The Poisonwood Bible (currently reading)

One of the most famous father figures that appear in American literature and movies is the strict, religous father. They always appear as a symbol of hardship, strict discipline, and punishment in the eyes of the father's children or wife. The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, is a story about a strixt Baptist priest, Nathan Price, takes his family of four daugthers and his wife on a mission to bring hope, in the form of Christianity, to the Belgian Congos, where they must stay for a whole year to bring "peace and prosperity", or whatever sugar-coating word they family uses to give themselves a good image. Now, this book has a unique style of story-telling. Instead of just using a third-person view to dexcribe what happens to the family, Kingsolver takes the first-person perspective of each of the four daughters, Leah, Ruth May, Rachel, Adah, as they tell their thoughts and stories on how they do their best to adapt to African life. Before continuing on what I read so far, let me introduce these four girls. Rachel is the eldest, and she's your typical spoiled girl. She's the one who finds it the most difficult to adapt with the Africans because of her fancy dress and her long, blonde hair which stands out like a sore thumb amongest a village of children who barely have hair. Leah and Adah are twins with completely opposite characteristics. Leah likes to stand out, be special, and tries to be "daddy's favorite", by constantly trying to be around her father, and as a result, has become the most religous out of the four girls. Adah is a little less expressive with herself, and almost never speaks out. She does have her moments of pride when she is easily able to speak French fluently when Leah is struggling with comprehending the language. And then there's Ruth May, the youngest of the four girls, and the first who is easily able to get along well with the African children. And then there's the mother of these four unique children, who is almost at the point of ripping her hair out due to the frustration of not being able to adapt to African life. Now that they've all been introduced, story development comes next. So far, the majority of the book has been how strange the Price family thinks of the Congo lifestyle and how they try their best to get along well with the village people. But recently, an interesting event has occured that contains the potential to twist the storyplot to a new direction. A young girl was eaten alive by an aligator as she was undergoing water baptism, introduced by Nathan Price. The only reaction from this event is during preaching time, the head of the African village gives a daring glare that indicates that he is either cursing at the Price family or he lost his faith in Christianity. Also, when Adah accidentilly trips over a mountain of oranges that were to be sol at the village market, the African seller literally hissed at them. This could also be viewed as a sign that tension between the African people and the Price family is building up. From this, foreshadowing even more people giving up on Christianity and the Price family enduring hardship in the near future is merely a simple reflex. Now the question for next week's blog is: is this an accurate foreshadowing?

The City at the End of Time (Completed)

Now this was one of those books where being stubborn and staying until reading the through the whole book was a good thing. The reason for this is because one, the setting is a little hard to choke down at first and two, you don't get much character backgroud until the early middle of the book. The plot of the story that took me so long to digest in my brain is this: this book concentrates on two time eras, the present time and the future in a few trillion years, give or take a few million years. In the present, there are three individuals who seem ordinary but they are actually people who don't officially exist because that is their power as a jumper, one who can sense the lines of fate and jump from an ill fate into a more desirable fate while keeping their own personalities. Because of this power, they naturally possess a powerful stone called the sum-runner. Before I go into the sum-runner, I would like to explain the future. The future is another apocolpyse setting where instead of a "big bang" kind of finish, it comes in a kind of whisper known as "the Chaos". The Chaos is a big entity that swallows up all life. In the future, the Chaos has swallowed cities, planets and even whole universes. The only thing that most likely remains is the Kalpa, an ancient city whose citizens are artifically made humans or "breeds". They try to live out their lives in ignorance of what's happening outside, but there are a few breeds who become curious about the Chaos and venture out of the Kalpa to venture out into the Chaos in hopes of finding another surviving city. Now, two of the jumpers in the present, Jack and Ginny, often dream about the Kalpa through the eyes of two breeds, Jebrassy and Tialba, to witness the Chaos themselves. Now, this is where the sum-runners become important becuase they have the power to ward off the Chaos from their host. With such an incredible stone, they are naturally hunted down by hunters hired by the Chalk Princess, an unkown entity with many names, who is the present's form of an early Chaos. Now, the sum-runners are very important becuase they have the ability to repel the Chaos, which plays an important role later in the story. All of this may seem confusing, but trust me, if you stick to it, then you will learn to love the book.

Note: Trying to find out what the Chaos really is like trying to find out what the monster in Cloverfield is, so don't even bother

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (completed)

Many people like to say, "If your going to go out, go out with a bang" and it seems that while writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K Rowling took those words to heart. This last installment kicks off from where the Half-Blood Prince ended where Harry tries to figure out what to do now that Dumbledore is dead. The fact that Dumbledore is dead basically makes up the whole plot for this final installment, since Harry has to continue Dumbledore's work of finding the Horcuxes, which are the items Voldemort stored his souls in, and destroythem in hopes of killing Voldemort. The book also seems to have a nostaglia feel to it, since Harry has to dig deeper in Tom Riddle's past (aka Voldemort) in order to find out where he could have hidden the Horcuxes. The "bang" mentioned earlier can be seen in the epic battle of Hogwarts, where Harry and his order formed in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoneix rallies the older students and teachers of Hogwarts to fight against the Death Eaters, lead by Voldemort himself. Like every good book, there are some aspects of the book that are unavoidable to critize at. The one aspect I did not like the book was that J.K Rowling killed off a lot of good characters. For example, in a chase scene where Harry is being pursued, one of the killing spells that the Death Eater shoots accidentally hits Hedwig, Harry's owl. Now that was really unneccesary, killing off my favorite character in the whole series. But like I said earlier, this book goes off with such a bang that you really don't have the time to dwell on all of the negative stuff. Well, all I can say is that this may not have been the best book in the series, but it was definitely the best way to end the series.


P.S: Least favorite book was Order of the Phoneix.