A little summer reading

Okay. Update time. It's taken me over a week to get back on my usual sleeping and eating schedule and it's been crazy. But now, onto my favorite: BOOKS!

While in China, I didn't exactly have much time to read, so despite being there a month, I only made it through two books: The Secret History by Donna Tartt and The Carrie Diaries by Candace Bushnell.

The Secret History is an extremely beautiful and complex novel centered around a group of six classics students at a small New Hampshire college. One of the six, Richard, is the narrator and he is reflecting on the events that led to the murder of another member of the group. The author uses a format in which she introduces the murder and the murderers in the prologue, then the rest of the novel recounts how the characters actually came to commit the crime, kind a murder mystery in reverse. Other than tell the story of these six characters, the book also has, thanks to lots of literary and classic references and allusions, wider reaching themes and ideas about beauty: literary beauty versus the beauty of reality, social constraints and one's desire to be free, and the relationships between people. All in all, it's an AMAZING book, one that I want to go back and read again, because even though I understood it, I feel like it is a book that I can learn something from additional readings.

The next book is The Carrie Diaries by Candace Bushnell, which is a prequel to Sex and the City, following the life of Carrie Bradshaw during her senior year of high school in a small New England town. It's a young adult novel and it was okay. I don't know, I've read a few of Candace Bushnell's books, and I really want to like them because I love Sex and the City, but I never do. Maybe it's because I didn't read it, I listened to it on my iPod, and whoever was reading it had an annoying voice and made ALL the characters sounds so, well, annoying. And the Carrie in the book did not seem like the Carrie of the show that I love. I don't recommend it.

For good young adult, John Green all the way. I already recommended Looking for Alaska, and I just read An Abundance of Katherines. So funny and real. To explain the plot is confusing: washed up child prodigy, pudgy Judge Judy loving best friend, a road trip, and 19 ex girlfriends all named Katherine. Oh and somehow they end up in Tennessee hunting feral hogs at one point. Totally off the wall yet totally real at the same time. A great read!

Now I'm attempting to read Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. One of my favorite stories on film, so I owe it to Miss Mitchell to read her epic novel.  I'm 300 pages into the 1000 page monster and I do love it. Especially the scenes between Scarlett and Rhett Butler. Utterly gripping. Also, there is sooooooooooooo much description I really honestly feel like I am in Civil War Atlanta. More updates as I work my way through.

I'm also planning on reading Bret Easton Ellis's Imperial Bedrooms. It's the sequel to Less Than Zero and features all the characters 25 years later. I loved Less Than Zero so much. I love Bret Easton Ellis. I want to write like him sometimes, because what he write is just....amazing His books are messed up, strange, haunting, yet always leave me wanting to read more.

 That's all for now folks! Happy reading!

Home again

Unfortunately, I could not post in China. Stupid censorship laws. But I'm home now, back in California and very happy. China was quite an adventure, and a better update to follow, as well as posts on The Secret History by Donna Tartt and The Carrie Diaries by Candace Bushnell. For now, sleep, shower, laundry, and (not Chinese!) food.

CHINA HERE I COME!!!!

Going to China tomorrow!!! SO EXCITED!! Can't think straight!!! AHHHHH!!!!

Anyway, since this IS a blog about books, I will speak briefly about a book I just finished called Looking for Alaska by John Green. Very good, very well written, makes the reader think, oh and it's a young adult novel. But it is about something that I think readers of all ages can relate to: life, death, loss, suffering, and how we move on. It is also laugh out loud hilarious at some parts. I highly recommend it to you all, especially as a good summer read.

I will do my best to post updates on this blog while I'm in China, maybe not about books, since I will be in school there, but about everything amazing that is happening while I'm gone.

Happy reading!!

Sweet Summertime

Summer...beaches, swimming, blockbusters, sailing, BBQs, shots, novels, travel.

School is out, finished the finals, papers, quizzes, all of it. And I am very happy. Elated and relaxed. I have two weeks until China and I am counting down the days. It's pretty much all I think about and I just keep getting more and more excited. I've been watching documentaries about China and reading my guidebook nonstop. I can't wait for this adventure!

Not much on the schedule for now, work, reading, cleaning, preparing. Still working on the last books I posted about, thanks to finals...more to come as this lovely summer unfolds...

The Rape of Europa

I watched a documentary the other day, The Rape of Europa, which I know is not a book, but it is based on a book of the same name.

It's about the theft, destruction, and in many cases, eventual return and restoration, of the great works of art and architecture in Europe by the Nazis during WWII. The film follows the book in that it is chronological starting in the decades before WWII, when the rising Nazi party began to use their power to acquire great works of art as well as destroy the works of art Hitler deemed "degenerate." Then the film goes through different parts of Europe, chronicling the destruction and theft, mostly by the Nazis, in countries such as Poland, Austria, Russia, France, Germany, and Italy. While the main villains are the Nazis, Allied forces do cause destruction, especially in the bombing of Italy. The film also focuses on the heroic efforts of museum worker, art dealers, etc, who worked very hard to hide many of the precious works, as well as the efforts of the Monuments Men to restore and return many of the art and architecture.

I found this film so incredibly powerful. I am an art history major; art is my love and my passion and I cannot imagine the world without the great masterpieces of Europe, and that almost happened. There is one particular part of the film the was especially heartbreaking, and that is the portion focusing on Poland. The Nazis, Hitler mainly, hated Poland and considered them degenerate, so they set about invading and destroying their entire culture, including bombing the Royal Castle in Warsaw. The castle is a huge part of Polish history and cultural identity, and Hitler knew this and he destroyed the palace, completely blowing it up. The castle that stands there today is entirely a reconstruction. I actually cried while watching this portion, to think that someone tried to wipe out an entire culture and its art makes me so sad and angry.

Art is what makes us human and separates us from animals, gives us culture and identity, and to think that the world came so close to losing so much of its precious art... is absolutely terrifying.

Literary ADD

Since I've finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, I have had literary ADD. I also had an extremely intense paper to write, so I've been distracted needless to say.

The quarter is winding down, 2 weeks of class left until finals. Until then, I have to stay focused on school so I can just get done with it all. 

I did start three new books though, because of the literary ADD and not being able to choose what I want to read. So currently I'm reading Labyrinth by Kate Mosse, Saturday by Ian McEwan, and am working my way through The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake. I've had an uncorrected reader's copy of Labyrinth for about 5 years, from when I worked at Book Passage, and I am just now reading, but so far it's pretty intriguing. I always love a good historical epic. Ian McEwan is one of my favorite authors, and Saturday has been on my list for quite some time. 80 pages in and loving every minute of his elegant prose. As for William Blake, he is probably my favorite poet, but I've never read his complete works. I love his words and an enjoying with elegant, Romantic poetry.

That's all for now folks! Happy reading!

 

Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Wow...been awhile. School chaos.

Like I said last time, I got sidetracked from How Soccer Explains the World by The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. OH. MY. GOD. It was amazing. I could not stop reading it; literally took me 4 days to finish between work and school. I even turned down watching Avatar in HD to read.

I have not read a book that kept me so enthralled for so long. The last one I can remember is Twilight, and that was shit writing, I just liked the vampires.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is NOT shit Stephenie Meyer writing. It's perfect crime novel writing, at least for me. Keeps you hooked, no flowery, existential shit, and witty all at once.

The plot is quite complicated, so I leave it to my fave, Wikipedia to summarize:

Mikael Blomkvist, a middle-aged investigative journalist who writes for the magazine Millennium, loses a libel case against corrupt Swedish industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström and is sentenced to three months in jail.

Before beginning his sentence, Blomkvist is hired by Henrik Vanger, the aged former CEO of a group of companies owned by a wealthy dynasty. Vanger wants him to solve the disappearance, thirty-seven years ago, of Vanger's great-niece when she was sixteen. Vanger is convinced that the girl was killed by someone in his family. Blomkvist is ultimately helped in his quest by Lisbeth Salander, a young punk who has been victimized or misunderstood by those in authority throughout her whole life, but who is also a brilliant computer hacker. The unlikely couple become a classic detective pair.

It is one of the best crime novels I have ever read. Please read it, and the other two books in the series, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked a Hornets Nest . Lisbeth Salander (the titular girl) is such a bad ass. Not evil, just follows her own rules and is not one to be fucked with. Love her and her crazy, violent tendencies. She makes up for the sometime annoying-ness of the protagonist, Mikael Blomkvist. But this book is a definite summer, really all year round, read. Do it.

The proper name is football

Finished How Soccer Explains the World by Franklin Foer today. Got sidetracked with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson, I'll talk about that later. (SO AMAZING)

Soccer was quite interesting, I liked how each section was titled "How soccer explains..." then subdivided into five smaller sections. I like nonfiction writers who organize their work in a way that works with my obsessively organized mind. He also had firsthand experience in the stadiums of many of the clubs; he took a leave of absence from his job at the magazine New Republic and traveled the world and experiencing rabid soccer fandom up close. He went to Brazil, Bosnia, Italy, Iran, England, Scotland, Bulgaria, making one shocking discovery after another. There was the blatant anti-Catholicism in Scotland, the sex segregation in Iran, and the promoted fan violence in Serbia.

What Foer does is use soccer to examine the greater problems of the world through soccer and how many cultures use soccer as their release and as a channel for their frustrations.

I could go into lots of detail, but to be honest, while I found the book interesting while I was reading it, I find that many things, mainly the little details, left my brain after I stopped reading. I'm not saying that I didn't learn anything, because I did. I just couldn't tell you names and dates with any accuracy. At all.

What the book did inspire me to do was to educate myself about some of the issues Foer brings up, such as the Balkan Wars in Europe and power of Silvio Berlusconi. I don't know much and still don't, so I want to learn more and reading this book is what piqued my interest. Any book that actually makes me want to learn more is very okay by me. Isn't that the point of all books?