REflection...

REflection...

This semester I definitely challenged myself with my reading choices this year. I read books where you'd probably have to reread a page multiple times to understand what happened. Like my new book, Infinite Jest  by David Foster Wallace which contains 980 pages. It's a book set in the future North America and is about a tennis prodigy trying to get into a prestigious college. But since he lacks the academic ability he might not be able to get in. That's literally what I was able to get out of the first 11 pages. It's almost like reading Romeo and Juliet except slightly worse because you almost underestimate it when you first pick it up but when you open it, it almost looks like a textbook. "Ok, that's a lot of words," you think," But it must be easy language. No, It's extremely complex but I'm able to fight through it. Romeo and Juliet was hard at first but you were able to catch on eventually and from there it's pretty straight forward. I'm not even to page 20 yet and I'm still not catching on, but I am going to stick with it. 
Overall my blog keeping wasn't the best I wrote the posts but often forgot to publish them, and then lagged behind on blog five and six. I want to work on my reading speed. I've always been and very thoughtful and slow reader or maybe it's my book choices, but next semester I want to get through books faster. So in the future I want to increase quantity and quality of my independent reading and... let's see what else... Oh maybe try some classics. Like this summer I read the Great Gatsby which I think is considered a classic, and it was really good in the way it got a reaction out of the audience. Like how I was angry at the characters and frustrated at their fickleness, like the character daisy. I know she acts weak and almost childlike because that was how most women were in the 1920's and a girl in the twenty first century would scream at the book , encouraging her that she doesn't need a man to be complete and .."'that all a girl can be is a beautiful fool'" isn't true. ( that line made me cringe.#feminist4life#). Anyway I'll try reading classics or just famous books, like those posters Mrs. Leitsch has on her wall like Animal Farm, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Lord of the Flies, Fahrenheit 451 , or To Kill a Mockingbird. Books like that.

TWOC Inspired

TCOW Inspired

The Color of Water was a really interesting book to read. It was straight forward but gave an interesting perspective on the social problems in the civil  rights era. James McBride was clueless f his family history on his mother's side so he spent a good portion of his life trying to squeeze the information out of his old mother who spent a good portion of her life trying to forget her past. Well like all good books, you tend to see yourself in characters. I saw myself in James, the way he just wanted to get to know his mother. As kids we don't see parents as actual people with wants and needs and it's often uncomfortable for us to see them vulnerable. But still I wanted to get to know my parents especially on my mother's side. My family is Jamaican, I'm born in Boston though o I'm Jamaican -American. I know a lot about my Dad's side because it's really traditional and there's not a lot of drama but my mom's is a lot more complex. Some things have to to with race and being biracial and other problems.

In class we discussed whether or not James was justified in interrogating his mother about her family history or if kids in general had the right to know their parent's past. Majority of my peers thought kids didn't , but I actually did to a certain degree. You should know who you are and where you come from but if the past is to painful to bring up, I wouldn't push. Today I think I want to find out my past because of curiosity and jealousy. It's frustrating when you can't go on ancestry.com and people have pictures of ancestors from hundreds of years ago with stories past down from generations.

So what does any of this have to do with reading? Well I have decides to start from the very beginning of Jamaican history and read a Jamaican History Textbook. Hopefully its not as painful as it sounds but that'll be one of my next reading endeavors.

(Not this history book specifically)

UPstate- Kalisha Buckhanon

UPSTATE-Kalisha Buckhanon

 Upstate by Kalsiha Buckhanon was my first choice for the summer reading assignment but I ended up changing it to the Fault in our stars for multiple reasons including the fact that according to my peers it was a really good book and I could read it and get homework done at the same time. I took that opportunity. It wasn't that Upstate wasn't interesting but it was a little to simple for me and could be described as an "artsy" book which I'm usually into. Upstate is about a teenager named Antonio who lives in 1990s Harlem and is going through the Prison system in Upstate New York for killing his father in order to protect his mother. His girlfriend Natasha still stands by him but will their relationship be able to survive the distance as Natasha becomes more and more successful in school, and Antonio is struggling to stay alive in prison? 

I wouldn't recommend this book  because of the unnecessary "foul" language which makes the characters sound almost stupid. Also I feel as if the book reinforces stereotypes of African Americans of that time. Besides that it's a very simple read. Easy language and no between-the-lines analysis. But the book is written in an interesting way. The story is told through letters sent back and forth from Antonio  to Natasha. It was probably put on the summer's reading list because of the "raw emotion" (whatever that means) that are present in the letters. It's not a bad book and I'll definitely try to pick it up again later. But for now I'll try to pick up a book on the opposite side of the book spectrum. Something a little more complex and insightful, but still artsy.

                                                 The House Girl (Continued)...

              It usually doesn't take that long for me to read a book, but I feel like this book is really intermittent in pace, the way some parts are really action-packed, exciting and make you want to read really fast, but other parts are kinda slow, which makes it hard to move through. But overall the plot is moving along. Lina, the 21st century lawyer, is finally getting closer to proving Josephine, the slave, is the true owner and creator of the famous Lu Anne Bell paintings. The author writes to book in way where one chapter is told in the perspective of Lina and others in the point of view of Josephine. But now in the book, there is a new character named Dorothea who lives in the same time period as Josephine, except she's white and her father is a conductor on the underground railroad. Dorothea is a key character because I think she will somehow connect Josephine to Lina because there are documents of letters written by Dorothea to her sister, telling her about every day life, almost like a diary. And I predict that Josephine will eventually meet Dorothea and it will be recorded in Dorothea's letters. 

The HOUSE GIRL

                                        The House Girl

                                                                by: Tara Conklin

                   I've been reading The House Girl, by Tara Conklin, which you already knew because of the title. It's a historical fiction book which I usually steer  away from because, 1) History is not my favorite subject, 2) I find that genre predictable and sometimes cliche. But this story is different from the usual Civil war fictional book. It has a unique plot about how a house girl (hence the title), Josephine is a great artist and her masters take credit for her compositions and make money off her work. The story is also set in today's time period and is about a young lawyer named Lina who needs to find an decedent of Josephine to be the "face" of her case and get the credit and money to the rightful owner.

                 That's about how far I gotten in the book. I do like it so far,but it's a little hard to read because you have to know a lot of law and court terminology and if you don't it can kind of be hard to follow. Also in Josephine's story, you  have to have a little background of pre-civil war conditions and the author doesn't come out and say important details. Not to spoil the book to potential readers, but Josephine has tried to run before, but something stopped her. Conklin doesn't say why exactly but she gives clues that you have to put together. Once you realize what happened to Josephine when she first tried to run, you understand the severity of her  job even though she just works in the house instead of in the fields.
                 

                                   

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