1984- George Orwell

I'm currently reading 1984, by George Orwell. Where to start. I don't want this whole post to just be a summary, so I wont even start, because when I get going on the summaries, I don't stop. George Orwell addresses many issues in this book, but one that I found the most intriguing is the fact that things might not have been better before Big Brother took over and made everyone communist. Of course, when you first glance at it, obviously life was better before, but who knows. The standard of living might be lower for England, but England. Maybe if Big Brother had complete control over everything, the overall standard of living would be raised from where it was. Yes, having insight into people's minds is not a good thing for the general population, and being able to see what goes on everywhere, even in people's personal homes means that certain people no privacy whatsoever, which no one can think is a good idea. Still, if you don't know how it was like before, how can you say that the conditions today are worse.

I have been thinking a lot about different people's lives. When someone says that they have a good life, or a bad life, what does that mean? Can anyone really compare their life to someone else's? In sports, there are people who run a lot, so they build up their endurance. I think life is like that too. If you live a hard life and bad things happen to you more often then good, you build up your endurance for bad things, so they don't have much of an effect. I'm not saying that when bad things happen to people it has no effect on them and they can just shrug it off, but someone who has been living the dream and is suddenly broke will feel it a lot worse then someone who lives a life of a broke person all the time.

To us, the life of an animal seems extremely boring. To that animal, say an ant, everything is just more interesting. I think that people who live a hard life compared to us have a better endurance for things like that. Good things are better for them then they are for us, but they get fewer of them, bad things are worse for us, because we don't know how to handle them.

Yes, some people have hard lives, you could even say bad lives, but they have a stronger defense against bad things then people with easy, good lives. It might not even out perfectly, but I think the difference isn't as great as it is made out to be.  

The Amber Spy Glass **SPOILER ALERT**

I actually really enjoyed reading The Amber Spyglass, by Philip Pullman. I think it’s better than The Subtle Knife by a long shot, but The Golden Compass will always be my favorite in the series. I really liked it when Lyra narrated, because she has really strong feelings, and she had a very interesting view on things.

            I miss Pantalaimon. He was such a big part of The Golden Compass, but when Lyra stopped narrating, he fell into the background. Lyra’s relationship with Pan is a truly remarkable thing. The way they feel about each other is adorable, and I didn’t get that from them in the book, except when she has to leave him alone when she enters the world of the dead. Even after that, she soon puts Pan at that back of her mind and focuses more on getting all the ghosts free.

            I can’t imagine having a daemon. I am not much of an animal lover, and I find it hard to think about what animal my daemon would be. When people say they wish they could be invisible, I raise my eyebrows. To be able to fly would be the most amazing thing I can think of. Because of my long for flight, I would like to think my daemon would be a bird. I don’t like the idea of a bird as a pet, but a daemon is much more than that.

            In one of the last few chapters, Will is talking to Lyra about Pan taking a permanent form. he seems glad that he doesn’t have a daemon of his own. I agree with him. Anyone who first reads the book envies Lyra for having a daemon, but when you think about it, having your daemon in it’s true form is kind of like brandishing your personality on your sleeve. I get along fine without a daemon, and I think that after your daemon takes a true form,  having a daemon would not be good. 

Because I Am Furniture

Im reading Because I am Furniture, a book written in verse about a girl who is ignored by her abusive father. He goes around doing horrible things to her older sister and brother, but he completely ignores her. Some might think, well, isn’t that a god thing? I would rather be ignored then abused! Well I guess thats not the way fourteen year old Anke thinks. I guess in a way, Anke has a point. By ignoring her, her father is practically telling her that she isn’t worthy of even the worst sort of attention. The thing is, there are people with normal parents that ignore them anyways. It seems like its a lot better to be given no attention from a crazy man that abuses his children then a perfectly nice man. I mean, Anke's father isn’t nice to her or her siblings, its like no one is worth of the good kind of attention from him. Maybe its just that he thinks that Anke is the most likely of his three children to tell on him. Who knows. I just don’t think it really makes sense that Anke is complaining about not being abused by her father. I bet is she traded places with her older sister, she would realize how mush better it is to be ignored.

Personally, I think it would be a lot more hurtful if I was ignored by a father who loves my two older siblings. In Anke's situation, her father has proven that he is not capable of loving anyone, but Anke takes it personally. I think that by him ignoring her, her father is actually showing that he loves Anke the most. He loves her too much to be able to hurt her the way he hurts the other two. Anke's father is obviously a little off his rocker, and Anke shouldn’t take offense.

A thing about the book that I don’t really understand is why Anke's father is the way he is. She makes references to the way he was when she was young, nice and playful. His change in ways isn’t explained in the book. It seems like he just changed for no reason, but that doesn't happen to people. Anke doesn’t explain a gradual change in her father, she just refers to how he was before, and how he is now. It really doesn’t make sense, and it's not very realistic.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk

This blog post is about squirrel seeks chipmunk by David Sedaris. It is a collection of short stories about animals. I think that these stories are a lot like Aesop's fables, they teach a lesson. My favorite one so far is about a vigilant rabbit, who is supposed to guard a section of the forest so no animals can come in and disturb the peace. Some animals come and try to get over the fence the rabbit built, and are rude to him in the process, so he kills them. It is a brutal tale. One day, a unicorn comes to the fence an tries to convince the rabbit to let him by, but the rabbit, determined to keep the forest safe, refuses to let the unicorn enter the woods. When the unicorn jumps over the fence, instead of staying by the fence, guarding against real dangers, he chased the unicorn, watching as the unicorn uses his horn to heal the wounded, grow flowers, and making dead grass a fresh green color. Even though the unicorn was obviously doing amazing things for the forest, the rabbit only cared about the fact that the unicorn came into the forest without his consent. While the unicorn slept, he gnawed off his gleaming horn, leaving the unicorn weaponless, and magicless. When the unicorn woke, he was just an ordinary horse. Then, the rabbit spit out a diamond because the horn was magical. He was busy staring at it, and then the wolves came. Thats how it ends. The story. I dont much like the ending, I think it's depressing, like why cant the rabbit spit out a million gems, and then make the forest better by building a stronger barrier around it, or buy plant seeds so that there is tons of food in the forest, but then he wouldnt learn his lesson, would he? I guess thats what the whole story is about. I think that the whole moral of the story is that you have to look at the big picture as well as the small picture. I can relate this story to mocking jay, the third book of the hunger games trilogy. President coin was so focused on defeating the capitol, she forgot what the whole point of the rebellion was to begin with! She started using weapons against the capitol that harmed innocent people, but harming innocent people was something the rebels were trying to stop by overriding the capitol. I think that when you do something, instead of focusing on one little part of you job, you have to keep in mind the whole point of the job in the first place.

I really like the way a lot of David Sedaris's short stories end. They give you a lot to think about. Instead of giving you a happily ever after, he leaves the story open ended, so that you have to think about what is going to happen later on. A lot of times when I read a book, I dont really have to think about what happens after the story is over, I just think, oh, that was sad, or oh, that was happy, and I don't have to think about what will happen later on. For this story, there are a lot of things that could happen. Maybe the wolves take over and eat all the animals, leaving the forest a desolate patch of trees, not a heartbeat to be heard. Maybe the forest animals all work together to get rid of the wolves and the forest is safe once again. Maybe the wolves see the diamond and just stop in their tracks, gazing at the magnificent gemstone, and the cant take their eyes away, and they die of starvation, because how can they hunt! They must stare at the gem until they cant stare anymore. After reading the book, I felt something different about it then I ever had about a book. It was weird. I almost felt like the book was mine! That I had wrote it! That there was a little part of me in the book. I love David Sedaris.

I Turn to Fanfiction in a State of Depression

Harry Potter has been a part of my life since I was 5 years old. I waited for the books to come out, cried for all the characters, re-read each book more times then I can count, memorized full scenes of the movies, and crushed on Harry for all of my elementary school years. It's all ending. When the seventh book came out, I could handle the fact that I would never count down the days until the book came out, never have that feeling of reading a book like that for the first time. I still had the movies. Now, what will I do. I feel like going into a state of depression, and the movie hasn't even come out yet. I burst into tears after the trailer.

In this troubling time, I turn to fan fiction*. Some of them are not worth my time, being badly written. Also, I cant stand reading fan fictions about Harry, Ron, or Hermione. It's okay when they are in them, but when they're the main characters, the writers have them do and say things that J.K. Rowling would never write. I prefer reading about Draco or Ginny. Draco's character is easy to duplicate, and I don't really treasure Ginny as a character, so I don't care if the writers portray her in a way that Rowling would never do.

Recently, I was reading a particular D/G fan fiction that was incredible. It really brought back the rush of reading Harry Potter again. In this fan fiction, Draco leaves Voldemort, and is moved to the burrow for protection. As Ginny finds out, Draco had been beaten by his father, forced to hate muggle borns, and used by Voldemort in his plan to kill Dumbledore and shame Lucius. In telling her this, she confesses that she really cant stand her family. She loves her brothers, but they are super overprotective, and they never let her do anything. It's true. Ron flips out when she starts dating guys, when if given the chance when he was that age, he wouldn't have thought twice about it.

In the fan fiction, Ginny starts doing things just to make her family mad, and ends up really hurting Draco in the process.

If she had been given a little more freedom, she wouldn't've felt the need to do a whole bunch of horrible things. There has to be a happy medium, where Ginny can do things that she enjoys, but her brothers don't feel like their little sister is turning into a bad person.

The thing is, she wasn't even complaining about her parents, she didn't have problems with them, and they didn't have problems with her. To think that her brothers come down so hard on her when her parents don't mind is even more frustrating. She never gets her way on anything, and it isn't even the authoritative figures in her life that enforce these unfair rules. Well, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley should step in and help their daughter out.

*Fan fiction is: A piece of fiction within a fandom utilizing characters and situations from a pre-existing work including (but not limited to) books, television programs, films, and comic strips.

This definition has been copy and pasted from urban dictionary (urbandictionary.com) and because I have cited it it is not plagiarism.

Re-reading To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

“It's a sin to kill a mockingbird.” This is because all the mockingbird does all day is sing, so why would you do away with such a beautiful sound? True, the mockingbird does sing, and the song it sings is pretty, but that shouldn't be the only reason to kill it. If the only reason for me to stay alive is that I play piano nicely, then kill me. I'd rather be dead.

What's the matter with a bluejay anyways? You can't kill the mockingbird, but go ahead, kill as many bluejays as you can. True, bluejays can't sing, they only chirp. For all that it's worth, I think that the chirping of the bluejay is just as pretty as the song of a mockingbird. The sound of their two voices combined into one harmony would be even prettier.

This time reading, I noticed that Scout doesn't mention her mom a lot. Yes, she talks about her occasionaly, but just to say that she doesn't have one, and that she cant remember a thing about her. I really respect Scout for that. She is perfectly contempt with her life, she doesnt need anything more. There are so many times in my life when I wish I had an older sister, or a younger brother, or something along those lines, but Scout doesn't even long for a mother. I respect the way she handles the loss of a mom.

The racism and prejudice in this book reminds me of homosexuality today. There are a lot of people I know who are homosexual, and there are also a bunch of people I know who are completely against it. When I'm talking to my friends about this awesome funny friend of mine, and then I mention his boyfriend, the mood of the conversation changes suddenly. It's like, everybody thought he was a cool guy, but then uh oh, he's gay, we hate him now, lets talk about something else. Some people can be so mean and horrible.

I bet if everyone put on blindfolds and walked around Maycomb, greeting people, meeting people, they would be surprised when everybody took off their blindfolds. It doesn't matter if someone has a different color skin, and it doesn't matter if someone's homosexual. They are the same person no matter what you see on the outside. Thats not how most people think about things in Maycomb. The only thing black people have done in the world is to benefit others, so why is it not a sin to kill them?

Little Women (again): Revised

As I said in my previous blog post about this book, (I apologize for the length of this classic novel, Little Women) each chapter is it's own little story with it's own moral. Well, the chapter I’m reading right now is about Meg, Jo, and Beth going to an island with Laurie, their friend. It starts out with them all getting invitations. Along with Jo's is a very big hat. She always complains that her face gets burnt in the sun, but she can’t wear a bigger hat because it's not in style. Laurie thinks that she is not the kind of person to let fashion get in the way of comfort. It's a little joke between her and Laurie.

I think that this part of the story is it's own little moral in itself. Jo isn't the kind of person to care about style, and yet, she still shows concern for fashion. Even the people who seem not to care about things in the slightest bit, think about them a little. Jo is a tomboy, or at least as tomboyish as you could be back then, and she really takes no notice of the latest fashions, but she wouldn't willingly cross a line and wear something crazy.

The thing is, she does wear the hat. It is not absurd, and she feels that there is no reason for her not to. Because she does wear the hat, it seems to me that she is going out of her way to be different, and to show that she doesn't care about clothing and being a proper young lady.

In it's own way, the fact that Jo wears the hat shows that she cares about fashion just as much as Amy, if you can believe it. She just chooses to wear everything that is not in style, rather then refuse to wear anything that isn't.

I think that I would rather be in Jo's position then Amy's. She is not afraid to wear anything she wants without suffering because of the clothing she is wearing because she feels the need to be in style. Although, there are disadvantages to being the way she is. She is the object of ridicule in many situations, and I'm not sure if I would rather be subject to that and be able to wear whatever I want then wear what is in style and suffer because of it. There is no way out!!

I would've thought that Jo wearing the hat would've been embarrassing for her, and made her feel self-conscious, but I was wrong. It created a laugh at the start of the trip, breaking the ice, and it would serve as a good umbrella in case of rain. Plus, Jo was not sunburned, and there was no peeling skin on her nose. Always a plus.

Jo didn't have to face the consequences that come with being different. I think that there should be no consequences to begin with, but a world without bullies is pretty far fetched. I wish it could be like that all the time, no worries about being teased or talked about behind your back, but thats not how it works in the world. I'll just have to make the most out of it.