#always a literature adventure

[twelvebooksstuff]

Sunrise on the Reaping (Post 8 of Many)

The snake that Lou Lou had during her interviews and even later on in the arena was FASCINATING to compare with its use in the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the idea of a girl associated with a snake, who is a tribute from District 12. Lou Lou is much like Lucy Gray in that she will call out the capital to their faces, (her “murderers” refrain, for example) but unlike how snakes are often associated with danger and corruption in the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, they are associated with empowerment here. Presumably based on her experiences in District 11, Lou Lou has a deep adoration for snakes and absolutely loves them, seeing them almost like friends/family (basically the only family she can remember 😭), a large contrast between the presentation of the snakes in the first prequel. It’s nice to see this more positive portrayal of a species and subverts the expectations we might have had going in, as is the purpose of the whole book. Also worth noting that while snakes definitely are used as a symbol of evil irl, they are also used a symbol of healing irl and I like the incorporation of this into the story and series. Reminds me of Dr. Gaul as well, and how she represents a Hobbesian view of humanity and the worst of us all, and how Lou Lou has a more hopeful view IN SPITE OF EVERYTHING, definitely a more Rousseau or Lockean view (more in line with John Locke I suppose because she’s in many ways a tableau rasa, a blank slate, and able to be good from that state)

[twelvebooksstuff]

Sunrise on the Reaping (post one of many) lol

Right off the bat, I LOVE how Haymitch’s love interest is named after Lenore from Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” and how often the poem comes back in the story up to the end!!

[twelvebooksstuff]

One of many, many cool things about the Jurassic Park Novel is the kids’ first impressions scene

I love Tim (and arguably Lex’s) first impressions of the adults when they land on the island. One of the best scenes. It’s so great how the horror of meeting strange adults at an event you didn’t really want to go to is evoked here-brought back some little-kid memories LOL. But the first impressions are brilliant. Grant and Sattler make very good impressions, with their excited and outdoorsy vibe. Nedry makes a bad first impression (as a messy slob) but Tim does take notice of how young he is, too. Ed Regis makes a bad first impression for being so extroverted and forcing the kids to meet the rest of the adults, even after Lex protests multiple times. Gennaro and Malcolm end up in a third/fourth sort of category. Tim instantly notes Gennaro’s name and how he’s very argumentative with Hammond.  How Tim sees this depends on how you interpret his relationship with his grandfather!Malcolm doesn’t shake the kids hands but nods and presumably smiles from afar. Which is kind of funny considering the borderline hyperactive way he introduces himself to the rest of the cast earlier on the plane. I think this is his way of respecting how the kids are off-put by meeting the guests. Either way, this gives Tim the impression of very weird but friendly which is spot on. And really, all of the impressions are spot on. It’s brilliant and I love it. 

[twelvebooksstuff]

Sunrise on the Reaping (post 7 of many)

It’s interesting to see how clearly Undersee would be mayor was even at this point in time. It’s a neat historical detial showing what the family was like before they got power 

[twelvebooksstuff]

YES!!

I love Matilda because it's a story about a child who sees injustice around her and gets mad about it and questions why things aren't fair, and instead of the ending being that she learns how the world works and that life isn't fair, she catapults one of the adults who abused her out of a building with her mind

[twelvebooksstuff]

Sunrise on the Reaping (Post 4 of many)

Something small I want to highlight is the use of the cage after Haymitch’s victory in the celebrations…its on the nose in the best and most gut wrenching way possible!

[twelvebooksstuff]

Some Jurassic Park Daily Reflection-ft Life Finds A Way

I know I’m a few days late to when this chapter was the assigned reading, but I’m still going to make a post about this specific part of the book. I want to highlight the quote in the post title “Life…Finds A Way”. This small phrase has essentially become the slogan of the whole entire franchise, and arguably taken on a life of its own (no pun intended). So I want to talk a bit about the scene where we are first introduced to it, before even the iconic scene in the first film, to when we see the equivalent of that scene in the book.

It’s part of a much larger spiel, which is pretty par for the course for Book!Ian Malcolm, who is prone to long diatribes, many paragraphs long, detailing his opinions on everything from fashion to capitalism to natural history and beyond.

Anyway, the scene where this spiel takes place is actually not the scene in the laboratory like in the film, but rather a scene with an injured stegosaurus (triceratops in the movie). Dr. Sattler and Dr. Grant are trying to help the vet Dr. Gerry Harding assist the dinosaur to recovery, and Tim, Lex, Ian, Ed Regis (a PR representative who was not in the film) and Donald Gennaro (the lawyer, who is essentially a different character in the books) are all crowding around, too. Lex gets board and tries to play catch with some of the adults-Gennaro agrees and has a sidebar conversation with Malcolm at the same time. During this conversation, Gennaro essentially says that he thinks Malcolm’s use of chaos theory is too broad (“is anything not predicted by your theory” he point blank asks). He is skeptical, but Malcolm is able to provided specific examples beyond “things are unpredictable”, which Malcolm is able to do, listing many specifics. When trying to explain his underlying perspective, we get the basis memorable monolouge from the film: “The history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way…I don’t mean to be philosophical, but there it is.”

What’s most interesting to me is that unlike the pristine lab setting where we get this in the film, Malcolm outside talking to his colleague who’s playing catch with a young kid. Not only does it seem less grandiose, in a way, but it seems to have a more practical application, too. Oftentimes, in the later films or even other media, this idea of “life finds a way” takes on this “humanity will survive” kind of context that feels totally applicable, but a bit disconnected from the film scene imo.

But in the book, the entire spiel is happening over a game of catch, a game that means a lot to Lex, who, not fully known to Ian and Gennaro at this point, is having a very rough time at home. She feels unheard and ignored by all the adults in her life, and excluded even by Tim at points. But in this moment, Gennaro takes the time to indulge her game, and as far as Malcolm’s concerned, the more people to hear him talk, the merrier. In the midst of this hectic tour of a prehistoric zoo, they have found a small moment to connect, to build bonds, to be a community, and that represents the survival of humanity and the human spirit to me in a very visceral way.

It makes all the “life finds a way” tied to humanity exclusively make even more sense, too. Because while Malcolm is talking about things on a grand history scale, he’s also doing so while participating in/witnessing this small human moment, and it’s kind of perfect, in a way.

Anyway, I have a lot of thoughts about this and wanted to share!

[twelvebooksstuff]

So I read all of the new Hunger Games book Sunrise on the Reaping all in one day (yesterday/early this morning) and I do have a lot of thoughts I want to share, but instead of one big post I’ll probably do more smaller posts. But the book was absolutely AMAZING and I LOVED it and I RECOMMEND it and thought it was totally WORTHWHILE so there’s that to start

[twelvebooksstuff]

Love this

obsessed with mass market paperbacks. their pleasing rectangular proportions. how they fit badly in a hoodie pocket so you can drag them around everywhere with you like a temporary little buddy. the way they fit in your hand because they're MADE for human hands and not as bookshelf decoration. the way the pages feel when you riffle them gently with your thumb. How pristine and crisp they look when you get them and how creased and folded they look when you're done, even if you try to be nice to them. how that wear is okay, how that's correct actually, because they're made with the philosophy that books aren't meant to be PRETTY, they're meant to be read. that little ripple new ones get on the left side from where you hold them when you're reading, the way the ripple only goes as far as you've read, because u change stories by reading as they are changing you. how you can find thousands of these creased and folded and loved little dudes in every thrift store and used book shop and neighborhood library and you can instantly see the ones that someone carried around in a backpack for weeks or read to pieces or gave up on halfway through because they wear being read like fresh snow wears footprints. I love these poorly made, subpar little rectangles so much. truly the people's books.

[twelvebooksstuff]

Sunrise on the Reaping (5 of Many)

The connections between Plutarch’s family garden and the signs in the game makes me wonder if it was inspired by it, made by the same craftspeople, and/or overtly made by someone else in Plutarch’s family, and he has people who overly support the regime in the family as well

[twelvebooksstuff]

Sunrise on the Reaping (3 of Many)

Something that really struck me at the beginning was how the train was so much more practical and less fancy that the ones from the main Hunger Games trilogy. The luxury of it all is part of the point at that point in time..but that does not seem to be the case yet. It’s an upgrade from literal cattle cars like in Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, but still…at the end when Effie becomes the Escort she has a fancy train, so is this entirely her doing? A shift in policy from the gamemakers? Something Snow wanted? Or Plutarch? Or a cultural shift??

[twelvebooksstuff]

love this

In my first year university course there was a class I remember as being mandatory (at least for English majors) about fallacies and biases in writing. And this prof was all about reading the whole article before you formed your argument. That was his whole thing. You know measure twice cut once he was read twice respond once. He stressed this so much that on our final exam (which was two long form essay questions and a few short answer questions) that I decided to read the WHOLE exam booklet before I grabbed my pen.

Turns out that is what he wanted. The final page, the final question, informed the student that if they wrote 1. Their name, 2. Their student number 3. Their favourite fallacy, and wait for 30 minutes so they don't arouse suspicion, you will literally be given 100 percent for the exam WORTH 40 PERCENT OF YOUR GRADE.

I think about it to this day. The prof literally saw the "reading comprehension on this site is piss poor" and said I can fix them

[twelvebooksstuff]

Sunrise on the Reaping (2 of many)

I LOVE the song about the geese and commons that Lenore Dove sings soooo much!! It’s so fitting, so political and naturalistic at the same time, fits right in with the style imagery and themes of the book series as a whole and is a real folk song!!!!!

[twelvebooksstuff]

Jurassic Park Daily Thought-Chapter-Isla Nublar

Love the rising tension throughout, it keeps the pace up!

Love the implication that Ian Malcolm is terrified of flying, definitely fits his anti-tech/luddite/primitivas vibe!

Love all the details of the locales nearby on the mainland.

And the origin of the islands name-from the fog that often covers it-is a nice lovely backstory. Hammond delivers this well, in dialogue that is expository but fits his character well. He’s clearly proud to essentially own this island,fog and all, so this feels very real!

Last but not least I love Malcolm’s comment ”Christ, it looks like Alcatraz”. Such a great comparison that personally I never would have thought of. But it’s apt-a prison island controlled by a small but powerful amount of people, close by to a mainland paradise but so far from at the same time!

[twelvebooksstuff]

So true

“how did you get into writing” girl nobody gets into writing. writing shows up one day at your door and gets into you

[fictionadventurer]

Maybe love triangles work better in classic books because, well first off, because sex isn't really mentioned. Most people's complaint about YA love triangles is that it devolves into "I can't decide which one is hotter." Physical attraction is an element of romance in classic literature, but it's rarely the only one, and you're not going to have the same kind of in-depth descriptions of how standing near a guy causes heat or tingling sensations or whatever. Physical attraction in classic literature is more about what draws someone to another person, while the YA approach is more often about the feelings the other person causes within you, which makes the YA approach feel much more self-centered.

But I also think the different approaches to courtship may be a factor. The other big reason people hate YA love triangles is because the girl is "stringing along" two guys and "not making up her mind." This seems to be tied to assumptions of dating culture--even in the exploration stage when a girl isn't thinking about lifelong commitments, she needs to be in an exclusive relationship, otherwise she's being emotionally unfaithful. (And if she's kissing two separate boys, she's straight-up cheating).

In a lot of classic literature, the relationship only becomes exclusive during the engagement. Before that, the woman is just living her life, meeting men who could be romantic options, but not necessarily pursuing any individual one. She does have to be careful so guys don't interpret her behaviors as romantic interest, because it doesn't take much to be seen as flirtatious and "drawing men in". But she can still be around multiple men and getting to know them without it necessarily feeling like she's "stringing them along". (And she's not likely to be kissing these guys the way a modern YA heroine would). This gives her more opportunity to slowly get to know these guys without being pressured to choose just one at this early stage.