Fin.

Concerning my reading selection:


I have always hated romance. I think I would have incarcerated myself, had I chosen to write about love for the anthology project. But of course, I didn't. I probably chose the opposite, or something that stems from the opposite, if you get my drift. Anyway, in novels, I hate fluffy, mushy, supposedly teenage-high-school-based, perfect love. Or anything that attempts to imitate it in so-called literature. Lolita was as close as I got to that, but to be honest, that is definitely not even remotely what I just described. It's between a pedophile and a thirteen year old girl for chrissakes.

So basically, this semester, I chose anything that didn't resemble that. I love anything to do with music, hence The Words of Every Song. I -- do not love per se-- but I find war incredibly entertaining and engrossing, therefore, I chose The Art of War, and The Things They Carried. I adore vulgarity and profanity, a side-effect of being a teenager, so I loved Then We Came to the End. Tragedies are infinitely more interesting than happy-endings, so I was drawn to Angela's Ashes.

I love this boy.

 I had an incredibly hard time sticking to any singular book, for I would always find something more interesting whilst perusing through the shelves of the library. Yeah, I don't think I actually finished any of the books I started, but shhhh. Because finishing all those books was my goal for this quarter. HOLD UP. I finished The Things They Carried, but that was, uh, an assignment for AP Comp. It was an amazing fictional war novel (about Vietnam, and when I say amazing-- I really do mean it....), so I had no problem charging through it. I didn't actually list that on my reading log bookmark, so it can't be considered cheating. No Sir-ee.

I'll admit, sometimes I had a bit of trouble getting in the page quota for the weeks. So much physics and AP Comp and stupid PreCalc/Trig and Econ. Not that that's an excuse or anything. But PreCalc kills me. As does physics, kind of. It's a liable excuse in mine eyes. Mine eyes. Is that grammatically correct? It sounds a bit Old English-y. I assume it is.

Did I meet the requirements for the 'final' blog post? I believe I did. This looks like 250 words or more. So, Mr. Hill, if this is indeed our last post, then I shall never touch this blog again. I enjoyed it while it lasted, but I don't believe blogging is for me. Goodbye forever.

I feel as though that was the shortest, most sour, final goodbye I've ever scrounged up. My apologies, but I have no intention of improving it.

Ta-ta,
Lily

The Words of Every Song is such a depressing book. I haven't come upon a single short story in it, that ends in favor of the main character. Some of them are incomplete too, which makes it even more depressing. I can't stand when things end-- books or movies. It pisses me off to no end.

So I happened upon this one story (in fact, I mentioned it in my last 'sentences of the week' post), it concerns an aging man who is a sounds technician in the music corporation that is the centerpiece of the book (what connects each character to one another). He receives a letter from "Geri" who is his ex-wife, whom he has not seen in fourteen years, and is the mother of his two children. So much has happened in those fourteen years:

Tony, the main character and father, has a girlfriend named Vanessa. She loves him dearly and wishes to deepen their relationship, but somewhere inside her, she knows that will never happen.
Cooking dinner last night has inspired her. She thinks--in an abstract way-- that maybe acting like Tony's wife will make Tony ask her to be his wife. If she let herself voice that hope too specifically, she'd only realize the impossibility of it. Right now it is a subconscious desire, this idea of marriage to Tony; it is far enough away from the forefront of her mind that it remains nothing but a sweet and unexamined feeling most of the time.
And then she finds the letter from Tony's ex-wife, addressed to Tony.
[She] sees a letter addressed to Tony in what looks like a woman's hand. It bears a recent post mark. She closes the drawer. She opens the drawer. She closes the drawer.
She opens the drawer, and takes the letter out, and reads it, and feels infinitely young, a child, an infant, a person incapable of self-care, and lies back on the bed, and cries like a widow.

OMG. how depressing can you get? It's slightly ridiculous that there is no hint of positivity in this book. This other passaged touched me as well. It concerns the disappearance of a father-figure, Tony, in his two children's lives: Jim and Leila.
This is when Leila was born (the younger one) and Jim and Tony are going to see her.
The hospital smelled like school, but sadder.
"Hi, honey," said his mother. "This is your sister."
"Go say hi to her," said his father. But Jim stayed back, his arms wrapped around Tony's leg. He watched the baby and felt shy . . . . . .
[Jim] realized with a sudden ache that the memory stopped at that poing, with his arms wrapped about his father's leg; he couldn't remember what Leila looked like, or what his mother looked like, or what he did next. . . . The strength of him, the width of his calf, the fabric of his pants. How Tony had reached down and placed one large hand on the back of Jim's head-- not pushing him forward, just leaving it there. Just letting him be.
That's what Jim remembers of his father.
What Leila remembers: nothing. A black shape standing over her crib. Music. Nothing.

It astounds me how many children on the face of this earth have either only one parent, or none, or have to visit each parent separately. I am so lucky, I just can't find it in myself to appreciate it. I think it has to do with their authoritarian ways. They are quite anal-retentive, which in turn, makes me anal-expulsive (sounds gross, but just means unorganized and laid-back). At least I'm aware that I have something that many don't: two wonderful, loving, if strict, parents.

A miniature response post for last week. I suppose I'll do an enormously long one for this week.

So.... The Art of War.
It's not what I thought it was gonna be, but it is interesting. That's it though-- interesting. I only read about 60 pages so far, but 45 of that was an introduction that I may have secretly skipped....

So theres a Master Sun Tzu, who was the mother of all master kung fu artists (yeah, idk-- I skipped the intro, remember) and all the other martial arts guys look up to him. Sun Tzu basically just states a rule, like that a good general or leader must be good towards the people in order for the people to support the cause of the war. Mostly common sense stuff. And then underneath the aformentioned rule, the other generals, like I don't know, Cao Cao, will basically just restate it in his own words. Really redundant. But interesting all the same.

The reason I'm even considering reading this, is because when my father was an officer in the army, he was assigned to read it (but he never did, cuz he didn't really like to read), and since that might (most likely) be my future, I figure, I might as well get it out of the way.

It's so boring though, so I don't think I'm gonna finish all 500 pages of it. I think it's more than 500, more like 2000-- which definitely means I won't finish it. And it's completely repetitive.... I'm really good at stating the negative aspects of stuff. Side effect of being  a pessimist.

OMG. I DIDN'T KNOW THERE WAS A MOVIE CALLED THE ART OF WAR WITH WESLEY SNIPES! Who's watching this? I am. 'Cos I love Wesley Snipes. And Blade. Maybe It'll summarize Sun Tzu's version, though I highly doubt it. AND it's an instant play on Netflix! Omgz.

Currentlay

Pages this week: 120
Pages this quartie: 130 + 160 + 120 (I think those are the right numbers) equals 420

the best of the conglomerate sentences:

And here's Siobhan: in love with a dead man with desperate eyes, a man she's never met, a man she bled for twice.

Kurt was watching her from the magazine. He was beautiful, really beautiful, angelic and blond. Painful to look at.

He doesn't write anything, really, so it is an unfamiliar feeling to him to place his pen on this paper and write the words 'Dear Geri.' Next comes 'I'. Next comes a blank sort of terror.

All of these are from The Words of Every Song,  and the last one, about Geri, hits me the hardest. The book doesn't fully explain what he is to write next in this letter to Geri, but it's pretty obvious that the word 'I' is to be followed with 'love' and then 'you.' And the writer of the letter is scared witless to put those words on paper-- probably because writing it down solidifies his feelings for her, and those feelings should have long ago been erased. Hence, the terror of admission. I feel for him--even though he's fictional--I really do. Partly because, love is a strong word. Whenever someone says 'I HATE YOU' to another, the recipient replies with "hate is a strong word." And that makes me want to say, "well, love is a strong word too, and people seem to have no problem throwing that around. Except for me and this dude writing a letter to Geri apparently.

wham bam, thank you ma'm.

WHAM. BAM. I'm done with my make-up posts, on account of how I was so behind. Did you see them? They were pretty dang long. I should get extra credit for rambling on like that-- I was on fire. Still got to post for this week... but whatevskies, I'll do it in school.

Hedwig

THE POST FOR THE 2ND WEEK OF THE NEW 2ND QUARTER:


Incest.

I've started this book called Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma, and the central conflict/problemo of the novel is incest. Such a touchy subject.

Let me share a little bit about myself, before I start my rant about the unethicalness and icky-ness of romantic sibling love:
I am an only child.It's just me, my anal-retentive and authoritarian/authoritative parents (they've toned down over the years), and my slug of a dog. My closest relatives live in Michigan, the next closest in California, and the next in Guam, which is half-way around the world. Therefore, I have ABSOLUTELY no idea what it is like to . . . . .[they all have to do with the book, and the troubles of the main characters]:

1. share, a bed, or a room, or food, or chores (I do them all myself, unfortunately)
2. be independent, as an only child, my parents smother me with . . . not affection, but they watch my every move. They suffocate me with overprotection.
3.  take care of others, other than myself

BACK TO THE POINT: The main characters, Lochan and Maya, have had eachother for as long as they can remember, they're always surrounded by their siblings, and unlike my parents, their mother can barely call herself one. SO, I cannot readily socialize myself with them and their forbidden love. In all actuality, their love is not that surprising. In their family of six (two little brothers, one little sister, Maya, Lochan, mother) Lochan and Maya play the father and mother, respectively, because their real mother, for all intents and purposes, is a deadbeat. Their father left when they were young, to marry some younger woman and move to Australia, leaving Lochan and Maya to cope on their own with the loss of a parent, the loss of a good mother, and various other inhibitions in life.

Mothers and fathers are romantic interests of each other, therefore, Lochan and Maya begin to see each other as such. They rely on each other through thick and thin, and with all the frustrations of high school and raising a young family, they find that the only people they can turn to in times of need are each other.

Lochan falls first. He notices her beauty-- he has all his life, but while practicing dance steps with Maya one afternoon, he suddenly realizes that he is physically attracted to her, as well as emotionally-- for she is the only one in his life who knows his true self.

He doesn't talk in school because he is abnormally shy. It seems almost like a phobia of sorts, of talking or interacting with anyone other than his family. But APPARENTLY Lochan is a sex god, with black hair and green eyes, and allll of the girls in his high school are in love with him, despite his antisocial tendencies.

Maya herself, is his opposite. She is the goddess to his sex god-- and all the little high school boys have noticed.

I feel like this is one of those typical teenage romances that I always see on bookshelves, the kind that I read in middle school, before I actually knew what literature was. The kind that tries to replicate the atmosphere of high school in writing, and it's usually done supremely inaccurately. I mean, not EVERYONE is highly gifted in the looks department, and it's just such a weird coincidence that the two main characters (the most troubled, as well) are practically the best lookin' guy and gal in the world apparently. Books like this always include things like that-- the main character being inexorably gorgeous, with her beautiful manly counterpart. Huh. Susssspicious.

But then again, I've never read a book that centered around incest before, so at least it has that unique aspect going for it.

IF I WERE THEM, I would have given up already. I mean, I've never been in a serious relationship, but I can't imagine attempting to tough it out with my so-called brother.

1. Numero uno, NO ONE WILL EVER ACCEPT THEM. There's a reason it's illegal. I mean, I think I can handle those people who live in remote villages in the mountains, who marry their cousins.... but there is a huge gap between cousins and siblings. It's just tooooo close. I'm hoping in this book, that they don't, uh, consummate their relationship, because that might put me off my porridge. What is that phrase again? Idk. But I'm voting for abstinence, because, really, what is there to gain by taking their relationship a bit further? It can only go downhill from the point that they realized their love-- and I don't know if there's a way to build up their brotherly and sisterly relationship after they deal with this little "problem." From the looks of the back cover, it seems like Maya and Lochan are going to try to make it work, as in pursue the relationship.... which is not likely. They will never be accepted, the end. And I doubt they're going to go into hiding just to continue their relationship.
2. Another numero uno, which goes along with the above: BABIES ARE HIDEOUSLY DEFORMED WHEN THEY ARE PRODUCTS OF INCEST. Man, I really really hope they don't do it. Blech.

I understand that they are in love, I understand that they have found the one true person who will always accept them for who they are, and already  has. I understand. But at the same time, I would've totally given up. In fact, at the first sign of attraction, I would've run in the opposite direction. It's illegal. It just can't happen.

I know this book is going to end sadly. 'Cause it's not like they can just live happily ever after.

They're gonna have to get over it. Somehow.

Crookshanks.

Did you see it? That spectacularly loooong almost-essay that I wrote for the last post? Yeah. I'm on fire.

This is the CURRENTLY FOR LAST WEEK.

Pages last week:160
Pages this semester:290

Am reading The Words of Every Song by Liz Moore
and Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma

and OMG. I'm going to immerse my self in The Art of War by Sun Tzu, fairly soon.

Sentences of the last weeksie:

And here's Siobhan: in love with a dead man with desperate eyes, a man she's never met, a man she bled for twice.

It's about Kurt Cobain. Yes, I fall in love with singers and lyricists as well. Probably why it's one of my SoW's.

Now Theo is here, oblivious, standing on Tenth Avenue with his green messenger bag, falling in love with a woman he never really knew anyway. He will not know the pain of that until it is a memory, distant and hallowed, until it is a dream.

Leila, in the elevator, is dreaming of the first concert she veer saw. She was in the second-to-last row. She was fifteen. Tom, in the lights onstage, had looked like an angel.


All from The Words of Every Song by Liz Moore.