Title:  The Pillars of The Earth

Author:  Ken Follett

Genre:  Historical Fiction

Reading Experience:  Great for anyone who enjoys examining historical fiction and complicated relationships

Rating:  **1/2

The Pillars of The Earth follows the story of the town of Kingsbridge, England, and it’s inhabitants.  It particularly focuses on the building of a cathedral in the town.  The cathedral seems to symbolize the general theme of destroying and rebuilding which reoccurs throughout the story with every situations and relationship.  Everyone in the novel is somehow connected, and the story unfolds through a very complex and intricate sequence of events.  I personally do not like historical fiction, and I thought it was much too long.  I would recommend it to people who love history or someone who is good at following confusing plotlines.  (Lydia Netterville, 9)

Title:  Franny and Zooey

Author:  J.D. Salinger

Genre:  Fiction

Reading Experience:  Perfect for anyone who appreciate Salinger’s The Catcher in The Rye

Rating:  *****

Franny and Zooey is an interesting account of a sister’s nervous breakdown and her brother’s attempt to help her.  Franny suffers a nervous breakdown over her beliefs about the world.  Her brother tries to help her by pretending to be their older sibling over the phone, and eventually he gets through to her.  The novel is comparable to The Catcher in The Rye, only Franny and Holden are on different pages.  Holden is resisting the ways of the world while Franny is struggling to accept them.  I would highly recommend this to anyone who enjoy classic, well-written literature, though there are some time skips which can be somewhat confusing.  (Lydia Netterville, 9)

Title:  The Illustrated Man

Author:  Ray Bradbury

Genre:  Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Reading Experience:  Great for those who like science fiction short stories; easy to comprehend

Rating:  ***

The Illustrated Man centers around a man who travels from town to town with no home.  What makes him special is the vast amount of tattoos he has covering his body.  However beautiful they are, they have a tendency to come to life and make strange things happen around him.  The book in itself is a collection of eighteen short stories, each one explaining each of his tattoos.  They all have their own story, and Bradbury draws it out into a whole intricate web of sci-fi and real life.  Each short story teaches a lesson about society, which makes the book valuable.  Sci-fi is not my favorite genre, but I did enjoy this novel.  I would recommend it to any who needed a good sci-fi book, whether it be for personal reading or for school.  (Lydia Netterville, 9)

Title:  The Collector

Author:  John Fowles

Genre:  Fiction

Reading Experience:  A wonderful novel for anyone who enjoys reading the thoughts of a crazy person

Rating:  *****

The Collector takes place in Britain, where Frederick Clegg lives.  He is very wealthy, but seems to have some sort of personality disorder.  He has problems connecting with people which stem from his lack of communication with his parents, who died very young.  He begins stalking a young girl who is in art school, and buys a secluded house in the country.  After preparing things, he kidnaps her and keeps her as his prisoner in the basement.  He does not want to hurt her, and just wants to make her love him.  He promises to do anything for her, and buy anything for her, but he will not let her leave.  It is creepy, but a very well-written book.  It ends in tragedy, but then continues on.  I like Fowles’ writing style.  It’s very British and formal.  I would recommend this to anyone who likes mysteries and the human way of thinking.  (Lydia Netterville, 9)

Title:  Running With Scissors

Author:  Augusten Burroughs

Genre:  Memoir

Reading Experience:  A great read for anyone who can appreciate the crazy (and sometimes funny) things in life

Rating:  *****

In Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs documents his insane life from the time his mother’s depression set in until the time he learned how to make it on his own.  When his mother falls incredibly ill from depression, Augusten is forced to move in with her therapist, Dr. Finch.  There, he learns to shed his clean and germophobic ways to make room for the Finchs’ slovenly ones.  He makes friends with the Finch children, and grows up commanding only himself.  What I loved about the way this book is written is that the situations were written to be amusing.  Augusten takes the bad things in his life and looks at them from a new perspective; a funny, bizarre one.  I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a comedy that also teaches a few life lessons.  (Lydia Netterville, 9)

Title:  Angels & Demons

Author:  Dan Brown

Genre:  Mystery/Thriller

Reading Experience:  A good read for those who enjoy mysteries centered around underground societies

Rating:  ***

Angels & Demons follows professor Robert Langdon as he journeys through the mysteries of the Vatican city trying to solve the murder of an atomic particle specialist.  He travels with the specialist’s daughter, Vittoria, and attempts to catch a killer supposedly working for the underground Illuminati society.  After finding out that the killer’s main targets are four main cardinals, Robert goes on a hunt to save them, but none of them survive.  Things don’t exactly turn out the way everyone wants, but in the end the day is saved either way.  The book was much, much longer than it had to be.  While mysteries aren’t my favorite anyway, this one was particularly uninteresting to me, but many others have given it good reviews.  It’s a great book to read in your spare time, but it doesn’t teach anything of importance.  (Lydia Netterville, 9)

Dear Ms. Westfall,

I was definitely not a fan of The Pillars of The Earth.  I read Manya’s letters, and I know she loved it, but she tends to lean towards novels associated with history anyway.  I, however, prefer the realistic fiction genre, so this probably wasn’t my best choice of book.  It was very long and very complicated, and it was easy for me to get lost.  Once again, the problem of everyone having a problem with someone else gets in the way during the last part of the book.  After Kingsbridge is attacked, Tom Builder is dead, and Aliena no longer has her job as a wool merchant.  The cathedral is still unfinished, but fortunately Tom has been training Ellen’s son Jack in his trade, and the boy has become quite an accomplished stonemason by now.  However, Aliena’s loss of her money means she must marry Tom’s son Alfred (who is rich) instead of Jack.  They continue building the cathedral, but Alfred insists on making the roof stone instead of wood.  The structure cannot take the weight of the stone and collapses, and Jack leaves.  It turns out that Aliena is his son’s mother, and she finds him.  They return to Kingsbridge to be married, which cannot be done because the marriage must be annulled by someone who isn’t on their side.  Eventually, the cathedral is completed, but only because of Jack.  Since nothing can ever be at peace in this town, Prior Philip is accused of having a son, which is problematic because of his vow of chastity.  It proves to be false.  The story switches back to William Hamleigh, who was supposedly involved in the planned murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury.  He is then hanged.

As interesting as I first found the novel’s web-like structure, I began to grow tired of it very fast.  There is only so much despair one can handle, and I’ve had my fill of it with this novel.  I respect the complexity of the relationships of the characters, but there are too many problems between them.  My favorite aspect of the novel is still the cathedral, because it appears to represent progress and the building of relationships and such between the people of Kingsbridge.  When it is destroyed, it represents the fact that everyone’s world is falling down.  Aliena is in a relationship with an egomaniac, Jack has left the town, and there are grudges on both sides with hinder things from coming back together again.  Only when Jack returns does the rebuilding process start, literally with the destroyed cathedral.  I admire the novel for what it is, and am impressed by Follett’s ability to weave a historical fiction like this, but once again, I got bored with everything after a while.  I personally would not recommend it to anyone.

I noticed that complexity is a key theme when it comes to writing historical fiction, which makes me wonder, were historical situations really so difficult?  Or were they exaggerated for the sake of novels and movies to seem more sinister and real?  Reality seems to be perceived as something dangerous and scary, but in my personal opinion, it isn’t.  People are scary.  Reality is not.  There is a monster in every person, but they seem to appear most frequently in historical accounts of scandals or murders.  Were people really like that back in the “old days”?  Are people still like that now?  It would seem that they are, but it is more secretive than the open hatred which flew around between characters in books such as The Pillars of The Earth.  Even so, I don’t foresee myself reading any historical fiction in the near future if I can help it, and if I were to, it would be one that’s not as long.

Sincerely,

Lydia

Work Cited

Follett, Ken.  The Pillars of The Earth. New York, NY:  Penguin Group, 1990.  Print.

Dear Ms. Westfall,

The Pillars of The Earth by Ken Follett weaves fact and fiction together in a story centered around the fictional town of Kingsbridge, England.  While extremely complex and confusing at first, if carefully analyzed it can be worked through.  It begins with Tom Builder, a stonemason who is wandering around searching for work because of the loss of his previous contract.  He stumbles into Kingsbridge where he is asked to build a cathedral.  He agrees, and then the town Prior must find the necessary funds to build it.  The King gives him permission to get the materials from a quarry belonging to Percy Hamleigh.  This is problematic, because the stone belongs to Hamleigh, who got it for arresting the former Earl of Shiring.  Hamleigh also has another issue with the former earl.  Hamleigh’s son, William, had been a suitor to the earl’s daughter, Aliena, but she had no accepted him.  The house for the two of them was the same contract that originally put Tom Builder out of a job.  In this way, the characters are tied together.  William finds Aliena and her brother.  After raping her and beating her brother, the two of them must survive on their own.  Once again, Kingsbridge becomes the center of the story when they show up there and make a name for themselves selling wool.

However confusing this book is (which it is, extremely so), I find it interesting that the one thing that remains constant is the building of the cathedral.  It makes me wonder if the cathedral symbolizes something other than a religious place.  In this instance, is it a symbol of perseverance, even in the wildest of times?  There is a lot going on which complicates the building of the church, such as the financial situation surrounding the structure, but Tom continues to build on it and become famous for it, even though Kingsbridge is losing all of its money to it.  It’s also interesting that Follett ties in fictional and real relations between characters.  They are very cleverly placed, and they give the story the feeling of a complex spider web.  At the same time, it makes perfect sense, even though it doesn’t.    It sounds exactly like something one would read in a historical document about an older town in England, which I think is what Follett is going for.  Even so, it also demonstrates how easy it is for fact to be faked.  One just has to know how to write.

The characters are a bit of a mess, it seems.  Though I have not read The Other Boleyn Girl, I have seen the movie, and I am reminded of the lives of the characters.  Everyone seems all over the place, and everyone has a conflict with someone else.  Everyone also has their own personal  motives.  That says a lot about human nature.  Are humans really so vengeful?  Do we really hold grudges for so long?  Why do we do it?  Perhaps letting go of things would be better, although there would be no book without the complications.  That’s the other thing:  as wonderful as it would be to have complete and utter peace between people, there would be no interesting stories.  Things might be rather boring without a little bit of violence, or mischief.  Most things are based on human nature, so most things in the world would be pointless without the negative and positive aspects.

Sincerely,

Lydia

Work Cited

Follett, Ken.  The Pillars of The Earth. New York, NY:  Penguin Group, 1990.  Print.

Dear Ms. Westfall,

In the second part of J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, the story is turned over to Franny’s older brother, Zooey.  This section of the book was slightly more confusing to me, since I am not sure where Franny’s part of the story is supposed to be in the timeline.  After Franny faints in her part of the novel, it switches over to Zooey’s perspective.  The rest of the book explains the family values of the Glass family, of which Franny and Zooey are the youngest members.  The family bases its relationships off of philosophy and spiritual meaning, and as a result they are quite different from most modern families.  While Zooey is reflecting to himself, his sister is in the middle of an emotional breakdown centering around her newfound realization that she dislikes the way the world around her functions based on materialistic values and selfishness.  After speaking with his mother, he visits his sister in the family living room, where he only manages to upset her more.  Later on, he calls her pretending to be their brother, who seems somewhat wayward, but it doesn’t take her long to catch on.  Even after, they keep speaking, and in an attempt to somehow lessen her state of emotional anxiety, he tries to enlighten her with the words of one of their brothers.  It seems to work, and the book ends with her falling asleep.

As much as I love Salinger’s writing, this was a rather confusing read.  I feel as though there is a pattern within his writing of ending abruptly in order to provoke thought from his reader, in order allow them to come up with their own ideas about the meaning in his writing.  I saw the same thing in The Catcher in the Rye, where everything is down on paper, but there is a deeper meaning.  However, it was interesting how Franny and Zooey took an opposite path than The Catcher in the Rye.  While Holden’s viewpoint was one not based at all upon religion, but rather the absence of it, the Glass family’s entire life is based around the idea that philosophy and spiritualism can lead one in the right direction.  Franny is in emotional turmoil about this fact throughout the entire book, but it seems that at the end, she finally comes to terms with what she is supposed to understand.  If you were to ask me, I would say most of her anxiety comes from an overload of information, or perhaps her trying too hard to understand the deeper meaning in life.

While Holden is barely trying to be enlightened, Franny is trying much too hard to be enlightened.  Holden’s attitude is the complete opposite of hers.  He doesn’t care much about the world and believes that he has everything and everyone figured out.  Franny on the other hand knows for a fact that she doesn’t understand everything, but is driven by a deep desire to try.  Both characters are incredibly intelligent, but Franny knows how to use her intellect.  Once again, Holden’s lack of compliance sometimes blinds him.  At the same time, he is more enlightened than Franny is when it comes to the bad in people.  He is quick to detect people who are fake, while Franny seems to be the kind to give everyone a fair chance.  Even so, in her mind, the consequences of that are unraveling, and the basis of her emotional torment stems from the realization that the world is a selfish and cold place.

Sincerely,

Lydia

Work Cited

Salinger, J.D..  Franny and Zooey. New York, NY:  Back Bay Books / Little

Brown and Company, 2001.  Print.

Dear Ms. Westfall,

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger is written in the classic Salinger style, with quick wit and smooth, realistic scenes.  It starts off with Lane, a college student, awaiting the arrival of his girlfriend, Franny, in a train station.  It seems that he is looking forward to a nice weekend spent with her.  When she arrives, she seems different than when he had last seen her.  She is flustered and sickly looking, pale and sweaty.  They go to eat at a small diner, and she only worsens.  At one point, she gets up to go to the bathroom.  When she is in there, she sits down and cries for about five minutes.  When she has finally pulled herself together again, she washes her face and goes back out to meet Lane, who seems utterly confused as to why she’s acting so odd.  She orders food, doesn’t eat it, and instead talks, but everything she says is critical of different types of people.  She goes off on a tangent about how much she hates certain kinds of people, specifically egomaniacs.  After that, she starts on describing a book she is currently reading about a Russian man who is teaching people the “proper” way to pray to God.  At this point, Lane is genuinely concerned about her, because she seems to have gotten progressively paler, and still hasn’t eaten, which is apparently unlike her.

While the first part of the book may not seem to have much content, the points Franny raises about society are interesting and show a different view of the world.  With her changed attitude, everything she says is negative on some level, and critical of popular people.  With that, we see a very Holden Caulfield-like persona take over Franny, and it makes me wonder if Salinger must have at least one person in every book who assumes that role.  The way she speaks about people who are considered “popular” is stereotypically accurate, but in a way that actually puts the hypothetical person into a scene.  The only main differences between her and Holden is that she is more feminine and apologetic about her thoughts, and she doesn’t use the word “phony” every three sentences.  While I admire her thoughts and analysis of society, at the same time I feel as though she would be completely different were she not sick.  To be honest, I don’t want it to change.  Her pessimistic attitude gives her two sides, and almost makes her come alive.  She has her weak, feminine side, the one that is content to do what women are supposed to do, but she also has a darker, stronger side, one that is not afraid to share its opinions.

Another interesting point she raised about stereotypes is a sort of reverse-psychological theory.  Rarely is someone on the other side, seeing a group of people and their behaviors from a different perspective, but she seems to be there.  Something she said really captured my attention.  What she said was, “And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way” (Salinger 26).  In many ways, she’s right about that.  There seems to be no true originality in the world anymore; it seems to all have run out.  No matter what you do, you’re just doing the same as someone else did before you.  It’s not revolutionary, and you can barely be called a pioneer.  Changing your personality and the way you look to something else doesn’t make you unique; it makes you exactly the same as the people who did what you did.  It’s a very sad thought, when you get right down to it, but it’s one that’s almost completely true.  There will always be someone and their clone, no matter where you go.

Sincerely,

Lydia

Work Cited

Salinger, J.D..  Franny and Zooey. New York, NY:  Back Bay Books / Little Brown and Company, 2001.  Print.