Wow, books. How many again? 1-2-3-4-5. Yeah, five books. That number is more than four, less than six. Good times. At the time our class was reading each book, there was at least once where four of them. Yet in the end, I felt that almost each book was worthwhile.
As far as Catcher in the Rye goes, I enjoyed that Salinger wrote about a situation that most teenagers don’t get themselves into, which is running off to New York City to hang out with hookers, smoke cigarettes, and drink. However, by writing about such an outrageous scenario, I feel that he did seem to illustrate some of the trials that everyone goes through at some point, whether it’s questioning one’s place in life, growing up, facing failure or even having a breakdown of some sort. I felt as though that aspect of the book was satisfying overall. On the other hand, I often got annoyed with Holden’s voice. I felt like that made me relate to Holden less because I was distracted by his “annoyance factor”. I also disliked how outright judgmental Holden was and how hypocritical he behaved. If you’re going to hold someone’s fault against them in such a devout manner, you shouldn’t have that same quality.
Now onto First They Killed My Father. My liking towards this book outweighs my disliking significantly. I really gravitated towards they way Loung introduced the book in a pleasant way. I felt that it provided a nice contrast between the life she was accustomed to and the Khmer regime. It made me relate because I had a much similar childhood to Loung (before the genocide, of course). However, that relation disappeared when the Khmer Rouge invaded. I became emotionally absorbed into the story. I felt that the fact that the first-person narration brought a human viewpoint to the horrors of genocide. This viewpoint showed me a much more real feeling that any statistic, photo, or history book could ever show.
Next, there is the every-wonderful play Inherit the Wind. This was honestly my favorite thing we have read so far. I always love when real life events illustrate a right that almost everyone takes for granted. In the case Inherit the Wind, this is the right to think. I also that it provoked me to appreciate my rights to believe what I want to. It always gets me when a book makes me stop and really think about something that I take for granted. I also liked that by reading this, it shows us how different the world is from the way it was when the Scopes trial occurred.
Onto A Midsummer Night’s Dream, this was the only book I was indifferent about. It’s not that I hated to book, I just didn’t really care about it. I’m agreeing with Lizzy, I thought Romeo & Juliet was much funnier. I liked that it showed how love doesn’t always go perfectly because it obviously doesn’t. I don’t feel like Shakespeare really drew me in like Romeo & Juliet did. However I kept getting annoyed with the stupidity of Demetrius, Helena, Lysander, Hermia, and Hermia’s father. Demetrius, Hermia’s not that into you. Deal with it. Same goes for Helena towards Demetrius. Just so-so for me.
Finally, My Ántonia. I found myself getting bored with the first book in the, err, book. I kinda wanted to yell “Just get on with it already!”. I liked that Cather used words to make you feel what the character was feeling. On the other hand, I feel like sometimes her words worked against her and at times she worded me to death. I found myself liking the story but not the way it was written. Cather’s diction often turned things bland and took away from the meaning. Yet, I grew to like Ántonia, Jim, and Lena. I found it satisfying that we really got a strong sense of friendships and coming of age.
Okay, cool. I’m excited to move on and get cracking on the books this semester. Maybe I’ll go get that taco now.
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