China!

I don't post on this much, but in case you end up here, hi! I'm going to be in China for the next four months, and you can read about it at dianeschinablog.blogspot.com

You should probably go there

Books: Matched

I don't read that many books any more, since I am busy with school, but I manage a few and I was excited to read this one. I had heard good things about it from more than one person, then the author came to my lecture series class and spoke some about it. And it was fun and fast-paced and and well written.

I didn't like it.

It was not so much that I had any problem with the story itself, but the thing is it is the exact same storyline used by every single dystopian book in existence (by the way, I don't personally categorize Hunger Games as dystopian, since the main characters were never under the illusion that they lived in a good place). The love triangle was the same love triangle in everything. I knew exactly what was going to happen in the whole book just by reading in inside front cover.

One of the reasons I kept reading is that I kept hoping that the author would surprise me, that she would break out of the mold and have the main character make a non-standard decision, or have something unexpected happen. It was not to be, at least in this book. I have yet to decide whether I'll read the next one. Maybe she'll surprise me then.

I'm sort of just waiting for someone somewhere to write a dystopian book where they decide not to overthrow the government in the end. I think it would be an interesting story, and I think it has the potential of having some very deep issues. I'm also sort of waiting for a book where the hero decides to go with his/her head rather than his/her heart when it comes to romance. I'm tired of stories about stupid teenage girls causing havoc to everyone around them just for a guy that they have convinced themselves they can't live without.

Childhood

I have read a number of books dealing with the holocaust. It was a terrible, terrible part of history, but because of that it also happens to be unusually fascinating. I have found the books I have read on the subject beautiful and heart-wrenching and inspiring. I haven't read all that I wish I had, but I read both Hiding Place and Man's Search for Meaning during high-school and loved them. In addition to this, I also went through about a year-long phase a bit earlier when I read a whole bunch of them right in a row. This particular phase is my real topic for this post.

You see, I hadn't really ever considered it strange that I had gone through a phase like this. I read books. I always have. In fact, I hadn't even thought of this at all in quite a while. Then, a few weeks ago, I was talking to my family and the subject of childhood came up. At one point in the conversation my my mother said something like this:

"...and there was that time when Diane was 6 years old and read all of those holocaust books."

Wait.

6 years old? I was 6 years old when I went through that phase? I thought back and found that it was, indeed, true.

So, yeah, pretty much I was reading books on human cruelty and suffering when I looked like this:

They were my favorite books too. And I wondered why I didn't have any friends.

Names

I'm not sure how many people will recognize the name of my blog. Considering how few people figure out my email address (a.yellow.wood@gmail.com, from the first line in The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost), I'm guessing not too many.

The phrase is from an ee cummings poem named "anyone lived in a pretty how town," which is probably my favorite poem, and one of about a dozen I have memorized. I won't post the full text here, but you should follow this link and read the whole thing, because it is delightful. If it completely baffles you (like most ee cummings poems do on first reading), here is a good concise analysis of it.

I've always liked this line, and I've always wanted to continue my poem theme-naming (starting with my email address), so that is what I named my blog. If I were being a really dedicated fan, the title wouldn't be capitalized, but I tried it that way, and don't like how it looks. I did, however, leave the caption below the title un-capitalized, so I'm not completely unfaithful to the original.

Why Blogging?

You see, I took an Honors Civilizations class this semester, and hated it. A large portion of the class involved a group blog. We had to do a large blog post every week, comment on others' posts every day, and we never got any warning about what crazy project they would make us do next. And some of them were crazy. Like,  for one of my midterms I spent a total of about 7 hours one week carving ancient symbols into a piece of rock (plus several hours researching said symbols).  I just finished the class yesterday, and am super, super happy.

The thing is, the blogging grew on me.

All during the semester I kept thinking of these fun posts I could do, but I couldn't do them on my class blog because we got graded for that. Now that I am free of my graded obligations, I thought I might start a personal blog and be able to post some of the things I want to talk about.
(another thing I hated about the class. They kept telling us we were supposed to have self directed learning, and research what we want to, except they then gave us a whole bunch of restrictions on what we were allowed to do)