Tagged: 1984

My Achy Breaky Heart

This is one of my favorite book blog follow alongs to participate in. They usually have really provoking questions, and I’ve been racking my brains, and shedding a few tears coming up with this weeks list.

Question:  Top 10 books that broke my heart.
Answer: I am only going to include books that made me cry, which is a rarity.

1.My Sister’s Keeper – Jodi Picoult
We’re talking sobbing, gut wrenching slobbery, red-faced, snotty nose sobbing. Oh and I was on a plane, and the adorable little old lady beside me kept patting me on the arm and offering me a tissue. I’m not even exaggerating.

2. The Street Lawyer – John Grisham
I can’t explain why, or how it happened. It was in the first couple chapters and I just broke down. I saw humanity and all its evils, I decided I wanted to help the homeless, and I did for a while.

3. Beatrice & Virgil – Yan Martel
I just finished this book about a week ago. I’m going to do a post on it when I’ve finally calmed down. I was un-prepared for my reaction to “Games for Gustav”. It was unbearably sad, but this is the most beautiful book I have read in over a year.

4. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irvine
I loved him, and he was so smart and funny and brave. I cried at the end.

5. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
They say unrequited love is the most painful thing on earth. He loved best.

6. A Fine Ballance – Rohniton Mistry
This book was an ache that lasted a long time after I closed the back cover. How can mankind treat itself that way? How can goodness and simple happiness survive?

7. 1984 – George Orwell
You know when you’re so angry, and you’re trying to make a valid point, and explain your reasoning/view/why you’re right, and all you can do is feel your face grow redder, and hotter, and your vocal cords squeeze tight and you feel hot, angry, shameful tears leak out of your eyes? Ya. This book.

8. The Shack – William P. Young
I can’t even get into it.

9. The Subtle Knife – Phillip Pullman
*SPOILER*
I don’t think I have ever cried quite so hard at the death of a character ever, (except maybe in number 1.) than at the death of Hester. I still tear up, sniff, (no joke), when I think about it. Then I get mad. I’m not a weepy person!

10. The Crucible – Arthur Miller
Angry tears, sad tears, defeated tears, and hopeful triumphant tears. All in one play.
_____________________________________________________________

I almost forgot! The REAL number 1. The ULTIMATE book that caused me to cry, and feel loss even to today is…..

A book I have already talked about and will likely talk about again.

Fool’s Fate – Robin Hobb
The ultimate love story, the ultimate character development. You really have to read the whole 9 books to understand why this is as great as I say it is. Or trust me.
“Home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there any more.”

10 Books I Have Read This Year That Are Outside Of My Comfort Zone

I got the idea for this list from The Broke and the Bookish. Their blog hosts a weekly meme called “Top Ten Tuesdays”; and on November 8th this was their theme. I don’t actually follow the blog as closely as I should, and I have yet to officially participate in a TTT, but I loved this question, and I love lists, so I thought I’d answer it.

I am chosing only books that I have read this year due to the NYR/11; therefore the answer as to why I have read them is going to be the same for each book. I’ll simply state how I had pre-judged the book, if applicable, and how I felt about the read. Please note SPOILERS, don’t read past the title if you don’t want me to give away my *gasp* moments.

  1. His Dark Materials – Phillip Pullman; I am 27 and am so over YA. I was a bit snobbish thinking this was just one more fantasy type book series I could do without. I cried like a baby over Hester and Lee, I enjoyed the whole story.
  2. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carrol; I learned in my socials 11 class that this was a satire aimed at old rich folks in London, I was never interested in reading it as I thought it would probably be lost on me and I would be annoyed. I was right.
  3. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy; All I knew was he had written War and Peace, and I wasn’t particularly interested in Russia or its history. Big, old, and boring was my pre-judgments. Amazing, engrossing, and beautifully descriptive with an awesome redemptive story line was my end feelings. This book is currently the top of my favorite reads of all time.
  4. Moby Dick – Herman Melville; This is going to sound bad, I thought it was a men’s book and I wasn’t interested. Reading it I decided it’s definitely a mens book, the beginning was funny, and I really didn’t need to know that much about whales or the killing of them.
  5. 1984 – George Orwell; I knew it would make me mad. It did. I knew everyone would either die or sell out. They did.
  6. Tess of D’ubervilles – Thomas Hardy; I’m not all too interested with Hardy so I wasn’t overly keen to read this. I find him overly wordy, flowery and somewhat depressing. Seems this is exactly how I felt about Tess.
  7. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood; I was worried it was going to be overly preachy, feminist propaganda. It was actually a great read, if not a quick one. I have a lasting impression of the main character, and I find myself referring to the book in many of my political discussions with people.
  8. A Tale of Two Cities – Dickens; I thought I knew all about it because I knew the first twelve words; I was bored with it before I picked it up. This is an amazing book, I shouldn’t even have to tell you it’s the best Dickens novel out there, and the characters are so real it hurts.
  9. A Brave New World – Aldus Huxley; I knew nothing about this book. If I had I would have stayed away as it’s so far away from anything I normally read. It was interesting, and it was stretching. I felt un-comfortable the whole time as it was so weird to me, but I am glad I read it.
  10. The Inferno – Dante; I’m not into epic poems. As amazing as the imagery is in the Inferno, it’s still a long, epic poem. Beautiful and terrifying, and long.

Ciao

Go read something that scares you.

Moi xoxo

 

Victory Fries

So blogger is being exceedingly frustrating. Deleting posts, restoring them in the wrong order, causing my dashboard to be inaccessible. Those types of things. In the event this post is taken down I will be expected to believe it is mere coincidence and not a spiteful act. But I digress…. (Did I? Was that actually a digression.)

di·gress/dīˈgres/
Verb: Leave the main subject temporarily in speech or writing. 
 
Well then, I was aiming at one subject and did temporarily divert pre topic so I suppose I pre digressed… However only I knew that was a digression… I should just delete all this and start over, but what fun would that be?!
 
Hello,
I am reading 1984 by George Orwell. I quite enjoy many sentences and descriptions so far. I’m only on page 58 of 251 but that’s like 23%. “For the future. For the unborn.” I liked that one so much I put it down in my quotes in Goodreads already. Usually I wait until I’m finished one of the books before adding just one quote from the book. I broke the rules. Ah well.
Something from this book which has sort of punched me in the gut is all the “Victory” stuff. “Victory Gin”, “Victory Cigarettes”, “Victory Coffee”. I can’t actually believe that Ignorance is Strength, but maybe it is according to America.
I will never forget visiting a Burger King in Boston in 2003. I had been living in Birmingham England, and I was on a trip with a group of friends. We travelled to Boston, Albany, and Buffalo. In the Burger King, fresh off the airplane from London, we ordered up some Burgers and Fries… Freedom Fries. I asked the skinny youth behind the counter what the hell happened to the “French” fries, and I got a parroted version on how awesome the USA was and how horrible the French were. This kid could hardly have been 16, could hardly have been politically inclined, and was totally propaganda’d. I mean brainwash yo. Like, dude!
Okay, so you have a beef with the French; first off that’s hardly unique. Secondly, I can’t believe that the general population would be so stupid as to not remember a classic book that talked about the villainy of the future, propaganda, censorship, and, and –  oh whatever. Ignorance is Strength alright.



…Or it could just be an American thing. After the President of France, Jacques Chirac, openly condemned America going to war with Iraq in 2003, the cafeterias in the House of Representatives renamed french fries and french toast “freedom fries” and “freedom toast”.

Taken from http://brainz.org/15-ridiculous-yet-politically-correct-moments/.