wider or gross.
However, I am still a bit peeved with you, though this may not be entirely your fault: designers seem to think that for shorts and skirts, they can use the same amount of fabric when they're high-waisted as when they're low-rise. Which means that, when you're a pair of shorts, you barely extend past my crotch. I wish I could find some of you with a good 6" crotch panel so my aforementioned large thighs don't get the chub rub! But, again, that's less your fault than it is the designers'.
In summary, you're all right.
Sincerely,
Kate
a woman who takes a while to come around to trends sometimes
I'm sorry I used to hate you. "YOU ARE NOT PANTS, YOU ARE AN UNDERGARMENT!" I used to say. You're fine under dresses and tunics but if the top doesn't cover the butt, then you don't belong. That was before I embraced what an amazing set of legs I have, and what an amazing ass, too. It was also before I could ever find leggings opaque enough to truly cover my underwear. You first became pants when I was in high school, and the popular girls embraced you first. I didn't like them very much so I didn't like you.
But you're so comfortable. I can find you fleece-lined, opaque and warm and cozy, at my grocery store. Your tops are elastic so they don't pinch my gut when I sit down. You cling to me enough to keep me warm, but flex with me and don't restrict my movements.
To put it simply: I've embraced you as tightly and snugly as you embrace me.
Dear Ombre hair styles,
I'm sorry I used to think you looked stupid. "Why would anyone pay to look like they got their hair dyed six months ago?" I used to think. I didn't realize that people would use you to go creatively from natural to unnatural colors, or from one unnatural color to another. I also didn't realize yet how great you would make my hair look when my dye job did grow out after several months.
I'm too cheap and lazy to keep my roots covered up all the time, you see. And now you're here, making me look trendy when I'm actually being lazy. (It's also stubbornness - I only want my best friend touching my hair, and she lives 600 miles away.)
In short: you're every bit as gorgeous as everyone has always said you are.
Dear High-waisted pants,
I'm sorry I used to rip on you. "They're horrible for anyone with big thighs or a big butt, and I have both!" I used to proclaim. I still have those big thighs and butt, too. But what I also have (and always did have) are love handles. Low- and mid-rise pants sort of make them quelch outwards and I find it unflattering. But High-waisted pants? You cover the love handles, hold them in to make me look a bit more slim. You don't, in fact, make me look like my ass goes up to my waist. Nor do you make my thighs look wider or gross.
However, I am still a bit peeved with you, though this may not be entirely your fault: designers seem to think that for shorts and skirts, they can use the same amount of fabric when they're high-waisted as when they're low-rise. Which means that, when you're a pair of shorts, you barely extend past my crotch. I wish I could find some of you with a good 6" crotch panel so my aforementioned large thighs don't get the chub rub! But, again, that's less your fault than it is the designers'.
In summary, you're all right.
Sincerely,
Kate
a woman who takes a while to come around to trends sometimes
Thursday, September 29, 2016
2016 Reading Challenge: a book published before you were born
Honestly, the challenge in finding a book for this category was in narrowing it down to just one book! I'm pretty sure that ALL of the canonical classics were published before I was born. (That year was 1991, so booknerds, please let me know if there are any classics that are younger than I!)
Before I spent too much energy trying to decide on a book, I went to my town's Labor Day weekend festival with a friend. (People from Berkley: it's basically like Berkley Days, but for Labor Day!) There was a used book sale going on in one area, and books were ALL $1 each! Ahh! I grabbed two mysteries that seemed interesting, a Kathy Reichs book, and then I happened to notice sitting there a copy of Journey to the Center of the Earth. It's a very nice hard cover, with a built-in bookmark ribbon, and by the inscription it was evidently a Christmas present for someone named Connor in 2009 from his aunt and uncle. I kind of really like knowing who it used to belong to! I hope that Connor at least read the book, and willingly donated it to the sale. If he lost it and it somehow wound up donated to a book sale, I'd feel bad.
Anyway!
Yet again, Jules Verne's writing style kind of disappointed me. It was nowhere near as bad as getting through Tolkein, but it definitely did drag every now and then. Some of it - the high formality of the language, for example - could be the fault of the translator. There were definitely a few sentences that I had to read a few times in order to understand. (My beginner's knowledge of German could imagine the different grammatic structure of the German sentence, and then imagine the translator struggling between a literal translation which probably felt more "true" to him, vs a more casual English sentence structure that reads easier but is perhaps a technically less accurate translation.)
I ended up reading this a lot more quickly than I normally would have. When I read the first few chapters, it was at home on my couch as usual... and I kept struggling to stay awake, due in part to my odd fatigue all summer long, the slow/formal language of the book, and how comfy my couch is. But before too long, I got an internship with The Advocacy Project in downtown DC! I decided to take the Metro rather than attempt to drive during the morning rush hour, and boy oh boy does that ~40 minutes each way 3 days a week make for a lot of great reading time! One day, there was a 20 minute delay on the Metro, and rather than get all frazzled about being late to work I simply smiled and read for an extra 20 minutes that morning.
When I saw the 2008 movie with Brendan Fraser and Josh Hutcherson, I either heard or figured (or both) that it was quite different from the book. But, wow, it was REALLY different. It's been a while since I've seen the movie, but I remember them doing a lot of running from dinosaurs and something about a ground that was over a bottomless pit, and said ground was very fragile and dangerous to walk on. Not to mention that they spent the majority of the movie actually in the center of the Earth.
But the book? They didn't even enter the extinct volcano (from several thousand feet ABOVE the surface) until HALFWAY THROUGH the book. Then, while they certainly spent several months and a good portion of the book very deep beneath the surface, they actually never make it to the center of the Earth! The book is definitely more about the journey TO, while the movie is about the adventures IN. So, that was definitely a surprise. Of course I figured that the book would be slower and a little less action-packed, simply because of the time period it was written in, but I guess I also expected some of the scenes that I remembered from the movie to be in the book.
Despite the differences, I did enjoy the book. I don't think it quite earned a place on my list of favorites, again mainly because of the formal language, but I'm definitely glad that I read it! It also amused me that I read the bulk of the book on the subway, which averages about 4 stories below ground. Here are my heroes several hundred leagues under the Earth, and I'm suffering from the pressure on my ears less than one thousandth of a league under the surface!
Coming up next in the challenge: probably a book chosen for me by a friend. Last night at my crochet meetup, we talked a lot about books and I complained about how many difficult books I've read this year. My friends had a looooot of good recommendations for me! I'm excited to read some of them. I'm also planning on reading The Magic Kingdom of Landover series, which I discovered on Goodreads and am very intrigued by. Also, I started watching Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell on Netflix, and I'd reeeeeally like to read the book! I got the audiobook on Audible (woo free Gold subscription trial!), which I think will be great on the Metro because I'll be able to let my eyes rest but still get through my book. If you had told me this time last year that I'd be flying through much more than one book per month, I'd have been pretty surprised!
Before I spent too much energy trying to decide on a book, I went to my town's Labor Day weekend festival with a friend. (People from Berkley: it's basically like Berkley Days, but for Labor Day!) There was a used book sale going on in one area, and books were ALL $1 each! Ahh! I grabbed two mysteries that seemed interesting, a Kathy Reichs book, and then I happened to notice sitting there a copy of Journey to the Center of the Earth. It's a very nice hard cover, with a built-in bookmark ribbon, and by the inscription it was evidently a Christmas present for someone named Connor in 2009 from his aunt and uncle. I kind of really like knowing who it used to belong to! I hope that Connor at least read the book, and willingly donated it to the sale. If he lost it and it somehow wound up donated to a book sale, I'd feel bad.
Anyway!
Yet again, Jules Verne's writing style kind of disappointed me. It was nowhere near as bad as getting through Tolkein, but it definitely did drag every now and then. Some of it - the high formality of the language, for example - could be the fault of the translator. There were definitely a few sentences that I had to read a few times in order to understand. (My beginner's knowledge of German could imagine the different grammatic structure of the German sentence, and then imagine the translator struggling between a literal translation which probably felt more "true" to him, vs a more casual English sentence structure that reads easier but is perhaps a technically less accurate translation.)
I ended up reading this a lot more quickly than I normally would have. When I read the first few chapters, it was at home on my couch as usual... and I kept struggling to stay awake, due in part to my odd fatigue all summer long, the slow/formal language of the book, and how comfy my couch is. But before too long, I got an internship with The Advocacy Project in downtown DC! I decided to take the Metro rather than attempt to drive during the morning rush hour, and boy oh boy does that ~40 minutes each way 3 days a week make for a lot of great reading time! One day, there was a 20 minute delay on the Metro, and rather than get all frazzled about being late to work I simply smiled and read for an extra 20 minutes that morning.
When I saw the 2008 movie with Brendan Fraser and Josh Hutcherson, I either heard or figured (or both) that it was quite different from the book. But, wow, it was REALLY different. It's been a while since I've seen the movie, but I remember them doing a lot of running from dinosaurs and something about a ground that was over a bottomless pit, and said ground was very fragile and dangerous to walk on. Not to mention that they spent the majority of the movie actually in the center of the Earth.
But the book? They didn't even enter the extinct volcano (from several thousand feet ABOVE the surface) until HALFWAY THROUGH the book. Then, while they certainly spent several months and a good portion of the book very deep beneath the surface, they actually never make it to the center of the Earth! The book is definitely more about the journey TO, while the movie is about the adventures IN. So, that was definitely a surprise. Of course I figured that the book would be slower and a little less action-packed, simply because of the time period it was written in, but I guess I also expected some of the scenes that I remembered from the movie to be in the book.
Despite the differences, I did enjoy the book. I don't think it quite earned a place on my list of favorites, again mainly because of the formal language, but I'm definitely glad that I read it! It also amused me that I read the bulk of the book on the subway, which averages about 4 stories below ground. Here are my heroes several hundred leagues under the Earth, and I'm suffering from the pressure on my ears less than one thousandth of a league under the surface!
Coming up next in the challenge: probably a book chosen for me by a friend. Last night at my crochet meetup, we talked a lot about books and I complained about how many difficult books I've read this year. My friends had a looooot of good recommendations for me! I'm excited to read some of them. I'm also planning on reading The Magic Kingdom of Landover series, which I discovered on Goodreads and am very intrigued by. Also, I started watching Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell on Netflix, and I'd reeeeeally like to read the book! I got the audiobook on Audible (woo free Gold subscription trial!), which I think will be great on the Metro because I'll be able to let my eyes rest but still get through my book. If you had told me this time last year that I'd be flying through much more than one book per month, I'd have been pretty surprised!
Saturday, September 3, 2016
Myla Goldberg: Bee Season
My decision to read this book isn't actually part of the 2016 reading challenge. That's right, after so many years of barely reading, I'm reading an extra book on top of the 12 that I've decided to read this year - before I've finished the challenge! I'm definitely loving reading more often.
Back in early July (or maybe it was the end of June?), I checked out several books from the library. My library is only about two or three blocks away (although I don't actually walk on the streets - it's much faster if I cut through the series of parking lots between my apartment and the library). Sort of on the way home from the library is Roosevelt Square, a quaint little plaza with a Co-op grocery store and a few restaurants and even a movie theater. (Have I mentioned how much I adore the community in which I live?) Right outside the grocery store is one of those Little Free Libraries - a small kitchen cupboard unit where people drop off unwanted books, and hopefully pick up a book or two in return.
So as I was walking home from the public library, I decided to check out the little free one. After all, I'd just returned two books, so why not pick out one or two more? There were more books in the shelf than I expected. Most of them didn't really appeal to me, but this one did.
Bee Season by Myla Goldberg proved to be... an experience. Based on the description on the back, I was expecting it to be on the lighter side and mostly kid-friendly. But, wow. The first few pages (the book doesn't really have chapters - just line breaks with asterisks to denote a scene change/time passing) were mostly what I was expecting. After a few scenes, things started to change. I don't want to say enough to spoil it, because I'm definitely going to recommend that you read this book. But... let's just say that because the book is written not just from Eliza's perspective but from the whole family's, things get emotionally heavy. Much more so than I would ever have understood or liked as a kid. We get insights into Eliza's parents' struggling relationship, into Eliza's brother's struggles as an unpopular 16-year-old, and Eliza's struggles to understand what is going on with her family. Towards the end of the book, things get REALLY intense.
There weren't many lines in the book that stood out to me as profound, but there was one very early in the book that I really liked. As we learn in the beginning of the book, Eliza has never been particularly smart or special at anything. Her fourth grade class is divided into two reading groups: she is placed in the Racecars group, while the other is called the Rockets. At first, Eliza enjoys being a Racecar, until she learns the name of the other group. "... [S]he can't get it out of her head that, while she is speeding around in circles waiting to be told when to stop, other kids are flying to the moon." (p 7).
Something about that line just really struck me as special. Picturing a child, proud of herself for being a speedy race car, suddenly feeling less than special because her classmates are rocket ships, made me smile sadly.
The climax of Bee Season was very intense. It felt more like an actual climax than most of the books I've read this year, which was super satisfying. For really only the second time this year (Cursed Child being the first), I was completely unable to put the book down until I finished it. Dinner ended up being a little bit later than usual that night. Derek reminded me that it was 5:00, but I had a few pages left and didn't want to put the book down yet. (Yeah, we eat super early. I often start cooking at 4:30ish because we're apparently 60 years old.) To be honest, it kind of felt like the book ended during the falling action. It was like climax, some falling action, and not really much of a resolution. Then again, I was always terrible at figuring out the exact moments that define the story arc.
Don't get me wrong, it was a good ending. It's just that the emotions were so high and so much was happening at once until just a few pages before the end. Still a satisfying ending, but I kind of wished there was a little bit more to it, you know? I guess that's partly because I like a perfectly rounded, happy-for-everyone ending. When a book ends on a sort of "will it work out or won't it?" note, I'm like "show us that it will work out!" I know that's not realistic, but that's what I like and I'm not embarrassed to admit it. I think I've matured enough that I can still enjoy a book (or movie) that doesn't end with the sentence "All was well," but I still generally wish it was there.
So, what's next? I'm hoping to check off the book chosen for me by a BFF category next. A friend of mine at my crochet group is distantly related by marriage to the author of a successful fantasy series, but I'm on a waiting list at my library for the first book. If that takes too long, I might skip to a book that I previously abandoned. Of course, there's a HUGE plethora of amazing books that were published before I was born, but I have to figure out which one of them I want to choose for the challenge! And, I've preordered all 3 of the new Pottermore Presents books on the Google Play Store. They're all super short but I'm definitely going to read them, though they don't count for the 2016 challenge.
Back in early July (or maybe it was the end of June?), I checked out several books from the library. My library is only about two or three blocks away (although I don't actually walk on the streets - it's much faster if I cut through the series of parking lots between my apartment and the library). Sort of on the way home from the library is Roosevelt Square, a quaint little plaza with a Co-op grocery store and a few restaurants and even a movie theater. (Have I mentioned how much I adore the community in which I live?) Right outside the grocery store is one of those Little Free Libraries - a small kitchen cupboard unit where people drop off unwanted books, and hopefully pick up a book or two in return.
So as I was walking home from the public library, I decided to check out the little free one. After all, I'd just returned two books, so why not pick out one or two more? There were more books in the shelf than I expected. Most of them didn't really appeal to me, but this one did.
Bee Season by Myla Goldberg proved to be... an experience. Based on the description on the back, I was expecting it to be on the lighter side and mostly kid-friendly. But, wow. The first few pages (the book doesn't really have chapters - just line breaks with asterisks to denote a scene change/time passing) were mostly what I was expecting. After a few scenes, things started to change. I don't want to say enough to spoil it, because I'm definitely going to recommend that you read this book. But... let's just say that because the book is written not just from Eliza's perspective but from the whole family's, things get emotionally heavy. Much more so than I would ever have understood or liked as a kid. We get insights into Eliza's parents' struggling relationship, into Eliza's brother's struggles as an unpopular 16-year-old, and Eliza's struggles to understand what is going on with her family. Towards the end of the book, things get REALLY intense.
There weren't many lines in the book that stood out to me as profound, but there was one very early in the book that I really liked. As we learn in the beginning of the book, Eliza has never been particularly smart or special at anything. Her fourth grade class is divided into two reading groups: she is placed in the Racecars group, while the other is called the Rockets. At first, Eliza enjoys being a Racecar, until she learns the name of the other group. "... [S]he can't get it out of her head that, while she is speeding around in circles waiting to be told when to stop, other kids are flying to the moon." (p 7).
Something about that line just really struck me as special. Picturing a child, proud of herself for being a speedy race car, suddenly feeling less than special because her classmates are rocket ships, made me smile sadly.
The climax of Bee Season was very intense. It felt more like an actual climax than most of the books I've read this year, which was super satisfying. For really only the second time this year (Cursed Child being the first), I was completely unable to put the book down until I finished it. Dinner ended up being a little bit later than usual that night. Derek reminded me that it was 5:00, but I had a few pages left and didn't want to put the book down yet. (Yeah, we eat super early. I often start cooking at 4:30ish because we're apparently 60 years old.) To be honest, it kind of felt like the book ended during the falling action. It was like climax, some falling action, and not really much of a resolution. Then again, I was always terrible at figuring out the exact moments that define the story arc.
Don't get me wrong, it was a good ending. It's just that the emotions were so high and so much was happening at once until just a few pages before the end. Still a satisfying ending, but I kind of wished there was a little bit more to it, you know? I guess that's partly because I like a perfectly rounded, happy-for-everyone ending. When a book ends on a sort of "will it work out or won't it?" note, I'm like "show us that it will work out!" I know that's not realistic, but that's what I like and I'm not embarrassed to admit it. I think I've matured enough that I can still enjoy a book (or movie) that doesn't end with the sentence "All was well," but I still generally wish it was there.
So, what's next? I'm hoping to check off the book chosen for me by a BFF category next. A friend of mine at my crochet group is distantly related by marriage to the author of a successful fantasy series, but I'm on a waiting list at my library for the first book. If that takes too long, I might skip to a book that I previously abandoned. Of course, there's a HUGE plethora of amazing books that were published before I was born, but I have to figure out which one of them I want to choose for the challenge! And, I've preordered all 3 of the new Pottermore Presents books on the Google Play Store. They're all super short but I'm definitely going to read them, though they don't count for the 2016 challenge.
Sunday, July 31, 2016
2016 Reading Challenge: A book that was published this year
Since Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has been out for less than 24 hours, I promise you that there will be NO SPOILERS in this post. This post is just my general reaction to the book as a whole, and to keep with the continuity of how I've been doing this challenge.
At first, I was happy that this is a script instead of a novel because everything moves faster in a script. No descriptive paragraphs, no pages of a character's internal struggle or confusion. Everything just happens. But as I finished Part One in under three hours, I realized that a novel would last longer. After all, it took me at least two full days of binge-reading to get through Deathly Hallows. I finished Cursed Child within 13 hours of owning it, and that's including breaks for 7 hours of sleep, two meals, and doing a load of laundry.
Still - and obviously - I loved every second. I absolutely devoured it. I considered forcing myself to stop for the day, to preserve the length, but really, there was never a chance of that happening. Rowling's fast-paced style and tendency to end a chapter (or in this case, a scene) on a very intense moment if not an outright cliffhanger were not marred by the presence of the other two authors. So it was pretty painful to put it down for five minutes to go put the laundry in the dryer.
For years, I've been wishing that I could temporarily delete everything that I know about the Harry Potter series, just so I can experience it for the first time again. The suspense, the thrill, the wonder and joy, the twists and reveals. I finally got to experience all of that again, and as an adult at that. Of course, it happened all too quickly and once again I'll be cursed with the knowledge of what happens, unable to feel surprise because I knew what was coming at every turn. It's a blessing and a curse.
One more thing, because I fear that if I keep going on I'll reveal too much: I WANT TO SEE THIS PLAY. The stage directions in the script must be beautiful. Of course I can picture them in my head, what's happening, as it would in a movie or as I would picture a book happening... but some of these things seem so impossible to happen on stage without the use of CGI! Some of the stage directions actually gave me goosebumps as I tried to imagine how incredibly magical they would look when enacted on stage. It makes me hope that Cursed Child will wind up like Phantom of the Opera - it'll have its home base theater for at least 30 years, and there will be occasional tours so that people outside of London can see it, and maybe after about 18 years they'll turn it into a movie. (I hope it takes way less than 18 years.) The effects should be as well-known as Phantom's falling chandelier, but I don't think that would take the magic away because everyone still adores the falling chandelier, even after 30 years.
Okay, that's enough out of me. Maybe, probably, I'll write an entirely spoiler-riddled post that anyone who hasn't read the book yet will know to avoid so I can share my reactions to specific points.
I only have four books left for this challenge! Once I finish them, I'll officially have out-challenged myself. Hoorah! I'm so glad to have gotten back in to reading. I didn't realize how much I'd missed it. <3
At first, I was happy that this is a script instead of a novel because everything moves faster in a script. No descriptive paragraphs, no pages of a character's internal struggle or confusion. Everything just happens. But as I finished Part One in under three hours, I realized that a novel would last longer. After all, it took me at least two full days of binge-reading to get through Deathly Hallows. I finished Cursed Child within 13 hours of owning it, and that's including breaks for 7 hours of sleep, two meals, and doing a load of laundry.
Still - and obviously - I loved every second. I absolutely devoured it. I considered forcing myself to stop for the day, to preserve the length, but really, there was never a chance of that happening. Rowling's fast-paced style and tendency to end a chapter (or in this case, a scene) on a very intense moment if not an outright cliffhanger were not marred by the presence of the other two authors. So it was pretty painful to put it down for five minutes to go put the laundry in the dryer.
For years, I've been wishing that I could temporarily delete everything that I know about the Harry Potter series, just so I can experience it for the first time again. The suspense, the thrill, the wonder and joy, the twists and reveals. I finally got to experience all of that again, and as an adult at that. Of course, it happened all too quickly and once again I'll be cursed with the knowledge of what happens, unable to feel surprise because I knew what was coming at every turn. It's a blessing and a curse.
One more thing, because I fear that if I keep going on I'll reveal too much: I WANT TO SEE THIS PLAY. The stage directions in the script must be beautiful. Of course I can picture them in my head, what's happening, as it would in a movie or as I would picture a book happening... but some of these things seem so impossible to happen on stage without the use of CGI! Some of the stage directions actually gave me goosebumps as I tried to imagine how incredibly magical they would look when enacted on stage. It makes me hope that Cursed Child will wind up like Phantom of the Opera - it'll have its home base theater for at least 30 years, and there will be occasional tours so that people outside of London can see it, and maybe after about 18 years they'll turn it into a movie. (I hope it takes way less than 18 years.) The effects should be as well-known as Phantom's falling chandelier, but I don't think that would take the magic away because everyone still adores the falling chandelier, even after 30 years.
Okay, that's enough out of me. Maybe, probably, I'll write an entirely spoiler-riddled post that anyone who hasn't read the book yet will know to avoid so I can share my reactions to specific points.
I only have four books left for this challenge! Once I finish them, I'll officially have out-challenged myself. Hoorah! I'm so glad to have gotten back in to reading. I didn't realize how much I'd missed it. <3
Friday, July 8, 2016
2016 Reading challenge: A book that has been banned at some point (update: I'm finished!)
For this challenge, I decided to go with another book that my 11th grade English teacher often talked about: Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. I honestly don't remember when or why be brought it up - I just remember scribbling the name in my quote book (an amazing part of my life in which I wrote down hilarious moments from the day and occasional random notes). For all these years, I've had the book on my read-eventually-maybe list but never gotten around to it. I'm not entirely sure I was aware that Lolita had been banned, as I wasn't at first sure what to read for this challenge. But while I was perusing a random list of banned books, I saw the title and I immediately decided on it.
I have one word to describe this book so far (I'm about halfway through the book at the time of writing): Ugh.
Let's ignore for a moment the content of the book and focus on Nabokov's writing style. I like to call it "fancypants smartybutt." There are lots of random big words that sound like a high schooler used a thesaurus to impress his English teacher. (I realize that I've kind of been pooping on high school English teachers while writing this series; I do apologize to any teachers reading this and want to stress that it's nothing personal. I actually really liked four of six of my high school English teachers (I had three in one year thanks to maternity leave and a semester switch), but you know... high school English classes are obnoxious. I don't think it's entirely the teacher's fault 100% of the time.) And, UGH, why are there so many French words, phrases, occasionally sentences? Okay, the narrator is from France. But the author is from Russia and he wrote the book in English while living in America. There shouldn't be so much French in a book that takes place in America. It's annoying and it sounds pretentious and, again, makes it sound like either the narrator or the author was trying to prove himself as a fancypants smartybutt.
Why do I say "either the narrator or the author"? Because of the format of the book. It's written in the first person, past tense, and presented as Humbert (the narrator)'s memoirs that he wrote while in jail awaiting his trial. And it's obvious that Humbert thinks very highly of himself. So I do understand that he, as a character, would want to use big words and French sentences to sound smarter to the "ladies and gentlemen of the jury" or to the "dear reader." Buuuuuut I also kinda feel like there's a way for the author (Nabokov) to do that without grinding on the reader's (me) very last damn nerve with all those French and fancy words that need to either be looked up (ain't nobody got time for that) or skipped over and not understood. Or, I guess, there's the third possibility that Nabokov really was such a fancypants smartybutt that he assumed that everyone who read his book would be equally as smart and fancy and know all of those French and fancy words. (Or that he only wanted fellow fancypants smartybutts to really understand his book. hmm.)
Anyway, so the author's writing style makes it hard enough for me to get through the book. Like Tolkein, Nabokov enjoys writing long-ass run-on sentences that take up an entire paragraph and need to be read about four times before you can really understand what it means. Or, again, simply skipped over and not understood because at page 179 (halfway, mind you) I am getting real sick of these long-ass sentences and their fancypants smartybutt language, I tell you what. Ugh.
Okay, so, there's my complaint about the writing. Now on to the content (obviously, spoilers).
I can definitely understand why this book was banned. Going in to it, I did know that the book was about an adult male who had a relationship with a minor female, but... wow. I did not think it would be like this.
Through the first quarter or so of the book, Humbert presents Lolita as a young girl of twelve who has a crush on him because he looks like an actor that she likes, and because he is an attractive (ugh, he likes to remind us of his looks) European guy. So, even though that doesn't make it okay, it's still at least consensual in his eyes. And it would at least maybe be exciting for Lolita, even though I know damn well that she can say "yes" all she wants, but it's still rape because she's only 12.
But... then.... Humbert.... is going to... protect Lolita's purity (ugh)... by drugging her up... and fondling her... while she sleeps. UGH WHAT. That's not how it works. That's not how anything works. So now I'm totally disgusted. But then.... after Lolita's mother dies and Humbert goes to pick Lolita up from summer camp to deliver the news.... and he does it bluntly and horribly... he whisks Lolita away and takes her on a year-long tour of America wherein he has to constantly threaten, bribe, or spoil her, or some combination of the three, in order to keep her "satisfied" enough to have sex with him every morning. UGHHHHHHH. So now it's not even a real relationship, he's just got her as this sex slave that he's carrying around the country in order to get his creepy rocks off and carry out his pre-teen fantasies. Ugh.
That's pretty much where I've left off. He seems to have just signed her up for some school that wants to teach young girls how to succeed in society (this takes place in the early 1940s, by the way) by being good housewives and knowing how to dance and have social etiquette and general not actual education. Ugh.
And the several chapters in which Humbert describes their year-long trek? Ugh so boring. It doesn't read like a novel so much as a really bored guy's notes. It doesn't even sound like Humbert was enjoying remembering that year as he wrote it down in his notes. So many long-ass run-on sentences, so few conversations, so few actual scenes, so little imagery and emotion.
All right, well those are pretty much all of my thoughts on Lolita so far. I might (probably will) write another post when (if?) I finish the book. Literally the only thing that's keeping me reading this book right now is the knowledge (thanks to the forward, which is actually a part of the fiction) that Humbert dies in prison. Which means he gets what's coming. I just hope that poor Lolita doesn't also die or suffer any worse than she already has.
On a happier note, there are precisely 22 days and fifteen minutes until the release of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child! I am SO looking forward to being able to complete the challenge of a book that was published this year. <3
PS Are you on Goodreads? You can follow my progress with this book (and all of the books I read this year, for the challenge or not!) by being my friend! Here's my profile.
I finally finished the book! I put it off for about a week or two because I was so fed up with it. But I'm not a quitter, so I decided to finish it off before Harry Potter and the Cursed Child releases IN JUST OVER TWO DAYS AHH.
I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that there were about 10 pages of "also by Vladimir Nabokov" stuff and something of an epilogue by Nabokov. I read a few paragraphs of the epilogue and deemed it unnecessary, so woohoo!
In case you couldn't tell, my opinion of Lolita did not change in the last half of the book. Yeah, it was cool to see how depressed Humbert was after Lolita left him, but there wasn't anywhere near enough emotion or action involved to truly make it interesting. After writing the initial part of this blog post, I found myself having to stop and say "You started to read this book, so finish it" quite often. Pretty much a couple of times per paragraph, because of how many goshdarn run-on sentences there were that had me so confused I had to re-start each sentence about three times before I could finish it. Why do authors get away with that crap?! Their editors should say, "listen, I get what you're trying to show here, but the readers are going to be confused because their brains won't be able to follow what's going on. You've got to make your sentences shorter. End a thought every now and then before throwing in the next one and then jumping back to the first thought with no transition."
So, yay, I have now read Lolita. I can check that off on my list of "Books that probably everyone should read because they're written by dead white guys but really aren't all that modern white guys have cracked them up to be."
I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am to get back to some young adult fiction after this! My next step is, of course, Cursed Child as a book that was published this year. After that I'll be turning to a book that I previously abandoned - either James Dashner's The Death Cure, which I never started but I did kind of give up on trying to get a hold of it for a while; or Harry Potter und der Feuerkelch. That's Goblet of Fire translated into German. My thinking is, I've read the book at LEAST 12 or 13 times in English, so what better way to study up on my German than by reading a book that I know so well? I've started to give it a try a few times but usually given up and either said "I'll just read it in English yet again" or moved on to something else.
I have one word to describe this book so far (I'm about halfway through the book at the time of writing): Ugh.
Let's ignore for a moment the content of the book and focus on Nabokov's writing style. I like to call it "fancypants smartybutt." There are lots of random big words that sound like a high schooler used a thesaurus to impress his English teacher. (I realize that I've kind of been pooping on high school English teachers while writing this series; I do apologize to any teachers reading this and want to stress that it's nothing personal. I actually really liked four of six of my high school English teachers (I had three in one year thanks to maternity leave and a semester switch), but you know... high school English classes are obnoxious. I don't think it's entirely the teacher's fault 100% of the time.) And, UGH, why are there so many French words, phrases, occasionally sentences? Okay, the narrator is from France. But the author is from Russia and he wrote the book in English while living in America. There shouldn't be so much French in a book that takes place in America. It's annoying and it sounds pretentious and, again, makes it sound like either the narrator or the author was trying to prove himself as a fancypants smartybutt.
Why do I say "either the narrator or the author"? Because of the format of the book. It's written in the first person, past tense, and presented as Humbert (the narrator)'s memoirs that he wrote while in jail awaiting his trial. And it's obvious that Humbert thinks very highly of himself. So I do understand that he, as a character, would want to use big words and French sentences to sound smarter to the "ladies and gentlemen of the jury" or to the "dear reader." Buuuuuut I also kinda feel like there's a way for the author (Nabokov) to do that without grinding on the reader's (me) very last damn nerve with all those French and fancy words that need to either be looked up (ain't nobody got time for that) or skipped over and not understood. Or, I guess, there's the third possibility that Nabokov really was such a fancypants smartybutt that he assumed that everyone who read his book would be equally as smart and fancy and know all of those French and fancy words. (Or that he only wanted fellow fancypants smartybutts to really understand his book. hmm.)
Anyway, so the author's writing style makes it hard enough for me to get through the book. Like Tolkein, Nabokov enjoys writing long-ass run-on sentences that take up an entire paragraph and need to be read about four times before you can really understand what it means. Or, again, simply skipped over and not understood because at page 179 (halfway, mind you) I am getting real sick of these long-ass sentences and their fancypants smartybutt language, I tell you what. Ugh.
Okay, so, there's my complaint about the writing. Now on to the content (obviously, spoilers).
I can definitely understand why this book was banned. Going in to it, I did know that the book was about an adult male who had a relationship with a minor female, but... wow. I did not think it would be like this.
Through the first quarter or so of the book, Humbert presents Lolita as a young girl of twelve who has a crush on him because he looks like an actor that she likes, and because he is an attractive (ugh, he likes to remind us of his looks) European guy. So, even though that doesn't make it okay, it's still at least consensual in his eyes. And it would at least maybe be exciting for Lolita, even though I know damn well that she can say "yes" all she wants, but it's still rape because she's only 12.
But... then.... Humbert.... is going to... protect Lolita's purity (ugh)... by drugging her up... and fondling her... while she sleeps. UGH WHAT. That's not how it works. That's not how anything works. So now I'm totally disgusted. But then.... after Lolita's mother dies and Humbert goes to pick Lolita up from summer camp to deliver the news.... and he does it bluntly and horribly... he whisks Lolita away and takes her on a year-long tour of America wherein he has to constantly threaten, bribe, or spoil her, or some combination of the three, in order to keep her "satisfied" enough to have sex with him every morning. UGHHHHHHH. So now it's not even a real relationship, he's just got her as this sex slave that he's carrying around the country in order to get his creepy rocks off and carry out his pre-teen fantasies. Ugh.
That's pretty much where I've left off. He seems to have just signed her up for some school that wants to teach young girls how to succeed in society (this takes place in the early 1940s, by the way) by being good housewives and knowing how to dance and have social etiquette and general not actual education. Ugh.
And the several chapters in which Humbert describes their year-long trek? Ugh so boring. It doesn't read like a novel so much as a really bored guy's notes. It doesn't even sound like Humbert was enjoying remembering that year as he wrote it down in his notes. So many long-ass run-on sentences, so few conversations, so few actual scenes, so little imagery and emotion.
All right, well those are pretty much all of my thoughts on Lolita so far. I might (probably will) write another post when (if?) I finish the book. Literally the only thing that's keeping me reading this book right now is the knowledge (thanks to the forward, which is actually a part of the fiction) that Humbert dies in prison. Which means he gets what's coming. I just hope that poor Lolita doesn't also die or suffer any worse than she already has.
On a happier note, there are precisely 22 days and fifteen minutes until the release of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child! I am SO looking forward to being able to complete the challenge of a book that was published this year. <3
PS Are you on Goodreads? You can follow my progress with this book (and all of the books I read this year, for the challenge or not!) by being my friend! Here's my profile.
UPDATE 7/28
I finally finished the book! I put it off for about a week or two because I was so fed up with it. But I'm not a quitter, so I decided to finish it off before Harry Potter and the Cursed Child releases IN JUST OVER TWO DAYS AHH.
I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that there were about 10 pages of "also by Vladimir Nabokov" stuff and something of an epilogue by Nabokov. I read a few paragraphs of the epilogue and deemed it unnecessary, so woohoo!
In case you couldn't tell, my opinion of Lolita did not change in the last half of the book. Yeah, it was cool to see how depressed Humbert was after Lolita left him, but there wasn't anywhere near enough emotion or action involved to truly make it interesting. After writing the initial part of this blog post, I found myself having to stop and say "You started to read this book, so finish it" quite often. Pretty much a couple of times per paragraph, because of how many goshdarn run-on sentences there were that had me so confused I had to re-start each sentence about three times before I could finish it. Why do authors get away with that crap?! Their editors should say, "listen, I get what you're trying to show here, but the readers are going to be confused because their brains won't be able to follow what's going on. You've got to make your sentences shorter. End a thought every now and then before throwing in the next one and then jumping back to the first thought with no transition."
So, yay, I have now read Lolita. I can check that off on my list of "Books that probably everyone should read because they're written by dead white guys but really aren't all that modern white guys have cracked them up to be."
I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am to get back to some young adult fiction after this! My next step is, of course, Cursed Child as a book that was published this year. After that I'll be turning to a book that I previously abandoned - either James Dashner's The Death Cure, which I never started but I did kind of give up on trying to get a hold of it for a while; or Harry Potter und der Feuerkelch. That's Goblet of Fire translated into German. My thinking is, I've read the book at LEAST 12 or 13 times in English, so what better way to study up on my German than by reading a book that I know so well? I've started to give it a try a few times but usually given up and either said "I'll just read it in English yet again" or moved on to something else.
Thursday, June 23, 2016
Should we ban cars too???!!!??!!?!?!
In the wake of almost every mass shooting in the past year or two, I have seen dozens of people use the analogy of "well people die from cars too, should we ban them? should we ban cars that can go above 75 mph, since higher speeds aren't legal outside of race tracks?" Frankly, I am sick of it.
Mainly: cars are already heavily regulated.
You can't legally learn to drive until you are 14 years and 8 months of age in the US. From there, you take Driver's Education. I'm sure the types of programs offered vary from state to state, but in my home state of Michigan, it's 24 hours of classroom time, 6 hours of in-car learning, and 4 hours of observation time while driving. That classroom time is limited to a maximum of 2 hours per day. After all of that plus a written test, you can get your Segment 1 Learner's Permit. From there, you have to wait a minimum of 3 months before taking another 6 hours of classroom instruction and another written test before you can take the final test to get your driver's license at the age of 16. That is a LOT of work.
I will interrupt myself to give you my example. I never took Driver's Ed because of reasons that I don't want to go in to. Instead, I took a written test after I turned 18 and got a learner's permit, and then I learned to drive from my sister. Then, I was able to take a driving test and get my license without having to go through all of that coursework. This was a much cheaper and technically easier route to take, but it had its sacrifices: I didn't know how to drive until long after I graduated high school, so I was entirely dependent on my parents and friends for rides in high school and half of college. This was a few years ago; I don't even know if you're allowed to get a permit without going through Michigan's Graduated Driver Licensing program anymore.
So, obviously, it is hard to obtain a driver's license. It takes time, learning, and testing. I nearly failed my road test because I was bad at parallel parking and backing into a spot - two things which are not guaranteed to be a part of every driver's life.
Then once you get a car (which can be very difficult if you are not financially blessed), there are all kinds of rules for driving. Speed limits on every road. Tickets for speeding, for making illegal turns, for running red lights even if nobody was around, for using your phone while driving, for not wearing your seat belt, for driving hazardously (guy who always swerves through traffic cutting everyone off going 25 mph above the flow of traffic, I'm looking at you). Points on your license for getting caught breaking the laws. Too many points and they suspend your license or take it away all together. DUI laws that have become so severe, you don't even get a warning anymore - one instance of drunk driving and you're done. If your reaction time and/or vision can be proven to have deteriorated to the point that you become a hazard on the road, your license will be taken away.
And then there's registration. Every car must be registered with the state in which it resides, even if it's not in use. To illustrate: years ago, my parents were selling their old car to a friend. They had already gotten a new car, so they took the license plate from the old one and used it for the new one. The old car was parked at the top of our driveway for maybe a week without a license plate. A nosy neighbor saw it and phoned the city, and then we got a notice from the city stating that we needed to register the car or either it would be impounded or we would be ticketed/fined.
And then there's insurance. Each state varies slightly, but in the US it is illegal to drive an uninsured car. Insurance covers you causing an accident, someone causing an accident against you, unnatural damage to your car (such as a branch falling on it in a storm), etc. Any time you make a claim on your insurance - any time you ask for your insurance company to pay to fix something - your rates go up and it becomes more expensive for you to drive.
Okay, so all of that to say: Cars are heavily regulated to protect both drivers and pedestrians. The ability to drive a car is heavily regulated. Sure, one can steal a car and drive it without a license, but the penalties for that would be huge.
On to some other types of reasons why banning cars is a stupid analogy when talking about gun control.
Cars were invented for transit and recreation. People rely on cars to get to work, school, the store, etc. Some people also drive their cars for fun. But cars were not invented to be weapons of mass destruction, or of minor destruction for that matter.
Guns, on the other hand, were invented strictly for the purpose of killing. The earliest gun was invented in China in the 13th century AD and it was meant to be a weapon of war. "But some people use guns for recreation, like skeet shooting!" Yes, true. But that sport did not surface until the 1920s. And guess what? That sport was invented by a guy who liked to hunt (read: kill) birds. So it's safe to say that that sport is meant to practice or imitate hunting (read: killing). I don't inform you of this to judge anyone who likes to shoot skeet or go to the firing range; I merely want to remind you that guns were invented with the intent to kill. So there's another reason why we shouldn't ban cars even though sometimes people die from them.
Now, I really wish I could provide you with factual, statistical evidence regarding the way in which people die from cars. By that, I mean comparing the number of accidental car crashes to the number of purposeful car crashes. I've looked, but I haven't been able to find any of that type of data. This causes me to suspect that the number of purposeful car-related deaths in the US is statistically insignificant. Meanwhile, the number of purposeful deaths caused by guns in the US is, well, staggeringly high.
Cars have an incredible amount of built-in saftey features in order to prevent accidental deaths. Air bags, side air bags, bodies that crumple on any impact (example: I once hit a parking structure pay station, going about 2 mph, and the body of my car crumpled so badly that I couldn't open my front passenger door all the way), seat belts, child locks, the design of head rests, etc, etc, etc. Upgrades such as rear-facing cameras to avoid backing over things. Millions of dollars have been spent on research in order to make cars safer.
And yet.
Guns have one little button or switch to prevent them from being shot. Children and toddlers are constantly fining Mom and Dad's gun, which is for some reason stored unlocked within their reach and loaded, and shooting themselves or their parents.
How many toddlers do you see accidentally unlocking and starting the car, putting it into gear, and rolling into traffic or crashing into the house?
So please, for the sake of everything that is good in this world, STOP suggesting that we ban cars because they are dangerous. It is a BAD analogy and using that analogy makes you sound desperate. Over the last 60 years, cars have proven themselves to be safer and safer, while guns have become a bigger and bigger threat. Sure, the linked chart shows that guns and cars kill the same number of people every year right now; but car deaths have declined drastically while gun deaths have increased drastically over time. That right there should be enough reason for us to not ban cars, and reason enough to place stricter control (and perform more research) on guns to avoid gun deaths.
/endrant
Mainly: cars are already heavily regulated.
You can't legally learn to drive until you are 14 years and 8 months of age in the US. From there, you take Driver's Education. I'm sure the types of programs offered vary from state to state, but in my home state of Michigan, it's 24 hours of classroom time, 6 hours of in-car learning, and 4 hours of observation time while driving. That classroom time is limited to a maximum of 2 hours per day. After all of that plus a written test, you can get your Segment 1 Learner's Permit. From there, you have to wait a minimum of 3 months before taking another 6 hours of classroom instruction and another written test before you can take the final test to get your driver's license at the age of 16. That is a LOT of work.
I will interrupt myself to give you my example. I never took Driver's Ed because of reasons that I don't want to go in to. Instead, I took a written test after I turned 18 and got a learner's permit, and then I learned to drive from my sister. Then, I was able to take a driving test and get my license without having to go through all of that coursework. This was a much cheaper and technically easier route to take, but it had its sacrifices: I didn't know how to drive until long after I graduated high school, so I was entirely dependent on my parents and friends for rides in high school and half of college. This was a few years ago; I don't even know if you're allowed to get a permit without going through Michigan's Graduated Driver Licensing program anymore.
So, obviously, it is hard to obtain a driver's license. It takes time, learning, and testing. I nearly failed my road test because I was bad at parallel parking and backing into a spot - two things which are not guaranteed to be a part of every driver's life.
Then once you get a car (which can be very difficult if you are not financially blessed), there are all kinds of rules for driving. Speed limits on every road. Tickets for speeding, for making illegal turns, for running red lights even if nobody was around, for using your phone while driving, for not wearing your seat belt, for driving hazardously (guy who always swerves through traffic cutting everyone off going 25 mph above the flow of traffic, I'm looking at you). Points on your license for getting caught breaking the laws. Too many points and they suspend your license or take it away all together. DUI laws that have become so severe, you don't even get a warning anymore - one instance of drunk driving and you're done. If your reaction time and/or vision can be proven to have deteriorated to the point that you become a hazard on the road, your license will be taken away.
And then there's registration. Every car must be registered with the state in which it resides, even if it's not in use. To illustrate: years ago, my parents were selling their old car to a friend. They had already gotten a new car, so they took the license plate from the old one and used it for the new one. The old car was parked at the top of our driveway for maybe a week without a license plate. A nosy neighbor saw it and phoned the city, and then we got a notice from the city stating that we needed to register the car or either it would be impounded or we would be ticketed/fined.
And then there's insurance. Each state varies slightly, but in the US it is illegal to drive an uninsured car. Insurance covers you causing an accident, someone causing an accident against you, unnatural damage to your car (such as a branch falling on it in a storm), etc. Any time you make a claim on your insurance - any time you ask for your insurance company to pay to fix something - your rates go up and it becomes more expensive for you to drive.
Okay, so all of that to say: Cars are heavily regulated to protect both drivers and pedestrians. The ability to drive a car is heavily regulated. Sure, one can steal a car and drive it without a license, but the penalties for that would be huge.
On to some other types of reasons why banning cars is a stupid analogy when talking about gun control.
Cars were invented for transit and recreation. People rely on cars to get to work, school, the store, etc. Some people also drive their cars for fun. But cars were not invented to be weapons of mass destruction, or of minor destruction for that matter.
Guns, on the other hand, were invented strictly for the purpose of killing. The earliest gun was invented in China in the 13th century AD and it was meant to be a weapon of war. "But some people use guns for recreation, like skeet shooting!" Yes, true. But that sport did not surface until the 1920s. And guess what? That sport was invented by a guy who liked to hunt (read: kill) birds. So it's safe to say that that sport is meant to practice or imitate hunting (read: killing). I don't inform you of this to judge anyone who likes to shoot skeet or go to the firing range; I merely want to remind you that guns were invented with the intent to kill. So there's another reason why we shouldn't ban cars even though sometimes people die from them.
Now, I really wish I could provide you with factual, statistical evidence regarding the way in which people die from cars. By that, I mean comparing the number of accidental car crashes to the number of purposeful car crashes. I've looked, but I haven't been able to find any of that type of data. This causes me to suspect that the number of purposeful car-related deaths in the US is statistically insignificant. Meanwhile, the number of purposeful deaths caused by guns in the US is, well, staggeringly high.
Cars have an incredible amount of built-in saftey features in order to prevent accidental deaths. Air bags, side air bags, bodies that crumple on any impact (example: I once hit a parking structure pay station, going about 2 mph, and the body of my car crumpled so badly that I couldn't open my front passenger door all the way), seat belts, child locks, the design of head rests, etc, etc, etc. Upgrades such as rear-facing cameras to avoid backing over things. Millions of dollars have been spent on research in order to make cars safer.
And yet.
Guns have one little button or switch to prevent them from being shot. Children and toddlers are constantly fining Mom and Dad's gun, which is for some reason stored unlocked within their reach and loaded, and shooting themselves or their parents.
How many toddlers do you see accidentally unlocking and starting the car, putting it into gear, and rolling into traffic or crashing into the house?
So please, for the sake of everything that is good in this world, STOP suggesting that we ban cars because they are dangerous. It is a BAD analogy and using that analogy makes you sound desperate. Over the last 60 years, cars have proven themselves to be safer and safer, while guns have become a bigger and bigger threat. Sure, the linked chart shows that guns and cars kill the same number of people every year right now; but car deaths have declined drastically while gun deaths have increased drastically over time. That right there should be enough reason for us to not ban cars, and reason enough to place stricter control (and perform more research) on guns to avoid gun deaths.
/endrant
Saturday, June 18, 2016
2016 Reading challenge: a book you can finish in a day
A book I can finish in a day turned out to be a book I can finish in one sitting. It took me less than an hour to read Haruki Murakami's The Strange Library.
I saw this book on the shelf while I was looking for Nabokov's Lolita - M being close to N and all that. And it looked so cool. I was intrigued by the flaps, and then when I realized that underneath the flaps was the first page instead of another cover page, I was pretty much sold. I didn't even read past the first page or the back of the book - I totally judged a book by its cover. But can you blame me? Just look at it!
Almost every other page is an illustration, and the font is pretty big, so it was a super short read. It would have been even shorter if I didn't take a few moments to absorb every illustration - but there was pretty much no way I wasn't going to study each illustration.
The book is about a young boy who gets lead through a strange labyrinth in the basement of his public library. I honestly don't want to say much more than that because the book is so short that the journey through the labyrinth takes up nearly half the book. But it's..... weird. It escalated from "hm, okay, this book is getting started" to "HOLY CRAP this book is weird" in less than 20 pages (out of 96).
I don't think I really understood it. I mean, I was easily able to follow what was happening, but... I feel like there must be more to this book. A high school English teacher would probably go crazy over it and force their students to write a 10-page essay on what they think was actually happening to the boy or if the boy was even real or if this book actually exists (because, let's face it, high school English teachers make up so much that they might as well make up an entire book).
Anyway, it was a pretty neat book. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes cool illustrations or really weird books or very pretty books. Because it was very pretty. There was a character who didn't have a voice and spoke with her hands, and her dialogue was printed in blue. I liked that a lot.
Being so short and odd, there wasn't much that truly resonated with me, but there was one quote at the beginning that I liked. The boy had asked for some books, and when the old man brought them to him, he told the boy (yeah, nobody had actual names in this book) that they couldn't be checked out and he'd have to read them in a special Reading Room. The boy wanted to go home because his mother would worry, but the old man got so angry about having gone to the trouble of getting the books for the boy that he agreed to stay and read for a half hour. Then the boy thought to himself:
"Why do I act like this, agreeing when I really disagree, letting people force me to do things I don't want to do?" (p 21)
Oh, little boy, how well I know how you feel. OH WAIT I THINK THAT THE BOY'S ANXIETY KIND OF MAKES THE WHOLE BOOK INTO A SYMBOL OF HOW PEOPLE WITH ANXIETY ACT IN ORDER TO AVOID DISPLEASING OTHERS. Have you ever been at a party and kind of wanted to leave but didn't want to seem rude so you ended up being the very last person to leave? And the whole time you just felt trapped under these societal pressures to be social and polite and seem normal? I would say with about 65% confidence that what happens to the boy in the Reading Room is a symbolic representation of that feeling. Ha, take that high school English teachers, I could write a good three or four pages about that!
So now I have two other books that I got from the library last week. One of them is my banned book, and the other may or may not be the book that I abandoned at some point. I'll explain that when I write my blog post for that part of the challenge! In the mean time, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child releases in 42 days and 10 hours. I'm so excited for my book that was published this year ahh!
I saw this book on the shelf while I was looking for Nabokov's Lolita - M being close to N and all that. And it looked so cool. I was intrigued by the flaps, and then when I realized that underneath the flaps was the first page instead of another cover page, I was pretty much sold. I didn't even read past the first page or the back of the book - I totally judged a book by its cover. But can you blame me? Just look at it!
Almost every other page is an illustration, and the font is pretty big, so it was a super short read. It would have been even shorter if I didn't take a few moments to absorb every illustration - but there was pretty much no way I wasn't going to study each illustration.
The book is about a young boy who gets lead through a strange labyrinth in the basement of his public library. I honestly don't want to say much more than that because the book is so short that the journey through the labyrinth takes up nearly half the book. But it's..... weird. It escalated from "hm, okay, this book is getting started" to "HOLY CRAP this book is weird" in less than 20 pages (out of 96).
I don't think I really understood it. I mean, I was easily able to follow what was happening, but... I feel like there must be more to this book. A high school English teacher would probably go crazy over it and force their students to write a 10-page essay on what they think was actually happening to the boy or if the boy was even real or if this book actually exists (because, let's face it, high school English teachers make up so much that they might as well make up an entire book).
Anyway, it was a pretty neat book. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes cool illustrations or really weird books or very pretty books. Because it was very pretty. There was a character who didn't have a voice and spoke with her hands, and her dialogue was printed in blue. I liked that a lot.
Being so short and odd, there wasn't much that truly resonated with me, but there was one quote at the beginning that I liked. The boy had asked for some books, and when the old man brought them to him, he told the boy (yeah, nobody had actual names in this book) that they couldn't be checked out and he'd have to read them in a special Reading Room. The boy wanted to go home because his mother would worry, but the old man got so angry about having gone to the trouble of getting the books for the boy that he agreed to stay and read for a half hour. Then the boy thought to himself:
"Why do I act like this, agreeing when I really disagree, letting people force me to do things I don't want to do?" (p 21)
Oh, little boy, how well I know how you feel. OH WAIT I THINK THAT THE BOY'S ANXIETY KIND OF MAKES THE WHOLE BOOK INTO A SYMBOL OF HOW PEOPLE WITH ANXIETY ACT IN ORDER TO AVOID DISPLEASING OTHERS. Have you ever been at a party and kind of wanted to leave but didn't want to seem rude so you ended up being the very last person to leave? And the whole time you just felt trapped under these societal pressures to be social and polite and seem normal? I would say with about 65% confidence that what happens to the boy in the Reading Room is a symbolic representation of that feeling. Ha, take that high school English teachers, I could write a good three or four pages about that!
So now I have two other books that I got from the library last week. One of them is my banned book, and the other may or may not be the book that I abandoned at some point. I'll explain that when I write my blog post for that part of the challenge! In the mean time, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child releases in 42 days and 10 hours. I'm so excited for my book that was published this year ahh!
Thursday, June 16, 2016
2016 Reading challenge: A book you should have read in school
This is the first challenge that I kind of had to interpret loosely. I was a pretty great student who read almost every book she was supposed to (except for textbooks in college). There was one book in my Greek mythology class that I kind of skipped over, but I can't remember the name of it or what it was about, so I have no way of finding it again. I also gave up on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in high school - it was not at all what I expected and I literally couldn't read more than two paragraphs without falling asleep, even when I got well into the Rising Action. Plus it was the end of my senior year and I'd already been accepted to college, and bombing one unit in English class wasn't going to lower my GPA so drastically that I'd lose my spot at MSU. So sue me.
Anyway, I decided to interpret this challenge as a book I feel should have been a part of my curriculum in school. And so I chose the book that my eleventh grade English teacher talked about almost more than some of the books that we actually read: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Junior year honors English focused heavily on existentialism, a theory (religion? lack thereof?) that I never really understood. We read Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle that year, and I remember Mr. Duffy frequently talking about Slaughterhouse Five as well. He also talked about Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita a lot, but I'll get to that later. :)
I've sort of been meaning to read Slaughterhouse Five for all of these years, but never really had a reason to until this challenge. The moment I saw this particular challenge I knew that I was going to read it. To paraphrase Vonnegut, me reading this book was meant to be, and it always was and it always will be.
So, it took me less than a week to read Slaughterhouse Five. I can't even remember the last time I read a book that quickly! (Okay, it was probably two summers ago when I re-read Harry Potter, because the first three books are so short.) The quick pace of this book was a huge breath of fresh air after crawling my way through The Fellowship of the Ring. Vonnegut's short, easy sentences were so easy to get through that I occasionally caught myself wondering why he didn't combine a few of those sentences.
Overall, I liked it. I've always enjoyed satire. I even noticed a few bits of symbolism in this book, which is rare. I don't really know what they mean, but I noticed them. The train that Billy Pilgrim and the other prisoners of war were transported in was marked with orange and black, to denote that it was not to be bombed. The tents at Billy Pilgrim's daughter's wedding were also orange and black. I noticed that, said "huh, that must mean something," and then kept reading because interpreting symbolism has never been one of my strong suits. (I struggled very hard in all four years of honors/AP English. I think the only reasons I managed to earn good grades were a) my teachers could tell that I was honestly trying and b) I had an English major for a mother who helped me to write my papers.)
The whole Tralfamadore thing and their view on time was at once interesting and obnoxious. After their first introduction, I was like, "wow, they seem to be able to handle death in a very cool way, I wish I could see it like that," and I kind of liked their tradition of saying "So it goes" whenever they learned of a death. But the more I read about the Tralfamadorians, the more Billy Pilgrim learned about them, the more I was kinda like "they sound really pretentious." And the more the narrator said "So it goes" every time death was mentioned, even so much as "they were going to discuss whether the novel was dead or not" (p 205), the more it got annoying. The sentence feels like you're distancing yourself from the death, shrugging it off and basically saying, "whatever." Of course, I understand why Vonnegut uses the phrase that way. This book is a satire of war, or more precisely a satire of American films/books/TV shows that glorify war. This book is criticizing people who look at war as a big, beautiful thing fought by strong, valiant 35-year-olds and say, "Well, the millions of deaths were necessary and not that bad when you consider the alternative to fighting." (Just gotta point out that I don't know how well I would have picked up on that if it wasn't literally spelled out for us on pages 14-15.)
As usual, there were a few quotes in this book that really resonated with me, and I'd like to share them now.
"And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep" (p 18). The narrator says this after talking about visiting the World's Fair and seeing what the past was like and what the future might be like. (I wish I could have seen a World's Fair!) I just really liked that quote. How big is a moment? Can we hold on to a moment forever? Do we get to keep moments that were once the present with us as they become the past? Deep stuff.
"It isn't much fun if you have to pinch every penny till it screams" (p 104), spoken by Billy Pilgrim's mother. All I have to say about that one is: Amen sista, I hear you on that.
So, yeah, certain aspects of the book got a little annoying at times but overall, I really liked it. I wish I'd stayed in touch with Mr. Duffy so I could tell him that I finally read it!
Interjection: has anybody noticed how my writing style in each blog post is influenced by the book that I've been reading? I've always struggled to find my own voice when writing. I also struggle to find my own voice when singing - I tend to try to copy every sound, every fluctuation of the singer whether I'm listening to The Beatles or Regina Spektor.
When I checked Slaughterhouse Five out from the library, I also snagged three other books. Two of them are definitely for the 2016 challenge, while I still have to decide if the third one is or not. So I'm not entirely sure which one I'll read first, but I'll definitely be getting started on my next book and challenge soon oh boy!
And uh. A book published this year? You KNOW I'm gonna go with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which releases in 44 days AHHHHHH! I'm so stoked for my first Potter-related midnight release in five years!!
Anyway, I decided to interpret this challenge as a book I feel should have been a part of my curriculum in school. And so I chose the book that my eleventh grade English teacher talked about almost more than some of the books that we actually read: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Junior year honors English focused heavily on existentialism, a theory (religion? lack thereof?) that I never really understood. We read Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle that year, and I remember Mr. Duffy frequently talking about Slaughterhouse Five as well. He also talked about Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita a lot, but I'll get to that later. :)
I've sort of been meaning to read Slaughterhouse Five for all of these years, but never really had a reason to until this challenge. The moment I saw this particular challenge I knew that I was going to read it. To paraphrase Vonnegut, me reading this book was meant to be, and it always was and it always will be.
So, it took me less than a week to read Slaughterhouse Five. I can't even remember the last time I read a book that quickly! (Okay, it was probably two summers ago when I re-read Harry Potter, because the first three books are so short.) The quick pace of this book was a huge breath of fresh air after crawling my way through The Fellowship of the Ring. Vonnegut's short, easy sentences were so easy to get through that I occasionally caught myself wondering why he didn't combine a few of those sentences.
Overall, I liked it. I've always enjoyed satire. I even noticed a few bits of symbolism in this book, which is rare. I don't really know what they mean, but I noticed them. The train that Billy Pilgrim and the other prisoners of war were transported in was marked with orange and black, to denote that it was not to be bombed. The tents at Billy Pilgrim's daughter's wedding were also orange and black. I noticed that, said "huh, that must mean something," and then kept reading because interpreting symbolism has never been one of my strong suits. (I struggled very hard in all four years of honors/AP English. I think the only reasons I managed to earn good grades were a) my teachers could tell that I was honestly trying and b) I had an English major for a mother who helped me to write my papers.)
The whole Tralfamadore thing and their view on time was at once interesting and obnoxious. After their first introduction, I was like, "wow, they seem to be able to handle death in a very cool way, I wish I could see it like that," and I kind of liked their tradition of saying "So it goes" whenever they learned of a death. But the more I read about the Tralfamadorians, the more Billy Pilgrim learned about them, the more I was kinda like "they sound really pretentious." And the more the narrator said "So it goes" every time death was mentioned, even so much as "they were going to discuss whether the novel was dead or not" (p 205), the more it got annoying. The sentence feels like you're distancing yourself from the death, shrugging it off and basically saying, "whatever." Of course, I understand why Vonnegut uses the phrase that way. This book is a satire of war, or more precisely a satire of American films/books/TV shows that glorify war. This book is criticizing people who look at war as a big, beautiful thing fought by strong, valiant 35-year-olds and say, "Well, the millions of deaths were necessary and not that bad when you consider the alternative to fighting." (Just gotta point out that I don't know how well I would have picked up on that if it wasn't literally spelled out for us on pages 14-15.)
As usual, there were a few quotes in this book that really resonated with me, and I'd like to share them now.
"And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep" (p 18). The narrator says this after talking about visiting the World's Fair and seeing what the past was like and what the future might be like. (I wish I could have seen a World's Fair!) I just really liked that quote. How big is a moment? Can we hold on to a moment forever? Do we get to keep moments that were once the present with us as they become the past? Deep stuff.
"It isn't much fun if you have to pinch every penny till it screams" (p 104), spoken by Billy Pilgrim's mother. All I have to say about that one is: Amen sista, I hear you on that.
So, yeah, certain aspects of the book got a little annoying at times but overall, I really liked it. I wish I'd stayed in touch with Mr. Duffy so I could tell him that I finally read it!
Interjection: has anybody noticed how my writing style in each blog post is influenced by the book that I've been reading? I've always struggled to find my own voice when writing. I also struggle to find my own voice when singing - I tend to try to copy every sound, every fluctuation of the singer whether I'm listening to The Beatles or Regina Spektor.
When I checked Slaughterhouse Five out from the library, I also snagged three other books. Two of them are definitely for the 2016 challenge, while I still have to decide if the third one is or not. So I'm not entirely sure which one I'll read first, but I'll definitely be getting started on my next book and challenge soon oh boy!
And uh. A book published this year? You KNOW I'm gonna go with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which releases in 44 days AHHHHHH! I'm so stoked for my first Potter-related midnight release in five years!!
Saturday, June 11, 2016
2016 Reading Challenge: a book that intimadtes you (part 2)
Well, it's taken me over two months, but I finally finished The Fellowship of the Ring!
Part of the reason it's taken me so long is that I simply stopped reading for almost a month. I went on a 2-week vacation back home, and that was long enough to pull me out of the habit of reading, and then I kind of had to force myself to start again. And even if I read for half an hour a day, which is a fairly small goal, that's still only like 4 pages of this tiny-text, long-ass-paragraphs book.
I read a review of this book on Goodreads that started off, "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry." I could tell exactly where that person was going with their review from that. They weren't sorry about spoilers or the length of their review or their bad English. They were sorry for not really liking the book.
And that's honestly how I feel, too.
I'm so sorry that I can't say that I absolutely loved it. That it didn't thrill me the way it thrilled my friend in elementary school, the way Harry Potter thrilled (and continues to thrill) me. The story, the message, the meaning, are absolutely wonderful. But. If I hadn't already seen the movies, or if they never existed, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it at all. If I didn't already know the overall plot and most of the events that take place, I probably wouldn't have remembered what was going on after I took a month-long break from the book, and therefore probably would have felt like giving up on it all over again. Hell, if I didn't have a face to put with each character, I probably wouldn't have been able to keep track of who was a dwarf, elf, man, or hobbit except for Sam, Frodo, Gandalf, and maybe Aragorn. (Although, we do get plenty of frequent reminders of Legolas' and Gimli's races and their relations to each other, so, maybe.)
It's just..... so slow. So much history and geography and mere passage of time is intertwined with the action that I often didn't even notice when the description of the land had turned into something happening to someone. And not in a good way, like when an author seamlessly transitions from one thing to another. More in the bad way, like when an author has been rambling on for so long that you're barely absorbing the information anymore and you forget to pay attention to what's happening.
Again, I am sorry.
I know that these are classic books, canonical texts, and truly beloved by many. But to each his own, right? The adventure and the undying friendship and loyalty and the Chosen One To Complete A Very Dangerous Mission aspects of this book absolutely appeal to me. But, unfortunately, Tolkein's writing style does not.
So right now, I'm left with a decision to make. Technically, I have read an entire book that intimidated me, which fulfills the challenge, so I can move on to the next category. However, The Lord of the Rings is all technically one very long book that gets published in three volumes. The Fellowship of the Ring is the first volume, which means that techincally, I have only read 1/3 of the book as a whole. I would like to read The Two Towers and The Return of the King some day soonish, but I really think that if I try to read them both next, it'll take me until October and then I'll barely have enough time for the rest of the 2016 challenge. So probably what I'll do is I'll move on to the next challenges, perhaps reading one or two other books before tackling The Two Towers, then another book or two before The Return of the King.
Oh, and - spoiler, I guess, though I can't imagine anyone reading this hasn't seen the movies by this point - I was really surprised that Fellowship didn't end with Boromir's death and Merry and Pippin's kidnapping! The final chapter ended with Frodo and Sam leaving Amon Hen, as the film does; but the rest of the Company is still running through the woods looking for Frodo. I suppose Two Towers starts with Boromir's death and the kidnapping? I guess I'll just have to read the next book and find out!
Part of the reason it's taken me so long is that I simply stopped reading for almost a month. I went on a 2-week vacation back home, and that was long enough to pull me out of the habit of reading, and then I kind of had to force myself to start again. And even if I read for half an hour a day, which is a fairly small goal, that's still only like 4 pages of this tiny-text, long-ass-paragraphs book.
I read a review of this book on Goodreads that started off, "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry." I could tell exactly where that person was going with their review from that. They weren't sorry about spoilers or the length of their review or their bad English. They were sorry for not really liking the book.
And that's honestly how I feel, too.
I'm so sorry that I can't say that I absolutely loved it. That it didn't thrill me the way it thrilled my friend in elementary school, the way Harry Potter thrilled (and continues to thrill) me. The story, the message, the meaning, are absolutely wonderful. But. If I hadn't already seen the movies, or if they never existed, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it at all. If I didn't already know the overall plot and most of the events that take place, I probably wouldn't have remembered what was going on after I took a month-long break from the book, and therefore probably would have felt like giving up on it all over again. Hell, if I didn't have a face to put with each character, I probably wouldn't have been able to keep track of who was a dwarf, elf, man, or hobbit except for Sam, Frodo, Gandalf, and maybe Aragorn. (Although, we do get plenty of frequent reminders of Legolas' and Gimli's races and their relations to each other, so, maybe.)
It's just..... so slow. So much history and geography and mere passage of time is intertwined with the action that I often didn't even notice when the description of the land had turned into something happening to someone. And not in a good way, like when an author seamlessly transitions from one thing to another. More in the bad way, like when an author has been rambling on for so long that you're barely absorbing the information anymore and you forget to pay attention to what's happening.
Again, I am sorry.
I know that these are classic books, canonical texts, and truly beloved by many. But to each his own, right? The adventure and the undying friendship and loyalty and the Chosen One To Complete A Very Dangerous Mission aspects of this book absolutely appeal to me. But, unfortunately, Tolkein's writing style does not.
So right now, I'm left with a decision to make. Technically, I have read an entire book that intimidated me, which fulfills the challenge, so I can move on to the next category. However, The Lord of the Rings is all technically one very long book that gets published in three volumes. The Fellowship of the Ring is the first volume, which means that techincally, I have only read 1/3 of the book as a whole. I would like to read The Two Towers and The Return of the King some day soonish, but I really think that if I try to read them both next, it'll take me until October and then I'll barely have enough time for the rest of the 2016 challenge. So probably what I'll do is I'll move on to the next challenges, perhaps reading one or two other books before tackling The Two Towers, then another book or two before The Return of the King.
Oh, and - spoiler, I guess, though I can't imagine anyone reading this hasn't seen the movies by this point - I was really surprised that Fellowship didn't end with Boromir's death and Merry and Pippin's kidnapping! The final chapter ended with Frodo and Sam leaving Amon Hen, as the film does; but the rest of the Company is still running through the woods looking for Frodo. I suppose Two Towers starts with Boromir's death and the kidnapping? I guess I'll just have to read the next book and find out!
Side note: I have no idea what to choose for a book that I previously abandoned. The only reason I have ever abandoned a book is because it bored me too much to continue. Do I really want to force myself through the boredom yet again? Isn't the point of reading to be intrigued and absorbed into the book? Can I maybe count a series that I abandoned? Because that would work for me. I kind of abandoned the Maze Runner series when the wait list at my library was too long for the third book and then I got busy moving in to the new apartment/abandoned reading all together. But the series didn't bore me. But I also didn't ever start the third book in the series. Sigh. I'll have to think of something for that category.
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Shit we don't say about other types of crime
Trigger warnings: rape, murder, theft.
You left your door unlocked that night. Are you sure you didn't secretly want to get robbed?
The victim never explicitly told the defendant, "No, I do not want you to kill me right now."
Your storefront does not have bulletproof glass protecting the cashier and cash register. Doesn't that just invite gunmen to come in and commit armed robbery?
A witness said that he overheard you joking about what you would do if someone ever tried to rob you. Doesn't that mean you wanted to get robbed?
Star Athlete and Community Servicer Accused of Murder, But Victim Was Kinda Suicidal Anyway
He was depressed and chose not to be on anti-depressants. He must have secretly wanted to be killed or he'd have lived his life in a way that said, "I don't want to die!"
The victim was in to such dangerous activities as skydiving and bungee jumping. Doesn't that exude the type of personality that says, "Please kill me because I like it"?
If you didn't want to get robbed, you shouldn't have left your blinds open at night revealing all of your expensive technology right there in the living room for everyone to see.
You should have known that walking down a dark street alone at night would lead to you getting mugged.
If you didn't want your child to get kidnapped, why did you let him walk home alone from school? Why didn't you pick him up instead? Everyone knows that a kid walking three and a half blocks alone in broad daylight is just asking to get kidnapped.
If you're so anti-murder, why do you watch shows like Dexter and CSI?
He was living in sin with his girlfriend anyway, so he deserved to be killed.
If you didn't want your identity stolen, why would you use a credit card and not cash?
The robber got in through your cracked window. You should never leave a window open in your apartment because that's just asking for someone to come in and steal your stuff.
The defendant can clearly be seen in this security footage killing that man. There is no question that he is guilty. But this is his first offense ever, so we'll let him off easy because so far he's been a pretty good person in life.
My daughter has lived for 24 years on this planet as a good, law-abiding citizen. It only took her thirty seconds of drunk driving to run over that child. You can't condemn her for a crime that took up so little of her life!
We don't fucking look at murder, theft, or kidnapping victims as if they wanted it, as if their lifestyle opened them up to getting killed or robbed. So why the fuck do we look at rape victims as though they had it coming? What is it about getting sexually assaulted that leads people to believe that it's the victim's fault? Doesn't anybody fucking realize that rape is just as much about violence as murder is? That rape is about power, control, force, anger, hate, and not about getting laid?
If I hit you in the face with a frying pan while we're both in the kitchen, we don't call it cooking. We call it violence. Yet if a rapist forces themselves upon a victim, conscious or not, sober or not, we say, "oh, are we all sure that the victim didn't actually want it? are we all sure that the victim doesn't just regret sleeping with that person? are we all sure that the victim just doesn't remember saying yes?" Even though an intoxicated person is legally unable to sign a contract in most states (or all states? I'm no lawyer). Because an intoxicated person's consent is meaningless. But apparently a drunk person not saying "no, please don't rape me" is the same thing as a sober person saying "yes, please have sex with me."
Apparently sexual felonies aren't that big of a deal. Apparently rape is actually pretty okay. Apparently rape is some magical crime that garners sympathy for the criminal instead of for the victim. Apparently rape is just sex that the victim regrets. Apparently rape is not a crime that you need to serve time for. Apparently rape is totally expected if you're a drunk college kid. Apparently there's nothing anyone can really do from stopping themselves from raping someone. Apparently rape just happens when you're drunk. Apparently rape isn't even rape if the victim is unconscious, intoxicated, or both. Apparently rape isn't really rape if the rapist insists that s/he had consent.
You left your door unlocked that night. Are you sure you didn't secretly want to get robbed?
The victim never explicitly told the defendant, "No, I do not want you to kill me right now."
Your storefront does not have bulletproof glass protecting the cashier and cash register. Doesn't that just invite gunmen to come in and commit armed robbery?
A witness said that he overheard you joking about what you would do if someone ever tried to rob you. Doesn't that mean you wanted to get robbed?
Star Athlete and Community Servicer Accused of Murder, But Victim Was Kinda Suicidal Anyway
He was depressed and chose not to be on anti-depressants. He must have secretly wanted to be killed or he'd have lived his life in a way that said, "I don't want to die!"
The victim was in to such dangerous activities as skydiving and bungee jumping. Doesn't that exude the type of personality that says, "Please kill me because I like it"?
If you didn't want to get robbed, you shouldn't have left your blinds open at night revealing all of your expensive technology right there in the living room for everyone to see.
You should have known that walking down a dark street alone at night would lead to you getting mugged.
If you didn't want your child to get kidnapped, why did you let him walk home alone from school? Why didn't you pick him up instead? Everyone knows that a kid walking three and a half blocks alone in broad daylight is just asking to get kidnapped.
If you're so anti-murder, why do you watch shows like Dexter and CSI?
He was living in sin with his girlfriend anyway, so he deserved to be killed.
If you didn't want your identity stolen, why would you use a credit card and not cash?
The robber got in through your cracked window. You should never leave a window open in your apartment because that's just asking for someone to come in and steal your stuff.
The defendant can clearly be seen in this security footage killing that man. There is no question that he is guilty. But this is his first offense ever, so we'll let him off easy because so far he's been a pretty good person in life.
My daughter has lived for 24 years on this planet as a good, law-abiding citizen. It only took her thirty seconds of drunk driving to run over that child. You can't condemn her for a crime that took up so little of her life!
We don't fucking look at murder, theft, or kidnapping victims as if they wanted it, as if their lifestyle opened them up to getting killed or robbed. So why the fuck do we look at rape victims as though they had it coming? What is it about getting sexually assaulted that leads people to believe that it's the victim's fault? Doesn't anybody fucking realize that rape is just as much about violence as murder is? That rape is about power, control, force, anger, hate, and not about getting laid?
If I hit you in the face with a frying pan while we're both in the kitchen, we don't call it cooking. We call it violence. Yet if a rapist forces themselves upon a victim, conscious or not, sober or not, we say, "oh, are we all sure that the victim didn't actually want it? are we all sure that the victim doesn't just regret sleeping with that person? are we all sure that the victim just doesn't remember saying yes?" Even though an intoxicated person is legally unable to sign a contract in most states (or all states? I'm no lawyer). Because an intoxicated person's consent is meaningless. But apparently a drunk person not saying "no, please don't rape me" is the same thing as a sober person saying "yes, please have sex with me."
Apparently sexual felonies aren't that big of a deal. Apparently rape is actually pretty okay. Apparently rape is some magical crime that garners sympathy for the criminal instead of for the victim. Apparently rape is just sex that the victim regrets. Apparently rape is not a crime that you need to serve time for. Apparently rape is totally expected if you're a drunk college kid. Apparently there's nothing anyone can really do from stopping themselves from raping someone. Apparently rape just happens when you're drunk. Apparently rape isn't even rape if the victim is unconscious, intoxicated, or both. Apparently rape isn't really rape if the rapist insists that s/he had consent.
Saturday, April 2, 2016
2016 Reading Challenge: a book that intimidates you
So. It's come to this.
For this part of the challenge, I've decided to finally tackle J. R. R. Tolkien's classic, Lord of the Rings. Why does this book intimidate me, you might ask? It's not the length, I can assure you of that. I was in elementary school for the first half of the Harry Potter series, and the length was no issue back then. In fact, the reason this book intimidates me dates back to elementary school...
A friend of mine was a huge Tolkien fan. For his birthday party, his family recreated the Unexpected Party from The Hobbit and we dined as the dwarves, Bilbo, and Gandalf did (replacing wine and beer with punch and root beer, of course). The games that we played included a scavenger hunt for The Ring, and whacking a giant spider pinata that was laid out in a web made of rope. I'd never read The Hobbit, so some of the magic was a bit lost on me, but it was an amazing party all the same. This friend recommended - demanded, really - that I read Lord of the Rings if I liked Harry Potter so much. The first movie had come out recently, and I'd seen and enjoyed it. Why not read the book, I thought? So my parents bought me a very nice box set of the books (really, it's one huge book, but it's generally broken up into three when it's published) and I started out on my adventure through Middle Earth.
Oh. my. gosh. The book was so far above my reading level. I could barely get through it. I remember complaining to my teacher that the Council of Elrond chapter was unbearably slow. (The scene in the movie had been so short! How was I to know that in the book, they sat and talked for like 300 years?!) She suggested that I read the first few sentences of a paragraph and then skip it if it seemed unimportant. But the paragraphs were all a whole page long. And the text was small, so small, that a page unbroken by line breaks and paragraph indentations took me half an hour to drag through.
Somehow, I managed to get through the whole book. I'm fairly sure that I got at least part way through the second book before giving up. I have no memory of the second book - even the first book is proving to seem mostly new to me, except for the general flow of events which I know from the movie. For years, I told myself that I'd try the books again some day.
And then I read The Hobbit in the 8th grade (three years after struggling through LotR). I'd heard that that book was written in much easier language, intended for a slightly younger audience. I figured I could handle it - and my sisters probably forced it on me, fed up with me rereading Harry Potter yet again. But even that one was hard for me to get through. I did finish it, but when the first movie came out around eight years later, I was like, huh, I don't really remember much about this at all. When I heard that the movie was incorporating a lot of Middle Earth history, mainly from The Silmarillion, I headed out to the bookstore and bought both The Hobbit and The Silmarillion.
That summer, I read The Hobbit. It was quite enjoyable, the experience made even better by the fact that I read it at my apartment's poolside, in the late summer when very few students were around making lots of noise. (Can you tell what kind of college student I was?) I started the Silmarillion during the following school year, but gave up after a few pages. This needed to wait until I didn't have homework, classes, work, and film shoots hanging over my head.
It's been almost four years now. In that time, I've thought about re-tackling Lord of the Rings, but it's just kind of sat there in my mind, all dark and mysterious and full of very long sentences and difficult language and the world's most boring chapter ever.
Well, that was then. I'm about halfway through The Fellowship of the Ring (and they're NOT EVEN IN RIVENDELL YET), and while it is a bit sticky for me, I'm definitely enjoying it! My edition of the book has an introduction written by Tolkien himself, and he admits to being more interested in the linguistics and history of Middle Earth than the action. That is very obvious when you read the book. I can follow his sentences much better now that my reading level has improved, but the action is definitely slow. I don't blame the movie for making the journey from Hobbiton to Rivendell seem to take only a day or two, because it's been almost two months since Frodo and friends left Hobbiton, and they're not yet in Rivendell after 206 pages. A great many days of those two months has been described in great detail, even if nothing more happens than the hobbits walk a long distance and are very hungry, tired, and scared.
So, I'm getting through the book. Not as easily as I flew through the last book in my challenge, but much more easily than I did at the age of 10. Tolkien's writing style doesn't intimidate me the way it used to, but it certainly does seem to drag compared to the pace at which I'm used to action rolling out in books.
I know that so far for this challenge, I've been writing a post about a book only after I finish it, but I have a feeling that I'm going to write a few more posts as I go through this series. I have lots of thoughts that I like to write down, and I get the feeling that I'll be too impatient to write them all in a draft and publish them all at once. In any case, I'm only halfway through the first third of the book, and look how much I've already rambled! I'm sure that anyone reading this would hate to read all of my thoughts for the next 1,012 pages!
For this part of the challenge, I've decided to finally tackle J. R. R. Tolkien's classic, Lord of the Rings. Why does this book intimidate me, you might ask? It's not the length, I can assure you of that. I was in elementary school for the first half of the Harry Potter series, and the length was no issue back then. In fact, the reason this book intimidates me dates back to elementary school...
A friend of mine was a huge Tolkien fan. For his birthday party, his family recreated the Unexpected Party from The Hobbit and we dined as the dwarves, Bilbo, and Gandalf did (replacing wine and beer with punch and root beer, of course). The games that we played included a scavenger hunt for The Ring, and whacking a giant spider pinata that was laid out in a web made of rope. I'd never read The Hobbit, so some of the magic was a bit lost on me, but it was an amazing party all the same. This friend recommended - demanded, really - that I read Lord of the Rings if I liked Harry Potter so much. The first movie had come out recently, and I'd seen and enjoyed it. Why not read the book, I thought? So my parents bought me a very nice box set of the books (really, it's one huge book, but it's generally broken up into three when it's published) and I started out on my adventure through Middle Earth.
Oh. my. gosh. The book was so far above my reading level. I could barely get through it. I remember complaining to my teacher that the Council of Elrond chapter was unbearably slow. (The scene in the movie had been so short! How was I to know that in the book, they sat and talked for like 300 years?!) She suggested that I read the first few sentences of a paragraph and then skip it if it seemed unimportant. But the paragraphs were all a whole page long. And the text was small, so small, that a page unbroken by line breaks and paragraph indentations took me half an hour to drag through.
Somehow, I managed to get through the whole book. I'm fairly sure that I got at least part way through the second book before giving up. I have no memory of the second book - even the first book is proving to seem mostly new to me, except for the general flow of events which I know from the movie. For years, I told myself that I'd try the books again some day.
And then I read The Hobbit in the 8th grade (three years after struggling through LotR). I'd heard that that book was written in much easier language, intended for a slightly younger audience. I figured I could handle it - and my sisters probably forced it on me, fed up with me rereading Harry Potter yet again. But even that one was hard for me to get through. I did finish it, but when the first movie came out around eight years later, I was like, huh, I don't really remember much about this at all. When I heard that the movie was incorporating a lot of Middle Earth history, mainly from The Silmarillion, I headed out to the bookstore and bought both The Hobbit and The Silmarillion.
That summer, I read The Hobbit. It was quite enjoyable, the experience made even better by the fact that I read it at my apartment's poolside, in the late summer when very few students were around making lots of noise. (Can you tell what kind of college student I was?) I started the Silmarillion during the following school year, but gave up after a few pages. This needed to wait until I didn't have homework, classes, work, and film shoots hanging over my head.
It's been almost four years now. In that time, I've thought about re-tackling Lord of the Rings, but it's just kind of sat there in my mind, all dark and mysterious and full of very long sentences and difficult language and the world's most boring chapter ever.
Well, that was then. I'm about halfway through The Fellowship of the Ring (and they're NOT EVEN IN RIVENDELL YET), and while it is a bit sticky for me, I'm definitely enjoying it! My edition of the book has an introduction written by Tolkien himself, and he admits to being more interested in the linguistics and history of Middle Earth than the action. That is very obvious when you read the book. I can follow his sentences much better now that my reading level has improved, but the action is definitely slow. I don't blame the movie for making the journey from Hobbiton to Rivendell seem to take only a day or two, because it's been almost two months since Frodo and friends left Hobbiton, and they're not yet in Rivendell after 206 pages. A great many days of those two months has been described in great detail, even if nothing more happens than the hobbits walk a long distance and are very hungry, tired, and scared.
So, I'm getting through the book. Not as easily as I flew through the last book in my challenge, but much more easily than I did at the age of 10. Tolkien's writing style doesn't intimidate me the way it used to, but it certainly does seem to drag compared to the pace at which I'm used to action rolling out in books.
I know that so far for this challenge, I've been writing a post about a book only after I finish it, but I have a feeling that I'm going to write a few more posts as I go through this series. I have lots of thoughts that I like to write down, and I get the feeling that I'll be too impatient to write them all in a draft and publish them all at once. In any case, I'm only halfway through the first third of the book, and look how much I've already rambled! I'm sure that anyone reading this would hate to read all of my thoughts for the next 1,012 pages!
Saturday, March 19, 2016
2016 Reading Challenge: A book you've read at least once
Looking through my moderately small book collection, it was obvious which book I should read for this challenge: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. My Mom brought it home one day when she was working at Borders. At the time, it was just another book I had never heard of that she figured I'd like. And not only that, but the author had been there signing books, so she snagged a copy for each of my sisters and got them all signed!
I probably put off reading The Book Thief for a while, since it was likely during the school year and I was busy with everything, including assigned reading. (I actually struggled to do well in English class, harder than I had to struggle to do well in AP Calculus - reading is one thing, but analytical writing is, for me, far more difficult and annoying than finding the derivative of sin x squared plus y cubed.)
I know I read this book for the first time over the summer. I know I read it curled up in my pink butterfly chair. I probably read it while listening to the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack on repeat. This was my CD of choice at the time. Even now, I usually listen to the Hans Zimmer Pandora station, which plays a lot of songs from the four Pirates movies.
The Book Thief had me captivated immediately. Never in my life had I read a book with such strong imagery. On this read, which is at least the third time I've read the book, I couldn't stop crying through the first few chapters. Partly because I got emotional remembering myself curled up in my chair, most likely stroking my kitty Miles absentmindedly as he sat curled in my lap. Partly because I knew about all of the sad things that were coming. But mostly, because the book is so god damn beautiful that every bit of imagery had my eyes welling up. And there is a ton of imagery in this book. Voices personified more than I have ever seen in any other book. "She seemed to collect the words in her hand, pat them together, and hurl them across the table," p 35, is one of my favorite examples.
Of course, it's always hard to read about Nazi Germany, even if it's a beautiful story from the perspective of a preteen. This time, there was a passage that truly scared me. To set the scene for those who haven't read the book:
During the first air raid in the town of Molching, several families are huddled in an air raid shelter. They are all holding hands, silent, waiting for the raid to end.
"Did they deserve any better, these people?
How many had actively persecuted others, high on the scent of Hitler's gaze, repeating his sentences, his paragraphs, his opus? Was Rosa Hubermann responsible? ... Or Hans? Did they all deserve to die? The children?" (p 375-6.)
This passage always made sense to me when I read the book before. But never has it actually resonate with me before. Replace the name Hitler with Trump, and... well... you can probably figure out the rest. Reading this passage, I couldn't help but to envision a dark, scary future in which Trump is President and there is a second Civil War, and a group of people in Trump-America are huddled together, hoping not to die together, each unsure of how much of a part in this war each of them has.
Okay, I don't want to get too political here, but it had to be said. Moving on.
"There are lines on his cheeks. They look drawn on and, and for some reason, when I see them, I want to cry. It is not for any sadness or pride. I just like the way they move and change" (p 527).
This line made me cry a little. Because I realized that I am just like Liesel in that regard. Sometimes, I like something so much that I cry a little. A line in a book. The swell of notes in music - even in action movie soundtracks or pop songs, sometimes. A new scent that flows in through the open window. A loving hug, in real life or in a movie. People gathered together in the town square, singing Jingle Bells after Santa lit the Christmas tree. (That one happened this past Christmas.) Some things in life are so pretty, or nice, or normal, that I take a quiet moment to appreciate them, and my eyes water either a little or a lot. (Usually a lot.)
It's worth noting that The Book Thief is one of the only books-to-film that was truly perfect. Yes, the film cut out some scenes, but it's a 550-page book. The 2013 film really managed to capture the sad beauty of the book. That's the best way I can describe the tone of this book: Sad, beautiful. Tragically beautiful. Beautifully sad. Sometimes sad, sometimes beautiful, sometimes both at once. It's a book that really makes you feel. It's a book where, every few chapters, there's a sentence so beautiful, so powerful, so tragic, that you just have to stop reading and bask in it for a few moments before moving on. I won't quote any of those sentences here because it's unfair to pull them out of context and plaster them on to your screen, especially surrounded by my awkward, stumbling, rambling sentences. (I say that with all the pride in the world for my writing style, and perhaps a bit of inspiration from Zusak's style.)
I think I've said all that needs to be said about The Book Thief at this point, though I know I could ramble on about my love for the book for pages. If you haven't read this book yet, read it as soon as humanly possible. If you have read it, read it again when you get the chance. And watch the movie after you've read the book, because it's good enough that it won't ruin your image of the book.
I haven't quite decided which challenge to do next! It will likely be one of the following:
-Six Characters in Search of an Author, Luigi Pirandello - a book I can read in a day
-Lord of the Rings, J R R Tolkein - a book that intimidates me (yes, all 3 books!!)
-Too Far, Rich Shapero - a book that I previously abandoned
I've made my decision of what to read for most of the rest of the challenges, but I don't own any of them so I'll finally have to pay a visit to my library - which is only about two blocks away! And for the life of me, I don't know what to read for a book that was published before I was born. There are just way too many classics to choose from! (Scary thought: there are children at the appropriate reading level who could choose Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for that challenge. Eeek!)
I probably put off reading The Book Thief for a while, since it was likely during the school year and I was busy with everything, including assigned reading. (I actually struggled to do well in English class, harder than I had to struggle to do well in AP Calculus - reading is one thing, but analytical writing is, for me, far more difficult and annoying than finding the derivative of sin x squared plus y cubed.)
I know I read this book for the first time over the summer. I know I read it curled up in my pink butterfly chair. I probably read it while listening to the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack on repeat. This was my CD of choice at the time. Even now, I usually listen to the Hans Zimmer Pandora station, which plays a lot of songs from the four Pirates movies.
The Book Thief had me captivated immediately. Never in my life had I read a book with such strong imagery. On this read, which is at least the third time I've read the book, I couldn't stop crying through the first few chapters. Partly because I got emotional remembering myself curled up in my chair, most likely stroking my kitty Miles absentmindedly as he sat curled in my lap. Partly because I knew about all of the sad things that were coming. But mostly, because the book is so god damn beautiful that every bit of imagery had my eyes welling up. And there is a ton of imagery in this book. Voices personified more than I have ever seen in any other book. "She seemed to collect the words in her hand, pat them together, and hurl them across the table," p 35, is one of my favorite examples.
Of course, it's always hard to read about Nazi Germany, even if it's a beautiful story from the perspective of a preteen. This time, there was a passage that truly scared me. To set the scene for those who haven't read the book:
During the first air raid in the town of Molching, several families are huddled in an air raid shelter. They are all holding hands, silent, waiting for the raid to end.
"Did they deserve any better, these people?
How many had actively persecuted others, high on the scent of Hitler's gaze, repeating his sentences, his paragraphs, his opus? Was Rosa Hubermann responsible? ... Or Hans? Did they all deserve to die? The children?" (p 375-6.)
This passage always made sense to me when I read the book before. But never has it actually resonate with me before. Replace the name Hitler with Trump, and... well... you can probably figure out the rest. Reading this passage, I couldn't help but to envision a dark, scary future in which Trump is President and there is a second Civil War, and a group of people in Trump-America are huddled together, hoping not to die together, each unsure of how much of a part in this war each of them has.
Okay, I don't want to get too political here, but it had to be said. Moving on.
"There are lines on his cheeks. They look drawn on and, and for some reason, when I see them, I want to cry. It is not for any sadness or pride. I just like the way they move and change" (p 527).
This line made me cry a little. Because I realized that I am just like Liesel in that regard. Sometimes, I like something so much that I cry a little. A line in a book. The swell of notes in music - even in action movie soundtracks or pop songs, sometimes. A new scent that flows in through the open window. A loving hug, in real life or in a movie. People gathered together in the town square, singing Jingle Bells after Santa lit the Christmas tree. (That one happened this past Christmas.) Some things in life are so pretty, or nice, or normal, that I take a quiet moment to appreciate them, and my eyes water either a little or a lot. (Usually a lot.)
It's worth noting that The Book Thief is one of the only books-to-film that was truly perfect. Yes, the film cut out some scenes, but it's a 550-page book. The 2013 film really managed to capture the sad beauty of the book. That's the best way I can describe the tone of this book: Sad, beautiful. Tragically beautiful. Beautifully sad. Sometimes sad, sometimes beautiful, sometimes both at once. It's a book that really makes you feel. It's a book where, every few chapters, there's a sentence so beautiful, so powerful, so tragic, that you just have to stop reading and bask in it for a few moments before moving on. I won't quote any of those sentences here because it's unfair to pull them out of context and plaster them on to your screen, especially surrounded by my awkward, stumbling, rambling sentences. (I say that with all the pride in the world for my writing style, and perhaps a bit of inspiration from Zusak's style.)
I think I've said all that needs to be said about The Book Thief at this point, though I know I could ramble on about my love for the book for pages. If you haven't read this book yet, read it as soon as humanly possible. If you have read it, read it again when you get the chance. And watch the movie after you've read the book, because it's good enough that it won't ruin your image of the book.
I haven't quite decided which challenge to do next! It will likely be one of the following:
-Six Characters in Search of an Author, Luigi Pirandello - a book I can read in a day
-Lord of the Rings, J R R Tolkein - a book that intimidates me (yes, all 3 books!!)
-Too Far, Rich Shapero - a book that I previously abandoned
I've made my decision of what to read for most of the rest of the challenges, but I don't own any of them so I'll finally have to pay a visit to my library - which is only about two blocks away! And for the life of me, I don't know what to read for a book that was published before I was born. There are just way too many classics to choose from! (Scary thought: there are children at the appropriate reading level who could choose Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for that challenge. Eeek!)
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
2016 Reading Challenge: A book you've been meaning to read
Sometime over a year ago, I found out that Colin Mochrie had written a book. Being a lifelong fan of Whose Line is it Anyway?, I was immediately interested. Then I read the description - a collection of short stories in which Mochrie takes the first and last sentences of several famous books/stories and makes up his own story in between. Absolutely brilliant, I thought. I need to read it.
Well, no libraries around me have this book. The bookstore at which I used to eat lunch every day when I had a job didn't have it, either - even though they have plenty of fiction, and plenty of books written by celebrities! My Mom actually captured my unhappiness at this lack of fiction by Mr. Mochrie when she visited me last fall:
She thought she was just getting me happy to be in my favorite bookstore, but nope, I was scowling because they didn't have Not Quite The Classics by Colin Mochrie.
Anyway, Christmas 2015 came and went, and my Mom got me an Amazon gift card! So I finally decided to buy the book, especially since it meant fulfilling another check on the 2016 reading challenge.
Oh my gosh. I super enjoyed this book. The short stories were even less related than the ones in Haunting Experiences, so it was even easier for me to put the book down for a few hours (or days) to do other stuff. This proved to be both good and bad: I never felt even a little taste of a cliffhanger, but I also went a whole week without reading this month. I know, not horrible, but that was about 5 more days of TV binges in a row than I'd like! After all, I'm trying to wean myself back in to reading, not off of it.
There are 13 short stories in Not Quite the Classics. Inspiration comes from all walks of life: Sherlock Holmes, The Cat in the Hat, The Great Gatsby, Slaughterhouse Five, etc. While I haven't read every book behind Mochrie's stories, I think he did a great job of capturing each individual author's voice/style. The few I have read include T'was The Night Before Christmas, The Great Gatsby, and 1984. Each of Mochrie's stories were written in a style that reflects the style of the original author. His Holmes in A Study in Ha-Ha was particularly convincing - I couldn't help but imagine Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman acting out the absurd plot! (Two things on that - one, I say absurd in the most loving of ways, it being Derek's and my word of choice to describe anything silly, hard to believe, cartoonish, or amusing lately. And two, I have never read any of the original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle novels, but I watch BBC's Sherlock religiously. BBC, if you're reading this, please secure the rights from Mr. Mochrie and produce a special acting out "A Study In Ha-Ha"!!!)
I can't even pick my favorite of these stories. Is it his version of Ernest Thayer's "Casey at the Bat," of the same name, in which the narrator quickly divulges into an epic tale about Casey the hockey player of NHL fame? Or perhaps Mochrie's version of Orwell's famous "1984," "The Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Fourth," a hilarious tale that takes place in a magical land filled with the most convoluted and twisted history I have ever read? Or maybe it's "Re: Becker," which draws its first and last lines from Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca," detailing the journey of a man set out to fulfill his late friend's last request regarding his ashes. Each of the thirteen short stories in this book had me laughing out loud at least twice, if not more. I even snorted at one of them.
I'm so, so glad that I read this. I'm so, so glad that Colin Mochrie wrote this. Colin, I know you say in your introduction that you dislike work and that writing is a lot of work; still, should you ever feel inclined to write another collection like this one, I beg that you do not shy away from that urge.
Well, no libraries around me have this book. The bookstore at which I used to eat lunch every day when I had a job didn't have it, either - even though they have plenty of fiction, and plenty of books written by celebrities! My Mom actually captured my unhappiness at this lack of fiction by Mr. Mochrie when she visited me last fall:
She thought she was just getting me happy to be in my favorite bookstore, but nope, I was scowling because they didn't have Not Quite The Classics by Colin Mochrie.
Anyway, Christmas 2015 came and went, and my Mom got me an Amazon gift card! So I finally decided to buy the book, especially since it meant fulfilling another check on the 2016 reading challenge.
Oh my gosh. I super enjoyed this book. The short stories were even less related than the ones in Haunting Experiences, so it was even easier for me to put the book down for a few hours (or days) to do other stuff. This proved to be both good and bad: I never felt even a little taste of a cliffhanger, but I also went a whole week without reading this month. I know, not horrible, but that was about 5 more days of TV binges in a row than I'd like! After all, I'm trying to wean myself back in to reading, not off of it.
There are 13 short stories in Not Quite the Classics. Inspiration comes from all walks of life: Sherlock Holmes, The Cat in the Hat, The Great Gatsby, Slaughterhouse Five, etc. While I haven't read every book behind Mochrie's stories, I think he did a great job of capturing each individual author's voice/style. The few I have read include T'was The Night Before Christmas, The Great Gatsby, and 1984. Each of Mochrie's stories were written in a style that reflects the style of the original author. His Holmes in A Study in Ha-Ha was particularly convincing - I couldn't help but imagine Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman acting out the absurd plot! (Two things on that - one, I say absurd in the most loving of ways, it being Derek's and my word of choice to describe anything silly, hard to believe, cartoonish, or amusing lately. And two, I have never read any of the original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle novels, but I watch BBC's Sherlock religiously. BBC, if you're reading this, please secure the rights from Mr. Mochrie and produce a special acting out "A Study In Ha-Ha"!!!)
I can't even pick my favorite of these stories. Is it his version of Ernest Thayer's "Casey at the Bat," of the same name, in which the narrator quickly divulges into an epic tale about Casey the hockey player of NHL fame? Or perhaps Mochrie's version of Orwell's famous "1984," "The Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Fourth," a hilarious tale that takes place in a magical land filled with the most convoluted and twisted history I have ever read? Or maybe it's "Re: Becker," which draws its first and last lines from Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca," detailing the journey of a man set out to fulfill his late friend's last request regarding his ashes. Each of the thirteen short stories in this book had me laughing out loud at least twice, if not more. I even snorted at one of them.
I'm so, so glad that I read this. I'm so, so glad that Colin Mochrie wrote this. Colin, I know you say in your introduction that you dislike work and that writing is a lot of work; still, should you ever feel inclined to write another collection like this one, I beg that you do not shy away from that urge.
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