SO AWESOME. Read it.

That’s all I really can say.

I mean, if you’ve been following this blog at all, you know I don’t just plow through books, I take my time.

Well I finished this in like, A DAY, so I think that’s saying something.

But seriously, this opens up a whole new world of reading that I am excited to explore: graphic novels.

So, I started reading Ben Hur by Lew Wallace because I love the movie, however, the book is incredibly dry. It reads like a textbook, and the first 70 pages are about the nativity story which, really, is quite boring. I finally figured this out around 30 pages in and skipped ahead to where Ben Hur’s story starts.

However, I just bought The Watchmen today, the graphic novel by by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, and will probably spend the next few days reading through that. I know quite a few people who have read it who say that it’s pretty amazing, so I’m excited to read it. Also, I’ve never read a graphic novel before, so this will be a first. I’ll keep you posted.

Who else to tell the story of Ronald Reagan than The Great Communicator himself? Reagan’s autobiography is full of the ideas, conviction and faith that guided his life and political career, but thankfully unaccompanied by self-reverent narrative pomp

His life is fascinating. He lived through the depression, played football in college, became a sports announcer, actor, television host, public speaker, and eventually a politician. At first he was reluctant to enter politics and had to be prodded along to run for the governor of California. After his success in California though, he was ready to move up – America agreed, and in 1981 he became President of the United States, a title he would hold for the next eight years.

Reagan’s writing style is very engaging, thankfully, which means you can learn all about history, economics and politics without feeling like you’re reading a dusty old textbook (or even a new one, for that matter.) You can really feel Reagan’s optimism and conviction through his words; the way he writes impacts you as much as what he writes. I imagine his public speaking was the same way – engaging, inspiring and substantial.

If you want a clear-cut understanding of classic Conservative ideology I highly recommend this book. Also to be found: romance, guns, Molotov cocktails, assassination attempts, Russians!, hostages, terrorism, riots, pending nuclear war, football, international trade disputes, guerillas, treaties…my word, this book has it all.

Save the Males looks at feminist culture in North America and explains how it is now detrimental to men and boys growing up. The first wave of feminism gave women the right to vote, the second wave gave them abortions and divorces, and the third, current wave of feminism has made women into pornstars. It’s not so much about equality anymore as it is about “goddess worship.”

Parker asserts that the importance of fatherhood is being undermined and efforts are being made to prove it as completely unnecessary. “Now becoming a single mother isn’t so much an accident as, for some, a goal.” Artificial insemination and adoption among single women is on the rise and men are taking note. If their role as good role models and fathers really isn’t that important, then why bother stepping up to the plate to be just that?

On television, nary is a program found where the father isn’t a bumbling buffoon and, well, thank God he’s got a wife to take care of him; The Simpsons, Family Guy, Everybody Loves Raymond, and Malcolm in the Middle come to mind.

I picked up this book because it’s been an issue I’ve been following here or there on the internet (Dr. Helen’s blog comes to mind). I love men and the idea of chivalry, manliness, and the fact that, no, I really can’t open this jar by myself; yes, I really would prefer a man in the house to defend me in case of an intruder, and no, I don’t think that every guy I see on the street is a potential rapist.

She covers other issues in the book such as women in the military, pornography, The Vagina Monologues, child support and unfair divorce proceedings that favor women over men.

Kathleen Parker asks for a fourth wave of “reasonable” feminism to come around, one that encourages men to be as amazing as we know they are capable of, not just “non-threatening” waxed-up metros with great style. Nature is being thrown out of whack with all this “men aren’t necessary anymore” banter. Women need to get over themselves, stop standing over mirrors and realize that.

So, I have never actually read one of his books. Yet. But Jurassic Park has always been on my Must Read list, considering the movie was pretty much one of the greatest things I have ever witnessed. Thank you for Jurassic Park. If I can contribute something half as awesome to the world one day, I will be content.

YES. lol.

(heads up, language warning)

directed by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Matt Damon, Danny Devito, Jon Voigt and Claire Danes

Augh. What a terrible and boring movie. And were all musical scores in the 90’s so cheesy? Worst. Ever.

Danny Devito was pretty awesome as Deck Shiffler, the sidekick, but that’s pretty much all the acting credit this movie gets; everyone else sounded like they were reading a script. Matt Damon bores as Rudy Baylor. Jon Voigt was alright, I guess, as Leo F. Drummond, the adversary, but that’s about it.

See, they didn’t put enough focus on Rudy. This guy had it rough and he was working hard. He filed for bankruptcy, was evicted, doorknocking on firms looking for a job, working late at the bar only to wake up at the crack of dawn to do yardwork. The movie, of course, lets us know all this, but just doesn’t put as much emphasis on it. I guess in a movie you can only spend so much time on one part of the plot, but that part was the reason I liked the book so much.

However, when it came to aesthetics, the characters and the settings all looked almost exactly how I had imagined them, with the exception of Donny Ray. I thought he would look far more emaciated – instead they got a James Franco look alike to talk faintly and tell us he was dying. Didn’t quite work for me.

I’m not sure how I feel about the adaptation from book to screen either. I mean, granted, scenes were omitted for time, and the scenes they did keep were hardly altered from the book…but I just felt they didn’t flow together well enough. Everything was very choppy, like the purpose of each scene was merely getting to the next scene, instead of drawing you in and making you care about what was happening to the characters right then.

But you know, I always complain that movie scripts never stay true to the book, and this one still did, so I’ll give it kudos for that.

3.5/5

Soooo awesome. Let it be known that next to John Kelly, Rudy Baylor is my fictional hero.

Rudy Baylor is a law student in Memphis – a city overcrowded with lawyers. He’s fired from his firm before he even starts working, so he’s stuck filing for bankruptcy, doing yardwork for rent, bartending at night and door-knocking on small firms in attempts to find any sort of legal work.

Through one of his classes, Legal Advice for the Elderly (or something like that), he picks up a bad-faith case against a massive insurance company, Great Benefit. Rudy and his client file suit – they have all the right cards, but no experience – while Great Benefit hires a team of experienced and successful lawyers to defend itself. It sounds boring, but Grisham’s characters are so engaging that you actually care about the legal paperwork.

“Mr. Leo F. Drummond may be a litigating wizard, and he may have countless minions at his beck and call, but I, Rudy Baylor, have nothing else to do. I’m bright and I can work. He wants to start a paper war with me, fine. I’ll smother him.”

“…And if I get tossed in the street, it’s happened before. I’ve managed to land on my feet.”

Rudy Baylor possesses a work ethic I envy, and pretty much kicks ass at everything too.

This book is awesome. Read it.

In Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, people are no longer born, but mass produced in bottles. They are manufactured and conditioned to belong to various classes and be perfectly content with whichever caste they were created for. The World State motto is thus:

Community. Identity. Stability.

Individuality is not an option, the family unit has been abolished and everyone belongs to everyone else. “No pains have been spared to make your lives emotionally easy – to preserve you from having any emotions at all.” And for those moments where natural bliss cannot be achieved, there is the perfect drug, soma. “Better a gram than a damn.” Society is stable and everyone is perfectly content and/or blissful.

Except for Bernard, a member of the alpha class with a penchant for being alone and preferring misery over soma (“I’d rather be myself. Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.”) Bernard gets the unique opportunity to visit a savage reservation – a place where live births still occur, complete with the family unit, hunting, religion, dirt and disease. There he meets John, who feels like an outsider because of his ability to read. Bernard feels like an outsider because of his ability to think for himself. For the purposes of a social experiment, John is allowed to come to civilization under the watch of Bernard.

So basically you have John absorbing this new “civilized” way of life and comparing it to his “primitive” ideas and lifestyle, while Bernard is not so loud in criticizing the world system when it gives him fame.

I think my favorite part was when John learned to read Shakespeare. Through reading Shakespeare he found the ability to define and express his feelings with words, which thus made his feelings more real. You know…let’s just go with the excerpt here. For the record, Popé is his mother’s “boyfriend.”

“He hated Popé more and more. A man can smile and smile and be a villain. Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindles villain. What did the words exactly mean? He only half knew. But their magic was strong and went of rumbling in his head, and somehow it was as though he had never really hated Popé before; never really hated him because he had never been able to say how much he hated him. But now he had these words, these words like drums and singing and magic. These words and the strange, strange story out of which they were taken – they gave him a reason for hating Popé; and they made his hatred more real; they even made Popé himself more real.”

-pg 110

I love that…the words made Popé more real. Reminds me of something C.S Lewis said: “The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define.”

There’s more things to write about here – an infinite amount, almost – but maybe I’ll write another post sometime, cause I’m tired. l8er m8s.

Holla, meet my favorite poet, John Donne (1572-1631), and consequently my favorite poem:

Love’s Growth

I scarce believe my love to be so pure
As I had thought it was,
Because it doth endure
Vicissitude, and season, as the grass ;
Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore
My love was infinite, if spring make it more.
But if this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow
With more, not only be no quintessence,
But mix’d of all stuffs, vexing soul, or sense,
And of the sun his active vigour borrow,
Love’s not so pure, and abstract as they use
To say, which have no mistress but their Muse ;
But as all else, being elemented too,
Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.
And yet no greater, but more eminent,
Love by the spring is grown ;
As in the firmament
Stars by the sun are not enlarged, but shown,
Gentle love deeds, as blossoms on a bough,
From love’s awakened root do bud out now.
If, as in water stirr’d more circles be
Produced by one, love such additions take,
Those like so many spheres but one heaven make,
For they are all concentric unto thee ;
And though each spring do add to love new heat,
As princes do in times of action get
New taxes, and remit them not in peace,
No winter shall abate this spring’s increase.

———–

Here are some definitions to help understand the poem a bit better:

Vicissitude: changeability
Quintessence: the absolute essence of a substance
Elemented: made up of more than one element
Spheres: planets

I should think very much that this poem is awesome. My other favorite John Donne poems are The Good Morrow, Lovers’ Infiniteness, A Fever, Death Be Not Proud, Batter My Heart, and A Hymn to God the Father.