The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I know I'm a little late on this trend, but a copy of The Hunger Games was literally put into my hands, so it was hard to put off reading the series any longer.  I wish I hadn't put it off so long.  It's really, really good, and very haunting.
Quick list of favourite things in this book:

• All of Katniss's stylists have the names of either Roman emperors or well-known senate members.  (Also, the interviewer dude is Caesar, and I pictured him as Hamilton-ish [from Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility].)
• Katniss does not care about romance at all.  It's not even on her radar.  On one hand, her obliviousness about the fact that Peeta is really in love with her can be a little annoying, but on the other, she's not giving though to it because survival is most important.  I am totally behind that.  I feel bad for Peeta a little, but at the same time, I love Katniss for being--well, not so girly.  In other news, those of you wearing "Team Peeta" and "Team Gale" shirts are probably idiots.  It's pretty clear even from just this that romance isn't going to be a priority, thank goodness.  
• The Foxfaced girl.  There's something about her.  I want to know more about her, even though she's dead and only shows up like twice.

Runner-ups:

• The fact that Peeta is a bread baker... Like pita bread.  Hehe.
• The fact that even the characters in the book seem to be aware of what a stupid name Katniss is.  (Gale calling her "catnip" as her nickname.  That has to be Suzanne Collins mocking herself.)

So--onto the rest.  If you don't know what this is at all, you've been living under a rock for the past two weeks/probably don't have a Tumblr, and if that's true... How are you reading this?  But here's a basic summary: on the remains of the US, a new land has arisen, split into thirteen districts and the Capitol.  Each district is based off of something--Katniss's is the coal district, there's an agricultural district, fishing district, and so on.  Many years ago, the districts tried to rebel against the posh Capitol, and in the end, the thirteenth district was destroyed.  To punish the other districts and remind them of their pattern, every year the Capitol holds the hunger games.
A hunger game is set in a predetermined area, different every year.  Two teenagers from each district (except thirteen, obviously) is chosen to fight while surviving in this area.  They must forage for themselves, though sometimes their sponsors send food and medicine, and they do have a pick for weapons--though they must fight the other kids to have a pick at the weapons left in the beginning of the game.  Last man standing wins (though in this hunger game the rules are changed, since prior to the games Katniss and Peeta play up the idea that they are in love, Peeta of course being serious, and Katniss being like, whatever), so it's essentially a big old gladiator battle.  (And why it makes sense that all these Capitol folk have Roman names...)
So.  As you may have gathered, Katniss was drawn for the games (technically her younger sister was, but Katniss volunteered in Prim's place), as was Peeta.  Let's go:

Oh, yeah.  Gale is a friend of Katniss's.  In the beginning of the book they have snuck outside of the fence that contains their district and are hunting illegally.  This is how they feed themselves and their family, because District 12 is really, really poor, especially their families.  On the morning before "the reaping" (when they choose the candidates for the games) Gale suggests that they run away to live in the woods.  It doesn't appear to be romantically charged, at least as not as much as it may sound, but it could be.  There's not a lot of Gale in this volume.  Anyways, the point is, he doesn't exist as simply a romance object (and now you understand the "Team Gale" thing I said earlier).
I also love how down-to-earth Katniss is--Katniss goes a little to the extreme, and it could prove dangerous for her later, but still: "As I walk, I glance over at Gale's face, still smoldering underneath his stony expression.  His rages seem pointless to me, although I never say so.  It's not that I don't agree with him.  I do.  But what good is yelling about the Capitol in the middle of the woods?  It doesn't change anything.  It doesn't make things fair.  It doesn't fill our stomachs.  In fact, it scares off the nearby game.  I let him yell though.  Better he does it in the woods than in the district" (Collins 14).  I completely respect the attitude that she has.

Oh yeah, the stylists... Well, the competitors have to be spruced up.  Katniss is cleaned, shaved for the first time in her life, scars are fixed, etc.  And they are presented to an audience (it's basically a reality TV show) before the games in interviews and so on.  They are given fancy clothes and an "edge"--sexy, mysterious, tough, et cetera.  So.  The stylists' names: Venia, Octavia, Cinna and Flavius (at least the ones on the page I marked).  Octavia=Octavius=Augustus Caesar, Flavius is a lesser-known emperor, Cinna was on the consul, and although there are multiple Cinnas (obviously), the one I'm most familiar with is the poet that was murdered in a riot for having the same name as the consul member.  And... okay, fine.  I don't know of any famous Roman named Venia, but it is Latin.  Apparently people have been complaining about Lenny Kravitz being cast as one of the stylists (Cinna, I think), but as long as he's done a good job, what does it really matter?  Sorry that he's black...?
Oh, speaking of the stylists, one of the things I'm really excited to see in the film is the outfits.  Suzanne Collins is incredibly talented in writing descriptions (especially that of food!), and of the dresses Katniss wears during interviews and so on.  "...My dress, oh, my dress is entirely covered in reflective precious gems, red and yellow and white with bits of blue that accent the tips of the flame design.  The slightest movement gives the impression I am engulfed in tongue of fire.  I am not pretty.  I am not beautiful.  I am as radiant as the sun" (Collins 121).

Oh--and going along with the Stylist's names, there's Caesar, the interviewer.  I hope I don't need to explain the Roman importance of his name.  

One thing people have been up in arms about is the fact that Rue was black in the movie.  Well, duh.  She's described as being black.  Not only that, she's from the agricultural district--she picks from morning till night, if she stops she gets whipped, if she steals she gets whipped.  You'd have to be an idiot not to draw the obvious connection between that and a plantation.  Even if Collins hadn't described her as having dark skin, it very nearly would be an automatic to have her be black in the movie because there's no way you can't make that connection.  So... So yeah, calm down world.
And--Rue--well, here come the spoilers.  Her death was heartbreaking and beautiful.  And in a way, I'm glad it happened.  As they got closer and friendlier, I started getting scared--because at that point, the rules hadn't changed.  Only one person could win.  One of them would have to kill the other.  So once the fact was over... Well... In a sick way, I was a little relieved.  Because Katniss would have to kill Rue, and that just wouldn't be possible.  Katniss kills Rue's killer, however, covers Rue in flowers, and sings a lullaby to her to ease her into her death.  It's a beautiful scene.

Later, Katniss makes it back to Peeta, and they care for each other.  (Mostly Katniss caring for Peeta.)  This when they play up the fake relationship the most--Peeta kissing her for real, Katniss focusing on what was truly important--survival.  At one point Peeta asks Katniss to tell her a story, so she tells him about when she got her sister's goat--I only mention it because Collins has these clever ways of wording sentences every so often that I really enjoy... "It was an excellent deal if the goat lived; I'd been robbed if she died.  People took sides in the argument, but I took the goat" (Collins 272).

Also, fans of Skyward Sword: there are birds named grooslings.  I can't take any part of the book that mentions them seriously.

I really don't have much to say until the book's end.  I mean, Katniss lives--obviously--and I think I've already mentioned that Peeta does as well.  The rules changed, like I said--when it's just them left there's an announcement that the rules never really changed, so they decide to kill themselves with poisonous berries at the same time, but right before they can swallow they are stopped, it announces that they both win, and although all the people are happy, the Capitol higher-ups are pissed, because that along with what Katniss did for Rue are considered high acts of rebellion.  Certainly this is what sets the stage for the rebellious acts that begin to run rampant in the next two books--and the book ends with Katniss on the train back home realizing she's in potentially more danger than she ever was in the games now because she has made the Capitol mad.
She also considers Peeta's relationship with her and Gale's--who does she care for and whatnot.  She says she misses him already, she feels bad for offending him... But I don't believe this is grounds for saying she loves him as lover or cares for him more than anything else or anything like that.  She cares for him because they shared that danger, and they were the only ones that did--in a time of trauma, they came together. but it doesn't necessarily mean in a romantic way.  Well, I guess I'll have to see how this all pans out...

All in all, this is a really good book.  Yeah, for the age group, and even an adult could read it.  It's not "dumbed down" in its writing or content--how much the book affects you is more according to your own age rather than the book's level of writing.  (For example, a kid may not think twice about the "mutts", but that and its implications disturbed me.)  It's a neat action story, with more to it than being just that.  It's almost--it's almost like a younger adults version of the Uglies series by Scott Westerfield (minus the fourth book in that series!  Ugh).  Or at least that's what it reminds me of, though to be fair I haven't read that series in four or five years, and maybe I'm just associating them because that was the last new series I read and enjoyed and because both were recommended to me (and lent to me) by the same person.  Well, whatever.  This is a good dystopian future series, and so is Westerfield's series.  Read them both, then let me know whether my connection between the two of them is unfounded or not.  Please.
Anyways, read the book, you'll be glad you did--it's worth the hype.  Collins is talented.  The books are well-written.  The ideas are intriguing.  The main character isn't a wet rag.  You'll read it in about two days.  Gooo doooo itttt.


MLA Citation Information: Collins, Suzanne.  The Hunger Games.  Scholastic Press: New York, 2008.

The Time Machine by HG Wells

I was gripped with a sudden urge, while wandering drunkenly through the library (truth?), to reread HG Well's awesome book--it's a little less awesome now than it was four or five years ago (what, is that even real), but it's still good.  Better than the Autocracy of Mr Parham.  Always better than that.  Anything would be better than that.

Anyways, this is the first time machine story ever written.  (Well, the first well-known one in any case.  Shush.)  That has never hit me before reading it this one time--I was reading the section where the Victorian men were trying to puzzle out how the time machine could move back in time if they had never seen it in their friend's room before.  Finally it occurs to one of them that it moves at super speed or whatever as it goes back, and whatever else.  It has never occurred to me before that someone could take the idea of time travel for granted, but I clearly had.  All the late Victorian and turn-of-the-century people probably basically peed themselves when they read this.  Also, I think that it's hilarious that the psychologist is the one who eventually figures out the super speed thing.

Oh, but the story itself--the pioneering scientist travels into the feature which has resulted from people attaining utopia, and then devolving in light of the easy life.  The working class went underground and became gross ape-like monsters who feed on the upper class people, who have devolved into child-like creatures that aren't very bright.  My next note has to do with this--you see, I've read a lot of studies that accredit human brain development to the fact that we started eating more and more meat because we figured out how to cook it and not die.  All of these people ate fruit exclusively.  Maybe HG Wells didn't do this intentionally, or did this just to contrast their purity with the Morlocks' cannibalistic evils, but still, that would definitely have an affect on their brain power and bodies.  So... so yeah.  It's also a bad idea to raise a kid (until age five or six, but even then it's questionable) on a strictly vegetarian diet because of the damage that can do.  (HG Wells also mentions that they're all incredibly weak and light, so that's probably a super protein deficiency.)
Also, when he explains their diet he talks about how all cows and sheep and everything seemed to go extinct. Okay, HG Wells.  Sure.  That makes oodles of sense.  Why bring it up other than to complain?  Well, what he actually says is is that they "followed the Icthyosaurus into extinction" (Wells 32).  Hehe.  Awesome.

Eventually the time travelling narrator befriends one of the future non-Morlock humanoids.  He saves her from drowning--while swimming or playing in a stream she gets a cramp and the moderate current picks her up and takes her away.  Her fellows basically ignore her and leave her for dead, so the narrator dives in after her and rescues her.  She falls in love with him immediately (which, of course, he doesn't understand--he believes for almost the entirety of their friendship that it was just a childish affection) and follows him everywhere.  At first she annoys him, because "'I had not, I told myself, come into the future to carry on a miniature flirtation'" (Wells 54).  It's funny because flirtations are considered minor or miniature (as compared to, say, romance or dating or getting married, because it was the Victorian era and getting married was your only option then), and because Weena (the girl) is no more than four feet fall... Ahhh, oh you, HG Wells!
Oh yeah, I always forget that the non-Morlocks are the Eloi, probably because HG Wells only mentions it once.  It means "chosen" in Latin (although one of the baby naming sites it was one says it has Latin and French origins which doesn't really make sense since they developed at different speeds and times...?), which would make sense if these people were supposed to be the privileged upper class.  The French saint of metalworking (no lie) is Saint Eloi.  There doesn't seem to be a clear meaning behind the name Morlock, but apparently HG Wells wrote a quasi-prequel to this book (by quasi-prequel I mean one of his books is set a few centuries into the future and makes intimations that certain groups will develop into the Morlocks eventually.  I wonder if HG Wells really believed that the way HP Lovecraft believed Asian people really would take over the world), which might have some clues in it...?
HG Wells also eventually figures out the true nature and relationship of the Eloi and Morlocks.  He realizes that the Eloi are the main food source of the Morlocks and that explains all of their weird nighttime behaviour. I think he gives the Morlocks too much credit, though.  He says the Eloi are akin to fatted cattle, which the Morlocks "'preserved and preyed upon--probably saw to the breeding of''" (Wells 80).  The Morlocks are clearly more advanced physically than the Eloi, and more advanced mentally because being a predator obviously requires a more complex system of thought, but I don't think they're smart enough to control breeding and preservation and all of that.  I think they're very much like cavemen--knowing where the prey is, and how much there ought to be, but beyond that, not really having a good idea of what's going on.  (But just wait until Equality discovers electricity!)  Though saying the Eloi are akin to fatted cattle is appropriate in what a fatted cattle is, that also automatically brings up the image of farming, which is definitely inappropriate for this situation.

...Also, now that I think of it, what happened to all the people every part of the world that's not London?

My next bit comes when... when that guy who I almost called the Doctor but most definitely is NOT the Doctor realizes he can scare the Morlocks with fire--he gets so excited he tells Weena (the Eloi female) to dance and he dances with her: "'It part it was a modest can-can, in part a step dance, in part a skirt dance (so far as my tail-coat permitted), and in part original.  For I am naturally inventive, as you know'" (Wells 87).  At first I was like woaaah, ego!  But then I remembered that he made a whole damn time machine, so maybe he should be allowed to brag a bit.

Anyways.  He finds his time machine again, and Weena is killed due to his foolishness with the Morlocks--something I apparently misunderstood when I read it all 5,000 times in middle school.  You see, I always thought she was simply stolen away, and that's why the time traveler goes back--to try and save her.  The book ends--well, this edition has an epilogue, which for whatever reason my edition was bereft of--with the time traveler becoming determined to prove that the traveling occurred to our narrator who parrots back everything the traveler said in verbatim.  The time traveler goes back in time, and the narrator tells us that he vanished three years ago and never returned.  I kind of like it better when he's going back to save Weena and gets killed instead, instead of just trying to prove himself, but whatever.  I'm not the one writing classic sci-fi novels at the turn of the century... Yet.
The epilogue is also a little too optimistic--basically the narrator is saying that the traveler could still be alive wandering the future or past, and that the future saw can be changed, and at least love and tenderness still lived on in the Eloi.  It was probably to calm down all the Victorian people, who were probably smoking their smelling salts at that point in an effort to not vomit on everything, but... But ugh!  It's so lame!  It ruins the creepy implications of it!  Stupid Victorians and their fear of absolutely everything.  Anyways.  Other than the lame-butt epilogue, this is Twilight Zone-worthy.  No, I don't care that it predates the Twilight Zone by like seventy (woah, really!??) years.


MLA Citation information: Wells, HG.  The Time Machine.  Robert Bentley, Inc: United States of America, 1895.  (Sorry, this one of those books that are definitely from the mid forties to mid fifties that don't feel like putting legitimate information in their books, which I guess doesn't really matter since this is all public domain and everything.)


I also started reading the Sandman comics by Neil Gaiman.  I read a spin-off series (Death: At Death's Door by Jill somebody, which I'm thinking is her specific take on all the events that occurred during the Sandman comics--though I'm not sure because it's only one volume... And I'm only one volume into Sandman.)  and a spin-off of that spin-off (The Dead Boy Detectives) which sucks HARDCORE.  I read Preludes & Nocturnes... I'm not sure if it was a prequel series made after the original series or what, but I jumped into it okay.  There wasn't a huge learning curve, even if Martian Manhunter and the Scarecrow make appearances (yep).  The only other related book was Dream Country, which is a collection of random quasi-related stories... That was good, though.  Plus you get to see Morpheus wearing a ruff, sooo...
But yeah.  I like the series so far, but unfortunately my access to it is limited until the summer (or maybe spring break, if I'm really lucky--shut up I don't have a life at all).  The local library has only these two volumes (I believe), the school library only has The League of Extraordinary Gentleman (I tried reading it again but it's just so baaaaad), and my library at home only has the aforementioned spin-offs.  Soo I'll keep you updated.  But it's cool.  Very cool.

I read JD Salinger's Nine Stories, too.  I can't do a whole post for that--I don't really like focusing on short story collections.  His stories are always all right, and always seem to be constructed okay, if not really well--but the ends are just... just failed.  Talk about going out with a bang instead of a whimper.  I can never quite follow them, for example, "A Perfect Day For Bananafish" starts out with the girl talking to her mother on the phone about her boyfriend, then it goes to the boyfriend who's being kind of creepy on the beach in a robe talking to young girls (yeah, I thought pedophile--even before it mentioned the girls, it was the robe that made me suspicious), who then shoots himself.  It ends with him going into the room where she is sleeping and him loading up a gun a then shooting himself.  I... What?  What, because the little girl ran away before they were done talking or whatever?  What?  The next story does a lot of Holden Caulfield "I mean it--I mean I mean it" stuff that makes me want to pull my hair out.
The Esme story is in here too, and it's probably my favourite.  Well, half of it is.  Half of it is a little slice of life sort of deal, he meets a girl named Esme while in England during the war.  Esme asks him to write her a story, and the second half of that story is presumably it?  I'm not sure.  But he's very good at presenting slice of lifes, just bad at making them do things.  On the plus side, he writes about Connecticut all the time, and that's always exciting for me.
Anyways, these stories are more himself than anything else.  All stories and art and music is the creator in some way, but these are a psychological study more than anything else.  They are way more telling about Salinger's mental mechanisms than they are about anything else, I feel like.  And I'm not just saying it because of all the analyzing in his daughter's book.  I don't even really remember what she said, other than that she mentioned "Bananafish" a lot.  But if you're interested in Salinger's mind, I'd suggest it.  If you're kind of lukewarm on him, like me, you might not really be interested in this as much.  Salinger's style in these stories isn't nearly as grating as Catcher in the Rye, but I still got bored quickly.


Wow, long post.  I'm rereading Crabwalk, but I'm not going to write anything for it because I hate it even more this time around.  Oops...

(Also, spellchecker has decided to peace out for this post, so sorry if I missed anything.)

This is Not Your City by Caitlin Horrocks

Woah, what?  A book written in the past five years?  Yeah, check it: 2011.  There was something about the cover of this book that really attracted me.  And I'm glad it did--this is a really good book.  It's a collection of short stories by the authoress (sorry, I wanted to call her that, and technically it's a real world) Caitlin Horrocks, who I've never heard of before.  She's good, though, and pretty young--she was born in 1980.  One of her stories seemed familiar, but I'm pretty sure I had never read any of them prior to this (though it is possible; she published them all in separate magazines and such before this book's publication).

The stories are all very intriguing, including the ones that I would say are "misses".  I would definitely buy this book in a heartbeat, if I weren't a poor college student, that is.  My favourite story is about a woman--man--soul--who has been reborn, reincarnated, whatever, 127 times.  She can recognize the reincarnated souls in other people she has known over her past lives... including that of a mother who drowned her as an infant.  The catch?  Ooh, I'm going to spoil it.  But it's so good, I've got to spoil it--in this life she is pregnant, and her baby has the reincarnated soul of that mother.  I really, really, really want to spoil the end--but I guess I won't.  Not yet, at least.  There's a story about a teacher who takes out her aggression on her students-not necessarily violent aggression, just... Just weird.  Twisted.  Some kind of abuse, but I'm not certain what the title of that sort of abuse would be.  There's a story about a girl whose mother has extreme arthritis--she has to wash her, clean her, and so on... And she's going to college (or maybe she's a senior in high school; she's an awful writer) and all of that, but it's an essay in an effort to save her grades and pass the year, or at least the semester.  The implication is that she's failing because her mother is eating so much of her time.  Soooo.  Interested yet?  Let's go!

The first story I had anything in was actually the second story, "It Looks Like This", the last one I just described.  ("Zolaria" is good too, but I spent it adapting to Horrocks's style!)  The narrator writes like she's in middle school, though she's in her senior year of high school, I believe.  It's awful, the description of her mother.  Having to wash her, take care of her completely--her sister left--plus she's only in middle school... That's awful.  That's no way to grow up.  It's striking particularly for that, trying to imagine yourself in that awful situation...
One of her best friends--or the person she feels closest to, rather, is an Amish woman (she lives in rural Ohio).  I mention this because in the second page of the story there is this: "In the paper the other day, some guy said, 'Based primarily on the strength of local tourism, Ohio's rural communities are sinking or swimming.' My mom's the one who read it out to me, and she said, 'Sinking or swimming?  This f--king town was built under water'" (Horrocks 16).  The situation that our narrator is in would seem to indicate sinking, and at the end of the 'paper', assures the narrator that she was "'built for swimming'" (Horrocks 28).  It was very sweet.

The next story that I've got anything for is "Zero Conditional".  This is the one about the oddly abusive teacher.  It's not... like I said, it's not quite sexual, physical, or mental... It's like when you have a nasty teacher, and they're very small and they take it out on you or your classmates.  It's the closest I can get to that.  For example: they have this gross classroom rat (a pet!) that is slowly dying of a tumour.  She makes her least favourite student, who she just straight-up hates (let's be honest) touch it as punishment.  Rub his hand on it.  I think we can all agree that that's messed up, but it's hard to explain how much so, right?
On the teacher: "But Eril was a woman without great talents, forced to pride herself on small, unexpected skills, like the way she could untangle knots, hold her breath for two and a half minutes, or the way she'd taught herself in sixth grade to balance things on her head the way women did in third world countries or finishing schools.  She still practiced sometimes, unloading groceries and balancing a twelve-pack of die soda on the top of her head, plastic bags in each hand" (Horrocks 50-51).  This is the way I feel sometimes.  I mean--not exactly the same way, but I can relate to it, you know?
Anyways, that's the only thing I have to point out about that story...


She also has a sister.  They grew up in poor conditions, but the sister went on to go to college and is studying bio.  She has a boyfriend with a business major who presumably isn't falling apart at the seams, as well.  My first note has to do with her--she (Mouse) always signs her letters to her sister with "Love and Squalor, Mouse" (Horrocks 75).  This is, of course, a reference to JD Salinger's short story, "For Esme--With Love and Squalor".  Our narrator is certainly drowning in squalor (and love, I suppose), but I don't know how far the similarities reach.  I still haven't read it yet.  Anyways.  The narrator gets that her sister is joking, but she doesn't get the joke itself.
Anyways, the main meat of this story is that they go to pick up a dalmatian named Perdita (of course) that has been found, posing as the owners.  Usually Leo doesn't give a damn for the dogs he has, but he lets her ride in the front of the truck, and pets her, really plays with her... Even the narrator likes her, and that's rare for her.  The narrator even almost lets her free, because she spends her whole night howling.  The narrator feels guilty, especially since she knows that eventually Perdita will eventually be turned into a puppy science experiment.  She is about to let her out, but then she realizes that she doesn't want to disappoint Leo (or make him mad), how she'd probably just get lost and die, and make them lose money.  So she doesn't do a thing--and then the narrative jumps; we discover that this was a retrospective from a month later.  Perdita is gone, and the narrator is hoping that she's dead.  And--here it is--the grossing thing ever: "[Leo's] skin thing is getting worse.  He's got patches so bad they're swampy with fluid, where his shirts stick and scabs won't form... It's like he's molting into something new and horrible, and all I want to do is hold his skin together, press the seams of him together, so he won't fall apart and nothing in our lives will change" (Horrocks 89).  She ends the story itself with a reference to her sister's joke, the reference to JD Salinger's existence: "If this is what I get in this world I'll take it.  Love and squalor, but mostly love.  I'll take it and I'll take it and I will not be sorry" (Horrocks 89).  Tell me that's not messed up--or maybe it doesn't seem so because you haven't read the whole story, but trust me--it's messed up.  Royally.

The next story is the reincarnation one I described above: "Embodied".  If nothing else, look this story up.  I'm sure it exists somewhere online, and I promise that it will make you want to reader the other stories.  I actually don't have a lot to say about this--the concept itself is really cool, and it's just so perfect.  Almost all of the stories in here wrap up into neat little boxes, and even when there isn't closure, it feels darned well like there is.  I don't even want to spoil it... So I guess we'll go on to the next story, strangely enough, the only one which has a lack of closure that bothers me.  The story takes place at a zoo--a woman is there with her son and grandfather.  Her father is a bit like the father in Big Fish, something the woman resents him for.  They have a kind of understanding at the end--but ultimately, it is a passing affection and understanding, and both she and her father know that when he goes back to his home, their relationship will be just as strained and disjointed as it has always been, and nothing will really change.  Alternately, there is her inner monologue regarding her job at the patent office.  She has been getting letters from a man who claims to have invented a time machine.  He includes items in packages, such as a gravy boat from 1901, supposedly once on King Edward VII's table.  He includes a washcloth that looks like one that was in the girl's house growing up... And the most recent package had a bolo tie.  This tie (or a nearly identical tie) is mentioned in the grandfather's inner monologue, and supposedly his daughter knows nothing of it.  The story ends with her finally deciding to call the number on the supposed time traveler's packages and patent applications.  It obviously wasn't the father sending the packages, not even the bolo tie, so... it's just kind of there.  I didn't get why.  It didn't quite flesh it out.  Other than that I liked it, though.  It was kind of sad, but ultimately true, even if it was uncomfortable to admit it... Anyways.  Why mention this story?  What did I mark in it?  Well...
"She has found herself looking, really looking, over the blueprints.  The machine isn't familiar: not a DeLorean or Bill and Ted's phonebooth or Doctor Who's police box or any ships she recognizes from Star Trek or Star Wars or H.G. Wells.  It is simply a smooth, metal tube, that does not seem, somehow, like something a crazy person would design" (Horrocks 111).  Look at all those references.  My nerdgasm cannot be contained.  I do not even care if you are grossed out!  Because you know you did too.  (It was mostly for the Doctor Who reference, even if she botched it a little.)



Anyways, that's my last note or anything for this.  I'm glad that I impulsively picked this up--it's worth it, and it's a relatively fast read.  (It will probably be in your library's new or just arrived section, if your library has that sort of thing.)  I believe all of the stories were published in magazines or newspapers as well, so you could even just look them up online, maybe.  So... Yeah!  HG Wells's The Time Machine will be next!  (I didn't even do that on purpose, either.)


MLA Citation Information: Horrocks, Caitlin.  This Is Not Your City.  Sarabande Books: Kentucky, 2011.

Neuromancer by William Gibson

This post won't be helpful at all.
This book was not my most favourite thing ever.  It was recommended highly to me, but it just wasn't for me.  It was like Crichton on the strongest, most hopped-up steroids possible, and it just moved too quickly for me.  Also, the parts I could follow reminded me of the movie The Lawnmower Man, which is never a good sign (Stephen King sued so his name would not be associated with it. That's how bad it was).

Anyways, it's set in the future.  A future where computer upgrades to oneself or plastic surgery is not only successful, but cheap as hell.  One girl had surgically inserted retractable (and small) razorblades under her fingernails, another has "mirrored eyes", which give the eye a Terminator-esque readout.  (Her ducts were relocated to lead to her mouth, so if she ever had to cry she would just spit the tears instead.)  That sort of thing. Also they fix the main character's--Case's--liver so he can't get high off pills or whatever when he ingests them.  Alcohol also no longer affects him.  Oh, and you can back up your memory on hard drives and such.  And there's the Matrix, which is an actual computer thing and not something made up for Keanu Reeves (in case if you didn't know--my dad's a programmer and whenever he messes a code and can't figure it out, I suggest that there could be a glitch in the matrix.  He's never seen the movie).
The main character is unable to connect to the matrix because something I don't understand was messed up in his head and other stuff, so he is an alcoholic, a junky, and a hustler who just sort of floats around.
And that's it.  That's basically where I lost the story.  I know that sounds pathetic, but I just couldn't follow it around.  And I couldn't even follow the end.  It's actually kind of depressing.  I felt depressed after it ended and realizing I couldn't even get that.  Complicated sci-fi futures are a lot easier in comic book form, like Akira (awesome, if you haven't ever read that).

So... These are just some parts I liked, or whatever.  Sorry that I've been doing this so poorly lately, but not really because chances are no-one actually reads this anymore, sooo I win.
The first one is when some thug--"the Flatline"--describes himself as "'them huge f--kin' lizards, you know?  Had themself two goddamn brains, one in the head an' one by the tailbone, kept the hind legs movin'.  Hit that black stuff and ol' tailbrain jus' kept right on keepin' on'" (Gibson 78).  He's referring to stegosauruses.

"'One burning bush looks pretty much like another'" (Gibson 173).  I can't give much of a context to this, but it seems pretty much like Case is being warned about communicating with the wrong person.  It was just something that jumped out at me in a big mass of what.  I can't give context.  On anything anymore.  I'm full of Chinese food and kind of woozy--wait, I can finish this.  I swear.

The thing that confused me the most was probably the end.  Normally I can pretend to make logic out of an end, even when I can't follow the story itself, but I was just confused and sad and thinking about Lawnmower Man.  He finds a new girlfriend that's not Molly--who was somehow the catalyst of this book or something--and has a job writing software or something.  He sees another woman--Linda (????) and someone with his arm around Linda that--lo and behold, is him.  The Wikipedia summary doesn't even address this or really explain it, unless if I didn't even understand that, which is entirely possible.  I am the worst book blogger ever.


MLA citation information: Gibson, Wiiliam.  Neuromancer.  Ace Books: New York, 1984.


PS. I've started rereading Akira.  Awesome!

Dream Catcher by Margaret A Salinger

Not to be confused with Stephen King's Dreamcatcher, though, strangely enough, I received both books at the same exact time (also a copy of Gone With the Wind and a giant book of quotes, but shush).
This is the memoir of JD Salinger's daughter.  Her memoir, though I picked it because I saw the name and was like JD SALINGER'S DAUGHTER WROTE A BOOK ABOUT HIM.  I know what a memoir is, but come on, let's be real, probably almost all of the people who bought this book bought it for that reason.  Prior to the halfway point I actually got rather agitated because she was talking so much about herself.  Sorry.  Once I remembered that the words "memoir" were on the cover though, I got over it.  Also, JD Salinger wasn't a great father, so there's a point where you kind of want to push him out of the way.  He didn't beat his kids or anything like that, but he refused to give them real medicine even when they were dangerously ill (homeopathic meds are always a good idea), let them stay with their mother who was unstable--he suspected her of burning their house down (as did Margaret herself), kind of peaced out on showing up for parental events like graduations and such (though he almost went to Woodstock--it's too bad he changed his mind.  Can you imagine??), kind of was a messianic guy (or at least his daughter likens him to a cult leader, drawing women in and kind of breaking them down.  I kept on thinking of Ken Kesey and the Mountain Girl, or whatever her name was, from The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.  In any case, it was an interesting comparison.) and so on.  It wasn't--I don't like calling it neglect, but it was bad parenting.

Anyways.  It's a memoir.  Do I need to say more?  Most of my complaints/comments came early on when I was still like "TALK ABOUT YOUR DAD MORE"--or comments.  He was an interesting guy (JD Salinger died in 2010).  The bad parenting or less than pretty picture of him didn't really make me question my life or personal heroes or anything like that--he's not one of them.  That sounds mean, but what I'm trying to say is, I'm not idolizing him over Catcher in the Rye.  As you can see, the second reading of the book didn't even end up that well.  When you're fifteen or sixteen, the book is your little teen angst Bible, and when you're eighteen, after a while you just want to shut Holden up.  (Actually, this makes me want to reread Franny and Zooey really badly, because I liked that twice as much as I ever did Catcher.)  It did weird me about a little because there's something about JD Salinger's face that reminds me of Jack Kerouac.  (They have the same haircut, actually.)  So at times the image in my head of this person acting this way was Kerouac, and it was like "No, no, no--that's not right.  Not at all."

The first thing that worried me is that her introduction starts off with tons of quotes, poems, song lyrics, etc.  Immediately I got worried, because that's like rubbing it in someone's face that you're ridiculously educated (sure enough, she is--I don't even know what an M.Phil is).  Such annoying (and often seemingly unneeded) interludes became scarcer and scarcer as she moved away from the subject of her father, however.
The second thing that got me were the footnotes.  She berates a biographer of her father's very rudely--apparently her father had the nickname Sonny since childhood.  This biographer mistakenly said that he got the nickname in ninth grade, given to him by his friends.  "Ian Hamilton... claimed that it was at the McBurney school... that 'he was nicknamed "Sonny" by his chums, perhaps with a hint of sarcasm.'  Please, chums?  On the West Side of Manhattan, perhaps?  Several of my dad's army buddies in the foxholes and bloody battlefields of World War II were referred to, by the same scholar, as his colleagues.  'Let me confer with my colleagues, Rocco,' Jerry said.  'Oh, Rocco, would you be so kind as to pass the ammo?'  'Right-o, Sonny old chum,' Rocco expostulated laconically... I can't stand it" (Salinger 17).  So the guy screwed up on something!  Sorry he didn't have the advantage of being born in your family.  Hell, there's a whole year where no-one (to this day, apparently) knows where Salinger (JD) went, after Margaret's mother refused to drop out of school to marry him.  Also, sorry he uses admittedly odd phrasing like chums and colleagues.  Maybe it's a little old-fashioned, but it's not like the guy just threw HP Lovecraft call-words in there.  And what's with her little sarcastic reverie at the end there?  No need to get bitchy.  Just state that he was incorrect and move on.  Jeez.  (I don't know why this annoys me so much, but it makes me very mad.)
My next note was on another footnote that annoyed me--she explains a Hindu concept as being like excommunication, or "the WASP favorite, disowning or disinheriting, but more to the bone" (Salinger 23).  For some reason this made me mad (because I am a WASP, maybe?  That's honestly the only explanation I can make for my reaction...)--because only WASPs disinherit or disown?  Yeah okay.  She could just say "or disowning or disinheriting".  Again, I don't know why this agitated me so.  (Perhaps it would help to mention that I am PMSing and all my irrational moods and acts are ten times more so?)  In any case, the concept she's trying to describe--sitting shiva

My next bit is quick--Margaret recalls that at the time her father was writing Catcher, he told a friend that he was writing an autobiographical work at the time.  Also, this book is--before I forget--very heavy in drawing connections between Salinger and his characters, predominantly in the first half of the book.  That was very interesting, and made me wish I had bothered to read more of Salinger's works before reading this.  On the plus side, I'm all inspired to read Nine Stories now.  (If I can find a nice copy--I've never seen a library copy of any Salinger book that didn't look like it had been gnawed on.  One time Wallingford had a nice, almost-new copy of Catcher, which would have been perfect if some idiot teenage girl hadn't wrote "I [heart] Gerard Way" [with a real heart, not an HTML heart] on the cover.  Ugh.  Help.)  It's interesting because Holden is definitely autobiographical--I've never really had a doubt about that.  Franny and Zooey, however, seemed like a logical procession of thought (at least at the time), more than an illustration of the inner personal mechanisms of a mind.

Oh, I also thought that it was interesting that Salinger left his wife (Margaret's mother--apparently Salinger had a very extensive list of lady friends over the years--where/how did he meet them all!?) after he discovered she was pregnant.  Despite the fact that he loved kids, he got disturbed and... I don't want to use the phrase "grossed out", but I don't have all those fancy degrees, so I am.  This is also the popular explanation for why Oscar Wilde only had two children, and why Elvis only had one.  Also, is it too early to mention that Salinger also reminds me of a demented Atticus Finch?  Like, he seems like he would be a really good, awesome dad from certain descriptions by Margaret, and then it's like haha, just kidding.  Like if Atticus Finch was anything less than the perfection that he is.  I love Atticus Finch.

Oh yeah, apparently JD wrote a short story entitled "For Esme--with Love and Squalor".  Immediately I thought of A Series of Unfortunate Events--Remember Count Olaf's girlfriend... Esme Squalor?  What's uuuup.  And don't even be like, "but Angela, it's just simple word association!", because there's is no way it's not.  Lemony Snicket (wait, is it cool to call him Dan Handler now?  Is that cat out of the bag?  I've also seen his face before.  Do people still wonder about that?) was a smart guy and definitely did do that on purpose.  It is 100% fact now.*  Also, this led to a half-hour researching frenzy on the series, which I used to be obsessed with, but, oddly enough, did not survive rereading either.  I looked at the Wikipedia page for the first book, though, and felt the same feeling when I first picked it off the shelf and looked at the picture on the inside and everything.  Man.
(Also, my cousin met Dan Handler.  What.)

Margaret also mentions that in one of her father's stories, a boy named Seymour throws a rock at a beautiful girl, permanently destroying her beauty in the form of a scar on her forehead.  (Make your own Harry Potter joke here.)  She says that she didn't quite understand it, though all the characters in the story did.  The closest she came to understanding it is when her son was two and they would hug and cuddle and all of a sudden he would hit her.  I think I kind of understand it (in a different way).  I think it's like Fight Club, when the narrator says that he wants to destroy everything beautiful that he could never have or hope to have.  He couldn't have it, so he didn't want to be reminded of it, and he wanted to punish the people who did have it.  Of course, I haven't actually read the JD Salinger story, so take that with a grain of salt....

Oh, and Margaret related an event that again, reminded me of To Kill a Mockingbird.  They lived in the country--obviously--and at one point one of the known poor kids gets his tooth knocked out at school.  Margaret's mother took the child to the dentist, where the nurse there asked her "'Why'ja bother?  All them Courdelaines lose their teeth anyways'" (Salinger 139).  She then tells them to just go home.  It's a superficial connection, but it was kind of like how Scout knew everything about all the families.  These kids were the white trash, this family was poor but they paid back every penny given to them no matter how long it took, et cetera.

Oh, and very young (I want to say seven or eight?) Margaret broke her arm.  I thought I was going to die laughing--wait for it--: "Some idiot moved my arm to place it on the X-ray plate.  Screaming agony.  They did it an eternal hell number of times.  I had a compound fracture: one bone was splintered, the other was sticking out and covered with dirt.  A mask came over my face.  Some nurse, with a cheery stewardess voice, actually asked me to count!  Jesus.  Now?" (Salinger 169).  Obviously it was just that last part that I thought funny--the rest of it is kind of gross.  But that reaction cracked me up.
Oh, and when the parent Salingers decided to get divorced, Margaret explains it to her brother, including this: "'They both love you.  They just hate each other'" (Salinger 205).  Again, hilarious, though maybe I'm a bad person for thinking that. (But I wish someone had explained it to me like that!)

JD Salinger's advice to his daughter on marriage: "'Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do'" (Salinger 226).

I think the major change in my opinion on Margaret came when she was talking about her crush on Paul McCartney.  No, Paul isn't my favourite Beatle, but she imagined kissing, or going to kiss him, while he sang "All My Loving", which just so happens to be my favourite Beatles song.  Touche.

Oh, and Margaret went to a boarding school.  I can't say I liked this part--the only time I've ever seen a boarding school portrayed in a way that wasn't terrible was in a Mary-Kate and Ashley book--but it was familiar.  The first memoir I ever read was Roald Dahl's, then James Joyce's, and... Okay, there's basically no school ever in Running With Scissors.  But at least Margaret didn't get caned, or beaten with a pandybat!  (Or have to fag for the older children.  Ugh.)  There was some intense psychological abuse from the headmistress in Margaret's case, like Captain Hardcastle, but... Well, without the caning.  But just as scary and awful.  Her letters were also censored, which I was surprised when she found out and was surprised by that fact.  (Well, Boy wasn't even published then, to be fair.)  I was half-expecting to see examples of such letters in the following pages in the same manner as Dahl's--with the same explanation for their being there, her mother kept them and bound them all in green ribbon... But no such luck.  And yes, I did read that book about a million times as a kid, okay??

Oh, JD Salinger was also apparently invested in orgone boxes.  (Look them up for yourself.  I can't really give a good, concise explanation of what they are, but they're basically supposed to fill you with good energy or whatever.  It's super homeopathic.  [Sort of] Big in the fifties.)  The only reason why I mention it is because... So was William S Burroughs!  Yay!  Kerouac mentions it in the original version of On the Road (I can't vouch for the shorter version, though...).

Oh, and she never mentions the murder of John Lennon.  Skips right to 1982.  Granted, it's not necessarily something you would want to mention, "My dad's book caused John Lennon's murder and somebody to take potshots at Ronald Reagan!", but it's one hell of an elephant in the room.  (And it's strange too, considering the things she does choose to write about.  It couldn't be any worse than some of the other things she chronicles...) I wonder if JD Salinger even knew?  He had to have known, though, even if he was a recluse.  I mean, come on.  John Lennon.  He knew who he was, he made a vague promise to introduce John to Margaret by way of his publisher or something that never came to fruition... I never thought about it before this, but I'd really like to read up on Salinger's reaction to John Lennon's death.

Margaret eventually has a fight with her father, and her father's policy is pretty much, make me mad and we're done.  They had a few fights prior to this where he promised her that he would still love her, but he'd be done with communicating with her.  That's a harsh policy especially when applied to your daughter.  Margaret said that that was the last "real" conversation she had with her father, so I imagine they talk, but small talk, stranger talk.  That's too bad--I wonder if they reconciled at all before his death... Anyways, she talks about how students who had read the book would try to find him--one such girl interviewed said that she'd ask him "'if he'll be our catcher, our catcher in the rye'" (Salinger 427).  Margaret couples this with the fact that she felt like one of those children running alone in the rye, and that her father simply wouldn't be a catcher.  He couldn't, and his raising and treatment of her (and her brother) kind of proved that.  He'd like to save, but he simply didn't have that ability for this or that reason.  The irony makes me a little queasy.

Okay, one last comment on the book itself.  Margaret occasionally copies her father's tendency to emphasize random parts of words.  I always find myself saying such words over and over in Salinger's books, trying to figure out the point of a certain emphasis is, or even if such an emphasis could flow naturally.  I found myself doing the same thing in this.  And no, they rarely seemed to flow naturally or have a point.  If the whole word was emphasized, or even two syllables together instead of the odd one... Uuuuuugh.

I don't really have a comment on whether this book was good or bad.  I don't feel comfortable judging a memoir in such terms.  It was interesting, and at times very eerie or difficult to read--but still interesting.  It's too bad that she is nearly overshadowed by the fact that her father was JD Salinger, but she pulls through, and the information given on him is definitely cool, because prior to this I knew him as that author who was a recluse and may or may not have drunk his own pee (Margaret confirms that this is in fact true).  A bigger JD Salinger fan might have been more into it than I was--and it's an interesting sort-of companion to his works.  I liked the book, at least, and I don't regret reading it or anything like that; however, this isn't the sort of book I'd just pick up again and read for fun.  I'm probably going to end up giving it to Fabrizzles or Stubs if either of them are interested, or send it off to the Jerome Harrison book fair.  Again--no judgment on the book itself, Margaret is a very talented author and the book is interesting--but I know I'm not going to read it again, at least not in the next ten years or what have you.  (And if she wrote some sort of addendum after her father's death I would definitely read it!  And... Now that I'm thinking about it, did JD Salinger know about this book?  Did he read it?  Probably not, if he was "done with" his daughter like he said, but still.  It would be interesting, albeit impossible, to know his reaction to it if so, or the idea of the book in general.)


MLA citation information: Salinger, Margaret A.  Dream Catcher.  Washington Square Press: New York, 2000.


*No, it is not.

South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

Look, I'm doing this again!  I was only going to take a break from doing this for a month last year, but... Well, clearly it went a little longer than that.  I took three English classes and a history class that was basically a Lit class, though, so I have one heck of an excuse.  (I shudder to think what my final two years in college will be like.)  Hopefully I'll be able to do at least one book a month in the future or something, but we'll see.

Anyways.  First off, I got awesome nerdy things for Christmas which I am going to tout: Kate Beaton's Hark, A Vagrant! book (the one with Napoleon on the cover), Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer (which is an absolutely gorgeous and amazing book.  Last year when it came out it was out for forty dollars, which I can assure you is totally worth it.  It's beautiful, and a good book too.) and an uncensored edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is also amazing.  Kate Beaton, I have touted before, and you can check out her awesome comics at harkavagrant.com, Foer's book is a reworked version of the book Street of Crocodiles, a book I myself have not read, but he says is his favourite book, so now of course I need to read it.  I recommend searching Google images for pictures of the book if you're curious about it--but I don't think you can really get it unless you're actually cracking it open yourself and reading it.  In fact, I take that back.  Don't even wonder about it until you actually buy it.  I kind of knew what was in store when I asked for it (Foer cuts out parts of the text to create a new story out of it all), but I was still awed when I opened it.  It's seriously amazing.
The edition of Dorian Gray I got was this edition, and is worth the money, even if you already own three copies of the book already, which I definitely do not.  It gives a very good background for the novel, as well as a more in-depth look at Wilde's life and the parallels between that in the book.  To read an even better case for it, go here.  (Really--much better than my description thus far.)  It's also interesting because all of the story with James Vane (Sybil's brother) hadn't existed yet, which meant until about ten minutes ago, when I checked my 1910 edition, I thought I was going insane.  Actually, James's death occurs in (I believe) chapter eighteen, which the original manuscript never even reached.  So yeah.  Get that.  It's definitely worth it.


Anywayyys, Haruki Murakami's book... I borrowed it from Meg.  I've heard he was good for a while, but from a source that I was not particularly fond of in the least, so I put off trying him out.  In any case, I really did enjoy this book.  It's kind of like--well, the end of it reminded me of John Green's Looking for Alaska, or Paper Towns.  You see, the book starts with Hajime reflecting on his early years, and girl he was close friends with right before he hit puberty, or before puberty really hit him.  He was attracted to her, and he moves away before they get any older and their relationship really has the chance to become anything more.  She definitely becomes a sort of romanticized figure, but not in a whiny way, if that makes sense.  He thinks of her from time to time while he's dating Izumi in high school, and every so often he thinks of the girl (Shimamoto), but it's not dominant.  He even gets married, becomes pretty successful in his job, and has two children and all of that.  She appears in his life again when he's thirty-seven, and things become turbulent for a while, but other than that time, it's not like "SHIMAMOTO SHIMAMOTO" and I'm going to try real hard not to smear Looking for Alaska, but this book is like the perfect version of it.  No--better.  It's unfair to say that.  But it reminded me a lot of that, and the end could have potentially gone on a long time more in a Looking for Alaska-esque way.

One thing I don't understand is a section with Izumi.  The first time they kiss, Hajime decides it is important that he gets condoms ASAP, not for any lascivious reasons, but because he's just a teenager, you know, sixteen or so.  Izumi is nervous, and he assures her that he was just curious about them, and that he will take it slow and never hurt her or anything like that.  The thought of it makes her nervous, still, though, and she says she feels like a snail without a shell--Hajime responds by saying that he is nervous too--he feels like a frog without any webs.  I'm not sure if I get it... Webs?  Last time I checked, frogs weren't spiders...?  Translation issue?  I don't know...
Anyways, things obviously don't work out with Izumi.  Hajime has sex with her cousin on multiple occasions--where Hajime moves on, Izumi does not.  She is permanently damaged by the occasion and kind of... deflates.  She appears from time to time throughout the novel, and now that I think of it, kind of serves as a picture of a person who is too wrapped up in the past.  She just kind of dies inside and becomes emotionless and kind of creepy.  (An old classmate of theirs says that the local children are scared of her, specifically of her face.)  That sounds mean, but... but yeah.
The Living Desert.  "'There's nothing you can do about it. Another person's life is that person's life.  You can't take responsibility.  It's like we're living in a desert.  You just have to get used to it.  Did you see that Disney film in elementary school--The Living Desert?'  'Yeah,' I answered.  'Our world's exactly the same.  Rain falls and the flowers bloom.  No rain, they wither up.  Bugs are eaten by lizards, lizards are eaten by birds.  But in the end, every one of them dies.  They die and dry up.  One generation dies, and the next one takes over.  That's how it goes.  Lots of different ways to live.  And lots of different ways to die.  But in the end that doesn't make a bit of difference.  All that remains is a desert'" (Haruki 81).  Kind of depressing, especially in that it does have merit, right?  Don't worry, I'll be getting back to this later.

Anyways.  Shimamoto reappears in Hajime's life.  She tells Hajime very little about herself--she has surgery on her bad leg (she had a partially lame leg when they were kids, which led Hajime to go on a blind date with a different girl with a partially lame leg at some point in his twenties), she had a baby but it died within, at most, two days of its birth, and she does not wear a wedding ring.  Their first 'excursion' is to go out and spread the baby's ashes.  But they spend a lot of time together at one of the bars Hajime owns, talking and drinking and what have you.  They actually only have sex once--well, not once, but only one night is, uh... marked by sex.  After this she disappears.  Hajime's wife reveals that she knows that something has been going on.  Now I'm going to spoil the end, which I didn't intend to do, but I am the worst person after all.  Hajime chooses between the two--and comes to the fact that Shimamoto was idealized.  (Actually, his sudden run-in with the deadened Izumi is what kind of brings him to that realization.)  While driving with Shimamoto to the cottage they had sex at, she told him that she had a sudden impulse to grab the wheel and jerk it--undoubtedly that would kill them, but she does not add that.  Hajime comes to the conclusion that she's... Not so much unbalanced (though I would definitely put it like that) but that whatever had happened made her so desperate that death kind of... infected her.  It was the only real option she could truly see.  Or, she became "creepy as hell".  Actually, he described her eyes as being very dead, or having death in them, while they were having sex (I think specifically while she was giving him a blow job), so yeah.  "Creepy as hell".  (But can you see why she would bring up the image of Alaska?)  

Anyway.  My last bit (sorry if this post seems weird; I'm kind of out of practice.)  goes back to the desert.  (And also a little bit onto Alaska.)  After he decides that he will stay with his wife, he meditates at the table until "someone" comes and "lightly rested [their] hand on my shoulder", imagining "rain falling on the sea.  Rain softly falling on the vast sea, with no one there to see it.  The rain strikes the surface of the sea, yet even the fish don't know it is raining" (Haruki 213).  It shows an opposite, more optimistic view of life than that afforded by Hajime's old schoolmate, yet I believe it may be saying the same thing.  The people are the rain, hitting the water, the world, eternity, what have you, and the fish are supposed to God, the universe, all of that.  At least that's what I'm thinking.
And I hope you can see the connections to Looking for Alaska--the idealized girl, the car issues, that sudden impulsive suicide (or not-suicide in Shimamoto's case), etc.  I think potentially, the book could have gone on like the second half of Looking for Alaska.  I thank God it did not, because that was three-quarters of the reason I did not like the book.  He could have and he didn't, which I respect.  I mean--I understand why the main character (Pudge?) wanted to find out the reason behind it all and everything, but it just got boring and painful, like an episode of The Big Bang Theory.  Ugh, sorry about this.  I didn't mean to slam John Green.  I loved An Abundance of Katherines.  (I did mean to slam The Big Bang Theory, though.  It is terrible.)

Um... Yeah.  Sorry that this post is a little... Strange.  Well, in any case, I liked the book, and would definitely recommend it.  I'm still a little leery about The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which Meg said she'd lend me next, just because its style is supposedly a little odd, but it's still going to happen.  Hooray and goodnight!


MLA information: Haruki, Murakami.  Trans. Philip Gabriel.  South of the Border, West of the Sun.  Vintage Books: New York, 1999.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

This is the classic vampire story.  (Or at least the most well-known, this wasn't even close to the first vampire-related piece of literature, or tale or anything,)  Strange things you probably didn't know about this story: It's told through a series of letters and diary entries, Renfield and Harker are different people, and Bram Stoker is thought to have had an affair with Oscar Wilde, but I doubt that because 1. Stoker married a woman who turned Wilde down, 2. Wilde had better taste than that, come on.

The story starts with Harker going to the count's castle--Harker is a real estate agent and the count is going to London so he will be closer to victims.  Harker is trapped in the castle for some time after the count leaves, and I'm not really clear on how he ends up in a British hospital. He escapes somehow, but he had a "brain fever", so he never made it really clear on how he got out... Dracula makes it to England, of course.

My first note is on what was apparently a common enough Victorian phrase--to make your toilet.  I can't figure out if it's a general phrase to freshen up, put your PJs on, whatever, or if that was actually how late Victorians said to go to the bathroom.  It's just... it's just really silly sounding.

At this point you may be wondering, "Angela, why is your first note hardly ten pages in and your next note on page 297?"  Well, there's not a lot to make notes on.  Anyway, I actually read the introduction to this book, and the author points out that much of what Dracula and Renfield are parodies or twisted versions of biblical passages.  Most of it's pretty obvious (the famous quote "The blood is the life!" is actually out of the Old Testament, believe it or not), but Renfield says that Dracula "'began promising me things--not in words but by doing them'" (297).  I'm ninety-nine percent sure that that's from somewhere in the Bible (I'm thinking New Testament, about Jesus), but I can't seem to find the passage.  I could just be crazy, but you have to admit, it sounds awfully biblical.  Help, please?

My next note is on Dracula's origins--he's expected to have been based off of Vlad Dracul, or Dracul is usually referred to as the "real-life" Dracula.  Bram Stoker doesn't specifically say that Vlad Dracula is the Dracula, but Dracula certainly hails from the right location.  ...Anyway, though Bram doesn't specify that Dracula is Vlad, van Helsing explains that Dracula was supposedly an incredibly talented and intelligent man in life.  A soldier, a statesman, and alchemist (dating him perfectly--though van Helsing also calls him a "'wonderful man'" [320], which doesn't sound like Vlad Dracul), which all can be twisted around to point to Vlad Dracul, but makes it seem awfully iffy... On the other hand, he also supposedly "'knew no fear and no remorse'" (320).  According to van Helsing, his brain was just so big and powerful it just didn't shut down at the time of his death.  This survival is what gave him his weird power.  Now, at the time I'm sure the legend of the vampire wasn't very well explored and this was probably pretty acceptable--still, I prefer the Hellsing version--in desperation, when Vlad is being taken to his death by the Turks, he licks up the blood on the ground in front of him.  Because he is apparently a virgin (he was raped as a child, but I guess that didn't count because of his young age, or because it was sodomy?), this enabled him to become a vampire.  (This also actually works with the book--Dracula attempts to entice Mina to drink his blood so, presumably, she will become like him completely.  This is necessary for Seras too, even after he drank her blood--she was caught in between.

"'A man who has centuries before him can afford to wait and to go slow'" (321).

So eventually everybody gets together to destroy Dracula.  Van Helsing, Mina, Harker, and two of Mina's Harker's ex-suitors (Mina and Jonathan marry when Jonathan recovers).  One of them is an American--a Texan, to be exact.  When trying to decide what weapons to use to defeat Dracula or at least defend themselves from Dracula and his fellows, the Texan pipes up: "'I propose that we add Winchesters to our armament.  I have a kind of belief in a Winchester when there is any trouble of that sort around'" (344).  Of course.

The most annoying part of the book comes at the end--not at how Dracula dies or that he dies (he doesn't get stabbed with a stake, he gets stabbed in the heart with a bowie knife), but because they kill him, they rejoice because the reign of evil is over and he is redeemed and free to die, and then all of a sudden they're just like "seven years later..." Oh okay, that's cool.  Nah, I don't mind.  Whatever, Bram.  Not stupid at all.

My last bit is on what the book is a comment on--foreigners, sexuality--there have been dozens of things suggested, but I think the only one that really makes sense through and through is sexuality.  Dracula is kind of gross looking, but very--um--seductive.  I mean, he's biting all the women, he already has three voluptuous vampire-wives (whose sexuality Harker is terrified of--when he kisses them he is stuck between desire and terror--sounds like HarkerRenfield's speech about Dracula are often twisted versions of Bible passages), so... An oversexed false god?  Even just the devil in general.  The devil isn't known for seducing anybody (to the best of my knowledge), but it's the same basic temptation bit.  The essay/introduction to this edition (Barnes and Noble Classics) is very interesting and helpful, especially in relation to what I'm trying to explain.  This is what I'd suggest you buy if you were looking to read it...  (The introduction was written by Brooke Allen, if you want to try looking it up online or something.)

MLA Citation information: Stoker, Bram.  Dracula.  Barnes and Noble Classics: New York, 2004.

EDIT: Fun fact, I guess this was originally supposed to be published on August eighteenth, I just pressed "Save Now" instead of "Publish Post".  Oooooops.  Well, I'm not dead, in any case.