Musing for Amusement

The Red Tent

2010-11-14T15:25:00.001-08:00

I've heard a lot of women praise The Red Tent, and I have to admit that the cover picture had me wondering why the woman was posing in this manner. After reading the book, one can only speculate. Historical fiction fans would enjoy this book, but the plot didn't really grab me on this one. I know it's a book club favorite, but I wouldn't want to read this for a book club.

What I did appreciate in the book, however, was the personal narrative piece. I like how women are portrayed as the story tellers, the keepers of memory who pass on the memories of their families, and especially their mothers. Such this the case with our protagonist Dinah (pronounced Dee-na) who opens the novel with a retelling of her mothers' lives--Leah (pronounced Lay-uh), Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah. All four sisters are married to her father Jacob in the order of their birth.

Through Dinah's storytelling, she recounts her family history. She explains the strained history between Leah and Rachel--their rivalry. Leah is wed first, which angers Rachel, yet Rachel has more beauty and draws a stronger reaction from Jacob. However, Leah is very fortunate in child birth. She gives Jacob many, many sons while it takes Rachel over ten years to conceive one son. Ziplah and Bilhah also conceive, but they are considered more as lesser servants than equals to the other two wives. Among the four women, Jacob has many, many sons.

Dinah, born much later, is the only girl born to Jacob. It is a blessing when she is born since now the story of the family and the women can be carried on. Dinah discusses the relationships she has with her brothers and her mothers. She is given privileges earlier than most girls because her mothers love her so much and are so eager to turn her to womanhood.

The title of the book, the red tent, reveals to a special tent in their camps dedicated to menstruating women or women in child birth (hence the tent being "red" with blood). Men were not allowed in this tent. It is in this tent where the women bond the strongest and Dinah is told many of these family secrets that she passes onto the reader.

Certain scenes in the novel (or within the red tent) were quite graphic. Dinah tells harrowing details of child birth, animal fornication, first sexual encounters, and a first-menstruation ritual to turn a girl into a woman. I don't consider myself a prude by any means, but I felt borderline awkward reading those scenes and envisioning them actually occurring in the past.

Anyway, moving on to more adventurous and engaging scenes, the reader moves to Dinah's maturation. She enters the city (which is told to be cruel and bad), yet Dinah is curious. While in the city, she meets a young man who turns out to be the prince. He asks for her to move in with him, and she does. Before marriage, they have sex, and now Dinah cannot become a good bride with a good bride price for any other man. The positive thing is that Dinah and the prince are in love. The king goes to Jacob with a fair bride price, yet Jacob and his sons believe that Dinah has been stolen and raped. When the king returns a second time with more money, Jacob insults him by refusing the money and instead offering that all of the men within the palace become circumcised. The prince agrees, for he will do anything to be with Dinah.

The dark or "red" scene within the novel (SPOILER COMING...) is when Dinah discovers her soon-to-be-husband slashed to death in their bed at the hand of her two brothers. Everyone else in their path was murdered. They take Dinah back to their tents where she is too angry to live there and returns to the city. The prince's mother is kind enough to let her stay with them, despite the havoc caused by her brothers, and she bears the prince's son. The prince's mother raises the son as her own and names him despite Dinah's wishes. Dinah is more like a servant to her son than a mother, though the son does know that Dinah is his birth mother and that his father is deceased.

As Dinah ages in the city, she becomes a well-respected midwife who helps women deliver babies. Women from all around call to her to help them give birth. This gains Dinah respect in the city. Her son ages and travels which makes Dinah sad. Later on in her life, she is approached by a man who eventually seeks her as his bride after two years. Dinah, feeling that she could never love again after the prince, discovers that she can. Years later, she discovers that her younger brother Joseph is now the prime minister of Egypt. Dinah, her husband, and Joseph return to Jacob's tents to see their father die. The story of Dinah is known throughout the tents among the women, but the brothers have soon forgotten her, and they do not recognize her upon her arrival. It is at these tents that the reader learns what happens to the other characters in the family to give closure to their stories.

As a reader, I was very angry at the part where Dinah's happiness is stripped from her by her family. I don't know if I can fully blame the men for destroying and ruining parts of Dinah's life. Perhaps they truly felt that she was stolen and raped and needed to do what they did in order to restore power and honor to the family name. Maybe they were truly protecting her. It also seemed that they were aware of Dinah's happiness (since Bilhah came to visit Dinah in the city and spread the news throughout the tents), so why would they deny her that happiness? It was very frustrating, and it made me angry to see such violence for terrible reasons. To ruin someone's life over manly pride is disgusting, and it was hard to read through.

End of spoiler...

What I did not know, because I am not an avidly religious person, is that this novel is a retelling of a minor character in the Bible. Anita Diamant, the author, wrote this on her website on this very point:

"The Red Tent retells the story of Dinah, which is found in the Biblical book of Genesis, Chapter 34. This episode, usually known as the 'Rape of Dinah' has been a difficult passage for bible readers for centuries because of the murderous behavior of Jacob's sons. In Genesis, Dinah does not say a single word; what happens to her is recounted and characterized as rape by her brothers. In my retelling of the story, Dinah finds her voice. The Red Tent is told entirely from her perspective and the point of view of the women around her."

I think it's a pretty interesting idea to take a very small story and blow it up into something bigger in order to promote more understanding or closure. Who knows how far or close this story comes to the truth with its embellishment, but it brings up conversation between those who truly care about the Bible and its teachings.

Was it the most intriguing and exciting book I've ever read? No. Was it thought-provoking? Yes. I often found myself comparing rituals and customs from the past to now, and it's interesting to see which customs have stuck and which ones are considered silly. I would make faces at rituals or customs that seem odd to me, but I bet there are a lot of things that my culture does that would seem odd to other cultures. It's just interesting to see how people lived a long time ago and think if you could handle such a life. It's interesting to see the transformation.

In any event, those interested in historical fiction and religion would be deeply invested in this novel. I find it would connect more with a female audience, but it certainly is not only for women. The strong bonds of women are certainly a strong thread that is woven throughout this novel, yet I don't see why men couldn't be fascinated with these tellings, thoughts, and feelings the same way that a woman would.

To me, it was a mediocre read, yet here I am blogging about it. So, that must say something.

What do you think of The Red Tent?

House Rules

2010-11-11T07:42:00.000-08:00

I've heard a lot of talk about Jodi Picoult's newest novel, House Rules. I found myself to be particularly interested in this novel because of its subject matter: Aspberger's Syndrome. I was interested to see how she presented the characters and what conflicts they would encounter (besides the obvious conflict of living with the disability). However, like many of her novels, I found myself hooked to the story and connected to the characters. This, among others of hers, is another good title to recommend.

Picoult, one again, writes from multiple character perspectives. I thought this would be considerably challenging since one of the characters has Aspberger's Syndrome, a milder form of Autism. Picoult must have done much research to not only understand the disoder but to accurately speak from their point of view. I would find this to be very challenging. It's one thing to understand what Aspberger's is, know the behaviors, and interact with those with it, but I couldn't imagine writing from their perspective. I'm not saying this in a negative way at all. I'm simply presenting the idea that she is very talented to convey something that is so mysterious, cryptic, and misunderstood by so many in this country.

Like most of her novels do, Picoult brings about controversial or misunderstood topics to the forefront and makes people aware of it. She makes people take a stance on the issue and/or discuss it with a larger group of people. Autism has growing awareness, yet it's not something that everybody is very familiar with. It's something that people are aware of if it directly effects them. Otherwise, it can be some distant term that isn't generally understood. Autism itself comes with its controversy as well. Many people speculate as to its causes, be it from mercury poisoning in shots or a general biological disorder. Mothers swear it comes from shots and that gluten-free diets are a sure way to stave off the side effects. But, the medical world is slow to jump on this bandwagon. This, I am sure, is one reason that Picoult wrote about this subject. Her novel is causing more discussion and perhaps is bringing more people and communities to become cognizant of Autism and discuss the disorder and its controversies.

But, I digress. Back to the novel itself.

I liked that the novel included a character with Aspberger's Syndrome, but that wasn't what the entire book was about. A common trait among those with Aspberger's is an obsession with a specific topic. The character in House Rules, Jacob, has a fixation with crime and forensics. He sees crime scenes almost as a puzzle that he must solve. He studies old cases, detectives, and crime shows to become an "expert" on the subject. Like many with Aspberger's, Jacob is brilliant, and he is like a savant in his abilities to fit the pieces together.

The central conflict of the novel revolves around Jacob's fascination. It will eventually lead him to trouble. He shows up at crime scenes, hoping to help solve them. His mother gave him a police radio which helps him arrive at these scenes. But, Jacob does not have social graces granted to your average person. He does not understand that this may come off as creepy or suspicious. He has a lot of characteristics that a guilty criminal might have as well: he can't look in people's eyes, he has nervous twitches, he can't hold a normal conversation, he focuses the conversation solely around himself, etc. The police department becomes aware of who he is once he starts "crashing in" on crime scenes.

Meanwhile, Jacob is taking social skills lessons with a college student named Jess. Jess has a boyfriend named Mark who Jacob completely despises. Jacob, even though he is disgusted by most sexual encounters, finds himself attracted to Jess and asks her on a date in front of Mark at a pizza shop, at one of their sessions. Jacob does not understand how offensive this is (part of his lack of social understanding). Mark gets very angry, yells, and storms out of the pizza shop. Jess is so angry at Jacob, especially since he continues to ask her out once this has occurred, she tells him to "get lost," and she storms out. Jacob knows that he can't "get lost," since he takes language very literally, and decides that he will still go to their next session.

Jacob lives at home with his mother, Emma, and his younger brother, Theo. Their father ran off, understanding that his life would be significantly different with a child with Aspberger's. The interesting thing is that he is somewhere on the spectrum himself.

The main conflict truly arrives when Jess goes missing. It is later discovered that she is murdered. When they discover her body, Jess is wrapped in Jacob's childhood quilt. Emma calls the police station with this information, and Jacob is questioned by Rich Matson, lead detective. Jacob does not lie. He admits that he was there and moved her body, so he becomes the leading suspect in the case. Throughout the novel, the reader wonders if he did in fact commit the crime. Evidence goes both ways, and Jacob's cryptic language makes the reader question whether he is capable to commit such a crime. The reader does not find out until the very end what the truth is.

Once Jacob is put into jail as a suspect, Emma finds a local attorney, Oliver Bond, who has just passed his BAR exam. He is very young and inexperienced. He is not really sure how to be a lawyer, but tries to pretend that he knows. Emma does not have a lot of money to pay him anyway, so they are both kind of winging the experience. Oliver calls for a suppression hearing since Jacob was not truly granted his Miranda Rights. They have to prove that he truly did not understand that what he said could incriminate him. The court decides that evidence used during that crucial interview with Rich could not be used. Jacob (since he was deteriorating in jail) can stay at home under house arrest.

The rest, or most, of the novel takes place in court during the trial. I am finding that many of Picoult's novels take place in court as they use a legal means to sort out these controversial topics she brings up. As the trial unfolds, Emma and Oliver get closer and closer, eventually developing a sexual and romantic relationship.

Theo, the younger brother, takes all of this very hard. In his perspective, we learn how troubling it is for him to deal with having a brother who others call "retarded." He is a loner because of his association with his brother. He knows that he will eventually have to take care of his brother, and this scares him. He feels that his life has always been controlled by his brother and his needs. Jacob always comes first, and Theo always comes second because his needs are less.

Because Theo is dealing with this hard material, he lashes out in other ways. He breaks into local homes and hangs out in their houses, trying to see what it feels like to be normal and live in a "normal" house. He steals materials to see if people will notice. He takes games and iPods and other expensive gifts that his family cannot afford. During the trial, Theo hops a plane to California to go see his father who abandoned the family when Theo was an infant. Emma is forced to fly out there, even with the little money they have, and this is when their father discovers Jacob's murder trial. He eventually comes out there with them to be there during the trial.

The end was intense... SPOILER ALERT...

It is finally revealed that Jacob did not commit the murder. Even though Jacob takes the stand, he never tells what really happened. He never says that he didn't do it. This makes no sense to me, but I will move on. When the jury is deliberating, the truth comes out when Theo is opening his birthday presents. Jacob never gives presents, but he gives Theo a stuffed animal with something tucked inside. An iPod is inside, and Jess's name is etched into the back. Jacob says something like, "Didn't you want this? Isn't that why you were there?" It is then revealed that Theo was at Jess's house the day of her murder. He was spying on her in the shower. She saw him, panicked, slipped and fell. She knocked her head on the sink's edge and bled to death. Scared shitless, Theo runs away. Jacob arrives at the scene, realizes a house rule (always protect and care for your brother), so he cleans up the mess, moves the body, and creates a fake crime scene. Jacob did not kill her. The death was accidental.

The ending isn't 100% clear. Throughout the novel, Jacob describes past crime cases that were solved, like Ted Bundy's story for example. I thought it was clever to end the novel with this new case, Jacob's case. Jacob tells it from the future and how people saw the case after its conclusion. Apparently this new evidence was brought to the court, and I am assuming that Jacob was aquitted of the charges. This case makes forensic history along with the other stories that Jacob told all along. Hm.

Even though I kept reading to find out what happened, I was very frustrated that the truth didn't come out sooner. There were so many instances where the truth should have come out, but it never did. If I was in the story, I don't see why I wouldn't sit down with him and ask him every detail that I possibly could, even if I didn't want to hear the answer. Maybe you don't want to believe that your son, brother, or friend committed murder, but wouldn't it kill you to know the truth? Why would you want to believe a lie? Don't be selfish. I wouldn't want to be naive. It bothered me that no one ever asked him these crucial questions, and it only came about after the fact in a random situation. Very frustrating!!

END OF SPOILER.

However, this novel was a great way to learn about Aspberger's and Autism if you don't know too much about it. I think it's better than reading a nonfiction piece that reads like a textbook. Not only do you get to hear Jacob's perspective and see his behaviors, you get to hear how it's like to live with someone with this disorder, from the family members, but you also hear from experts during the trial to provide more thorough, "scientific" information. Overall, it was well-rounded in that respect.

The story was engaging, and the characters were dynamic, as always. Especially if you are intested in forensics, this novel would hook you. I enjoyed reading about random forensic facts and crime cases. Some were eerie, but they were a nice break from the trial at times.

Picoult writes another good one again. I would put this as one of her best, along with The Pact and Nineteen Minutes (and maybe The Tenth Circle). So far, those are my favorites of hers.

So, what do you think of House Rules?

The Good Earth

2010-10-14T13:37:00.000-07:00

In the near future, I am going to have my honor students focus on reading highly praised novels (like the "classics" and Pulitzer Prize novels), so in my research, I am trying to read some of my own. I happened upon The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, and I was tempted to read it.

It looks like a dry book. It really does. But I was hooked and I wanted to keep finding out what would happen to Wang Lang and his family. This book is very old, as it was published in 1931, and used to be taught throughout schools when my mom was younger. My mother actually read the book in 6th grade. She remembers reading it because she sliced her finger open while making a project for the book--a diorama. Remember those? In any event, it's an older book.

Wikipedia's description is very, very brief. So much more happens that makes the plot and the character's circumstances very complicated. Essentially, the book follows the protagonist Wang Lang who lives in rural China. He is a very poor farmer but has a connection with his land (hence the name of the book). He wants to make a man of himself, so he goes to the main courts to get himself a bride from a slave. It is there that he receives his wife O-Lan. She soon bears him many children, as they are fortunate to have two boys first. However, economic times become extremely harsh in the land, as the land dries up, and China experiences a drought, thus a famine. Finding food is extremely difficult, and people resort to stealing. Wang Lung has a difficult time feeding his family since he has to feed his wife, two sons, and his older father.

To Wang Lung's misfortunte, his uncle (a mischievous, nefarious, malicious man) joins a notoriously bad group of felons who steal and hurt for their own personal gain. They are the equivalent of a gang. They take most of Wang Lung's food (which is hardly anything), but O-Lan pleads that they leave the furniture, which most of them do. Wang Lung is faced with a hard decision: does he sell his land to make some money for food or does he move away? Wang Lung decides not to sell the land and move to the city to keep his family alive.

However, before they leave, O-Lan faces two misfortunes. First, she gives birth to a daughter who is the victim of malnutrition during the pregnancy. This girl is born with some type of mental retardation as a result, and is thus called the Poor Fool throughout the novel. O-Lan's second pregnancy at this point of time births another baby girl. O-Lan knows that they cannot provide for this baby and kills it. Wang Lung takes it outside to be eaten by a nearby dog who keeps digging up the dead bodies of his relatives to satiate its hunger. Horrid. Nasty. Horrifying.

Wang Lung's family migrates to the city where Wang Lung pulls a plow for silver. His family begs in the street, but at least they have little money and rice to eat. One day, a mob breaks out as people are starving. They raid the nearby house of the rich. Wang Lung comes face to face with a rich man. In an act of desperation, Wang Lung tells the man he will kill him if he does not hand him over some silver. Wang Lung receives many gold coins, enough to keep his family satisfied for a long time. O-Lan picks up some jewels that also will help. Thus, they return back to their land to start anew.

Wang Lung decides to really build up his house and his land. He buys land from the rich house and staffs farmers to increase his intake from his land. He becomes rich from all of the products coming from his land. The money starts to get to Wang Lung's head. He starts to dress very nice and partake in luxuries. He has twins as well, a boy and a girl. They buy servants and build a new, nicer house. The servants move into the old house.

Wang Lung grows bored and wants to become known as a great man. He goes into the town and stumbles upon a whorehouse. He contemplates the decision, feeling guilty, but eventually he begins to sleep with a girl named Lotus. He will do everything for Lotus and pines for her day and night. O-Lan suspects this, and their distance grows. He even asks O-Lan for her jewels to give to Lotus, and O-Lan knows this. However, O-Lan is a silent, obedient woman. It's sad to watch how much terrible treatment she takes and how hard her life is.

Eventually, Wang Lung decides that he wants to buy Lotus for good. His uncle and his wife have now taken residence in his home, seeing that he is so prosperous, and he must house them, for he must respect his family and his elders. He hates having them live there, for they are greedy and constantly ask for silver, but his uncle provides protection from his gang. The uncle's wife makes a deal for Lotus to move to the house, so Wang Lung builds her her own wing off of the house which is very nice. She will reside there. Of course, tension between the women erupts as she lives there.

At this point, Wang Lung's sons are now older, and Wang Lung wonders what he will do about wedding his first son. His first son is lusting so bad that he goes into the town for women. He even has a brief fling with Lotus, and when Wang Lung finds them, he beats his son with a stick. He sends him to the city to get out of his sight until he can find him a bride. A bride is eventually found, and they move into the house together with the family.

Meanwhile, O-Lan has grown terribly sick, and it now becomes apparent how much she meant to the family and how much she did for them around the house. Wang Lung calls a doctor to the house who informs them that a dead baby is living within O-Lan and will eventually kill her. He could either give them medicine to quell the pain, but it wouldn't solve anything, or he could perform surgery to ensure her survival. When Wang Lung says that he will pay it, the doctor suddenly becomes greedy and asks for ten times the amount, which he could not afford. He would have to sell his land for that kind of money, so it comes down to the land or O-Lan. O-Lan begs for him to keep the land, for her life is not worth that much. Wang Lung agrees with her.

During O-Lan's slow decent towards death, Wang Lung is so saddened inside. He is disgusted with how ugly his wife is and has a hard time holding her hand as she dies in her bed, but he hates himself for thinking this. O-Lan, while in a half-daze, half-sleep, constantly cries out phrases like, "But I have beared your children!" Comments that show how torn up she was over her husband's new love and infidelity. O-Lan finally dies once her son is wed. The old man soon dies as well.

Wang Lung-s first son bears children, and the son's wife is a pain. The eldest son often quarrels with the cousin (uncle's son) who is lustful and devious. He wishes to move away into the great house to escape them. Their first idea to make peace in the house is to hook the uncle and uncle's wife on opium. This works. They are now drug-addicted and want nothing else but opium. Lotus grows fatter and fatter but is happy to live in such luxury with servants. The cousin constantly tries to make sexual advances onto Wang Lung's pretty daughter, so Wang Lung weds her off quickly while she is still a young virgin. To their fortune, the cousin eventually decides to go off to war, so that makes things easier in Wang Lung's house.

After making his second son an apprentice in the grain market and looking after their finances, Wang Lung and his family rent out parts of the great house and move into the city. Wang Lung still returns to the land and even rents parts out, as his servants are now growing older. Wang Lung also grows older. He weds his second, smarter son to a rural woman who won't be as picky as the first wife, and lives in happiness with his wealth. He now has many servants to wait on his growing family.

During one bad period of time, the army (as a war in going on, the Revolution) comes into his home, led by the cousin. They stay there for a long time which causes unrest in the house. They have to put all of the women in one wing and guard it, as the men might rape the women. The cousin takes to a slave, and she has babies by him. The army eventually leaves, and peace comes to the house.

Now, if things couldn't get any stranger, they really get odd now. Wang Lung is now an old man. His youngest son does not want to work on the land, which was Wang Lung's plan, so he asks to be educated like his older brothers and to have a wife. He asks for a servant to be his wife, a very beautiful young girl named Pear Blossom. However, Wang Lung fancies her, and wants her for himself. He is conflicted with what he should do, and one night, he makes an advance on her, and she tells him that she likes older men because they are nicer and gentler. They have their own romance. When the son finds out, he is livid and leaves the house to join the army. Wang Lung approaches his death with acceptance. Before he dies, Wang Lung overhears his sons discussing selling his land once he dies. Wang Lung cries out in horror, and the sons lie to him, telling him that they won't. They smile at each other as they say this, and this is how the book ends.

Now, I did not know that there were two other books to follow this one. This is a cliffhanger, and I wonder if Buck meant for it to be this way. In any event, I am drawn to read more. If anyone has read them, are they worth reading??

The book is so rich with material to discuss. How low will people go when they are starving? What happens when people go from rags to riches? How do people become so greedy? Is infidelity justifiable? What is the role of family and filial piety? What happens when parental expectations don't fit into what we want for ourselves? What is loyalty? How do you maintain wealth when money is hard to come by? How do you become a respectable, honorable person? Is arranged marriage a good thing? Why title the book, The Good Earth?

I wish I could discuss the book with someone else. There is so much to talk about!

Is the movie worth watching?? I am aware that there is one, but I am not sure if I should check it out or not.

So what do you think about The Good Earth?

Book of Eli

2010-10-03T16:40:00.000-07:00

This movie is long overdue for me. I meant to see it when it came out because it seemed so interesting--different than movies out lately. I got the opportunity to watch it last night, and it was extremely thought-provoking. I will flesh out my thoughts here.

Eli, played by Denzel Washington, exists in a post-apocolyptic world that has experienced "the flash," something that destroyed most of the human population and its surroundings. Eli encounters savages who kill for small tokens in a desolate countryside. He seems to be somewhere in the American west. He carries around a desirable book that all want to covet. At first, we just watch Eli get around a countryside just trying to survive, but we soon learn that Eli can outfight large groups of people and is a strong presence.

Eli makes his way to a nearby town where he soon encounters a small faction who watch him murder a man who tries to rob him while in a bar. Eli proves his fighting skills by taking down many men within this bar, and he is brought to the attention of the man in charge of this faction or townspeople. He tries to persuade Eli to work for him since he seems to be a talented, smart, and aged man. Older people are assets during this time because they knew what life was like before the flash, almost an unimaginable time.

Our antagonist here locks Eli in a room but tries to seduce him to stay with a warm bed, a lot of food and water, and a lady to entertain him. This lady, Solara, happens to be Carnegie's, the antagonist's, lover's daughter. This causes tension between the two. Solara and Eli talk but he will not take her. They end up talking a lot and Solara develops respect for Eli. Eli then tells Solara that he heard a voice that told him just to go west. He needed to deliver the words of the book to a deserving people. He would be protected until he arrived there, but this was his life's mission.

Eli escapes in the morning before his secret of his "book" gets out to Carnegie who then desperately wants to find him. Carnegie comes head to head with Eli in the center of the town and a shoot-out ensues when Eli refuses to give up his book. Eli shoots a lot of people, including Carnegie who gets shot in the leg. Eli escapes and Solara follows into the desert.

Eli tries to abandon Solara, as he thinks she will only get herself harmed when she joins him. Eli has to save Solara as she is assaulted by ongoers, who he kills. They run into an old couple who tries to trick them into coming into the home, only for them to kill and eat them, until Carnegie and his men find them in the house. A massive shoot-out occurs, and the old couple is killed. Solara and Eli survive but are dragged outside. They put Solara at gunpoint until Eli will hand over the book. He does. Once it's done, Eli is shot in the stomach and abandoned.

In their SUVs, Solara strangles the driver and stabs the other man there, a man who wanted to have her as his trophy wife. She throws a grenade at the second SUV and takes off. Carnegie lets her go; he has what he needs--his beloved book. Carnegie believes that he can gain ultimate power with this book. All will follow him when he has it and can deliver its word. So, he wants it for something negative.

Solara finds Eli and drives him to the Golden Gate Bridge. They abandon the car on the bridge and proceed to take a boat over to Alcatraz, where a small civilization lives and is trying to restore the world to goodness. Eli and Solara pass in, and Eli can deliver the message of the book because he has it memorized. Eli spends his last days alive reciting the book from memory as it is copied. Eli dies, and the world finally has the written word of the Bible.

Meanwhile, Carnegie discovers that the book is locked. It takes him some time to get someone to open it for him, but once he does, he discovers that the book is written in braille.

SPOILER: The shock is that Eli is, thus, blind. This is why he wears the sunglasses that he does. Everything then seems almost impossible for a blind man to do. Travel across the country. Kill many people, especially when attacked by multiple people and snipers on rooftops. Kill for food, birds and cats. Escape. Etc. This was a HUGE surprise to me! This didn't even click to me until after I saw the movie. Being blind almost enhances the meaning because it really drives home the point that he was fulfilling God's will, and with faith, he fulfilled his assignment. It gives hope in a supreme being. Very, very powerful stuff.

Solara takes off from Alcatraz to go back home. They make her look, walk, and talk like Eli as she leaves, almost like she is the one to take his place. Carnegie is slowly dying as his leg wound becomes infected, becoming smelly from gangrene. The whole town has gone to hell and his lover (who is also blind and will not read the book to him) becomes overcomed with joy as she knows he will meet his end.

End of Spoiler.

So much to talk about! The biblical references and ideas are overwhelming. He communicates with God and has a purpose. He needs to deliver the word of the Lord in order to save the world. Without knowing the word, people go literally mad, killing one another and losing all respect for themselves and others. It's interesting to ponder why all books were destroyed before the flash.

What was the flash? Was it human-created or natural phenomenon? Why or how did some survive?

It's crazy to see what happens when there are no authority figures, resources, or organized society. People can kill at whim. There are no consequences. You need to find everything you need, and if you're sick, you might not have ways to treat yourself. You can't travel very far because there isn't transportation. It makes you wonder how some people come to power because they really don't have anything to hold them up to that authority. Very, very bizarre. Not something I'd want to deal with.

This film would be very interesting to compare to The Road. They are both apocolyptic recent films (even though The Road was a novel first), and both touch on similar ideas or resorts that humans go to once faced with "the end of human society." Yes, it's sci fi, but it sure is damn interesting and rich to discuss.

So what do you think of The Book of Eli?

How I Live Now

2010-10-01T14:58:00.000-07:00

I always mean to read more YA titles to recommend them to some of my students, so recently I finished How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff. I really didn't know what to expect, and there wasn't too much description on the back, and I felt like there were so many unexpected twists and turns. But, I can see that this book would cause a lot to talk about.

Daisy is a teenage girl living in Manhanttan. Her mother died when she was young, and her father remarries to the stereotypical evil stepmother. They don't get along to the point where Daisy is sent to live with her mother's sister Pen in England. Daisy gets to start a new life over there. She struggles a little bit to feel at home, but she soon feels that life is so much more exciting in this lovely countryside rather than the busy city.

Daisy soon falls for her cousin Edmond, a fourteen-year-old smoker. They hide their relationship from the rest of the family, although it must be clear to most of them. Daisy is also hiding her anorexia, which becomes even more complicated as the novel progresses.

And here's the weird twist. A fictional war breaks out in Europe, and life on the farm seems to be normal. They are self-sufficient, so they don't really interact with the outside world. First, a doctor comes to the house looking for medications to help the wounded. He is suspicious that he does not find any adults at home. There is no uncle, and aunt Pen has left. She soon becomes stranded in Oslo and is not heard from again for a long while.

Soon enough, soldiers come to the house and split up the family. Isaac and Edmond (the boys) are sent one way, and Piper and Daisy are sent another way (the girls). Daisy longs for Edmond, but soon takes to saving Daisy as she is younger. There is little food where they are taken, which really makes Daisy look at her anorexia as she grows thinner and thinner and weaker and weaker. Piper and Daisy eventually escape to go back home and must walk home a long distance. Along the way, they encounter a field of dead bodies, a place where Edmond was supposed to be, and Daisy checks every body to make sure that one isn't Edmond. She does not find him, but they seem to be completely scarred from their experience.

Once they finally return home, Daisy intercepts a call from her father who sends her back home. She stays in a New York City hospital until she is nursed back to health. A while later, Daisy returns to England to discover that Aunt Pen was killed in Oslo and Edmond has been found. However, Edmond is so scarred from what he saw in the war that he's only a shell of himself. His arms are physically scarred from self-inflicted wounds. While everyone projected the hurt and harm and anger onto something else, Edmond turned it onto himself. The book concludes with Daisy nursing Edmond back to sanity as she believes she will stay on the farm because that is where she feels the most at home.

Issues to talk about with this book:

-The effects of war
-Eating disorders
-Incest
-Inflicting self harm
-Underage smoking
-Cruel parenting
-Absent parents
-Future wars

The reading level was easy for a young adult. The novel centers around a fictional war, so you could spend some time speculating why this could have happened. Readers didn't have a lot of information about the war, which is probably quite realistic. We know a lot about wars because we study them after the fact. However, how much do civilians know during the war, especially when they are cut off from contact? I think that's an interesting idea to ponder.

Blood cousins dating? I guess that one's up for you to speculate about...

Simple text, but a few things to talk about with it.

So what do you think about How I Live Now?

Songs of the Humpback Whale

2010-09-26T13:11:00.000-07:00

I'm still on my quest to read all of Jodi Picoult's novels. So, a couple of months ago when I was in my days of not blogging, I finished Songs of the Humpback Whale, Picoult's first novel. I wasn't as hooked into this one as a I have been to others, but it was still pretty interesting. I kept tuning in because I wanted to see what would happen, but I was not impressed with the ending (which I'm sure she hears a lot).

Songs of the Humpback Whale involves a woman named Jane who is unhappy with her marriage to her husband Oliver. Oliver is a renound scientist who specializes in whale studies, but he is obsessed with his work and travels a lot. He misses out on his life with his wife and teenage daughter, Rebecca. One day, after a fight escalates in their San Diego home, Rebecca slaps Oliver. She then flees with her daughter Rebecca with no place to go.

In the car, Rebecca (the seemingly stronger of the two) convinces her mom to run if she isn't happy. Why stay in a mediocre situation? They travel across the country, stopping here and there, as Oliver tries to follow them to track them down. Jane calls her brother Jolie who lives in Massachusetts and works on an apple orchard, and they decide that they will stay with him there until they figure out what to do. One of the stops that Jane and Rebecca take is to the site where Rebecca experienced a plane crash. This incident is referenced often. During this crash, Jane was also thinking of leaving Oliver, but the crash brought them together. However, Jane still wants to leave him years later.

Most of the novel is told from the orchard. Love blooms (not to use a ridiculous pun, but I'm already guilty). Jolie's boss Sam and Jane do not hit it off right away. They have that middle-school relationship where they are always bickering, but you can tell that they're flirting. They seem to pre-judge each other--Sam as the redneck idiot farm boy and Jane as the uptight California high class girl. As they spend more time together, these images slowly fade, and they fall in love.

On the other hand, Rebecca falls in love with an older boy on the farm named Hadley. Hadley respects Rebecca's innocence and does not push her into love. It just naturally unfolds, but they try to hide it for a little while. The odd thing about all of this is that Hadley, Sam, and Jolie are all roughly the same age. So when Hadley and Rebecca's interest comes out, fights ensue because Jane thinks Rebecca is too young to know what love is and Hadley is taking advantage of her daughter. Then Rebecca argues about her infidelity from her father, and they aren't on the best of terms.

Meanwhile, Oliver is in his quest of finding his family as he travels across the country. While in New England, as he tracks down Jolie's location, he saves a humpback whale which lands him a spot on the local news channel. He confesses his love to his wife on television, which they watch in the house, and this stirs up emotions among Jane and Sam. The next day, Oliver shows up at the house in the middle of the night. He finds Jane and Sam in bed and goes crazy, demanding that they leave for San Diego immediately. Jane tries to resist. When they try to locate Rebecca, they notice that she and Hadley are missing.

Sam and Oliver leave in Sam's pickup to find her, as they believe that they have run away to Hadley's mother's house. This upcoming scene is foreshadowed in earlier chapters. Hadley and Rebecca are found camping near a cliffside, and a fight escalates as Oliver is sort of insane at the idea of his daughter sleeping with this older man. He demands that they leave him immediately and end this now. As the fight escalates, Hadley accidentally slips and falls over the cliffside to his death. Rebecca is beside herself with grief and has caught pnemonia, so she must return back to the farm.

Because of these terrible circumstances, Jane decides to return to San Diego with her family to ail her wounded daughter. As the car pulls away, she looks at Sam and discusses that she feels that she will see him again. The novel ends on their travel back home.

I was so pissed off that Jane went back to Oliver. She wasn't happy with him, and she found new love, a person who would treat her well, and she ran back to her unhappy marriage. She loved life on that New England orchard, what a different new chapter to her life! However, I can see why it DID end this way because it seems what women might typically do, which gives it that realistic twist. However, I wanted Picoult to give Jane's character more, to make her dynamic and special. But, she is just like her name, a plain Jane. Nothing memorable.

I guess we're left to believe that someday, their love will reconnect. But I just feel bad for Sam. Now he knows what a wonderful love could have been, and it drove away. Now he goes back to his old life with tons of time to think about what he's missing. And, he has her brother around to help him think of it. Lame, lame, lame!

But, I did like how Picoult challenged couples that are far different in age. She showed both sides of the argument, as she normally does, and they both made sense. She showed the intricacies of a broken marriage. She showed the difficulties of understanding people from different backgrounds. When you break it down into these simplicities, the book covers some good topics for discussion. I just wasn't as on-the-edge-of-my-seat as I normally am with her stories.

As her first novel, I can see how it is her first as her other ones get stronger and stronger. I like how she continues to use the dual point of view system to see everyone's perspective. This novel jumped in time a little bit which made it a little more interesting. A lot of information was provided about whales which was kind of interesting extra information to get tied into. She also painted the person who connects more with animals than humans, and we do see that a lot in daily life.

The parallels and deeper connections with the whales can further be made within the actual story. Oliver spent his life listening to love songs of whales, and he had a hard time keeping his own love in tact. In the end, he sings his own love song to Jane (metaphorically) on the air for all to hear (similar to a whale broadcasting his love). It's funny that Oliver seems to be this expert, yet he's really not one at all in his own life.

This time of year would be a good one to read this novel, as it does connect with apple orchards, New England, and fall. If you enjoy Picoult's novels, then this one would be a good one to pick up as well. It's always good and interesting to check out that first, breakthrough novel and see progress or where it all began. At least I find that interesting.

So what do you think of Songs of the Humpback Whale?

The Stationary Bike

2010-09-26T12:52:00.001-07:00

For whatever reason, I tend to read obscure Stephen King novellas, short stories, and novels instead of his more well-known choices like The Stand, It, Christine, The Shining, etc. The list goes on and on. However, I did get my hands on a novella of his called "Stationary Bike." The back of the book drew me in because it just seemed so different, so mysterious, so bizarre. I hand to find out what this was about.

"Stationary Bike" is about a man named Richard Sifkitz who goes to the doctor to check out his cholesterol levels. He discovers that they are too high, and his doctor tries to describe his high cholesterol levels with a metaphorical scenario of workmen clearing off junk foods on the roads of his arteries. Richard becomes obsessed with this idea, and it will be brought up later on.

So, Richard, an artist, buys a stationary bike in order to lose weight. He sets it up in his basement, and he actually uses it all the time. On the blank wall in front of him, Richard puts a map of the United States, imagining where he travels with every mile he pedals. As he continues to daydream on his bike, he decides to paint a mural of these metaphorical workmen that his doctor described to him. He pains four workmen clearing fat off of a road. However, the mural starts to come to life.

When he rides, he enters a trance where he actually enters his mural. When he sleeps, he dreams of the workmen. One of the workmen enters his dream which inspires him to paint his garage. However, when he paints the garage, he discovers that this workman has hung himself. Richard realizes how serious this is all getting, so he decides to dismantle the stationary bike.

Richard parallels drug addiction to his addiction to this stationary bike. He tries to make his addiction to riding it to be less than that of someone addicted to drugs. He ponders the idea of doing the drug or the addiction that "one last time," thinking that drug addicts say it all the time and don't mean it, but he is somehow stronger and really can do it one last time. In any event, his one last time is the most intense and really does become the last time.

He interacts with the workmen in the mural who are angry that Richard has led to the death of their friend. Since they've cleaned up all the fat in the streets, they no longer have work. Their lives are ruined. Richard tries to tell them that they are all imaginary, but their comebacks seem to make him think otherwise. He tries to take one of their hats with him almost as a test. He wonders if it was all a dream.

How it ends: Richard receives a hat in the mail that says LIPIDS on it, affirming that the mural, perhaps, was real.

Interesting huh? It read very quickly, and was very interesting as you wondered what was real and what wasn't. It was interesting to hear him parallel what constitutes addiction, and it may even coincide with King's own thoughts of addiction. I liked that the story was about such a solitary guy in his home and how even though it seemed so mundane, it became so outrageous. You can tell that King spends a lot of time at home to concoct such a story. It's not a bad thing--I spend a lot of time at home as well, and because of that, I could see where he could concoct a story like this. It's like he had a crazy daydream, or dream, and then put it down on paper. Who doesn't have odd daydreams like this one? It almost sounds inspired by some sort of drug or drink anyway. I wonder if the wall started to come to life man... Crazy.

People write about what they know, right? King knows about the darker side. He knows about life at home (it's the life of the writer). He knows about addiction. He must know about daydreams or imagination from the intense stories and novels he has concocted. And, he knows how it is to be an artist, even if it is a different kind of artist, he paints even more elaborate paintings with his words.

As always, I am impressed with King. He is definitely one of our great writers alive today and should be consistantly commended for his incredible imagination. I feel like more and more people try to repress the imagination, but I admire those who connect with it. This is one reason that I really respect this man. He continues to come up with stories that are so engaging to a wide audience. Now THAT is talent.

So what do you think of "Stationary Bike?"

Men at Work

2010-09-23T14:55:00.001-07:00

Recently, I've been getting into some old-school 80s music, and it's surprising the hell out of me. I used to loathe the 80s even though I am a byproduct of it. But, I am coming to terms with the decade. Why not embrace it?

Well, Men at Work has caught my attention. There's just something about them that really makes me want to dance. And I hate dancing. But, on a similar parallel, the New Yorker published a poem called "Men at Work." Weird coincidence. So, here it is!

Men at Work

by Julie Bruck

I said, "Do you speak-a my language?"
He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich.
-"Down Under"

We middle-aged sense them immediately:
four brittle pop stars sprawled across
the rigid fiberglass chairs at the airport gate.
It's not just that they're Australian, that gorgeous
thunk of English, the stacked electric-guitar cases
draped with black leather jackets, on their deep
tans on this Sunday night in midwinter Toronto
that holds everyone's attention, drawn as we are,
pale filings into their pull. Even their rail-thin
lassitude attracts us, as it must Doug, the portly
Air Canada gate manager in his personalized jacket,
who arrives to greet the band, cranking hands
and cracking jokes. Doug, who must live in
Mississauga with the wife and a couple of kids,
and who insists the boys come back to play Toronto
next year, when we clutchers of boarding passes
will have abandoned our carry-ons for tickets
to a midsized arena and a ressurrected band
whose lyrics never did make sense but
which are laced to a beat that won't let go--
propelling us down the carpeted ramps
of late-night flights on feeder airlines, hips
back in charge of our strange young bodies,
now shaking down runways in rows.

I wonder if this was inspired by a true story that occurred to her in an airport or whether it was inspired by the song itself in which she invented this fictional story to paint the picture of how she sees this old band today. Yes, the lyrics aren't really memorable (more funny than deep), but the beat is killer! It does make me want to dance. I love how she constructs the sentences of her poem, carrying on for line after line--the emphasis drawn on the final word in each line. Excellent word choice. A story to hook you. Allusions to connect with. I love it!

What do you think of "Men at Work?"

Rant

2010-09-23T14:05:00.000-07:00

Chuck Palahniuk, I believe, is one of the best writers alive today. Would I recommend to all people? No. Would I recommend him to most people? No. He has such a specific audience that it's hard to peg who would enjoy him. However, I think I fall under that small category that would.

Does a good writer have to appeal to a lot of people?

Not a bad question to ponder.

In terms of Palahniuk, he is just SO out there. He writes about content that might make you embarassed to be reading in public (as I feel). Certain scenes or subjects are either too extreme or gory or explicit, so it's borderline embarassing to give it the stamp of approval. He's certainly not someone to recommend to a high school student (for fear of parents getting angry). However, he is someone to recommend to another adult.

His writing, I find, is so intelligent. Rant is one example that shows how diverse and intelligent he is. The ending became so complicated that I had to reread sections to make sure I was understanding it. After completing research during my post-reading exercise that I do, I discovered that Rant is the first book in a trilogy. Imagine my excitement!

Rant has scenes that made me cringe as I read it. He is so descriptive that it's hard not to physically contort your face and continuously mold your countenance into ways that people near you might start to question what you're reading. But, I think this makes him both memorable and effective. His description of the rotten, dirty, poverty-stricken town just makes you uncomfortable when you read it. Normally, when people read, they like to be taken to a nice place to escape the one they currently live in. When you read this setting, you are transported to a place where you just feel downright icky. It's not something you want to escape to. It's somewhere you want to flee from. But, that really encapsulates what he's trying to get across. This is why Rant wants to leave.

What makes this book unique is that it's told by everyone that Rant encounters except for Rant (if you've read this, you know that this is slightly untrue, but I will not go into further detail as not to spoil it just yet). Rant is the main character. The first scene introduces Rant's father on an airplane. Rant is known throughout the country as this horrible, horrible person for starting a nationwide rabies epidemic, and he has just died. The interviewer asks Rant's father questions about him, and then we flash back in time to see who he was through everyone he knew.

The true title of the story is Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey, Rant's true name being Buster Casey. I thought it was so interesting to read a story through people's interpretations. You have to pick through what people say to see what is real instead of taking everyone's word for truth on face value. You read a range of people's interviews from friends to enemies, from teachers to parents. It's very cool to watch it all unfold while still following a plot.

Rant is such a deep, diverse character. Even though he seems to be portrayed as a villain (seemingly killing family members with spider bites and spreading rabies), he is very intelligent. He discovers valuable coins and spreads the wealth in his poor town. I think it's interesting to see how the town manipulates one another and how they spend the money. Rant also graduates early from high school because he brings up an adolescent male issue that the town just wants to get rid of. I don't want to tell more details; it could be inappropriate for some viewers. He makes deep comments where it shows that he's trying to live this life differently than others and experience all that he can (not a bad human trait). The reader is constantly conflicted with his villainous side and his admirable side.

He seems to have some superhuman qualities as well, which brings in the fantasy/sci fi twist towards the end. I will not give away the end. If you would like to see it, view Wikipedia's explanation of it. Rant has hightened senses--he can smell or taste something and tell much more than an average person could tell about it. When he kisses girls (and more) he can taste what they've eaten for days past. He leaves messages on eggs for his friends when he passes; he writes in wax on the eggs and in order to read the message, viewers must dunk the egg in some kind of ink to read the message. Interesting.

Throughout the novel, we travel all throughout Rant's life. We see his childhood. We see his adolescence. We see his transition from the small town to the big city where he becomes a Party Crasher. Once Rant arrives in the city, we see that it is a dystopian future where the world is divided into Daytimers and Nighttimers, two different classes. Daytimers, as it appears, are classier individuals who play by the rules, and Nighttimers are oppressed individuals looking for a wild, good time.

Of course, Rant is a Nighttimer. He is involved in a group called the Party Crashers who drive cars late at night with the purpose to crash them. Each night has a different theme. For example, one night may be Christmas, and cars well decorate themselves with trees on the top of them, lights around the sides, and someone dressed as Santa driving the car and elves as passengers. It is when Rant becomes a Party Crasher that he meets the woman he loves, Echo Lawrence, a physically deformed girl.

I will not spoil the ending in this entry, so read elsewhere for more!

Overall, I really enjoyed the book. If you like sci fi twists or dystopias, then you will like where the book goes. If you can stomach some hard core descriptions, then you can make it through the book. But seriously, it's really interesting and it's really entertaining. Give it a try, but if you don't like it, don't blame me!

So what do you think of Rant?

Shutter Island

2010-07-19T10:02:00.000-07:00

Scorsese hits it big with Shutter Island. A lot of current movies are so shallow and don't allow for in-depth conversation to follow afterward. I know a good movie when I feel like I have to go back and rewatch it or when I need to converse with someone about how they viewed the film. Shutter Island is one of those movies.

I would call it a psychological thriller. Essentially, Leonardo DiCaprio's character Ted comes to a remote island, Shutter Island, which houses the country's worst psychological inmates. They apparently perform kinds of tests to help them "get better," but we see that some of these tests might be pretty intense.

Ted is a federal marshall who comes to the island to investigate an escaped inmate, a woman who drowned her three children and has run away on the island. Him and his partner must locate her, as she is a threat to those around her. But, as the movie goes on, the environment seems to get stranger and stranger, and it seems that Ted will never be able to leave the island. He is becoming a patient there himself!

SPOILER: Brilliant twist. I never saw it coming. I also thought that they did a tremendous job explaining what was going on. Apparently, Ted is a patient on Shutter Island, the worst of all, and they created a giant role play scenario that involved the entire island. They all "pretend" that he is a federal marshal in hopes of connecting with his true self and discovering who he is and why he's there.

Ted's wife is really the one who murdered their children. After he discovers this, Ted kills his wife and creates a fake world for himself because he doesn't want to believe his real one. Apparently Ted has been on the island for two years and suffers tremendous hallucinations. They have him on extreme medication. They have been trying different methods to get him to understand what has happened and moved past it (the role play scenario being their biggest attempt), but he normally relapses and loops back to his made-up persona.

Unfortunately, the role play idea only works for one day. In the last scene, Ted goes back into character, and they take him to the lighthouse (or so it is assumed) for him to be tested/fixed.

I thought the film really made you think. You saw the movie from DiCaprio's perspective (not reality), so at first you think that the island is the bad guy, the antagonist. You think, How can he escape? Can he tell teh world of their monstrosities? You root for DiCaprio. But, as the movie goes on, as the hallucinations get more intense, this all starts to reverse. Instead of the antagonist, the island becomes more of a support, a help. DiCaprio really becomes more delusional and violent as the pieces of reality start to unlock.

What really made me understand the overall idea of the film was when he spoke with a friend of his in a basement jail in Ward C. He said, "You're a mouse in a maze," which he truly was. They were all playing around him, and you can truly see that on a second watch of the film.

END OF SPOILER.

Scorsese really does create some of the best films out there. I was engrossed in the film and had to rewatch it again the second day to piece things together and have a full understanding of all of its parts. It is so interesting to watch all of the characters and dissect their dialogue and behaviors on the second time around. You'll see why.

DiCaprio creates some pretty good films as well. He's grown on me over the years. As other child actors fizzle out, he seems to get stronger. I really do think he is talented. I sympathized with his character throughout it and felt so bad for him. He conveys so much emotion that seems heartfelt. I think he was perfect for the role.

I also didn't know that this movie was first a book. I would definitely check it out. It's probably much better than the movie as it must really get into more psychological frameworks inside the minds of these patients.

So what do you think of Shutter Island?

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

2010-06-23T10:08:00.000-07:00

Talk about a breakthrough novel.

I haven't read such a good book in a long time. I was COMPLETELY hooked on this book, and I would put it at the top of your reading list if you haven't read it yet. The book I am talking about is The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. I never made the connection while I was reading it, but I discovered that this novel is a retelling of Hamlet. This adds even more interest to the novel in terms of discussing and dissecting it.

Quick Synopsis: Edgar Sawtelle is a mute, and only child, living with his parents on a farm in Wisconsin. His parents raise dogs, Sawtelle dogs, for a living. These dogs are special and have been meticulously breeded for two generations to create the perfect dog. Enter Edgar's uncle, his father's brother, Claude. Claude has just got out of prison and is staying with the family. Fights between the brothers ensue, and mysteriously, one day Edgar's father Gar dies in the barn. Edgar strongly believes that Claude is the perpetrator as he flees the scene.

More synopsis but it might spoil... While coping with the death, Edgar's mother Trudy asks for Claude's help one night when the dogs get in a brutal fight. Claude ends up staying at the house, soon becoming Trudy's lover. Edgar stages a scene between the dogs where they reenact the murder, and Claude turns ghost white, confirming his suspicions. Edgar's fury rises, and he raises a pitchfork to kill Claude. Unfortunately, he has struck the wrong man, and their vet dies instead. Scared half to death, Edgar flees the scene, running away on the spot with three of his dogs. Edgar survives in the woods for months, stealing food from anyone he can. He finally seeks refuge with a man named Henry who doesn't ask many questions. Edgar regains his health there and eventually makes it back home to see his mother and confront Claude.

The ending: Edgar leaves a note at his home that he will return the next day. Claude hides this note from Trudy, hoping to eliminate Edgar since he knows his dirty secret. Claude conspires with the vet's son Glen (who is a police officer) to find Edgar and question him, since he is the one responsible for his father's death. Glen corners Edgar in the barn and tries to knock him out with ether. Edgar throws a noxious substance into Glen's eyes as a defense mechanism, and Glen is instantly blinded. With the ether knocked to the floor, it hits a lamp which lights the entire barn on fire. Edgar frantically tries to save his father's documents (which is everything his father and grandfather lived for to create the Sawtelle dogs). Claude enters to appear that he is helping Edgar, but in reality, he fills a syringe with poison and stabs it into Edgar's neck, just like his father. While waiting for the poison to kick in, Claude waits, but he waits too long. The barn fills with smoke and they both die. The dogs escape the barn and run into the wild.

End of spoilers!

The novel had me curious the entire time. I wanted to see what would happen to Edgar. Wroblewski had me invested in the character. The character is extremely different from traditional characters in literature as well because he literally can't speak (which makes his last name even more ironic--SawTELLe). He sees something and can't find ways to communicate this to others. He never really does share it either.

I love that the novel is broken down into parts or sections, each charting a significant event that occurs that will change the fate of the characters. The chapters are Forte's Children (background information and dog history), Three Griefs (Gar's death, death of his family as Claude replaces father, and discovery of dead father's ghost/secret), What Hands Do (Edgar accidentally kills vet), Chequamegon (Edgar flees and lives with Henry), and Poison (Edgar returns and is killed, along with Claude). Very fitting titles.

I really enjoyed seeing the relationship build between Edgar and his dog Almondine. They were raised together, like siblings, and they could communicate even though they really had no means to. Edgar would sign to the dogs, and they seemed to understand what he wanted. I thought that that would be hard--as a dog trainer, Edgar can't even yell or speak to the dogs, but they seemed to understand his demands (even through signing). Almondine and Edgar separate, however, when Edgar runs away. SPOILER: Edgar discovers Almondine's grave when he returns. I wanted to cry. That, to me, was the saddest part of the novel, aside from the obvious sad parts, deaths of major characters. END OF SPOILER.

Especially now since I have a new puppy, I really started to connect with dog owners and relationships that humans have with dogs. To say the least, it was a timely novel for me. I understand how connected you can be to a dog and the difficulties in communication (and he had more than I do!). I understand how crucial it is to breed a wonderful, obedient dog, and I appreciate the means that the Sawtelles went to in order to create that. I was very interested to read and learn about HOW to breed. That fascinated me.

The setting also made me feel connected to the novel. I felt calm and at peace, as the setting lies on a rural farm in Wisconsin. The slow way of life, the old country farm house was inviting. It was a nice place to escape to and an easy one to visualize.

This is a book that stayed with me. I thought about it when I wasn't reading it. When I see book covers and pictures of boys with dogs, I feel a sense of melancholy. I feel Edgar's character and feel his ultimate love and loss. When someone mentions the book, I feel passion and excitement. I want to discuss this with others, but I don't know anyone who's read it! Someone connect! Someone read it! Someone discuss!

This would be a GREAT film to make into a movie. I truly hope that they do. The story is classic (connecting with Shakespeare but putting a modern twist on it), and it's extremely engaging. Overall, I can't stress how impressed I am with the novel. It is definitely a MUST READ.

So what do you think of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle?

Harvesting the Heart

2010-06-22T11:46:00.000-07:00

I am still on my Jodi Picoult rampage, and I am destined to finish all of her books by the end of the year. (I'm making some decent head-way...) Anyway, my newest accomplishment is her second novel, Harvesting the Heart. This novel, I found, was a little bit different from her other novels. Instead of creating multiple characters and getting insde their heads, it focused mainly on two characters and their romantic relationship (and struggles) together.

Her other novels seem to focus around a central, controversial issue. A trial is usually involved. Multiple characters give their side of the story through their point of view. Families are split in this crucial issue.

But, Harvesting the Heart is slightly different from her normal formula. This could either draw or repel readers, but I think most readers like to find out for themselves.

The controversial issue in this novel, even though it's not the BIGGEST focus, is abortion. The protagonist, Paige, has an abortion during her senior year of high school. She has many good reasons to do so. She doesn't want to be tied down to the small town outside of Chicago that she was raised in. She's not sure that her boyfriend is really the one who is best for her, and she knows that she will marry him if she has the baby. She wants to go to college to pursue her budding artistic talent, which she wouldn't be able to if she had the baby. She wants to travel. She is not mature enough or financially stable to raise this baby. She still lives with her father too.

So, Paige has the abortion and runs. Paige has learned to literally "run" from her problems because that's what her mother did when she was younger. Her mother ran from her family and never spoke to them again.

Later on, once Paige becomes pregnant with her husband's, Nicholas's, child, she starts to remember small things about her mother which makes her want to find her now more than ever, especially since she is becoming a mother soon herself.

Paige relocates to Boston where she meets her future husband Nicholas, a prize of a husband who is going to school to be a doctor. He is from an affluent family, was on the crew team, is stunningly gorgeous, and has traveled the world. Even though he is much older, they still seem to hit it off. They are physically drawn to one another which a passion that excites them. When Nicholas takes Paige home to visit his parents, the Prescott's, they do not like her. Nicholas stops talking to them, they get married, and they live estranged.

A couple years after the marriage, Paige becomes pregnant and starts to fear that she will not be a good mother. She has still not pursued her art career (they had to put her career on hold while they paid for Nicholas to go to med school), and she feels too young to be a mother. She feels like she is destined to fail at motherhood because of her previous abortion AND because she never had a mother herself. Paige still has withheld her abortion secret from Nicholas.

Unlike other novels that express the glory of motherhood, Harvesting the Heart captures the opposite. Picoult shows the struggle that some mothers have. They don't feel like they know how to do these chores, they lose their independence and freedom, they feel worthless, etc. Paige truly makes you feel her struggle. Meanwhile, Nicholas is swept away in his job (being an amazing heart surgeon) and escapes to the hospital often so that he has little responsibility for the child. This creates arguments between the couple, and they grow farther and father apart.

One day, Paige accidentally drops the baby on his head, and she feels that she almost killed him. She feels like she is an unfit mother. When Nicholas comes home, they get in a huge argument about how Paige isn't a responsible mother, and she runs. She takes off in her car and doesn't know where she's heading.

Paige ends up running to Chicago where she visits her father and ex-boyfriend. She then figures out that she really wants to visit her mother, and tracks her down to live in North Carolina as she is a horse trainer.

Meanwhile, Nicholas is furious and cuts off Paige's credit cards. When Paige calls, Nicholas is violently mean and angry and refuses to get back together with her. He struggles with finding childcare and eventually must turn to his mother for help. His mother accepts with open arms.

Paige travels to North Carolina to visit her mother, and it's not what she expected. Her mother is nice and she stays there a while as Paige tries to figure her out. Her mother didn't want to be tied down (which is what Paige is wondering herself), but there is a major difference in them that makes Paige leave and return home: Paige cares too much about her child to leave him alone without her.

When Paige returns, Nicholas is a brooding maniac, allowing her to sleep on the porch and yelling obsene things at her. Not knowing what to do, Paige follows him around at work and eventually follows him to his parents' house to see her child. Surprisingly, Mrs. Prescott welcomes her in with open arms. She explains that she didn't like her at first because she seemed to be submissive and to have a weak spine, but this has proven her wrong. Paige moves in with them which makes Nicholas even more furious. Paige does anything she can to win him back. Her biggest move is getting a job at the hospital where she shadows patients and draws pictures of them which become an instant hit. They are displayed all around the hospital which surrounds Nicholas with his wife.

Nicholas struggles the most with Paige's abortion secret, which she reveals to him when she returns. Nicholas feels like he can't trust his wife. She is a stranger who abandons her family. Paige tries her hardest to show him that he is wrong, but that is an extremely difficult thing to prove.

The ending seemed very open as if we were to decide what would happen to the couple. I assume that they will be together because we have watched their struggle and slow acceptance of one another, but it's not crystal clear. Maybe all relationships aren't crystal clear, so this actually makes their situation more realistic. Who knows?

I thought the title was almost too cute. With Nicholas being a heart surgeon and relationship problems, it was accurate on many levels. Hearing about the politics of the hospital and the hierarchy was interesting (as they hosted dinner parties and Paige felt worthless). I liked hearing descriptions of open-heart surgeries and how it feels to literally hold a life in your hands. I'm so removed from the medical world that I find it interesting to read about because it's so foreign to me. (Knock on wood).

The novel alternates between the two in the couple. I really liked seeing both perspectives of the relationship because I felt like I could see each side of the problem. I feel like I sided more with Paige because, to me, Nicholas seemed irrational at times. Yes, that's a hard thing to deal with, but he just seemed to be too pouty about it. At least hear her out. I started to get really frustrated with his character towards the end. I just wanted to yell, "GET OVER IT!" at him, but I really couldn't. I could just keep reading.

Overall, I enjoyed it. I learned some things about horseback riding and open-heart surgeries. I learned about the struggles of being a young mother (or a mother in general) and about relationships in general. There is a lot to be learned here. It's a clear dissection of a relationship, and discussing it with friends would truly be an interesting conversation.

So what do you think of Harvesting the Heart?

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

2010-06-22T11:12:00.000-07:00

Sherman Alexie is an amazing writer. I was first captivated by a short story he wrote (which I highly recommend), "Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian to See Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star Spangled Banner' at Woodstock." Incredible story. Then I read a bunch of his poems, my favorite being "Buffalo Bill." Powerful poem.

Alexie is most noted for his writings on Native Americans. He has different mediums of conveying stories about them and identifying their current struggles. I am fascinated by how honest and revealing he is. He is truly an educator in this format.

Today, I read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, a novel targeted at young adults. It is a novel that includes pictures, since the protagonist is an aspiring cartoonist, which help depict the plot as it unfolds. The pictures are another excellent way of conveying the progonist's feelings and describing (and literally picturing) new characters as they enter each scene.

For struggling readers, this is a great book. It has graphic novel features but is mostly text. The chapters are short and the narration isn't over-the-top. The narration is conversational and to-the-point. He actually has a pretty solid flow as he reads. He uses a lot of repetition to show how the protagonist is coping and what he observes in certain scenes. He'll vary longer paragraphs to quick, choppy ones. Longer text is broken apart by lists, pictures, dialogue, or sound effects. It's really easy to get through.

I would LOVE to teach this to an older middle school group (8th grade) or early high school group (9th or 10th grade). There is so much to discuss in this novel, and I think the students would REALLY connect with the plot. This novel would also really appeal to boys for many reasons. There is a male narrator. He plays sports, and there is a lot of description towards the end about his basketball team. He is involved with a girl and honestly (almost too honestly) describes his thoughts and feelings about it.

However, I would also be skeptical to teach it because of some content issues. There is a lot of talk about sex and maturation, using vulgar words. The book is almost too honest to the point where a school might have hesitations passing it. There are minor swear words (ass, fricking, fag, etc). The protagonist's father is an alcoholic, which could actually be a good thing to talk about in a mature classroom environment. But the group reading it would have to be mature enough to discuss these topics and not get too hung up on these small things.

The plot of the novel is interesting, I think anyway. The 9th grade narrator, Arnold, is confronted by a white teacher (since he lives and goes to school on his reservation) and is told that the only way for him to excel in this life is to leave the reservation. The reservation is depicted as having tons and tons of drunks that are poor and struggling. It's a vicious cycle. Arnold takes his advice and goes to a neighboring all-white school which introduces a plethora of issues and problems. He is basically outcasted from the reservation and is not understood by peers at first. He slowly makes friends, and even a girlfriend, through his wit and charm, and by being an incredible basketball player.

Along the way, Arnold struggles with getting rides to school, being accepted by white peers who tease him for being Indian, having other students accept his poverty, taking care of his drunk father, dealing with deaths in his family, losing his best friend Rowdy (who was angry that he abandoned him and the reservation), and then finally, playing his former school and best friend in basketball.

SPOILER: Arnold ends up beating Rowdy and his school, which was formerly undefeated, and soon rekindles his friendship with Rowdy after his sister passes, which Rowdy blames on Arnold. After Arnold left to go to his new school, his sister ran away with another Native American to live in a trailer in Montana. The trailer catches on fire during a party, and they are too drunk to awaken. The novel ends with Rowdy and Arnold playing basketball, finally understanding that Rowdy is meant to stay at the reservation but Arnold is meant to leave on go on to bigger things.

END OF SPOILER.

I find it so sad and disturbing to see what has become of reservations and Native Americans. Stereotypes are terrible. It seems like they're coping for a lot of crap that we have put them through over many, many years. To write about it, from experiencing it like Alexie has, is interesting for someone to read about who has not a full grasp of what it is like. And for this, I think it's even more imperative for teens to read. It's good for them to understand so much about cultures they don't fully know about, especially cultures that exist within our own country. Knowledge helps kill ignorance, and maybe this novel could bring that one step closer!

Personally, I loved the integration of pictures. It's different than most books. I also loved how brutally honest the narrator is. He swears, he talks about his sexuality, and he paints his culture accurately (or so I can only speculate). It's refreshing. It clearly sounds like a teenage boy, and I think a lot of high school students could appreciate that. And, he's funny. Very funny.

I recommend it, but I would think about who I was going to recommend it to. Some parents might not want their kids reading it, and I can see why. Some might not care. Some of the language and material may not be new to some, but it may be to others. Personally, I liked it and would recommend it, but I have to put that warning out there just in case.

Alexie is so strong in creative titles that make them sound so interesting that you just have to read them. Anything by Alexie is a joy to read. And this definitely makes the list.

What do you think of The Absolultey True Diary of a Part-Time Indian?

Nineteen Minutes

2010-04-20T17:09:00.000-07:00

I continue swiftly along on my Jodi Picoult rampage (if one can call cruising through an author's set of books a rampage). Last week I finished Nineteen Minutes, a novel focusing on bullying and school shootings. I really seem to enjoy her stories that center around teenagers in tough situations. Maybe I can relate more to them because I work in a setting concerning teenagers. Anyway, this one really spoke to me (again, maybe it's because I work in a school).

I haven't seen a school shooting book come out yet. It's almost like it's too soon for someone to touch this subject after recent school shootings, but I think Picoult does a good job at understanding WHY shootings could happen. She really goes back into the past to anaylze the years it takes to build up to something this devastating. And normally, like she shows, it's something that builds, and it takes a bunch of people to contribute to the pain that festers inside to make someone commit such a heinous act.

Before I start, why would the first cover posted above be the best choice for a cover for this book? The focus is not about love. This makes it look like a teen romance book. If anything, it's anti-that. It shows bad teenage love. It's more about pain and suffering at the hands of bullying. Why have this one then? I say, BAD CHOICE!

Ninteen Minutes is a clever name for the novel. Nineteen students are killed, which alludes to the title right off the bat. However, I really like how Picoult opens the book. She lists off anything that can potentially happen in nineteen minutes:

"In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn; color your hair; watch a third of a hockey game. In nineteen minutes, you can bake scones or get a tooth filled by a dentist; you can fold laundry for a family of five. Nineteen minutes is how long it took the Tennessee Titans to sell out of tickets to the playoffs. It’s the amount of time it takes to listen to the Yes song 'Close to the Edge.' It’s the length of a sitcom, minus the commercials. It’s the driving distance from the Vermont border to the town of Sterling, NH. In nineteen minutes, you can order a pizza and get it delivered. You can read a story to a child or have your oil changed. You can walk two miles. You can sew a hem. In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world; or you
can just jump off it. In nineteen minutes, you can get revenge."

In nineteen minutes, Peter Houghton invades the school and seeks revenge on those who bullied him.

The novel skips back and forth from the present to the past as the reader discovers why this shooting happened and discovers all of the pieces to the puzzle about the shooting itself. Like other Picoult novels, there is a mystery twist at the end (concerning the shooting) that changes EVERYTHING in the book. Honestly, I didn't see this coming in the slightest. She normally has a twist, but this one came from left field. In retrospect, I could've seen it. She was really building up to it. But afterwards, it makes a lot of sense.

Peter was a troubled kid, picked on by boys ever since his first day of kindergarten when his lunch box is tossed off the school bus. Throughout school, he had little support from administration who did not heavily punish the boys who tormented him. He even had an elementary school teacher who encouraged Peter to stand up for himself and did not force the bullies to stop picking on him.

A much better cover:

Peter's mother tried to make Peter fit in, but he just wasn't suited for it. She made him join the soccer team, which led to more embarassment and teasing from teammates, especially since he never played. He was picked on in the showers for being so small. And even worse for Peter was his older brother Joey, the perfect son who Peter could never live up to. He was an athlete, a smart guy, a popular guy--one who even picked on his little brother in school to save his own reputation. Unfortunately, Joey is killed by a drunk driver, making him almost become a saint. Part of this adds to Peter's pressure which leads up to the shooting.

In addition, the past connects Peter with Josie Cormier (daughter of the judge Alex Cormier) as good friends. Peter and Josie were childhood friends until Peter showed Josie his father's rifles (the ones he uses to shoot later on when he is a junior). Alex forbids Josie to play with Peter anymore even though they remain friends until they are in sixth grade. Josie starts to hang out with the popular crowd, and their friendship deteriorates.

Another level is added to the mix because of their dismantled friendship. Peter's mother, Lacy, was Alex's midwife and coached her into having Josie even though she was a single mother and aspiring judge. They became friends through this struggle. This paints the history of Alex's troubled relationship with Josie's father, her law professor, who she eventually beats out to receive the position of judge. Their friendship breaks apart when Peter's and Josie's does, but it sparks up a little bit at the end when Alex starts to smypathize with Peter during the trial.

Before the shooting, Josie was going out with Matt Royston, one of the victims. He severely teased Peter, even pulling his pants down in the cafeteria in front of everyone. On another occasion, his group of friends sent out Peter's love letter to Josie (since he had a crush on her) to the entire school. This made Peter look like a fool. This incident triggered some of the deaths on the day of the school shooting.

Some other percursors were linked to the possibility of him becoming a shooter as well: He created his own violent video games on the computer. They were about going into a school and shooting. He set fire to a dumpster at work and then wrote about it during school (Josie told on him which further severed their relationship--but they do make up in a jammed elevator where she lets him kiss her briefly). His father took him hunting which is where he developed his shooting skills. His father then feels tremendous guilt that he cannot shake for the duration of the novel.

In addition, the novel focuses on Josie's relationship with Matt and trying to fit into the popular crowd. She really sees these people for the shallow teens that they are. She hates how they pick on people, but she doesn't want to turn on them because then they would turn on her. She doesn't want to become a target. Matt is also abusive to her, physically harming her and then taking advantage of her sexually. He has moments where he sort of seems to care about her, but the relationship is really shallow and he is really selfish. He doesn't even care when she becomes pregnant and miscarriages. Josie's actions in the end have a purpose based on this information.

In terms of the shooting, Peter came into the school not really planned and killed students who bullied him and some random students as well. He killed a history teacher who was gay (perhaps to hide the fact that he caught Peter at a gay bar trying to figure out his own sexuality). If Peter WAS gay, which he wasn't, that would add another layer to the teasing and bullying. I think Peter must have been bisexual. Anyway, he sat down in the cafeteria to have a bowl of cereal and then continued to shoot victims. I think he stopped because it was the only time in school where he felt in control and where no one would bother or tease him (even though that sounds sick).

And as for the twist (SPOILER ALERT): Josie admits on the stand to killing Matt Royston. The way that the bullets were found in the locker room at the end of the novel make it impossible for Peter to take the blame for it. Josie is standing face to face with Peter and Matt when a gun slips out of Peter's backpack. Matt yells for Josie to shoot Peter, but she turns and shoots Matt in the chest. Matt is laying there dying, and Josie panicks and asks Peter to do something. Peter shoots him in the head, and they both faint before Peter could kill himself--what he wanted to do originally. It is hinted at the end of the novel that Peter does kill himself in prison. Josie is sentenced to five years in prison and her mother visits her.

Josie's mother Alex, during the novel, engages in a romance with Patrick, the lead police chief on the case. Alex eventually steps off the case, yet the two are still romantically intertwined. Apparently Patrick was a character in another novel of Picoult's, but he finally seeks his closure with Alex as they prepare to have a child at the end of the novel.

End of SPOILER.

I thought the topic was a really good one to discuss with others. Picoult gets inside the mind of a troubled victim to make us see why something like this might occur. It also points a finger at the tormentors who never got in trouble for being extremely cruel. It explains WHY bullies pick on others and the effect it has on those bullied. I found that exploration to be very interesting.

Picoult also focuses on the life of a judge, which I enjoyed. I never thought of the judge's perspective before, and the female judge's perspective was interesting. Alex kept connecting back her role as a mother to that of a judge which made awesome connections throughout.

Picoult does a great job sequencing of time to keep you hooked. We keep switching perspectives of characters to make the plot well-rounded. Then we keep going forward and backward which adds more layers to the characters and their stories. Of all the Picoult novels I've read, this was definitely one of the best. I was hooked on this one and couldn't stop reading it for days on end until I finally finished it.

Teens have so much to deal with. That transition that teens have when they go from childhood to teenage-hood when friends shift around and people become popular is hard. It hurts feelings. It makes people feel inferior. Being bullied is even harder. It's even more pathetic on the end of the bully because they need to make someone feel smaller than them because they have their own issues and insecurities.

I can't stand bullying. I can't stand seeing it in my classroom and I try my best to stop it when I can. But, the sad thing is, there is only so much that administration and teachers can do. Bullies can be smart, and they do it in places where there is little supervision like the locker room, the cafeteria, the halls, or the bus. Those areas are terrible targets for poor victims, and I feel bad that bullying is still a terrible problem. I don't even think it's one that can be stopped. People always want to have a hierarchy, and even if you hold programs on anti-bullying, it will still happen. Bullies don't peg themselves as bullies; they do it for psychological reasons that they may not even recognize. It's a sad cycle that I don't think will stop no matter how much we try.

But, we can at least try to be aware of it. Reading about the topic and dissecting WHY it happens (i.e. reading a book like this) is at least one step. Maybe if there is more discussion generated, more awareness can help more preventing--not to stop it completely. That would be a dream.

So what do you think of Nineteen Minutes?

Downtown Owl

2010-04-11T16:16:00.000-07:00

Chuck Klosterman's first (and only to date) piece of fiction, Downtown Owl, was a really interesting read. I've read some of his non-fictional pieces and really enjoyed his commentary, especially on pop culture, his specialty. Thus, I was really interested to see what he could do with a piece of fiction, and I was very impressed, overall.

Downtown Owl takes place in a fictional town of Owl, North Dakota. Klosterman himself is from the midwest and most likely drew from his own experiences growing up in a small town like this one. The novel transfers between three narrators. Mitch is a football player who is depressed for no reason really. Julia is a history teacher who just moved to the town straight out of college. Horace is an older man who hangs out at the local diner and interacts with the town folk. Through their commentaries, a narrative is woven.

Mitch's perspective focuses on how lame high school is. He talks a lot about his loathed football coach and English teacher who sleeps with the students and gets away with it. The town turns a blind eye. It's pretty gross. He already impregnated two girls. Then they move. Then he moves on. Mitch also talks about his sports and hanging out with his friends, which this again revolves around current pop culture.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that this takes place in 1983-1984? Awesome decade to encapsulate. Not much is written about the 80s in retrospect, since it's a bit recent, but I thought Klosterman did an awesome job taking us back to that time period.

Connecting with those years, Mitch's class reads Orwell's 1984, and connections to the novel are quite interesting to read.

Julia's perspectives focuses on teaching in a small town and not knowing anyone. She becomes familiarized with the customs and nicknames of the locals (the nicknames having no importance whatsoever to the character of the person, just a stupid story that was funny at one point). Julia feels like an alien in this town and is bombarded with folk who want to take her out because she's new. She goes to the local bars quite often, especially with her two sidekicks. Julia meets Vance Druid, a local football celebrity, and their interactions are really interesting.

Klosterman's writing style is unique from other writers. In one instance, in a conversation between Vance and Julia, Klosterman alternates between, "What she said" and "What she meant," and then to "What he said" and "What he meant." It analyzes a conversation between two people who are both flirting with the other one but have different intentions. It was fascinating to read, and dead-on.

Horace's perspective deals with talking with locals about other people in the town. Horace talks a lot about his deceased wife, which it seems that he either killed or led to her death somehow. It's a little mysterious. He likes living alone now and talks a lot about the past with his wife and his life alone now.

SPOILER: The end was captivated, and it came from nowhere! I never saw this happening! Since there really wasn't a STRONG central plot, the ending tied all three narratives together. I liked it so much because it came from left field. On the last night, the town is hit with a terrible snowstorm that ends up killing sixteen people. Two of those people are Julia and Mitch, who talk about their final minutes. Those narratives are fascinating. Horace survives the storm and walks us through how he does so.

Very strange way to end it. Why kill off two of those narrators? Why kill THOSE narrators? They were the youngest and had the most to learn/gain. Why let the one who is oldest and wouldn't mind dying, die? Klosterman even foreshadows this event with a news story at the beginning of the novel, but the reader has no idea what this connects to until the end. And, we don't know who dies.

End of spoiler.

Even though the plot isn't 100% solid, it was really interesting to read through. Klosterman's characters engage in thought-provoking and/or humorous discussion that you can't put down. You might even bring up some of their points in discussion in your real life. And, he intersperses musical commentary and 80s references to keep you interested as well.

Overall, if you like Klosterman or are looking for a good piece of fiction to read, Downtown Owl is for you. I really enjoyed it and was disappointed when I finished it. I sat down and read it in the span of one day, but it can be spread out and enjoyed over more time as well.

So what do you think of Downtown Owl?

Diary

2010-04-09T17:16:00.000-07:00

I couldn't put down Chuck Palahniuk's Diary today. I finished it all in one day. Palahniuk is a writer that fascinates me. He comes up with these insane, twisted, and intellectual stories with plots that no one else could ever come up with, and you become entransed in this insane alternate universe. He creates some bizarre plots, but we should add this one to the list, for sure.

One of the novel's greatest questions is posted subliminally on the cover, and more overtly inside the novel: WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR INSPIRATION?

Interesting question. Must be an interesting book then...

Diary follows Misty Mae Kleinman (soon Wilmot), an artist in college who is forced to move with her boyfriend, Peter, to his tourist-ridden town after he impregnantes her. Misty slowly deteriorates in the town after her daughter Tabbi is born. She works as as a waitress in the resort's restaurant facility, and she begins drinking heavily. She hasn't painted in years due to the destitute state of her new life.

The novel begins where Peter is discovered in his car, attempting to kill himself. Since he was not successful, he is now in a coma. Before he tried to kill himself, however, Peter went to the homes that he was working on (since he was a contractor) and wrote absolutely obsene messages on the walls. People begin suing Peter left and right, even though he's in a coma. Misty has to deal with this mess as Peter is obviously indesposed.

Misty visits the houses Peter destroyed to read these horrific messages. Misty is met by a friend, Angel, who helps her try to understand the messages as well. He is interested in graphology (the study of handwriting and what it tells about the writer) and they discuss Peter's writing.

Now, here is the twist (so don't read if you want to read the novel): Misty is involved in an age-old superstition/conspiracy that occurs every four generations in Peter's town. The belief is that every four generations, a young man brings back a wonderful artist to the island. The cycle persists that, once brought to the island, the artist reproduces, then the husband is killed, the children die, and the wife goes insane. From this insanity, the woman paints masterpieces that make the town rich. Once the woman has created a gallery's worth, a gallery is opened, and all of the townspeople are brought to see it. When the town is awed by these masterpieces, the gallery lights on fire, killing all of the viwers. The town then collects its insurance claim which will keep the island's financial state alive for four more generations. Then the cycle should repeat itself.

Misty is caught in the middle of this conspiracy. She is told Peter's father was dead, but it turns out that he was alive the whole time. He is the one who tries to murder his son and make it look like a suicide (to fulfill the conspiracy) and fakes Tabbi's death to make Misty go crazy. Angel tries to tell Misty what is going on (while also revealing that he was Peter's lover) and is murdered by Peter's father to silence him. Misty, understanding what's going on, fulfills her part but escapes with her daughter after the burning down of the gallery.

( Here is the interior of the novel: )

The end of the novel is from a little bit of time into the future where Misty writes a fictional letter to Chuck Palahniuk, offering that he write about her horrors to make others aware so that this conspiracy does not happen again, four generations from now. This is a book that could be read again, because then you can go back and piece together all of the clues. Apparently Peter was trying to warn Misty through his writing, so going back will be interesting to see what his cryptic messages were.

End of spoiler. The writing was a little hard to follow, a little disjointed. The narrator would go back and forth from seeing Misty's perspective to accusing and talking about Peter, using second person to assume that the narrator was YOU. That was different from most narrations.

Palaniuk did a solid job on making the reader feel as crazy as Misty felt as she was being manipulated and twisted to be this carbon-copied person. This crazy life led her to become insane, to the point where she counts out her drinks, her pills, and makes comments that make you question her sanity.

The repetition Palahniuk uses is here yet again. It's the single characteristic that I love the most about his writing. It can be found in each of his novels (as I have commented in earlier posts on his novels), and they are all extremely effective. Words/phrases/ideas that are constantly repeated throughout the novel: "You." "Take another drink/pill" following events that occur. Peter's wall writings. Angel's insights on graphology interspersed between plot events. "Everything is a self portrait. Everything is a diary." Connections to Maura Kincaid and Constance Burton.

Not only am I really interested in graphology now, but I want to try out Carl Jung's theory of how one sees the self, as presented in the nove. I want to ask these questions to people to see what they say about themselves. Here is how Palahniuk's narrator describes it: Ask these four questions. After each question, the person needs to give three adjectives that describe the answer they give. Write these three adjectives down each time. These questions stand for the (information placed inside parenthesis next to it).

Name a color (How one sees the self)
Name an animal (How one views others)
Name a body of water (How one views his sexual life/being)
Name an all-white room (How one views death)

Analyze the three adjectives given to see how this personal currently sees himself or herself. Palahniuk is bound to have cool little things like this interspersed through his writing.

I like how Palahniuk explored the tortured/suffering artist. The one who is really insane is really brilliant. He references many artists who were a little nutty who ended up producing some fabulous work. Where does inspiration come from? Do we really only create when we suffer? I hope never to answer this someday.

This was quite a bizarre book, but I really enjoyed it in the end. It took me a little while to get the flow and plot of the book, but once I got it, the book kept flowing until I finished. Palahniuk has yet to let me down with his writing.

And, hopefully this will become a motion picture soon as it was picked up as a potential Sundance film. I'll cross my fingers until then.

So what do you think about Diary?

Billy Corgan

2010-04-03T13:27:00.000-07:00

Billy Corgan, rock god?

Rolling Stone recently covered Corgan's current life in an article with the title "Rock God, Interrupted." The last time that Rolling Stone dubbed an artist a rock god, they received backlash from fans. They called Chris Martin of Coldplay a rock god, and a debate ensued about what a rock god is. Chris Martin is talented, but I don't think he has acheieved the status of the title.

Now, Billy Corgan? God status? Not in my mind. When I think of a rock god, I think of a rock artist who will be a legend, an artist who lights up the stage (even in a dark way) and captivates an audience. They create songs that speak to the generation and will be around for a long time. Rock gods are like Kurt Cobain or Jim Morrison. They were living legends. They still resonate today even though they're gone.

When you say a rock god's name on the street, people know it. They can picture a face. They don't say, "What band is he in?" "What does he look like?" "What songs does he sing?" With Billy Corgan, I don't feel like we make that same connection.

How does Billy Corgan fit into that mix? Now, don't get me wrong, he does create good music. Smashing Pumpkins is a great band from the 90s that created some awesome songs. Those are some classic songs of the 90s. But, to me, Billy Corgan is just too whiny and soft to be "godlike." He seems too pouty, poor-me, caged up and hiding from the world. And did I say...arrogant?

In any event, the article was astounding to me. Corgan's arrogance caught me way off guard. I couldn't believe some of the stuff he was saying to the writer knowing that he would publish it in a popular rock magazine! Check out what he said:

"Do I belong in the conversation about the best artists in the world? My answer is yes, I do. I've been too productive for too long, and despite what anybody wants to strip away from me, I am influential. I am. You can hear echoes of my music right now. So all the Pitchforks in the world can try to strip me of every ounce of dignity, but I belong."

Humble much?

I loved the introductory line in the article: "Unless you count what he's done to his career, Billy Corgan has never attempted suicide."

Hilarious. Let's face it: He was HUGE in the 90s. Siamese Dream and Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness were INCREDIBLE albums. He created songs that still are strong and influential today. Then the band dismembered and came back for a random political album, Zeitgeist. I didn't mind that album, but it wasn't up to the caliber it used to be.

The 90s MADE Corgan, and then in the article he says, "I fucking hated the nineties." It's like he's destined to hate and despise and complain and moan about everything positive (and everything negative) in his life. Is there anything he likes or thinks is positive? He seems to be the tortured artist, but the tortured artist, oftentimes, is the most brilliant of all.

I do have to give Corgan credit on his current musical project though: He's releasing 44 songs slowly (about one a week), and every time four songs are put out, he's going to put them on an EP and sell them himself. The 44 song compliation will be called Teargarden by Kaleidyscope. Awesome idea. He's embracing the new age we're coming into when bands take over their own distribution of music. I think fans would be really into this idea of focusing on one song and then awaiting the next. It's a really creative idea.

Corgan is talented, he has a troubled past, but he just seems too haughty to me after this interview. He feels entitled and angry about what's happened to him. Maybe I'm coming off with a strong opinion without knowing too much of his story (a lot of which was provided in the article), but everything he had to say just turned me off. Yeah, he can be a big deal, but when you say you're a big deal, it takes away that lustre and flare. It's less attractive and appealing. I don't like it much at all.

And, I think his recent alleged affairs really bring down his image. We'll let the Courtney Love relationship slide... It was the 90s... She used to be something different pre-Kurt. We didn't know how low she could stoop. We'll even ignore if they still have contact and that he has been currently working with her on her music with Hole... But his recent relationships with Jessica Simpson and Tila Tequila are just trashy. I mean, come on? Is this the validation he needs now in his later years? Really? This is where we are headed Corgan? To me, this is just another strike against this alleged "rock god."

So what do you think of Billy Corgan or the recent article on him in Rolling Stone?

The Marriage Ref

2010-04-02T05:45:00.000-07:00

What is Jerry Seinfeld thinking?

Now, don't get me wrong. Jerry Seinfeld is a comedy legend. He's one of my favorite comedians/writers of all time. His humor has changed the way comedy is presented. He focuses on the issues wrong with our daily lives--the mundane--and makes it hilarious. Then, regular people everywhere can connect with him on this stupid (yet brilliant) observations.

But, now Seinfeld has created a new show that is quite questionable. I was hesitant to begin watching it, but because it was Seinfeld's idea, I tuned in.

I think this is The Marriage Ref's biggest problem: It's a better IDEA than an actual, running, successful television show.

I mean, think about it: Married couples always have stupid fights. Maybe the only way to solve them is to have an actual ref to determine a winner. That would work as a funny bit, but it wouldn't work as well as a show, I am seeing.

The Marriage Ref tries to draw in people by throwing out as many celebrity names as possible--especially Seinfeld's. After Jay Leno's ten o'clock flop, they're looking for anything to take its place and survive. But this show isn't going to own up to that challenge. There's no way that America will hook into this show. It's lame, awkward, and it has no flow or direction.

They try to make it seem structured, but the show has awkward pauses. The celebrities seem scripted, as if they have pre-planned their quirky little phrases and ideas. They all laugh for long periods of time and cut each other off. It's very natural, but I still find myself feeling uncomfortable as they try to communicate about a very strange marriage situation (i.e. keeping a deceased dog as a stuffed pet). Then celebrities have to dispel their morals, and it can make us look at these celebrities in a good/bad light (i.e. Eva Longoria-Parker siding with psychotic women and showing her old-fashioned/crazy side). Yikes.

And, the host just isn't funny. He's a weird dude. He tries to make really funny jokes (which he laughs at), but he's just not a spotlight guy. And then HE is the one who is supposed to make the decision? I don't know about this. I don't trust or like this guy. Why would I want to listen to him? If Seinfeld was telling me something, I would listen to his judgment, but it seems like this host was just lifted off the street. Why do I listen to him? I don't care about him. I don't trust him. I don't value his opinion. F this guy.

I'm surprised that Seifeld is even leaning towards the reality TV angle. He's being sucked into what's popular. I'm even more surprised that married couples are more than willing to show America these humiliating fights they have between themselves. Oh, the whole thing is shameless, and that bothers me. It's just an awkward compilation of good ideas gone wrong, and they keep trying to make it work. I don't think it's going to work. But, if NBC is throwing away talent like Conan O'Brien, maybe this is considered, to them, a good, quality television program.

I tried sitting through two episodes, but I turned both off prematurely. I just can't sit through it. It's a struggle for me because I want to watch these awesome, respected celebrities (Larry David, Alec Baldwin, Tina Fey, Ricky Gervais, Kelly Ripa), but they're just doing Seinfeld a favor. It's sad. I want Seinfeld to do something on the air, but this just isn't something that is respectable and/or interesting. He's better than this. He just needs to find his groove again.

And isn't this a flawed concept anyway? Isn't this just going to cause more fights? I don't think that declaring a winner is actually going to solve the fight, I think it's going to give either the husband or the wife the upper hand in the marriage. It's another card to use against the other one. It might even make the "loser" feel useless or worthless. I think the show will cause more therapy than less. I think it's a disaster waiting to happen to marriages. We'll see.

So, Seinfeld is still a great, great comedian, but his newest show is a joke. We'll let him have this flop. I only can hope that something more brilliant than this (which isn't setting the bar that high) can come. He's allowed to screw up; we all are. I just look forward to the next greatest project, but let's ditch this new show. It's short-lived anyway.

What do you think of The Marriage Ref?

Vanishing Acts

2010-03-29T13:07:00.000-07:00

On my Jodi Picoult binge, I've just finished Vanishing Acts, another one of her works. I wasn't as hooked or impressed with this novel, but I still read because I wanted to see the story unfold. She made me interested in finding out what happened with Delia Hopkins and the aftermath of the trial. (It seems like a lot of these Picoult novels have trials--am I wrong??)

Vanishing Acts centers around Delia Hopkins, a woman who has a search-and-rescue dog and finds missing people. She has a fiance, a lawyer named Eric, who is struggling with staying sober due to his alcoholism, and she has a daughter with Eric named Sophie. They live in New Hampshire (a state normally depicted in Picoult's novels), and they are in close contact with Delia's father, Andrew. Another central figure is Eric and Delia's best friend growing up, Fitz. Fitz is a journalist who has had a crush on Delia forever but never felt that he could intervene in their relationship.

The conflict introduces itself when Andrew is arrested for kidnapping. The irony in Delia's job (searching for lost victims) is that she is a lost victim herself. Andrew used to live in Arizona where he kidnapped his own daughter and moved far, far away. He slowly learn that he does this to protect his daughter from an alcoholic mother, one that the state would give custody to. Andrew feared for his daughter's life (that it would turn her into a rotten person) and he did what he thought best: get the hell away.

Andrew is tried in Arizona which makes Delia and her family follow him down there. Eric takes on the case (which is hard for him because he isn't allowed to dispense too much information to Delia) and he struggles with finding out new information about his wife and soon-to-be inlaw. Delia meets up with her mother and learns of her past alcoholism (something too tied with Andrew). Delia fights with her mother a little bit as she tries to make sense of the incident. She believes she would have done the same thing as her father since she believes if Eric did the same thing, she would take Sophie and run.

Meanwhile, Andrew has a side plot going on inside the prison. He hooks up with a black inmate to be friends (which is unheard of inside the prison because racial lines are not to be crossed), and they get involved in dealing meth. His friend tries to get him out of the business because it would destroy Andrew, and the friend is killed by another inmate. Andrew is sort of set up for it, but he ends up getting out of the incident because of the outcome of his trial.

Fitz also accompanies Delia, but his mission is to write a story about it. Fitz ends up abandoning the assignment which costs him his job, but it eventually gets him the girl. Now, this pairing of two seemed obvious to me that it was going to happen. Eric eventually falls off the wagon which lands Delia is Fitz's arms. They soon become a couple and Eric remains down in Arizona to try his hand at being a lawyer there with some old friends.

Here is the twist in the plot (so look away if you don't want a spoiler): Andrew really took Delia away because his wife was cheating on him with a man named Victor who molested Delia (her old name being Bethany Matthews). This is why Andrew assaulted Victor in a bar and then took off with Delia. He was protecting her from sexual abuse as well. Victor later steals Sophie, which makes things really get creepy. But, fortunately, Delia is able to find them.

Done spoiling. Another side plot was a character named Ruthann who was an Indian friend who looked after Sophie as they lived in the trailer park. She taught her Indian stories and crafts. She seemed to act as the voice of reason within the novel, offering smart anecdotes and sayings every now and then. However, Ruthann did not tell them that she had cancer and was going to die. When she goes missing, Delia follows her to a cliff where Delia debates letting her jump or not. Delia has a difficult decision on her hands, but she lets Ruthann have her way. She lets her jump. If she didn't want to suffer in this life, then that was her decision. Delia has a hard time letting this go, but I think it's a turning point for her character.

Overall, I didn't find myself as hooked to this novel as I normally am with her books. I am normally really drawn into the plot and the characters, but I didn't find myself being invested in the characters this time. They didn't seem to be as real to me as others were. It seemed similar to other books, but the draw and the issue wasn't as interesting to me.

The book touched upon more controversial and/or grey-area issues which could be great points for discussion: alcoholism, sexual abuse, kidnapping, identity theft, secret identities, spirituality (tarot cards), parental neglect or abuse, forbidden romance. I can see why this could lead to good discussion; the plot just wasn't stellar to me as other plots have been.

So what do you think of Vanishing Acts?

Foo Fighters Unplugged

2010-03-28T07:49:00.000-07:00

It's about time that Foo Fighters did Unplugged. The show has been allowing artists that are not Unplugged-worthy. They are either too focused on rap and R&B, newer artists that aren't going to last, or older artists that we just don't care about (i.e. Bon Jovi). At least Foo Fighters deserve the spot.

Dave Grohl explained a lot of songs and stories that connect with his music, which added more levels to his music. He talked about how having children impacted his music career. He talked about the trajectory of their career over the past fifteen years. He talked about how unreal it is that this that they have made it this far.

Besides the discussion part, the music was also really good. I was proud that they picked some new songs too since they are a band that can tend to focus on the same old, same old songs. The songs they picked were because of the story. THAT is impressive.

Here are the songs they played with explanation:

"This is a Call"

Dave discussed how he started the band fifteen years ago. He rented an underground studio for five days and recorded their first self-titled album all by himself. He didn't see it as anything serious. He called the band Foo Fighters because he wanted other people to see that it was made by a group--not just him.

"Big Me"

Once the band was formed and their popularity started to grow, they were approached by VH1 and other big-name music corporations to make a music video. They scoffed at the offer at first because they didn't want to become too sucked into the media. But, they soon agreed and had many pitches for music videos. The one that sucked them in first was a Mentos commercial spoof for "Big Me." The guitarist warned Dave, saying that after this, Mentos will be thrown at the stage from now on. Dave brushed that idea aside, but he was wrong. Mentos would POUR onto the stage during this song which became painful for band members.

Ten years later, after they stopped playing the song for fear of injury, they decided to play it. A full pack of Mentos soared onto the stage and right at Dave's face. He stopped playing immediately and decided that it was all end there. Dave made a speech and decided that they would burn the Mentos pack as a rital to bring it all to an end. But when he reached in his pocket, he didn't have a lighter. He asked the audience for once, and instead of Mentos packs raining down on him, lighters were.

"Wheels"

"My Hero"

This song was one of the first songs they played on tour. They only had 12 songs to play (from the first album), so they started to play this song. Whenever Grohl hears the melody of this song, he thinks of a "Valley Girl" theme song. He started to list off heroes in his life that influenced him. As a whole, the song embodies how he feels towards all of his heroes.

"Word Forward"

Grohl lost his best friend recently which made him reflect on his past. He was in a really dark period because he discovered a lot of cool things that changed his life, including music. He considered him to be like a brother. He wrote this song about moving on after your best friend passes away and there's only one direction to go--forward.

"Everlong"

When they wrote their second album, it was ready to go. But, they recorded one more song and wondered if they should include it. They wrote a demo and realized that it was pretty good--they should include it. Grohl says that without that song, they might not have lasted the 13 extra years.

When they toured with Bob Dylan years later, he asked to speak with Grohl. They discussed other things, but at the end of the conversation, Dylan asked Grohl what the song was with the lines, "will everything feel this good forever..." in which Grohl responded, "Everlong." Dylan suggested that they play that more often. That is a good song. Blown away, Grohl agreed.

So what do you think of Foo Fighters Unplugged?

Memoirs: The Criticism

2010-03-28T06:31:00.000-07:00

Memoir is definitely my favorite literary genre. Don't ask me why, but I find something entirely powerful with a person who opens themselves up to a painful and/or troubling situation to try to make sense of it. We discover through their hurt and struggle what they have learned about life through their unfortunate trauma. These are, as we are supposed to believe, real stories, and because of that, I am even more interested.

But, the genre has received a lot of criticism over the past few years, especially when James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces came out. It was found that many parts of his book were either embellished or fictionalized. This takes away from the memoir--a true account. Are memoirsits writing their history the way they want it to be told? Do we tell a story in a certain way to portray ourselves in a certain way? It's like history teachers preach: History is told by those who want to teach it. Consider the point of view.

When I've had students write short memoirs, or this year when they wrote a memory start to finish, most of them wrote about their greatest difficulty afterwards: Getting down EXACTLY what happened and remembering every piece was really hard. Some of them said they even made up some parts because they just didn't remember. Part of what I wanted to show them was that exact issue. Writers do the best they can to remember what happened in each scene, but in the end, it really is just the best that the writer can do to convey what happened. The dialogue isn't verbatim, the characters might be just the perception of the writer, the drama or conflict may impact or be greater than it was because it's coming from the writer's perspective.

But, isn't a memoir really about how one person experiences a problem? I find some merit in the fact that it is the person's experience. How does the person remember and make sense of this problem? How would this person tell the story? What does that tell us about this person and his/her psyche? What is left out? What is overtold? Where do we end and begin? I find it to be a very interesting case study.

Yesterday I read an article in The New Yorker on this very issue. This is why all of these musings and defences are coming to mind. The subtitle of the article, "But Enough about Me" by Daniel Mendelsohn, asks us, What does the popularity of memoirs tell us about ourselves? He connects our love for memoirs almost to be like watching reality television. It's not really reality, but we still love to view it and perceive it as real. I don't know if that close of a connection can be made, but he also has other comments on the memoir that I want to share:

"Unseemingly self-exposures, unpalatable betrayals, unavoidable mendacity, a soupcon of metericiousness,: memoir, for much of its modern history, has been the black sheep of the literary family. Like a drunken guest at a wedding, it is constantly mortifying its soberer relatives (philosophy, history, literary fiction)--spilling family secrets, embarassing old friends--motivated, it would seem, by an overpowering need to be the center of attention."

"Such self-involvement [...] is just one of the charges that have been levelled against memoirs and their authors over the centuries, the others being that Freud was so leery of: indiscretion, betrayal, and outright fraud. But it's the ostensible narcissism that has irritated critics the most."

"Are there any motives for the enterprise that aren't tainted with justification? To halo a sinner's head? To puff an ego already inflated past safety?"

In defense of memoirs: "They accurately reflect a reality present not in the world itself, but in the author's mind."

Writing is therapeutic; it helps the writer cope and survive, to make sense of the incident(s).

The article discussed various memoirs that were claimed to be entirely fictionalized, some that were written about slave life and survival during the Holocaust. Perhaps it's more difficult to debunk those claims, but it is much easier today, especially when this person earns fame and a hefty salary. People are more willing to step forward to disclaim them, especially out of hatred and jealousy, especially if they were portrayed in a way that is not suitable to them (even if most of it is true).

But, I am still a supporter of the genre. I still find myself drawn to reading any memoir I can get my hands on. I feel like I am immersed in a situation or culture entirely foreign to me. Instead of reading a book about the topic, you get the internal narrative of what the person experiencing it feels and believes. Those hooked on drugs, we understand WHY they do what they do. We see WHY they got involved instead of a textbook's classic list of answers. When someone engages in plastic surgery, we read why this person is driven to do this. I find it fascinating to read the true narrative of someone who suffers and what they end up taking and learning from this experience.

I understand the criticism. There is merit to the claim. But with this known, don't we still keep that in the back of our minds when we read? We shouldn't ever read or view something and take it as 100% truth. We should always be questioning small details (or big ones) as good readers and viewers. After all, it is just a text. We can take what we can or need from it. We don't take it as gospel; we extract the lesson we need to learn.

Here are some good memoirs that I have really enjoyed in the past:

Running with Scizzors by Augusten Burroughs
Dry by Augusten Burroughs
Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs
A Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burroughs
Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs
Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis
Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman
I'm Not Myself These Days by Josh Kilmer Purcell
Letters from My Father by Barrack Obama
Broken by William Cope Meyers
Wasted by Marya Hornbacher
Madness by Marya Hornbacher
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M Pirsig
Passing for Normal by Amy Wilenski
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Find Me by Rosie O'Donnell
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
Teacher Man by Frank McCourt
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
The Glass Castle by Jeanneatte Walls
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
Naked by David Sedaris
The Water Is Wide by Pat Conroy
Marley and Me by Josh Grogan
Woman Warriors by Jennie McCarthy
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
Black Like Me by John Griffin
Into Thin Air by John Krakauer
Tweak by Nic Sheff
Beautiful Boy by David Sheff
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloan Crosley
Always Looking Up by Michael J. Fox
Unraveled by Maria Housden
Hope's Boy by Andrew Bridge
Night by Elie Wiesel
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max
Beautiful Stranger by Hope Donahue
Death Be Not Proud by John Gunther

So what do you think of the memoir?

The Dahn Yoga Cult

2010-03-27T07:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I read an article in Rolling Stone on the Dahn Yoga Cult. I had never heard of them before, but I was somehow sucked into the article. Whenever the word "cult" follows a phrase, I am always fascinated to see what it is that mass people follow. What is it that sucks people into these cults? What do they have to do? What do they sacrifice? What principles do they follow with all of their hearts, even if they might have a twinge of doubt? How do they recruit followers? How far do they go for these leaders? And what is the leader seeking out of this?

The article, "The Yoga Cult" by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, focuses on a young couple who were former cult members. They were recruited in college (like many of this cult are) and were persuaded to continue attending seminars and sessions, dumping thousands and thousands of dollars into this organization to keep themselves connected. The couple, Amy and Ricardo, were sucked in for years and have recently come out of it. They have exposed many of the practices of the cult.

To give a little background on Dahn Yoga, only some refer to it as a cult. It is seen as a cult because of the extensive following and the intense practices of the members. Lawsuits have come out against Dahn Yoga and its leader, Ilchi Lee, for various reasons including sexual charges and deaths associated with intense workouts (similar to hazing). It was founded by Lee in 1985 when he climbed to the top of a mountain and realized that his calling was to lead this Yoga movement. He left his family and started this group. Now, he accumulates millions of dollars, has private jets, multiple properties, and darts lawsuits.

Basic information on Dahn Yoga: "In Korean, dahn means 'primal, vital energy,' and hak means 'study of a particular theory or philosophy.' Dahn teachings are said to place equal emphasis on physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. News sources have described its exercises as 'a blend of yoga, tai chi, and martial arts exercises.'"

Essentially, members go through extreme workouts to aim for spritual perfection. Members are told that, together, they will come together to achieve world peace. Sounds like a lofty goal, eh?

Members keep striving to reach higher levels of their spiritual health. Amy, the focus of the article, was even promoted to become a Dahn instructor where she had to go through rigorous training. These trainings had to be lightened because one victim was killed while carrying too heavy a bag of rocks up a mountain. Members like Amy recruit young twenty-somethings to join. They are on college campuses, they are physcially fit, and they are ready to take out loans to give to Dahn. Some members drop out of college in order to meet the demands (physically, spritually, and financially) to accomodate the needs of Dahn.

Ricardo, one of the former members, said it was difficult to stop being a part of Dahn because they are brainwashed into thinking that if they leave Dahn, their spritual path will be destroyed. Essentially, they will be spiritually lost. And once members leave, they are harassed with phone calls over and over again by leaders trying to get them to come back. Intense. Both Ricardo and Amy went deep into debt paying for all of these sessions and seminars. I can't believe that they suck THIS much money out of these people to stay hooked.

Here are some of the practices retold by Amy that the members were asked to perform:

-Lack of sleep during retreats
-They would have to plunge their heads into the water until they couldn't breathe. When they gasp to the surface, they chant a devotional song to their leader, weeping to prove their sincerity to the cause. Repeat many times.
-In pitch-black darkness, members scream and dance hard for hours. Then they collapse into a "sobbing heap."
-At a retreat, members punch themselves in the stomach while yelling things like "I hate myself!"
-They engage in head-shaking meditation that they call "wave vibration." Members have to purchase "palm-size vibrating brains" which cost $80, and after class they discuss feelings in a sharing circle.
-Hours of loud, fast exercise, trust-building games, and personal confessions.
-To enter, they had to write their most personal account in writing and share it with many, many people. If it wasn't personal enough, that did not show their devotion so they could not participate.
-At retreats, they were taught that their brains were clogged with meaningless information and they would reprogram them together.
-One exercise: Pretend you're looking at your dead body. What do you want to say to your dead body? How did you live your life?
-Candidates for membership must show their devotion to Dahn. This entails a seven-mile hike with up to 40 pounds of rocks on your back.
-Members are required to pull in a certain amount of money into the mission per month, sometimes climbing as high as $20,000.
-They have to wake early in the morning (4AM) to meditate.
-Some have to drink toilet water, lick each other's feet, and fall backwards into a pool screaming their love for Lee to prove themselves to the Dahn.
-At one session, a wet washcloth was said to be their soul, and people fought and scratched to get ahold of their washcloth.

Now, the above practices were communicated by Amy, the subject in the article. Perhaps these are not ALL standard practices, but these are some witnessed by a former member.

Facts

-127 fitness centers
-The holiest seminar costs $100,000
-Americans make up 10,000 of the 500,000 members
-Last year, Dahn Yoga pulled in $30 million in the US
-$30 million is only a fraction of what they collected in the nine other countries they are set up in
-They consider themselves a cutting-edge science called "brain education" with "the power to sharpen memory, prevent cancer, and give practitioners extrasensory powers."
-15 American cities have declared Ilchi Lee days.
-PowerBrain Operation is a Dahn-run organization that teaches "brain wave vibration" workshops in 44 different public schools, most in New York City.
-Many members believe he is god, while Lee compares himself to Buddha.

I am merely presenting information. I expect that some people will not like the infomration I present here. I am merely publishing information that I have learned from a magazine. Perhaps there are some small things that are not correct, and that lies in my misinterpretation of the facts. This is what I have read. This is what I think.

What do you think of Dahn Yoga?

From the Lives of My Friends

2010-03-25T14:12:00.000-07:00

The New Yorker has really got me into the twin poets Michael and Matthew Dickman. Every time I see a poem of theirs, I get really excited. I've already written a blog post about them (as they are two average guys making a living while pursuing their poetry), and they continue to prove to me how fabulous their writing is.

From the Lives of My Friends

by Michael Dickman

What are the birds called
in that neighborhood
The dogs

There were dogs flying
from branch to
branch

My friends and I climbed up the telephone poles to sit on the power lines dressed like crows

Their voices sounded like lemons

They were a smooth sheet
They grew

black feathers

Not frightening at all
but beautiful, shiny, and
full of promise

What kind of light

is that?

__

The lives of my friends spend all of their time dying and coming back and dying and coming back

They take a break in summer
to mow the piss
yellow lawns, blazing
front and
back

There is no break in winter

I am in love with the sisters of my friends
All that yellow hair!
Their arms
blazing

They lick their fingers
to wipe my face
clean

of everything

And I am glad
I am glad
I am

so glad

__

We will all be shipped away
in an icebox
with one word OYSTERS
painted on the outside

Left alone, for once

None of my friends wrote novels, from the lives of my friends came their lives

Here's what we did
we played in the yard outside
after dinner

and then
we were shipped away

That was fast--

stuffed
with

lemons

I see this as a coming of age poem. The way I read it, the speaker is reflecting back on his childhood and where he is today. He and his friends perhaps grew apart from their childhoods together, which seemed to be close but now adult life has interjected.

In the first section of the poem, the speaker and his friends are using their imaginations (something that seems to be lost by the end of the poem). It is a pure experience that the children share together. They call birds dogs and watch them fly. Childhood is so simple--they watch birds fly and it's a fun afternoon. They are curious and want to explore. They climb, they pretend, they watch. Their voices sounded like lemons (lemons are bitter, perhaps trying to connect the sound with a taste, and yellow to connect with brightness). These birds eventually grow black feathers (alluding to darkness), but the boys are not frightened. They experience life together.

What kind of light is that? I'm still trying to figure out the significance of that...

In the second section, the speaker has grown up a little bit, at least to the point where he is an adolescent. He is starting to have feelings for the friends' sisters. Another reference to yellow (connecting with lemons and the piss-yellow lawns). Instead of playing all the time--like they used to do as children--they only really hang out for long periods of time during the summer. School is now taking up time in between. Even in the summer they are filled with chores and tasks of mowing lawns and jobs. Licking their fingers is a sexual reference to his connection with these sisters (who seem to be more available to him than the friends) and they wipe his face clean. This implies that it was dirty before (perhaps from mowing lawns and working), almost like their are purifying him (making him cleaner). To me, their relationship seems to be dirtier than it does cleaner. The repetition of "glad" almost connects back to their sexual relationship, especially since it gets shorter and shorter as the stanza goes on.

The third section references the boys going off to college, like they will be shipped off in ice-cold boxes (which sounds quite morbid). They will be labeled OYSTERS which is an organism that looks just like the next one. There is no individuality about them. They are just students, BOY A, BOY B, etc. and they will be shipped off just like it happens each year. At least when they are shipped off they will be left alone, for once. Even the term "shipped off" makes it seem like it's not even their choice. They are doing what is expected of them, and they will follow these commands like obedient, obsequious robots.

At the end of the section, the speaker seems to go back in time to when they used to play outside, and then the rest seems like a blur. Now all of a sudden they are leaving and going off to college. He even mentions how fast it all went. Growing up was bitter and bright, a juxtaposition of good and bad.

The structure of the poem suggests that time is slipping away. Lines go from long to short, suggesting that time is coming to an end, diminishing. Even the fact that there is rarely punctuation (which means the poem is read faster) suggests that these events are happening quickly and you have to keep revisiting it to understand all that has happened in this short time period. But as the poet does, you can even section off a life into parts. This is easy with school years. Childhood. Adolescence. College.

The speaker gives us colors and tastes to connect with his response to growing up. Lemons. Yellow. Black. Crows. Warmth (summer). Oysters (bland, dull, boring is what they have become).

I think it's interesting that he titles it about his friends. Why would he place THEM as the subject of the poem? It seems more to be about his experience growing up, but they seem to be at the center of it. Unless, maybe he's trying to separate himself from them, almost like they had a different experience from him. Perhaps he will not become the oyster (the different one), and his friends will be just like everyone else. While he experiences love and branches out, his friends are living standard lives. This is all just a guess. I need more guidance from a fellow lover of poetry to add some additional input to me.

So what do you think of "From the Lives of My Friends?"

Cryonics

2010-03-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

Have you ever heard of cryonics?

This morning, I read an article in The New Yorker on cryonics. I have heard of it before, but I had never read about it in this much length before. I can't believe that it's really a serious study, practice, and belief that people follow and go along with. But in the meantime, let's discuss what it is.

In plain English, cryonics is when humans literally freeze their bodies after death in the hopes that technology will increase so much that their bodies will be resurrected by newer medicine in future years.

Cryonics was first proposed in 1962. The founder of this movement is Robert Ettinger, the focus of this article. This paragraph will provide some background on Ettinger and cryonics in general from "The Iceman" by Jill Lepore:

"Ettinger is a founder of the cryonics movement. When he dies, the blood will be drained from his body, antifreeze will be pumped into his arteries, and holes will be drilled into his skull, after which he will be stored in a vat of liquid nitrogen at minus three hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit. He expects to be defrosted, somewhere between fifty and two hundred years from now, by scientists who will make him young and strong and tireless. Ettinger has already frozen his mother and his two wives, along with ninety-two other people who await resurrection inside giant freezers in a building five minutes away from his house, in Clinton Township, Michigan."

Ettinger, born in 1918, was inspired by many pop culture texts that made cryonics seem like a plausible idea. The birth of the sci-fi genre, Edgar Allen Poe's "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," Jack London's "A Thousand Deaths," Gernsback's "The Corpse That Lived" and "The Ice Man," Dr. Strangelove, and Woody Allen's Sleeper. These texts give him faith in cryonics.

All a person needs is fifteen hundred dollars for the downpayment on preservation, and twenty eight thousand dollars to keep the body for all of that time until the body can be resurrected. Some can use their life insurance or life savings. Unfortunately, they wouldn't leave anything behind for others. They put their money towards their futures, after they're dead.

Ettinger has been on talk shows and published manifestos. A lot of the public has laughed at him for this crazy theory, and I'm presenting it to see what others think about it.

To me, I have a problem with the soul. Where does the soul go, and can it return back to a dead body? How does one restore LIFE into a dead being? That sounds more like a god complex to me. I'm sure that technology is going to increase a lot in the near future--I just don't know HOW far.

I haven't delved into the deeper science involved in cryonics, but even just examining the overall theory makes me hesitant to believe it. Giving new life into a frozen body does sound sci-fi. It does seem like a cheesy movie more than reality. Crazy things do happen every day though (especially connecting with science), things never deemed possible. I just don't think people can be brought back to life--especially two hundred years later. I'm not saying it's IMPOSSIBLE--it just doesn't seem probable to me.

Here are their beliefs or PRO-Cryonics theories:

"A central premise of cryonics is that memory, personality, and identity are stored in durable cell structures and patterns within the brain that do not require continuous brain activity to survive. This premise is generally accepted in medicine; it is known that under certain conditions the brain can stop functioning and still later recover with retention of long-term memory. Additional scientific premises of cryonics are that (1) brain structures encoding memory persist for some period of time after clinical death, (2) brain structures encoding memory can survive cryopreservation, and (3) future technologies that could restore encoded memories to functional expression in a healed person are theoretically possible.

Cryonics is controversial because the technologies of premise (3) are so advanced that premises (1) and (2) are considered irrelevant by most scientists. Whether biological traces of memory or personhood might persist after clinical death is of no interest to medicine once resuscitation becomes impossible by present technology. Similarly, outside of cryonics there is no interest in the question of whether memory encoding might survive cryopreservation because the question is regarded as meaningless until cryopreservation can be reversed. At present only cells, tissues, and some small organs can be reversibly cryopreserved. Medical science is primarily concerned with what is demonstrably achievable, not what is theoretically possible. There are therefore no established scientific specialties or journals directly concerned with the scientific questions posed by cryonics.

Cryonics advocates claim that it is possible to preserve the fine cell structures of the brain in which memory and identity reside with present technology. They say that demonstrably reversible preservation is not necessary to achieve the present-day goal of cryonics, which is preservation of brain information that encodes memory and personal identity. They believe that current cryonics procedures can preserve the anatomical basis of mind, and that this may be sufficient to prevent information-theoretic death until future repairs might be possible.

A moral premise of cryonics is that cryopreserving people when there is no other hope is the right thing to do, sometimes even under poor conditions that make the scientific premises of cryonics highly uncertain. Some cryonicists believe as a matter of principle that anyone who would ordinarily be regarded as dead should instead be made a "permanent patient" subject to whatever future advances might bring. Unlike the scientific premises of cryonics, such moral beliefs are not testable or falsifiable."

So what do you think of Cryonics?

Ashes of Roses

2010-03-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of the historical fiction research paper my students are writing, I chose to read a popular YA historical fiction title, Ashes of Roses. This novel, by Mary Jane Auch, is about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City, 1911. I hadn't researched the historical topic much before, but this novel provided decent inquiry into the details surrounding the event.

This YA novel could be applicable to students in grades six to eight. It centers around the story of a sixteen year old girl, but it still could be read and enjoyed by a male. I have found that more ladies in my classroom are reading it, but maybe other historical topics are more interesting to them than this one. I found it to be a decent read, but I must admit that I was a tad bit bored at times. I felt like I was waiting for the fire to happen, but it didn't take place until almost the last chapter of that novel. At least it was a good build up, making me wait and read further, anticipating the climax.

The story focuses on Rose Nolan, an Irish immigrant who comes to Ellis Island with her family. Her brother has to return back to Ireland with the baby they bring because he doesn't pass medical inspections. Rose, her sister, and her mother are left in New York City to fend for themselves. They shack up with Rose's father's brother who came over to the states years earlier and established himself with a political career. He lets them live in their small apartment which increases the tension between the wife and daughter living there.

The women become short with them and yell at them for taking up their space, eating their food, and essentially mooching. They act superior which angers Rose to no end. As a result, Rose seeks a job so that they can live on their own. Rose starts to work making paper flowers, and the boss lets her take them home to work on them. Rose and her mother work on the flowers in the house. The women come home angry, saying that they have set up a sweatshop in the house and now the daughter will never be courted. A large fight ensues, and they decide to return to Ireland.

At the docks, Rose and Maureen, the sister, decide to remain in New York City while the mother wants to return home to her husband. New York City has proven to be too much trouble. Rose and Maureen promise to return to their uncle's, but once mother leaves, they go out into the world to start their own life without the pity and assistance of others.

Rose and Maureen try to live in countless apartments but are turned away because they are two young girls without jobs or a lot of money. But, they are accepted into one house because of a nice feminist girl named Gussie. Gussie is a union worker who sets them up with an apartment and jobs at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Gussie also helps Rose earn back the money she was owed from her old boss who tried to cheat Rose out of her money and take advantage of her sexually.

Now working at the Factory, Rose earns some money to live. She visits the Nickelodeon (the "moving pictures" center which plays black and white films) and makes new friends who like to hang out with boys (ooo!). Gussie tries to show her the horrid conditions of the factory--the tight working quarters, the little pay, the long hours, the rapid rise and fall of ranks of workers, etc. Rose just feels lucky to have a job and some money.

Then comes the fire. It happens really fast. The fire breaks out. Women crowd the doors to get downstairs but they are locked. Women jump out windows to escape. Some try to land on firefighters' nets, but they either miss or the nets are not suitable to catch them. Women are burning alive. It's horrible.

Rose escapes but searches to find her sister. Fortunately, she finds her sister after she climbed to the roof and was escorted over to the next building over the rooftops. They try to find Gussie, but Gussie is the casualty that they experience. Rose and her sister mourn the loss of Gussie. The end.

I thought it was kind of lame that they didn't kill either Rose or Maureen. There wasn't really that much loss suffered at the hands of the protagonist. Sure, they lost their friend, but to really feel the tragedy, one of them should have died. It seemed to much of a happy ending when the real event was traumatic. Making us lose one of the main characters would have better mirrored the emotions suffered that day. This seemed like an easy way out for the ending, but that's just me.

This is a YA title, but it did seem pretty simple. It was really a simple story without means for any analysis. It is more a means of retelling a historical event, which in that purpose, it serves its duty. I would recommend it to young readers, especially those who are interested in history, and I'm sure a lot of them would like it. Others would find it kind of boring, so the one recommending would have to gauge the reader to pass this book off to certain readers.

That's my take on Ashes for Roses. What do you think of it?

Live Your Life

2010-03-19T13:28:00.000-07:00

This blog post is ENTIRELY NOT MINE. I am copying it over from an issue of The New Yorker. It is written by Dave Cowen, and it is absolutely hilarious. I want other people to enjoy how brilliant and hilarious it is.

This speaks to me as a lover of learning, a lover of reading, a lover of writing. It speaks to the true English teacher in me. And, a dig at Kanye West doesn't hurt either. Enjoy.

Live Your Life

by David Cowen

"I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book's autograph. I am a proud nonreader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life."

-Kanye West, promoting his book, Thank You and You're Welcome

Whoever said life is an open book probably didn't have any friends. Sure, he probably liked the people in his book. But did they like him? No. Why? Because they aren't real.

My friends are real. They actually talk to me. Like just the other day my friend Bill said, "I'm not reading your email for you anymore. You need to learn how to read." And I said, "Bill, if you don't read me my email, I won't sign an autograph for your son." And Bill was, like, "Well, go f*** yourself. I'm going back to the hospital." Bill's son, Bill Jr., or Billy Bob, was in the children's unit there. He didn't read the label on the box of his Sticky Stones, and when he swallowed three of the iron-ore magnets they fused into a chain along the wall of his esophagas. Bill, Sr., felt extra bad because he hadn't read that a consumer safety group had placed the Sticky Stones on its annual list of worst toys. I told Bill that's life. That stuff happens when you are doing stuff. In life. Real life. If I told you what happened to Billy Bob had happened in a book, you would have said no way, that would never happen, that's fiction. But it did. Because I told you it did.

Now, don't get me wrong. There are a few books that I am a fan of. Matchbooks are good. A lot of people are under the impression that books burn only at a certain temperature. But it's just not true. I can burn most books at or below 451 degrees Fahrenheit. Sometimes below 300, if I soak the jacket in lighter fluid.

I also like MacBooks. You can really do stuff on them, you know. Like see how many followers you have on Twitter, or take pictures of yourself with Photo Booth, or play Second Life, or check if Bill has checked your e-mail. I miss Bill. He set up my Facebook account on my MacBook. I've got my own page on there now. Do you know how many fans Books have? Twenty-five thousand seven hundred and sixty-four. That's it. So I'm not alone here. You know what else has more fans than Books? The Olive Garden. One hundred and eighty-five thousand nine hundred and eighty-six. What else? Sleep: over three hundred thousand. More people would rather be unconscious than read a book. Now, I'm not condoning sleep. I'm about doing stuff. Living life. But it goes to show that I am in the majority.

Right now you're probably wondering. Hey, why is this guy, a proud non-reader of books, writing this? Isn't this a Catch-22? And I say no, it's not. It's a Catch-23. What's a Catch 23? It's like a Catch-22, except there is no catch. I don't want you to read this. In fact, you should stop reading right now. Seriously. Stop reading this. Start doing stuff. What kind of stuff, you ask? I don't know. Why don't you go to the Olive Garden? But just watch out. They give you the never-ending salad before the never-ending pasta bowl. You wouldn't think so, but the salad fills you right up. The lettuce is mostly iceberg. All water. And the water really makes you feel like shit when you don't make it to the fettucine Alfredo.

Sometimes when I don't know what to do I imagine other people doing stuff. But like people in a different time. Or like people in a different place. And I think of how cool it would be to be that person for awhile. Like to know how other people I don't know talk or do stuff. How they really live, you know? But that's when I'm not doing stuff of my own. Which is all the time anyway.

So what do you think of "Live Your Life?"

Imagery-Rehearsal Therapy

2010-03-12T14:22:00.000-08:00

Ever have recurring bad nightmares? Well, according to a study completed by Barry Krakow in 2001 (published in The Journal of the American Medical Association), a practice called imagery-rehearsal therapy could be the answer to your grueling nightmarish problems.

Krakow took 168 women who were sexual assault victims who had recurring nightmares. Half of them were the control group who received no therapy. These women had continued repeating nightmares. The other half of the women received imagery-rehearsal therapy. After six months of this therapy, the majority of the women had significantly fewer recurring nightmares and their post traumatic stress disorder had lessened.

So what is this therapy then? Well, if a women has a recurring nightmare, the woman is to re-write the nightmare but ending it in any different way they wished. Then, women spent about 20 minutes each day envisioning this new ending. When visiting with doctors, these women would repeat the ending aloud with the doctor and even act it out in some cases.

For example, a person envisioned knives falling from the ceiling. To change this, not only did the person envision a different ending, but she changed the physical setting of her bedroom. She hung potted plants from the ceiling and envisioned leaves falling instead of knives. Or, a woman always saw herself at a concentration camp. Instead, she changd her dream to be at a summer camp. Small changes like this would transform the dreams from their scariness to something that is more pleasing and easier to accept. In most cases, it worked.

The article found in a November issue of The New Yorker (entitled "Nightmare Scenario" by Margaret Talbot) explains in great detail the many cases Krakow experienced. More data and facts were given arround the studies of dreams, nightmares, and treatments. What I found interesting was this new study to try to combat dreams. What do you think of them? Does it sound crazy or like something that you might try if you found yourself in the situation?

An opposer believes, "The technique--which is an intellectual cousin of cognitive-behavior therapy--is an insufficient approach, because it does not seek to get at the roots of the disorder it treats. In other words, nightmares may be the least of a patient's problems."

Some doctors prescribe Prazosin, which is said to stop the nightmares completely, but after taking the meds, the nightmares will come right back. Aren't we too drugged up enough anyway? Pills shouldn't always be the right answer!

But, many scientists are taking the view held by the leading dream researcher at the moment, G. William Domhoff which is to support the therapy. He believes this is an advancement, an effective technique, and that dreams center around some of our deepest concerns, so altering their narrative is an effective cure.

On a different note, here are some interesting facts about nightmares that come directly from the article:

-"Less than a quarter of chronic nightmare sufferers report that they are always awakened by their nightmares."

-Fear was the signal emotion in 70% of nightmares. In the remaining 30%, other emotions predominated: sadness, anger, frustration."

-"Between 8 and 30% of adults report that they have nightmares at least once a month. In the course of a lifetime, virtually everyone has them."

-"Nightmares are more common among children than adults and are more common among women than men."

-"The gender difference [as mentioned above] may be explained, in part, by the fact that women are better than men at remembering their dreams, and perhaps more willing to admit they have nightmares."

-"The most common scenario of a nightmare is to be pursued or attacked."

-"In a study published in 2000, when children were asked to attribute their bad dreams to a cause, they did frequently cite something they saw on TV. There is also evidence that dream villains and monsters evolve over time, in response to popular culture. Michael Schredl looked at several nightmare studies from the 20th century, and found that dreams of the bogeyman were common in the twenties; dreams of ghosts, devils, and witches reigned in the fifties and sixties; and those of movie villains dominated the nineties."

-"250 German children between the ages of 9 and 13 were questioned, and it was found that nightmares were not more frequent among the kids who watched more TV or played more video games. So, nightmares can influence nightmares but not necessarily create or increase them."

Interesting, eh?

So what do you think about imagery-rehearsal therapy or any of the studies or statistics presented above?

Change of Heart

2010-03-07T11:53:00.000-08:00

On my rampage of reading Jodi Picoult novels, I have just finished reading another one of her novels, Change of Heart. At first, the plot didn't really grab me. It seemed like another one of her novels centering around a controversial topic that just seemed over-the-top (maybe could never happen), but as I kept reading, I got hooked. She definitely has the ability to grab you as a reader!

Even though I didn't feel a strong personal connection or opinion on the topics in this book, I started to become interested in the plot and what happened with these characters. One strength that Picoult has is that she creates in depth characters that readers can connect with. She makes us care about them, so we want to keep reading to see what happens to them.

In Change of Heart, the main premise surrounds a convicted murderer, Shay Bourne, who murdered the husband and daughter of June Nealon. He is sentenced with capital punishment and waits eleven years to receive the death penalty.

During this eleven year lapse of time, June Nealon's other daughter (who was still in her stomach as a fetus when the murders occurred, leaving her alone) develops a heart condition that will kill her if she does not receive a heart transplant. In order to redeem himself, Shay wants to give his heart to Claire, the daughter. But, if he is given a lethal injection, his heart would not be able to be delivered to Claire because the injection stops the heart. He would have to die in a different way (like hanging) to be braindead; then organs could be donated.

This issue then becomes a matter of religious preference--prison inmates are still allowed to practice their religion. Maggie Bloom, Shay's attorney, argues in court that Shay needs to be able to practice his religion freely, and his religion propels him to want to donate his organs so that he can feel redemption and peace within his soul before passing. So, a trial ensues (like a lot of her other novels).

Enter Michael Wright, Shay's spiritual advisor. He is summoned by his church to advise Shay to give up this silly idea of heart donation. Michael has a strange connection to Shay though: he served on the jury that sentenced Shay to death. We eventually find out, in the last section of the book, that Shay knew this all along. But, the whole time, we assume that Michael is waiting to unleash this bombshell of information, which he finally does.

Maggie and Michael become friends, being the only connections Shay has. They discuss religion, or their lack of belief in it. Michael became a priest after Shay's trial, feeling lost and alone, he felt his calling. Maggie used to be Jewish, her father is a rabbi, but now she is atheist. They have many conversations about religion.

And, speaking of religion, Ian Fletcher from Keeping Faith makes an appearance. He consults Michael on the topic of this trial and religion, and he becomes a wtiness at the trial. Since this novel takes place further in time than Keeping Faith, we learn what happens to Ian and Mariah after the novel. The two have twin boys (who he nicknames Cain and Abel), Ian continues to publish his novels in his barn office, and Mariah continues to work on her dollhouses. They live a happy life.

Anyway, twists and turns come in the plot. SPOILER ALERT...

Shay came from a foster family and his sister Grace hated him forever for burning their house and leaving her with nasty scars on her face. Come to find out, once we meet Grace, she actually started the fire. Shay actually saved her but took the blame. This landed him in a juvenile detenetion center, changing the course of his life forever.

This foreshadows his later crime with the Nealons. I figured out what happened once June Nealon and Shay met in jail. June asks Shay, "Why? Why did you do it?" and Shay replies, "She was better off dead." What does that mean? Well, the father was sexually molesting the child. Shay walked in on them, and he tried to save her. Unfortunately, since the husband was a cop, he fired off shots that killed the daughter. However, Shay does kill the husband out of anger. He says, "Some people deserve to die." Since the husband was a cop, Shay had no fighting chance to get out of this. He took the blame and the death sentence. All he wanted was sympathy from June Nealon, but he didn't want to ruin her life again with this disasterous news, even though she does figure it out later which makes her, in turn, receive the heart to save Claire's life.

In the midst of the plot, Maggie researches how to save Shay through a doctor named Christian (ironic name). He and Maggie eventually fall in love. But, Maggie has some serious weight problems which are constantly addressed in the book. Christian helps her overcome this conflict.

Besides Christian's name, other names are significant as well. Michael Wright--he almost feels like he is on his righteous path. He is "right" even though all priests and others think he is wrong. Maggie Bloom--her last name suggests her coming out of her shell with this case. She finally feels alive and has found her niche to make her feel like a real, contributing person of worth and substance. Shay Bourne--his real name creates the phrase I.M. Bourne, which alludes to his questioning position as Jesus Christ reincarnated.

Another HUGE point of the book is the question of Shay being the messiah. While in prison, he creates religious miracles that cannot be explained. On his first night in prison, the water in the pipes turn to wine (a connection to Jesus). He takes a dead bird in the prison and breathes life back into it. He can change the moods of prisoners to act nicer than they would. He revives a dead prison guard when pronounced dead. And, he cures a prisoner, Lucious, of having AIDS.

Lucious is another point of view from within the prison. This is a person who we get to see inside his head. He tells us what goes on with Shay, as we never get to see inside of his head. Lucious eventually dies from complication of AIDS which begs the question--was the initial cure real?

Lucious was an artist who killed his boyfriend Adam (another religious reference) when he cheated on him. He painted lots of tattoos and backed Shay in believing that his supernatural powers might really be connected with a religious purpose.

Both angry and supporting people gather outside the prison on a daily basis to either promote that he IS the messiah or to belittle his "miracles" and say that he deserves to die. The ironic twist is that the trial and conviction IS a lot like Jesus Christ. Wrongfully committed of a crime, dies for others' sins, performs miracles. Kind of interesting.

At the end, Shay says that he will see Michael in three days. In the epilogue, three days later, Claire discovers that her dog is dead. When she picks him up, she holds him to her chest and feels that he has come back alive. Are we to believe that Christ has risen again inside this dog? Is Shay back? What do we think?

End of SPOILER!!

I really liked the writing style of this novel again--switching perspectives from the minds of multiple characters. That must be a very difficult way to write because it's hard to determine who should tell what part of the plot. But in any event, I was very drawn in and interested in the novel and the plot.

What do we think of Change of Heart?

Wood

2010-03-06T19:41:00.001-08:00

Here comes another poem from a November 2009 issue of The New Yorker. It's another one that caught my eye and I would like a little bit of space to reflect on what it's trying to say.

Wood

by Sarah Arvio

The last thing I ever wanted was to
write again about grief did you think I
would your grief this time not mine oh good

grief enough is enough in my life that is
enough is enough I had all those
grievances all those griefs all engraved

into the wood of my soul but would you
beileve it the wood healed I grew up and
grew out and would you believe it I found

your old woody heart sprouting I thought
good new growth good new luxuriant green
leaves leaves on their woody stalks and I said

I'll stake my life on this old stick I'll stick
and we talked into the morning and night
and laughed green leaves and sometimes a flower

oh bower of good new love I would have it
I would bow to the new and the green
and wouldn't you know it you were a stick

yes I know a good stick so often and then
a stick in my ribs in my heart your old
dark wood your old dark gnarled stalk

sprouting havoc and now I have grief again
and now I've stood for what I never should
green leaves of morning dark leaves of night

Woa. A lot is going on in this poem. You catch yourself reading it the first time because of the lack of punctuation and the constant jumping around of thoughts. Nothing reads fluid--you have to keep stopping to piece together the phrases that are meant to be together. But I think the lack of punctuation is half of the point of this poem (or maybe most of its meaning): Life is unplanned, thoughts can go wild, and the way we read this poem is almost as painful and struggling as the experience of the poet.

Obviously, this is a poem about grief. It is mentioned five times. It is mentioned a whole lot in the beginning of the poem and then once at the end. The speaker deals with the loss (whatever it is to be named) and feels scatterbrained and lost. Repeating it over and over emphasizes how much sorrow the speaker feels. It's ever-present in her life and is difficult to erase. But, it comes back in the end, like it's something that can come and go--we can escape it for a little while, but as life goes, it can and will return.

The other heavily mentioned word in this poem is the title, wood. Sticks are also mentioned which in turn reference wood. Wood is first connected with her soul, "the wood of her soul." As if she is hollow, as if she is the living organism of the tree with deep roots that are planted so indefinitely in something (a person, a feeling) that can never be erased. As long as she is living, she will be feeling this loss, like having a branch chopped off.

Her soul is connected to something living--well, that is arguable. Wood probably connotes more the chopped wood than the living tree. We might call it bark or a tree instead of wood. Wood is the product of the tree. So once she was living and feeling and happy (as aforementioned) but now she feels like wood--as if she has been stripped, violated, and chopped to pieces only to be used as a source for fire. Or her wood could be used for a positive purpose (building a house, etc.) but she seems so disheveled that she doesn't know her path at this point.

I love the image of the "green" that constantly comes up. Green can sprout out of the wooden soul, a good healthy color to emphasize growth and change. She has overcome the dull brown of her life and is sprouting anew.

From this green there comes a no-named person who apparently helps her out of this dark time. This talks with her through days and nights, probably helping her cope and sprout the green to feel better, and he/she even helps a flower sprout which is even better than green! It's colorful! Her life now has color!

This person is a stick. So they're both wood; maybe they both have experienced loss and feel the connection. They have some sort of love between them. But then, in my interpretation, it seems like this person leaves her (either dies or chooses to) and this person's stick jabs right into her ribs and heart now. The grief then returns again, a circuitous motion right back to the beginning. It seems that the speaker has learned something, but that same raw, dark feeling comes back.

The way the poem is written is really smart. It makes us careful to read every word instead of flying through the poem. It almost feels like we're going through the mind of a child--scattered and all over the place--which is what it can feel like when you experience such grief. You feel small and helpless, and your thoughts can replicate a child's. "I don't understand..." "What can I do..." "Someone help..."

Especially when the poet ends on the word night, we are filled again with that sense of darkness creeping over her again. Even when she begins with "the last," the poem has to do with endings and dark periods. But, in the middle, we did have a high point only to drop down and back to the low. But, if this poem is about grief, it's going to be dark. It's going to be fitting. It's going to be appropriate.

The poem works well on many levels: repeating certain phrases, the lack of punctuation, the diction throughout, the images and words used to get the reader to think more in depth (wood, green, etc). Overall, it's a poem that can be dissected, discussed, and argued. Add anything you will if you find more.

And I'm spent on "Wood," but I do think it's a good read.

What do you think of "Wood?"

Grooveshark

2010-03-05T15:16:00.000-08:00

Pandora Radio fans: I call to you!

If you like listening to music--especially those who stream it online--check out Grooveshark. It combines the best of Pandora but personalizes it. You can create your own playlists by searching their infinite website. You can then create these wonderful playlists, share them with others, and listen to them.

They have EVERYTHING you could look for. It's amazing. You can share your ideas with others, have similar songs on your playlists matched so you can explore new music, you can check out what other people are listening to...

It's a great way to share and listen to music. I'm really into it. Check me out at jibbles02. See what cool songs I'm coming up with...

Any good requests to download if I'm into indie music (Fleet Foxes, Band of Horses)?

What do you think of Grooveshark?

The Burglary

2010-03-04T15:23:00.000-08:00

Back to some poetry: This poem was published in last year's (2009's) New Yorker issed in November. It speaks of a burglary and the aftermath of the crisis.

The Burglary

by Linda Pastan

They stole my mother's silver,
melting it down, perhaps,

into pure mineral, worth
only its own weight.

We must eat with our hands now,
grab for food

in this new place of greed,
our table set

only with memories, tarnishing
even as we speak:

my mother holding a shiny ladle
in her hand,

serving the broth
to children who will forget

to polish her silver, forget even
to lock the house.

While forks and spoons are divided
from all purpose,

patterns are lost like friezes
after centuries of rain,

and every knife is robbed
of its cutting edge.

I've had my car broken into before. I understand what it's like to feel violated and stolen from. It makes you feel stripped and naked, like you are only worth things and those things are not yours anymore. It makes you feel connected to those lost things, like you are now less of a person without them. But when it comes down to it, they are just things. Lost "things" should not be the end of the world. It still doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt like hell though.

This poem really gets the heart of what I'm talking about. It parallels between the purpose and intention of the criminals and the aftermath of what the family thus experiences. The criminals don't think about the other half of the equation, and it's hard for the victim to see the other side as well. The poet (writing on the victim's behalf) also doesn't know what the criminal is doing with the stolen items. She is making an assumption. Who knows what is true. But, it is true that both sides are both disconnected and not understanding of the other party.

Selecting to identify the stolen silver really puts a strong image in the reader's mind. We can now see the effects the family feels when they go to dinner, eating with no utensils. Even the simplest things feel the loss, and you take for granted the small things you have. You don't always see someone stealing from you these items, no pertinent and imminent threats. But alas, the silverware is stolen.

Pastan writes, "Now we must eat with our hands," alluding to the fact that they are now in a more primitive state, as if they have now been reduced to less of people than they were before because of this crime. Or, at least it makes them feel that way. It's as if you walk in the shoes of the criminal, feeling the dirtiness of a dirty job/act. Stealing is primitive, and so are the raw feelings they are now experiencing.

The interesting twist to the poem is that the mother didn't lock the door, so she probably feels extremely guilty for what happened, like she deserved it. She didn't take the precaution she should have, but she probably didn't think she had to. She had too must trust in the world, and can that be a fault? I guess it is in the world we live in. It's sad that we have to question others before immediately accepting them.

I really like the end, concluding with the knife and how it's lost its cutting edge. Clever. End with the hurt (the obvious weapon) when it's such an emotional loss that feels almost like a stabbing pain from a knife.

Even the structure of the poem looks like a utensil. I kind of like that. The lines are also very similar in their structure, alluding to the normalcy of their lives. But now they have been violently thrown off key, off balance. Something like this can definitely do that.

Overall, it's a concise, effective poem. It says a lot with little words. Well done.

So what do you think of "The Burglary?"

Cold Souls

2010-03-03T17:28:00.001-08:00

Paul Giamatti's latest film was quite out there. I commend him for doing such a different film than he's used to, but it wasn't the most enjoyable film I've seen in a while. It's one of those projects that seems more like a better idea than it is a movie (kind of like Jerry Seinfeld's new show sounds like a better joke than a television show--The Marriage Ref).

Cold Souls is the film I am referencing, and it's quite similar to the name of it: If people want to, they can get rid of their souls and put them in storage. If your soul just weighs you down and you need to feel nothing, you can have your soul sucked out of you and stored in a facility. You might not be overly energetic and excited, but you also won't feel sadness or any other negative feeling you can't get rid of.

See, it's a smart idea. But when it's turned into a film, it's kind of dull and boring. Paul Giamatti plays himself, an actor, who just feels an overall "blah" in his life and thinks that storing his soul will solve his problems. Unfortunately, his soul is stolen (once he wants it back and realizes its worth) by the Russian black market (technically a soul mule--as opposed to a drug mule) who sells it in Russia. He must literally go soul searching to get his soul back, which he eventually does.

I liked their dialogues about souls--what they look and feel like, why people would want to switch them, what it feels like not to have one or to steal someone else's, why someone would want to be rid of it. Those points were very interesting. But, the other parts were sort of dreary and depressing. I know we were trying to mirror Giamatti's dull life, but there weren't really any pick-up points during the movie. It was kind of just as dull as he was feeling with some minor parts of interesting dialogue.

The concept of the movie could strike up good conversation. I just don't know if the film itself would sustain a strong enough audience to sit through it. Now, don't get me wrong, it's not that bad. Realistically, I just don't think it's the type of movie that people normally see. The average person likes mindless blockbusters that have major actors and actresses and has happy endings (like some romantic comedy). This is more about the idea than the entertainment value. I respect movies like this (hence one reason I picked it up and watched it), and I'm not unhappy that I saw it, I'm just honestly trying to gauge what others would think. I guess I would say to try it for yourself.

Any thoughts on soul searching or storing souls?

What do you think of Cold Souls?

Survivor

2010-02-28T10:19:00.000-08:00

No, this post is not about the television show Survivor. This post is about Survivor, an excellent book by one of my favorite writers Chuck Palahniuk. I'm on a literary quest to read all of his novels since I enjoy each one more and more. His novels have such unique content and are written in his own unique style--he impresses me more and more with what he publishes.

Survivor, in a nutshell, is about Tender Branson, a man who was raised in a death cult yet escaped before his entire community committed suicide. Tender is the last surviving member of the cult and receives a lot of media attention from it. He is set up with an agent who basically publishes anything under the sun for him and gets him on television as much as possible. He does nothing; everything is scripted and created for him. He is the face and name to this franchise.

What makes this novel REALLY interesting is that it begins with Tender on a plane, telling us that he will soon crash to the ground. He has hijacked a plane, with just him on it, and is going to fly the plane until the gas runs out. In the meantime, he tells us his story. He then begins telling us what happened from the top. The rest of the book is a flashback.

The pages of the book actually go in reverse order, so instead of starting on page one, we begin on page (for example) 312. Even chapters are in reverse. It's these kinds of little touches that makes this man a really interesting person to read.

We now need to understand Tender's cult, the Creedish, who turned him into the odd person that he is. We don't blame him; it just explains his odd tendencies throughout the book. Tender's cult believed themselves to be servants to the human race, and they were waiting from a sign from God so that they could then return to serve him (by killing themselves). Put in better words, here is the purpose to their names and jobs:

"They are extensively trained in etiquette, housecleaning, and other menial labor, after which they are baptized and sent out into the world to make a living. Every month, they are expected to send back money and a letter of confession. "Tender" is not really a name, but a title, which is given to all male children except the firstborn, who is called "Adam". Likewise, all female children are called "Biddy", including the eldest. "Tender" is meant to denote one who tends; "Biddy", one who is biddable. All but the firstborn sons and their wives are discouraged from having sex of any kind and are forbidden to marry, and the latter are expected to have sex only for procreation. All the Creedish wear highly recognizable clothing, both inside the community and out. This makes it easy to spot another member of the Church in the outside world."

Thus, Tender has difficulty with romance. He feels he does not deserve it and shies away from it. Typical to Palahniuk books, Tender constantly provides us with little tips on how to cook or clean. They are really in depth to do the best possible job to cook or clean. It is not common knowledge by far. He will discuss mixing herbs or chemicals to create a good cleaning solution or cooking sauce. He will explain the best procedures for cleaning or the best way to take the shell off of a lobster. It's interesting, yet we see why he possesses this knowledge. This quirky behavior isolates him from others.

In present time, when the novel begins, Tender is living a "normal" life ten years after the mass suicide. He is cooks and cleans for a wealthy family. The odd thing about his life is that his phone number was misprinted in a suicide hotline pamphlet. Thus, he receives tons of phone calls from suicidal people who ask him for advice. They expect someone to tell them not to do it, but Tender will tell them the opposite. He likes having the power over them (like he never had) almost like he is God. It's pretty twisted. Sometimes when he tells people to do it, they chicken out or it stuns them so much that they don't. Other times, people just need to hear what he tells him, and they do kill themselves which is more peaceful to them. They get what they want.

In one instance, Tender tells a neighbor of his to do it when he calls. Once he goes through with it, he learns that his sister, Ferility, is upset about it. He visits her brother's grave, and the two of them start to talk and see each other around. Tender starts an interest in Feritlity.

Fertility soon calls the crisis hotline, not knowing it's Tender, and Tender disguises his voice and tries to talk her out of comitting suicide. Fertility soon becomes interested in this man on the phone, and they keep talking. They even talk about Tender and says how ugly and boring he is. The man on the line (Tender) convinces her to start seeing him because that is the only way the man on the phone will meet up with her.

The strange thing about Ferility is that she has visions of the future. She seems to know EVERYTHING that is going to happen, and that makes her crazy. She has no element of surprise in her life because she always dreams what will happen. This gives her the power to show up where Tender is going to be and tell him things that are going to happen to him.

Meanwhile, Tender is essentially given a make-over and turned into a celebrity for the purpose of making money for the agent. Tender goes along with it. He doesn't really care what happens to him. The agent produces books and television shows for him. He has followers. Fertility gives him prophetic words and predictions to make live on air, and people follow him likes he's a religious leader.

It is discovered, as the FBI investigates, that there are more Creedish survivors. They are sought out because the Creedish also engaged in some illegal activities which they could be prosecuted for. The news continues to show more Creedish victims killing themselves which makes Tender more rare, thus more interesting. There ends up being two last victims, Tender and his brother Adam, who constantly follows him around.

The climax of the book comes when Tender's agent wants him to get married live during the Superbowl halftime show to promote his upcoming autobiography. Tender has been wanting to kill himself the entire time; he just has never found the opportunity. Fertility runs across Adam who wants to frame Tender for murderering his agent to bring him down. Unforuntely, Tender's agent will die anyway during the Superbowl half-time show (as she predicts) so she helps Tender stall long enough so he can escape the show. He then becomes a man on the run, escaping the so-called murder of his agent.

Tender, Adam, and Fertility escape and are on the run. They steal cars and trucks to hop around the country. Fertility soon ditches them though for unknown reasons. They are on their way to the Creedish community to see what it has become. As Adam discusses ways to uncorrupt his mind, Tender gets so mad that he crashes their car into the middle of the landfill, what the Creedish community has become.

When they crash, a figurine of Tender shoots into Adam's eye. Adam asks Tender to disfigure him with a rock so that he can be left alone when he goes to jail. Tender reluctantly agrees, and Adam says he'll tell him when to stop. Unfortunately, he never does, and Adam is killed. Fertility soon shows up, and they leave the scene.

That night, Tender finally gives in to pleasures with Fertility. She tells him in the morning that she is pregnant, and then tells him that she has to travel to Australia. Tender follows. Fertility tells him that someone is going to hijack the plane, and it ends up being him. Fertility tells him that there is a way to escape, which brings the book back to the beginning. Tender doesn't seem to find a way to escape because the book cuts off in mid sentence. We are left wondering if he lives or dies.

But, on Palahniuk's website, he has stated that he believes Tender survives. It seems more like he dies, but I guess it's all just speculation.

Overall, it had bizarre points to it, but I found it really interesting. It was pieced together in an intelligent way that was captivating--it drew me back to the text often. He created such a satirical work that it makes it interesting to see what American culture aspects he's poking fun at. Analyzing this text would be VERY fun to do.

The book asks many great questions: How do we handle traumas? Is there such a thing as fate? Why do people want to commit suicide? How do our environments effect who we turn out as? How much of the media is constructed and fake? How far will entertainment industry go for a profit? Can we overcome our pasts, no matter how traumatic or intense they were?

Palahniuk is a must-read author. He also wrote Fight Club (his most notable work), but he has others that are just as interesting as this book. Survivor was his second written book. I find this man utterly fascinating and I hope that others do too.

So what do you think of Survivor?

The Invention of Lying

2010-02-27T19:31:00.000-08:00

Ricky Gervais is a comic genius. In my opinion, he is changing comedy and how we view it. Whether it's television (with The Office) or movies (with The Invention of Lying), his ideas are just so unique and hilarious that I can definitely see them influencing the path that comedy will take.

The Invention of Lying was such a good movie that I watched it twice in the two days I rented it. I never do that with movies. I like to watch as many movies as I can, so I rarely watch movies twice, let alone in two days. I thought that this comedy was SO radically different from others that I had to watch it again. I felt like I missed jokes and really wanted to revel in how funny and smart they really were. I am very impressed with Ricky Gervais and his innovative ideas.

So, the movie is essentially about what it sounds: a man who invents lying. That means that his surrounding world tells the complete truth. People are blunt and honest with one another. No one lies. There is complete faith and trust. No one would even THINK of lying. Except, Gervais's character does because he comes at a tough crossroads. He loses his job, and since he loses his job, he can't pay his rent. Thus, he is facing being evicted from his apartment. While at the bank, he has the opportunity to lie to get the money to pay his rent. Once he lies, he feels a monumental wave of an idea come over him: if he lies, he can get anything he wants.

The movie then goes through waves of his exploration of lying. He tries to lie to get sex, but he doesn't like doing that. Then he lies to get money at the casino. Then he lies to get his job back, and since his job is writing history, he makes up history to make the best movie ever and to earn the most money ever. He lies to try to get the girl even though Rob Lowe's character tries to get in his way. Except, the only thing he doesn't use is complete lies to sway the pretty girl to like him. Slowly, she does see the good in him even though she is so focused on reproducing and fears that if she reproduces with Gervais that her children will had pudgy snout little noses. That part, I find, to be utterly hilarious.

At the end, she does see him for who he is, and they do have a pudgy little kid with a snub nose. He then learns the trick from his father, so they will both be successful in their world.

Ricky Gervais's character is eventually discovered for knowing too many things which earns him more fame. When he tells his dying mother about how beautiful the afterlife is, he soon becomes the man who knows. He talks about what happens after death and what God is like. Could you imagine having to come up with that?

Anyway, the movie had so many excellent guest stars. They had Rob Lowe, Tina Fey, Jennifer Garner, Louis CK, Jonah Hill, Bobby Moynihan, Jason Bateman, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Edward Norton, Jeffrey Tambor, and of course, Ricky Gervais. They all did a FABULOUS job and were all hilarious. Edward Norton was really the surprise as the traffic cop.

The writers just did a really good job with creating jokes for their plot. Some movies have good ideas but they don't write good dialogue or scenes to go with it, but this movie really capitalized on its good idea. It was hilarious in every scene, and it even gets funnier when you watch it again to catch for jokes you missed. Overall, it was enjoyable on many levels. It was funny yet it had a good message.

But man! Budweiser must have contributed a pretty penny to the film. They were mentioned EVERYWHERE. That and Pizza Hut...

If you are a person who enjoys comedy as a genre of film, this is a must-see. You won't regret it.

So what do you think of The Invention of Lying?

Shrink

2010-02-26T13:20:00.000-08:00

Sundance films always intrigue me. And, movies that include Kevin Spacey also intrigue me. Thus, I picked up Shrink and in the end, I really enjoyed it. I respect the films that Kevin Spacey selects ever since he starred in American Beauty. For those who enjoy his work, this is quite an interesting piece to view.

Shrink is about what it sounds: a psychiatrist. Kevin Spacey plays this psychiatrist, Dr. Carter, who lives in Hollywood and treats patients from movie stars to high school students. The irony lies in the fact that Dr. Carter really has his own issues--his wife killed himself, and to handle it, he smokes all the time. His friends try to intervene and stop his drug abuse, but he rejects them and tries to continue on his own path of coping.

Meanwhile, his book about happiness (which was really just a self-exploratory way of trying to cope with his depression) is selling well. The movie branches out to focus on other characters, those that Dr. Carter is helping. Their story lines connect throughout the film.

One subplot has to do with Patrick, a movie agent who deals with famous actors and actresses, two of which are treated by Carter. One is Jack, played by Robin Williams, and another is Kate, who deals with her rock star boyfriend who cheats on her. Eventually, Kate and Carter run into each other enough outside of the workplace that they start to have feelings for one another. Although this is not exclusively developed, the viewer is left with the feeling that these two will pursue a relationship, giving Carter some closure on his dark past.

Another subplot focuses on Jemma, a struggling teenager whose mother has just committed suicide. She starts skipping school and pursuing in questionable behavior; thus the school forces her to see Dr. Carter. She has a difficult time opening up to him, and they both do not realize at first that they are fighting with the same issue within themselves: losing someone to suicide and not understanding why. In the end, they both discover this secret, and they both read the suicide notes left to them together. A strong bond then forms between them.

One of the movie's bigger subplots has to do with Dr. Carter's friend Jeremy, a struggling screenwriter who was closely related to Carter's wife. He is the only friend who accepts Carter after he denies help from his addiction. Jeremy gives a screenplay to Patrick, but since he is so busy, it is intercepted by his assistant Daisy. The two of them begin to see each other after that encounter. However, Jeremy's screenplay is similar to another film that is coming out, so that piece of writing is basically useless.

Jeremy then flounders and wants to succeed. For some material, he breaks into Carter's office and steals the case file on Jemma. Interested in the dark material he finds, he befriends her and hangs out with her. He then writes a screenplay on her life. Jemma soon finds this screenplay and yells violently at Jeremy. Once Carter finds out, he starts a brutal, vicious fight with Jeremy. Now Carter must stop seeing Jemma AND his friendship with Jeremy is in question.

However, meanwhile, Daisy forwards the screenplay to Patrick, who loves it. Daisy is promoted to being a producer and will start on this film. The movie ends with Patrick, Jeremy, Carter, and Jemma in an office talking about making the film. It seems as if all loose ends are tied up.

And, since Carter recently got into a drug-induced accident and saw his life flash before his eyes, he quit smoking. He even went on live TV and denounced his book, coming clean to the world. Characters all seem to have closure.

Overall, it was a smart film. I think it is smart writing when so many subplots can tie together and eventually weave into one. We start to see characters individually and undertand their background, and then we can better understand their decisions and actions once they all come together. It's a nice build up to try to understand their motives and to see their character development.

The film also had nice themes. Sometimes we can receive help from the strangest of places, those we don't expect to help us perhaps. Sometimes they are the most unlikely candidates. People need to come to their own conclusions to find peace. It can't be shoved down their throats--it can be a self-exploratory process. But, one must confront the past and the issue in order to overcome it. Numbing the self will not help get over it; it will just prolong the internal conflict. And, one must pursue his or her passions; otherwise, won't we always wonder, what if?

Kevin Spacey engaged in some fine acting, let me tell you. His character was different from others. He wore the pain of his character on his face. He always seems to impress me, no matter what kind of film he does. Even in Fred Claus, he still was brilliant.

I can see why this film did well at Sundance. It's a good one. If you like independent films, Kevin Spacey, or are interested in psychiatry, screenwriting, or itnernal conflicts, this is a good choice. It's not the most popular film, but some of the more popular films are quite boring and are just too over-the-top blockbuster predictable garbage. Yup, over-the-top blockbuster predictable garbage.

That's why I most enjoy indie films, Sundance films, the step right beneath big blockbusters. Focus Films. You get the picture. Any recommendations if I like these kinds of films for future views?

So what do you think of Shrink?

Conan Off the Tonight Show

2010-02-22T13:15:00.000-08:00

Alright, this blog is a bit overdue and out of date, but I wasn't in my full swing of blogging at the time of its newsworthy height. But still, I need to vent because the issue still angers me: Conan was essentially kicked off of The Tonight Show.

Being the avid Conan fan that I am, it seems natural that I would get this livid over this issue. Of course I rise to the defense like a mother whose child has been cheated or slighted. It's hard to put into words how much of a travesty this entire fiasco really is, but I keep trying to tell myself that Conan has bigger things in store for him. I really do believe that everything happens for a reason, so hopefully this will only launch Conan to greater heights. If NBC is going to treat him this way after working for them collectively for over 20 years, then maybe he doesn't deserve them after all.

So we all know the Conan story. I wonder if I am being too biased or wounded over the whole thing. As my father said to me, "How can you feel so sorry for a guy who got paid MILLIONS of dollars to walk away? It's not like he's totally left in the dust screwed." Fair enough. I know he got good compensation, but it seems that it's not about the money to Conan. It never was. It was about "having fun on television," which is what he always claimed. He has fun making comedy and making people laugh--I am sad that he isn't doing that every day.

But, I want to know Jay's real side of the story. I haven't seemed to find it or run across it yet. Does anyone know what his deal is? To be honest, I can't understand why he would want to come back. He doesn't need it anymore. Isn't it selfish for him to take it away from Conan forever just because he wasn't succeeding on his other show? And what is this ridiculous NBC/Jay Leno love affair anyway? Why not just cut him loose? Why is Leno choosing to end Conan's career? I'm sure he has other options!

When I first heard about it, I thought it was a total joke. How can they actually kick Conan off? And then the issue suddenly started to snowball into the disaster that it became. I then watched Conan avidly, hoping for the news to change. It feels like he only just arrived in LA, and now he's been ditched. He left his whole life on the west coast to come out here, and not even a year later he is kicked off the show. What a mess.

I thought Conan's jokes the whole week prior to the last episode were hilarious in terms of giving digs to NBC. Especially his bit on spending a lot of money to piss off NBC--that was gold (even though it really wasn't wasting that much money). In any event, it saddened me because everything on his show worked so well. His band. His writers. His sidekick. The jokes. The bits. Everything meshed SO well, and I'm afraid that, from now on, he might not get that back again. What if he doesn't get everyone back? What if he isn't picked up? Now I sit and fret! I miss watching Conan and hearing his hilarious perspective on the world.

But I do think Conan will get picked up though. He's so popular and has such a wide fan base. I just don't know if there is a venue for him, and if those who are willing to have him can pay him what he deserves.

Conan's heart-felt speech at his last show almost brought me to tears (just like it did him). He's right about not being cynical; I'm trying not to hate NBC for it. He really is lucky to have worked every comedian's dream--the host The Tonight Show. It's just sad that it had to end so quickly. I bet it's partly because Conan is so out there, he's not as safe as Jay. He's more like Leno, causing a controversy every now and then. Oh NBC, take risks!

In any event, I've written more than I've wanted to because now I'm just making myself want to watch him even more! Does anyone know any rumors of his future or why Leno has decided to take his show?

What do you think of Conan leaving The Tonight Show?

The Burning Plain

2010-02-21T10:04:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I saw a movie that really stuck with me: The Burning Plain. The preview kind of locked me, even though it seemed like it belonged on Lifetime Movie Network, but it still looked poignant and deep enough to be somewhat enjoyable.

Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger drew me to it too. They tend to make decent decisions in selecting movies to star in. And this one wasn't bad. In fact, it's still resonating in the back of my mind, showing me that the message is a good one, that the writing is really effective, that the story was pretty interesting.

What I really liked about this film was the way the story was pieced together. Nothing was in any sort of chronological order. You had to constantly piece together who was who, what this plot had to do with this plot, how this murder happened, etc. The writing gave enough clues for it to still be interesting yet you still had to continuously discover and identify plot points and characters. That is interesting writing. That is smart writing. That is hard writing to do.

The story itself was interesting, yet kind of sullen and depressing at the same time. All in all, when it's told in chronological order, it's about a teenage girl who discovers that her mother is cheating on her father with a Latino man. (They live somewhere in Arizona or New Mexico). They get together in an abanadoned trailer in the middle of nowhere and build a small life together out of their true love. Well, this teenger named Mariana gets really mad one day and follows them there. Only meaning to scare them out of the trailer, she lights it on fire. However, the gas leaks and blows up the trailer, killing them both. She did not mean to do this, but is now scarred forever.

Mariana is somewhat stalked by the cheating father's son, Santiago, and they soon become close friends as they try to figure out their cheating parents' affair. Soon, they fall in love and start making love. Their families find out and get really mad. Mariana finds out that she is pregnant. They run away to Mexico where she has the baby and abandons the family.

This plot then cuts to the future where Mariana has run away (Charlize Theron) and works at a fancy restaurant. She sleeps with any man she sees. She feels so much regret for her life and feels nothing. She has no respect for herself really; she probably doesn't even feel like she deserves to live. With a role model of a cheating mother (one that she destroyed) she then turns to promiscuous sex herself, perhaps trying to hold onto what she has left of her mother.

Santiago, in the future, gets into a plane crash. He asks his brother and daughter Maria to find Mariana and bring her to them. Santiago will survive but with bad injuries. This brings the family back together after some intense struggle, and the plot ends before we get the satisfaction of seeing the family together once again.

Santiago was a great single parent who always seemed to be waiting for Mariana to come back. That is his true love, and he was a good soul who was stuck in a bad situation.

Overall, it was a very smart film. I really enjoyed it. Of course, all of that was pieced together in fragments which made it more interesting.

The acting was really good too. Therone and Basinger played really damaged and confused women. I bought it. They put on two very powerful performances.

It brings up many questions: What is true love? What do we do with such heavy guilt when we can never take back what we have done? What do you do when you cannot share something so painful that you have done? What if you aren't ready to change or to grow up? What if you don't have a parent to identify with or their characteristics are so terrible that you don't know who YOU are or who to be? What do you do if you know your parent is cheating? What if you have so much pain that you just don't know how to live?

Even though those are heavy and harsh topics, they are interestingly splayed in this film. It is an emotional film, but it's worth the watch.

So what do you think of The Burning Plain?

Milkweed

2010-02-20T10:25:00.000-08:00

Milkweed: A decent tale about the a Jew's perspective from the Warsaw ghetto. Milkweed is a young adult novel told from the perspective of a Jewish orphan who is not one hundred percent keen on the politics and horrors striking around him.

The story is told from the point of view of Misha, the orphan, and is quite scattered and confusing since the narrator is both confused and in-the-dark about what is going on around him. At times, it was a little difficult to piece together what was happening, but since I have done a great deal of study on the Holocaust and World War II, it wasn't that hard to piece together what he was talking about. However, if I didn't know as much as I did about this time period and what was going on, I might have been just as confused as Misha, given I was a young, middle school reader--the audience of this novel.

First Misha is told to be labeled as a gypsy. They were also targets at the time, not just Jews. Jews are called very nasty names throughout, to show the utter discrimination and level that they were brought to by the Nazi Party and surrounding Germans. Misha, being an orphan, must steal food to stay alive. In his attempts, he comes across a young girl named Janina who is also Jewish. They become good friends and he steals foods for her.

Soon enough, Jews are forced into ghettos. Misha and Janina are both penned into the Warsaw ghetto, and ghetto life is thus depicted here on out in the book. There is little food and warmth--all trees are cut down around them. Walls go up around them to keep them in. People are crammed together to live. People are shot or hung daily; bodies of all ages lie in the streets. It is a shocking life for these young children.

More horrors come: Janina's mother dies of typhus, Misha's friend is hung in the square with a sign over his chest warning others not to steal, and then the deportations come. People think they are going to a peaceful place to live. They think that when people mention "ovens" that food will be baked in them. We all know otherwise. It kills me that there was so much optimism in such a dark time, when in actuality, the brutality and horror only got worse once they boarded the trains to be sent to concentration camps.

But can we blame them? Isn't it honorable to keep thinking the best of things in such a dark time? Or, is it better to try to be realistic? But how could they be realistic? How could they see that things could get even worse and darker? Who would have thought that man could stoop to the level of creating labor camps with the aim of mass killing an entire population? Could that even be imagined or dreamed? We can see this in retrospect, but we cannot assume or blame them for not thinking this. It is too cruel to think this of human nature. It's not something you see everyday.

Back to the book: Misha is warned from an old orphan friend of his named Uri, who escaped and claimed a false German identity, to run because the trains led them to bad, bad places. Misha tries to take this advice, taking Janina away from her family. Janina refuses to leave her father and runs to the trains, thinking they will take her to a candy land. Trying to save her, Misha is shot and left for dead.

However, Misha is not killed. His ear was blown off, but he is much alive. He runs into a farm which keeps him for the next three years. He works there until it is safe to venture out into the world. Misha never does reconnect with Janina--we can only assume that they were killed in the concentration camp. Misha tells his tales on a street corner where he meets his wife and has a baby. She leaves him afterwards though because she cannot get over his psyche and strange habits, being damaged from this period of his life.

The book ends with him working in a grocery store. His daughter comes with her new daughter and asks him to provide a middle name for his granddaughter. Not surprisingly, he comes up with Janina.

The title Milkweed comes from Janina and Misha's conversations about angels and heaven. It's hard for them to grasp the concepts, but it's good to hold onto something light and positive during this time. The image of the milkweed seeds floating into the air is not only on the cover, but it is described throughout the book. It's the little things, the little beauties in the world to hold onto even when the rest of the world turns its back on you. There still is beauty amongst a surrounding world of hate and destruction.

This book was a very quick read, an easy read for a middle schooler. Some of my students are currently reading this for a project. I can see why some students might not like this--the ones who know more about this time period will have an easier and more enjoyable experience with this book. Personally, it didn't grab or excite me, but that could just be the material.

Overall, I would recommend this to a younger population, particularly males. But, that's not to say a girl would not enjoy this. The chapters are broken up so it is easy to pick up and put down in multiple sittings, or it could be read quickly in just a few short hours.

So what do you think of Milkweed?

My Sister's Keeper

2010-02-19T14:40:00.000-08:00

Since I'm on my Jodi Picoult run, I had to read her most popular book, My Sister's Keeper. I also wanted to read it so that I could compare it with the movie out that is based on the book. Yuck, what a joke that was.

The book was not a mistake to read. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought the characters were well crafted, and I liked reading from each perspective. Each one had his or her own voice that was interesting to see. Especially with such a controversial topic, cloning, and when there are sides to a story, it was very cool to get inside the head of different people on either side of the story.

Essentially, My Sister's Keeper is about a thirteen year old girl named Anna who wants to become medically emancipated from her parents. Anna was created by means of cloning so that she could donate parts of herself to her older sister Kate who has leukemia. Unfortunately, as Kate's disease progresses, she becomes in need of a kidney. This is when Anna seeks out legal help from Campbell Alexander who takes her on as a client.

Anna's mother Sara is appalled, always being the advocate for Kate, and decides to fight against them since she is a lawyer. Brian, the father, has a difficult time pleasing both parties as he does want his daughter to survive but he also wants his other daughter to have a choice. The oldest son Jesse struggles with being recognized. Starving for attention, he sets houses on fire to try to get people to recognize him and to try to mask his suffering. Ironically enough, his father Brian is a firefighter, and he soon catches him and puts a stop to his attention-seeking behavior.

In the midst of the case and the trial, a guardian ad litem is appointed to Anna. Her name is Julia Romano, and she is the old, first love of Campbell Alexander, ironically enough. The two of them have to work together on the case, and even though it starts out rough and heated, they slowly fall back into love. The twist with Campbell is that he is driven on his career and has a service dog named Judge. What he needs the service dog for is unknown until the end. When people ask what it is for, Campbell makes up a different lie every time to shield himself from his actual problems.

In the end, Campbell reveals his problem when he has a seizure in court. It is then learned that he has epilepsy, and his main reason to take on Anna for no financial gain whatsoever is that he realizes what it is like to have no control over your body. Hm. Interesting.

Spoiler coming...

Anyway, the ending really through me off guard. First, Anna expels why she brought this all the way to trial: Kate wants to die. The only way for Anna not to give her kidney to Kate would be to literally fight off her mother with a lawsuit. Kate is sick of fighting for her life and just wants to slowly give up and let the disease overrun her body like it's been doing for the past fourteen years. She wants her family to start living their lives instead of revolving theirs around hers. What an intense scene that was!

After that twist, the judge discusses it with Kate and grants the victory to Campbell and Anna. But, here comes the REAL twist: on the way home from the trial, Campbell and Anna get into a horrific and fatal car accident. Campbell walks away hardly harmed, but Anna is left braindead. The doctor asks for them to consider organ donation... Just like Kate needed. It is then decided to save Kate with Anna's organs since Anna has no chance at a real life.

Woa. Never saw that one coming. Kate ends up living on instead of Anna, what we all pictured. I don't know if it's genius to write the exact opposite ending that we envisioned or what. I don't know if I love it or hate it.

You know, thinking about it, it's probably the best way it could have been done. Instead of going with the predictability of the leukemia patient dying, we go with the healthy thirteen year old. No one expects her to die. She lives her life without thinking of death and has no attention paid to her, yet she is the one who dies. It makes her parents think about all of the time and attention and devotion paid to Kate when they actually spent far less time and focus on Anna, the one who really does die. If anything, this is the way their parents truly do learn. And then Kate gets a new perspective on life and starts living for something since she was granted this second chance. Not too bad, now that I really ponder it.

And maybe I've come to this conclusion because of the filthy, trashy, atrocious excuse for a movie they created out of this. Yuck, what a waste of time. Not only were their Blockbuster choices for actors horrible and off-base (I mean, who buys Cameron Diaz as Sara let along the HORRIBLE choice of Alec Baldwin as Campbell; I love Alec tremendously, but he's no bachelor lawyer of Campbell--try Jude Law maybe), but the differences were overwhelming. They left out so much and twisted the plot so much that it hardly resembled the book.

First of all, Jesse had no issue with burning down houses. His character was too soft in the movie and looked too young and hurt. Jesse is supposed to be angry and not give a damn, not look like a wounded puppy. He smokes cigarettes, drinks, drives around random places, makes scenes, and burns down houses. The Jesse in the movie looked like a nice kid in the back of the classroom. Poor choice.

Then, they didn't even include Julia Romano's character. Julia makes Campbell interesting. Now we just have a lawyer who cares, not one who is struggling over the past and future. Why not throw a romance into it? Julia was central to the book, but they edited her out to add more unnecessary scenes to the family. Barf.

Lastly, THE ENDING??? I don't know where to begin here. What an atrocity! The ending was the COMPLETE opposite of the book's ending. Instead of Anna dying, they have Kate give up and die in the hospital. This COMPLETELY changes the meaning of the book, which in turn is a slap in the face to Jodi Picoult and her message. How did she let this happen?

I discussed previously the original ending's message. With this new ending, it's giving way to what we all thought originally. BORING. Not only that, but it excuses the parents' behavior to isolate and focus on one child. They don't learn anything by their daughter dying of cancer. It's the easy way out for their characters. There's no growth. It's easy, it's expected, it's Blockbuster. In the book, the parents go through depression and their own problems to cope, which they eventually will come out of. They realized their mistakes and are trying to cope and figure out life's true meanings.

By having Kate tell the story, in the epilogue of the book, we FINALLY hear her voice. This is the first and last time we hear from her, which is symbolic in itself. She now can speak, is heard, and wants to live. Instead of giving up on life, he fights to stay alive. Kate has a new perspective on life. She doesn't want to commit suicide; she now wants to live. By the moving killing her, it's basically okay-ing her suicide plot which should NOT be the message of the film. That is a horrible message to send to viewers. That is not what the message was intended to be.

Spoiler is over.

If you've read the book, don't even bother watching the movie unless you want to become critical or angered, like I have here. I wonder if Jodi Picoult had any sort of voice towards this film or if you just sell your rights to your book and whatever happens happens. If that's true, I'm very disturbed.

The book was well done, but not the movie. Tsk Tsk.

Stay tuned for my ideas on Change of Heart which will come soon. Hopefully I can find more time to write as I am now bogged down in the world of having a real job. Hopefully I can pick up this blog habit that I do so enjoy. Smile.

So what do you think of My Sister's Keeper?

Keeping Faith

2009-12-13T19:23:00.000-08:00

My students drew me to Jodi Picoult. They read every book of hers, and they keep reading, and reading, and reading. Now, it's my turn to read.

The first book I could get my hands on (since they can be so scarce) was Keeping Faith. Since it's about religion, it really wouldn't have been my first choice, but it was the only choice. For her first book, I'd say it was pretty good. It must be because now I'm reading a second book of hers: The Tenth Circle.

Now that I'm in the middle of her second book, I can see patterns in her books. Each book takes on a controversial topic that she wants us to think about. They make us consider our morals and our stances on such topics. Keeping Faith is about religion; The Tenth Circle is about rape. When I'm finished, I will pick up The Pact which is about suicide. I kind of like this pattern she's got going. I think it's pretty smart.

Keeping Faith sounded a little tacky, but Picoult did it in an alright way. Mariah White is a mother who is bored with her life, and her husband is bored with her. She walks in on him having an affair which causes them to separate. Amidst this familial struggle, Faith "starts talking to God." She calls God her "guard" and refers to her as a woman. At first this causes trouble just with Mariah and her mother, but eventually it catches the attention of the media.

Faith engages in such activities as reviving her dead grandmother, curing an autistic man for a short period of time, curing a baby with AIDS, performing stigmata on her hands similar to Jesus's wounds, and telling personal information that she would have no way of knowing. It's a little out there, but you have to have "faith."

Two side plots go on in the meantime. First, Ian Fletcher, an atheist TV host whose job is to discredit acts of God to prove his point, seeks out to bring down Faith White as his next episode. He comes to the town to point out her flaws, but for some reason, he can't find any. He slowly gets close to the family and closer with the Mariah. It's easy to predict that these two seemily opposite people fall in love.

Next, Mariah's husband who cheated on her, Colin, sues for custudy. A custody battle in court then ensues. They peg Mariah as unstable from her earlier suicide attempt (after Colin's first affair) and with a made-up psychological disorder that Mariah has. The court scene went on for a BIT longer than I would have liked, but I think all of the evidence presented was crucial to the plot. The succession of events also was significant towards the end result.

During the trial, Faith falls deathly ill. She has been sentenced away from her mother with a restraining order, but she gets worse and worse as she is away from her mother. But, Mariah can't keep herself away. She goes to the hospital despite the order, and for whatever reason, Faith goes from critical condition to being fine to leave. This is Faith's last act of God to prove that she belongs with her mother.

The book ends ambiguously. It ends with Faith wondering where her God is, calling out to her. But, we don't know if she has gone from her life completlely or if she will always be there. I like that there is no closure. I think it adds more to the story. But, people do get closure with the romance since Ian and Mariah seem to hook up in the end.

I can see why so many women connect with this book. These characters seem so real because they have such honest, true flaws--flaws that we all might face. I think women connect with these characters, male and female, because they might reflect parts of themselves or others they know. I just think it's good writing. She develops an in-depth plot that pans out into so many different avenues that I never predicted. She connects earlier plots and shows such character development among characters. I'm just astonished.

I would recommend Picoult books to readers, but I don't need to. She already has such a VAST audience that has read all of her books. I am the one behind. But, this is my way of giving approval. I like it. I'm going to read more.

So what do you think of Keeping Faith?

Away We Go

2009-11-29T18:22:00.000-08:00

I love good writing in movies. You don't normally see it too often. Luckily, Dave Eggers, a very talented writer, has been turning to screenplays lately. He just finished working on his adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are, and here he has created a wonderfully smart romantic comedy, Away We Go.

Away We Go is a film he co-wrote with his wife, Vendela Vida. It stars Maya Rudolph, who is amazing in a dramatic role, and John Krasinski, who plays a similar role that he's used to: a mellow, easy-going, funny-but-lovable guy. Having been created by a married couple, one would wonder if the roles are in any way similar to their own relationship. I wonder if the characters are closely bound to the writers themselves.

The film is about a couple, not married, who become pregnant. When they visit Burt's parents, they drop a bombshell that they are moving thousands of miles away. On the way home, Burt and Verona discuss why they're even staying where they live, in New England. They think they are "fuck ups," and decide that this new baby will help them become better people.

The couple decides that they will move to somewhere new for a fresh start. So, they visit all of their friends and family that live around the country to decide where they will move to. Along the way, they meet some crazy people who shed different perspectives on raising a family.

They travel to Phoenix to visit Verona's crazy old boss. They are too outspoken and treat their children like they are crazy science expirements. Then they travel to Tucson to visit Verona's sister where Verona and her sister discuss their deceased parents, drawing upon absent parents and death. Then they travel to Madison, Wisconsin to visit Burt's childhood friend. She is too "granola" and over-the-top with being an earthy mother, and they leave after they offend them with buying a stroller since it makes the mother "push away the baby when it should be held close."

Next, they travel to Montreal to visit their college friends. They have a diverse family of children, all adopted, all different races, all different ages. The woman cannot become pregnant, even though they keep trying. It is a real stress on their relationship, but it shows how strongly a family can be created even if it isn't blood deep. Finally, they travel to Miami to visit Burt's brother who was recently left by his wife, leaving his brother to raise his daughter alone. Burt freaks out, trying to find her and console his brother, but he speaks with Verona, and that's just the way the world is. You can't save every child and every family; you can only make your own.

When in Miami, Burt and Verona have an INCREDIBLE discussion on a trampoline. It is extremely brilliant writing which immediately hooked me into this movie. There are moments in the film where the characters speak these deep, wise words that are absoluytely captivating. I was sucked into the screen, drawn into the wisdom, and I could only think of how much I miss watching good movies that communicate this caliber of intelligence.

In the end, Burt and Verona end up buying her childhood home to fix up. It's a wonderful last scene as they sit on the porch and say final words about raising the baby. A wonderful ending to bring them back to where they always belonged.

Throughout the movie, the couple has their own problems. How will they raise the child? Why won't Verona marry Burt? Where will they live? Will they succeed?

What I like about the movie is that it's realistic. Verona never accepts Burt's marriage proposal. They learn to accept things about each other, but it doesn't mean they'll be bad parents. They've learned a lot from their journey, and all they can do is give the most love they can to their child. It's a really beautiful story in how this message comes across.

Here is one excellent quotations from the movie that hopefully gets across the smart writing:

"It's all those good things you have in you. The love, the wisdom, the generosity, the selflessness, the patience. The patience! At 3 A.M. when everyone's awake because Ibrahim is sick and he can't find the bathroom and he's just puked all over Katki's bed. When you blink, when you blink! And it's 5:30 and it's time to get up again and you know you're going to be tired all day, all week, all your fucking life. And you're thinking what happened to Greece? What happened to swimming naked off the coast of Greece? And you have to be willing to make the family out of whatever you have."

I hope to find more, especially from the scene on the trampoline.

Not only is it good writing, but it has GREAT cameos from great actors and actresses. Maggie Gyllenhall, Jim Gaffigan, Catherine O'Hara, Jeff Daniels, Paul Schnieder, Allison Janney, Chris Messina, Melanie Lynskey, and Josh Hamilton have incredible small roles that are either hilarious and touching. And, Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski blew me away. They are normally in comic roles, but they do a great job of making you laugh but also being very serious. Their acting was incredible. They stepped it up to a new level.

This is a MUST-SEE movie. It's one of the best I've seen in a long, long time. This is one I'd like to own and would watch over again (and I'm not one to usually do that). Whatever Dave Eggers does, follow. Read his books. Watch his movies. Read the books where he selects the best "non-required reading." He's a smart man to trust, read, and learn from!

So what do you think of Away We Go?

Palin 2012

2009-11-26T19:25:00.000-08:00

Being an SNL and Digital Shorts fan, I couldn't help but absolutely love this newest Digital Short. I just commented recently on Firelight, which was hilarious. But, this week's Short almost topped the last one in terms of movie spoofs. Palin 2012 was definitely one to discuss with others, and definitely laugh about in the process.

Watch the Short here. You'll have to cut a little ways into the clip, but it's the only place to watch it at this point in time.

Basically, the Short is a spoof of the movie 2012 (where the world comes to an end), but the spin is that Palin is now president, hence the world coming to an end because of it. The way they cut news footage and interviews, mixed with actual movie scenes, is hilarious. They even do an AWESOME job cutting in interview clips with movie scenes--hence the "bridge to nowhere" comment as a bridge collapses, and ending with the White House being demolished. It's just put together very well.

I don't normally connect with political satire on the show, but I really liked this one. Especially since it has to do with Sarah Palin. Especially since she's doing her book tour. Yuck.

And come on. We all know she'll run even though she won't admit it. Can't wait to see it.

So what do you think of Palin 2012?

Whatever Works

2009-11-22T11:46:00.000-08:00

I'm not a Woody Allen fan, but I had to see one of his latest films, Whatever Works, since it features the extremely talented comedian Larry David. Being a Larry David fan, I had to see it. He isn't one to star in movies--let alone his own television show--so I knew this one had to be pretty good.

When David interviewed on Conan O'Brien's show to promote the film, he talked about how horrible he is as an actor. He's really not that bad. He said when Allen first asked him to do it, he refused. "I'll ruin your movie" was his reaction. I wouldn't say he ruined it at all. It seemed more like the role was written for him. I don't think we'll see David in more films, but this role was made just for him. He was Boris Yelnikoff.

Whatever Works is different from other comedies I've seen. The writing was very intelligent and well written. I'll give Allen that. The actors did a great job of delivering very clever one-liners and longer monologues.

The film stars Larry David as Boris Yelnikoff, an extremely intelligent man who almost wins A Nobel Prize. He used to be a professor teaching music and chess, but he stops doing that after a revelation. He divorces his wife and lives alone in the city where he teaches young boys to play chess; although he is very abrasive and rude to these boys.

Boris is so brutally honest that it's funny. He makes stunning observations about his surrounding world and will announce them even if it will offend the person listening. He will be honest about the kids he is teaching, right to their parents. He will make straight-forward comments to the people concerning them. He doesn't care. He does "whatever works." That's his new philosophy on life.

One day, he meets a girl on his doorstep, Melodie, who has traveled from the south to live in New York City, her land of dreams. Boris is reluctant to let her stay there, but she ends up crashing there for a long time. She isn't very smart in the least, but he is fascinated by her. One night when she returns home drunk, they decide to marry, even though they are VERY far apart in age.

A year later, Melodie's mother finds her in NYC and stays with them. She is distraught with the marriage and vows to herself to break it up and find her someone more suitable. She succeeds--she introduces Melodie to Randy whom she soon has an affair with. They separate. Boris's friends, and even Melodie's mom, start to pair off.

Like in the beginning, Boris tries to commit suicide. Boris failed the first time because he landed on an awning. This time, he lands on a woman, Helena, who he then ends up with. He does "whatever works."

This movie was different because Boris directly spoke to the audience, which isn't normally done in films. It's like when Ferris Bueller would do it, except much more in depth. You'll see it more in plays, but not necessarily in movies.

In the beginning of the film, it opens up with Boris, in present day, chatting with his friends. He mentions an audience watching him and how they're probably eating their popcorn with their overpriced tickets (alluding to the theatre experience). Obviously, his friends are skeptical. He then walks down the street, addressing the camera, to tell us his life story.

David goes on a solid five+ minute monologue where he discloses his thoughts on life and of his past. It's absolutely incredible. The whole time I kept thinking, "How did David memorize all of this?" It really is a brilliant monlogue. It seems longer than a normal play or movie would have one. But, the fact that Boris is aware of us as an audience proves how intelligent he is. He will even speak to us even though others thinks he's crazy. He just does whatever works for him.

Overall, a great story, great plot, great acting, great writing. I was impressed. It's very different from anything you'll ever see. And if you like Larry David, this is a must see. He stays in his character (from other roles) which is what we all love.

What do you think of Whatever Works?

Firelight

2009-11-21T19:09:00.000-08:00

A couple weeks ago, Andy Samberg and the Lonely Island put out a hilarious SNL Digital Short to spoof the Twilight movie series. The hype is so huge right now. Teenage girls and middle-aged women are swooning night and day for the premiere of New Moon, the next movie in the Twilight series. The Digital Short captures it all.

View the video here.

The Short is called "Firelight," obviously a play on words for Twilight. The Short is a trailer that almost exactly mimicks the trailer for the original movie. Instead of Bella Swan swooning for a brooding vampire, Bella swoons for a monster that resembles Frankenstein. The way they script the exact same scenes to fit this new monster is absolutely hilarious.

And what makes it that far off? Vampires. Werewolves. Wizards. Monsters. They're all fictional. They'll all work to hook an audience. Monsters, like Frankenstein, just seem so ridiculous which plays on the whole fictional aspect of it. How are so many people buying into this (like I am myself)? It just highlights the absurdity. But, if you like the series, you'll still get a kick out of it. It doesn't make fun of it TOO much so you're offended.

The New Moon hype really is outrageous, but I think this Short comes at an appropriate time. It proves that Andy still has his flare. He's still creating hilarious Shorts. Taylor Swift looks like an excellent Bella Swan. And for Bill Hader, it's impossible for him NOT to be funny. It all just connects so beautiful comedically, if that's a word.

So what do you think of "Firelight?"

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

2009-11-20T13:31:00.000-08:00

Many friends suggested I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell to me. Since I generally trust my friends, I picked it up. It sounded pretty interesting since it had to do with outrageous stories about an outrageous life. But, overall, I wasn't as impressed as I thought I'd be.

As I was reading, I couldn't help but wonder how accurate some of the details are since they're so centered around him and his persona that he builds up. The dialogue seemed very scripted, not natural by any means, especially when he's talking. I know it's hard to recreate dialogue because it's hard to get across what was said word for word so long after it's occurred, but this retelling seemed very over-the-top, especially to build up his character, which he is constantly trying to impress us with.

I'm not saying that I doubt that these things happened; I'm sure they did. I just wonder on some of the small details that may be blown out of proportion or maximized for the ultimate effect of telling a good story. I mean, he wants to sell books here and live off of his crude lifestyle. He wants to be a celebrity, anyway.

A lot of times in his stories he would mention, "I'm Tucker Max." Or, "Then I remembered, I'm Tucker Max." It just seems very arrogant to me. As if no one else exists around him. The rules bend for him. Well, I guess it's worked thus far for him.

I also didn't appreciate how he treats women throughout his novel, especially when he gives them nicknames like Fatty. It just turned me off, overall.

The whole thing seemed like a big compilation of bragging. And when I saw what he looked like after I was done reading (since I have the movie cover version), I was very surprised. I pictured him to look very different than what I saw.

Anyway, for those of you who do seem interested in the book (I won't steer you away), it has some crazy tales about being drunk, trying to become a lawyer, crazy hook-ups, building his website, going on his book tour, becoming recognized, losing his pants one night, going to Vegas, going to a strip club in Texas, and about his friends and their uniquenesses.

I'm sure this book would appeal to college students and pretty the majority of men. I don't regret reading it. Maybe I just had a different read of it as a female. My friends have had mixed reviews. Some of my friends had the same reactions that I did; other friends said that they enjoyed the crazy stories. In any event, I wouldn't say not to read it. Make up your mind for yourself. Maybe I'm reading the tone completely wrong. But, that's my take. That's my two cents.

Has anyone seen the movie? I heard it only focuses on one story line. I'll watch it to see how they portray his persona and his crazy stories in one fluid story line. I wonder which story they will select to put into a film...

Does he make his living off of his website? I was surprised to see so many of his stories posted on there. It seems like you could read his whole book on his website without paying him. Seems strange to me.

So what do you think of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell?

The Cracker Factory

2009-11-19T14:59:00.000-08:00

I don't know what possessed me, but I picked up The Cracker Factory last weekend and finished it in a couple of sittings. The Cracker Factory is a 1977 novel by Joyce Rebeta-Burditt that was turned into a made-for-TV movie in 1979. Years ago, I picked it up at a used book sale, and I decided to read it recently.

The cover of the book stated that it's comparable to One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Perhaps the female version. It does have some similar plot points which would link the two. The Cracker Factory is set in a mental hospital, but it deals with a female narrator.

The protagonist and narrator, Cassie, is a young wife and mother who is unhappy with her life. Her husband is emotionally abusive, so she drinks in order to solve her inner problems. Her drinking and depression spiral out of hand; she drives under the influence with her children and eventually attempts suicide. Cassie lands in the mental hospital where she feels more at home.

Cassie loves this life because she is separated with her husband and she has time to herself. She doesn't have to do all of her chores for her children and husband. So, she wants to draw out as much time as possible to stay there.

Cassie has such an odd relationship with her psychiatrist, Dr. Alexander, who she has some weird crush on. She doesn't want to pursue it, but she is fascinated with this man. He won't let her return home, but Cassie eventually does decide to come home after Christmas once her son is sick.

The novel wasn't all that interesting. It is mostly Cassie's inner thoughts on her depression and drinking, which might be interesting to some. She has random interactions around the mental hospital, dealing with weird patients and doctors. Cassie is seen as the ideal patient since she seems the most together and because she visits AA meetings. She seems to have it the most together.

One weird factor that seemed to just be thrown in there was Cassie's affair. She supposedly had an affair with a man that is never really brought up. She also had another affair with one of her husband's friends. It doesn't really seem characteristic of her, but I guess it shows her unhappiness and how she really isn't cut out for the life of being a committed mother.

But, the ending didn't make sense to me at all. I actually had some problems with buying the ending. Cassie was so unhappy with her husband. She loathed him. She didn't love him. She wanted to live alone nearby to get her act together. That was her plan. But, when she goes home, she lets her husband make love to her. Her son gets sick, and she has a revelation that she wants to stay there and take care of him. She wants to return to her house to be the mother that she never was.

And, tie in some resentment from the angry mother who thought she was lazy and doing this on purpose. Weird characters are weaved in throughout.

Ahem. What a whim! How could that knock sense into her?? Give it two months and she'll be right back to where she was--drinking and landing in the hospital. I just didn't buy it. It seemed like it needed a sequel because she'd go right back. There wasn't any change or growth. What was the point of the novel then? It ends like it starts! Nothing was really accomplished!

After all of that, the ending was a total downer to me.

But, I researched that this book was turned into a movie two years after it came out. I didn't realize it was this popular. Has anyone else read it?

That's my refelction. I would only recommend it if you like internal narratives, mental disorders, depression, addiction, and/or adultery. So-so. Just wanted some feedback I guess.

So what do you think of The Cracker Factory?

The Gingerbread Girl

2009-11-16T12:49:00.000-08:00

I keep reading obscure Stephen King novels. I just picked up The Gingerbread Girl, a very short novel; perhaps it can be considered a novella. King continues to fascinate me with everything I read of his. Short story, film, or novel, he really is a talented writer. I can't believe he has created so many interesting stories.

Apparently, as I just researched, this story was first published in Esquire magazine. I can see how it could be so short to publish. It is REALLY interesting. I'd be hooked to read it in a magazine.

The Gingerbread Girl is about a woman who loses her child from SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). She is absolutely distraught, and her and her husband get a divorce because they can't face the past or the present. The woman, Emily, decides to get away to her father's little vacation house in Florida to escape the death and divorce.

However, Emily stumbles upon a murder victim, a woman, in the house of a creepy man known as Pickering. Now she is the target of this murderer. He ties her up, tortures her a little, and then decides if he will kill her or not. Emily discloses that only the boat man knows where she is, so Pickering sets off to kill this man. Once he is gone, Emily does everything she can to break free from the chair she is duct-taped to.

Once Pickering returns, they have an all-out brawl to the death. They wrestle, stab each other, bite each other, wound each other with kitchen objects, run up the stairs, jump out of windows, chase down the beach, and eventually run into a Hispanic man who barely speaks English. Emily thought she was saved until Pickering tried to talk him into her being "loco." Pickering eventually kills this man.

Emily then runs into the water, in her last attempt to survive, luring him in. Pickering can't swim though. This is his demise. Even though he tried to kill her over and over again, he still screamed for help. Odd. Why the hell would she save him?

Emily's obsession with running was persistent throughout the novel/story, and it came in handy throughout the book. It contributed to her survival.

I think it's an interesting title, as she did have to "run, run as fast as [she could]." It was her savior. And hopefully this new encounter will help her value her life instead of dwelling on the negative.

This novel/story is said to be an allusion to "The Gingerbread Man" story. I don't actually know what the story is; I only know the song. I wonder if that would shed more light on this piece.

King does a fabulous job of invoking emotions in the reader. He makes me cringe and visualize in ways that other authors can't. He's so talented. I am so envious of his glorious gift!

Last interesting piece of information: Pickering appears as a minor antagonist in the novel Insomnia. Hm.

So what do you think of The Ginerbread Girl?

Hope's Boy

2009-11-15T09:32:00.000-08:00

Memoirs always catch my eye. I had to read one called Hope's Boy when I saw it on the shelf. And, I haven't read anything like this book before. Hope's Boy is a memoir by Andrew Bridge about his experience in foster care. I haven't had much exposure to the foster care system, and it was very interesting to read about a personal experience of a person who went through the system and grew from the experience.

The back of the book made it sound like his foster care experience was going to be a lot more traumatizing than it actually was. Given, I can't even imagine how difficult it is to be separated from both parents during elementary school. I can't imgaine going to live in a house where kids come in and out of there like a grocery store on a Sunday afternoon. I can't imagine having pseudo-parents who don't really care for you like real parents. Instead of mom and dad you have Mr. and Mrs. Leonard.

I thought Bridge was going to expose how horrible the living conditions were, how atrocious the boy's home was that he lived in for a very brief amount of time. The pain and trauma really came in his own emotional experience, not feeling like he was loved and not having a real "family." He always felt like "just a foster child" instead of being "Andy," a real, loved person.

The beginning and end of the book take place in present day where Bridge has grown up and pursued a career helping out boys that were in his same situation, in foster care without parents. He first explains his career and helping out a boy who needs love, like he did. He also closes the book with his final conversation with this young boy. It's a nice wrap-around to see that even though he went through this pain, as many still are today, he's actually doing something about it. Maybe that's what gives him closure.

Hope's Boy goes through many phases of Bridge's troubled childhood. His first recollections are living with his grandmother in Chicago, wondering why his mother didn't live with him. She eventually calls for him to come live with her in Hollywood where they live a rocky two years together. His mother, Hope, is a flashy woman who smokes a lot of cigarettes and draws a lot of male attention. She lives in a shabby apartment and is very young to have a son. She doesn't seem to understand how to be a mother since it is just thrust upon her so forcefully.

She has abusive boyfriends, neglects him at times (sometimes unknowingly), wakes him up for midnight adventures (at one point robbing a house for money), but seems to really try and care. There's even an incident where Andy needs her to make a bunny costume for him at school and she ingores it until the last minute when she buys a very out-of-place suit that makes him feel both embarassed and proud.

Eventually, Hope strarts to lose her mind. She has visions that people are going to take Andy away from her. She stops working, so the landlord is constantly threatening to evict them. Hope eventually really loses it and is brought to a mental hospital, in which Andy begins his string of boy's homes and foster care. Hope continues to visit Andy for a few years until she escapes down to Arizona for a while where she is again thrown into a different mental hospital.

Meanwhile, Andy endures living with the Lenoards who take in many, many children who are characterized during his childhood. The most heart-breaking one was a boy named Jason who desperately wanted to become a part of the Leonard's family. He begged and pleaded with them. He eventually ran away to test if they would come looking for them, which they only did for a short while without success. Jason was then transported to the next home because of his run-away attempt.

The Leonards didn't seem to be abusive. They didn't really give out love, but at least they took care of him for all of these years. Andy ended up living there until college, which I wasn't expecting. That was kind of them. Mrs. Leonard's character was quite strange too; she grew up during the Holocaust where she was actually in a concentration camp. She wanted to take in children who knew pain and suffering like she had since her children were very spoiled. I thought that angle was really interesting.

After years of not seeing his mother, Andy seeks her out before he sets off for college on the west coast. In his path, many people didn't think he could go to college. They wanted him to go to community college because it would be easier. The main point was that no one really had expectations for him. But Andy wanted to prove them all wrong.

Andy shows one last experience with his mother where she still seems to care but she really is just gone inside. It's sad, but at least he got to understand at an age where it might be easier to make sense of the past.

If the topic of foster care interests you, it's a good read. It wasn't too depressing to bring down your mood. It was more informative and interesting, I found. He writes clearly and evokes certain emotions. It seemed therapeutic for him, which I like to read about through the lines.

I think his mother's name, Hope, says a lot too.

So what do you think of Hope's Boy?

Catching Fire

2009-11-14T18:34:00.000-08:00

Reading The Hunger Games, the first of the Hunger Games series, I was hooked into reading the next book, Catching Fire. When I started reading the book, I didn't know it was going to start a long series that Collins would hope to become the next Twilight. It's certainly not the next Twilight, but it still is gaining a lot of teenage readers.

I thought the concept of the series was really unique. I think it's an interesting way to look at a post-apocolyptic world. Total government control. Extreme poverty. Overworking. Starvation. Human beings as entertainment (especially toying with their lives). Sounds like reality TV, eh?

The first book did a great job at hooking me in. The last line of the first book basically set up the next book. It was a cliffhanger to leave the reader hanging. And what did I do? I bought the next book just like others who read the first book like me.

If you have not read Catching Fire, you might not want to read everything below this line.

We all knew the second book was going to be about the tour. But the book was set up in different "books" or sections which took the plotline in different directions. We start off with the tour where Katniss keeps trying to fool others that she is in love with Peeta. They try to prove to the Capital (and to the people) that they are going to get married, and eventually Peeta even drops that Katniss is pregnant, even though she is not.

I won't lie that I get very bored with Katniss's act to fool everyone. Her internal narrative definietly bores me at times. She says the same things over and over and worries about the most predictable plot details. If I heard her say that she had to save Peeta in the arena one more time, I was going to scream!!

At the beginning of the book, Katniss parades around with her mockingjay which ends up being a sign for revolt. Katniss, unknowingly, makes a comment about her dead lost friend to their district, Rue, and the district revolts. Different districts start revolting, and Katniss is their unofficial leader.

Almost as a way to get rid of them, the president sends all (I should say most) of the winners from previous Hunger Games into the arena. This is his way to kill off Peeta and/or Katniss. Especially since they are young and fresh, they might get killed off by more talented, wisened, skilled hunters from previous years who have had more practice and studying.

I thought sending them back into the arena was a bit lame. I thought we were getting away from the Hunger Games in this book. I thought maybe they'd send in Gale (Katniss's real love??) to piss off Katniss. They definitely drew out their love affair. I get so frustrated with Katniss's thoughts as she torn between these two men. I'm having a very hard time liking this narrator as she frustrates me more than makes me want to keep reading. I want to read more to get to the end than to enjoy her telling of the story.

The last third of the book transfers to the Hunger Games where Peeta and Katniss team up with older, stronger winners from previous years. Katniss's main focus this year is to keep Peeta alive (as aforementioned), but more unexpected turns come in the arena. They insert a force field, introduce new animals, and use new weapons. Katniss's team tries to rig up an explosion which eventually triggers her group's rescue from the Hunger Games.

Katniss wakes up in a hospital where she will now assist her friends in revolting against the government, hence book three. And just like the first one, Collins leaves us with something to think about until the next book comes out: Katniss kept eluding to a District 12 where they could escape. But, at the end, she reveals that there is no District 12. Yikes! Then what was it? Where will they go now? How will they revolt? Will they succeed? (Probably)

I think it is a good read for young adults; I think I'm just having trouble reading it as an adult. It may be a little violent, but it's not anything too much worse from what's on television. And it is thought provoking. It could draw up some really interesting coversations too.

I do get a little tired of the simplicity of the reading. Maybe I'm used to more in depth reading. I just think Collins tells us more than she shows us. I want to analyze and interpret on my own. She tells too many things and repeats too many things. Maybe it's because it's a young adult novel. Teenagers like to be told information. They don't always like to 'figure it out for themselves.' Well, then they'd like this book. It says it all for them!

Does anyone know how many books there are going to be in all? Has it been announced? Does anyone know the next title?

Maybe I'm being too critical of this book. I really liked the first book and was completely hooked. I just felt a little bored with this one. It was too repetitive like the first one, too many similarities. And this time, unlike the first, the narrator bothered me. Hopefully the third book will impress me more. I will buy it. I will read it. I will recommend it. I just can't admit that I really enjoyed it. Have others enjoyed it?

What do you think of Catching Fire?

Unraveled

2009-10-22T15:14:00.000-07:00

I didn't expect to like this book as much as I did, but I really connected with it in the end. I picked it up because it's a memoir, my favorite genre. Unraveled: The True Story of a Woman Who Dared to Become a Different Kind of Mother was very touching. Maria Housden, the author, wrote a fabulous book that has stayed with me days after I've completed it.

Unraveled takes the reader through a journey of Housden's untraditional style of being a mother. I didn't really know what to expect, with that subtitle, but it makes sense after reading it. Housden takes us through her experiences of motherhood, jumping back and forth through time, to show us her unconventional ways.

Perhaps the largest part that sticks with me is Housden's explanation of her three-year-old daughter Hannah's death from cancer. In that span of time, she had to walk her husband, her older son, her sick daughter, and herself through the experience. Right before Hannah passed, Housden became pregnant and had a child. Thankfully, Hannah was able to see her baby sister's birth and meet her for a little while.

Housden completed her first book on the life and death of her daughter called Hannah's Gift, which is also explained in the novel.

I couldn't imgaine losing a child one month and giving birth to and raising another child the next. I can't imagine the loss I would feel, especially while trying to give love to another. That's a very hard, unique position to be in. It is definitely worth writing and reading about.

But, Housden also tells the reader about being "a different kind of mother." She struggles with her husband, Claude, and eventually decides to separate from him. He tried to mold her into someone she wasn't and asked her to do things she didn't want to do. Housden eventually divorces him but is faced with a hard decision. Does she take custody of the kids or let him have custody and live in their house?

Before the divorce, Housden went on a weekend retreat to clear her mind after Hannah's death to do some writing. On this retreat, Housden met the love of her life. She never thought she'd be one to have an affair, but she went with her internal instinct to be with him, Roger Housden, a writer. The way Housden describes meeting him was absolutely uncanny. She says that, once they locked eyes on each other, they knew that they were meant for each other.

Years later, Housden divorced her husband and moved in with Roger on the west coast in California. She let Claude take custody of her children in New Jersey and spent weekends and holidays with the children. Housden describes the pain of living away from her children, especially when major traumatic events happened like 9/11 and other injuries. Housden just wanted to pursue her writing career and explore her life more, especially with her new boyfriend.

After struggling with the distance, Housden and Roger moved back to the east coast to be closer to her children. They both ended up getting their own primary places in New York, one in New York City and the other a bit farther apart, where they now live and try to make more contact with her children. Claude still has problems letting her back into their lives even though he also had an affair and pursued a new love interest. It's all very strange.

But, the memoir was still extremely interesting. I was hooked. I know a book is really good when I can't stop thinking about it, and I can't stop thinking about this one! She always wanted to be a writer, and now I see why. She's talented, and she communicates her message quite effectively. I now want to read her other book! She's pretty good!

So what do you think of Unraveled?

Always Looking Up

2009-09-20T15:57:00.000-07:00

Michael J. Fox astounds me because he has never given up despite his disease. I never got the chance to read Fox's first memoir, Lucky Man, but I did just finish his second memoir which is pretty new right now, Always Looking Up: Adventures of an Incurable Optimist.

I got to listen to this book on tape with Fox actually reading it himself, which I found extremely powerful. You could hear his emotion when times were tough and you could hear the lightness in his voice when moments were funny. The experience was pretty intense because it felt much more personal because I was actually hearing him discuss his problems.

Further, I didn't know too much about Parkinson's Disease anyway, so I got to hear some first-hand accounts of what it's like to live with this. I couldn't imgaine having to transform my life to the degree that Fox has. It's sad that he's had to make so many lifestyle changes to accomodate his situation, especially when he had to give up a television show he loved to produce and act on when he left Spin City.

I found it sad listening to Fox talk about leaving Spin City since he loved it so much, especially since it continued on without him. Charlie Sheen replaced him, which must have been hard to watch. But, it was hard for Fox to juggle his active television career and with taking his meds and controlling his shakes. He wouldn't be able to stop, once he was walking, and communicate with someone because he wouldn't be able to control his bodily functions. Cast members thought he was mad at them, and that's when Fox knew it was time to move on.

Also, I enjoyed hearing about Fox's personal life and how his disease affects his family. Fox tells a lot of stories about his wife and her acceptance of his decisions regarding his disease and about his children and how it affects them. A lot of focus was placed on their eldest son Sam and how he has viewed the disease.

But, I saw this book as Fox's second memoir on PD, and even though some of it was on PD, a lot of it was just on his life in general without dwelling too much on the effects of PD. A lot of the book was just on his family life and politics surrounding PD research and his organization. Perhaps Lucky Man deals more with Fox and dealing with PD, but Always Looking Up takes it a step further into his personal life and his life post-Lucky Man.

Fox even gets into some personal stories like how he went through September 11th. He was across the country, about to guest star on Spin City in California after being gone from it for a couple of years, and he heard about the attacks. His family lives, works, and goes to school in New York City, so he panicked. He cancelled being on the show and looked to travel back to NYC, but all flights were cancelled for weeks. So, Fox rented a car and drove across the country with a friend. Family counts more than other things.

Fox also details such personal incidences as travelling across the country with his son when he was young, experiencing the birth of his twin daughters, and experiencing the death of his oldest sister. His sister was hooked up on machines to keep her alive, and they had to make the tough decision whether they should let her loose or not. These moments are all intertwined throughout the memoir.

I also didn't know that Fox was involved in politics, an organization, and trying to advocate for PD research with stem cells. A significant portion of the book is dedicated to this facet. I like that Fox is using his publicity and his finances to not only help himself but help others like himself that are affected with the disease. I also learned, through his discussions on the organization, that Ali has PD too! You'd never think that such strong people could be hindered by something like this.

Overall, the memoir seems to be focused on his struggle with PD, but a lot of it had random details and stories just about his life, which I didn't mind too much. If you're interested in PD or about Fox's life, this book should interest you.

I saw there was a TV special on the memoir, but I missed it. What was it about?

So what do you think of Always Looking Up: Adventures of an Incurable Optimist?

The Soloist

2009-09-15T18:37:00.000-07:00

The Soloist grabbed my attention right off the bat because it is based on a true story. Besides that, the film has two phenomenal actors in them who are extremely talented, Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx. With those two elements on my side, the movie did follow through.

I think it's interesting how many times the story of this man's life has been told. First, Steve Lopez discovered this homeless, talented musician on the street in LA, and he thought it would be a story. Working for the LA Times, Lopez wrote a few columns on this talented man, Nathaniel Ayers, which he eventually turned into a book. Then this book turned into a blockbuster movie, and now people are commenting on the book and the movie just like I am now. Isn't it interesting how many ways the same story can be told?

Basically, Ayers was a homeless man who suffered extreme bouts of mental illness. She is schizophrenic, which caused him to lose his spot at Juliard and land him on the streets. However, Ayers is extremely brilliant. He taught himself to play various instruments, and he can play them better than those who practice for years and years. It's an incredible story.

Lopez helps get Ayers off the streets and helped with treatment. He even starts playing again which really lightens Ayers' day. It's crazy to think about how generous Lopez must be to help out this homeless guy. I mean, yeah at first he wanted a story and that is a bit selfish, but he didn't need to push it this far. His life started to blur with Ayers's life. It's really inspirational.

I thought the movie was done pretty well. I just wonder how it really happened and what the two men look like. I did look it up afterwards, and they look pretty different, but what are you going to do? Two talented actors did a terrific job. I just wonder how accurate the movie is to real life.

I enjoyed the movie. I heard it might even be movie of the year, 2009. Is that true? It was good, but I don't know if it was that good.

So what do you think of The Soloist?

I Was Told There'd Be Cake

2009-09-14T15:51:00.000-07:00

True-to-life essays really captivate me. It's my new favorite genre that I am just stumbling upon. After being fascinated by David Sedaris, Chuck Klosterman, and Augusten Burroughs, I am now fascinated with Sloane Crosley's new book of essays, similar to the aforementioned authors, called I Was Told There'd Be Cake.

I was interested in this book definitely because of the nature of the stories, but I was also into the fact that she's writing about her past and she's not too much older than I am. A lot of her stories deal with issues and pop-culture references that are totally my generation. And, I get her humor.

Crosley's essays are quite a range. She'll discuss items from her childhood and even creep up into present-day issues and matters. Essays range from the following topics: collecting My Little Ponies in "The Pony Problem," working for a witch in "The Ursula Cookie," losing her keys while moving out of a New York City apartment in "Fuck You, Columbus," being half Jewish half Catholic and her voyages at religious summer camp, volunteering at the butterfly exhibit at a museum in "Sign Language for Infidels," being nominated as a maid of honor for a distant high school friend in "You on a Stick," reminiscing back to old-school computer games like Oregon Trail in "Bring-Your-Machete-To-Work-Day," and dealing with crazy neighbors.

I Was Told There'd Be Cake was such an enjoyable read. Not only is Crosley entertaining, but she's wickedly funny. She makes some pretty incredible points on obscure topics while making you think all the same. The incidents portrayed are ones that we might get ourselves messed up in (like a horrible boss or being a maid of honor) while others are completely outlandish and strange. But, that's what I like about it. I could totally connect with certain essays while I was completely entertained with other stories that were so bizarre and out there from my life. She is an excellent and easy read.

I know essays can scare some people, but they're very fun to read. They're little disconnected pieces of life that are really quite memorable. I kept wanting to read more. I hope that Crosley is on the path to creating more works because this book was spectacular. This is a great read and I would highly recommend this book to anyone who needs a light read or needs to laugh a bit.

But, I think I missed the boat on the name of the title or the cover of the book. Maybe there were some missing essays on the audio tape I listened to. I loved listening to the audio tape because Crosley read it herself. It just seems so much more personal, and it's interesting and fun to hear the author's inflections and how the author tells the story, literally. Try it if you have the opportunity. Can anyone fill me in on the title or the cover?

Read this book! So what do you think of I Was Told There'd Be Cake?

The Fillmore

2009-08-31T13:07:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I was blessed with the opportunity to see a concert at the Fillmore in San Francisco. The venue is known for its small atmosphere, great bands, and excellent concert posters.

When you walk in, you are assaulted with incredible pieces of artwork, or at least they seem to be, in the form of concert posters. The entire building is covered in them as if some sort of wallpaper, except they are all framed. I could spend hours in there just gazing at all of the incredible bands that have graced their presence in this important venue. It's absolutely breathtaking not only to walk through here but to see a band perform here as well.

What I like about the venue, besides the decorations and interior designs, must be the small atmosphere. The venue has two floors, so you could either watch the band from the floor, which really isn't that crowded, or from the balcony where about five tables exist if you get there and set up early. Also, they if you want to stand on the floor, where we were situated, they have aisles cleared on each side so you can walk up and down from the front to the back. You don't have to push your way through; you just need to make it to the side where an aisle is literally patrolled by a worker (trust me, my friend was constantly being flashed with a flashlight to move her dancing self out of the way). It's also nice when places provide free water instead of charging way too much for it.

At the Fillmore, bands do two sets with an intermission. This is when we took advantage of the free water. When I went, we saw Railroad Earth and they were absolutely phenomenal. What most stuck with me was their violinist, and a female guest violinist who came on stage and jammed with him. They had a violin battle, as I like to call it, where they basically duelled with violins for who could play the best solo. I've never seen anything like it in my entire life. It blew my mind--they definitely left a good impression in my mind.

And, if the show sells out, everyone gets the poster advertised for free! We got one for Railroad Earth, which was absolutely sick. It got a little crumpled on its way back to New York, but I still think it's cool.

Anyway, below I would like to show some incredible posters from the Fillmore. I'm sure you've seen them before but maybe you haven't put the venue to the design. Check them out. And check out the bands!! What band of these would you like to have seen there?

So what do you think of the Fillmore?

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

2009-08-30T08:40:00.000-07:00

Now, I'm cruising through these Harry Potter books for the first time, and I'm really quite enjoying them. I am fascinated by JK Rowling's ability to create a magical, fictional world with rules and characters and continuous plot development. It all makes sense and is extraordinarily interesting. I'm happy she's creating such a wonderful book series for adolescents and children!

I just finished the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and I was impressed. Her books seem to get better and better as the series continues, but this could be because she doesn't need to establish characters or history anymore. She can just pick up where they left off and use what she's already created. She obviously will throw in a new character or two in every book, like Mad Eye Moody, Rita Skeeter, Ludo Bagman, and the Crouch family. Understandable. I like that there are constant new characters and the old ones keep growing and changing.

I like that this book broke a little bit from the same formula that Rowling had been sticking to for the first three books: start trouble at the Dursleys, get rescued, go to school, discover a conflict including Harry Potter that he must figure out clues to defeat, play Quiddich, fight with Malfoy, fight "the boss" and win (with the help of others), and return to the Dursley's. Zzz after a while.

Thankfully, this book broke a LITTLE from that formula. They included the Quiddich World Cup and the Triwizard Tournament, two sporting events that broke the repetitiveness a bit. The book also started with a scene between Voldemort and Wormtail, which I thought was a better way to hook readers at the start of the book rather than always relying on Harry waking up at the Dursley's to their maltreatment. We got it. No surprose. Unfortunately, the fifth book starts off that way. It's just getting to me I guess! Spruce up the creativity!

The Goblet of Fire starts romance brewing as well. Cho is introduced, and Ron starts to have little bursts of I'm-a-boy-and-don't-know-how-to-show-or-understand-love with Hermione. There's a dance, and emotions run high. Even Hagrid has a love interest! Ooo baby. The other books can only bring more now that they're fifteen! Woa now.

The ending was pretty well done. I liked how Cedric and Harry really helped each other win the tournament. Cedric's character really goes down in history as a good man for his final effort during the last task. I couldn't believe Cedric was killed though! I didn't see that coming. Now Cho can focus more on Harry. Yikes. The final scene was pretty cool though--establishes Voldemort's character, his return, and his followers, the Death Eaters.

The only thing with the final scene that gets to me is that it seems that, in the next three books, they probably will have similar endings to this one. Voldemort will continue to take down Harry, but Harry will keep slipping away with his questionable power over him. He'll need to keep escaping until the last book where he finally destroys him. It seems kind of obvious, but if each ending is Harry vs. Voldemort and Harry keeps slipping away to take him on in the next book, it just will get a little old. I hope it isn't so cookie-cutter of a formula on endings.

And, Harry didn't really win the tournament! The whole last task was fudged because Krum and Fleur were charmed, and then Cedric and Harry "tied," but Harry won because he died? That's not really fair. I mean, I think we all thought he would win since he's the golden child, but it seems like Cedric actually won. The other two COULD have won but were charmed. I don't know. It didn't seem fair to me.

And why are they trying to make Fleur's character so big? Both on the cover of the book and on the cover of the movie, they make her character stand out when it was so small. I know she's attractive, but come on now. I'm not into that either. They're better than this!

But, I really enjoyed the fourth book and I'm a little way into the fifth book, which is starting out pretty good. But Harry has quite a temper! I know all fifteen-year-olds and teenage boys go through this phase, but somehow I thought Harry was better than that. But, I guess the point of the story is that he IS human...

Anyway. After every Harry Potter book, I watch the movie. I wanted to vent my frustrations with the movie. Man, it was so different from the book! So many details were left out, so many plot points were out of order, and some characters weren't even included! Ludo Bagman didn't even appear. Ginny had some headshots, but she wasn't central, so why include her character and not Bagman's? No Bill. No Charlie. And, the whole idea of Mad Eye Moody being the antagonist in the movie is easily pointed to. Instead of discovering it for ourselves at the end, the filmmaker drops clues throughout, pointing to him as the obvious choice. I didn't like that at all. It took away from the mystery of the story.

Other details were out of place or weren't mentioned which really took away from the story. The last task was all off. Harry and Cedric pretty much battled and fought inside the maze which didn't happen. If anything, they were helping each other to win which makes Cedric's character more honorable. In the way he was portrayed here, he was kind of a brat. I didn't like it at all. Also, the way that Harry discovers certain secrets about the tournament didn't happen the way they were portrayed. Harry discovered the dragons from following Hagrid before meeting Sirius--not in the movie. Dobby gave Harry the gillyweed--not Neville. Small things like that irritate me. They didn't even bother showing the Dursley's! Harry just wakes up at the Burrow. Arg. I know there's limited time, but some things can't be THAT fudged! Then make two movies or make it longer! We're here for a reason; at least portray it right!

I felt like the movie was on fast forward and all I could do was sit and rack my brain on all the details they were missing. I had a hard time enjoying it, but maybe I'm being too critical. I know the book has to be massively condensed to make it into a movie, but the sacrfices they choose are not good ones to choose. They didn't bring up the elf plotline with Hermione, but I think that one was a good choice. That plot line bores me.

Anyway, I'm done rambling about my problems with the film, but I hear great things about the fifth movie. Seeing as though the movies are getting worse and the books are getting better, I hope it's not true. The movies need to do the books justice! Meh.

So what do you think of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire?

The Colorado Kid

2009-08-29T07:13:00.000-07:00

Another Stephen King novel for me, The Colorado Kid. I guess I'm starting off with some of his lesser known works, for my first was The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and now I read The Colorado Kid published in 2005. King has an uncanny ability to write, as so many already know. His characters seem so real; they come alive off the page. He has a great way of describing things so that you actually can see it in your mind, even if it is a little creepy.

The Colorado Kid is a mystery novel, but it is unlike typical mystery novels. The Colorado Kid explores an unsolved mystery in Maine through a young writer named Stefanie or Steffi. She asks to older men at the newspaper if they've ever come across an unexplained mystery, and the two of them launch into the story about the Colorado Kid. The entire story is really a narrative of the two of them telling the story with Steffi asking questions every now and then.

Here is the mystery: Two teenagers discover a man on the beach very early in the morning in 1980. The man is in a jacket perched standing up on the beach with a piece of steak wedged in his throat. The cause of death is asphyxiation, and fish and chips are in his stomach when he passes--not steak. At the scene of the crime, he has no identification, just a Russian coin and a pack of cigarettes. The medical examiner determines that John Doe is not a smoker by his pink lungs. So what's up with the cigarettes and the coin?

A year earlier, a hotshot in town figured out that they should check the tax stamp on the bottom of the cigarettes to determine where they came from. This is where John Doe gets dubbed the Colorado Kid. A woman from Colorado calls to identify her husband who went missing years ago and abandoned his young son that he truly loved. Why would he run away if he loved his job and his family? The mystery keeps spiralling out of control.

Further, they question those who worked with him, and he was at work the day before he died. He would have had to jump on a plane directly after the last person saw him, on an elevator in the morning at work, take a private jet to Maine and then be killed or kill himself? The mystery further tangles.

By the end of the novel, nothing is really figured out. No more clues or answers are given. We are left with this tangle of a web without any sort of closure. At first I was a little mad because I thought that King was going to tell us how to solve this mystery, but he doesn't. He doesn't do what the typical mystery does, and that's why he's such an innovative writer. He makes us wonder. He does what the real world does: he doesn't solve the crime. Not every mystery and murder has that obvious solution. Sometimes it takes years to solve; sometimes mysteries never get solved. That's the way the world works.

I like this idea of storytelling that is ever-present throughout the novel. The act of oral storytelling is really getting lost as years go by. We watch movies, we read, but do we pass on oral stories? We do in a sense, at least looking at comedians, but not in the ways that we used to. I like that this story connects back to that oral tie that is becoming abandoned. I think it's pretty cool.

I was a bit disappointed without any closure, but I think it sends a more powerful, deeper, realistic message without having a real ending. It's more true to life. It makes the reader actually think and try to solve the mystery herself/himself. If you read a mystery novel, you might try to put it together yourself, if you're that bold or non-lazy, but most people would just read to find out. I like that you are forced to come up with some kind of idea because King won't give it to you. We need to be more creative thinkers and not have everything spoon-fed to us!

The only thing I don't really get, besides any closure on the story, is the cover. Is that Steffi? What's up with the 1970s cover? The cover doesn't represent the story at all. Or maybe I'm not looking hard enough. I didn't take Steffi to be that sexual. There isn't any romance or sex in the novel anyway! Why be so deceiving on the cover? And, the answer on the cover is NO!!!

What conclusions have others come to about what happened to the Colorado Kid?

What do you think of The Colorado Kid?

District 9

2009-08-28T13:55:00.000-07:00

I didn't know what to expect with District 9. I knew that it had to do with aliens, but I didn't know anything else about it. Another alien movie, but this one is produced by Peter Jackson. I figured everyone would be talking about it, so I took a chance at the drive-in.

Watching this movie, I went through many different emotions. Disgust, anger, hate, sorrow, fear. The emotions were all negative, but I do think the movie was trying to communicate a larger message. I like the way it was filmed, as a mock documentary, and it was talking about everything after the fact, which I thought was pretty cool.

As I was watching it, I kept thinking how improbable the whole thing would be. Not necessarily the whole alien encounter thing but the response of humans. I didn't buy that humans would let the aliens come to their planet. Why would they let them live in a colony? I feel like it would be too big of a threat. I understand that they wouldn't accept them--we can't even accept each other for petty reasons like racial color, religious preference, or sexual preference. I think the movie is a great reason to point out our feeling of superiority among everyone around us.

I also thought it was quite improbable that both species could eventually understand their dialects after twenty years. How could we understand their language? They might not even have a language that is even close to English to be translatable. They made absolutely different noises. I just don't know if it would really ever work out. I mean, how does anyone learn a new language when you can't communicate anything to the other group?

So basically, in District 9, aliens come down to Earth and hover over Johannesburg, Africa for months. They do not come out. Humans eventually fly up and pry themselves into their spaceship. They are malnourished and need help. Humans send them down to a compound they call District 9 where they fence them in and provide them shelter and food. It is a heavily militarized area.

Twenty years later, their population is growing and they need a bigger compound. The people of Johannesburg are also growing quite tired of having them around. The plan is to ship them to a different compound 200 KM south, so the person in charge, a man named Wikus, goes door to door to give them eviction notices. Note that these aliens are given human names and identifications just like human beings.

Outside of the compound, humans try to deal food, weapons, and other pleasures to the aliens. It is considered the Nigerian black market. There's even inter-species prostitution. Yuck. The aliens really like catfood, so they try to sell them that as well. There are picketers and protesters outside the compound. The aliens have even earned a new derogatory nickname as "prawns." It is the equivalent of a racial slur.

The conflict in the story begins with Wikus is exposed to a very valuable liquid to the aliens. This liquid, held in a tube, can transport their spaceship back to their homeland where they all want to return. Unfortunately, Wikus starts to slowly turn into a prawn. The government tries to do tests on him as he is the only successful person to transform into a prawn. Others have tried by digesting parts of the aliens or having intercourse with them. There is even a special lab that does testing on them that the main alien, Christopher, stumbles over with Wikus when they try to secure the liquid.

Wikus eventually runs away from the holding facility because he gets his hands on some alien weapons. Alien weapons only work when an alien holds them (which is really genius), so he escapes and hides away. The only place where he is safe is when he is among the prawns. Christopher then discovers his problem, and they decide to go on a suicide mission to get the liquid. Christopher promises that if he gets his liquid, he will turn Wikus back into a human.

In the midst, the Nigerian black market tries to cut off Wikus's arm for their own military gain, Christopher and Wikus murder a lot of people, and Christopher and Wikus eventually return with the liquid back at Christopher's hut. Christopher says that he cannot change Wikus yet because he must return back to his homeland. He promises to return three years later to turn him back. Wikus gets angry, but in the end, Christopher and his son are able to fly away in the giant spaceship alone.

This is where I got all sad: Wikus slowly transforms into an alien and must live with the other prawns. He misses his wife terribly and leaves her little things outside her door to let her know that he is still alive and loves her. The movie ends without closure whether Christopher will return to save the other aliens, if he will return for war, or if Wikus will ever change back to being a human.

I liked the ambiguous ending. It also leaves room for a potential sequel. I think it would make a good sequel. I thought the whole thing was kind of dreary and sad though. It was horrible to see how we treated the prawns, but I guess I can understand it too. On one hand, I see that we must respect everyone, but on the other hand, I don't know how much I would trust them. They are so powerful and technologically superior that they could wipe us out in an instant.

I was kind of disappointed with how the aliens were physically created. They looked very human-like with two legs, two arms, eyes, and mouth pieces. It was very similar to the human body, and they even communicated in similar ways that were able to be understood. I don't know what else I would have preferred, but it just bared quite similar to humans.

What I didn't know is that it is based on a similar actual account that happened in South Africa, where it takes place. Check out its origination: "The title and premise of the film are inspired by historical events that took place in District Six, an inner-city residential area in Cape Town in South Africa under apartheid. In 1966, District 6 was declared a "whites only" area by the apartheid government and for the next several decades, 60,000 people were forcibly removed and relocated to Cape Flats, 25 kilometres away." I love the spin off. It's so very clever. It's easy to substitute something alien (an actual alien) in place of another group of humans to make a point. Brilliant.

District 9 was a bit raunchy and disturbing, but I think it brings up interesting points to talk about. How would you feel about having aliens drop down on our planet? How should they be treated? Do you even believe in aliens? Why would they come here? What could we learn from them? A believable tale or not?

So what do you think of District 9?

Cheri

2009-08-26T18:07:00.000-07:00

I saw an independent film tonight which really intrigued me. An old theatre near me plays really cheap movies, and I was interested in the title because Michelle Pfeiffer is in it. As an actress, she blows me away. She's absolutely phenomenal. And I was right again; in this movie, she was absolutely incredible.

Cheri is a movie that was once a novel. It is a European film that debuted at the Berlin International Film Festival. I can see why it wasn't that big in the United States, but I still do think it is worth repeating.

Cheri takes place in France and focuses on an old courtesan named Lea. Basically, Lea got rich by courting wealthy men who payed her to sleep with them for months or years. Lea is getting old, but she takes on one more prospect, a young man (18) who she knew when he was young named Fred. When he was young, Fred called her Nunu and she called him Cheri. They go by these nicknames throughout the movie.

Lea and Cheri meet up when he is eighteen and wild where he wants to run away with her. Lea takes it upon herself to court him and try to teach him how to be a man so he can be a good suitor. They have a lavish time together for six years. Then, Cheri's mother, played by Kathy Bates, fixes an arranged marriage. Lea and Cheri are forced to end their affair.

Cheri thinks he can just let it go, so he tries to marry this tight young woman. Lea takes it hard and runs away to stage that she is courting a new man. What Cheri didn't plan on was going mad with rage and envy. He comes home angry and is crazed as he waits for Lea to return. He stays in a hotel for weeks waiting for her. Cheri does take a new man but leaves him to return home when he hears that Cheri has separated from his wife.

Upon her return, Cheri gets back together with his wife because he thinks he can now rest since he knows that Lea is back in town. Unfortunately, he can't keep himself away for long. The movie ends on a last dramatic scene between the two when they make love and wake up in the morning. Lea decides that they will run off together and be in secrecy from now on. Cheri was planning on having a dual love life. They have this really in-depth discussion where Cheri reverts to being like his mother and he yells at her for being like her. He always loved her for being nice and humble and honest. So, Cheri reverts back to herself and tells Cheri what he needs to hear: he needs to forget her and be a man to his new family even though she deprived him of that in their relationship.

Cheri actually leaves, but a narrator discusses that Cheri went off to war and eventually shot himself because he could never love anyone else besides Lea. Lea did look very old in the end which was sad because I think Cheri started to notice it. It was such a sad relationship because they could never really love each other for very long. They lived without each other, still with a strong love, but couldn't have it because it wasn't acceptable. That kills me.

I can't believe the romantic taboos that were present back then. Everything had to be so clean-cut--that would never fly today. I'm happy that we have moved on to more open romantic relationships so people can be happy with who they love. They don't have to endure pain and be in relationships they don't want to be in. Some people still marry for show, but it's not the only option anymore. It's a great thing.

One thing that I did find interesting in Cheri was the gender role reversal. In their relationship, Lea wore the pants. She made phone calls and paid for them. She was the boss. She was the controller and the power force. She had a hold over him, and I think he liked that. Cheri was very flamboyant and beautiful. He dressed wonderfully and had gorgeous hair. He liked wearing her pearls and always curled up on him like a little boy. It's weird the way it worked out.

Even though the movie is tragic, it has some great themes and it was very entertaining. I really didn't know what to expect, but this was good. I liked being brought back to the early 1900s in Europe--it was gorgeous. Such a simple life. But it was also cool to see how courtesans were actually respected and made such a good life for themselves with the money they earned. It's so much different now!

Michelle Pfeiffer is looking old, but she is still so stunningly gorgeous. She is one of those women who have such natural beauty, and she still looks beautiful today. She was perfect for this role, and her acting was impeccable. She drew me in and helped me appreciate the film. I love the man who played Cheri too. I've never seen him, but he is so handsome. He was perfect for the part.

Their nicknames are perfect for each other too. Nunu is so childish, which still shows Fred's boyishness that he never lets go of. Cheri is so feminine, connecting back to the gender role swap. It's a clever addition to the story. It's a good story and a great indie film.

But anyway, what do we think of Cheri?

Valkyrie

2009-08-24T20:02:00.000-07:00

Despite the negative reviews I heard, I still watched Valkyrie. World War II movies intrigue me, like the rest of this country, so I had to check it out. Just look at how many movies are made on the subject! Can't we just list WWII movies off the tops of our heads? I mean, even Quentin Tarrantino is making a WWII movie. That's when you know it's becoming a bit obsessive.

In any event, most people who spoke to me about the movie stressed its disappointing nature. I still watched it, and I really don't see why the movie was all that terrible. Honestly, I was pretty interested. It's one of those movies where you know the ending, so it's not really a surprise, but you still sit there hoping that somehow the course of history you know is wrong. But it's really not.

Valkyrie depicts one of fifteen assassination attempts made on Adolf Hitler by Germans to take him down in the Nazi Party. Von Stauffenberg, played by Tom Cruise, is the movie's protagonist. The movie is meant to bring his attempt to light since it was the one that almost worked and would have saved many, many lives. Von Stauffenberg gathers a team of military helpers to try to use Operation Valkyrie, a national emergency plan, to stage a coup to take over Berlin and assassinate Hitler in the process. Unfortauntely, the plan did not work and Hitler had all of the helpers killed for treason.

From a historical standpoint, it's a pretty interesting film. It's different from other World War II movies because it deals with the German perspective (even though it is probably twinged since it's an American film). Wikipedia offers a lot of perspective on the American critics take on the film and the Germans take on the film. Quite interesting. Apparently, the movie was pretty accurate. I mean, the whole thing was created because the writer felt that the Von Straussenberg story needed to be shared with the world. And now we all definitely know.

What I did learn from Wikipedia was the German people's reaction to the film. They weren't so mad about the content as they were with the filmmaker's selection of Tom Cruise as the lead role. They did not like his role in Scientology and basically put up a small fight about him leading the role. He was not fit for it, his religion is offensive, yadda yadda yadda. Even protestors set out to picket it. But, Von Straussenberg's grandson stepped forward and admitted that it was okay for Cruise to play the role. Others agreed later on as well since they saw his professionalism and realized that his popular role in America would draw a large fanbase. Interesting dispute.

Overall, Valkyrie was very interesting if you like history, particularly World War II material. Cruise did a great job as Von Straussenberg, except I hate when he does those high-pitched screams. It sounds like my mom is yelling. I wish he had a more manly yell (better than "Show me the money!"), because it would add more to the character. It's just awkward. But despite that, he convinced me that he was the character and I thought he portrayed the story exceptionally well. Well done Cruise. And, he looks a lot like his character. It's kind of eerie!

I think the movie does send out a good message, especially since it's based on a true story. When you see a tyrant in your midst, do you go along because you fear for your neck or do you stand up to the cruelty even if it might mean that you die for what you believe? How do you want to be remembered as a people? Do you take a stand or sit by and watch? Is it just as bad to watch a perpetrator continue to perform ill than to commit the crime? Are you a part of the crime if you just stand by and do nothing? Think about those kinds of questions.

Valkyrie provokes those kinds of questions and perhaps applies them to our own lives. What kind of person do we want to be remembered as? Even though Von Straussenberg died, he is still remembered for trying rather than slipping into history unremembered. Without those like him, people don't take chances and horrible things happen. It's a great message to pass on even though he failed. We still learn from failure. It still can be motivational.

What do you think of Valkyrie?

Elephant

2009-08-23T13:39:00.000-07:00

Movies on the Sundance Channel always intrigue me. The latest one I caught was Elephant, a movie written and directed by Gus Van Sant. This one intrigued me because of its unusual content, a movie about a school shooting. I found out later that this movie is loosely based on the Columbine School shooting, but it is only loosely based. Some is fictionalized.

This movie, as I later found out, is the second in a trilogy of his called the Death Trilogy. They obviously all revolve around the same theme of death. The first movie is called Gerry and is about two men stranded in the wilderness starring Casey Affleck and Matt Damon. The second is Elephant which is about a school shooting. The third movie is called Last Days and is based on the last days of the life of Kurt Cobain.

Elephant is quite artistically done. Van Sant's films always have this very indie, artsy feel to them. There is very little dialogue in this movie. It's more about character development, as the camera follows around each character on the day of the shooting. You'll follow one student who walks down the hall and passes another, and then later on in the movie you'll watch the day of the student who passes. It's an interesting way to do the movie as opposed to purely one-sided on the side of the shooter.

I liked seeing the different perspectives of the shooters and the victims. You watched the shooters get picked on in class, play piano, plan the shooting, practice shooting, and even make out in the school bathroom. Weird addition. What is the purpose of that? You watch the victims live their last days, and you really can tell how innocent and young they are to experience such a tragedy. One guy even tries to help, which is quite heroic, and he is sadly shot.

The movie chronicles the lives of these characters, and they are quite diverse. Anyone and anyone is killed in this movie, as the movie shows the lives of all of these different students in their days--a popular couple, a teen struggling with an alcoholic father, a gay student, two artsy students, a clique of uptight girls, a jock, and the shooters. I liked showing the different groups because it's one of the reasons that alienates these shooters.

It also scared me, watching this movie, how easy it is for them to pull off such a horrible feat. It was easy for them to score the weapons and carry them right into school. They studied exactly which entrance they could enter, and they studied which areas held the most students with little escape routes. And, what kills me the most is that they were able to practice and plan at home. Their parents were absent. This is what causes these things to happen in the first place!

The movie was a little slow, as the camera literally follows students walking for long periods of time. I could see how this movie would drag on a bit for some, but I found it different, thus interesting. I was waiting for that big moment where the shooting actually happens. It's nerve-racking because you know it's going to happen but slowly pray it doesn't, but you know better. That last build-up kept me hooked, and some parts were ambiguous as to deaths and escapes, but I thought it added some necessary flavor to the film.

The ending was a little odd. One shooter kills the other shooter (for what purpose?) and then goes into the freezer in the back of the cafeteria. He comes across the popular couple and corners them into the freezer. He sings "Eeny Meeny Miny Moe" to them as he points the assault rifles at their chests. Once he finishes singing, the camera cuts to black. Odd. I wanted to see what happened to this kid and how many were taken down in their path.

Elephant is based on and inspired by the Columbine shootings but was dropped with the tag to the shootings because he didn't want to hold too tightly to the facts of that shooting. A lot of the same threads were persistant in the movie and the previous school shooting. Acquiring the weapons, practicing, warning signs, easy access to shooting, being bullied in school. Smilarities.

What is really eerie is that this movie inspired a school shooting to occur, something that really turns the stomach. In 2005, 17 days after its release, a school shooting occurred after a kid watched this movie. It happened at Red Lake High School. The boy brought the movie over to a friend's house, skipped to the parts of the shooting, talked about school shootings, but showed no other signs of actually wanting to do it himself. Days later, he did it. Freaky.

I was kind of mixed on a movie about school shootings. Does this promote school shootings or does it try to show the root of the problem so we can solve it? I think it's a racy topic, but I like that it's being expressed in film because it's becoming a tragic and horrible problem in our country. The problem is that it's glorifying these shooters, which is what they want--attention. We can't give them that satisfaction because then it will create more and more shootings. It's a vicious cycle, but the media just can't help itself.

I still liked it though. The title confused me, but I thought "Does it mean not to ignore the elephant in the room?" That was my only thought, and I was pretty close. It's similar to another movie called Elephant which is a movie about violence based on religion. It is exactly titled for not "ignoring the elephant in the room, especially when it's obvious." I think it's very clever for a title. That makes a lot of sense in this country.

If the subject interests you, it's worth checking out. If you're into indie films or want something different, Van Sant is really talented. I do enjoy his movies because they focus a lot on the message and creativity. It's different from a lot of other blockbuster movies.

Enough said. What do you think of Elephant?

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

2009-08-20T13:40:00.001-07:00

As I'm going through these YA titles that I could potentially read with my eighth grade classroom, I'm weeding some out and keeping some in mind. I just recently finished Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor. We were forced to read this book in an undergraduate class on teaching literacy, and now I see why this book might not be too bad to teach.

What I like about the book is that it opens up a lot of areas for discussion. It deals with some pretty serious issues surrounding the struggle of African Americans that I find it rich to discuss with middle school students. It touches upon slavery, the KKK, hate crimes, sharecropping, bigotry, educational differences, and unjust treatment socially, economically, and educationally. I think it's worth teaching just because it opens up these avenues for discussion and introduces these concepts early on in the mind of the student.

A few concerns do come to mind, though. The book is quite long for a middle school student, and since the content is a little more sophisticated and serious, this book would have to be taught later on in the year. I'm afraid that the length and content are going to turn the heads of my students. And at times, the book can get rather dry. The characters aren't that dynamic--except for Stacey and perhaps TJ--but I don't think students are looking that in depth into the characters.

Basically, the story is about a large family who owns a lot of land, which is strange for African Americans of the south. The land is a big motif throughout, as it represents the only source of power and threat they hold over the white community. It is important for them to have the land since it is the only thing they can hang on to, the only thing that their family has to pass on. It's sort of representative of their family and their people--it's something tangible that they can be proud of.

The protagonist is Cassie, an eleven-year-old girl, who has three brothers: Stacey, Little Man, and Christopher-John. Stacey grows the most from the beginning to the end of the novel since he is learning the ways of being a black man in the 30s. He conflicts with his friend TJ who cheats him, takes his mother's teaching job away from ratting her out, befriends whites, and gets himself into a heap of trouble. TJ trusts whites who do nothing but get him in trouble. At the end of the novel, they end up making him steal a rifle, and when they are caught, the white boys murder the man who interrupted them and blame it on TJ. TJ is eventually sentenced to death at the hands of these two white teenage boys.

Cassie is a strong character who can't stand injustice. She even takes it out on a white girl who she helps carry books to school by beating her up and antagonizing her out in the forest. She can't stand when she isn't helped on by whites in the grocery store and must wait and wait and wait. She can't stand it when the white children take a bus to school and they have to walk (so they build a ditch to take down the school bus). She can't stand it when the local grocer threatens their family after they boycott the grocer for ill treatment to blacks. She can't stand for any kind of injustice.

Both of Cassie's parents struggle financially and with jobs. Early in the book, Cassie's mother is fired for taking out "colored" labels in the books and for teaching the truths of slavery. Cassie's father has to travel to work, working on the railroad, and isn't in too much of the book. Mr. Morrison lives in their backyard to take the place of their father. He is a strong man who helps them throughout the book. Also, Pa's brother Uncle Hammer comes occaisonally to help out with money or when they are in trouble. However, he is just like Cassie; he hates injustice and will do anything to combat it, even if it means his life.

Cassie's family dodges hate crimes, as others are tarred and feathered, beaten, and lynched. It seems like an endless battle for them just to earn enough money to eat. It's pretty sad. But, I think these plot points are good to introduce to students.

The character of Jeremy is also interesting to discuss. He is a white teenager who goes against the grain of what whites believe, and he is nice to blacks. He hangs out with them, walks with them to school, and brings them presents on Christmas. Jeremy truly wants to be friends with them, but Stacey can never allow it into his heart to trust a white person, especially with how whites treat TJ. The lawyer also is a character similar to Jeremy as he stands up for blacks when they want to murder TJ without a fair trial and then take on Cassie's family afterwards just for sport.

I didn't realize that this book is as old as it is. It was published in 1976 and won the Newberry Medal. A sequel came out a few years afterward called Let the Circle Be Unbroken. What is that one about? Is it worth reading?

I'm going to plan a Webquest and a PowerPoint project for after the novel. I'm pretty excited about it. I hope that I can interest my students in this novel, because I fear I won't be able to. I feel like tolerance is a great lesson to teach students, especially as I teach in a predominantly white school. Even if they can't relate, I think it's good to know. Knowledge beats ignorance.

If anyone has any good ideas on how to teach this book, any fun activities or discussions, please let me know.

What do you think of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry?

Pygmy

2009-08-18T13:49:00.000-07:00

Pygmy, Chuck Palahniuk's latest novel, is quite different from any of his other novels thus far, despite the graphic nature which is found in most of his works. I read Pygmy on audio tape which might hint towards my vague understanding of the novel and my disconnection with it.

Reading from Wikipedia, Pygmy is an epistolary novel, which means that it is a novel written as a series of documents. Each chapter is an account of Agent 67, nicknamed Pygmy, on his account of his visit to the United States. Pygmy is a nickname given to our protagonist and narrator because of his small size. He is an exchange student from a totalitarian homeland ("a mash-up of North Korea, Cuba, communist-era China, and Nazi-era Germany"). He travels to the midwest to live with a host family to carry out his mission for his homeland: some sort of terrorist attack.

Pygmy was taken from his family at an early age and was trained (and brainwashed) with a group of young boys like himself, hence his nickname Agent 67. These boys are trained to fight for their homeland, and these boys are sent off to countries to provoke war and terrorist attacks in the name of their country. In the beginning of the novel, you can tell Pygmy's brainwashing and connection to his country. He constantly repeats totalitarian quotations to justify his actions, something he must have learned in training.

Palahniuk is famous for using repetition in his works. In Pygmy, Palahniuk uses totalitarian quotations, as noted above, and the introductory beginnings of chapters. At the beginning of each chapter, Pygmy will document certain things about his location, purpose, people there, etc. So, it will sound something like, "Location: redacted. Mass of people on bus: redacted. Date: redacted." Everything is redacted, hence Palahniuk's repetiton for this book.

As aforementioned, each chapter is like a document that Pygmy uses to document his accounts in the United States. I think it's a clever way to structure a book. Since Pygmy isn't really big on description, it helps give the reader of sense of setting and other necessary details that aren't given in his narrative.

Also, the novel is a bit hard to understand since Pygmy's narrative is in broken English. It is a bit hard to get familiar with and used to, almost like you're reading A Clockwork Orange. But you do get used to it after a while.

What else is strange is the names in the book. Pygmy nicknames everybody something strange. For instance, he has two host siblings in his family, Cat Sister and Pig Dog Brother. Kind of creative. His host parents are Cow Father and Chicken Mother, attributing to their size and behavior. I like how Pygmy describes our overindulgence in things like food, especially when in comparison with the nickname of his host father.

Basically, the novel takes on a strange plot. Pygmy comes to the US and is immediately handed a Jesus t-shirt and an American flag. Hilarious. Then, he gets to know his host family. He goes into Walmart and tries to purchase an assault rifle which causes quite a stir. At Walmart, he catches his host brother being picked on by a kid named Trevor. Pygmy takes it upon himself to fight back against Trevor, so he brings him into the bathroom and beats and rapes him. Horrifying. Trevor then threatens to hurt Pygmy, but Pygmy is not scared of that happening.

Meanwhile, Pygmy is attracted to Cat Sister and they have quite a flirtatious relationship. Cat Sister actually makes Pygmy feel human, eventually leading to his transition at the end of the book where he decides not to go through with the terrorist attack and betray his home country.

Pygmy is decided to be adopted by the host family which makes sexual encounters between Pygmy and Cat Sister to become awkward. What else is strange is Chicken Mother's addiction to pleasing herself. She has toys all around the house and hoards batteries. It's very strange. Thus, Cat Sister takes it upon herself to steal office supplies from her father's work, thinking she's a spy. This is how she tries to get the batteries back.

Pygmy starts to question his motives and intentions in the country when he stops a school shooting and becomes an instant hero. The final turning point where he abandons that motive is at the end when he also stops another shooting: Trevor realizes his homosexuality after Pygmy's encounter with him, he tries to hook up with him and is denied, so he murders students at a UN Conference. Pygmy stops the attack and once again becomes a hero. Pygmy finally learns human emotions.

This novel was really bizarre. It was hard to get into and to follow since its strange style, but that also makes it unique. Palahniuk never fails to keep surprising me with how grotesque he can be. But, he is quite creative and has an imagination that is insane. This isn't my favorite book of his, but it's still worth talking about.

What do you think of Pygmy?

Tunes for Bears to Dance To

2009-08-14T13:20:00.000-07:00

Robert Cormier is a very popular young adult literature writer, and I had not yet been graced with his work until very recently. I know he is most popular for I Am the Cheese and The Chocolate War, but I read Tunes for Bears to Dance To, perhaps not one of his most popular books. However, it's on my to-teach list for my new school, and I think it's definitely teach-worthy.

Tunes for Bears to Dance To takes place after World War II. Our main character Henry, eleven years old, has just experienced the death of his brother. His father is so depressed that he quits work and falls into a deep depression that later will need to be hospitalized. His mother works overtime at a local restaurant as a waitress and is not given enough wages or respect at her job.

Henry then must earn money as he works in a local grocery store for a man named Mr. Hairston. Mr. Hairston, as we come to find out, is a bigot and is prejudiced against Jews, an antisemite. As Henry works for the store, he starts to notice a strange neighbor, an old man named Mr. Levine. Wondering about him, he starts to follow him around to see what crazy things he does. He follows him to a craft center where he is pulled in to meet the man.

Mr. Levine, we come to find out, is really not all that crazy. Mr. Levine used to be in a concentration camp, and he comes to the craft center to recreate his childhood. He makes exact replicas of the people and places that he remembers out of wood. Henry is blown away by his talent, and later he slips this information to Mr. Hairston who seems overly interested in the whole affair. We also notice Mr. Hairston's daughter coming into the store bruised, showing that he is abusive in the home. Henry desperately wants to help her out but can't.

Later on, Mr. Levine wins an art contest for his wooden replicas. He even crafts a wooden duck for Henry. Angry about the award, Mr. Hairston fires Henry but will take him back to work on one condition: he must smash the wooden figurines to pieces. In addition, Mr. Hairston will pay for the stone memorial that does not exist on Henry's brother's grave because they can't afford it, and he will give his mother a better paying job with better hours. If Henry does not comply, he will lose his job, he will have his mother lose his job, he will blacklist Henry for other businesses in town, and he will give a bad report to Henry's principal.

Henry is really in a pickle here. He contemplates what to do for a long time. When it comes down to it (SPOILER ALERT), he chooses to smash the town. Henry is beside himself, but when he confronts Mr. Hairston, he can't accept all of the wonderful gifts from doing the deed because he realizes the reasons that Mr. Hairston wanted him to do it: he hates Jews and he wanted to "break" the goodness in Henry. Henry quits and doesn't accept the gifts. Shortly afterwards, his family moves out of town because they can't deal with the trauma of their long lost son/brother.

The book is really short and really interesting. I had to keep reading because I wanted to see what was going to happen. And, it's a pretty easy read. I'm starting off the year on this book because it's coherent, short, and easier. I like the connection to bigotry and the Holocaust, since we still see so much prejudice in the world today. Will it ever go away?

I can see why Cormier is such a popular author. His books are brief, interesting, and can connect with teenagers. They are deep enough that readers can have in-depth conversations, but they aren't too shallow that the conversation would falter quickly.

For an assignment, if allowed, I was thinking I might focus on this essential question: What can we learn from our elders? We can learn about the past, about life lessons, and we can also learn what not to do. In order to demonstrate this, I was hoping to invite in adults, relatives, and neighbors of my students to come in and talk about some life lesson. The students would take notes and write a short essay on the life lesson/theme they took from one of the speakers and another short essay on what theme they took from one character in the story. Hopefully I can get this approved.

It's a good read. I would recommend this to young readers, especially those interested in history and the Holocaust. There isn't TOO MUCH information on the Holocaust, but it still is a central part of the book.

What do you think of Tunes for Bears to Dance To?

Arsenic and Old Lace

2009-08-13T06:43:00.001-07:00

For the new school I'll be teaching at, I have a few options of what play to teach. Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring is one of those options. In this space, I will explore the play and its many dynamics.

I don't know if many people are familiar with the play since it was written in 1939 and was most popular during the 1940s and during a brief stint in the 80s, from 86 to 87, when it was performed in New York City. Otherwise, you would just have to be a studying actor, drama student, or lover of literature to have crossed the path of this play. I hadn't heard of it otherwise before now.

Arsenic and Old Lace is a farcical black comedy that has many different story angles all tied into one. I find I might teach this one over Inherit the Wind and You Can't Take It with You since my audience is a sea of twelve year olds. This play is bizarre and off-the-wall, and I think that would be more appealing to them. Especially since my other competetors have to do with a trial about evolution and a family comedy.

The main plot has to do with two elderly ladies, the aunts, who live in Brooklyn and are well off. They take it upon themselves to poison old men who come looking for a room because it is their "charity work" to put them out of their misery. They then get their nephew, Teddy (who thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt), to dig their graves in the basement. He thinks they are yellow fever victims and that he is digging the Panama Canal downstairs.

These old ladies, Martha and Abby, have a newphew who is the star of the play, Mortimer Brewster who is a drama critic. He writes nasty reviews of plays, so since he has earned a reputation of being a bachelor and hating love, he tries to put off and/or hide his marriage proposal to Elaine. Throughout the play, Elaine tries to get him to commit to marriage, and once he does, he discovers the deaths of the men in the house and tries to get her to leave him as much as possible in order to rid her of the insanity.

Later on in the play, Teddy and Mortimer's long-lost brother returns. His name is Jonathan and he brings with him a Dr. Einstein who is a plastic surgeon. He has reconstructed Jonathan's face since he has committed so many crimes and murders. When Jonathan returns, they don't recognize him, but he convinces them otherwise. He is offered to stay the night, and when Mortimer comes home, he tries to dispute this. Jonathan secretly wants to run a plastic surgery operation in the basement and live there forever, and no one else likes this idea except for him and his doctor, who he controls mercilessly.

Meanwhile, Teddy runs around the house screaming "CHARGE!" or giving and receiving commands from others as the President. Cops come from time to time, and they are depicted as absolute fools, and they seem to have no idea what's going on.

At one point, Jonathan decides to murder Mortimer because he is getting in the way of their plans. Jonathan has also murdered someone and is going to bury him in the hole dug for the recent murder of the old ladies. Mortimer tries to use this as collateral to get them out, but they won't since they know of the other murders. They even try to take Elaine away before Mortimer interrupts them. So, Jonathan ties up Mortimer, in a scene of pure irony as he describes the play he went to that night of the same plotline, and they attempt to kill him before they are interrupted by a police officer, O'Hara. O'Hara thinks they are reenacting the play from the night, and he spends hours telling them about the plotline until they all fall asleep.

The third act resumes later in the morning when O'Hara has finished his story. Mortimer has already signed paperwork for Teddy to go to Happy Dale, a mental institution, so that he can be safely away from the murders. The cops burst in and recognize that Jonathan is a wanted felon, and they take him away. Before they do, Jonathan bursts out their secret of the dead bodies, and they think he's joking. A man comes to take Teddy away to Happy Dale, and the old ladies freak out about it. They want to come too, so they talk about the murders in the basement. Thinking they're crazy--not honest--they submit them to Happy Dale too. Mortimer and Elaine are left to be wed.

Now, this plot is supposedly based on actual accounts where an old lady did poison old men, except she did this to gain their pensions. This play was originally supposed to be a drama, except a friend of Kesselring convinced him that it would be much more interesting and successful as a comedy. And so, it was.

There are many controversial topics that are brought up during the play that are poked fun at, farce: plastic surgery, murder, dumb cops, the mentally insane, bachelorhood and marriage. There is a lot to talk about, but it's a bit scattered so I could see difficulties in sustaining a coherent discussion. I'll find my ways.

I'm thinking of focusing on farce and having students create their own one-act farcical black comedy to perform in front of the class, in groups. We would focus on identifying and defining farce, and then they would demonstrate their understanding of plot, drama, and farce in their short, very short, play. That's what is running through my mind right now. Please add any other ideas of how to tackle this play with students, besides acting it out and showing the classic old film of course.

I also watched the film adaptation yesterday which was relatively close to the plotline of the drama. Some areas were skewed or different, such as Mortimer wedding Elaine in the first scene. But, I think it gives a good depiction of what happens, when it might be confusing to a beginning reader, and it helps make sense of the random plot details throughout. The characters seem to be right-on to their depiction in the play. It would be worthwhile to watch.

So what do you think of Arsenic and Old Lace?