cyndork: literature

Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts

town of cats from tokkio on 8tracks Radio.

I recently finished 1Q84 the other day. I started it last year and a year later I finally finished it. I did it! I reached the next milestone of my life - it seems. Personally, 1Q84 is so far one of my favourites. I personally even liked it more than the Wind Up Bird Chronicle which was my favourite novel of Murakami's.

1Q84 was such a roller coaster ride and I'm glad I continued reading it until the very end as I loved the ending so much. I loved the way it is written from the perspective (third person) of Aomame and Tengo and how both worlds slowly collide with each other until you see the same thing from different perspectives. It's such a clever way to write the novel. The more I think about it, the more I fall in love with the whole story. It tackles so many themes and gives new insight into the world surrounding us. I love it so much. I can't wait to dive into Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage!

Blogged about the novel here. Review is down below - click here

I had the utmost pleasure of seeing an advanced screening of 'The Fault in Our Stars' yesterday as my friend won two tickets through a student competition. She had already watched it once and I was so excited and extremely overwhelmed that my friend chose me out of all of her 900 Facebook friends to go watch it with!

We got to the Belmont Reading Cinema by bus after uni at 5pm and decided to get popcorn. Then we decided to buy drinks as well but then there was a line already forming so I waited in line while my friend bought the drinks and by the time she got the drinks a line had formed from all the way to the outside of the building!!! We also had to give our phones to the crew as we weren't allowed to have any cameras/phones in the building but the two men with the metal detectors couldn't even detect the huge ass laptop and my small iPod we were carrying in our bags haha (Fake metal detectors)

The screen was huge and there were so many people. Luckily we got in early and grabbed great setas! These are the only two photos I have of yesterday as we weren't allowed photos inside the cinema.

This was the before and after photos of watching the film. Need I say more?

Now onto my short review (may include spoilers):

As it is drawing closer to the beginning of the very dreaded #wace exams, I have compiled a rather long list of books I must read before the end of the year. I will briefly summarise why I would read such a magnificent novel and why in such the novel intrigues me so (I'll do this later). I absolutely cannot wait until my exams are done. completed! FINISHED! so that I can devour my time with these books and enter into the realm of AMAZING GOODNESS or EVILNESS - either way, I will gladly accept.

My TOP 20 BOOKS TO-READ LIST

Looking for Alaska by John Green
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen
It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
Paper Towns by John Green
An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan
One Day by David Nicholls
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
1984 by George Orwell and Erich Fromm
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F.Scott Fitzgerald
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin
Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler
The Future of Us by Jay Asher
Wonder by R.J. Palacio
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

I finished the Fault in Our Stars a few weeks back but I haven't had the time to really blog about it until this week due to the mass amount of assessments we have before we officially finish year twelve (eek!)

I cannot exactly explain how I felt about finishing the novel. I mean, I think Tumblr kind of spoiled it for me and I borrowed the book to my friend who assumed that I had already read it; so she sort of ruined it for me as well. So, the ending wasn't really much of a surprise. However - it was.

It's a book about cancer, love, family, friends, growing up in a non wish-granting world. I cried, I have to admit (I think it was the second novel I've cried whilst reading). It was horribly sad and I felt really sad. I think perhaps because Augustus Waters was just an overall well-liked person and John Green made all the characters come true. Something which I still yet to achieve in my narrative writing.

The funny thing is, a few weeks before I had finished TFiOS, my step-grandmother passed away from cancer. I can't really say I was upset because I didn't know her that well to be honest and it's just so ironic how I can cry over this fictional character's fictional death and not even shed a single tear for a human being who I'm related to. I guess I can sort of relate to the whole cancer thing now, yes? It sort of helped me to understand because I guess I'm really afraid my immediate family will get cancer but I know God will protect us and even when the worst happens, we'll fight it through together as a family and support each other. Like Hazel and Augustus, I'll give them the best moments and memories in their life to remember.

“The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we’d done were less real and important than they had been hours before.”

— John Green, The Fault In Our Stars

“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.”

— Nick Caraway, The Great Gatsby

Remember when I posted that I had bought 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald? Well, I finished it last time (actually I finished it at 2 in the morning).

The 2012 The Great Gatsby is coming out in Summer 2013 and Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby with Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan. I actually, whilst reading it, didn't picture Leonardo or Carey as Jay and Daisy. Especially with Nick Carraway - did not picture Tobey Maguire at all! But when I saw the AMAZING trailer, I thought that they suited the characters well. I'm sure they can pull it off and everything - I absolutely adore the setting, the props and the clothes they have. Just beautiful!

I honestly thought, before I finished the novella, that 'The Great Gatsby' would be about this guy named Gatsby who was this wonderful business man who did some sort of illegal business to get to this high position. Mind you, but I actually saw the trailer first, and I'm not American - so the Curriculum council didn't tell us to read this as it doesn't apply to our country, which is really a shame as I would have loved to read 'The Great Gatsby' instead of 'Of Mice and Men' as we did last year. They're both great books by the way, I just love The Great Gatsby more because it has romance in it!

Anyways, I thought the novel would just be about Nick Carraway meeting Jay Gatsby and it's set in the Roaring Twenties and it tells us all about how life was back then. I thought that it would be about this mysterious businessman named Gatsby and how the government and police uncover his illegal drug/alcohol business underground and he gets arrested and stuff for it and he's damn rich and holds parties while selling his drugs to people at the party. It would also be about a Jay Gatsby affair with Daisy Buchanan and how they would end up together (sort of like the Titanic). I thought Jay Gatsby would be this rich fellow who was wise, charismatic and just everything a rich person would be like. That's what I thought it was all about.

Oh - how I was completely wrong and totally off the page (mind the pun)!! This novel made me cry at 2 in the morning! It made me so frustrated, sad, disgusted all at the same time. I couldn't even sleep after finishing it because I was so annoyed. I was so mad at all the characters and empathised for Jay Gatsby and everything was horrible. The novel was brilliant though - it just made you feel so many emotions after. I think I'll read it again tonight or tomorrow or whenever I have the time because I believe the first time you read a book - you receive some sort of magical special-ness and then the more you read it - the more you understand it.

I think I understand what the novel is trying to portray and I think I understand why it didn't get so famous internationally until after the Great Depression and after F. Scott Fitzgerald's death. During the 1920's - the American dream was the main thing. It was the thing to achieve; it was the dream of the Americans and everyone was trying to achieve it - even during the Great Depression. The dream took over their lives, it literally consumed the Americans and Fitzgerald understood the corruption of the dream but others didn't at the time until much later on. I honestly believe this is such a wonderful book and everyone should read it too! I find it fascinating after I read 'Of Mice and Men' and then 'The Great Gatsby' as it completely shows how quickly Americans went from having luxury to absolutely nothing. Completely two different centuries - the 1920's and the 1930's.

I found this link to a Great Gatsby game by the way haha:
The Great Gatsby Game

At 6 in the morning, I woke up, got dressed, ate and packed my bags to get ready for my Philosophy & Ethics excursion to the prestigious Hale School. We listened to two seminars by Juli Arliss who covered topics about religion, Plato, Aristotle and other stuff which I found pretty boring. We roamed around Hale School during lunch time, mind you, but Hale School is AMAZING. Why in the world didn't I get enrolled here? The buildings, the uniforms, the whole system, the cafeteria, the lockers - even the GRASS is all so perfect and ugh, why?

I saw my church friend, Francis, as he goes to Hale - he spotted me first even though I was the one looking for him. It was really weird because as our chaperones guided us to the cafeteria or when we were roaming around during lunch time; everyone would look at us! Aha-ha-ha! But anyways, overall the day was so much fun and I enjoyed it a lot but I don't think I would have enjoyed it as much if it wasn't at Hale! :)

After school, me and my sister went to Whitfords and she bought The Great Gatsby and The Fault in Our Stars and also Regina Spektor's 'What we Saw from the Cheap Streets' 2012 album!!!!! I can't wait to read them. I've already read part of TFiOS in PDF but reading it on your laptop is never the same as holding it in your own hands and lying across the bed whilst reading it!