Sunday, February 27, 2011
Books 12, 13, and 14
I'll do a proper review soon. I finished She's Come Undone while visiting my parents and forgot to take any other books with me, so I had to make do with 2 books I had there (things I hadn't read since middle/high school)...1 of which was crap and 1 which was still brilliant.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Nail art inspired by William Blake's poem "The Tyger"
I'm using this blog primarily for book-related things, but I do more than read all the time. One hobby of mine is nail art and since these are inspired by literature, I thought I'd post them.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Book 11: The Great Gatsby
Completed February 17th
I have just not felt like reading lately. I powered through January with 9 books, but this is only the 2nd I've finished this month. Blah.
So, The Great Gatsby. I can't believe I made it through high school and college never having been assigned this novel. I had no idea what it was about when I started...if I'm honest, I vaguely thought baseball was involved for some reason...it's not, by the way.
I enjoyed it overall. The characters are intriguing and mysterious. It seems like there are secrets around every turn and the ending was all kinds of unexpected. Even when there didn't seem to be anything happening, I was still interested. The mundane day-to-day of these characters is more entertaining that my life will ever be. Something to remember: this novel takes place in the 1920s. Fitzgerald mentions several dates and it took me a while to wrap my mind around the fact that he was referring to the 1800s.
Some of my favorite passages:
I have just not felt like reading lately. I powered through January with 9 books, but this is only the 2nd I've finished this month. Blah.
So, The Great Gatsby. I can't believe I made it through high school and college never having been assigned this novel. I had no idea what it was about when I started...if I'm honest, I vaguely thought baseball was involved for some reason...it's not, by the way.
I enjoyed it overall. The characters are intriguing and mysterious. It seems like there are secrets around every turn and the ending was all kinds of unexpected. Even when there didn't seem to be anything happening, I was still interested. The mundane day-to-day of these characters is more entertaining that my life will ever be. Something to remember: this novel takes place in the 1920s. Fitzgerald mentions several dates and it took me a while to wrap my mind around the fact that he was referring to the 1800s.
Some of my favorite passages:
- Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.
- For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing.
- They were careless people...they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Book 10: Will Grayson, Will Grayson
Completed February 4th
I love John Green. I love him as an author, a philanthropist, a decreaser of WorldSuck, a creator of awesome, and the father of Nerdfighteria. Looking for Alaska is in my top 3 favorite books, if not the favorite. So I had high expectations for this novel. Before I go further, let me say that I read this when it first came out and was severely disappointed. Something about it stuck with me though, and I wanted to give it another try.
Okay so this book is written in alternating chapters by John Green and David Levithan. Green writes from the view of Will Grayson, who is a social outcast and just tries to pass through life unnoticed. (He also has a best friend named Tiny Cooper who will become important later on in this review/summary/thought thing.) Levithan writes from the view of another character named Will Grayson, who is an angsty, closeted gay teen. Both Wills meet eventually and their lives begin to change, leading to epiphanies on both their parts. (There's also a character named Jane who is a music snob and I'm left wondering why she was included at all. Her relationship with Will was unrealistic and too forced for my taste.)
Tiny Cooper is gay and "out and proud" in the biggest sense of the phrase. Green and Levithan use Tiny to bring about both Wills' epiphanies. Green has said that Tiny is his favorite character that he has written...and I have to wonder, why? Now don't get your dander up and wonder if my dislike of Tiny has anything to do with him being gay. If you know me at all, you know I am a HUGE supporter of the LGBT community and am pretty involved in it. There's just something that rubs me the wrong way about Tiny. He's loud and self-absorbed, yet other characters seem to gravitate toward him.
And the way Green's Will Grayson describes Tiny annoyed the hell out of me. Green writes, "Tiny Cooper is not the world's gayest person, and he is not the world's largest person, but I believe he may be the world's largest person who is really, really gay, and also the world's gayest person who is really, really large." The enormity of Tiny is reiterated ad nauseam. I understand that the reader needs to remember that Tiny is a big guy in order for Tiny's spiel about his struggles and loving himself to have an impact, but my God. I get it, Green. Let's move along and talk about something other than the miracle of Tiny fitting himself into a car or how he eats 10 hotdogs in 1 sitting or almost breaks the swing set when he sits down. The introduction to Tiny is memorable enough for his hugeness not to be mentioned every few pages. Trust the reader to remember.
That being said...I enjoyed this read-through a helluva lot more than the first, when my reaction was pretty much, "What the hell did I just read and why does it exist?" I really liked Levithan's Will. He was angsty and brooding and is able to pass as a teen with depression. He's not just sad or upset with life, he actually has a mental illness.
A couple quotes stood out to me:
Rating: 4/10
I love John Green. I love him as an author, a philanthropist, a decreaser of WorldSuck, a creator of awesome, and the father of Nerdfighteria. Looking for Alaska is in my top 3 favorite books, if not the favorite. So I had high expectations for this novel. Before I go further, let me say that I read this when it first came out and was severely disappointed. Something about it stuck with me though, and I wanted to give it another try.
Okay so this book is written in alternating chapters by John Green and David Levithan. Green writes from the view of Will Grayson, who is a social outcast and just tries to pass through life unnoticed. (He also has a best friend named Tiny Cooper who will become important later on in this review/summary/thought thing.) Levithan writes from the view of another character named Will Grayson, who is an angsty, closeted gay teen. Both Wills meet eventually and their lives begin to change, leading to epiphanies on both their parts. (There's also a character named Jane who is a music snob and I'm left wondering why she was included at all. Her relationship with Will was unrealistic and too forced for my taste.)
Tiny Cooper is gay and "out and proud" in the biggest sense of the phrase. Green and Levithan use Tiny to bring about both Wills' epiphanies. Green has said that Tiny is his favorite character that he has written...and I have to wonder, why? Now don't get your dander up and wonder if my dislike of Tiny has anything to do with him being gay. If you know me at all, you know I am a HUGE supporter of the LGBT community and am pretty involved in it. There's just something that rubs me the wrong way about Tiny. He's loud and self-absorbed, yet other characters seem to gravitate toward him.
And the way Green's Will Grayson describes Tiny annoyed the hell out of me. Green writes, "Tiny Cooper is not the world's gayest person, and he is not the world's largest person, but I believe he may be the world's largest person who is really, really gay, and also the world's gayest person who is really, really large." The enormity of Tiny is reiterated ad nauseam. I understand that the reader needs to remember that Tiny is a big guy in order for Tiny's spiel about his struggles and loving himself to have an impact, but my God. I get it, Green. Let's move along and talk about something other than the miracle of Tiny fitting himself into a car or how he eats 10 hotdogs in 1 sitting or almost breaks the swing set when he sits down. The introduction to Tiny is memorable enough for his hugeness not to be mentioned every few pages. Trust the reader to remember.
That being said...I enjoyed this read-through a helluva lot more than the first, when my reaction was pretty much, "What the hell did I just read and why does it exist?" I really liked Levithan's Will. He was angsty and brooding and is able to pass as a teen with depression. He's not just sad or upset with life, he actually has a mental illness.
A couple quotes stood out to me:
- when things break, it's not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. it's because a little piece gets lost -- the two ends couldn't fit together even if they wanted to. the whole shape has changed. (Levithan's Will, whose chapters are written in lowercase letters)
- i will admit that there's a certain degree of giving a fuck that goes into not giving a fuck. by saying you don't care if the world falls apart, in some small way, you're saying you want it to stay together, on your terms.
Rating: 4/10
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Books 7, 8, and 9
I plan on reviewing them soon, so check back. I'm currently reading book 10 Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan.
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