Books

Book 30: The Cider House Rules – John Irving

It took me entirely way to long to read this book. I would go so far as saying that this is a fascinating fictional case study of an orphan and the doctor who raised him in New England. We spend the entire novel following the orphan Homer Wells and Doctor Wilbur Larch. It’s a rather plain and simple story, but the details and the little twists and turns throughout the novel create the oxymoron of an intricately simple love story. From the love of a ‘father’ to a non-nuclear family’s love for each other and the unrequited love of a childhood friend overall this is a love story and a story about the various types of love you experience through life.

Although Homer and Larch are the clear protagonists, it’s clearly a story of relationships and interactions and the various relationships love has to and within each interaction. If you ever wanted to catalogue the types of love this would be a great novel to read because I’m fairly certain they are all here, from convenience and unrequited to lust and familial. It’s hard to pinpoint which type of love Irving wants the reader to focus on, gut instinct would be either the fatherly love of Larch for Homer, or the love between Wally, Candy and Homer or even Melony’s strange interpretation of love for Homer, but I would say it was the smaller loves that truly made the novel. The unwavering love of Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela for their charges, especially Homer, and for Larch, or even Olive and Ray Kendall’s love for Wally, Homer and Candy even though they know the confusion they’re facing.

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Books

Book 12: Mockingjay – Suzanne Collins

[To see an updated review of when I re-read it in 2013 before the release of the films click here.]

I honestly don’t know how I feel about Mockingjay. My reaction isn’t as strong as it was to either The Hunger Games or Catching Fire. I’m not sure if it has to do with the psychological aspect of the novel or the context of this novel or the ending of such a strong trilogy in such a lack-luster manner. As with the first two I read the novel very quickly and enjoyed the read.

However, I once again have to say that I believe the trilogy would’ve been stronger if it was a quadrilogy or even five novels. More detail of the minor characters of the skirmishes would have created a stronger ending to the series and would’ve perhaps built more realistic characters and created empathy with many of them. DON’T READ AFTER THIS IF YOU WANT TO READ THEM ON YOUR OWN (SPOILERS).

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Books

Book 11: Catching Fire – Suzanne Collins

[To see an updated review of when I re-read it in 2013 before the release of the films click here.]

Similar to The Hunger Games, I pretty much read this in one sitting. I hadn’t planned on reading it for at least 24 hours after I’d finished Volume I, but I just couldn’t keep myself away.

IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED IN The Hunger Games DON’T READ AFTER THIS POINT!

Catching Fire picks up approximately six months after the end of the 74th annual Hunger Games. We check in with Katniss, Peeta and everyone in District 12 prior to Katniss and Peeta’s champion tour (yes they both one, with the threat of a double suicide, the gamemakers had no choice but to crown them both champions.

As the first chapter ends, the impact of Katniss and Peeta’s actions at the end of the games comes to light with a visit from the President who makes threats against Gale, Katniss’ love interest, and hers and Peeta’s families. It is from this point on where you not only realize how young Katniss is, but also how much she has on her shoulders.

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Books

Book 10: The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins

[To see an updated review of when I re-read it in 2013 before the release of the films click here.]

Wow. I have no other words for this book.

How do you sum up something this intense? I wanted to cry within the first five chapters and was completely riveted and did not want to stop reading (and didn’t). The novel is a conglomeration of science fiction writers throughout history, from H.G. Wells, George Orwell, William Golding, and even Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and modern reality TV.

The Hunger Games is a dystopic novel about the US in the untold future where there were thirteen districts (thirteen colonies anyone?) and the capital. The capital won some sort of long-standing battle against the rebellion and completely obliterated one of the districts (13 – unlucky!) and indentured the other twelve. Each year the 12 districts have to send one female and one male competitor to the Hunger Games. These games, televised on national TV are a deathly battle where only one person can survive and they have to kill or be killed by the other 23 competitors. The quirky (seems to be my new word) characterization of the novel provides many brief respites from the seriousness of the task at hand and the oppressive government.

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Quotes

Quotes from Before Night Falls – Reinaldo Arenas

“Being a fugitive living in the woods at the time, I had to write before it got dark. Now darkness was approaching again, only more insidiously. It was the dark night of death. I really had to finish my memoirs before nightfall. I took it as a challenge.” – xii

“I used to climb trees, and everything seemed much more beautiful from up there. I could embrace the world in completeness and feel a harmony that I could not experience down below…Trees have a secret life that is only revealed to those willing to climb them. To climb a tree is to slowly discover a unique world, rhythmic, magical and harmonious, with its worms, insects, birds, and other living things, all apparently insignificant creatures, telling us their secrets.” – 5-6

“In those days I had a different idea about sexual relations; I loved someone and I wanted that person to love me; I did not believe that one had to search, unceasingly, to find in other bodies what one body had already provided.” – 64

“The gay world is not monogamous. Almost by nature, by instinct, the tendency is to spread out to multiple relationships, quite often to promiscuity. It was normal for me not to understand this at the time; I had just lost my lover and felt completely disillusioned.” – 64=65

“We would all bring our notebooks and write poems or chapters of our books, and would have sex with armies of young men. The erotic and literary went hand in hand.” – 101

“The ideal in any sexual relationship is finding one’s opposite, and therefore the homosexual world is now something sinister and desolate; we almost never get what we most desire.” – 108

“The sea was like a feast and forced us to be happy, even when we did not particularly want to be. Perhaps subconsciously we loved the sea as a way to escape from the land where we were repressed; perhaps in floating on the waves we escaped our cursed insularity.” – 114

“Her death was perhaps an act of affirmation. There are times when living means to degrade yourself, to make compromises, to be bored to death.” – 135

“It sounded like a unanimous roar. Ever since my childhood, noise has always been inflicted upon me; all my writing has been done against the background of other people’s noise. I think Cubans are defined by noise; it seems to be inherent in their nature, and also part of their exhibitionism.” – 178

“I told him he was a writer even if he never wrote a single page, and that gave him some comfort.” – 256

“In exile one is nothing but a ghost, the shadow of someone who never achieves full reality. I ceased to exist when I went into exile; I started to run away from myself.” – 303

“To discover a city is in itself a unique event, but when we have the privilege of sharing it with friends most dear to us, it becomes a once-in-a-lifetime experience.” – 304

“This man was not a professor in the conventional sense of the word; he was a great reader, and possessed the magical ability to instill the love of beauty in his students. He was the only Spanish-American professor in the United States who inspired a school of critical thought.” – 305-306

“Dreams and nightmares have been an important part of my life. I always went to bed like someone getting ready for a long trip: books, pills, glasses of water, clocks, a light, pencils, notebooks.” – 311