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Showing posts from November, 2020

Blood Child Octavia Butler 5 points

  1. What is your reaction to the text you just read?     I was confused the whole time. I could understand that there were two different races and one was being used as incubators but I couldn't tell what the other race was and all the names got super confusing. The story sporadically went from scene to scene and it was hard for me to keep up with it. Also, the structure of the narrative didn't really help at all, it left me behind just as much as the dialogue did. The main character had an odd connection with T'Gatoi, which was the alien who lives with them. The boy is mated to her, which I felt was a little odd because she is like three times his mother's age. I decided to read an explanation after I had finished the short story and I understood it more. I definitely like the concept but I think that the narrative could have been written so much better. 2. What connections did you make with the story? Discuss what elements of the story with which you were able to con

Bable-17 Samuel R Delay 5 points

I really enjoyed this novel and I was surprised to see how ahead of its time it is. For a novel written in the '60s, it's incredibly progressive with representing people and cultures outside of the standard societal norm. The protagonist is a strong, spunky, female, which was very rare for the  60s, and the way sexuality and physical attribute difference between the two different people were so drastically different from the views of the time. Even Rydra's crew strayed from the norm, being varied ethnically and culturally, I think this added so much to the story. I loved the openness of this book. For the majority, it was super clear and it was obvious the goals of the characters from the start, which allowed me to focus more on the world-building and the overall structure of the science behind it.   The openness about appearance really pushed the idea of self-image and what one can do. I feel like most older generations are like the Customs people, put off by outlandish ap

The Female Man by Joanna Ross 5 points

 A feminist novel published in 1975 that really got into not only the feminist movement but also touched on the environmental movement in the 1970s. I really liked how much this book challenged gender roles and sexist mindsets of the earlier 70s,  it got me really fired up. Typically, I don't usually like science fiction but The Female Man was very good. There are four main female characters who live in four different dimensions, all at different stages in time. This book was meant to highlight the fact that gender roles are outdated. The book is about trying to build a better society where gender roles don't prohibit someone from living their best lives. There is a certain importance to solve social issues on time. The 40-year war in Jael's world isn't much of an exaggeration, if anything an understatement because women are still fighting for equality, and the suffragette movement started in the early 1900s. Joanna takes Janet and Jeannie to a party to show them how me

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle 5 points

 I  read this book for the first when I was in the fifth grade and I didn't take much from it. I  remember being super confused and not really understanding the meaning of the story. I  really enjoyed re-reading it though because I finally understood the more obvious themes. For one, I took away the theme of conformity versus individuality. At the beginning of the book, Meg harps on how different she is from her classmates and how her younger brother, Charles Wallace, is bullied because of how different he is. That's why I think this book is a great choice for the younger audience because most kids feel like their different from everyone else around them and sometimes it can be overwhelming. She wants to fit in so bad as her younger twin brothers do. Though it was hard for me to wrap my head around that concept when I was younger, I realized now how much I would have connected with the character had I understood it more. Meg is confronted about her wish for conformity when they

Sea Kings of Mars by Leigh Brackett 5 points

I did some research on the author and Leigh Brackett is a very important writer and screenplay writer. She is often referred to as the Queen of Opera and one of her most notable screenplays was  Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.  As the semester comes to an end, it's getting harder to stay motivated enough to finish reading all the books week to week. At first, I didn't really enjoy reading this book, I don't know if it was because I'm mentally exhausted or because I genuinely didn't really like it at first, but either way, it was hard to get through the first couple of chapters. I did some research and this book is actually like the Naming a sword Rhiannon, they had to know that most people would associate that with the Fleetwood Mac song. I thought that was pretty funny, but every time I read the word, I always thought of the song first instead of the evil god sword. Funny enough though, they recently added Easy A back on to Netflix and one of the main