Date Started: April 25, 2010
Date Finished: June 08, 2010
Wow, this was honestly one of the hardest books I've ever read! I've started this book 3-4 times in the past and had never finished. This time I was on a serious mission to finish it, even if it was the last thing I did! So now I'm finally done, and I feel better about it than I did while reading. Throughout most of the book I could only read one chapter at a time. The style of the writing just didn't work for me. Plus it was super cheesy. The way all the girls acted and talked; it was just hard for me to handle. I'm extremely happy I finished it though.
*I'm upset Laurie didn't end up with Jo. I totally thought it was going to happen.
*Super sad about little Beth. :(
*I do love how the first chapter of the book all the 'girls' are complaining about being poor and having nothing for Christmas, etc. And the last chapter of the book all of the 'women' can't stop talking about how happy they are.
In the end, I come off from reading this book and can say I like it. It's a great story as a whole, even though pieces of it were really hard to get through. I think if I were to read it again I'd have a much easier time doing so (not saying that I'm going to). I've rented the movie now so I can watch and compare. I'm now taking a break from my list to read 2 books that I've been dying to read but have been waiting patiently till I finished Little Women. BRB
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Book 1: Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
To start off the journey I figured I'd read a book I've read before. This is to help ease my mind into a more serious mindset. The last 20 or so books I've read have been about vampires, werewolves and such.
Date started: April 13, 2010
Date finished: April 20, 2010
Overall I really liked this book. It had been so long since I read it last it was almost like I was reading it for the first time. One part of me thinks about how nice it would be to live in a world like this: no problems, no worries, no relationships. Everything and everyone was happy to do what they were meant to do and be who they were meant to be. Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons: all want to be exactly who they are and don't want to be in any other class because of how they've been conditioned. As Lanina, and Alpha, states one time "I'm glad I'm not an Epsilon." Epsilons think the same thing about Alphas. They do the jobs they were conditioned to, they never get into serious relationships so they never have to deal with that drama, and they are rationed out grammes of soma each day so they can relax every night and forget about everything. This society lives in a world where they don't have to worry about disease, age, starvation, fear, anxiety of what's going to happen tomorrow, torture, pain, anything. Like I said, one part of me thinks this would be they way to live.
Then the other part of me, the overemotional, caring, short tempered, anxious side of me would hate that kind of life. As bad as times can be with fights with your family/friends/boyfriends, times when you seem stuck in a dead end job and want to get out, worrying about if you really live in a safe neighborhood, if you can really trust your neighbor who you wave to every time you see them; these times are overridden by the joys of loving your family/friends/boyfriends and being loved back back by them, unconditional love that you wouldn't trade anything in the world for, the time when you finally get that promotion or new job that you've worked so hard for and know that it was fully yourself who made the accomplishment, the time when you do find out how trustful and wonderful your neighbors are, or hear about strangers and their neighbors, how they open up their homes and lives to you in times of dire need. All of these times of life when you realize there is good in a world of bad make it all worth it, to me at least. I wouldn't trade that for a perfect Utopian society. Not even for daily rations of soma and unlimited amounts of obstacle golf. I choose as the Savage chose. "I like the inconveniences...I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin...I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
*Chapter 3: I was not a fan of this chapter. They way it was jumping around many different conversations after 1 sentence in each. The conversations between Lanina & Fanny; Henry, the predestinator & Bernard; the controller's speech; and also the hypnopaedia being implanted into the brains of the young. It was just a tad confusing and I'm not really sure what the point of it was.
*Another think I rather enjoyed and found slightly humorous, is how the citizens would constantly repeat the hynopaedic sayings that had been conditioned into them since day one: "A gramme is better than a damn" "Ending is better than mending" "The mores stitches the less riches" "A gramme in time saves nine" All of these sayings seem kinda creepy, but if you think about it, it today's socitey, we almost have the same thing: "The early bird catches the worm" "A friend in need is a friend indeed" "A penny saved is a penny earned" "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" "All good things come to those who wait." Now these sayings are implanted in our brains hypnopaedically like in Brave New World, but they are sayings that will always come up, almost on a daily basis.
Date started: April 13, 2010
Date finished: April 20, 2010
Overall I really liked this book. It had been so long since I read it last it was almost like I was reading it for the first time. One part of me thinks about how nice it would be to live in a world like this: no problems, no worries, no relationships. Everything and everyone was happy to do what they were meant to do and be who they were meant to be. Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons: all want to be exactly who they are and don't want to be in any other class because of how they've been conditioned. As Lanina, and Alpha, states one time "I'm glad I'm not an Epsilon." Epsilons think the same thing about Alphas. They do the jobs they were conditioned to, they never get into serious relationships so they never have to deal with that drama, and they are rationed out grammes of soma each day so they can relax every night and forget about everything. This society lives in a world where they don't have to worry about disease, age, starvation, fear, anxiety of what's going to happen tomorrow, torture, pain, anything. Like I said, one part of me thinks this would be they way to live.
Then the other part of me, the overemotional, caring, short tempered, anxious side of me would hate that kind of life. As bad as times can be with fights with your family/friends/boyfriends, times when you seem stuck in a dead end job and want to get out, worrying about if you really live in a safe neighborhood, if you can really trust your neighbor who you wave to every time you see them; these times are overridden by the joys of loving your family/friends/boyfriends and being loved back back by them, unconditional love that you wouldn't trade anything in the world for, the time when you finally get that promotion or new job that you've worked so hard for and know that it was fully yourself who made the accomplishment, the time when you do find out how trustful and wonderful your neighbors are, or hear about strangers and their neighbors, how they open up their homes and lives to you in times of dire need. All of these times of life when you realize there is good in a world of bad make it all worth it, to me at least. I wouldn't trade that for a perfect Utopian society. Not even for daily rations of soma and unlimited amounts of obstacle golf. I choose as the Savage chose. "I like the inconveniences...I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin...I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
*Chapter 3: I was not a fan of this chapter. They way it was jumping around many different conversations after 1 sentence in each. The conversations between Lanina & Fanny; Henry, the predestinator & Bernard; the controller's speech; and also the hypnopaedia being implanted into the brains of the young. It was just a tad confusing and I'm not really sure what the point of it was.
*Another think I rather enjoyed and found slightly humorous, is how the citizens would constantly repeat the hynopaedic sayings that had been conditioned into them since day one: "A gramme is better than a damn" "Ending is better than mending" "The mores stitches the less riches" "A gramme in time saves nine" All of these sayings seem kinda creepy, but if you think about it, it today's socitey, we almost have the same thing: "The early bird catches the worm" "A friend in need is a friend indeed" "A penny saved is a penny earned" "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" "All good things come to those who wait." Now these sayings are implanted in our brains hypnopaedically like in Brave New World, but they are sayings that will always come up, almost on a daily basis.
The Mission
Reading has always been something I've enjoyed. I have gone through many phases of genres; from adventure to chick lit to paranormal romance. I kept reading and reading, but realized I haven't really read any of the classic literature books. I've read a few of them in school and never got to appreciate them since I had to read them. Now I'm done with school and I'm free to read what I want, when I want, and go figure, I actually want to write book reports on the books I read.
The mission: 51 books of classic literature, some I've read before, others I've heard of and have wanted to read, and a select few that I dread reading but feel as though I must (I'll save them for the end.) After I've finished a book, I will write up a post on how/what I felt about it. I'm no scholar or English major; just a 24 year old girl who wants to read.
Below is a list of the books I'm setting out to read. They're in no particular order:
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The mission: 51 books of classic literature, some I've read before, others I've heard of and have wanted to read, and a select few that I dread reading but feel as though I must (I'll save them for the end.) After I've finished a book, I will write up a post on how/what I felt about it. I'm no scholar or English major; just a 24 year old girl who wants to read.
Below is a list of the books I'm setting out to read. They're in no particular order:
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1. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
2. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
3. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
4. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
5. Dracula – Bram Stoker
6. The Iliad & The Odyssey– Homer
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. The Prince – Niccolo Machiavelli
9. Through the Looking-Glass – Lewis Carroll
10 The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
11. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
12. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain
13. Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
14. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
15. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
16. Grimms Fairy Tales – Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
17. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
18. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
19. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
20. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
21. Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkein
22. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkein
23. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
24. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
25. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
26. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
27. All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Remarque
28. Crash – JG Ballard
29. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
30. Dr Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
31. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
32. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
33. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
34. The Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
35. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
36. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
37. Atonement – Ian McEwan
38. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
39. 1984 – George Orwell
40. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
41. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes
42. David Copperfield
43. Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
44. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
45. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
46. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
47. Animal Farm – George Orwell
48. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
59. The Pearl – John Steinbeck
50. Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
51. Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradburty
52.The Giver - Lois Lowry
52.
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