Honors Book Review: The Beautiful and the Damned

Honors Book Review: Bread Givers

Last week was a roller coaster of "up's" and "down's". My first up started on Monday when I figured out how I can make some code that I'm working on more compact and more likely to succeed. It was followed by the down of me learning that over One World Week, I wouldn't be able to work on the robot that I've been coding as I had planned. A later up happened on Friday when I got a good laugh out of the TAP Poetry session, but was followed by a down when I realized that since I shared all of my poems, I have nothing original to read at the class reading. On Saturday, there was a tractor accident that occurred on the way to the robotics competition in LA that I was going to. The traffic practically came to a stop as 5 lanes had to merge into 1. The two hour car ride turned into a 5 hour car ride and we were a bit late to the competition. On the upside, this gave me time to finish Bread Givers.

Bread Givers was an interesting read, and while I was getting bored of the whole poverty thing since this has been the third book about poverty in a row that I have read, I give it props. The book seemed to be tied up a bit nicer than in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn or Angela's Ashes, but it wasn't tied too nicely. It kept some ends open to leave to the reader's imagination, but it also ended on a somewhat happy note with the main character, Sara, marrying the man that she wants to marry, and her father becoming accepting of her marriage in spite of his past disapproval of it.

There were a lot of themes that I have seen that happen in Angela's Ashes and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn that connected to this book such as coming of age, children becoming responsible and taking care of the family, and fathers impeding the progress of the family.

Of all the parts of the book, there was one quote that stood out to me for some strange reason:

"Like a drowning person clinging to a rope, my tired body edged up to that door and clung to it. My hands clutched the knob. This door was life. It was air. The bottom starting-point of becoming a person. I simply must have this room with the shut door. And I must make this woman rent it to me. If I failed to get it, I'd drop dead at her feet."

This was the turning point of the book, so it makes some sense as to why I remembered it so well, but it goes quite a bit deeper than that. It was one of the first times I was able to understand the deeper meaning of  a quote the first time I read it. As if it all made perfect sense and the meaning of it was written in the next paragraph. When she says that the door is life, she is referring to her new life - the one she wants to start. When she says that the door was air, she was referring to a space for herself. A space where she can breathe without a family member telling her how she should live her life. At the surface level, this door was a place for her to study and start living a happier life, but underneath the surface, the door was a way for her to discover herself outside of what her parents forced her to be.

In the end of the book, when her father accepts the new her and her new lifestyle (far different than the person he wanted to raise her to become), it does tie up the story in a nice bow, but there were still many unfortunate problems like her sisters whom were all unhappy with their lives and marriages and of course the passing of her mother. I think that if you like happy endings, then this book is for you. If you don't like happy endings, I still think you will find satisfaction in this book. It was very well written and in spite of my fatigue towards the topic of poverty in the 1920's, I still would give this book a 4.5/5 rating.

New York City - 1920: An image expidition

Honors book review: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

"Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber, as a word, was better."

Those were the first three sentences of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Having not known what either Serene or Somber meant, I had a feeling that this book was going to be a difficult read.

I found it to be very similar to Angela's Ashes in many ways and thought it was kind of interesting to read both of them at the same time. In both books, the main characters belong to catholic families that are poor, although I would argue that Frank's family (from Angela's Ashes) is considerably worse off than Francie's (from a Tree Grows in Brooklyn). Both books are about Irish families, although Frank's family left America for Ireland while Francie's family left Ireland two generations prior for America, and haven't left since. The fathers of both families have drinking problems, sing songs, and generally have a lack of a job; although the details on the drinking problem are heavier and more frequent in Angela's Ashes than in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

I thought it was interesting that in Limerick, people from northern Ireland were commonly discriminated against and people from America were called "Yanks" while in America, the same was true towards the Irish. Irish people were called "Potato Poachers" in America. Consumption was also a big deal in New York during the early 1900's apparently, as it was also something that occurred frequently in the book. In both books, the family moved due to the mother not wanting to remember/deal with/look back upon past events. In Angela's ashes, these events are deaths of family members. In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, this event is Johnny's drinking problem.

Similarities aside, I really enjoyed how the ending of the book tied back to the beginning where Florry Wendy, who was 10 years old, was watching Francie from the fire escape, just like Francie would watch others from the fire escape when she was 11.

When I read the first two sentences from this book, I guessed that it was going to be a hard read and therefore, most likely, a boring read. I couldn't have been more wrong. I guess that really puts the saying "don't judge a book by it's cover" into perspective.

All in all, I enjoyed this book a lot. Perhaps it was because I could compare it to Angela's Ashes as I read it. Or perhaps it had the realism of a biography, while having the symbolism and feel that generally only comes with fictional stories. Nonetheless, I would give this book a rating of 4 out of 5 stars. I enjoyed it a lot.

Honors Assignment: Map of New York City in 1920's

Here is a map that I found that cover most of New York City in the 1920's (Fun fact: New York City is the world's largest city in terms of land area at 8,683 square kilometers).

The map was rather easy to find. I remembered copying down a map of Long Island in Randy's class as it would have been in the 1920's based on The Great Gatsby, but after searching for an hour and a half, I couldn't find it. So this map will replace the map that I failed to find.

• Edith Wharton lived in Manhattan (see just to the right of the compass in the map).
• F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in Long Island for most of his life (Closer to the middle of the right edge of the map)
• Claude McKay lived in Manhattan (Only found one source stating this. The others just said New York, which could mean the metropolis or the state.)

CPR Post Reading Blog: Book #1 - To Kill a Mockingbird

When I asked people about To Kill a Mockingbird, most, if not all of them told me that it was about a court case. Naturally, I imagined other court case stories that I have seen as movies (I don't read much) such as A Few Good Men or My Cousin Vinny. This made the book to be quite a big surprise for me and after reading it, I wouldn't describe To Kill a Mockingbird as a story about a court case at all. I would consider describing the story as "being about a court case" the equivalent of putting a clown mask over a man's face and saying his face is that of a clown. It just simply isn't so.

After reading the first 50 pages of To Kill a Mockingbird, I was confused. I still hadn't seen a court case in the book. All I had seen was this little girl named scout and what would be a day in the life during her younger years. This did not, however, discourage me from reading the book. I hadn't found it that enjoyable to read at that time, but I kept reading anyways in the hopes that I hadn't just wasted 50 pages of my life.

I kept reading on and over time came to enjoy the book. It pointed out some things to me which helped me discover what the book was about as a whole. In my opinion, To Kill a Mockingbird isn't about a court case. It's a coming-of-age story about a little girl and the important life lessons she learned while growing up. I believe those lessons to be:

1. Don't take advantage of someone who cannot defend themselves or has done no harm to you. This lesson is mentioned multiple times and is brought up near the beginning of the book in the words: "Remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird."
2. Try to see the situation from somone else's perspective. This is something that Scout Finch doesn't grasp until much later in the book.
3. Don't give up even if you know you will lose. This is shown throughout the court case that happens in the second half of the book. This is a concept that even I have trouble grasping, but believe that I understand a bit better from this book.

Overall, I found the book to be very interesting by the end. The lessons that I took away from the book also gave it more value to me than something purely for entertainment purposes. I would rate the book with a 3.5 out of 5 star rating, mostly because I simply wasn't interested in the book until later on when all the small things started to come together like a french braid. While the slow beginning helped to make the ending and the lessons more memorable for me, it still didn't make up for the fact that I didn't enjoy reading it until I got farther in.

Soundblog Post 6