Arka’s blog

I admit, I haven’t been posting on the blog much lately (certainly not 5 times a week!), and yes, much of that is because I can easily condense my sentiments into 140 character tweets. (Maybe I resort to crude internet language at times…)

But yeah, I won’t concede to the degrading of this kind of lengthy stuff!

Anyway, onto my reading, updates of which can be seen here. (Note to self: Insert hyperlinks at appropriate places.)

1. I should probably start from the beginning, when I cheated a bit with LotR (but really! I had to get some credit for finished those some 300-odd pages, in small font!) If I thought Fellowship had great use of language and the fantasy world, I don’t even know how to describe Two Towers. It really got to me in Book IV with Gollum, and his pitiable, redeemable state, and how Frodo treated him contrasted with Sam (Also, now I can’t help but seeing a slight Frodo/Sam thing). I might have even liked book IV better than III, despite the action and fighting and Aragorn and Treebeard in the latter.
2. In December I really started to noticed John Green (and Hank, of course!) as a vlogger, writer, and person. I started with Katherines, then got Paper Towns around Christmas, and bought Let It Snow when I noticed it at a Borders in Kansas City. I was a bit skeptical at first, but I started reading it and grew to appreciate all three authors’ great writing. I really liked Maureen’s story when reading it, but I think John’s is my favorite. As it always seems to be with this Young Adult genre, the stories reminded me about people, who are humans, and how deep and complex everyone’s life is. Sure, they spoke of loads of other things, but this stuck out throughout the book. Also, the three stories really blended in together well (and I don’t mean just the ending…)
3. I saw all of the vlogbrothers’ videos in late December, so when John mentioned M.T. Anderson, I eventually realised he was the crazy urban exploring guy. Octavian Nothing was definitely a great book. I once asked if “a book [is] better if you can’t put it down, or if you just want to put it down and not go through with it?” I think this was during Alaska, but it really applies to this as well. It really explored the characteristics of humans as dangerous and often immoral and dehumanized (ironic much?) as a result of society and other elements. It focuses most blatantly on the prejudiced misjudgement and inequality African slaves suffered during much of America’s history, but in general it questions the way people think and act, and challenge’s our perception of history in general. Most frightening of all, the events and behaviors exhibited in the book don’t really seem too unreal, and can relate too much to modern society.
4. Sure, I’ve always read Harry Potter fairly deeply, but in recent months I seem to have undergone some kind of intellectual metapmorphosis. Now I seem to always crave knowledge (not in the crazy, dehumanized way), and think far more critically than I used to. So far I haven’t read the series critically (although I have read some pages with new eyes), so I was even more excited to be reading Harry Potter and Imagination, by Travis Prinzi. But even without my neglect of critical reading, I know that this book takes a deep and true look at Potter. The Færie, the characters, the politics, all tie in to most of the themes of the books, and do a great job evaluating Potter with respect to the power of the imagination (no, not Respect^i or Potter*dx^i, all you math nerds!) But yes, this was a really good book, and I can’t even touch on all the other points in which it is a well thought-out and analytical look at books with deeper meanings that are complex yet easy to relate to. I might do a whole post (and maybe an Amazon review or something) on the subjext one fine day when I don’t have a Chemistry tests to study for.

So there it is; now I have to go off and do stuff and study for AP Chemistry. It took a lot of energy out of me to write these brief assessments of 4 books, and I might edit in a fifth just to make it look neat later; but I think I’ll stick to 5 books at a time. So expect around 10 semi-monthly installements of Arka’s book review thingies! And if you want to see what I can’t write ≈ 700 words about, check out my Twitter.