When I read Sputnik Sweetheart

How do I even begin. First, the title was cheesy. I heard about the book from a friend who was reading Fifty Shades at that time. At first, I thought it was of the same genre, my apologies. That has always been one of my flaws, being judgmental to people, book titles and reading choices. I am trying my best to be a changed person now though.

So there was the story, SS. I first read a HM book years ago before the incident, out of whim, and before the SJ era. I even forgot the title of that book. The only feeling that the book left me was of confusion. The girl in the story somehow disappeared and vanished in her room??! That story was also narrated through a male's point of view. Is this a recurring theme in HM books? Well, maybe I am getting ahead of myself.

Here are my thoughts/realizations/and fifty cents on the book SS by HM:

Judy Blume’s Otherwise Known as Sheila The Great, A review

Dogs, spiders, swimming, ghost stories, thunderstorms, eerie sounds at night, what else? Sheila Tubman fears a lot of things. These things may be trivial to most of us, but to Sheila it was a matter of life and death.

I read Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great today as a light reading. It indeed was! I breezed through it in a couple of hours. I would have finished it sooner if I wasn't laughing so hard at Sheila. Haha! This girl, her ridiculous reasoning when it comes to the things she fears and things she could not admit she can’t do, reminds me so much of my younger self. Fear of dogs, eerie sounds at night, covering ones ears at night… LOL that is so me. And her inner dialogue, speaking so matter of factly of the things or situations she is in, and her tirades with her sister and parents, all these speak so true to me.

Like Sheila The Great, we both are learning and adapting, little by little. I am older now, I am no longer that afraid of dogs, but I still cover my ears when I sleep because I am sure that a monster is coming to get me if I ears are shown ;-P

Well, that is Judy Blume to us. She writes these things eloquently as if I am reading my own story and my own thoughts.  And Mouse, Jane & Sondra, Marty, summer classes, Newsdate, the play with Liddy being cast as Captain Hook instead of being Wendy (I had a laughing fit with this!), truly I wouldn’t forget this summer at Tarrytown.

Read August 29, 2012.

Paper Towns review/reflection

Paper Towns by John Green
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Margo Roth Spiegelman. Even the name gives off that mysterious vibe. Paper Towns chronicles how Q, Quentin Jacobsen, got the miracle in his life. The elusive Margo has asked him to on an adventure of sorts suddenly one night. And just when Q has thought everything is going to be working out, Margo disappears.

It was only Q who was as worried and concerned over what happened to Margo. Despite the fact that Margo has frequently and repeatedly ran away in the past. Q was then off to a journey in finding Margo and somehow realizing who she really is from Walt Whitman, an abandoned mall, and unfinished subdivisions among others.

I envy Margo. She had this untypical courage. Or was this rebellion? I felt she wanted to be found, but repressed this feeling too much which made her more detached from the people around her, specially her family. But who am I to judge how she has felt to be in her family, in her life. Somehow, I can get it though. How it feels. That it's suffocatingly unreal. Like I can't find myself if I am here...

And Q... the ever adoring neighbor but of course he's more than that. The part where he tells about his perception/idea of Margo isn't who she really is... that got me. The paper girl/boy we think of, and see in those photos and shows and videos. It's really not them. We'll need to dig further, find clues, deduce all these to it's meaningful whole, and pray they'll also want to be found.

View all my reviews

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

I read the book on a whim. I was intrigued by the title which just proves how much of an unusually-lousy reader I am. Coincidentally, I was nursing a delusionally-broken heart at that time. I resorted to reading again, which I now learned is a way of coping from the harsh realities of my totally-unrelated fangirling life.

So here comes the book, freshly-bound and since I was supposedly-depressed, I jumped with joy when I found the book at the bookstore. And never blinking twice about the Php 600++ price tag.

I did not expect that the book is cancer-related at all. When I read the first few lines, I predicted that it was gonna be boring. (And worse, in the first few pages, physical descriptions of the characters were revealed. Waaaahh! Even in reading a book you are haunting me. Waaaaa!) Please forgive my random spazzing.

Really, I did not expect that the book was cancer-related. This is a sensitive topic for me because cancer runs in our family. I definitely can relate to the medical terms and procedures that were talked about in the book. I knew the ins and outs of cancer, even if I am not a patient myself.

And reading about Hazel and Gus’ life going through it all, I couldn’t even imagine myself in their shoes. Maybe I would have coped differently.

An important thing imparted in the book was about Gus’ fear of oblivion. Since my family’s cancer history, I was /am also worrying about the same thing. When I die, do I just go away, disappear, cease to exist. How will I and how do I make my stay as a conscious sentient being asmeaningful and as beneficial to others.

But then, Van Houten/Hazel’s answers struck me. Because it is true. Because all I have to think of is the now.

There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will also be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away. But even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever.

There was time before consciousness and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human connection worries you, I encourage you to ignore it.God Knows what’ everyone else does.

Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins Book Review

Spoilers Ahead ;')

i wrote this aeons ago. there must've been typos and erroneous grammar, i didnt re-check. :-/

I have always loved books that brought me to a new world. A world I’d rather live in. A world I could exist and would rather wish I was born there instead.

My first impression of the Hunger Games, the first book, was that it was going to be boring. I felt District 12 was boring and it really was. The districts of Panem were in a depressing state. The Hunger Games, despite brutal and violent is somehow a good way to go before you die. You will feel the luxury of a blessed life. You will eat.

What kept me reading was the love affair. From the time Peeta confessed his love to Katniss, I knew he was telling what was really in his heart. I just didn’t understand his reaction on the last part of book one. When I rethink about it, I know perhaps Katniss was the one who did not understand herself. Perhaps I am having a Katniss crossover at that time.

I adore Cinna and his creations.  They’re just amazing.

I am excited for the third book. I feel Gale will die, and if he won’t, Katniss will not choose him. I just wish Panem will be a much better place when the book ends.


***

Yes, I have read the third book. Gale did not die but I wish him dead. That would have been more honourable for him. I know it is wrong to wish for someone to die. Sorry, I take it back.

I know that I have written earlier that it was the love affair that kept me wanting to read the story. It was true. Now that I have read the entire series and have been thinking through the book, I feel that what hooked me to the books was the fact that Panem is where our civilization is going. And somehow, when I tell myself that I am/was hooked to the love story, I suddenly feel that I am like a Capitol citizen. Someone who loves being entertained, watching TV shows, movies, etc. Someone who would believe and “feel” that it is the real thing going on there in the TV screen.

I feel bad about that. Maybe that is why I first felt the book was boring. The districts of Panem were in turmoil. War has plagued them and they are trying to live a life that would avoid the war that they’ve been through.  So the districts agree and Capitol is sort of like their punisher. Capitol people host the Hunger Games. Capitol people do not realize that real lives are destroyed in a game which to them was entertainment.

District 13 may have been wanted to break away from that civilization and create a new world where everybody was equal, happy, and living sustainably. But, it was always the people who govern and lead that have some other agenda. President Coin clearly would have wanted the rest of Panem to stay in the miserable, poverty-stricken, hunger-filled state they were in as long as she was leading the country. As long as she has power. Doesn’t this situation sound so familiar?

Even in an imaginary future where Panem exists, the problem that they face is still as identical as what we have now. Poverty, hunger, inequality, reality TV shows, indifference, war, rebellion, a rallying point, loveteams. I was side-tracked by the loveteam, the star-crossed lovers, the rebels in the story who keep spouting these dreamy lines. In as distant time in the future where Panem exists, surely the same theme in TV shows would have made us puke and change the channel. But yeah, it is always interesting every time. Every time we believe that it is true. I know I did doubt Peeta in the beginning. But after one or two pages, I knew it was true. But in the real world, the real entertainment world, you’d be a Capitol citizen to believe it.