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!

To Kill A Mockingbird, Entry 2

As much as I hate to admit it, this book has certainly grown on me. Now, I’m not saying it has become anywhere near my favorite books or a book I would necessarily choose to read on my own if I was not just being required to read a classic, but it is a little more tolerable than when I started. Perhaps it’s because I had such low expectations for this book based on some reviews I heard from my peers, but whatever the reason, I have most definitely started to enjoy this book more and it is a little less painful to continue reading (now, please notice that I am still not admitting that I like this book, I just strongly dislike it a little less...). I think the reason this book has not interested me that much was because it has a pretty dull plot structure. It is similar to the linear plot structure that I mentioned in my other post that most books were, but instead of a steeper line, this book most definitely has a flatter plot, like this graph. However, I bet as soon as this plot gets “high enough” (aka exciting) there is going to be an immediate drop back to boringness.

    However, one good thing, at least, is that I found out what the mockingbird reference is from the title

(in case you don’t read all my posts, this was one thing I was really wondering (and I have to admit, I was doubting that there actually was a reference or meaning to the title, too...)). The author writes, “‘Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.’ That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. ‘Your father’s right,’ she said. ‘Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird’” (90). To me, this seems like an insignificant part of the story. This “don’t kill a mockingbird” thing is just some rule of the family. But, since it is part of the title, for crying out loud, I suppose there must be some meaning that can come with a little more analysis. The book so far (and I assume it will continue to be) has been about equality between black people and white people. However, most people in Maycomb County (the town in which the story takes place) are not really fond of the black people. One day, though, Atticus (the father who is a lawyer) takes on a case defending an innocent black person. Throughout the story, he tries to teach his children that black people are okay and are people just like them, and everyone should be treated equally. I think these lessons from the father parallel the title and the meaning behind killing a mockingbird. Killing the bird represents killing the innocence of childhood by teaching the children to hate other people. The part about the birds being harmless and just wanting to sing represents the harmlessness of the black people (they just want to be treated like free citizens too) and also the innocence of childhood. Therefore, despite my original prediction, there is, in fact, a meaning to the title (a meaning that is probably way deeper and more profound than my quick little analysis...).
    This book connects to Room, the first book I read for this project. Both are written in the point of view of a five year old.

However, while Room stays in the point of view of a five year old throughout the story and seems to be written in the present, To Kill A Mockingbird is written by a five year old who gets older throughout the story and seems to be written reflecting past events. Additionally, Room’s five year old writes how a five year old would think, such as with the totally innocent creative and unknowing mind, but this book’s five year old writes just as any other narrator who is older would (perhaps because the five year old is theoretically older when they are writing the book). Whatever the reason for this difference, I like Room’s version of this better because I think it provides a more interesting perspective on the story.

To Kill A Mockingbird, Entry 1

For my classic, I am reading To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. According to the Internet, this book is rated 4.5 stars. However, I have heard mixed reviews about this book from the people to whom I have talked. During one of our group book talks in class, some of my peers explained that they really disliked this book. They felt it had no plot and they couldn’t get into it. Other people, on the other hand, have said that they loved this book, and couldn’t put it down, and it’s a great book that I’ll love (not to mention, it’s a quick read, even though it’s long, which is what I really need at this point in the project...). So far, I am not really liking this book, but then again, I am only on page 6. I found that the introductory pages up to this point are really confusing. The narrator just introduces characters as if I have known them my whole life. What I mean is that normally in books, the author might say, “Ari was a great friend of mine and she was a wonderful person and she had brown hair and I knew her from school” (Goldberg 1). However, this author says would say things like (and this is not a quote from the book, I am just using a made-up quote to emphasize my point more clearly and keep it more consistent with my previous example), “Ari went to school one time and broke her arm. Then Elle went to school and took a test. Then Arielle took a math class” (Goldberg 2). How am I supposed to know anything about the characters and their place in the story from that?! I also do not know anything about the plot of the story, but I’m guessing it probably does not have much to do with a mocking bird hunting trip, because why would a classic book have a title that has anything to do with the plot of the book? It’s probably just some symbolic reference made once in the book, but I guess I’m making a lot of conclusions without actually reading... On that note, I better go read more!

A Walk in the Woods, Entry 3

I should be a fortune teller. My prediction was correct, and Bryson and Katz did not finish hiking the Appalachian Trail. Actually, the story got kind of...bizarre...after I left off after my previous post, and more boring, as well. So what happened was, Katz went back to where he was from (where he lives), so Bryson and Katz stopped hiking together on the Appalachian Trail, although they planned to continue hiking at the end of the summer. However, Bryson continued hiking on his own. Sometimes, he just hiked on trails near his house, but eventually he started hiking the Appalachian Trail a day at a time, and driving home each night. I was thinking, how could an adult man have time to just hike every day and then just come home and sleep? What about work and responsibilities? Then I realized that hiking was Bryson’s, the author, job. Well, not hiking, exactly, but traveling and going on adventures such as hiking to write about. I realized that I was reading the product of his job. Whoa...But back to what I was saying about this middle part of the summer and book when Bryson is just taking day hikes alone, I found this part pretty boring. It was just full of facts and statistics about each of the different towns in which he was walking the trail. It was a pretty anticlimactic section that led to an even more disappointing and boring ending. Instead of the vicious nail-clipper bear fight I was expecting, the hiking duo just split up and went home. The biggest action in this story was the idea that there might be a bear that they would have fought with nail clippers, but in reality, Bryson was just scared of a different, unknown animal in the night that was most likely not a bear and was just near Bryson’s campsite to get a drink of water from the nearby stream. The other exciting part was when Bryson was hiking with a different friend of his on the day trips and he encountered some severe climate changes as he was hiking in the mountains and he was convinced that he was suffering from hypothermia and becoming delusional. But, spoiler alert, the temperature went back to normal as he climbed down the mountain, and he was not getting hypothermia (his watch had just broken, so he thought it was the same time throughout the hike, so he was not becoming delusional, he just had a broken watch). What a disappointment, as morbid as that sounds... I just wanted a little action! I guess that’s what Bryson thought, too, and why he had to try so hard to make some part of his adventure sound exciting so people would actually read his book, which is his living. The end of the book was the most disappointing part, though. The pair agree that they will never be able to finish the trail, so they just stop hiking. How’s that for some inspirational motivation! I guess that is like the saying, though, that it’s all about the journey and not about the destination. I, however, find it more rewarding to reach my destination, especially after such an awfully painful journey. I guess that is also like the saying, “At least it will make for a good story”, which is probably what Bryson had in mind, but did not quite happen...Overall, it was a pretty good book that was boring at times (when there were lots of facts) and had a very disappointing plot/conclusion. I would recommend it to read for fun, but not for a school project where you only have a certain amount of time to read a certain amount of books (all the facts and anticlimactic plot kind of slow you down...).

A Walk in the Woods, Entry 2

So far, I am really enjoying reading this book. As mentioned in my last post, I am having many personal connections as I read this book. However, the author still has not hiked in any of the specific places I have hiked yet, but I think those places are coming, a lot faster than I originally presumed, as well. Where I am in the book, Bryson and his friend have decided that they are going to skip hiking through the Smokies, and instead, they are going to drive up to Virginia, where they will get back on the trail. Not to say that the pair hasn’t already hiked quite a while on the Appalachian Trail and they have suffered a lot through the Smokies, but I am still really disappointed that they are not doing the whole trail. It doesn’t even make sense why I am disappointed; it’s not like I’m giving up. But in a way, I guess I’m reading vicariously through their journey (if that is even possible) and I have really connected to the author and his friend, and I do not want them to give up! Just think, when/if they get to the end of the trail, they went through all that pain and suffering and determination, and they can’t even say they hiked the whole Appalachian Trail! I suppose they could say, “I hiked the whole Appalachian Trail, except for the hundred or so miles we drove instead.” That does not sound nearly as impressive, though. Earlier on in the book, on the day the hike starts, Bryson writes, “To my surprise, I felt a certain springy keenness. I was ready to hike. I had waited months for this day, after all, even if it had been mostly with foreboding. I wanted to see what was out there. All over America today people would be dragging themselves to work, stuck in traffic jams, wreathed in exhaust smoke. I was going for a walk in the woods. I was more than ready for this” (33). Where did this happy, excited man go? There has definitely been some character development. It’s probably just really easy for us, as the readers, to quickly judge Bryson and his hiking partner (Katz) as quitters, but we are comfy in our warm houses, sitting down, while Bryson and Katz are cold and muddy and sleep with mice running over them. In fact, they even have a totally different mindset in the wilderness. Bryson writes when Katz gains pleasure from killing seven mice in one night, “Occasionally it troubled me (I presume it must trouble all hikers from time to time) just how far one strays from the normal measures of civility on the trail” (96). Often, character development and characters changing only occur in fiction books, where the author can control what the characters do, etc. But here, in this nonfiction book, I am definitely starting to see some character development and seeing the personalities of Katz and Bryson starting to change. However, unlike the common book where the characters get more mature throughout, I feel that this book is not just a consistent, linear, uphill trend (with a slope of about 1.63872. Yay math).

A linear graph like this one, although this graph does not have the slope I mentioned.

 
Instead, I feel that the characters in this book become more mature sometimes, such as when they are planning the trip or gathering supplies, but at other times, the characters are incredibly immature, such as when they are angry at the mice so they kill them or they are terrified of the noise in the woods, assume it’s a pair of bears (that rhymes!) and decide to fight these bears with nail clippers. Maybe just the general inconsistency of their development differentiates these characters’ changes from those of characters in fiction books, since it is a more realistic pattern of change (up down up down etc.). In this way, the constant changing of characters in this book follows more closely a cosine curve (starting at the top, where they were fully mature as middle-aged men, then starting to decline as they hike the trail, where they reach their minimum immature-ness and begin to climb back up to maturity, no pun intended).

Here is the infamous cosine graph

 I think this also helps exemplify the mysticism of the trail and the unusual effects it has on people, and the isolation people feel on the trail from the rest of the world, which connects back up to Bryson’s quote I mentioned before about the lack of normal civility on the trail. However, I think I am going to stop writing now, because when you start seeing plot structures as trigonometric functions, I think that’s a small hint that you have written more than enough...

A Walk in the Woods, Entry 1

For my nonfiction book, I have decided to read A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. It is a memoir about Bryson’s attempt to walk the Appalachian Trail in its entirety with a friend whom he

hasn’t seen in many years. However, this friend is not exactly the most athletic person (he’s not quite a skinny fellow, for one thing) and Bryson himself is not really in the ideal physical shape for such a strenuous journey either. Although I am only about one third of the way through the book, I have read some online synopses, and supposedly, the two friends do not complete their hike on the trail. I really hope that is not true, because I feel that they have worked so hard already, and I do not want them to quit! Also, they have invested so much time and money into the trip, buying brand-new expensive hiking gear, etc. It would be such a shame to waste all that. And, they would have to feel defeated and feel regret for the rest of their lives, not to mention, if they wanted to try again some day in the future, they would have to restart at the beginning, where they have already walked about the first hundred or so miles. 

I chose to read this book because I myself have some experience hiking the Appalachian Trail, though not nearly as extensively as Bryson and his friend. One summer, I hiked for about five days, averaging about 5-9 miles a day, with the backpack and sleeping in the shelters and all, and I go back for 9 mile day trips during other summers.

My picture of the Appalachian Trail sign from Harpers Ferry, West Virginia

It really enhances my reading of this book by having actually experienced a vaguely similar experience in the same place. For example, Bryson talks about how heavy the packs were, and I sympathize with him. Additionally, he mentions the serenity of the woods (although the woods were not exactly quiet and peaceful when we were coming through because we did a lot of talking and singing) and the structure of the shelters, and the rewarding, expansive views at the tops of big hills. This book has inspired me to go back and hike the full trail one day (maybe), and so far, I am really enjoying reading about what it is like. I can’t wait to keep reading (and although this sounds a little mean and morbid, I’m kind of hoping that the two friends will encounter a bear. It is not that unlikely, considering Bryson repeatedly comments on how scared he is of finding one (there is constant foreshadowing). Also, I know that even if he does encounter a bear, he will survive, because he is the author of his own book so he can’t be dead, so really, how bad could the bear encounter be anyway?)

Room, Entry 3

Wow! What a good book! I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. This plot really made me contemplate my own life. Several times throughout the story I would think, “What would I do if I was in the situation? If I was the mother? If I was Jack? If I was Old Nick (the bad guy who put Ma and Jack in the shed in the first place)?” I came up with multiple solutions on how to escape that situation for each, but I always found flaws in my plans. My first thought was that I would spend my entire days just systematically pushing every button on the padlock until I came across the right code (just like how Ma and Jack play a game where they push all the buttons on the padlock in the hopes that maybe one of the codes will work one day). However, I realized this plan would not work because maybe the lock would not open after a certain number of wrong tries, or maybe Old Nick would hear the beeping and punish me for trying to get out, or what if the code started with a 9 and I went through all the possible combinations first starting from the 1 direction. I think if I was in this situation, though, no matter what I was doing to try and get out, I would just feel immense amounts of hopelessness and claustrophobia. I would probably go crazy, so even though some things Ma does seem a bit irrational, she is way more rational than I would be in that situation. To be honest, I feel scared just imagining myself in that situation. However, I will try to never get myself in that situation, and then I won’t have to worry about getting out.

My friend and I were discussing how Ma got in this situation, actually, and we were talking about how we as readers think of Ma as so stupid, while in another context, she would be considered a hero. Let me explain. For those who don’t know, Ma was abducted to be a prisoner in Old Nick’s shed. This happened when she was 19, and she got in the shed by agreeing to help Old Nick “find his dog” (there was no dog, hence the quotation marks). At first, I was like, “Dude, you’re so stupid! You don’t go with old men into their truck to find their dog. That’s, like, the oldest trick in the book for kidnapping.” But then, I did some more thinking (shocking, I know, right?). I realized that perhaps if there was a different plot, Ma would actually be regarded as a hero, and no one would even realize her stupidity for getting into an old man’s car to find his dog. For example, what if the story was about Old Nick and Ma’s journey to find the dog, and in the end, they find the dog and Old Nick and Ma are best friends? I think that this philosophy is accurate in any story. If you take the event out of context, the situation might not be as good or bad as it is meant to be in the book. In fact, you too, even you, might have done the exact same thing as the character in a book if you were in the same situation.

Based on this idea, I did even more thinking (whoa...). I was thinking about Old Nick’s motives. Perhaps he was being a stupid, mean old man, but maybe he had a reason. Maybe his wife died and he was incredibly lonely and no one would ever love him again and he was just so desperate for love and affection that he was blind to his cruelty. People do things like that all the time when they are blinded by love. Just think of Romeo and Juliet: there is no rational thinking there; they just kill themselves because they disobey their parents in their immature teenage relationship. It would be interesting to have some sequels to this book and have one be from the point of view from Ma and one be from the point of view from Old Nick. I like how the point of view is of Jack, though, because it provides an interesting twist to the story.

The story is not “well-written”, like a classic book with big words and complex themes. Instead, it is written how a five-year-old would talk. For example, when Ma is telling Jack the plan to escape, he says, “‘I won’t do it not ever and I hate you’...I shake my head till it’s wobbling because there’s no just me”, which is exactly how a five-year-old would talk (128). Even though this is kind of poorly written grammatically, I am still impressed at how good at English Jack is. In the Fritzl case, there was a girl who was locked in her basement by her father when she was about 20, and her father raped her, which caused a few children, who grew up in the enclosed basement, but had some problems since their bodies adapted to the enclosed spaces. Additionally, these children had speech problems because of their lack of contact with other people, unlike Jack who can speak fairly well.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I was surprised that Jack did not like the real world, (he didn’t like the weather or the shoes, etc.), which I guess is expected. For instance, I would not like if I suddenly had to go live in outer space or heaven or somewhere that I didn’t believe to fully exist. I can imagine how hard it must have been for Jack to suddenly embrace the new world. I did not really like the ending, because it ended kind of abruptly, but I guess that is how it has to end, otherwise the book would be boring going on and on about Jack’s new experiences and Ma re-learning world. One of my favorite quotes from the book, however, is the last few sentences (spoiler alert). Donoghue writes, “I look back one more time. It’s like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door” (321). I like this ending because it is a full circle ending to a time in the beginning of the book when Jack learns what a crater is because he is learning about the moon. This quote really shows how Jack has grown and become more mature as a character, from when he interpreted craters in the beginning of the book as holes in the ground, but at the end, he interprets the shed figuratively as a crater. Also, it shows his realization about moving on and accepting the real world instead of wanting to go back to the familiarities of room.

Room, Entry 2

This book is an incredibly eye-opening book unlike any other book I have ever read before. Similar to the Cancer’s Oddest Effect story we read in class about how the author suddenly appreciated the little beauties in the world, the characters in my book begin to appreciate the little beauties in the world, too. But instead of appreciating them in the cliche way of “Oh, the flowers are more colorful than I remembered” and “The air is fresher and I love waiting in traffic, yay!”, the author provides a unique twist to this common experience. Since, as mentioned in my previous post (which you should read so this next part makes more sense), the book is written by a five-year-old who has never experienced the outside world, the “real” world seems strange to him, and he misses the comforts of his confined, easily controlled environment. He notices things that we, as real world people, would never notice, and he doesn’t like them. For example, he notices the weather, and dislikes the sunshine and nice spring breeze and fresh air. Donoghue writes, “Too much horrible shine and air freshing. ‘My skin’s burning off.’...There aren’t any breaths out here...the wind’s so loud I can’t hear anything” (197). In fact, Jack, the young boy, is so unused to the outside climate that he can’t even breathe with the wind. In this way, Jack reminds me of a newborn baby. He is out of his mother where there was a regulated, isolated, cozy environment that he believed was all that existed in the world (he is out of the room) and now Jack is learning the basic things of the world, like bright sunshine, wind, etc. It made me wonder if that’s how newborn babies feel, too, when they first go outside for the first time, but nobody knows because, obviously, a baby can’t talk and express its dislike for nature (unless, of course, it is a talking baby). That makes this book even more interesting, because we are able to read the point of view of something that has never been written about before. Based on this comparison of Jack to a newborn baby, I believe that Jack will eventually adapt to the world and live just like a “normal” person (not that there is a such thing as “normal people”, I just mean someone who did not spend the first five years of their life in a shed). Because of this book being written by Jack, the book has an interesting plot structure (sorry, I realize I keep saying interesting, but that's what I think when I think of this book. It is interesting. Nothing else. No other word can describe it, not even if I use a thesaurus). It starts in the beginning with Jack just living his average life, and he continues to live his average life for quite a while. In fact, it seems to me that he doesn’t even notice the “problem” that’s to set of the “climax”, yet this is portrayed by his mother. For example, the reader can tell that the mother is trying to escape and that the escape will probably be the climax of the book, but Jack has no idea they are trying to escape, he just thinks it’s his day-to-day life. For example, the mother flashes the lights at night, like Morse code, but Jack has no idea. Donoghue writes, “In the night she’s flashing, it wakes me in Bed. Lamp on, I count five. Lamp off, I count one. Lamp on, I count two. I do a groan...’Please, Ma...It hurts my eyes’” (66). Additionally, he thinks that when they scream as loud as they can during the day that it is just a game, when in reality, it is the mother hoping someone will hear them and rescue them. I think there are actually multiple climaxes in the book. One: When Jack manages to escape/is escaping. Two: When the mother overdoses and Jack experiences the entire experience of the real world with Grandma instead of being in the clinic. So far, I think this book is very interesting, and I can’t wait to keep reading! Following this is a book trailer. It is incredibly sad, it made me feel even sadder than the book. The book is very good, and if you haven't read it, I definitely recommend it. Actually, watch the trailer first, and then you'll want to read it for sure. 

Room, Entry 1

I only know about the book Room, by Emma Donoghue, from online summaries and recommendations from my friend. My friend has told me that this is a very good book that she has read multiple times because she enjoys it so much. According to summaries, this book is about a mother and her five-year-old son who are the property of a man and live in his shed. The shed is the “room” and it is the only part of the world that the son believes to exist. He watches TV, but his mother tells him that everything he sees on the TV is not part of the real world. The climax of the story is when the mother tries to help the son escape. What is interesting about this book is that it is told from the point of view of the five-year-old son. Additionally, this book was inspired by a true story, based on the 2008 Fritzl Case. This book was written in 2010, so it should have relatively modern references.