karatetentacles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNk-k9eVUFU&#t=2m47s

By itself, What is the What did not change my life. I was a new Nerdfighter circa May 2008, had finished watching all the vlogbrothers videos, and decided that John's book suggestions couldn't be horrible. That summer, I went to the library, picked up What is the What, read it, and that was that. I enjoyed it, sure. And I felt a deeper connection to John due to this shared experience of reading a book. I'm weird like that.

Dave Eggers himself didn't stick with me, but the book was always sort of in the back of my mind. For those who don't know, What is the What is the fictionalized "auto"biography of Valention Achak Deng, who was a Sudanese Lost Boy. Deng told Eggers his life story, and Eggers then stylistically made it a novel, making comparisons between Deng's life in Sudan during the wars and Deng's life in America, where his skills are limited and his life is subpar.

The preface of the novel reads: "Over the course of many years, Dave and I have collaborated to tell my story... I told [him] what I knew and what I could remember, and from that material he created this work of art," written by Deng.

It's a very powerful story, and Eggers shows Valentino's voice so distinctly and beautifully it makes me ashamed to aspire being a writer.

And then came sophomore year; and then came Pulsinelli.

For one of our very first assignments, we were to write an "Open Letter to a Person or Entity Who Is Unlikely to Respond." You'll note the link is McSweeney's. I didn't put Dave Eggers, the author of the book I read over the summer, and this bizarre and beautiful website together.

Another early assignment was our very first Outside Reading project. Pulsinelli gave us a list of books to choose from: all nonfiction; some memoirs. The books included Bill Bryson, Nickel and Dimed, one book about being a teacher, and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. It should not escape anyone that aHWoSG is by Dave Eggers and currently tops the charts of my favorite books.

Now, I must admit I was feeling quite pleased with myself as P-Nelli presented the books available for outside reading. I contemplated picking a Bill Bryson -- I had read The Lost Continent and loved it -- but something about aHWoSG was so appealing. It couldn't be coincidence that John Green had brought one book by this man in my life and now my English teacher (who I fell in love with right away) showed him to me again. This was a sign. This was fate. I was destined to read that book.

And once I did... well, you'll understand if you read it. There's no possible way of reading it and, being a holier-than-thou English asshat, not fall in love with Dave Eggers. He's not self-pitying like some like to claim. He's not full of himself. Sure, he might be a bit pretentious, but aren't we all?

He's a visionary, a genius. MIGHT magazine. 826 National. McSweeney's. The Valentino Achak Deng Foundation. The Best American Nonrequired Reading anthologies. Wholpin. The Believer. Voice of Witness.

He inspired me to do great things. He showed me a world I never thought could exist. My life dreams revolve around everything he's done, everything he's created.

And that's why you all, lovely blog readers, should get yourselves some Dave Eggers.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (nonfiction/memoir), the story of Dave Eggers himself. After both his parents suffer cancer-related deaths, Topher, the youngest Egger sibling, is placed in the care of Dave. Dave has some growing up to do himself, but he does it with little Toph.
What is the What (fiction), already explained.
You Shall Know Our Velocity! (fiction), the story of a man who finds himself a fortune. Feeling unworthy of his cash, he goes around the world with his friend Hand to try and give it to people who need it.
How We Are Hungry (fiction/short stories), with varying lengths and genres. All beautifully written.
Zeitoun (nonfiction), the true story of a Syrian-American and family who suffer in Hurricane Katrina. The book goes into both the tragedy of Katrina as well as Zeitoun's life and family in Louisiana as well as Syria. Extremely interesting, heartbreaking, and eye-opening.
The Wild Things (fiction, based off the children's book and movie), which in some points follows the movie but in others diverges severely. The book enhances the movie and the move enhances the book. Beautiful story telling. See if you can get your hands on a fuzzy copy like me. :)

C'mon guys. Read one. For me?

because everyone is wrong and I'm right.

alright not really but c'mon. this is what I'm good at. this is what I /do./

I mean usually I can go off on my tangent and bitchslap everyone with words, but no, when you get the opinionated ones in the conversation, it's like "shut up, you're not Enlightened like I am." Yes, I'm full of myself, but I think this is one area where I can claim at least semi-expertise, you know?

I /get/ it. Things /click/ for me. It's like solving a math problem; it's like figuring out derivatives. And yes, they're the same. Figuring out the logic of a math problem is akin to figuring out the themes and symbolism of a piece of writing. There is, to a degree, a right answer.

If you look at Catcher in the Rye and try and use it as an excuse for killing John Lennon... NO. YOU'RE WRONG. You read it incorrectly. Try again. Minus $2000. No double Jeopardy for you.

It's a /hard/ math problem, I'll give you that, but if you're smart, you can figure it out.

Now, how you apply this symbolism and theme to your personal life -- that's a different story. That's something that doesn't belong in a classroom, not something that can be taught, but something you can do on your own. How a book makes you /feel/, makes you act, develops your take on life or whatever... that's the personal part of English, the part that math lacks. But to truly get that satisfaction of affecting your life, you have to get the first part down. You have to know what the author wanted you to take from it. You need to analyze the symbolism and imagery and metaphors and similes. You /have/ to, otherwise you won't really get it.

Maybe I can take this back to the math metaphor...

You have to know the unpractical part of math to get to the "real world" application. And usually, for the "real world" application, you don't need to get so... involved in the process.

Take All Quiet on the Western Front. It's really, painfully obviously an anti-war novel. It says it on the frickin' cover. But you take it, you analyze it, you learn the author's tone, you look at the symbolism, and you see the theme in all its glory. To get to the application, all you really needed to know was it was an anti-war novel, and determine whether or not you are going to take it to heart. Do you agree or disagree with the author? You only need the basic level, but to back yourself up, to really /learn/ from the novel, you need to get into the symbolism and metaphors and motifs. You need to look for allegories and know that diction is just as important as anything else.

Take /any/ book. Harry Potter. Hell, take Where the Wild Things Are. Take The Da Vinci Code or TWILIGHT, even. There are bits to be analyzed. There is something to /learn/. There's a theme to be gotten. There's an idea developed. There's a /reason/ the book was written, and I PROMISE it's /not/ just because the author was bored. Those books don't get published, those books have no substance.

Whether or not you agree or disagree with the idea is your opinion; what you take from the book is entirely personal. Personally, I disagree with the morals of Twilight. I think it's a shitty book. I don't think there's a lot of depth to it, and I don't think Smeyer was very subtle, but whatever. She is an author, she wrote a book, and I have an immense amount of respect for her. I do.

Now, she could probably stand to work on her narrative technique, which can and often does enhance the theme of the book.

Alright this is really long and rambly but whatever. This is what happens to me.

Sigh.

I love books.
I love the feel of them,
I love turning back the pages, watching my progress as I go and go and go...

I love immersing myself in them, completely and honestly, becoming the character's guarding them, seeing how they act, wondering what they'll screw up next...

I love finding the nuggets of genius, laughing at something no one else around me "gets," love the similes and the metaphors and looking for themes.

I hate talking about specific books.
I think that's a thing for classes.
I think that's something for trained professionals.

I mean, I can understand them well enough, and I feel confident with my own evaluations of the books, but people often... ask me about books.

I mean... what is there to say?
"I just finished my book."
"Was it good?"
"Yeah, I liked it well enough..."
"What's it about?"

... I don't like that question. I hardly like the "Was it good?" question. I mean... the "good"ness of a book is... irrelevant. How well I liked it is irrelevant. The book itself is a triumph of human energy and potential and amazingness - to have something published, to see your name on the spine... I don't want anything to be boiled down to "Was it good? Did you like it?" Because that's not what reading is about!

Not to me, anyway.

Books are not tools of enjoyment. They are tools to broaden one's mind, to expose you to thinks you would otherwise be unexposed to. They are the epitome of the human experience -- of human joy and human suffering and human growth and revival and romance and bromance and of life. Books are living things on their own.

Now, yes, some books are better than others. There's the mindfluff, the chick lit; there's Twilight, but even it has merit, even it has a theme. A theme I don't agree with, but it's there.

I just want to go to school, talk about books with intellects (not just like-minded people, of course), discuss the subtleties. I just want to read the raw copy of a book, improve it, make it great, make it something libraries and bookstores can't keep on the shelves, teachers rave over; something that gets taught, or at least discussed, something that people can understand and something that will expand minds and change hearts.

Alright. There's my blog. I'm gonna go read now.

I really wish my phone got service in my basement. I like to feel secluded, but sometimes someone *coughcough* will text me, and I enjoy that.

Also it would make receiving phone calls easier.

Earlier today:

-phone rings, unidentified number-
Me: Hello?
Them: -static-
Me: I can't hear you, one sec.
Them: -static-
Me: -goes upstairs- Hello?
Them: -static-
Me: Fffffff what is wrong with this house?! I get service NOWHERE!
Them: -static-

I called back five minutes later. Wrong number. Fffffffff.

Anyway. It's almost midnight. I'm gonna watch Ratatouille. I think I'll go up to my room and watch it on Darth, and hopefully have cell phone service. Also I have to go to Target tomorrow to get some shorts and a lock. My mom keeps bugging my ass about my lack of social life. I'm sorry, mom, I don't like hanging out with people. People bother me. I like hanging out in small groups, maybe one or two other people with me, not huge groups like everyone else, so it makes things awkward when I pull a certain person out of said group to enjoy a nice afternoon of just hanging out.

It's not my fault I'm socially retarded and seclude myself from every event. I like it better that way. Also I dislike being wet, so swimming is a no.

So I'm reading How We Are Hungry* by Dave Eggers. It's a gorgeous book, prose-wise, and it's so... depressing, almost. I don't want to spoil anything, but there's this one story (it's a collection of short(ish) stories) about this woman who goes on vacation. The really, really sad thing is that she goes on vacation to "get away," yet is able to perfectly predict everything that is going to happen. It's so sad.

And you know what I fucking hate? When people say I read into books/movies too much. Trust me, it's there to "read into." Authors are deep, they don't just throw shit on the page and sell it. Ffffff people are stupid and need to realize that just because you're not reading in/for a class doesn't mean the book is just an assortment of words on a page, and that there are still tones and themes and diction and metaphors and symbols to look at.

Anyway. I really love this book, despite it's sadness. I'm gonna try and finish it soon, less than 100 pages to go! (I think it's somewhere around 70 pages.)

Soooo off to Ratatouille. Sorry for this incredibly random/somewhat long blog post.

*Speaking of hungry... I'm gonna make some cheesecake soon. ... and I'm about to watch a movie about a rat chef. WTF METAPHORICAL HUNGER. LEAVE ME ALONE!

You know how I said I was tired of always blogging about P-Nelli?

Whatever, more anecdotes.

Finished Cuckoo's Nest, it was AMAZING. Loved it. So much. Awesome. I wanna see the movie. :)

Started Catcher in the Rye. zomg I love this book. My copy is signed by John Green, Printz-and-Edgar Allan Poe-Award-Winning-and-New-York-Time's-bestselling author. :D

P-Nelli also loves this book. He sympathizes (or more appropriately empathizes) so much with Holden; it's cute. He said, "There are few things in life I know, and this book is one of them." I'm so excited for this book.

He talked about JD Salinger and how he became a recluse after his book got really popular. He lives on the outskirts in a hut in a small town/village thing in Pennsylvania or something, and the people in the "city" part protect him from "rabid fans." There are zero movies made and it's illegal to make an audio recording of the novel. He said he didn't want to spoil anyone's view of Holden in the book. Also he's done zero interviews with any newspapers like the New York Times and stuff like that. He used to, however, do interviews with school newspapers. He loves kids, not in a creepy way, but in a damn-they-aren't-fucked-up-like-adults-are way, so he'd do little interviews like that and that was about it. But once, these two kids from a local high school came to do an interview, then went and sold it to the New York Times. What a HORRIBLE thing to do to a guy; completely shatter all his faith in humanity. I mean, it's not like he has social issues enough. Obviously, now he doesn't do any interviews of any kind. It's really sad.

Also, P-Nelli told us a story that is probably only funny for me and I really don't feel like retelling it. But guys reading this blog: READ CATCHER IN THE RYE. Copies are not hard to find at all. John Green loves it. Just saying, read the book. Please?

(Seriously, if my "love" for my English teacher is beginning to freak anyone out... I'm sorry.

Also, READ CATCHER IN THE RYE.

Also, since I already read it, this won't be on my 50-books-in-a-year-booklist. However, soon 13 Little Blue Envelopes will be done, and I'll be caught up with Sierra again! BWAHAHAHA. <3)

Hey kiddos. This has been a helluva ride, no? BEDA = awesome. Thanks, Maureen!

I have my first ever real-big-kid-stuff job interview tonight.

I feel pretty sick, so I'm gonna take a shower and have a little siesta to be prepared for my job-zilla interview.

Something of interest: Today in English (we're reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for those who aren't in the know), P-Nelli was talking about David Thoreau. The guy is a transcendentalist, which basically means he, and other transcendentalists, wanted to be "different." His most famous work is Walden, published in 1854.

History of Walden:
Thoreau decided one day that he was sick of material goods and the material world. So he went out into the woods, built himself a cabin, and lived there for a year, making a journal about how life was different then than it was in the "real world."

I haven't read it, but there's an allusion to it Cuckoo, so we just discussed it for a while. About how people are "individuals," and how we work in this "system" of life, which Kesey (author of Cuckoo) calls the Combine. P-Nelli asked us why we sat in school all day, if we were such "individuals," and why we fell into our roles in the Combine. We talked about how people, including ourselves, were afraid of academic/disciplinary consequences, how we were scared of what our parents would say if we just walked out of class one day and stopped going to school. And then a funny thing happened.

Pulsinelli walks over to the door, opens it, and says "If you walk out right now, I will not write you up. I swear."

No one moved. There was just a silence over the room. I didn't get up, oh gosh no. But why? Would you, reader, have gotten up?

God, everyone should read this book. It's incredible. Will probably finish it tonight or tomorrow night. Let me know if you read it in class. Please?

BEDA 30: PWNED.
BEDA: PWNED.

okay I love you bye bye!

I love the fact that I learn all this interesting information via P-Nelli. Today we talked about the invention of LSD.

See, it was designed by the CIA as a means of forcing captured prisoners of war to talk. But they didn't want to use it on prisoners right away, so they decided to test-run it on some college, or just out of college, aged kids. Obviously, everybody got addicted to it, and by the time the CIA repealed it, everyone already knew how to make it. And that's why we have Ken Kesey writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Also. I was in my school library earlier today. And I was trying to find Three Cups of Tea in the nonfiction section. I stumbled across the 800's, which all you Dewey Decimal lovers know is where they keep the "Literature." This confuses me. What makes the books in the nonfiction section of the library "literature," but Kurt Vonnegut and John Green have to sit in the fiction part of the library? Why is Virgil's Aeneid on some sort of pedestal? Because it's old? Really, that's a valid reason? Or is it a different reason that I just don't know? If anyone knows, please tell me... it's kind of bothering me, in this weird sort of way. (Among these books were Shakespeare, Dante, and that 1001 Arabian Nights.) Why are these in a nonfiction section of a library and not just labeled as "classics" or something?

So I get home from school and jump on skype, expecting to talk to Sierra (@crayolaawonderr), but she's on the phone. So I check twitter and see that John's broadcasting live! So I immediately go there and he reads some amazing poetry and answers questions for... what, an hour and a half? Two hours? Not even an hour? I can't tell. Alan was nice and gave me operator powers. I felt special. (: It was a fun show, full of product placement and Agloe talks and Willy and sellouts and... awesomeness.

A few days ago in EHAP, we discussed Niche. That man is a genius. He basically said "Up yours, Freud. We aren't controlled by our subconscious, we have free will." I totally agree. I think sometimes our actions are influenced by our subconscious, but we are ultimately responsible for our own choices, unless there is some flaw in our initial design that somehow alters our brain function (so yes, I do believe there are loonies out there). And we do get influenced by things that happen to us, but it's more of a learned behavior, you know? Like if my father did something to me when I was little that would cause me not to trust him, and I didn't trust him as I aged, that wouldn't be something that influenced me on the inside: it'd be a learned behavior. I taught myself to distrust him.

This blog is really random.

TENTACLES OUT.

I was on the Nerdfighter Ning this morning, and one of the discussion topics was "Life Changing books." So I started writing mine.

This whole year in my English class has been a life-changing experience when it comes to literature, but I'll list some that have really affected me throughout my life.

1. Harry Potter, JK Rowling. It wasn't my "spark" to reading, really, but the series and the aura around them is so amazing and it got me into the internet/nerdfighters/wrock/my friends.

2. Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger. We're gonna read this book in English class later, so I'll be much more aware of the deeper themes/etc, but I absolutely adored this book. I felt so bad for Holden, and it sort of changed the way I portrayed myself, and how I handle personal relationships.

3. Inferno, Dante. This book taught me that absolutely nothing an author does is unintentional. Everything has a meaning, a deeper theme, a crackpot reason for existing. Plus, it helped me reevaluate the meaning of "morals" and Hell and Christianity. Love it.

4. A Separate Peace, John Knowles. Love it. Love it. Love it. It's so... I can't even explain it. If you've read it (and properly understand the symbolism), then you'll understand why it makes me cry, even before the second accident. /vague, but I don't want to spoil it. It also changed the way I thought about literature, as less of a collection of interesting idiosyncrasies of characters and plot and storytelling, but about what all of it means.

Aside from that, specifically about the book, personally about my life, it's made me reevaluate my own childhood, my own fleeting innocence, my Finnys and my Lepers and my Brinkers and me. My Bookworms will vouch that I was completely convinced I was Gene for about ten seconds in a skype call. It's like Gene is a ghost on my back, something I need to be aware of all the time. I need to look for my adulthood, because if I don't... well... it'll kill me.

5. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain. At first, I hated this book. It was a summer-reading assignment, so of course I was spiteful, and didn't do a good job reading it. But then, I got to class and we talked about it. It reevaluated, like A Separate peace how I thought about literature. Of course, it did introduce me to the idea that characters run a story rather than themes, but obviously that's worked out now. Thanks, John Knowles! I think I'm going to read this one again fairly soon.

6. Twilight, Stephanie Meyer. Yeah, I hate it. We all know this. (And if you don't... well. Now you know.) But through it's horribleness, it helped me determine why I read. What I expect to get out of books. And Twilight didn't deliver that for me.

I think that about sums it up... funny how in 12 years of reading, only 7 have a lasting memory on me, and more than half have been read within the last few years. I guess I'm close to really "finding" myself, to making my judgments about literature as a whole. Close, but not quite.

And now, the booklist.

1. everything is illuminated
2. the average american male
3. inferno
4. life of pi
5. othello
6. all quiet
7. slaughterhouse-5
8. a separate peace
9. wizards (collection of short stories)
[10. cat's cradle]
[11. with the old breed]

Also, some exciting news:
@aplusk, aka Ashton Kutcher, is now following @realjohngreen, aka The One And Only John Green, on twitter. Awesome. *nerdfighters!*