3-30-10...So i went book browsing with Francis last week and she chose this book Evermore and after she read it. she insisted that i read it. So far i'm on chapter 5 and i'm hooked.  There's this beautiful girl that doesnt like to draw attention to herself but hangs out with an attention hog as her best friend. Then of course an amazingly handsome man comes into the picture.  There's two things wrong with this: one, he draws attention to her because all the "popular" kids are wondering wtf why is HE hanging out with her.  and two, there's something weird about him.  Francis kinda gave it away and said he's not the greatest guy but right now i'm not convinced.  He's seems DREAMY :)  oh, and the dead sister part is a little weird.

4-12-10 ...

pg.48

"And it's so weird how all the noise just stops and starts, starts and stops, like some messed up game of musical chairs. One where I'm always left standing. One where I'm always it."

pg.49

"I close my eyes when he speaks --- silence, sweet silence, for those fleeting few seconds. Then i open them again and gaze right into his.  'They're dead,' I say, as Mr. Robins walks in."

pg.49

"'I know what it's like to lose the people you love,' he whispers, reaching across the table and placing his hand over mine, infusing me with a feeling so good, so warm, so calm, and so safe --- I close my eyes and allow it.  Allow myself to enjoy the peace of it. Grateful to hear what he says and not what he thinks. Like an average girl --- with a much better than average boy."

Sold by Patricia Mccormick

This book is short and a very easy read but i got more from this book than u would believe.  Her family lives in Nepal - her mom, step dad, and little brother.  She's thirteen so of course she has a crush on this boy :). sounds pretty cute huh? here's the problem- Her step dad is missing half of an arm so all he does is gamble.  this, of course, causes money issues for her familybecause he's not very good at the only thing he can do. to keep a family is hard enough   this excerpt explains how its hard in nepal on a famly

p 10

"CALENDAR

At school there is a calendar, where my young, moonfaced teacher marks off the days with a red crayon.

On the mountain we mark the time by women's work and women's woes.

In the cold months, the women climb high up on the mountain's spine to scavenge for firewood.  They take food from their bowls, feed it to their children, and silence their own churning stomachs. 

This is the season whent he women bury the children who die of fever.

In the dry months, the women collect basketfuls of dung and pat them into cakes to harden in the sun, making precious fuel for the dinner fire.  They tie rags around their children's eyes to sheild them from the dust blowing up from the empty riverbed.

This is the season when they bury the children who die from the coughing disease.

In the rainy months, they patch the crumbling mud walls of their huts and keep the fire going so that yesterday's gruel can be stretched to make tomorrow's dinner.  They watch the river turn into a thundering beast.  They pick leeches from their children's feet and give them tea to ward off the loosebowel disease.

This is the season when they bury the children who cannot be carried to the doctor on the other side of that river.

In the cool months, they prepare special food for the festivals.  they make rice beer for the men and listen to them argue politics.  They teach the children who have survived the seasons to make back-to-school ink from the blue-black juice of the marking nut tree.

This is also the season when the women drink the blue-black juice of the marking tree to do away with the babies in their wombs -- the ones who would be born only to be buried next season." 

The plot escalates when she has to leave her little village to make money to send home so her family can survive. She goes to work as a house maid in the city where the roofs of buildings are made of gold.

p 60

"Inside the bundle Ama packed for me are:

my bowl,

my hairbrush,

the notebook my teacher gave me for being the number one girl in school,

and my bedroll.

Inside my head I carry:

my baby goat,

my baby brother,

my ama's face,

our family's future.

My bundle is light.

My burden is heavy."

If i tell you much more than i would be giving away the story. The only vocab i had trouble with is their native language reference's like ama=mom. and the name's are a bit strange but of course they would be because they live in Nepal. 

When i first started this novel, i thought this took place like 40 years ago...but i was wrong.  When/if u read this book, keep in mind that it takes place today, tomorrow, and it will happen tomorrow.  it is slowing decreasing but not fast enough. find out wat IT is by reading SOLD by Patricia McCormick.

"All that you touch 

you change

All that you change

changes you

The only lasting truth

is change

God

is change"

-page 3

How true is that?!?! That first poem/verse is what got me interested in this book at first.  It really made me think. Change is inevitable, we all know that. But will anything ever stay the same?

Another aspect of this novel that kept me interested was the graphic and realistic descriptions.  It almost seems like this could happen to America although I, personally, don't believe it will. But it's always fun to imagine.

"That night, looking for a place to camp, we stumbled across four ragged, fithly kids huddled around a campfire.  The picture of them is still clear in my mind.  Kids the age of my brothers -- twelve, thirteen, maybe fourteen years old, three boys and a girl.  The girl was pregnant, and so huge it was obvious she would be giving birth any day.  We rounded the bend in a dry stream bed, and there these kids were, roasting a severed human leg, maneuvering it where it lay in the middle of their fire atop the burning wood by twisting its foot.  As we watched, the girl pulled a sliver of charred flesh from the thigh and stuffed it in her mouth." -page 272 Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler.

When I first read that paragraph, it made me realize how much of a hell that this futuristic world had become.  Children eating human flesh to survive.  Could this really happen to us?

The setting of Parable of the Sower is placed in 2024-2026.  The main character is a 16 year old girl named Loren.  At first I found it easy to relate to her and her problems. She lived in a small community, had a crush on the neighbor boy, had annoying siblings, and her parents were kind of strict. But she turned out to be so much more complicated than the simple world i live in.

     "Crazy to live without a wall to protect you.  Even in Robledo, most of the street poor -- squatters, wincos, junkies, homeless people in general -- are dangerous.  They're desperate or crazy or both.  That's enough to make anyone dangerous.

     Worse for me, they often have things wrong with them.  They cut off each other's ears, arms, legs. . . . They carry untreated diseases and festering wounds.  They have no money to spend on water to wash with so even the unwounded have sores.  They don't get enough to eat so they're malnourished -- or they eat bad food and poisen themselves.  As I rode, I tried not to look around at them."-page 10

 We know this already happens in some parts of the world and of course in America.  But could it get so bad that the only safe place is behind a wall with guards and barbed wire?  But the dangers of the outside world is not the only complication in Loren's world.  She also has hyperempathy.  Hyper meaning excess or exaggerated and Empathy which is like feeling other's pain.  She also calls it sharing.  

"The sharing isn't real, after all.  It isn't some magic of ESP taht allows me to share the pain or pleasure of other people.  It's delusional.  Even I admit that. ...  I didn't fight much when I was little because it hurt me so.  I felt every blow that i struck, just as though I'd hit myself.  ... Hyperempathy is what the doctors call an 'organic delusional syndrome.'  Big shit.  It hurts, that's all I know.  Thanks to Paracetco, the small pill, the Enstein powder, the particular drug my mother chose to abuse before my birth killed her, I'm crazy.  I get a lot of grief that doesn't belong to me, and that isn't real.  But it hurts." - page 11

"If I don't look too long at old injuries, they don't hurt me too much.  There was a naked little boy whose skin was a mass of big red sores; a man with a huge scab over the stump where his right hand used to be; a little girl, naked, maybe seven years old with blood running down her bare thighs.  A woman with a swollen, bloody beaten face..." - page 13  

So you're probably asking Where are the police? Why is there no control and help in these places?  Loren has been taught not only by her famly and community, but by experience.  IF the police even show up, all they do is rob the people and make accusations.

So Bella and Francis are saying that it's really graphic and depressing.  It is really graphic but not completely depressing.  It really made me think about the future.  I, personally, don't believe our America will come to this.

Loren is also finding herself throughout the novel.  Even though she is only a teenager, she is really mature and understanding.  Throughout the novel, she is creating a religion based off of what she not only hears but understands.  She stongly believes in what she calls Earthseed. 

For all you saying that this is some Christain book trying to influence religion, it's not.  Loren's father was a minister and she gets a lot of Earthseed from her father's sermons.

Reading 3 depressing books in a row is definately not suggested.

First i read the Parable of the Sower and then The Road and now Grapes of Wrath and they are all about traveling on roads. Depressing. Horrible conditions.  I've noticed that lately i have been more of a pessimist and kind of depressed.  Its not easy being depressed.

 Francis is reading this book with me and she needs to read faster. jk

The most depressing part of this book to me is how the child constantly talks about suicide and murder.  But i love how the man tries to lift his spirits by making him a flute and telling the boy that they're going to survive.  This novel doesn't really have a plot so far.  They are just traveling south on roads, trying to survive. They nearly freeze, starve, and are almost murdered twice so far.  The only positive part so far is the underground storage place they found near a house.  They had canned foods, ham, burners, a toilet, beds, toothbrushed, a bath.  The poor boy didn't trust this underground heaven at first because of the first incident-

"He started down the rough wooded steps.  He ducked his head and then flicked the lighter and swung the flame out over the darkness like an offering.  Coldness and damp.  An ungodly stench.  The boy clutched at his coat.  He could see part of a stone wall.  Clay floor.  An old mattress darkly stained.  He crouched and stepped down again and held out the light.  Huddled against the back wall were naked people, male and female, all trying to hide, shielding their faces with thier hands.  On the mattress lay a man with his legs gone to the hip and the stumps of them blackened and burnt.  The smell was hidious.

     Jesus, he whispered.

     Then one by one they turned and blinked in the pitiful light.  Help us, they whispered.  Please help us." page 110

i eventually found out that they were being held down there for food.  They were being held by cannibals.

journal entry 11-5-09

     So i don't quite understand how the mother has died or dissapeared and what happened to the 1st bullet in the gun.  Did the mother kill herself with the first bullet?

     it's really depressing how the boy talks about commiting sucide and how the father comforts him but secretly wishing the same fate.

     The truck with the group of people really changed my thoughts on how the book was placed or set up. i didn't think until now that they thought nearly everyone was evil.

Journal Entry 11-18-09

     so the man and boy are STILL moving, traveling south.  Theyve come across two groups of people both of whom the man declares are evil.  Who are the good guys? and why arent there more of them?  i almost dont think the boy will survive the trip.  They have no food, poor shelter, and almost no energy.  How will they continue with only one bullet and no energy to run?  i think they might get captured. 

     im almost half way through the book and not much has really happened.  A lot of descriptions but not a lot of plot. 

"He walked out in the grey light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world.  The cold relentless circling of the interstate earth.  Darkness implacable.  The blind dogs of the sun in their running.  The crushing black vacuum of the universe.  And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like groundfoxes in their cover.  Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it." p130

VOCAB

• Mendicant (p126) - characteristic of a beggar
• bedlam (p97) - scene of wild uproar
• commissaries (181) - dinning room
• cairns (181) -  heap of stones set up as a landmark
• secular (177) - not connected to religion
• middens (177) - a dunghill or refuse heap
• piedmont (183) - a plateau between the Appalachian Mountains and the costal plain
• desiccated (184) - dehydrated or powdered
• fey (187) - fated to die
• promontory (221) - part of a plateau overlooking a low land
• sepulchre (222) - tomb, grave, or burial place
• tenerife (223) - the largest of the Canary Islands
• perverse (226) - contrary

" ... hopeless messages to loved ones lost and dead.  By then all the stores of food had given out and murder was everywhere upon the land.  The world soon to be largely populated by men who would eat your children in front of your eyes and the cities themselves held by cores of blackened looters who tunneled amoung the ruins and crawled form the rubble white of tooth and eye carrying charred and anonymous tins of food in nylon nets like shoppers in the commissaries of hell." -p181

 "What is it? He said.  What is it? The boy shook his head.  Oh Papa, he said.  He turned and looked again.  What the boy had seen was a charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on the spit.  He bent and picked the boy up and started for the road with him, holding him close.  I'm sorry, he whispered.  I'm sorry." -p 198

11-29-09

so i finished the book the other day and i wasnt too happy with the ending.  i liked how the optimism of the ending but it kinda made the overall book more depressing.  The descriptions in the book were desturbing and similar to Parable of a Sower.  Both books have a sort of happy ending and strong themes like hope, trust, and love.  I found these novels more inspiring than depressing because of the love shared amoung the characters. 

This is our Project   take a gander

the road.ppt