Okay

Listening to: Sailing Away by Standing Small

Line Obsession: "You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are." A Fault in Our Stars by John Green

I'm not yet sure how I feel about the whole of this book. It's deeply honest and moving and the characters while trying to be emotionally/mentally hard and strong are physically dying and I find beauty in this juxtaposition and the pathetic endurance going through the motions of these young lives. Lives that could be mine in a heartbeat.

Having said that. I freaked out this afternoon as I finally read something in this book that I could relate to on a personal level and not just a relational level. Hazel is at her boyfriend's funeral when she quotes Robert Frost's poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" (which is the one quoted by Pony and Jonny in The Outsiders) and anyone who knows me at all probably knows how much I cherish The Outsiders.

"It seemed to me that I had already seen everything pure and good in the world, and I was beginning to suspect that even if death didn't get in the way, the kind of love that Augustus and I share could never last. So dawn goes down to day, the poet wrote. Nothing gold can stay."
-A Fault in Our Stars p.277
John Green

Looks like Jonny Cade had it right when he explicated the poem. When you're young everything is gold and new and then you have to grow up and die and nothing gold can stay.

And that's when I knew I could appreciate Hazel Grace as a character. She's not a pessimist. She's a dying teenager who is surrounded by the reality of life (or lack there of) and the all too present reality of death. She has never truly known life or love (although she assumes she has) and how can we blame her for her reactions to life and pain (both physical and emotional). No, I'm not sure what I think about the book yet. I certainly don't always agree with Green or his characters and many of their thoughts and actions make my heart ache. But I think it paints a beautiful picture of what it means to be sick and that really, we are all sick. We all lives either in a zombie trance or angry and bitter and we are broken and not whole. We are missing legs and lungs and eyes and don't know how to live our best lives today even if we try.

Therefore, above all else this book has offered me magnificent insight into the lives of people around me in all sorts of walks of life. Hopefully it will now be easier for me to sympathize and discern how to help try to encourage those around me. This is one of those books that I would not necessarily ever choose to read again but whose lessons will be carried with me for forever.

There's a reason I adore books with terrible tragedies attached and that's because they tend to be more real, more understandable, more heartfelt. Who doesn't relate to the feeling of Hazel just being tired of being sick and just wanting to be held and for everything to go back to when life was easier and full of joy?

Hazel Grace makes me so angry most of the time and yet I cannot help but want to sit there and hold her hand and cry with her over the injustices of life and the loss of our most precious possessions.

Complex Wiring

Listening to: Run Daddy Run by Miranda Lambert and the Pistol Annies (From the Hunger Games Soundtrack)

Line Obsession: “She clenched her jaw, feeling the painful dryness of her eyes. A throbbing headache told her that she should be crying, that her sobs should match her sister’s."

Alright, I promised and I can't wait anymore to tell you guys about this book I'm reading.

This will be my first attempt at a more formal-ish book review so bear with me, even though I'm only 2/3 through the book. Are you ready for this?

I get it. It looks creepy and weird. And I've never before been into sci-fi futuristic stuff but this one takes the cake. It's book one (and only so far) in the Lunar Chronicles. Cinder is a pseudo-Cinderella story about a Cyborg (human with mechanical parts) in New Beijing sometime after WWIV. It's witty and suspenseful  and pretty relevant without boring the reader for being set in the future. There's two major plots being followed mingled with just enough heart-wrenching sub-plots for you to appreciate most of the minor characters and get a well-rounded view of the protagonists. I am so beyond happy to announce that this is unlike all those other Cinderella stories. 

Cinder, the title character and heroine, is strong and independent but also vulnerable and helpless. She doesn't have to be persuaded to do the right thing but she also struggles with what is truth. I so adore her as a character for her faithfulness to those she cares about (and even those she doesn't like as well but knows their lives are still valuable). She is real and honest about her frustration and confusion of her identity. And in a way this could be a coming of age novel, although some could argue that Cinder grew up long before the story began. Either way, this heroine is a treasure to behold. 

The story is an insightful satire of the modern media culture and the ease with which people can be persuaded to think and act according to the prejudices of others. And the subtle sparse humor is perfectly placed to add nervous laughter and sometimes real joy to the midst of the high tension anxiety that the characters are carrying.

There are plenty of plot twists, however they aren't too numerous. And while some may be fairly easy to guess before  hand the action that leads up to it had/has me holding me breath and hoping for the best (which usually never happens, often times I'm hoping for a main character to die or something just to make the story more realistic- but not this time).

I'm putting my money on Cinder. I would tell Katniss to hold on to her braid, but I'm gonna keep my mouth shut about Cinder for now and hope that it stays quiet for awhile. I like having a book to call my own that isn't famous among my community yet.

Mental Notes and Spanish Minors

Lovely Readers and Mental Self,

Remind me to blog about this new book and all of it's #Awesome-Sauce, because it's dripping with it. Haven't fallen in love with a book this quickly since...hold on this might take me a minute...maybe it was The Giver in 7th grade. Maybe it was Captain Underpants (do kids still read those, because when I say it I feel old). After googling possibilities for books I can't remember but am sure I fan-girled all over in middle school some shallow research I'm pretty sure one of the last books I fell in love so immediately with (after the first chapter or two and could not put down for the life of me) was Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.

Having said all of that...REMIND ME TO TELL YOU ABOUT THIS BOOK, OKAY?! It's super important to me.

But I'm beyond exhausted and still rather sick, so I'm gonna go. Buenos noches. A mí me encanta el Kindle y lo leía. <-- More on that later too.

My First Academic Love

Call me crazy, but so far there's only one thing that I don't like about studying at a liberal arts school. The fact that my gen ed classes prevent me from doing what I truly enjoy doing: writing literature analyses.

I know, I know, it's extremely strange. Who on earth likes to write papers?! But it's one of the only forms of writing that I enjoy. It's like the lab for a science major. My good friend is in the TTU nursing school and the way she talks about the excitement and challenge of dissecting a lamb's heart or something is the way that I feel and talk about dissecting the words of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" or something. 

Literature allows me to combine my creativity and my logical at the same time. I get satisfaction in using my imagination to read the stories and also in exercising my intellect. I love pictures and symbols and being able to relate to them, to the author. 

In fact, I'm in the middle of a break from an 8-10 page paper on a 5 page short story: "I Stand Here Ironing" by Tillie Olsen.

It sounds like a difficult task but it's not really. Because there's so much to discover within the text. It's a new adventure every time you read it. With each read you better understand the author and characters and the text (usually whether you agree with it or not) becomes more and more dear to your heart. 

I've never been a writer, I don't trust my creative instincts enough. But I love to interpret. There's no pressure for perfection. I can be as outlandish as I want as long as I have evidence in the text. Plus it's a perfect avenue for discussion. I love that about my professors. I never feel pressure to come up with conversation pieces because I know we can always talk about what books we're reading and what we think about them.

I have friends who are music majors who talk about music in this way. It's more than just a form of expression or something to fun to study at school. It's almost a lifestyle. The way my friends hear music and musical patterns and counts everywhere they go is the same way that I see imagery and archetypes and compare people and myself to characters and situations I've read before. 

It's also one of the ways God shares things with me sometimes (through his crazy metaphors) and of course I just eat it up.

It makes me miss my sister. Who taught me to love literature. Who continues to hand me the best books ever. Who inspires me with her passion for writing. Goodness grief I love her so stinking much.