meh, didnt save other post, what did i do? i rewrote this first on my and post and i can't get my old post back!

                    So I've recently began a new book called Motherless Brooklyn. It makes me crack up in the middle of project real, but also rub my temples with aggravation. For those who read the book, Minna, the main characters (Lionel’s') boss didn't really make much of an impression on me. I did not feel any sympathy when Minna died; I do really like Lionel the main character though. He seems like a cool person and all. I feel like, as I get deeper into the book I will start to grow closer to him and become a little more attached. One very interesting thing that I especially loved about this book is that it takes place in Brooklyn. As Lionel describes his childhood, places in Brooklyn he sees, schools and people he knows, it becomes easier for me to relate to him. Parts of the story practically take place in my backyard. One thing I really like about this is that it gives me a different perspective on Brooklyn, this story seems to be more about gangs, violence, secret meetings, (I’m really not too sure yet) this is a part of Brooklyn I don't really know too much about so it's interesting for me to read about that. Another reason I like that this book takes place in Brooklyn is because I find it interesting to read about one-person memories in a place that I also share memories at. For example, when Lionel talks about the Brooklyn Bridge and that area, my mind just jumps to memories of hanging around the promenade and the people I know who live there. It makes me sort of nostalgic but I guess it also brings me closer to the book.

Rereads

             I've been rereading one of my favorite books Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I don't think I've ever really understood why it was called this, but hopefully rereading will help me figure that out.
Basically this book is about an autistic boy named Oscar (8 years old) whose father (who he was very, very close with) dies in 9/11. In this book, Oscar becomes a true friend and you laugh and cry at the awkward, interesting situations that he gets into. As the reader, you feel painfully uncomfortable in situations where Oscar seems unfazed, maybe a little curious but completely oblivious to how uncomfortable he makes people around him feel. Reading this the first time i didn't notice most of these situations because I became really comfortable with Oscars' voice and his personality. Reading this the first time, lots of little sentences went straight over my head. Reading this the second time i realize how important the little sentences were. they were like little tinny moments that only Oscar knows about because he wrights this in past enc where he knows everything that has already happened. for example Oscar says "I thought about that the second time when the renter and I were digging up his grave." I found this really interesting because this was said at the beginning of the book where the renter hasn't even been mentioned. I feel almost as if this book was meant to be reread. that now rereading it i feel so overwhelmed by how much the end is for shadowed. knowing the end gives a certain suspense to it. Kind of like dramatic irony, -which I know about- from Romeo and Juliet. Also, reading it the first time, i never knew what the last picture in the book was. I flipped to it a thousand times, but the last time i flipped to it, when i had finally finished the book, I'm not ashamed to say, I cried.


                  the first time I read this book, I really loved how close I felt with Oscar, but at the same time I saw how distant he was from everybody and how he doesn't exactly understand basic, normal things society latently just does. I felt that I could never feel close to Oscar because he didn't want to be close to anyone. (Except his father.) However; at the same time I wanted to melt in front of him and just cry with him. It felt so frustrating, and i think that this is exactly how his grandmother feels, and his mother but i don't think she as vigilant with him as his grandmother was.

Cuckoo

            For a while, I've really just been bouncing around between books. While beginning to read One Flew Over The Cuckoo's nest by Jack Nicholson, i got caught in his casual, sophisticated way of reading everything going on in the main characters head. i found it really interesting to read something threw a persons mind who doesn't talk. It kind of reminded me of the book speak. I love that book. So, well,  I don't exactly know too much about what is going on in the book (ie) where the characters are, who the characters are, what is their purpose. All i really know so far is that there  is the nurse, the bad scary machines that shave your face for you, a group of dark skinned boys, and the main character. (the man that doesn't talk) Of what I've read, i feel like this man is very educated and feels like he doesn't belong where he is. (some sort of mental institute on my guess... and i just feel like the imagery and sound are really just sort of burned into my mind with all the hate that goes on in the book so far. it's sort of a dark book and it's scary... I'm really exited to get further into this book. But I'm also caught between finishing Franny And Zooey and re-reading the extremely loud and incredibly close. 

               at first glance Franny Glass is the perfectly average rich college boy's girlfriend. At first page, Lane seems to be able to fit in to his high class world, but is somewhat distant. "lane Coutell, in a Burberry raincoat that apparently had a wool liner buttoned into it, was one of six or seven boys out on the open platform. or rather, he was and he wasn't one of them. For ten minutes or more, he had deliberately been standing just out of conversation..." begins the second paragraph of the first page of this book. i wounder if this means something about Lane. is he not like the others, what is he missing, what keeps him from chatting with his group? As I  read further and further into this book, i discovered that it wasn't Lane who was different, but Franny. She, the perfect girlfriend, the perfect look, and proper education and cover, had thoughts that most people around her did not seem to be having. this character takes a different out look on life, and this book begins where she is somewhat confessing this to Lane, her boyfriend. Lane does not take this lightly, but that just makes him more like the rest of the world. this makes me question who he is if he isn't quite the rest of the world, doesn't just fall into his background but defends it when it is trialed. During this not so smooth dinner, Franny and Lane's relationship bounces from serene to unstable and the narrator implies that they are both questioning their relationship. So much was packed into these first couple of pages that i read. At the beginning of the week i a quarter of this book before realizing that i couldn't just be reading words on paper. it took me a while to finaly thoroughly analyze this wighting and go back and take in all these little things i didn't notice were happening before. i didn't catch a lot of these things partly because there is so much packed into so little in this book that most of it just runs by and i miss it. One last thing i would like to address with this book is how timeless it is. most of the key ideas that are thrust toward you while reading it are issues that the majority of people have today. It's just so relateable and real, that i don't think this book will get old. My hypothesis is that it will not be one of those books that you bring back to your English teacher's library amongst the rest of the books. it will be one of the ones you have to go to barns and nobles and buy for yourself so you can eternally keep it in your home. that's just a hypothesis though.

OVERBREAKREADING

             I am not ashamed to say that over break I read a four and a half hundred-page book called Fallen. Honestly, my neighbor gave it to me to read so I could tell him if I liked it or not. I liked it. I really liked it. Like most books, or just the general manifestation of society of the novel goes, it started out really suckish and it just sort of dragged on for a bit. Like I do with all these books, I propped it up on my shelf for a couple of months until the subconscious guilt forced me to take it back out and open it. Read the first page. Read it again. Put it down. Walk away. Pick it up. Skim through it. Weigh out the pages. The print size. Put it down. And come back later to read it again. And then continue with the rest of the chapter. Only to find that I kind of was into the book a bit. And once I got a little bit into it, I found a part of my day to read the next chapter. This was the beginning to a long relationship where I ended up not being able to put the book down for an entire day of my February break and read for an entire day. Yay me. So now that I have established that I liked this book, I want to share with you why it was so different and captivating. It was mind meddling and I just couldn't stop reading. Well, one tactic that I think the author used to keep me the reader tied to this book was by having a beginning that didn't really make so much sense, where not much was said about the characters or the situation. But enough was said to know that there was some sort of weird thing going on, something deviant about they’re being shadows and the whole "she doesn't know it, but I know it. This has happened before". And something was kind of strange about the "every first time we touch" thing. What made that a good element to this book was that it kept haunting the main character. After you get through that beginning part with the shadows and the girl and the guy... it's a new story. And the author makes sure that the reader knows this, but then she starts to push in characters like Daniel and the author makes you begin to think, "wait. Is this the same guy as the guy in the beginning?" and "are these the same shadows?" Piece by piece everything comes together. Every time the author gives you a new piece, you want to come back for more. It's like the author has a little basket of candy and she drops one candy here, and one candy there and you just want to keep going because you want more candy, you want more pieces. Overall, I just really think the author Lauren Kate does a real good job of keeping her reader into her book. And though I was not too keen to start up with this sort of genera -love, dark fantasy- I was glad that I did because it was a book that was able to emotionally overwhelm me at times. I really liked it. Did I say that?

              Another thing that I found about this book was that it reminded me a lot of Romeo and Juliet. The whole idea of star-crossed lovers the whole idea of not being able to control your feelings. In the book Fallen by Lauren Kate, an average girl named Luce was chosen by an angle to fall in love with. (Bear with me) And both lovers are inseparable. Their love however brings them to a disastrous war and everything, really falls apart. One thing the author mentioned in an interview was that "people are always falling for the same type of person even when it ends badly you find yourself looking again for that same disaster" And it got me to really think about the book in a deeper since. Where it wasn't just some dark fallen angle book, it was sort of describing society as some place where nobody is perfect even something that seems as great as perfect as an angle and even when we realize this - even when we experience this and get hurt, we keep going back, picking ourselves back up and trying to find the one. Or the perfect lover once again. Which brings me back to Romeo and Juliet where Mercutio was talking to Romeo about love, and being rough with love if love was rough with him.