breadgloves's reviews
5 reviews

I do not understand why this wasn’t the plot of the movie, this is a way more compelling story than what ended up being the movie. There is a lot of commentary on how the trafficking of drugs really isn’t as “ethical” as it seems to many people who only experience the end user side of it all. The movie is honestly an insult to this book’s story as it creates a fantasy about the author’s pen name pseudonym and squashes any idea of critical thinking. 

The dystopian reality George Orwell created in the 40s mirrors our modern reality with scary accuracy. The method of surveillance is even more intense in some cases than the novel portrays; the telescreens have a limitation in their ability to surveil, our phones do not have the same limits. It is easy to be manipulated to love and to hate. It is hard to manipulate the memory of living people whose trauma still rings in their ears. This is why the Ministry of Truth destroys evidence that would prove their word otherwise. The government has assigned vices with Victory Gin and Victory Cigarettes; they want people to have addiction and poor health. The government wants Big Brother to be the warm and fuzzy presence for those who conform and submit, but the threatening and controlling for those who do not. 

While the designed fear of knowledge and freedom lives in both reality and novel, the red-armed woman gives hope. She is evidence that the people will prevail. The feeling of helplessness is designed, but do not let it be your design. 

Separating the art from the artist is a difficult task for me. There are times that I am of the belief that the artist's views and interworkings are in their art. However, I also have instances of ignoring this belief for the enjoyment of something created by someone terrible. I feel uncomfortable with this hypocrisy; if I decide to not partake in the media of everyone who did something terrible; I could enjoy nothing, for everyone is terrible. The uneasy feeling comes back when I am watching something that has clear views of the author/artist embedded it in. What am I to do with this unease? A single person not reading or watching the media created by a person is not going to have any impact to the creator. It will impact the enjoyment of the consumer, their ethical quarrel is nothing to the creator. The only person you are proving something to is yourself. That doesn't mean I can't dislike or critique people on their actions and morals. I have to admit that there is no person who will fit within this strict path of ethics and morals in the age of the internet and social media being a part of most daily things. Trying to end people's careers for doing something many humans do is a black and white type of thinking that doesn't fit within the real world. This book brought up good questions to ask yourself, not only in the media that you digested, but your personal relationships as well. 

This is a great read if you can ignore the obvious instances of Mormonism and the racist false history of the Quileute that Stephenie Meyer created for the series. This was one of the first books that I read that had pop culture references that were topical for the time. You could relate to Bella a lot more than other book characters from books I had to read for school. There are some more blatant plot holes now that the whole series has been completed and with an adult's perspective. There is a lot more humor and charm in book Bella than movie Bella. She is a lot more intelligent and figures out Edward is a vampire pretty quickly. While she is still very introverted, the movie Bella we got is a new, but still iconic character. This story could have easily been set with college-aged characters, there are some scenes that are a bit more adult than realized on the first read. There are aspects of this book that touch on almost sapphic eroticism with Bella and Alice. If there was a book where Bella and Alice ended up together, I would enjoy that a lot more than the series we ended up with. 

While this was a good resource for punctuation, the dry humor is not my cup of tea. There are unnecessary sexist remarks on women, slurs, and an insistence that people do not use proper grammar while texting. This book shows its age by referencing many written works of the time (early 2000s). I do think there are good points made about how punctuation has impacted the interoperation of religion, but that is a small section in the beginning of the book. If there were more examples of how punctuation has effected history, I would have enjoyed the book a lot more. This is definitely a book to keep for reference, but I would come into the book with the knowledge of it being from the early aughts and dry British humor.