After that brief hiatus, I'm back!

I'm great at starting all sorts of projects: knitting, NaNoWriMo, exercise routines, blogs; but I always seem to fall victim to ever-present laziness, hovering like an overcast sky promising rain, that seems to affect my generation (or most of Western society? ...or just me?). With my summer job, I am able to devote at least 1.5 hours a day to reading whatever strikes my fancy, and I, once again, have the urge to attempt to record some of my reactions.

So, faithful reader, enjoy the small words of wisdom and guidance I have to offer, as I devote some time to The Celibate Life (as I avoid cleaning the house and working on a game I started a few weeks ago).

A book that's all about architecture, but not really.

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. So, I've been trying to write about this book for the past two weeks and I have found myself to be completely unable to make sense. Just read it.

"Where is my mind? Where is my mind? Where is my mind?"

I asked my mom to pick something up for me at the library, but they didn't have it and she brought me this instead. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane was recently turned made into a film by Scorsese, which is probably when my mom and dad both originally read it. It follows Atonement and Guernsey... pretty well, being that this book follows those chronologically and takes place in the mid-1950s. In the novel, we follow Teddy Daniels, a U.S. Marshall, going to an island of criminally insane patients to find one of them who has disappeared. It's not a horror novel, but definitely creepy and when I finished I was extremely unsettled. My favorite part of the novel was the intense dreams that Teddy has while on the island. In many movies or books when dreams are shown, they often follow a far more logical and sensible path than real dreams do, with the dreamer being too lucid and reflective within the dream. I enjoyed the experience of many of Lehane's dream sequences. I think he captured how, most of the time, the dreamer follows whatever they encounter without being able to instantly realize that the events occurring completely defy reality. Dream Teddy doesn't find anything wrong with any of the violent, sexual, or just plain bizarre things that he encounters in his dreams, until after he wakes up.

As things get stranger on the island, the big question of the book becomes whether or not Teddy is (going) insane. He has clearly been through a lot, WWII and the death of his wife, but that does not instantly point to insanity. Mental instability? Of course. Full-time resident of crazy town? Not necessarily. Teddy believes that his wife's killer, Andrew Laedis, is a patient on the island and becomes convinced that that the doctors are conducting illegal experiments on the patients.

SPOILER! Eventually, Teddy finds out that they are planning on turning him into the next patient. Teddy meets an ex-doctor hiding in the side of a cliff, while on the run on the island, who told him that he had been receiving drugs since his arrival that were causing him to go a little nutty, which would explain his strange feelings and experiences. When he finally confronts the big doctor, after failing to escape the island, it is revealed that Teddy has actually been a patient here after murdering his wife, and that the past few days were an elaborate act to try to get "Andrew" to remember and accept everything. Him slipping into craziness is "Andrew's" extreme psychosis, or something, acting up. Throughout the book, you can find evidence supporting each of the sides, so which is it? While initially I just thought that he was bonkers, I am now on the side of Teddy being drugged. I think that it's easier to fight the evidence against Teddy on this side, because you can blame most of it on his mind slipping from a heavy drugging. There are a few events that I don't think make sense for the Teddy is coo coo crazy argument. The biggest one being that during an interview that is obviously being watched and was heavily rehearsed, the interviewee scribbles "RUN" on Teddy's notebook when his partner, who is actually a doctor on the island, leaves the table. Why would you want to help a dangerously insane person escape into society? But you really can argue for both sides. I'm just more apt to blame "the man". END.

I zoomed through this book because I was dying to know what happened. If you enjoy thrillers or mysteries, this is a good read. I'm sure it would be a great second read, where you could make lists of the evidence of both sides and you could catch all sorts of new things to support or refute aspects of your argument. What? You mean, this isn't something that regular people do? Oh, bummer.

"Previously on Alan Wake:..."

A few weeks ago, my brother came home with this game on a Thursday evening and said that he was borrowing it from a friend until Sunday and that I had to beat it within that time frame. I succeeded. Alan Wake is the name of the game. The game tells the story of horror writer Alan Wake whose wife goes missing on their vacation. The game is played out like a television mini series. It's divided into six episodes. At the end of each section the screen will say "END OF EPISODE X" and a song will play, much like the credits of a tv show. Then at the beginning of the next section, a voiceover announces, "Previously on Alan Wake:..." and a series of clips is shown. In the game you use a combination of light and guns to dispatch of your enemies, townsfolk who have been taken over by "the darkness." There are many entertaining characters that you meet throughout the game, and some of the funniest moments come from the radio and tv shows that you can listen to and watch within in the game. The beginning of the game was the scariest part for me. Until you become accustomed to people running out of the night at you, you will go through the game being quite unsettled. There are many side areas and secrets to explore, but I spent most of the first couple of chapters running through the areas as quickly as I could constantly spinning the camera around to try to watch all of my sides. The plot is a story that you've seen before, but because it is told in such a fresh way, it's okay. Overall, a fun game that doesn't require too much of a time commitment to get through.

Let's write letters again, yeah?

I really need to catch up to what I'm reading right now. I finished this book two weeks ago and it's hard to remember what my instant reaction to it was. Anyway, my mom gave this to me to read. It was her book club's selection for May. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows is an epistolary novel set just after the end of World War II. The main character is a writer named Juliet who had a popular column for a British newspaper during the war and is now trying to a write a new book. By chance she comes into contact with a man from one of the islands in the English Channel, Guernsey, that had been occupied by Germany. Through letters she corresponds with various people on the island before she decides that she wants to write a book about their experiences and travels there herself. Epistolary novels are so fascinating. The entire story is made up of letters between Juliet and the residents of Guernsey, her editor, close friend, boyfriend and few random others. Sometimes the letters are between some of the minor characters. Occasionally telegraphs are used and at the end there is a journal from one of the islanders. Juliet, the little minx, has three men in her life: the man she starts dating shortly after the beginning of the book, her editor, the older brother of her best friend, and the man from Guernsey who wrote her the letter. I liked her editor, Sidney, and I thought that he was hopelessly in love with the fickle Juliet. And then you find out that he is gay and that Juliet has known for a long time about two/thirds of the way into the book. The guy she starts dating at the beginning is such a skeezeball that really anyone else she meets could be a better match for her, like the Guernsey man. The book has a large cast of entertaining characters. The flighty Isola was one of my favorites. While it is very humorous, it also deals with some serious things when talking about the war. Concentration camps always makes me want to cry and scream and never go outside again. Words cannot describe how completely fucked that was. Anyway, this was overall a rather enjoyable book. The ending leaves you feeling very at ease, unlike a certain other book somewhere below.

A sad note about the authors: Mary Ann Shaffer is the aunt of Annie Barrows. It is my understanding that most of the novel was written by Shaffer until poor health caused her to go to her niece to help her finish... and then she died. This was her only novel. How much would that blow to have spent so much time working on this piece and then not live to be able to see it in its finished form? I guess that the beauty of creating art is that you live on forever though it. Maybe one day after I'm gone someone will publish the MySpace blog I had my junior and senior years of high school. I aspire to spend eternity remembered as a whiny, pathetic little asshat.

Vampires are the new black.

In the main lobby of my dorm room there were all these bins to recycle and donate things at the end of the school year. One small bin was full of books. I looked through it in hopes of finding a freebie of something that looked interesting. They were all crap. I, of course, still managed to walk away with something: The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening by L.J. Smith. I didn't really have any expectations for it. All I knew about it was that it had been turned into a somewhat popular television show. This was published in 1991 and I can guarantee that Stephanie Meyer has read this book. The vampire hottie is the frigid Stefan who lives off of animals and avoids the beautiful Elena like the plague because of how attracted to her he secretly is. Not that I'm saying this formula (without the vampires) hasn't been used many times before Smith, but these specifics certainly do bear a resemblance to the beginning of Twilight. The main character, Elena, is about as likable as Bella, but for different reasons. While Bella has absolutely no self worth or personality, Elena is a typically shallow, pretty, popular girl. Initially her main goal in dating Stefan is just that she thinks she is entitled to any attractive boy that she sees because of her good looks and charm. I don't need to put any kind of plot summary for this book, because I promise that you know what happens. I guess that this kind of book could be appealing to someone young and new to the genre, but I get tired of reading books that I've pretty much already read. It's hard to create anything that is completely original, but no matter how typical the basic plot of a story is, it can always be turned into something great if it's told in a unique way or has characters that are fully developed and interesting.

I ask too much of the world.

Little girl fucks shit up.

Atonement by Ian McEwan. Oh man. This is an amazing book. One of the best things that I've read in a very long time. This novel is divided into four different parts. The main character is a woman named Briony who is thirteen in the first part, a young adult in the second and third parts and and elderly woman in the last part. The other important characters are Briony's family, particularly her sister, Cecilia, and their old gardener's son, Robbie, who becomes Cecilia's love interest. The first part takes place on one day in the summer and shifts perspectives between the various people involved in what would become the defining event of the rest of their lives. The second part is Robbie's experience retreating out of France. The third section shows Briony becoming a nurse during the war and the short last section is about Briony when she's old and had been diagnosed with a fatal disease. Briony convinces herself that Robbie is a sexual deviant and wrongly accuses him of being the rapist who attacked her cousin on that summer day. Robbie then goes to jail and is unable to continue the medical profession he was originally pursuing. He becomes a soldier during World War II. Cecilia breaks off all ties with her family and becomes a nurse. Briony also decides to become one after she begins to realize just what she did.

The beginning is my favorite part of the book. My mom is reading this right now and she is having trouble getting past it. There isn't too much that happens in the first hundred pages, but McEwan does an excellent job with the various characters' narrations. He perfectly captures the mind of the innocent adolescent. I think that some of the best lines in the book are the thoughts of the thirteen year old Briony. Her thoughts are uncensored and he really taps into the complete selfishness of children, how entitled she feels she is to everything. She is such a great character, but I completely hate her at the same time. This book was pretty rough in the emotional sense. A great source of tension was from how vested I became in Robbie's survival. I felt like I was holding my breath for most of part the third part after not knowing if he was able to successfully escape France. When Briony finally visits Cecilia and I saw that Robbie was safely with her, I let out a giant sigh of relief and found myself smiling through that entire scene. While Briony isn't forgiven by her sister and Robbie, she is forgiven by the reader (at least a little bit!) after you know that Robbie and Cecilia are still able to be together. If you don't know how it ends, stop reading now.
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Then comes the final section of the book. Actually it's more like the last three pages. It starts out fine. Briony talks about her life and how she became writer and married. Eventually we get to her birthday party, where Cecilia and Robbie are not in attendance. I was thinking, "Did they never forgive her? That's kind of sad... Or did they already die from old age? That would be okay..." Neither of which provides the real reason behind it. We reach the last three pages and get the real answer. Robbie died a few hours before the troops were rescued from his infected wounds. Cecilia was killed a few months later from a bomb... Parts one through three were the final version of Briony's latest book, where she wanted to give them the relationship they were never allowed to have. WHAT THE FUCK!? How did this bitch live with herself all those years!? Her being a fucking ridiculous little bitch completely destroyed the lives of everyone around her. Damn it! This does not fix it, this does not make it okay! How could you even think that it comes anywhere close to doing so!? GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! When I finished this book I sat in my bed for a long time just thinking about how absolutely horrid these characters' lives were and yet how completely beautiful this book was.
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You may continue now. Anyway, if you enjoy not wanting to kill yourself quit reading after the end of part three. I know that that lessens its artistic merit, or something, but I promise that you'll still have some hope in humanity if you stop where I told you to. However, if you're like me and that's already gone, then go ahead and finish the book and revel in the complete wretchedness that is life.