Book Jealousy

I don't think of myself as someone who gets jealous easily. That's definitely not one of my faults. Other people's happiness doesn't diminish my own, and naturally, I thought that would also apply to book-happiness.

Well, clearly it doesn't, if my sister is involved.

I was at the library yesterday (where I got Gone With the Wind) and my sister announces that she's going to get Dune (by Frank Herbert). I instantly protested. Now, here are a few things you should know.

1. I'm a bigger reader than my sister. She is definitely a lover of books, just not to the extent that I am. There has rarely been a book that haven't read before she did. And in one of those rare cases where she read a book before I got to it, it was a book that I wasn't particularly interested in. (The example that comes to mind is Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. My sister adores that book, and I haven't even read it.)

The book causing this sisterly contention

2. I haven't read Dune - but I really really want to.

The conversation went like this:

Sister: "I think I'm going to get Dune."
Me: "Why!?"
Sister: "Oh, I don't know. I want to read it."
Me: [Trying to formulate a logical argument in my head of why she shouldn't get it] "Uhh - but - Why don't you get something else?"
Sister: "I think I want to get Dune though."
Me: [Now, trying to figure out why the heck I don't want her to get it] "Well, I - I haven't read it yet. There are so many other books you could get!"
Sister: "No, I think I'm going to get Dune."
Me: [In mild exasperation*] "But I want to read it first! I haven't read it yet!"
Sister: "So? You don't have to read everything first. I'm going to get Dune."

That evening, I thought about why I so vehemently didn't want my sister to read Dune. I realized that I was jealous that she would read a book before I did - and of all things, a book that I wanted to read. This sort of freaked me out, because, as I said, I don't think of myself as a jealous or selfish person. But when it comes to books and the person closest to me - my sister - I become super jealous and selfish.

See, I know there are thousands of other people that have read thousands of books that I want to read. And this doesn't bug me. But because my sister is so close to me, and, though I tend to ignore it, there is a certain sense of competitiveness between us, my jealousy flared up when she DARED to read a book I wanted to.

So this post is sort of becoming therapy for me - getting over my jealousy of my sister reading Dune, and realizing that we're not competing for books. Heck, there's more than one copy of Dune at the library. But it's the idea that I don't have time to read Dune right now, and she'll finish it before I do - that makes me illogically jealous of her. I need to stop. :-)

Thanks for letting me spew all this stuff. Have any of you experienced book jealousy? Especially with someone you normally thought you wouldn't be jealous of? Tell me about it!

~Sophia

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*You can only get mildly exasperated in a library.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card // Nullo Is Awesome!

Boy, it felt good to breeze through a book. I'm getting tired of month-long projects.
I read Ender's Game in a weekend. You know what that means?
It means the approach of freedom.
It means Summer is coming.
The amount of time it takes for me to read a book is directly proportional to the amount of homework I have. Homework is lessening. I have more time for reading.
Yippee!!

Anyway, let's talk about Ender's Game.

Ender's Game is set in an alternate version of our world. We have expanded into the universe and are fighting with aliens that we call "buggers." We've already had two major Invasions, and we are preparing for the Third Invasion. 

Ender is a six year old boy genius (SIX. I love it. But we'll talk characters later.), who is chosen to save our world from the buggers. He is taken from his family - from his dearly beloved sister - to be trained in semi-isolation in the space-station Battle School, where future space soldiers learn tactics and fighting. 

Let's digress a bit and talk about the lessons. They train in zero-gravity ("nullo," they call it), which I would LOVE to try. I love this idea of zero-gravity so much that I had a dream about it and was trying to employ the techniques that Ender was using in the book. WAT.

Now then:

What I Loved

(The whole concept of nullo, obviously. But besides that.)

The fact that Ender is SIX. He has the brain of someone much older, but still, he is SIX (in the beginning, at least). A character so young is so unconventional, and I love it. For most of the book, he is not even a tween. It's great. It also makes it hard to picture him as a little kid, because his vocabulary and his mental processes are just so above that age, and I had to keep reminding myself as I read.

I also loved the detail about the technology and the techniques that Ender and his fellow students learned. Hey, it allowed me to dream about it better! :-)

I felt so bad for Ender throughout the whole book. I wanted to give him a hug, say, "Don't worry, you can cry on my shoulder, I'm not trying to use you, I just want you to be happy!" And then when I read this...

"We have to go. I'm almost happy here... I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it."

...my heart broke for him.

Ender had never known a life of happiness, a life where there wasn't someone, somewhere, who was in control of him. 

Oooh ooh let's talk about the ending! 

Man, was that a superb twist! It just jumped on me out of nowhere (the same way it did on Ender, except I wasn't QUITE as emotionally involved), and gave me tingles, the way good twist endings do. And the final chapter tied it up neatly, in an epilogue sort of way, where it didn't feel rushed but dealt with practically every loose end. 

One confusion I had with the ending, but it involves a spoiler, so... (Highlight to reveal spoilers)

Did the other kids - Petra, Alai, Bean, etc - know that it wasn't a game? Did they also think that they were just piloting little dots of light on a screen? Wouldn't they be just as freaked as Ender? And if they DID know - wait, is that even LEGAL? I don't get it. Don't they deserve just as much pity as Ender? They were fighting real things too. They were killing and destroying real beings too. They probably will have a decent amount of PTSD. Darnded I.F.. I hate them, ruining little kids like that. Yeah, yeah, I know they saved the world. STILL.

If you can please clear up this confustion, I'd appreciate it. Just give good spoiler warnings in the comments so no one else gets spoiled. :-)

What I Didn't Love So Much

The one thing I didn't exactly like was that Card's writing occasionally slips into telling, instead of showing. In fact, this happens more than occasionally. It makes some sense, since the book spans a good number of years, but still, it can dull the reading.

Ender's Game was a fun book. It was clever, it was funny, it was engaging, and it was deep. It dealt with intense issues in a non-intense way. It surprised me with it's plot and with its characters.

Now to read the rest of the series... I've heard different things about which books to read next - Ender's Shadow? Ender in Exile? Or a different one? What do you think? Which order do YOU think is the best?

~Sophia

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I ALMOST Put Down

As always, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.
Today's topic is Books I Almost Put Down - But Didn't.
I'm going to take that to mean - books I sloughed through.

1. Moby Dick by Herman Melville.
This book was rather boring. WAY too many nonfictional digressions on the history of whaling and the anatomy of a whale and the symbolism of whales etc.

2. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.
Here, there were a LOT of philosophical digressions - but that's just par for the course with Russian literature. However, I do not regret finishing this book. It was NOT a waste of time, and was a fantastic experience. And now I can say I read War and Peace cover to cover! (And wrote a pretty nice essay on it, too!)

3. Bel Ami by Guy de Maupassant.
I know I ranted about this one before. I love Guy de Maupassant - he has an excellent way with words - but Bel Ami was just so unsatisfying for me. The reason I didn't put it down was because I had hope that he would end it well. He didn't.
(Oh, and I found the post where I ranted about it, by the way.)

4. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.
I bet you didn't think you'd see this guy on this list, did you? I've sung my praises of Les Miz on here more than once, but that was after I'd read it for the second time.
See, the first time I read it, I was - twelve? thirteen? - and I did enjoy it. But there were far too many digressions for me to not have doubts, and I did consider putting it down. THANK GOD I DIDN'T. The second time I read it, I was ready for the digressions, and took them as they came. Some I read. Some I didn't. But I relished the story more because I wasn't freaking out about missing something just because I skipped some random section on the history and philosophy of slang.

Well, only four today, I guess. This one was a bit difficult for me. I guess I rarely finish books that I am considering putting down.

What about you? What books have you almost put down - but didn't?

Spin Results

So the results of the Classics Club spin have been revealed! The book I will be reading is...

(...drumroll please...)

This is going to be a reread for me, since I read this book back when I was ten years old. I was reading The Count of Monte Cristo at the time, but my friend insisted that I read Gone with the Wind next. Considering that Count is a rather long book, she was insisting for a rather long time - but I eventually read it. And loved it! 

But I haven't read it in a good many years so I'm looking forward to revisiting it. It's a little longer than I was hoping for, since I'm leaving for Italy in a week and would rather not lug a tome that heavy in my suitcase. Oh well. (More about Italy later this week.)

If you're doing the spin, what book did you get?

And if you've ever been to Rome (or Venice or Florence), got any recommendations on experiences I absolutely shouldn't miss? :-)

~Sophia

The Bible Project: Week 18 and 19 (1 Chronicles)

Hey, look at that! I'm back on track with my reading schedule!

1 Chronicles can be split into two parts:

Ch. 1-9: NAMES and MORE NAMES. The Chronicler really liked genealogy, and seemed to have a thing for identifying every single person involved in every single battle and great event. Every single person and their children, too.

Ch. 10-23: Retelling of David's story from back in 2 Samuel.

So really, nothing new. I'm sure if I read super carefully, I could write a discussion on the differences between the Chronicler and the writer of 2 Samuel, but I don't have time for such super in-depth analysis right now.
One difference that an annotation in my Bible pointed out to me was a wording change in 1 Chron 21:1. ("A satan rose up against Israel, and he enticed David into taking a census of Israel." - A census was sinful because the idea was that the people belonged to the Lord, not to the king, and thus only the Lord should know their exact number.) Here's what the annotation has to say about it:

In the parallel passage of 2 Sam 24:1, A satan is instead the Lord's anger. The change in the term reflects the changed theological outlook of postexilic Israel, when evil could no longer be attributed directly to God.... Here, as in later Judaism and in the New Testament, satan, or the "devil," designates an evil spirit who tempts men to wrongdoing.

So here we have the first mention of the Devil, which I thought was pretty cool.

That's all for today - the spin book is revealed tomorrow!

~Sophia

The Bible Project: Week 17 (2 Kings)

I know I've been somewhat AWOL in the blogosphere for the last week or so, but I do have excuses. These next two weeks are incredibly full of finals and I have been studying for them like crazy.

Anyway, on to 2 Kings. (It's actually week 18, but I promise I'll catch up soon...)

1 Kings and 2 Kings have a very similar style, which would make sense considering that they were originally part of the same book. So in 2 Kings we have more summaries of the lives of various rulers with confusing names. Some of them are loyal to God, but many do not follow God's laws.  They make temples to other gods on high places, and even when there is that one rare king that destroys all the pagan temples, it's still isn't enough for God to for completely forgive his people. 

I don't really have that much to say about this book. I read that Chronicles is actually an expansion of the Books of Kings, so I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to that or not. We shall see. I'm not really that big on history. 

~Sophia

Post Script: I know my plans for National Poetry Month didn't exactly work out, but April was just so busy. The cumulative poem sort of failed but it was a rather spontaneous idea so I wasn't expecting that much out of it. All we have are three lines, which are as follows:

The light of the lantern slowly shifts to eerie blue - but no one sees.
A Mighty Metamorphosis that raged across the labile land, 

        Grew stronger as the cobblestone was turned to sacred silver sand.

Deep, huh? :-) 

Classics Club Spin #6

So instead of doing a Top Ten Tuesday, I'm going to post my options for the Classics Club Spin #6.

For those of you who don't know, here are the rules of the Spin:

1. I pick out 20 books from my Classics Club list and number them 1-20
2. The Classics Club announces a number on Monday, May 12th.
3. I read the book that I assigned to that number by July 7th!

I think I'm going to be lazy and grab my list from the last spin. I just will replace a couple books.
So here's the list:

Rereads:
1. Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
2. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.
3. Joan of Arc by Mark Twain
4. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
5. The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy

I Can't Wait to Read:

6. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather 

7. 1984 by George Orwell

8. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

9. Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand

10. The Sea Wolf by Jack London

I'm Dreading:
11. Ben Hur by Lew Wallace (I started this one a few years back and only got a few chapters in.)
12. The White Company by A. Conan Doyle (Can you believe I've started this onetwice and haven't finished it yet?)
13. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (Well, this is both dreaded and anticipated. I'm both excited yet a little intimidated by the size...)
14. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

I'm Neutral About:
16. The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
17. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
18. The Man Who would be King by Rudyard Kipling

19. An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde

20. The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett