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.

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.

Rain Man

Rain Man.

Note: I think this is like, the second post in a month, which is not a lot, but I promised to myself I'd write at least two posts a month, so - there it is.

This is one of the weirdest, yet best movies I've seen so far. It's about a young man whose father died, and he's surprised to have received only a car and a few rose bushes as an heritage, because his father is a multimillionaire, and the young man, Charlie, wants to find out to who the rest of the heritage went.

He then stumbles upon Raymond, who is his brother, but who is an autist. He lives at the Walbrooke Institute, a place where autists and other people with mental handicaps live. He then tells Raymond they're going for a drive and kidnaps him.

Meanwhile, while Charlie is at Walbrooke, Charlie's car company has to pay back a gigantic debt, and Charlie's girlfriend disapproves of him kidnapping his brother.

This is Raymond.

This is Charlie.

Raymond is having a crisis.

Charlie wants to take Raymond to Los Angeles by plane, except that because Raymond remembers everything, he is scared of the plane because at least once, every company had a plane crash. So Charlie is forced to bring Raymond to LA by road, and by tiny secondary roads, because Raymond is scared of the highway. They stop at a tiny hotel and, when Charlie turns the hot water on, Raymond breaks into a crisis. Charlie asks him why.

Raymond: Raymond burn Charlie!
Charlie: Raymond, calm down. I'm not burnt, see.
                                                                Raymond calms down.
Charlie: Why do you say I'm burnt?
Raymond: I burnt you when you were a baby with hot water.
Charlie: You lived with us? So you're who I called Rain Man and sung me songs so I wasn't scared?
Raymond: Yes.
                                 Charlie is surprised.

When they depart from the hotel, Charlie teaches Raymond to play blackjack and they go to las Vegas. Charlie buys Raymond a new costume, and tells him his old ones are POO. Raymond thinks this is a joke, but agrees.

They play blackjack and win 80'500 dollars. Charlie's girlfriend arrives and gets stuck in an elevator with Raymond. They kiss. She asks him: How was it?
Raymond answers: Wet.

They leave las Vegas and arrive to LA. There, there is a trial because Charlie kidnapped Raymond and Raymond has to go back to Woodbrooke. Charlie promises Raymond to come see him in 2 weeks.

THE END.

BONUS

This elevator scene is also in another movie, The Hangover. And in the Hangover Elevator Scene, the guy with a beard and the grey costume is also kind of an autist.

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.

Life of Pi - The Movie

I already talked about Life of Pi before, if you remember. But that was the book. Nobody knew it, and suddenly it became very fashion, because there was a movie. I got to watch it twice. And I'm going to tell you what I think about it. If you want the story, there it is, but you can also check out the Life of Pi post. The story: http://ragdollsmaybe.blogspot.ch/2012/08/life-of-pi.html - too lazy to copy and paste it.

Well, what I think about the movie is that it followed the story of the book pretty well. Except I think that Pi should have been a bit more skinny. For all of that, I think that the movie is super well done, with lots of special effects. To learn more, check the website out: lifeofpimovie.com

I really liked the movie and I think you should see it, because it's one of those rare movies that actually follow the story of the book and manage to add stuff in that makes the movie very interesting to watch even to those who have read the book and/or have seen the movie already.

Skyfall

Skyfall, as I think all of you now it, is the new James Bond movie.  It has a very weird plot.

So, at the beginning, James Bond is shot by another agent and falls from a bridge. He's supposed to be dead. But he's not. Because he's James Bond.

So he comes back to his agence and they give him a new mission. To kill the Agence's ex-best agent. The other 'James Bond'.

On the left, James Bond.
On the right, the ex-James Bond.

He has an island all to himself. James Bond ends up on it. The other James Bond (Silva) gives him a long talk about rats:

Silva: My grandma had a small island. But if was infested with rats. So she had to get rid of them... Did she kill them? No. She put coconuts in a big hole. The rats all fell in the hole and when there was no coconuts they ate the other rats. When there was only two rats left, she let them out. And they didn't eat coconuts, they ate only rats. We are the two rats that are left. Are we going to eat each other? No...

James Bond: ...

James Bond manages to run away, but Silva, who has an overly big intelligence, 

Silva blows up the MI6. James Bond has a plan to kill Silva. James Bond goes to his home,  Skyfall and prepares a trap for Silva. Skyfall was Bond's house when he was young. He puts dynamite in it and while Silva is in it, blows it up. But Silva's still not dead. Bond falls into a frozen lake and has to struggle to get out. In the end, Silva is in a church and pointing his gun at Bond. But Bond kills Silva.

And there's only one rat left. Bond. James Bond.

And Adele made a song for the movie. It's a good song, I think.

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!!!

Hunger Games

The “Hunger Games” is a nice movie. It’s about a girl, called Katniss Everdeen (I’m not sure if you write it like that though) that comes from district twelve, and you’ll think *what’s that?* I’ll explain. Her sister gets chosen for the Hunger Games, which are basically violent games where everyone is killed except one person – the winner. And in every district (there are 12 of them), there is a boy and a girl chosen randomly to participate. But with Katniss, that won’t go because she doesn’t want to kill her friend from district 12. So they fake loving each other to survive – well, Katniss does but not him…

That's Katniss.

That story was taken from a book by Suzanne Collins and she wrote a trilogy out of it. The first book is good, the other two are boring – I think. I was too bored to read further than page ten of book two.

The movie was good. I liked how Katniss played her part – but she was a bit fatty and not beautiful. But she acted REALLY WELL.

So, it’s a good movie – as I said. But it’s quite violent so children under 10, stop here and don’t watch that movie. Ten-year olds and more, watch – except if you have a phobia of bees, dogs or blood. Otherwise, the movie had good special effects – and the music was OK.

So, I recommend this to you.

“ May the odds be ever in your favor…” Don’t worry, you’ll understand if you watch, if you were thinking *whaaaat?* just now.