My vote for the new book

Of the last part of this class when it comes to the group projects there were only two books that really interested me. One of which, was the book my own group did. That said, the only other book that looked good to me was The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Surprisingly, the groups presentation on it and it being a Pulitzer prize winner made me go order it off of Amazon. I feel like this book would fit well in the part of the curriculum where the Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was. Considering it is a Pulitzer prize winner just like T.B.A.W.L.O.O.W. it would be good to fill that spot. It also seems to have a better message. The message of the love between the father and his son. I feel Cormac McCarthy is a successful writer who did a spectacular job with No Country for Old Men and that gave me a feeling that this story would be just as good as that one. I am looking forward to my book's arival in the mail tomorrow so I can read it. It has been a good year and I am looking forward to see if some of my friends take this class in the future what book stay and what books go.

The Alchemist

Outside of water for Elephants, The Alchemist was the most enjoyable book I read this year that was related to this class. The book is the basic story of a young boy who is following his dreams to buried treasure. This is over simplifying the book to say the least. Although, it sounds simple, it is written simply, and it is relatively short at 160 pages, I feel it has a place in the reading now course load. I feel like this would be a good book for either after Happiness or at the very end of the semester. What makes this book good is that it is very though provoking and the whole story is a metaphor to follow your dreams. Each test the boy goes through along his path of finding buried treasure can be talked about in a class discussion. That said, if you were to put this story in the beginning of the year it would be good for breaking the ice into class discussion. The way this book is written it is easy to understand the characters and connect with them like you were to know them in real life. I feel this is because the author did not get to caught up in names and you only hear the actual names of people like 3 times through out the whole story. This seemed to make it easier to instantly get to know the characters. I feel this is a technique that was used effectively and should be used by more authors because it is very useful to the reader. All in all, I am glad to have read this book because it was fun, fast, and really had a good message.

In the Shadow of No Towers/9-11/Watchmen

It was fun to get the opportunity to read a graphic novel in this class. I had never heard of this artist or his work before in the ways graphic novels go. My only experience with graphic novels has been Watchmen or Batman graphic novels so In the Shadow of New Towers was really new to me and that was good. Unlike my previous graphic novel experience this one was written in an even more obscure way then Watchmen. Where in Watchmen the novel kind of bounces around this one was just kind of obscure. The first half was completely different than the second half. Although I was starting to conclude that the second half was more metaphorical than the first half.

Obviously this graphic novel brought up some some feelings for me about 9-11. It kind of reminded me what I was doing and how I felt that day, and just the period of time surrounding that date. I remember waking up early in the morning for no apparent reason and going out to the living room where my mom was always up early watching the morning news. When I first came out she told me there was a terrible accident where a plane crashed into one of the twin towers. It wasn't until about 5 minutes later that we watched the second plane hit and then a while later that we saw the third plane hit the pentagon. This time period made me feel real scared and I remember my mom didn't take me to school that morning because she was so paranoid and scared.

Although Watchmen might not match the criteria necessary for this class. I am not sure on the date but I think it was written before I was born, I still feel it would be good to have in this class solely for the reason it is a good novel that happens to be graphic.

Brief and Wondrous

This book was very wide ranged in what went on. So many different plots, There was Oscar, his sister, mom, and roommate. All these plots came down to one sad person though and that was Oscar. It seems Oscar had bad luck with everything productive he tried from the moment he had two girl friends. Obviously, Oscar picked the better looking of the two and from that moment on anything that would benefit Oscar in his life kind of just didn't work out for him. He had terrible luck with girls for the rest of his "brief and wondrous life" all up until the very end with his last girl. But still, bad luck followed him all the way up until that point. part of me wonders if this is because he just had no self confidence whatsoever. I really pitied Oscar because no matter what the circumstances he always failed. He couldn't get in shape even when his roommate was willing to train and help him. One of the funnier things to me in the story was he was so bad at everything he wasn't even able to kill himself when he tried. He was that pathetic at everything.

I actually only enjoyed a couple part of this book at all. The first and most memorable part was the part about Oscar's mom when she was growing up. I figure I like it because I am a guy and it was fun to read about his mom when she was pretty and there was action that was going down with the gangster and the mom's attempted murder. It really was the only part of the sotry that had me page turning. The second part that was... readable was the sister side plot probably just because she was rebel and didn't take well to her parent's authority.

Conan's graduation speech.

It was really amusing to read this short story about graduation. It got me thinking back to my graduation and some of the things surrounding it that I don't know if I will ever forget. To start out I listened to this song by O.A.R. called Love and Memories, at the time this was a pretty big song to me. Mainly because it is catchy but also because love and memories are one of the few things in life that really stick with you. One of my favorite memories was when we had Wheaties with half & half and strawberries with our World Affairs teacher. The guy is kind of a cowboy to stereotype him and we had a box of Wheaties that sat in the front of the class everyday because of the constant food drive so he said on our last day of school we could bust it open as long as we brought the half &half and strawberries. So we brought the goods for graduation day and during our Senior Brunch we filled up on Wheaties, Half &Half, and strawberries. Other things that reading Conan's Graduation made me think about were the roommate thing and how if your roommate isn't weird then you are probably the weird one. This was funny because I knew my roommate from high school and we are pretty good friends but a couple of my friends form where I am from had random roommates and their roommates are weird kids.

Figh Club part dos (emphasis on Tyler Durden)

Now this is the part of the story where Tyler Durden gets thrown into the mix. The Narrator first meets Tyler on one of his flights while he was on a business trip. He figures Tyler to be just another single serving friend who make soap, but little does the narrator know Tyler will be such an intricate part of his life.

This is one of the major differences I noticed between the book and the movie. In the book the Narrator meets Tyler on a beach in Florida, there Tyler is dragging logs from the surf up onto the beach. He drags five logs and digs five holes into the sand where he plants the logs standing straight up and down. Although the Narrator has no idea why Tyler is doing this later he sees that Tyler created a shadow with his logs and for a minute the shadow appeared to be hand that Tyler happened to be sitting in.

Even though it is kind of subtle change that really doesn't matter in the way the film ends it was still a pretty cool part that would have been fun to see in the movie.


Tyler is really everything the narrator wishes he could be. Tyler is smart, assertive, funny, and good in bed.

That is probably why Tyler is the other half of the Narrator's split personality. Tyler is also one who believes in chaos and really pushes the narrator over the edge. Even though Tyler accomplishes what he wanted to accomplish in destroying the credit district, the Narrator is the ultimate winner in the final confrontation when he ends up shooting himself.

Fight Club part one

Fight club is one of my favorite movies. So when seeing it on the class schedule for the year was an exciting thing to see in August when we started class. What I enjoy the most about fight club is how you can watch the film ten times and see something new every time.

Fight Club is the story of a insomniac (Edward Norton(the narrator)) and his split personality Tyler Durden, who in the movie is played by Brad Pitt. The narrator in the story is stuck in the rut of day-to-day life being a white collar worker for a major motor company.

In the movie Edward Norton helps his sleeping problems at first by attending group therapy sessions; his first one he attends is men living with testicular cancer (pictured to the right) where he meets people like Bob who allow him to let go and release his anxiety in the form of crying. The narrator can finally sleep after he cries.

This is all peachy until Marla Singer enters his life and interrupts his group therapy sessions that he can no longer fall asleep. The narrator in this story stands for the "American Dream" and well Marla is just kind of the opposite. She smokes, steals, and generally doesn't really give a dang about anything.

And in the beginning part of the movie it is very easy to make the contrast between the Narrator and Marla. If you went off of appearance alone you could see that the Narrator dresses clean and pressed every day, he lives in a nice apartment, and he works a respectable job. Marla on the other hand looks very dark and dreary, probably shops at Hot Topic, doesn't have a job, and her apartment is in some low income housing part of the city.

Water for Elephants

Water for Elephants seems to be an intriguing book so far. I believe Jacob seems to be thrown into a bad situation right off the bat with this book as his parents both die in a car crash and he doesn't have a home or a veterinary practice to go back to once he graduates from college. So in the middle of his final exams he just jets and hops on a circus train. He is helped out at first by Camel in getting into the circus, Uncle Al (who is the leader of the circus) finally has a meeting with Jacob in his stateroom and thinks he is just some rich college boy who ran away from Mommy and Daddy. Soon Uncle Al learns he was actually studying to be a vet at Cornell, an Ivy League school, and immediately gives him a job under August as the Circus' vet. August treats Jacob pretty well at first and invites him to have dinner with Marlena, August's wife, and himself after a practical joke gone bad. Things go pretty well until they make it to Chicago where August, Jacob, and Marlena go to a speakeasy and it gets busted. In all the confusion August gets separated from Jacob and Marlena. Jacob and Marlena end up kissing which is a bad mistake and will make this story juicy. I'm looking forward to finishing this book because this climatic scene was very fun and interesting. The plot is thickening!

MYOM

My Year of Meats was an interesting book that had two main stories. When there are two stories in a book I usually think that the stories will intertwine at some point. I was right in that assumption for this book does just that by telling the tales of both Akiko and Jane. I found it stupid how Akiko decided to just skip out of town, hop on a plane, and then call Jane from the plane telling her she was coming over. This was dumb because who just takes someone’s word when they say if you ever need anything just let me know? Akiko should have at least called first to give Jane a heads up to let her know she was coming. This wasn't the only issue I had with the book either. I hated how Jane's baby died before she even had a chance to give birth to it. That alone made the story worse for me to read. I enjoy different stuff happening in stories that doesn't necessarily fit into the "Hollywood" type of ending, but killing a baby off like that just ain't cool man. Although it may seem like I am just burning the book left and right, I did enjoy the whole meat aspect of it and getting that closer look at the meat industry was a little shocking/enlightening. I don't feel like MYOM is enough to make me go vegetarian but it did give me a sense that you can't just trust everything you eat was raised on a sunny pasture with a rainbow that stretches over the couple of cows on a 50 acre farm. It is made me feel like the whole meat industry is dark and that the cows are constantly living in fear and are tortured their whole lives... ... hmm. The book did a good job making me think.

Alternative ending to Happiness.

"Jack? It's me, Edwin."
"What do you want?" said Jack, but the tumors cut from his throat had left his once glorious baritone voice scratchy and weak.
"I came to collect my money."
"Well you're shit of luck then partner." said Jack, " I thought we already covered this and I told you I wasn't budging."
Edwin replied, "You did. Since I wrote How to be Miserable I feel that I deserve a cut of the profits from that book. If I don't get a cut I will kill your grandson."
At this Edwin witnessed Jack fall to his knees. Edwin rushed over and caught him before he fell all the way to the ground. He looked short of breath and Jack breathing was irregular and it appeared like he was hyper ventilating.
Jack squeaked, "If you think it is necessary to kill my grandson then you will just have to do it. I am not going to do anything different. Edwin, If you do in fact kill my grandson, I want you to know that the money isn't worth it. It might make you a rich man but that is only for this short time on Earth that you will be able to use it. Because you can't take it with you when you die."
Edwin was caught off guard and although he was planning on Jack saying he wasn't going to give him any of the money, this caught Edwin totally off guard, leaving any of the witty responses he had prepared useless. He just sat there silently and watched Jack die in his arms.
"Goodbye Jack."
Edwin laid Jack down watched the sunset from the hill and then walked back to his car.