The Great Gatsby ~F. Scott Fitzgerald~

James Gatz, young and poor, reached for the stars each night, 

and dreamt of an incorruptible beauty.

Set free from the enslavement of hope deferred,

 young James followed hope into the sea. 

Traveling the world, he lay upon the boat's deck,

and dreamt of an incorruptible beauty.

Jay Gatsby, after the war, dedicated his soul

into transforming his dream of incorruptible beauty to his reality.

Years later, he possessed the average opinion of beauty, wealth,

yet he still needed one more daisy in his bouquet of flowers.

 James Gatz died, his ghostly heart filled with hope,

but his boat sank, overturned by the current of the past.

~

“There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”

“The lawn and drive had been crowded with the faces of those who guessed at his corruption - and he had stood on those steps, concealing his incorruptible dream, as he waved them good-by.”

"Gatsby had an extraordinary gift for hope--such a romantic readiness I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again."

Looking for Alaska ~John Green~

                Alaska: girls name; meaning---that which the sea breaks against

Alaska Young: a girl searching for her “piece of oblivion”, lost in the labyrinth of life and death, and on a never-ending search to discover herself.

In Looking for Alaska, Alaska Young adventures with Miles Halter, a boy who is searching for his own last words, but discovers another’s. He falls in love with the sea breaker/Alaska and hopes to fulfill her dreams in himself.

But Alaska, haunted by her hopeless wandering in the labyrinth of life, takes refuge in death. She drags white tulips to her grave: white tulips of the family she never had, the adventures that always disappeared, her non-existent future, and most importantly, the questions never answered.

The greatest of these questions she asked is, “How do we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?” If I knew Alaska Young, I would answer her deepest question, the question her whole being died to answer with one word: Christ. Christ is freedom from her captivity to the endless maze of wandering. He saved me, by enslaving me to His grace, freeing me from the labyrinth of suffering.

“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
 Galatians 5:1

~

“You spend your whole life stuck in a labyrinth, thinking how you’ll escape one day and how awesome it will be, and I’m imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.” –Alaska Young (John Green)

The Westing Game ~Ellen Raskin~

            The Westing Game was one of those books that I really had to push myself to get through. It took me at least four days to read and it’s only 180 pages! The reason for that is because one of my hamartias is that when I reach a boring spot in a book, I put the book down. Unfortunately, I reached many of these “boring spots” so the book took me longer to finish then I had originally planned.

This book was suggested to me last semester by a friend of mine who is actually surprisingly good at finishing books on her book list before she adds more, unlike me. My book list is six pages long and growing. Yikes. Guilty as charged.

Anyway, the book: The Westing Game. What initially intrigued me was the foreword. The foreword was written by Ann Durell. She described her friendship with the author, Ellen Raskin. Durell did a great job of unfolding the energy and unique personality of Raskin, which inspired me to read the book in a different light.

 Though through most of the novel I felt no connection to the characters, by the end I felt a love for the different characters that had been introduced. The Westing Game is narrated from a child’s perspective. It’s not necessarily that the book is from the view of a child; rather, the details that only a child would notice are brought out. 

The plot, though not super suspenseful, was rather intense. Samuel W. Westing left a will that stated that one person out of sixteen contestants would be heir to his fortune. Westing created an intricate game before he died, the winner would be the individual who correctly guessed his murderer.

I actually really enjoyed this book. Though it seemed to drag on forever, I was sad to part with the characters when the book finished. Especially my favorite character, Turtle Wexler. Turtle reminds me of myself as a young child, adventurous, feisty, and a little disrespectful. I feel a stronger bond to her than I do the other characters because I can relate to many of the struggles she faces. Of course I’ve never had to live in a closet, but I understand her feelings of insignificance. I’m glad I read The Westing Game; it was a great experience!

~

This is a picture I took of a little girl I know who reminds me of Turtle Wexler:

An Abundance of Katherines ~John Green~

                An Abundance of Katherines. The title itself is enough to spark curiosity in any reader, at least it did in me. The reason I picked up this book was not because of the title, or cover, or recommendation, rather because of the author. 

                John Green is a writer that I admire very much for his down to earth writing style, sarcastic humor, and beautiful quotes. I loved his books The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns and I had heard that An Abundance of Katherines was similar. My, it was similar. Almost too similar. 

                Yes, the plot was different. Yes, the location was different. And the character personalities were a bit different too. Yet, the basic theme of the book was the same as every other John Green novel I’ve come across so far. All his books are so similar that, often times, when I think of them, they all sort of blend into one long laborious novel of drunken teens searching for happiness, fearing oblivion, and desiring to date someone who is unattainable. 

                In Paper Towns, Looking for Alaska, Will Grayson Will Grayson, and An Abundance of Katherines, a boy, who is not the coolest kid around, loves some girl/guy who is way out of his league. He usually gets a small preview of life as the “special someone” ‘s love interest before the trials and injustices of the world tear them apart. 

                In the case of An Abundance of Katherines, Colin, a child prodigy, who is bound to his ritual of falling in love with girls named Katherine, falls in love with a girl named Lindsey. Lindsey, however, is dating another guy, who’s actually cheating on her, and yeah. It’s basically a big romantic mess. Yuck.

                Colin and Lindsey, both, are facing the same struggles and doubts that most of the teens in John Green’s other novels face: fear of oblivion, insignificance, false pretenses, and the general feeling of unworthiness. I admit, more than once in An Abundance of Katherines, I felt comforted knowing that there are people who feel like they’re hiding behind a mask made of expectations, like I often feel. John Green does a great job in expressing some of the worries and concerns of a teenager, but I wish he wouldn’t choose the same worries and concerns in each of his novels. 

                An Abundance of Katherines was cleaner than many of his novels, which isn’t actually saying much. In his books, he tends to describe much of the intimate romance that I would rather not envision. However, An Abundance of Katherines was fairly clean, minus an illicit coitus and a few hundred crude jokes and cuss words. 

The book was an enjoyable read, and I felt connected to the characters, albeit their uncanny resemblance to other John Green novel characters. John Green writes so beautifully, and I definitely appreciate his skill in transforming the simple thoughts of a teenager into beautiful words.  Yes, the book was similar to Green’s others, but it was different enough that I could still read it and enjoy the suspense of the plot. 

~

 

“You can love someone so much but you can never love someone as much as you can miss them.” 

“The thing about chameleoning your way through life is that you get to a point where nothing is real.”

“Do you ever wonder whether people would like you more or less if they could see inside of you? I always wonder about that. If people could see me the way I see myself. If they could live in my memories would anyone love me?”

“He liked all books, because he liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.”

“Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they will always love you back.”

“I don’t think you can ever fill the empty spaces with the thing you lost…I don’t think your missing pieces ever fit inside you again once they go missing.”

“They like their coffee like they like their ex-boyfriends: bitter.” 

“I will get forgotten, but the stories will last.”

“One of those moments he knew he'd remember and look back on, one of those moments that he'd try to capture in the stories he told. Nothing was happening, really, but the moment was thick with mattering.” 

“The future lay before him, inevitable but invisible.” 

“The missing piece in his stomach hurt so much-and eventually he stopped thinking about the Theorem and wondered only how something that isn't there can hurt you.”

 “I feel like, like, how you matter is defined by the things that matter to you. You matter as much as the things that matter to you.”

“He missed his imagined future.”

“Half-drunk on well-creamed gas station coffee and the exhilarating loneliness of a freeway in nighttime...”