The Farming of Bones #2

This book is really boring. So far, Amabelle's boyfriend's friend, Joel, was killed by Amabelle's master. The master was on his way to see the birth of his twin children, driving in a car way too fast. He rounded a corner and hit Joel so hard the Joel flew into a ravine many feet away. Rather than stop and see if Joel was OK, the master sped on until he got to his house. Joel died instantly, but his friends and family were furious at the master, who never even took the time to see who he had hit. The master's father felt bad about it, though, and he went to Joel's funeral. This just goes to show the cruelty that a rich man in the Dominican Republic can inflict on others with no negative repercussions for himself. If a poor man had done the same to a rich man, the poor man surely would have been killed. But if a rich man commits murder, then nothing happens besides the family and friends mourning silently. But besides that, nothing really interesting has happened. The book has a lot of "pillow talk" between Amabelle and Sebastian. They talk a lot about their lives before they met each other, but its overly sappy, filled with talk of how they were destined to meet and stuff like that. I really don't know what is going to happen next; there isn't really much of a story-line, but I hope it's something that radically changes things. At some point the Haitians are supposed to be prosecuted by the Dominicans, but that hasn't happened yet. I think Se bastion and Amabelle will get separated and have to find each other again, which is bound to be predictable.

The Farming of Bones (By Edwidge Danticat 1998)

This is the book that I have to read for my Spanish V class, even though it is written in English. The story takes place in the Dominican Republic and is about a young woman, Amabelle, who is a native of Haiti, but works in the home of a wealthy family in the Dominican Republic. She is in love with a man, Sebastian, who works in the sugar cane fields, which the author refers to as "the farming of bones." So far, a concrete plot has not yet presented itself; I don't know what the point of the book is. The summary states that the story is about Haitians being prosecuted in the DR, but none of that has happened yet. Amabelle's parents died when she was eight, leaving her orphaned in Haiti. The author has not yet said how Amabelle came to the DR, but I assume that it was to find work. Like in "A Mayan Life," the outsiders of the country are not looked at fondly. Haitians really only work as servants to the people in the DR and are viewed as lowly and unimportant. Books like "A Mayan Life" and "The Farming of Bones" educate the reader about other civil rights problems. In school, we have only really been taught about the Civil Rights Movement in America, but not about the discrimination that takes place in other countries. Reading these books gives the reader a new understanding about social issues in Spanish Countries.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly #2

I will only be able to do 2 posts on this book; I just got assigned to read a book from the Dominican Republic in my Spanish class, so next week I will start blogging about that and, if there is enough time in the year, I will come back to this book.

The whole concept of "Locked In Syndrome" is terrible. Day after day, Bauby is visited by mourners, coming to console him on his tragic accident. I can imagine how awkward it would be to visit someone in Bauby's condition, someone who could not respond to anything you said. You couldn't even read facial cues or body language to glean his emotions. It would be like talking to yourself, except you would have the knowledge that you weren't. It would still be the same person in that hospital bed that you knew before the accident happened, the same mind functioning the same way, but how could you ever have a normal conversation again? You couldn't, unless you patiently dictated every letter, which would then destroy the air of casual banter that your old conversations used to have. Bauby's chapters are very short, little vignettes that do not necessarily connect. So far, he has described his daily routines and feelings towards the accident. He has not said much about his past life or family. In the movie, his ex wife, children, and girlfriend visit him. The girlfriend is in utter shock, but reasonably so. Slowly, Bauby's relationship with his wife starts to re-bloom, which really shows how the cliche that "love can conquer anything" is true. Inside, Bauby is in utter torment; he longs so much to perform the simple tasks he once took for granted, such as swallowing his food and bathing himself. Reading about the despair and embarrassment that Bauby feels really makes you think about the simple things in life that can be taken away so easily. There are little things we don't even notice, like the ability moving an eyeball, but when taken away, can cause so much pain.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Jean Dominique Bauby 1997)

I saw the movie "the Diving Bell and the Butterfly" a while ago and thought it was fantastic. The book, a memoir, was originally written in French by a man, Jean Dominique Bauby, who suffered a massive stroke and was then diagnosed with "Locked In Syndrome," where the person is fully capable of thinking, but unable to move his or her body. To me, and based on how Bauby describes it, this condition sounds like utter hell, the only part of his body that Bauby can move is his left eyelid, which is his only means of communication. Amazingly, Bauby was able to write his book by a special method in which someone, a hired assistant, slowly repeated the alphabet to Bauby. He then blinked when she said the letter he wanted to write. So letter by letter, the entire book was dictated from Bauby's still functioning mind. Bauby's book is quite short, a little over a hundred pages, but that is understandable given the circumstances under which he wrote the book. He had to memorize every paragraph and do all of the editing in his head before he could rely it to his assistant. I do not think I could do this; I would forget what words I wanted to say and get frustrated by how long the process took. Bauby and his assistant spent hours upon hours repeating the same process over and over again. The fact that Bauby was even able to write this book is a grand accomplishment that I suspect few people would be able to do under the same circumstances.

Uglies #6

Finally, the plot has become more exciting and less predictable. Throughout the entire book, I really thought that Zane, Tally's boyfriend, would become a Special along with Tally. Because of Zane's brain damage, which happened in the second book because of a cure for the lesions gone wrong, he had poor motor skills. Tally though that if she could make Zane seem like a rebel, a trait which the Specials all posses, the Special committee would turn him into a Special as well and cure his brain damage. To make Zane seem like a rebel, Tally broke into the town's armory and lead Zane, along with some other Pretties, to the New Smoke. Her plan was to then call the Specials and say that Zane broke into the armory and found the Smoke all by himself. This plan was not so great to begin with, but it turned disastrous. The specials thought that the neighboring town, where the smoke coincidentally was, had attacked their armory and declared war. The smoke was attacked with the strongest weapons that the specials had, destroying the city. Zane had been in the hospital when this had happened, while the doctors searched for a cure for him. The doctors were forced to evacuate the building and left Zane behind, where, without the attendance of the doctors, he lost all of his cognition. The doctors had to then, when they returned, take Zane off of life support in order to use the machines for other patients. This is a great ending to the book because it was literally the last thing I was expecting to happen. Based on the previous book's predictability, I assumed this book would end with a similar ending, one where Zane and Tally lived happily ever after as super-human crime fighters. Zane's death sort of saved the book from being boring, even though it was sad.

Uglies #5

"Specials" is getting a bit tedious to read. The three books in the series seem to have very parallel story lines. In "Uglies" Tally is ambivalent as to weather or not she should reveal the "Smoke" to New Pretty Town and goes on a long journey to get to the "Smoke". In "Pretties" Tally does pretty much the same thing with a few minor changes, such as the addition of her boyfriend and the fact that she's pretty. But in the end, the plot of "Pretties" mirrors the plot of "Uglies". Tally, again, goes through a long journey to get the smoke and then has mixed emotions when she gets there. In "Specials" Tally is, obviously, a Special. So her perspective has drastically changed; she looks at the world with a much more critical eye. She has nearly superhuman strength and speed, and is terrifyingly beautiful. But, nevertheless, Tally, again, goes on a long journey to the "Smoke" and then has mixed feelings about it when she gets there! I would like these books so much more if some new things happened. Sure, there are new characters and new experiences for Tally, such as meeting a tribe of people living like "pre-rusties", her boyfriend's brain being eating by nanos, and robbing a heavily armed armory, but fundamentally, all of these books are too similar to keep the reader excited about the story line. Don't get me wrong, I like the books and they are fun to read, but after a while, they get a little old.

Uglies #4

My Spring Break has been uneventful, so I have been reading a lot. Because of this, I finished "Pretties" and have now moved onto "Specials," the third book in the series by Westerfeld that came out in 2006.

In this book, Tally has become a Special, a scary sort of police officer that keeps Pretty Town in order and possesses super-human skills. Right now, she is on the hunt, chasing down her old friends from the Smoke, a rebel party who do not believe in becoming pretty. As a sequel to "Pretties," this book is all right so far. "Uglies" is definitely the best book in the series; the other two books are too predictable. From the beginning of "Pretties," the reader knew that Tally would successfully cure herself of the brain lesions. In "Specials," based on the books predictable plot line, I foresee Tally going back to the smoke and having internal conflicts as to whether or not she should turn her old friends Pretty. I am actually getting kind of tired of these books, probably because I read them all in one week, but also because the plot line, besides being predictable, is also cliche; it is full of teen melodrama found in basically every teen book, movie, and TV series. For example, Tally first falls in love with David, a leader of the Smoke who has vowed to stay ugly. But then once Tally becomes pretty, she finds a new boyfriend, Zane, who is pretty as well. As Tally journeys back to the Smoke, she realizes that she still has feelings for David, even though he is ugly and she is in love with Zane. This sort of teen angst situation is fine once in a while, but Westerfeld puts his characters in all too many cliche situations, which makes his books a bit boring and annoying at times. But overall, I still like the books; it is easy to lose yourself in cliche plot lines even though they are unoriginal.