The temperature at which books burn

So I read Fahrenheit 451.

By myself, not because of school.

This won't be very much of a review, more of a truckload of my reaction to the book.

• I loved it.
• You should definitely read it.
• Let me elaborate.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a very powerful book. The plot itself isn't... remarkable, let's say. It's a sci-fi, dystopian book just like I like them, but it's really the message that the book conveys that is what makes it amazing. Nothing in the book is literal. Everything should be looked at from a different angle, thought about and examined. 

Guy Montag is a firefighter. Except that the term firefighter no longer applies to the men who extinguish fires, but rather to those who light them. In this new and improved society, books are illegal and those who own them are pursued. Montag's job is to burn libraries and more often than not, their owners. Montag enjoys his job, until one night upon his return to his house, he meets his young neighbor, Clarisse, who is a very peculiar girl. Because Clarisse looks at the stars. She looks at the sky and at the ground, not just at the TV screens that have replaced people's lives and families. Clarisse is aware of the world around her, and it makes Montag both uncomfortable and fascinated. When he returns home however, he suddenly isn't thinking about the sky and the stars and the strange girl next door, because going into his room he trips on an empty jar of pills. His wife is lying motionless, staring at the ceiling. He calls the hospital who sends two men to help her. As it turns out, they are little more than mechanics emptying a tank of faulty oil as they empty Mildred Montag's stomach before driving off and performing the same operation on someone else in the city. 

Mildred does not remember the incident. Montag does, only too well. 

Everything changes.

In this book, television screens have replaced people's social lives. People don't sit around and talk anymore. They sit and watch their screens, which stretch to all the walls in the room. The people on the screens, the talk show hosts and presenters are called "the family". 

But what if everything couldn't be found out from the screens? What if there is something more important, like the war brewing overhead, and the people who burn with their books? Montag begins to question his world. And as with anyone who does, he must be silenced. 

This book was very powerful to me. It wasn't an easy read. The words were simple, it was the meaning they held that was more difficult to grasp. I read most of it when I finished my exams, while waiting for the bell to ring. I recommend a quiet environment to fully grasp what is happening. The writing was beautiful too, I really liked Bradbury's style. 

So there you are, in conclusion, you should read this book. I think it helped that I didn't read it in a classroom setting, because I'm always resentful towards books we read in class. I read it at my own pace and came to my own conclusions, which is infinitely better than writing a bunch of essays about the teacher's opinions on the book.

Have a nice day!

Resolution Ramblings

So it's that time of year again, the resolutions, the "do more exercise, eat healthier" time of year again. If you're anything like me, you will do none of those two things. Especially in January. Whoever thought it was a good idea to make midterm exams the second to last week of January needs to seriously reconsider their life decisions.

The result of these exams and the teachers' last minute scramble to get a bunch of grades in is that I have not had time to do very much.

Even so, I think that 2014 is already shaping up to be a really good year. Here is why.

1. The 3rd series of Sherlock. If you haven't seen it: you must. If you don't watch Sherlock: you must. End of discussion.

2. I have fulfilled something of a childhood aspiration and now work in a library. That's right, I am librarian extraordinaire! Just kidding, I shelve books, but it's a start. I enjoy it. I can tell you that college selection books are in the 378. 93 part of the Dewey decimal system because I had to shelve at least 10 books there and they were all huge and heavy. And that 391 is the costumes-historical fashion part of the system. The more you know, eh?

3. I have raised my grade in both of my hardest classes (this matters, okay?).

4. I don't know, it just feels good.

So anyway, resolutions. I have a few. Okay, I have one, so far.

I want to read 100 books in 2014. That's a lot. I didn't realize how much that was until I realized that I barely have time to read a chapter every night, but that makes it an even more exciting challenge!

So far I have read Ask the Passengers by A.S King and I am nearly done Stardust by Neil Gaiman, which I am loving so far.

So there you are, a little update on what's been going on and why not much has been going on in this little part of the Internet.

What are your New Year's resolutions? (Be creative, I'm expecting more from you than the exercise, healthy eating and whatever else people decided to feel bad about not doing.)

What books are you looking forward to reading this year?

As always, leave your comments/opinions/answers in the comments below!

P.S. Did I mention that I have an Etsy? It's a little bare at the moment, but I will be restocking very soon! Click (here) to see it, or on the button at the right.

Good start to the new year

The first book that I read this year was Ask the Passengers by A.S King, who is an author that I am starting to really like.

I adored this book. 

I read it in one afternoon, in under 6 hours, because I just could not put it down. 

Astrid Jones is a seventeen year old high school senior growing up in the Middle Of Nowhere Small Town USA. Otherwise known as Unity Valley. She was born in New York and simply does not fit in Unity Valley, as she is very shy and reserved. Her family is very dysfunctional, with a father who secretly smokes pot in the garage, a slightly crazy mother who is much too involved in Astrid's personal affairs, and a sister who has basically rejected Astrid to side with their mother. As a way of coping with her problems and when she wants to clear her head, Astrid lies on the picnic table in the backyard and sends love to the passengers in the airplanes passing by. Because Astrid does not fit in with her town, her family or society in general. Because there is someone who has taken her heart. Someone that she met at work. Someone named Dee Roberts. Someone who is a girl. 

Astrid does not know if she is gay. She just knows that she has fallen in love with a girl. And that she can't tell anyone in Unity Valley, because that just isn't done. It's not as if no one is gay; her friends Kristina and Justin are, even though they pretend to be a couple for the benefit of their close-minded peers. 

This book follows Astrid and her journey to self-discovery, as cheesy as that sounds. She learns who she is, what she believes and what she wants from life. She learns that having a reputation, or being sneered at in a high school in a small town in the middle of the country does not last forever. Which is why I love this book.

My dad said something to me at the beginning of last year when I started high school. "It's only four years of your life." That doesn't seem like very much of an inspirational quote, but that is what's kept me level headed and sane for the last year and a half. Four years of high school. That's nothing. So what if people don't like your clothes, or your hair, or whatever? It really doesn't matter. It may hurt a bit at the time, but there's so much more to life than the four years that you're stuck with a whole mess of people who probably won't remember you by the time you turn 20. 

That's why I related to Astrid. She's realizing that in the grand scheme of things, what matters isn't making others - that you don't necessarily like you - happy: it's making yourself happy, and living the life you want to live. If that means that you want to marry your girlfriend and go against society's rules, so be it. Why should it matter to other people? You're not impeding on their happiness by having yours.

Other than that very powerful message, the book was just very well written. It's a strangely uplifting book, in a way. There are parts where you genuinely smile because of the way that Astrid sees the world. After I finished it, I closed it and kept it in my hands, because I didn't want it to end. It was just a very powerful and thought-provoking book. I recommend it to anyone and everyone. Well, maybe stick an age limit there, like 14 maybe. It's a teen book, not a kid's book. There are very real issues in there that require a certain degree of maturity. 

Overall, a wonderful read.