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The Hobbit

My oh my do I love reading Tolkien, his writing has a sense of whimsy and wonder I don't really find in other fantasy works. We talk a lot about the hero's journey, but not enough about what happens before. The Hobbit speaks about conformity in our homes, but the home is never demonized or berated. It is described with love and beauty, Bilbo cares about his home because conformity is part of his identity. Before we embark on our own journey through life we are the same way. We want to stay at home and live with our family forever. That's not how life works. However, The Hobbit never demonizes the home, it is a part of life, a nest, our childhood home. The home has many memories attached to it, and its not something bad. Bilbo's conformity, also ties into his refusal to let new people into his life. Some of us have loud family members who every time they come over they rock our routine. At first, we find them annoying but later we enjoy ourselves, let go and be free ...
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Fragments of a hologram rose

This story is more of a conglomeration of moments than a regular narrative, it weaves together a spirit of memory and the contrast between reality and recordings. The tone of the story is very peculiar. The main character has just gone through a breakup, his girlfriend just left him and he finds a hologram rose, a postcard and an “Apparent Sensory Perception” tape. He breaks the postcard into pieces and then watches the tape, which has mostly been wiped out. This little short story reminded me a lot of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless mind. Mainly because we are living the memories of Parker, but through a more lens-y kind of view, instead of being there as a character. The whole memory erasing is very similar a concept,  it made me realize how some parts of that movie might fall into some sci fi genre codes. This part particularly stuck with me “Thinking: We're each other's fragments, and was it always this way? That instant of a European trip, deserted in the gray sea of wi...
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A Clockwork Orange

 A Clockwork Orange.  I read it with a little background information on it. I saw the Kubrick movie when I was about 15. What stuck out to me the most was the themes of choice, and also the controversy of the last chapter. Alex DeLarge is a violent young man, he gets chosen for the Ludovico experiments specifically because he killed a man. The violence and rape is very shocking and hard to read, since Alex and his gang are not the only nadsats partaking in the old ultraviolence. The question the book presents about authority and violence is very hard to answer. Is taking away choice from evil? Would the Ludovico treatment ever work? Alex represents humanity's the right to choose even if its a twisted choice, if we take away the right to choose then what are we? an organic machine, but is that better for  the good of society? I particularly enjoyed the Nadsat. It takes an interesting approach when it comes to slang. Combining two languages and creating new words, this ha...
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