Fahrenheit 451 Book Trailer

Hey, here is a link to the book trailer I made for class. Enjoy!


https://youtu.be/2qkYs4QoBN4

Tasting The Sky

In my lit circle, we are reading:

I didn't expect to enjoy this book. I didn't think that I would be able to connect with the characters or their situation simply because I was raised as a Christian, in America. I didn't account for the fascination that would draw me into the story or how much I would love all the characters.

I have also never really had any knowledge of the Israeli Palestinian conflict and now, I find myself googling things like the 6 day war.

I find comfort in how easily this family adapts to their new environments. Obviously this was probably not the case, but just how Ibtisam (our main character) perceived it because of her young age. Having such a young and fairly reliable main character is interesting. One would think that, with her being so young at the start of this book, she would be unaware of almost everything of importance - and maybe she was, but as an adult,Ibtisam is trying to fill in the gaps and make sense of her memories. That being said, I feel that the narration is definitely an adult trying to relive her childhood memories through her words. For instance, I got lost in London when I was six. All I remember is that we were listening to a tour guide and then he stopped talking and let us wander a little and I saw some stuffed peacocks so I went to look at them, but then the group moved on without me. Remembering things like how big the police officer's glasses were and how I liked his funny hat seem like the most clear memories in my mind when they might not have really been very important. They young mind grasps onto the smallest details regardless of their significance. Ibtisam's storytelling is very similar to how I remember my own memories - in fractured parts with very detailed moments that can hold any amount of actual significance to the narrative which I REALLY like. it feels very natural and honest.

Aristotle + Dante = 5ever (I Feel Like a Teenage Girl)

Oh thank god. I thought they were never going to get  together and the ending was just going to be an angsty, sad, disappointing ending of sadness. But goodness gracious, I am glad that Ari’s dad finally decided to say his piece cause without that, Ari never would have accepted his feelings.

I really liked this book. I was (obviously) very invested in the characters and their interactions. I think I liked the romance of this book more than that of any of the others we have read so far this semester. Really, I liked how the suspense of Ari’s realization was built. I was sure that he was not 100% straight pretty early on in this book and was just waiting for him to realize it for himself. Yeah, the car accident and the fight were very exciting and dramatic as well, but really i was just waiting for Ari to come to his STINKING SENSES!

I am very openly bi-sexual and while that definitely changes how I would handle some things, I think that if I were in Ari’s place, it would not have taken me nearly as long as it took him to realize his feelings, let alone accept them. Yeah, he doesn’t have the most healthy idea of what a man should be, but when it comes to emotions, most people - I think - can quickly recognize them within themselves and can accept what they are feeling as true simply because we cannot change how we instinctively feel. We can try to mask it and ignore it and shove it in a box, with a lock, in the deepest darkest corner of our mind, but we can’t get rid of them. They will always be the light pollution in our mind.

Toxic Masculinity is Ruining this Relationship Before it can Start

Aristotle and Dante’s relationship reads like the most confusing bromance ever. Obviously this is from Ari’s perspective and holds his biases over the entire thing, but I think that all that needs to happen now is for Ari to get his head out of the sand.

I sympathize with him, I actually do, because of the things he has been taught. Men are strong and silent (like his dad) or they join gangs and are tough (like his brother, maybe) but there is no inbetween. That is, I think until Dante starts breaking down those stereotypes. In his own personality, and breaking the masks of the people he defined manliness by. He gave Ari’s dad a book about Mexican artists and Ari was shocked. His dad had studies art? That doesn’t really fit his ideas of what a man does. Now, obviously Ari doesn’t know that this is what Dante is doing (and maybe Dante doesn’t know either) but it is certainly affecting Ari. Ari sees himself as a mexican who likes to fight and likes girls and is strong and stoic like his dad but isn’t a gangster because he isn’t stupid. That is how Ari sees himself and I think he tries to push that mold onto Dante but it could never work. It can’t work simply because Dante never learned that mold, never knew those were the standards he should ascertain (in Ari’s view). If Ari were able to read this book, I think it would hit him like a ton of bricks. OH MY GOD OF COURSE YOU ARE IN LOVE WITH HIM YOU BIG DUMB BLOB OF HUMAN-NESS! You literally jumped in front of a car for him. I love my best friends, but I don’t know if I would do that so instinctually.

Ari, get it together man. I love you, but get it together.

ABC Final Thoughts....

I understand that with the story of the Monkey King, ABC doesn’t exactly have a 100% realistic universe, but WTF? I feel like they tried to connect the three stories but just couldn’t find a way that worked, and worked well. They gave up, and we got stuck reading this.

1. HOW did everyone think it was normal that a monkey in a costume parading as a human was normal? Was it just a really good costume that no one could tell the difference between that and an actual human? Does nobody actually know what a person of asian descent looks like?
2. WHY is the Monkey King not count as a god? There was a flipping bird god (also, Darth Maul seems to be there too), why not a monkey? That just makes no sense. Also, there seemed to be a good mixture of shapes and sizes and species mixed in the gods but just MONKEYS are left out? Rude.
3. Did “Danny” think he was adopted? Did his parents also transform into white people? Did no one find it suspicious? Did everyone just think that Jin and his family disappeared? Or did they believe that they got turned into white people simply because Jin liked a girl and was insecure?

I just can’t handle the rationale they tried to force on us, just because it pulls the stories together! I’m sorry, Gene Luen Yang, you can tell three  very interesting stories separately, but you are not the Marvel Cinematic Universe...

American Born Chinese and Thoughts on Graphic Novels

I had never read a graphic novel before this book. So far, I don’t think that this genre is really for me. I have always gotten kind of frustrated with really quick reads and short novels. I am always wanting there to be more. I am a really fast reader too, so that probably is a factor. It’s kind of a novelty for me when it takes a while for me to get through a good story. Another note is that I am not really loving the stories either so that might be factoring itself into my thoughts on the genre. I just feel like I’m not really reading - even though I understand that graphic novels are a valid literary choice, I just feel like I’m cheating the system. Also, with the addition of illustrations, I don’t use my imagination as much as I normally do. It doesn’t take any effort to visualize what is happening when it is literally right in front of your eyes. When I read The Hobbit, for example, I have to picture Bilbo’s hole, not being damp and murky but also not sandy. The image must come from my mind which makes it feel much more personal.

This all seems very backwards compared to my rant about descriptions in Feed but in my mind, they are very different scenarios. In one, there is no substance for me to work off of to create the world the characters are in, and the other has far, far more visual detail which doesn’t allow me to make the universe my own. I’m not trying to nitpick, but I feel that you need a healthy dose of each of these styles to successfully create an engaging story.

Brown Girl Dreaming Might be Growing on Me (But not by Much)

The format of this book isn’t growing on me, exactly, but I’m starting to try to understand the reasons why you would want to write a book like this one in the format of a verse novel. Jackie lives her life in chunks of time. She lived in the North, then the South, then back to the North and these constant changes and fluctuations can be related through verse. I still  think it could have been just as effective as prose, with just different styles or inflections to simulate these changes. I also think that the verse format gives jackie a very different voice. I went on Jacqueline Woodson’s website and she said that BGD shows her learning to love creating stories, even though she had trouble reading when she was younger and I think that can also be reflected in the verse by the very simplistic feel of using so few words at a time. They tell a story but are almost adverse to the idea of being loquacious.

I still don’t like verse in general, but I think I have to change my perceptions from the last post: If you are going to write poetry, tell a story. Don’t just make an anthology, make a story that can be made sense fo by people other than yourself. Tell a comprehensive story that is easily connected and put in order. I find it pretentious when people write a poem on an apple then a poem on a wagon wheel and say they are connected and flow so well together and show true thought. Nope. That is what I call forcing a square peg into a round hole. Don’t draw connections just because you feel that you are supposed to, do it because they are there and I think that Ms. Woodson has done this the correct way… for verse.

Link to Jacqueline's Website:

http://www.jacquelinewoodson.com/category/books-ive-written/middle-grade-titles/