weekly review

Fahrenheit 451 last third

This is the final chapter in the book and it is essentially the climax of the story.

Bradbury presents it in a very poetic way, with lots of figurative language and comparisons.

the sun burnt every day. It burnt Time . . . Time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen and the sun burnt Time, that meant that everything burnt!

For a brief synopsis, view link below:

http://www.youtube.com/user/jonachen91092?feature=mhee

weekly review

Fahrenheit 451 second third

Probably one of the most important symbols happen in this chapter. Montag compares trying to read the bible with a childhood memory of trying to fill a sieve with sand. no mater how hard he tries, he just can't make it stick, and he hoped that, if he reads fast enough, some of the material will stay in his memory. The sand is symbolic of the tangible truth Montag seeks and the sieve of the human mind seeking truth. Truth is elusive and, the metaphor suggests, impossible to grasp in any permanent way.

weekly review

Fahrenheit 451-first third

This first chapter of the story is the explanation chapter where authors introduces the characters, the setting and the start of the conflict to the audience. it is a very well thought out piece, because literally every other word or phrase has a meaning and effect, either immediate or subtle. For example, we have the conversation Guy had with Clarisse, it was had an immediate effect on Guy and he went from the happy firemen to a hopeless amateur philosopher who is trying to figure out what is wrong with society. Another example is how Bradbury uses paradoxes a lot, like " the room was not empty yet indeed empty" and the hound was alive but also not alive.

weekly review

This week I have really scared my self too much, so i am transgressing into fantasy books. i heard from daniel that fantasy is really fascinating and relaxing genre, i'll give it a go. I already picked out some fantasy books, how do I know if they are fantasy? Well, the title makes it quite obvious. I have checked out Cry of Icemark, Septimus Heap I~IV and Rangers Apprentice I~VII. So thats 12 books i have planned for next week. I did begin reading Cry of Icemark, and i have to say, i'm pretty not used to this rapid transition from extreme horror and gore with maximum suspense to some far away kingdom that sounds a little like the Scandinavian countries which is under attack with not so much as a intense-scare-you-to-death-while-you-sleep kinda scene. Well, i'm working on it. Guess i'm still on King trauma.

weekly review

I Have finished all my funny and easy books, and moved on to some more serious and scary works, namely Stephen King. His works are truly terrifying and chilled me to the bone. It make you think you are reading a historical event. it just seems so....REAL, he even included himself as a character in the Dark Towers and explained that he wrote this book because his characters talked to him in person and had to protect him, because if the evil kills him, the story won't be written and the characters would fail to exist anymore. his intense pacing of the plot really helped amplify the story. in the story the characters travel between worlds and time to save a Tower, the axis of the multiverse, during the trip, they encounter new friends and foes. one character named Pere Callahan was introduced, but he was the main character of another Stephen King book called Salm's lot. Callahan finds this book which was fiction, but described his life in detail. they began searching for this Stephen king, who they think is their God. this gave me a really terrible thought, what if i was only a character, thought up by some random unknown writer? what if i'm only a pawn in his book? with every move i make planned out already? and , if he makes me die, will i die? these are what makes his books so scary and real.

i don't like the feeling , but its really hard to resist. this is a really good series, true or false.

weekly review

I have finished my stock of Terry Pratchett books. I have to say, he is a genius. He uses irony and sarcasm in such way that its absolutely hilarious. I started out with his most famous series, the Disk world. Disk world is a series of books that is set in the same universe, same characters appear in different books, but the books are only loosely connected, you can read just some of the books and it would make (somewhat) sense. the entire universe is a flip version of our universe, it makes fun of what happened in out world. the main world is not a "planet" because it is in the shape of a disk, hence the name Disk World. the world rests on 4 elephants which stands on a turtle which swims through the universe searching for a mate, when it finds another turtle ( with elephant and worlds on top) they mate and the world falls and is destroyed, their offspring then is born with its own set of elephants and world and the cycle goes on. in the world, there are eight colors in a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, purple and magic. there are 4 "genders": male, female, wizards and witches. the wizards study at a Unseen University and act all incompetent, while the witches act as healers but everyone still fears them and wants to burn them, Death is an occupation up for grabs and Gods tend to not know all that much about how biology works. I really recommend this series to anyone who need a laugh.

weekly review

This weekend i started to revisit some of my favorite books. I think i'll start with some Terry Pratchett, getting some laughs going, then progress into more serious stuff, like some Stephen King and scare myself to bed. Anyways, this week i did reread Fahrenheit 451 and I found out a lot of interesting stuff that i missed while reading the first time, like the use of fire in the book, its not only a symbol of destruction, but also a symbol of courage for the women who was burnt and a symbol of warmth when Montag runs away. This book is so full of hidden hints and messages, i have to read it again.

weekly review

This week i have read 2 very interesting pieces of writing from Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451 and Golden Kite Silver Wind. while reading, i have noticed some similarities and differences from these two works. one similarity that stands out the most is that both stories play with the stereotypes of the culture it is describing. he describes Americans as an lazy nation which does not want the complexity of reading and falls within the grasps of television. similarly, in Golden Kite Silver Wind, he describes Asians as a culture that believes heavily on omens and signs. Both stereotypes are true to an extent, like how we think of Americans as couch potatoes and the fact that in Taiwan, people don't use the number four just because it sounds like death, but Bradbury greatly exaggerates them to make it more obvious.

reflective post

Romeo and Juliet- what is true love?

A few days ago in class while reading Romeo and Juliet, we stumbled upon the question “What is true love?” I look up the definition of love and I found out that the literal meaning of love is “strong passionate feeling towards another. This definitely fits Romeo’s description of falling in love. But just wait on sec, real life is not just a play of words. The connotation we associate with love now is somewhere along the lines of being “mutually fond of each other”. Now we look back at Romeo’s case, his first “target” was Rosaline. He loved her deeply, but we do not know if she loves him back. Technically he is in love, according to the literal meaning of love. But then again, he is in the real world, or at least his character is, and since Rosaline did not visibly love him back, we can say he was not in love, but just very attracted to her. Later on he met Juliet, which is a different story now. They both are deeply attracted to each other, causing this love to be mutual, thus filling the requirement of “true love”

Caution, read at own risk.

Dear Trespassers, you have just left your safe domain and crossed into the wild and dangerous terrain of my blog. Venture on if you dare. But before you enter, thou shall answer thee question

" WHY ARE YOU HERE?"

(a) I'm a bored internet surfer who stumbled upon this blog

(b) I'm a fellow student who is checking out this blog

(c) I'm the random guy who goes and screws things up for everyone

(d) I'm a deep admirer of Jon, he is the most awesome and epic person I've ever known. ALL HAIL JON!

If you chose A, turn around now, this site is not for the faint hearted.

If you chose B , leave this place this instant, you are not prepared.

If you chose C, just don't enter, please.

If you chose D, you are worthy for the awesomeness, but still enter with caution.