Book Recommendation- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

I think it is safe to say that I have a soft spot in my heart for immigrant fiction. Thats why I love this coming of age tale of a second generation American, Francie Nolan, who grows up in Brooklyn in the early 20th century. She reads a book a day- alphabetically. I wish I were so dedicated! And yes, like most fiction involving Irish-American immigrants, the family is poor and the father is an alcoholic. Despite those facts, Francie has a beautiful outlook on life, and I admire her for that. I also like this book a lot because the Irish and Brooklyn accents really do come out in the younger character's dialogs, which is really enjoyable. I would definitely recommend this book, and it is a pretty quick and easy read.

Author Spotlight: Joseph Conrad

This past semester I had to take a class that consisted of ALL Conrad, All the time. While I would not recommend it, I think this experience has given me a pretty valid opinion, so here goes. Also, for those of you that know that the enjoyability of a class is directly related to the personality of the teacher that instructs it, I would like to note that I LOVED this teacher. She was nice and understanding and I would have hated Conrad more had I not taken this class with her.

Here is the list of books I read for this semester:

Heart of Darkness (1899)
Lord Jim (1900)
Falk (1901)
Typhoon (1902)
The Mirror of the Sea (1904-1906)
The Secret Agent (1907)
Il Conde (1908)
The Secret Sharer (1909)
Victory (1915)

In my humble opinion, Conrad is one of the most boring, redundant, and dry authors I have ever come across. All of the books previously mentioned, with the exception of The Secret Agent take place at sea, on an island, ship, port, ect. There are generally some sort of tortured heroes, self-sacrificing women, and big storms. DO NOT read Mirror of the Sea. This is a collection of essays about sailing, the topics include: the importance of wind, the relationships between captains and crewmen, and the role an anchor plays on a ship. It put me to sleep every time I picked it up. If I had to recommend some Conrad, I would say that Victory was decent, and The Secret Agent was not unbearable. Hitchcock made a film about the later (Sabotage 1936). And lastly, for the record, Heart of Darkness is incredibly overrated.

stuff i want to read over christmas break

These are in Order

-I never had the time to finish it, so I'm going to reread it!
Hot Russian adultery at it's best

-I bought this because of that recomendation from JK Rowling and it has a cool first line:
"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink"
The narrator is a seventeen year old girl, living with her family in a castle, who wants to become a writer.
-Apparently this is really artsy fartsy, and critics say it reshapped American Literature. whatever, we will see.

I mean if you know me, I love The Catcher in the Rye. I mean I probably will name my kid Holden. And I have heard people say that this is even better. That's hard to consider but we will see!

Breaking Dawn- Book Review

Well. I purchased the book at 12:01 am on Friday and finished it at 4 pm on Sunday. Despite that, I was a little disappointed. The first book was a delicious guilty pleasure. The next two were enjoyable for sure. This one seemed a little cheap. I felt the same way about the last Harry Potter, but at least JK Rowling had some B list character's dying. I mean Hedwig, Mad Eye, one of the twins... all that was sad. Mrs. Weasley called Ms. Lestrang a bitch. Big fight scene. Everything was memorable. LITERALLY nothing too exciting happened in Breaking Dawn. Bella became a vampire like we all knew she would, she had sex with Edward, AND manages to get a baby out of it, which no one knew was possible. Even Jacob imprinted and Bella wont have to worry about not being able to be his friend anymore. A little cheesy if you ask me. Nothing was left out of order, and everyone got their happy ending. There was a huge battle that wasn't even fought, and the only character that died was one that I don't even remember from the previous three. All in all... I still read it in three days. I still enjoyed reading it... but I'm going to have to give it a B-. It just left a bad taste in my mouth as a wrap up to a series.

final remark: worth the read, but don't have super high hopes.

Anna Karenina, Part I

Part One is only about 1/7th of the book, which is divided into 4 parts.
Anna Karenina does not appear until over half way through Part One.

So far, Dolly is married to this man that has an affair with their children's governess. She finds it hard to forgive him, but when her husband brings his sister, Anna, to the house, the women talk about life and love, ect. and the couple eventually makes up. Dolly's younger sister, Kitty, is about at the age where Russian women get married, and since she is so pretty she's getting a lot of attention from several men. She loves a man named Vronsky, and he sees her as a close friend but not as a wife. A man named Levin, who is Dolly's husband's childhood friend, is in love with Kitty and proposes to her, but she turns him down in hopes that Vronsky will propose to her.

Anna and Kitty meet, and Kitty is fascinated by her, and becomes close with her very quickly. Near the end of Anna's stay, there is a ball, to which the whole town goes. Vronsky and Anna hit it off, and Kitty realizes that Vronsky is already in love with Anna, and Anna has feelings for him as well (though she is trying to supress them, since she has a husband and child at home).

Ashamed of how she hurt Kitty, Anna leaves the next day to go home to her estate. Vronsky follows her onto the train to the city he lives in (Petersburg, I think..) hoping that he will run into her and have the chance to be with her.

More later. I havent been reading as diligently as i would like.

favorite singer, favoirte book

Mindy White, of Lydia, one of my favorite bands, is as big of a nerd as me.




im very happy about this

Book Summary

I dont know about you, but I have a really hard time remembering what happened in a book about a year after reading it. Therefore, my blog is going to mainly be about book's and summarizing them...probably chapter by chapter. I'm mainly going to be doing this for me, and i will try to put up a big disclaimer so I wont give anything away if you wanted to read the book. yay!