To Valpo With Love

uAs many of you might know, I am studying abroad in Chile for Spring Semester. My semester starts rather late (25 Feb to be exact), but that leaves me plenty of time to read up on my future destination. I learned recently that Chilean author Isabel Allende based part of her novel "Daughter of Fortune" in Valparíso, the city I will be living in.

Reading Allende reminded me a lot of Marquez in "One Hundred Years of Solitude". It had the same mystical aura about it, but kept on a more realistic level than Marquez. Valparíso serves as a parallel to San Francisco as a place of many different cultures struggling to fit together. In fact, in the guide books I've read, they describe Valparíso as "Little San Francisco". The main character lives with an English family, has a Mapuche (type of native in Chile) nanny, and falls for a Chilean boy. The guide books also mention a heavy German influence, not present in the novel. This book was beautifully written and not predictable in the least.

This book filled me with a variety of emotions. It piqued my interest about my future home, while also making me yearn for my past home (many characters move to California in the gold rush). As a period novel, based between 1830s-1850s, there is a lot of repression and negativity towards women. Smart women are scorned and ambitious women are looked as hookers.

My two favorite characters were the sailor John Sommers and the business woman Paulina Rodríguez de Santa Cruz. As a captain, John Sommers lives the ideal life. He travels all over the world, meets many people, and brings home wonderful treasures. He is stricter than most captains, pulling a tight rein over his crew, but that only adds to his reputation. Paulina is a modern woman stuck in the 1800s. Exiled from her family for falling for someone of lower class, Paulina starts off struggling to survive. Always a woman for business, she instructs her husband to set up a bank account and deliver fresh food over to the gold miners for profit. By far the strongest woman of the book, she never takes no for an answer.

Some of my favorite quotes:
"What matters is what you do in this world, not how you come into it" p. 5, presenting the first theme of nature vs. nurture

"You and I both know that my nature is more savage than yours" p. 13, Rose Sommers response to her brother Jeremy's statement of man's savage nature and woman's destiny to preserve moral values and good conduct

"Size has nothing to do with it, man. It's balls that count." p. 299, presenting the second theme of breaking masculine and feminine boundaries

My Guilty Pleasure

Sure I love the occasional soap opera, movies with Hugh Grant, dark chocolate M&Ms; the usual guilty pleasures. But my biggest guilty pleasure would have to be British Chick Lit. Yes, it must be British, because American Chick Lit is rather boring and terribly written. Brit Chick Lit (it's even fun to say!), while cliche most of the time, is fun and unusual. It never takes itself seriously, and presents women who are flawed, but still have a great time. And best of all, they use vocabulary you'd never hear your best friend use.

My recent BCL, "Confessions of a Shopaholic," was picked for two reasons:
1) I have wanted to read it for a while, hearing from others that it was really smart and funny.
2) The movie is coming out soon, and so it inspired me to start earlier than later.

Now, I was kind of skeptical about starting this book. I hate hate hate shopping, so how was I going to enjoy a book about a professional shopper?? But after realizing that it was by a British author, I decided not to hold the shopping part against it. And the good news: not even that much shopping! It really was much better than I had expected, although of course not a literature gem. Definitely good for a laugh.

Here's some of my favorite vocab used in the novel:

- a skip = an English term for dumpster, sounds more pleasant
- fusty = meaning stale and old-fashioned
- on the hop = I couldn't actually find a definition for this phrase, but based on its usage ("You had us all on the hop" p. 301), I believe it's a way of saying "in a frenzy". Ex. Wall Street has been on the hop ever since the Recession was made public.

The Jane Austen Discord

I am not a Jane Austen fan.

Don't get me wrong, the woman can write, and what she wrote was quite an achievement for her time. In fact, Austen was one of the inspirations of "Chick Lit," a genre that consists of the soap operas and tabloid reads of literature.

I find the concept of Austen's novels very fascinating. What she wrote was quite saucy for the time period; where the scandals of her novels could be equivalent of the Brad-Angelina-Jennifer triangle of today. I had read "Pride and Prejudice" and while it took me longer to read it, actually enjoyed the love story of Mr. Darcy.

I decided to tackle "Sense and Sensibility" with the same notion, hoping to understand more of Jane Austen's appeal. Some of it was actually fun, and I could enjoy the laughter of Marianne and the hatred of Fanny. Other times, I felt it drag on, hoping against all hope that in the next scene they just sold Elinor for slavery to keep things exciting.

There was one thing, however, that I took from the novel. The first was Fanny's temperment, her superiority complex made me loathe her as a character, but piqued my interest. From the first paragraph, I instantly saw Blair Waldorf from "Gossip Girl" emboding today's Fanny Dashwood. She represents the type of people I very much detest: those who feel they are better then everyone, but have nothing but scheming and manipulation to show for their honor. What's even more fascinating is that, almost 200 years after the novel was published, nothing has really changed. In that respect, Austen's novel really isn't dated after all, as it still shows the ugliness of people when money is involved.

The Taboo Idea

Could abortion really help lower the rate of murders?  

There were many intriguing ideas brought up in Freakonomics, but my favorite by far was the idea of abortion saving lives.  

Less than forty years after Roe v. Wade, abortion is still a very taboo topic.  You can turn on the TV and homosexual relationships on both daytime and evening programs, but Degrassi can't even show its abortion episode.  

I chose Freakonomics, curious to know more about this new approach to the declining homicide rate.  

I find abortion a very important issue.  Although I don't feel it is important enough to properly address with our current economic situation, it needs to be discussed at some point.  

Reading this book, I felt very curious and interested in ideas and issues I hadn't really thought about.

The Heath in Us

My first book of 2009 was the classic Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.  I've wanted to read this book for a while for several reasons:

1) Being Brontë's only book, I was curious what made her stand the test of time.  

2) Many people (including my mother) have called this book the classic love story of Catherine and Heathcliff

3) I had just finished the Twilight series (a big waste of good reading time) and for some reason, Stephenie Meyer kept on referring to Wuthering Heights, so I wanted to see what parallels there were to the series.

I loved the character of Heathcliff.  He was such a troubled, dark, evil individual, yet you couldn't help but be on his side.  You could understand why he was such a brute, after hearing about all the abuse he endured from Hindley.  My only upset was that we didn't know the complete history of Heathcliff.  However, that only made him that much more intriguing.

The biggest emotion I felt during the reading was longing.  For every character at some point, they weren't satisfied with what they had.  While they made sacrifices (Catherine marrying Edgar) and difficult decisions (Catherine II living with Heathcliff), they always wanted what they couldn't have.  Some characters let this longing haunt them into death (Heathcliff), while others let their longing guide them to something they wanted and could achieve, like Catherine marrying Hareton.  The lesson here: we all want something we can't have.  In fact, the idea that we can't have it makes it all that more desirable.  In the end though, its how we take that desire to get satisfaction out of our lives that counts.  

My Reading Lists

Anyone who knows me really well knows this: I love reading.  

It is a passion of mine that I have had since I was younger and has only grown and increased over the years.  I remember being in grade school and others would complain during English over each book we had to read.  I loved it.

These days, school and work are my priorities.  Thus, I make a goal at every break to read at least 20-30 books.  I've been pretty good, reading more than 15, but I've yet to make my complete goal.

For each book, I will talk about why I choose the book, somethings I found interesting/strange/note-worthy, and my emotions while reading.

Enjoy.