The Scarlet Letter

It has been years (only about two, now that I think of it) since I read The Scarlet Letter. I remember not particularly wanting to spend time reading it, but in the end it was pretty enjoyable. The only memorable thing (besides a vague summary) that I recall is the beautifully sad babbling brook. It came up more than once and it was such a richly described part in the forest that I never forgot it.

Even the cover is daunting.

The teacher I am cooperating with for my field experience at Waterloo West led a lesson about The Scarlet Letter and the idea of our own personal ‘sins’ or what I like to call real character flaws. Each student listed five of them and picked the one they thought most applied to themselves. Then, they drew the letter that that word started with and were instructed to wear them around school (on a day in the near future). I decided to draw my own letter based on my biggest flaw: being judgmental.

It looked much better on paper, trust me.

I really enjoyed this lesson, and I’m glad I was there to experience not only watching students think about themselves and how Hester Prynne was shunned for sinning, but also how she decorated her sin and wore it in clear view.

Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Lost Adventures

For anyone who doesn’t know, Avatar: The Last Airbender was a show about a boy named Aang and his friends, Katara, Sokka, and Toph. They three nations (Air has been wiped out): Fire, Earth, and Water. The Fire Nation had taken over and was waging a war for domination over the other three nations. Aang is the avatar, the one who is meant to master all four elements and keep peace in the world.

In The Lost Adventures, we get quite a few fun tales about their adventures outside of what the show was able to portray. For avid fans and new readers alike, this is a great graphic novel to get into. It is separated into the same books/nations as the show, so if you are a follower of it, you will understand and enjoy the context of the short stories. If you haven’t seen the show, the group generally spends a good chunk of time in each nation allowing Aang to master that element. The graphic novel shows miniature flashbacks to let you know important plot points in the story.

Fun adventures travelling the world.

I like every adventure, but there were a few that stuck out as especially enjoyable.

In one story, the group has stopped for a rest. Aang finds a merchant who is selling a relic of the air nation, and when the rest have finally gone to sleep, he goes to check it out. To his dismay, the Fire Nation traps him when he gets to an old airbender hideout. I love the history that is put into this story. Airbender relics are something even I would be interested in — they have been all but wiped out by the firebenders.

If you recall in the show, Toph scams firebenders for money by using her earthbending skills. In this story, they have to come up with a new way to get food in the Fire Nation. Appa (Aang’s sky bison) is hungry as well, and his stomach rumbles like an earthquake. Sokka convinces the Fire Nation citizens that he’s a great beast, and that he can scare him off if they pay for his food. Sokka is in for a great surprise though, when they find that the great beast is not Appa at all…

My favorite story with Toph has to be where she fights earthbender King Bumi. He is old and quite possibly senile, and they both think they are the epitome of earthbending glory. Sokka is the referee, and I think my favorite line from him has to be, “Rockalanche! Nice!”

Overall, this is a great read whether or not you’ve seen the show. It had so many fun stories about each character that it’s also not boring for people who have watched the series many times, like myself. I highly recommend it! I also want to thank NetGalley for giving me this book to review, I appreciate it.

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

For my Women Studies class at Wartburg, I have been reading The Second Sex (Simone de Beauvoir). I will admit that it’s interesting and worth a read for anyone who is fascinated by women’s relationships with the rest of the world. However, to me, it reads like a textbook. The entire first chapter relates women to eggs and men to sperm. It was fun to tell people about, but not to read. There were even quite a few words that were new to me, which is a novel feeling in itself.

Although I have enjoyed learning about some of the topics in the book, it’s quite dry. I don’t believe I will end up finishing it. I realize that a lot of people hail this as  an amazing book, which it is good, it’s just not something you can pick up and read every day.

There were actually quite a few quotes that I thought worthy of writing down in my favorite quotes book — things like:

“Just as in America there is no Negro problem, but rather a white problem; just as ‘anti-semitism is not a Jewish problem: it is our problem’; so the woman problem has always been a man’s problem. We have seen why men had moral prestige along with physical strength from the start; they created values, mores, religions; never have women disputed this empire with them.”

I actually have to do a ‘book report’ over this book for the class. I have to decide on three major themes, relate it to our class, and talk about why I think it should be included in women’s studies classes as required reading. I personally don’t think it should be, so I decided to tell the class how it could be studied as a textbook rather than additional reading. I was considering starting off my report with one of two quotes that would give a good feeling of the attitude of this book.

An old Anglo-Saxon incantation says, “Hail, Earth, mother of men, may you be fertile in the embrace of God and may you be filled with fruits for man’s use.”

From Tertullian, whom she quotes multiple times, “Woman! You are the gateway of the devil. You persuaded him whom the devil dared not attack directly. Because of you the Son of God had to die. You should always go dressed in mourning and in rags.”

For my three main themes, I chose the ideas that women is the “Other” to man and that she was made FOR man, that marriage and reproduction imprison women and limits them, and how woman is related to nature — as I am also writing a paper on ecofeminism.

I do hope that someone finds this book interesting enough to pick up and read, though I know it’s not for everyone.

Favorite Quotes

I thought I would start off Wednesday with some nice thoughts about literature, and what better way to do so than to use others’ words? Here are some of my favorite literary quotes.

“There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.”
― Elmore Leonard

“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn’t it such a relief to have somebody say that?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”
― Flannery O’Connor

“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”
― Mark Twain

I also thought I would include this sad Cracked.com article. It lists reasons we are in a new book-burning period. It’s sad to admit, but I feel like it’s true.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19453_6-reasons-were-in-another-book-burning-period-in-history.html?wa_user1=3&wa_user2=Weird+World&wa_user3=article&wa_user4=feature_module

Rage: After the Impact

After receiving quite a few graphic novels from one of my favorite publishers, Dark Horse Books, I chose to read and review Rage: After the Impact.

This is the first time I've read a graphic novel as an ebook. It was interesting, to say the least.

Rage: After the Impact is an introduction story to id Software’s game, RAGE. The story follows the brief beginnings of Dr. Elizabeth Cadence’s life after awakening from sleep in a cryogenic ark. A deadly meteor, Apophis, was headed for Earth, so the government took preemptive measures and saved the lives of many who would be necessary to rebuild humanity. Approximately 5,000,000 people were killed by the meteor. As Rage indicates, “They were the lucky ones.”

Once awakened from her cryo ark, Dr. Cadence is attacked by ‘Wastelanders’ and saved by The Authority, or the new form of government in this post-apocalyptic world. Once inside the scientific facility, she senses something amiss with the research that is being done on the mutants, the humans who have supposedly come into contact with feltrite, a substance from Apophis.

Arvid Nelson does a great job of building an interesting relationship between Drs Antonin Kvasir and Cadence. I am truly interested to see where Kvasir ends up. With his new outlook… he could go anywhere. Cadence, on the other hand, I see getting into a lot of trouble due to her gung-ho attitude.

Near the end of Rage: AtI, I was reminded of Serenity, a movie based on one of my favorite (one-season) shows, Firefly. I personally love being reminded that humans are often to blame for some of the bad things in this world, and that we have many faults, greed being a large one.

This was a fantastic snippet of what I imagine to be a great story line for a video game. I enjoyed this story, and can’t wait for the full novel, Rage, and the video game from id Software to experience more of this world.