Of Mice and Men

I'm sorry I haven't posted in so long! Well, I've read around 5 books since I went on vacation, so I have lots of things to post about!

Well, this post kind of has a story behind it.


On a lazy summer afternoon, I picked up a book that my friends had often spoken about and which has been lying in my bookshelf for over a year. As I had nothing else to read, I decided to take it with me on vacation. It was Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck. 

Lennie and George have been walking around the country, finding a job on a ranch. They want to buy a piece of land. Lennie wants to buy rabbits, pet them and feed them alfalfa. When they arrive on the ranch, the trouble starts for Lennie. The owner's son, Curley, is small. He doesn't like big people. Lennie is big, tall, and very simple-minded. When Curley hits him, he doesn't know what to do and crushes his hand. In the meantime, George helps Slim, and important guy on the ranch, and Slim gets puppies. Slim lets Lennie pet a puppy, and kills him. He didn't want to. That's when Curley's wife barges in, and sees that Lennie killed the puppy. He doesn't know how to explain it to her. George got friends with Candy, and older person. Candy wants to go with them at the end of the month, go buy a piece of land. Candy has an old dog. The other people that live on the ranch kill it with a bullet in the back of the neck. Candy is very sad. Lennie tries to stop Curley's wife from yelling, and shakes her so she stops yelling. He kills her, but he doesn't mean to. Lennie runs away, and George finds him. He thinks that the best thing to do is to shoot Lennie in the back of the neck, just like a dog. He doesn't feel anything.

This is a book everyone should read, because it's going to make you feel differently about all those people that you think simple, because they're not.

A bonus for Cloud Atlas and something about Doctor Who

Update: The Cloud atlas bonus is not working anymore. :-(

Doctor Who. Everyone, well nearly knows that. I used to think it's stupid, but now I'm a fan. Just try it and see! Those Angels are really, really creepy, too. And some of the special effects are not that good. But I, and lots of people all over the world, love it.

Cloud Atlas + Sorry for not posting

Hi Readers! I am  sorry for not posting, and I just wanna say: Well... Here's a new Post.

Basically, it's all really complicated. It starts in 1849 with this person, Adam Ewing, crossing the ocean, and then, it fades into a story where a person writes a piano partition called Cloud Atlas. One of their Very good friends was Rufus Sixsmith, who is then murdered because he didn't like an atomic reactor and was about to reveal everything about it to Luisa Rey, a jounalist. Then, an old editor, Timothy Cavendish, reads a book called Luisa Rey's Detective story. It all fades in to Sonmi 451, a rebelling humanoid robot. Then it's Hawai, and Somni is the goddess of a middle ages type of world. So it's all interconnected very weirdly, and all the characters come up again and again, and the intrigue builds up, and then ta-dah! It's the end.

The movie is a must-watch. It follows the story quite well, and the transititons from one story to the other are very fluid. Some things change, but they don't matter much. The spirit of the book isn't lost, it's actually even more present. If you haven't read the book, you might be lost at first, but then you understand everything, and you're really surprised. And at the end, everything is clear. They all know everything.

And as they say: Everything is connected! The  movie is great but a bit long, but so is the book. You'll love it.

And here's a character map, which might help you or mess everything up in your mind even more.

PS: All the readers, thanks for getting me more than 2000 views. This is what keeps this blog going, and all other blogs too.

Fahrenheit 451

... For Guy Montag, a firefighter. But not the normal kind of firefighter. In the future Ray Bradbury imagines, firefighters don't save houses from fires anymore, they burn them if anyone in them has books. Guy is one of them. He hates book, lives with a wife he thinks he loves. But his life just flips over when he meets Clarisse, a strange girl that still walks home and looks at the tiny things in life, like the taste of rain when you look up and open your mouth or other people. She's seventeen, and is soon run over by a car. But Guy remembers her for ever. He realizes his wife is actually like a stranger to him and starts to hate her.

He continues to burn books. But one day, when a woman burns herself with her books, he manages to steal one. He reads it and doesn't want to burn them anymore. His wife reads it too. We learn the books is not the first one Guy stole. His wife reports to the firefighters that he has a book. Guy has to burn his own house. Guy kills his boss with the flamethrower he used to burn his own house down and also kills a first mechanical dog that is supposed to kill him with poison. Another 'dog' is sent after him to kill him. The war of his country with another begins.

Guy runs away from the mechanical dog that has to kill him and finds people walking along the railway line, that also love books and remember them. Bombs are dropped on Guy's city and his wife is killed. He's not sad and the war is over.

The book ends with Guy thinking that maybe after the war, books would be okay again...

I just loved this book and hope the world will never be like that - and if it will, I'd have been killed straight away because I love books so much. And you?

I keep on thinking about this book and I think it'll just keep on thinking about it until I read a book that makes me think about the future and books just as much as this book. :-(

I also think that what happens in this book could happen, and easily! Would you like a future like that? I guess not. At 451 degrees Fahrenheit, paper burns...

In that future, all the books have been banned. Some have already been banned now, and I know there are good reasons for it, but still... Here is the link for the list of banned books (not by the whole world, but by some governments; plus, I can't know if it's true because it's Wikipedia) : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_governments
and also, just as an ironic fact, at some point in history, the books Fahrenheit 451 was banned.

Firmin - or the Adventures of a Metropolitan lowlife.

Firmin: Is he a human? A rat? Well, if you guessed so by looking at the picture you're right. Firmin is a rat.

But not an ordinary one. He is a Reading Rat. Let me tell you his story, which is also the story of the book. Firmin is the 13th out of 13 siblings, and the weakest because he gets no milk. The only way he can survive is by eating the litter on which they have to pee and poo. But this is no normal litter - it's made of books! Firmin, eating books to survive, ends ups learning how to read. He lives in a library.

His siblings go away when their mum dies, and Firmin is left alone. He then sees the owner of the bookstore, Norman and Firmin kind of falls in love with him. But when Norman sees Firmin for the first time, Firmin's happy days at the store are over. Norman tries to poison Firmin and Firmin realizes at last humans hate rats.

So he runs away from the shop, luckily, to be taken as a pet by a nice author called Jerry that loves him but doesn't understand Firmin can read. So Firmin reads the newspapers with Jerry and reads that the square where they live, and the bookstore is, is going to be destroyed. A theater on the same square burns down. Firmin lives on, being loved by Jerry. He goes to the Rialto cinema and falls in love with a human actress.

One day, when Jerry isn't at home, Firmin dies, thinking he is being hugged by the actress. It's pretty sad for a book. But I really loved it, even though it's not the normal kind of book. It's actually super weird, but when you start reading it, you kind of get pulled in and you can't come out until you're finished reading. So, I actually do advise you to read it, because it might become one of your favorites. Especially if you're someone that loves reading. Like Firmin... Except you're human. Or are you?

I wonder if any rats like Firmin are reading this... No, joking. I don't really think rats can read. Well, you never know.

King Matt the First

King Matt the First is a book by Janusz Korczak. Yes, I know. He has a weird name. But his original name was Henryk Goldszmit - and that already existed!

Well, about the book now. In the beginning, Matt was not a king. He was a simple child. His parents were the King and Queen. They both died. First the mother, then his father. He cried their death. He was now to be the king. He was then still very young. He thought being a king was fun, and not only work. 

*Well, children now still think that!*

He was controlled by the ministers into signing a war pact. King Matt made himself a friend before the war. Then, he escaped from the palace and fought with his country. Nobody knew until he came back and understood that being a king is not easy. 

He changed the way his country was, made friends with a cannibal king that gave him gold, and became very popular. Because of that, a new war started. This time, he lost. The other kings chose not to kill him, but to exile him on a desert island.

I was so sad that the book ended there! There's another book in the series, "King Matt on the Desert Island", but I can't get it. I can't find it. 

The old man and the Sea

Though it may not seem like it,

It's a must-read. Well why? you'd think. It's not that long. It's easy to read. The story is amazing. It's... artistic! An old sailor goes to fish and finds the biggest fish ever. Then ensues a long fight inbetween man and fish. The man wins, but regrets to have killed the fish, then dies himself when he returns to land. I very suggest you read that book. I loved it!!!

It's not that philosophic!!!

Wonderboy

It's a book. Well, you already know that! It's one of my favorites. I devoured it in 2 days. So simply, Fiona Gibson wrote a wonderful story. It's funny, it's awesome!!
It's about this boy, Tod, his mother is the narrator. The family moves to a little village and first, it's really weird. But then, a lot of funny things happen. Everything is good. Until the mother discovers that her husband, Marcus, cheated on her. And, mostly, while she was pregnant of Tod! The worst thing is, that he had another daughter in that time. So the mother breaks up with her husband and ummm... Everything's back to 'normal'.

A really good book for summer reading. Not a chef d'oeuvre, though.

Life of Pi

It's about a boy that is on a boat. He's on the boat with a lot of animals. *Why, Oh MY GOSH! * you'll be asking. It's cause he owns a zoo, with his parents. But then the boat sinks and he finds himself on a lifeboat with a tiger named Richard Parker. He's also with a tiger, a hyena and an orangutang named Orange Juice, but the tiger kills them all. By some sort of luck, shall I say, he becomes friends with the tiger. The most exciting part of the book is when they end up on an island that is awesome during the day, but that during the night has an acid ground and kills people and meerkats. He flees the island to finally be saved, but nobody believes him.

This IS on my favorite books list. I absolutely love it! You must read it, because it's the most awesome book ever.

I'm not telling a lot; I know. Just read it - and it'll also be in you top 5 list. Maybe even in 1st place!

Remember Me?

It's a book by Sophie Kinsella.

And it's really random. Basically, it's about this girl that goes to a bar, wants to catch a taxi, bangs her head and gets amnesia for three years, until she gets in an accident and starts remembering stuff again. It comes out she has a husband and, like, the whole stuff... plus an affair with a weird architect. Well, he says so. 

It's one of Sophie Kinsella's worst books 'cause it's really really random, at least it's not boring. Well, I actually liked it but it's not worth a lot of writing though.

That Book About Harvard

"That Book About Harvard" (By Eric Kester, if you're interested). It's a really stupidly funny book about *did you guess yet???* *a guy in Harvard? is he a nerd?*

Well, it is is a book about Harvard, and this guy is not a nerd, and by the book it actually seems he's kinda stupid. So he has to survive Harvard... and how he tells it is soooo fun!

I like that book because it doesn't talk about Harvard like we think it would - and that's why it's so cool.

And I think he should have called the book "This book about Harvard", though.