Good Harbor, Entry 3

I did not like this book. It was boring and nothing happened and it was too cliche with the “everyone lives happily ever after” ending. Now, maybe that was purposeful, because the book started out with the children’s librarian lady comparing her trip to the spa to a fairytale, and then the end of the book is like happily ever after without those exact words (you have to infer the happily ever after, but that’s about the extent of the thinking that is required for this book), but I think it was just a simple, boring book. This book reminded me of Catcher in the Rye, except Catcher in the Rye was better. It reminded me of Catcher because of the lack of climax, at least until the very end. Catcher was more of a story of day to day life, although Holden did come of age throughout the book. This book was similar to Catcher in that it was just a story of the summer, but there was no clear plot (like the characters weren’t going on a mission or something. They were just living their lives and facing their everyday problems). One thing in particular that I noticed was the parallel structure of Kathleen and Joyce’s lives at the end. Kathleen tells about the time she was busy on the phone with the man with whom she was cheating and then her child was hit and killed by a car, and similarly, Joyce was busy at the room of the man with whom she was cheating and her daughter fell out of a tree and was in the hospital and she missed her husband’s phone calls. (By the way, the daughter falling out of the tree was the climax/turning point of the whole story that brought together the conclusion and resolved all the problems throughout the book). One major difference between Catcher and this book is that Catcher is full of symbolism and everything in the book has symbolism, but to me, this book is just so simple, I cannot analyze it even! Okay, well maybe I can, but it will be a stretch...When Kathleen is receiving the radiation for the cancer, the author writes, “She closed her eyes against the red laser line, but it remained on the backs of her eyelids, vibrating and fading, a crimson tightrope” (166). I thought that this quote in particular portrayed all of the ideas in the story in one sentence. The sentence represents things that never go away, even when you “close your eyes” and stop thinking about them. This connects to Kathleen’s cancer, both womens’ cheating relationships, Kathleen’s dead son, Joyce’s regrets about not writing her book/loving her husband and daughter enough/fixing her house, etc., and Kathleen’s regrets for not having talked about her dead son Danny with her other sons Pretty much everything that happens in the book can be summed up in that one quote. So I guess there is some symbolism and in-text connections after all and it just needed some thinking to find. Actually, there probably aren’t many more examples like that throughout the rest of the book because it is literally just describing daily life (what’s symbolic about taking a nap? Okay, I take that back...It could represent rejuvenation/rebirth (which connects to Jesus and therefore Christianity, which connects to the dead sister nun who died of cancer, which ties this whole connection back to the cancer of Kathleen and why she was taking a nap in the first place! Whoa that was deep and full circle (and quite a stretch as well)...middle school textual analysis really paid off)

    Overall, I really liked this reading project! I felt as though we didn’t have enough time, though. I know that just sounds like I procrastinated a lot, but to be honest, I do not feel as though I procrastinated at all! I read 20-30 minutes each night, religiously (haha no pun intended since this book had sooooo many religious references...) I guess I am just a slow reader and I should have read more each night in order to be a proactive student, but I had to account for this time by spending literally hours straight each weekend just reading. Now, I am not complaining! I love to read, especially books that I choose to read on my own, but I hate having deadlines to read books because then I feel rushed through them and I do not get to enjoy them as much. However, I thought that there is nothing that could be changed about this project in order to fix those complaints, because everything there was my fault. Also, this project was good because it got me to read genres that I don’t normally read, and it introduced me to new authors that maybe I will read on my own in the future (like reading The Red Tent, which is the popular book of the author of Good Harbor) and I learned of other good books from reading my BBFs’ blogs (like how I read Water for Elephants). I hope we get to do more individualized reading projects like this in the future.

Good Harbor, Entry 2

So far, this book is “okay”. It is not the best book I have ever read, but it is tolerable. Right now, I am exactly halfway through it (well, technically like two pages away from being exactly halfway, but close enough). I am still a little confused about the plot. It just seems to me like two women who are trying to find meaning in their lives, but there’s not really a climax. We talked in the beginning of the reading project about plot structure, and based on what I have read so far, this book is practically just a flat line. Well, maybe with a slight positive slope,

The plot structure would be similar to a graph of this line.

but not much. Now, I’m not saying that it’s a bad book, it’s just not exciting. I have found that this author has focused too much on describing the details of the characters and places, but not enough time having action happen. The most “exciting” part so far of the book is when the main characters’ two separate stories meet and they become friends. I like how the book changes point of view so you can see what each character is thinking, such as about one another and about the world. The main characters are Joyce, a middle-aged author with a tween daughter who enjoys soccer and her friends and Joyce feels as though she and her husband’s relationship is dying, and Kathleen, an old lady who is the librarian of a children’s school library and is diagnosed with breast cancer that killed her sister too. As you can see, these two women’s lives do not really connect to my life, like I can’t relate very well since I am not an old lady or a middle-aged women, so maybe that is why the book is only “okay” to me and not really good! One thing that I do connect to is that both women are Jewish and go to synagogue. In fact, that’s where they met! I can connect to the traditions and prayers and meetings, etc., that are described in the synagogue because they are the same as my traditions. Additionally, I get the references to parts of the service that are mentioned, etc. For example, on page 61, the author talks about the rabbi singing. She writes, “Her unaccompanied voice...delivered a tune familiar from the boys’ years in Sunday school. ‘Shalom Aleichem,’ she sang. After one stanza, the rabbi waved for the congregation to join in” (61). There are many other references like this throughout the book (references to Jewish traditions). I like that because it helps me to better connect to this book despite the fact that the two main characters are very different from me and difficult for me to connect with. Hopefully, I can continue to feel this connection throughout the book, and hopefully some “action” will happen. This is an extreme prediction, but maybe the woman with cancer will die and the other woman will realize how good friends they have became? Or maybe on her deathbed, the cancer woman will realize how meaningful her life actually was and how she was close friends to the other woman? Whatever happens, I can’t wait to find out, and I hope it is exciting!!

Good Harbor, Entry 1

For my final book, I have decided to read Good Harbor, by Anita Diamant. I do not know anything about this book, but like I said in my previous first entry post, that is expected. However, unlike all of my other books, I have not even ever heard of this book. I literally just needed a final book, so I went down to my basement where I have a bookshelf of random books and I picked a book by its cover. (Speaking of which, I do not think it is totally wrong to judge a book by its cover. You can see if you want to read the book by seeing its style and main themes and general mood (typically, light romantic books have happy, colorful covers, while darker books have darker, more mysterious covers). That’s not to say you won’t be surprised by either liking the book or not liking the book which is different than you originally thought you would based on the cover, but I think the cover provides a good starting point for book choosing. After all, there is a cover for a reason...) However, this book that I chose said that this is the author of The Red Tent, which my mother recommended and told me to read, so I assume this book will be pretty good. I read the summary flap and found that there are some parallel plots going on and it is about motherly love (or something like that I think?), etc. I’m not entirely sure the details because the summary was a little vague, but I bet I will figure them out when I read the book (and if I don’t, then I will see why this random book was on the basement shelf in the first place...)

Water for Elephants, Entry 3

This book was very good! I would not hesitate to recommend it to someone. It is well-written with a surprising twist at the end and an interesting view on what is morally right and wrong. So, like I was saying in my previous post, I found it very interesting on what was accepted as “good” in this story. In all stories, depending on the viewpoint of the narrator/main character, different things are viewed as right or wrong, whether or not they are accepted by society as right or wrong as well. Most commonly, however, things that are portrayed as “right” in books are also usually “right” in the world, unless you are reading a book from the bad guy’s point of view, etc. In this book in particular, like I was saying in the previous post, cheating (as in, cheating on your spouse) is allowed, and the original husband is even viewed as the antagonist. The reason that I am commenting on this in this post, even though I also commented on it in my previous post, is that (spoiler alert), in the end, August (the original husband) is killed and Marlena and Jacob get to go start their life and have children and work on a different circus, and it is viewed as a happy ending. In fact, it is such a morbid and descriptive ending that I do not even know if it can be considered happy! The author writes, “She [the elephant] lifts the stake as though it weighs nothing and splits his head in a single clean movement- ponk- like cracking a hard-boiled egg. She continues to hold the stake until he topples forward, and then she slides it almost lazily back into the earth...

Almost immediately a herd of zebras passes in front of them. Flailing human limbs flash between pounding black and white legs. Up and down, a hand, a foot, twisting and bouncing bonelessly. When the herd passes, the thing that was August is a tangled mass of flesh, innards, and straw” (309). The best part about this is that this story of the head-splitting-trampling story also doubles as the prologue. Now that is an example of a compelling hook! I like this full circle ending because in the beginning, I was really confused as to what was happening (especially since Jacob turned to an old man right after sharing this gross story), but in the end, the whole story has come together, and the reader has an epiphany of the entire event (assuming they forgot about the prologue until they read the end, like me). I think it takes a lot of talent to be able to write the ending in the beginning of the book that still makes sense, but you are not giving away the ending of the book (does that even make sense? Probably not, which is why I am so amazed that the author was able to do it!) I think, overall, the author is very talented, stylistically, to be able to do these cool things such as tie in the author as an old man and a young man in parallel stories, and the ending/beginning passage, etc. For these reasons, I think the book was very good, and I recommend reading it (see, I did the full circle ending, giving-the-ending-away-in-the-beginning thing too!)

Water for Elephants, Entry 2

So far, I am loving this book! I really like how the author is able to connect parts from the old man’s memory into current times. For example, there are times in the book where the main character as a young man is thinking about something, and then there will be a flashback (or I guess, flash-forward) to current times where the old man will be thinking something similar. For example, on page 104, the main character is talking about how August (the “frenemy”) fed the dead horse to the lions for the end of one chapter, and then the old man version of the character in the beginning of the next chapter is having a bad dream and saying things in his sleep “about feeding stars to cats” (105). (There are better examples of this connection between past and present, such as when the young man is looking at a comic with a “horse faced girl” and then wakes up to a “horse faced nurse”, but some of these better examples have references that I did not feel were appropriate for my blog (172).)

This book is also strange in what moral values are viewed as what is right and what is wrong. For example, Marlena does not really like her husband August, and she likes Jacob, therefore, she is cheating on her husband. But is that acceptable? Now, on one hand, August is treating her poorly, but I do feel as though he genuinely loves her and he just has some anger management issues. On the other hand, Marlena is married to August, and there should be some sense of loyalty in that (they have only been married for about three years!). However, it seems that the whole premise of the plot is Marlena and Jacob’s love for one another and their life on the circus, and I am going to predict that they get together in the end (I mean, this is a very popular supposedly good movie, so therefore, there must be some happy ending). I personally feel bad for August. Now I know it’s typically not a good strategy to feel bad for the “bad guy” (mostly because you will almost always be disappointed because the bad guy always gets defeated), but in this story in particular, we know nothing about August’s previous life before the circus. Maybe we will hear of it later on in the story, but we have heard of Marlena’s story and how she was disowned by her family because she fled to the circus to marry August, and we know Jacob’s story and how his parent’s died in a car crash and he dropped out of Cornell veterinary school to join the circus. For both of these characters we feel sorry and hope they get what they want (their love for one another) even though what they are doing is morally wrong (it’s against one of the Ten Commandments even!). Perhaps if we heard August’s story of how he got to the circus, we as the readers, would feel more sympathy towards him and think he is less of a “bad guy”. Someone really needs to write a book from August’s point of view like those little Disney princess books that are from the point of view of the bad guy (like the picture book that is from the point of view of the evil stepmother from Cinderella, etc.).

Lastly, what I really enjoy about this book is that it gives me a new perspective about life in the circus in the early 1900s. Actually, not really a new perspective, but more of just a perspective in general.  I really did not know anything about life living on a circus before reading this book, and I could not have even imagined that the living conditions were so terrible! Also, I do not know if the circus in this book is like other circuses of the time (or even if this circus is based off of a real circus/was a real circus), but I thought that the people were pretty cruel to each other and the animals. For example, the “working level” people of the circus (the lowest level in the hierarchy of circus people. These are the people who set up the tents, etc.) often did not receive their pay if there was not enough money, but the performers did receive pay. I guess that shows the time period of the book as well, how it was not uncommon for people to segregate one another (a lot of the workers were immigrants) and how that was accepted. As for cruelty to the animals, I’m not exactly sure what happens to animals in present-day circuses, but in this book, the animals were not receiving enough food, and when they do receive food, it is not good food, such as the spoiled meat (there is one quote in the book where Jacob says he could see the ribs of the lions, so I infer that means they are too skinny and underfed). Also, to train the elephant, August beats the elephant with the bull hook when it doesn’t listen. I don’t know what about these terrible conditions I like, but I find it fascinating (on a morbid level...) to read about them. So far, this is definitely one of my top two favorite books that I have read for this project (the other book I really liked was Room). And I’m not just liking this book for these terrible circus conditions, I like it because it is well-written, etc.

Water for Elephants, Entry 1

I have decided to read Water for Elephants because I have heard of many other people who have read this book for this project, and from their blog posts and verbal reviews, I have decided that it must be a pretty good book and I should read it. So, instead of saying, “Oh that sounds good, maybe I’ll read it someday” and then totally forgetting about it, I have decided to read it right away, and what better purpose for which to do this than for this project! I don’t know much about this book (as with most of the books I have read so far, but that is expected, because if I knew about them a lot then what would be the purpose of reading them?), but I do know that it is about a circus, and it is a popular, R-rated movie. Hmmm...sounds interesting. I have read the first few pages and the main character was at Cornell trying to be a vet when he was notified that his parents were in a car accident and died, followed by a pretty morbid description of how his parents looked when the main character went to identify them as his parents. Also, I thought that the prologue was kind of confusing and then the main character turned into an old man and now a college kid, but I’m pretty sure this will all be made more clear throughout the book.

To Kill A Mockingbird, Entry 3

Wow, what a book! Truly one of those books that is terrible at the beginning, but once you get through, you are rewarded with a good plot towards the end. It was an interesting book about fighting for equality between white people and black people. My favorite part was the trial for whether or not the black servant raped the white girl (because this was where the most action happened). The result of the court case was from a totally different perspective from today’s views on issues like this. Despite the fact that the evidence clearly showed that the black man was innocent, the jury still voted that he was guilty (guilty meaning death as the punishment). I guess this isn’t entirely different from the views of today, though, because there are many circumstances where black people are unfairly convicted due to a biased jury or judge.

    Now for my “bloggly” analysis. On page 224, Lee writes, “‘The thing is, you can scrub Walter Cunningham till he shines, you can put him in shoes and a new suit, but he’ll never be like Jem. Besides, there’s a drinking streak in that family a mile wide. Finch women aren’t interested in that sort of people” (224). After reading this quote from Aunt Alexandra, I realized that throughout this whole book, there is separation between people that is not just between black people and white people. There is separation between each of the families that form “clans” (kind of). This quote in particular reminded me of Romeo and Juliet

about how the characters are supposed to have certain people from certain families to marry. I guess that it is expected that a classic book would reference Shakespeare, though. To connect back to the title and the stuff I was writing in the previous entry, on page 241, Mr, Underwood, the newspaper writer, “likened Tom’s death to the senseless slaughter of songbirds by hunters and children” (241). (Tom was the black person who was accused of rape in the trial). In this way, the title of killing a mockingbird (and how you shouldn’t because they are innocent birds who just sing) connects to the main message (the unfair treatment of black people during this time period) and it is all tied together in this quote at the end! How exciting! This quote in particular is saying that killing black people for crimes they didn’t do is like killing mockingbirds (something that is commonly known to be bad). It’s like killing innocent birds who have good intentions, and killing innocent people who only want to benefit society (“sing their song for the world”). Earlier, as I mentioned in my previous post, Atticus, the father, said that killing a mockingbird was a SIN!

Therefore, this newspaper writer is calling the killing of this black person a sin, which is not the opinion of most people in this town. By saying “senseless killing by hunters and children”, the writer is saying that only brainless people who don’t know any better would kill someone for no reason. So after analyzing this quote in particular, all my doubts about the title connecting to the book that I had in my first and second posts for this book have been eliminated. I have now seen one of the reasons why this book is considered a classic (it has a deep, seemingly unrelated title that actually connects the whole book together in the end and is really meaningful).
    To be honest, I have not decided whether I liked this book or didn’t. I think I’m just neutral. I think I would have liked this book more if I were reading it for fun on my own rather than reading it for this project, because for this project I was worried about reading enough each night and how I wasn’t reading fast enough to finish the book in time, etc. since the story was all written in a southern dialect with older words. (AKA I focused more on what page I was on than on the story...). Hopefully my next book is easier to read without focusing on the page numbers too much!