I Wrote More Postcards Than Hooks, I Read More Maps Than Books...

College lets out in about a week, and after that I am in my hometown until mid-June, when I will be heading off to become a camp counselor on the East Coast. Until then, I am going to have buckets of time on my hands. In order to keep myself occupied, I have compiled a list of book that I need to read. it's a weird mix of "literature" and those feel-goods where the couple stays together in the end. Here it is:

A Clockwork Orange- Anthony Burgess

Back When You Were Easier to Love- Emily Wing Smith

The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To- DC Pierson

Bearded Women- Terrie Milbrodt

Dark Places- Gillian Flynn

Eleanor & Park- Rainbow Rowell

The Secret Lives of Gay Men-Ryan O'Connell

Bonfires- Alexander Helmke
The New Age Camp- Chloe Caldwell

Gates of Paradise- Melissa De La Cruz
Lunch In Paris- Elizabeth Band

Just One Day- Gayle Forman

Less Than Zero- Bret Easton

Love and Other Perishable Items- Kerry Winfrey

On The Road-Jack Kerouac

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest- Ken Kesey

The Glass Castle- Jeanette Walls

Easy- Tammara Webber

Hopeless- Colleen Hoover,
 The Sea of Tranquility-  Katja Millay
The Coincidence of Callie and Hayden-Jessica Sorensen.
Lola and the Boy Next Door- Stephanie Perkins
Isla and the Happily Ever After- Stephanie Perkins
Small Damages-Beth Kephart
Twice Told: Original Stories Inspired by Original Artwork- Scott Hunt

Struck By Lightning-Chris Colfer

The Dice Man- Luke Rhinehart
The Future of Us- Jay Asher

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test- Tom Wolfe

The Realm of Possibility- David Levithan
Love is the Higher Law- David Levithan
I Wrote This For You

The Tragedy Papers- Elizabeth Liben

Slaughterhouse 5- Kurt Vonnegut
Choke-Chuck Palahniuk
Franny and Zooey-J.D. Salinger

Apparently Classic Novel Apparel is Becoming a Thing

I am definitely not complaining.

Shel Silverstein

As someone who enjoys reading ( as you can most likely tell from the amount of books I talk about), I like to pretend that I read everything, no discrimination, equal opportunity literature enthusiast. But that really isn't the case.

One genre that I continually avoid is children's books. I associate them with small children, something that I am not, and avoid them like the ten page paper I should be working on right now. However, there are many things to be learned from children's literature. Today, I have pulled from Shel Silverstein, whose poems are extraordinarily deep yet simple at the same time. Take a look.

 

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

     As you can probably guess by the title of this post, I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind today. I have had this movie in my Netflix queue for forever, but due to my short attention span, I hadn't watched it until now (I am not really a huge movie person).

     I was a little wary of the cast line up, since I am used to seeing Jim Carey as more a a comedy actor, and a lot of the actors are familiar faces (something that weirds me out since I see them as the actor and less as the character). However, the movie was amazing. Everything was beautifully done, and all of the back stories came together in such a stunning way (especially Kirsten Dunst's plotline, did not see that one coming).

     Basically, Clementine and Joel (Kate Winslet and Jim Carey) start the film broken up and hating each other, to the point where they were both using a memory-eraser in order to forget about each other. But as the memory-eraser-people erase Joel's memories, forcing him to relive them (while they get shwasted and high), he ends up wanting Clementine back. Crazy stuff.

It's an interesting concept, forgetting someone that broke your heart in any way, one that I am sure most of us (myself included) have though about at some point or another.

My English teacher in high school said that all forms of literary expression (books, movies, etc.) have two purposes: two inform, and entertain. Too often, movies only entertain. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind does both. It made me think.

My second favorite scene barely lasts five seconds, but it involves this little old lady having memories of her dead husband removed. She is bawling, and my heart breaks for her. partly because she reminds me of my Oma (after my Opa died), and partly because it's an intense scene.

     The ending was by far the the part of this movie that made it the amazing picture that it is to me. When couples are broken up in most movies, they will be happily reunited like nothing happened, even if their problems aren't actually solved. Without spoiling the ending for you guys, this doesn't happen, making this piece a lot more honest.



If you could forget someone who broke your heart, even if they were a huge part of your life, would you?

Where Things Come Back

I swear, I am not a speed reader. I just queued the previous book post.

     Anyway. Where Things Come Back (by John Corey Whaley) was something else. It was crazy and amazing and one of those books where you need to exhale afterwards. 

At first, it just seems like it's going to be one of those books where the cynical average boy (Cullen Witter, in this particular case) grows up and dates the beautiful popular girl. Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Completely wrong.

It's so difficult to even explain this book, due to the crazy amount of sub plots that go on.

Some oldish guy named John Barling thinks that the "Lazarus" woodpecker (oh the symbolic irony in that name) isn't extinct, and riles up the town.

Cullen's brother, Gabriel, goes missing/runs away/you'll-have-to-read-the-book-to-find-out, and the town cares more about the woodpecker.

Benton Sage has the most crazy sad religious parents and the heavy realization that he has failed at being a missionary.

Cabot Searcy is something else, something that I cannot tell you guys without giving away the story.

And the best part is, it all comes together in the best way for the ending. The ending is so ridiculously satisfying and makes the entire book (I hate unsatisfying endings).

And at first you may be like, "well, that doesn't sound very interesting". But it is, it really is, it's just super difficult to describe. This is the book that our high school teachers should have had us read instead of Fill in this blank with a book you hate (The Scarlet Letter, etc.)

Read it. Read it. Read it. Your life will be better, or something.

Life Comes Together in the Strangest Ways

     So, due to my excessive amount of stress over my upcoming camp interviews, resident adviser interview results, school work, and just regular happenstances, I have not been the most jolly person to be around. Everything has been irking me, especially my classes, which seemed to have no tie-in to my future career as a high school English teacher/ therapeutic-hiker-camp-counselor-Peace-Corps-person-thing.

     Also, due to my easily annoyed demeanor, I keep arguing with one of my roommates, which is a super bad outlet for my stress. Last night, we were discussing whether or not teachers should have to learn Spanish (since one of my goals in life is to move to Arizona). After being woe-is-every-culture/race-that-isn't- WASP-ed to death in my Intercultural Communications class, I was not in the mood to hear it again ,especially when it wasn't for a grade. So we got into it, until one of my other roommates distracted us.

     Unfortunately for me, in my Queer Literature Studies class we are currently reading Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldua, half of which is...wait for it...EN ESPAñOL. Lovely. Karma definitely exists in the world.

     I learned my lesson. Chicano culture has been around for a long long time. In fact, they could be considered Native Americans (if we were looking at North America as a whole). Intriguing stuff. Plus, maybe it's the English teacher in me, but hearing about their struggles in literature form puts them in a new and more poignant light. Here's an excerpt from our reading. Sorry that it's different sizes, that's what I get for screen shot-ing the poem from a PDF.

Just some literature for thought.