EVERYBODY IS DIFFERENT, BUT EVERYBODY IS THE SAME

I'm really horrible at updating this blog but since it's mostly for me anyway, it doesn't matter much.

The last month I've read (and re-read) this:
Curtis Sittenfeld - Prep
Curtis Sittenfeld - The man of my dreams
Albert Camus - The outsider
Tom Perrotta - The abstinence teacher

I'm currently reading Chuck Klosterman's Downtown owl which is awesome but I love Chuck Klosterman so obviously I would think that.

A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS

"I look over and smile when one of them makes a joke that is laughed at by all. They laugh, I chuckle - not too much, I don't want to seem overeager, but enough to say "I hear you. I laugh with you. I share in the moment." But when the chuckling is over I am still apart, something else, and no one is sure what I am."

- Dave Eggers

I just completely identify. Completely. Those sentences made me think of the opening to the movie version of American psycho which I (to a lesser degree) also identify with:

"There is an idea (...), some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense that our lifestyles are probably comparable, I am simply not there."

A LOW CULTURE MANIFESTO

"I remember saying things, but I have no idea what was said. It was generally a friendly conversation.

- Associated Press reporter Jack Sullivan, attempting to recount a 3 A.M. exchange we had at a dinner party and inadvertently describing the past ten years of my life."

- Chuck Klosterman

BOOKS

Christmas presents:

INSIDE THE THIRD REICH

"In retrospect, what perhaps troubles me most is that my occasional spells of uneasiness during this period were concerned mainly with the direction I was taking as an architect (...) On the other hand I must have had the feeling that it was no affair of mine when I heard the people around me declaring an open season on Jews (...) The ordinary party member was being thaught that grand policy was much too complex for him to judge it. Consequently, one felt one was being represented, never called upon to take personal responibility.

The whole structure of the system was aimed at preventing conflicts of conscience from even arising."

- Albert Speer

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHS

Obviously the world doesn’t need another Harry Potter review, so obviously I won’t write one. Instead, I’ll discuss some of the deaths from the books and what I thought about them. Won't talk about them all though.

Lily (Evans) Potter /James Potter – Well, it’s sad that Harry had to go through life without parents but without their deaths no story.
Sirius Black – I cried so hard my parents actually asked me if something was wrong. It was in the middle of summer, I was sitting on the porch at our summer cottage, the sun was shining and I read the words “he’s gone” and just started bawling. I mean, Sirius? Apart from Harry, he was my favourite character. And what really annoyed me about his death was the fact that it didn’t have to happen; if Sirius hadn’t yelled “OUT!” to Kreacher, if Harry had only learned how to close his mind to Voldemort, if he had only checked that mirror Sirius gave him…I was always hoping that Sirius would somehow reappear but he never did.
Dobby –I was definitely sad or perhaps moved is a better word, but I wasn’t horror-struck. The last thing he did was saving Harry and friends and so his exit was noble (even though it made me want to kill Bellatrix Lestrange even more).
Hedwig – Well, it was the only way really, because Harry couldn’t exactly have taken her with him and she would have been forgotten about if she had just remained at, let’s say, The Burrow the rest of the book. Because she died, we are not likely to forget her. But, I did care a lot about it because I always liked Hedwig and the relationship between Hedwig and Harry and how she was his only connection to the magical world when he was staying at the Dursleys’ during the summers.
Albus Dumbledore – Horrible but while I found Dumbledore’s death sad, it didn’t matter that much to me personally. And I did see it coming so I was prepared.
Nymphadora Tonks and Remus Lupin – When Lupin was killed I just thought “wow, she really manages to kill off every single role model Harry has”. I loved Lupin and found Tonks really funny (and I felt really bad for their child) so it was with a heavy heart I accepted their deaths.
Fred Weasley – Just completeley and utterly unnecessary. I felt like J.K. Rowling was just trying to shock us. I can’t imagine one twin without the other. How I loved them.
Lavender Brown – Her death made me understand the severity of the situation because she had always been there; while she was never really important to the main story, the name “Lavender Brown” was mentioned in every book. And her death was so casually slipped in: “’NO!’ shrieked Hermione, and with a deafening blast from her wand Fenrir Greyback was thrown backwards from the feebly stirring body of Lavender Brown.”, and that was it. It just threw me for a loop.
Severus Snape – I was so happy that he wasn’t all bad. I never really liked him, but he was such a great character and I wanted for him to be good. And he was.

WRAPPED UP IN BOOKS

I'd to go to Trinity College just to be able to hang out in the library: