Happy Halloweeen!

I hope everyone has a safe and fun Halloween!

Busy week

I will not have a review this week due to how busy I will be. Not only do I have three tests next week, I also have a paper due that needs to be 7-10 pages long. Also, I have my interview at Moravian College this thursday, I am handing out Halloween candy on Friday and an open house on Moravian campus this Halloween which will take up most of my day, and I will most likely be going to a party that night. As of now I am thinking about reading Hemingway or Charles Dickens I am not sure which. So as you can see the next few weeks are going to be very busy so I will try to get another book review done in a week or two depending on how much I will have to study for my test on Nov 9th. I am doing all this while trying to write my children's book and I am doing the best I can.

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas-Review #5

I know this is a little unorthodox but I would like to do a review on the short story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula Le Guin. I had first read this short story about a year ago when it was assigned in my college English class and I really enjoyed it.

The story begins by describing this perfect little town having a Festival of Summer and Le Guin describes the citizens of Omelas as joyous and cheerful. The elements of setting and style are used to develop and improve each other to make a thought provoking and well developed tale. Ursula Le.Guin uses language that creates great visionary and makes the reader feel like they too are in the story which is something I love in an Author. She goes on to illustrate a wonderful place where children are playing, families get together, and seemingly perfect place to live. 

Then the author goes on to describe a completely different and unsettling setting that changes the entire tone of the story which is what I like about it, the darkness behind it. She describes a room as having only one door and no windows, she says there are filthy, smelly mops and there is a child sitting in the room. The setting is dark and she describes the child as being unintelligent and thin. Le Guin uses very descriptive and disturbing language to create an image of the poor child. She even goes as far as calling the child “it” and saying it could be either a boy or a girl. In the beginning of the story everyone is picturing this perfect little place with green grass and joy, but like all good things, it has its terrible secrets. As it turns out, in order for Omelas to stay "perfect", have wealth and good health, this child needs to suffer and act as a sacrifice. Most citizens of Omelas know it's there which makes it even more horrible of a situation but some of them are so horrified by this that they end up leaving and walking away from Omelas to an unknown place.

Now I love this story because it reminds me a lot of another short story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson which is mainly about someone being stoned to death in order for the town to have good harvest for the year. Stories like these have a good way of describing the selfishness of humans and how they would rather "stay with the crowd" then go against it to stand up for what they know is wrong. The situation in The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas all the citizens know it is morally wrong but they justify it by pretending to believe it will give them good luck, health and wellness. I recommend these two short stories to anyone who enjoys reading about moral values and overall human stupidity and selfishness. 

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova- soon to be book review #4

Disclaimer- Since I am still in the process of reading a fairly long book I figured I would tell you what my thoughts are on it so far. I haven't had much time to read considering I have been working on my own book and continuing to submit my work to several literary magazines. On top of this I have been studying for school and preparing for two interviews I have for different colleges. So the book I will be telling you about is called The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova is a very long book which might turn some people off the way it turns me on, I just love long books. So I was first attracted to this book due to the fact that it was about Vlad the Impaler (Dracula) which is right up my alley. The book revolves around a woman named Helen who grew up in Germany with her father and one day discovered an old mysterious book in her fathers library. This mysterious book also has a strange letter with it that the woman reluctantly asks her father about.

The girls father explains that the book with the strange dragon cover was found by him while he was in college and took it to his friend Professor Rossi who revealed he had one very similar that he found. The father explains to the daughter the Vlad Tepes legend and reveals to her that he might infact been alive this whole time.

As far as I can understand The Historian follows the woman as she continues her father's (now dead) journey and research in finding out more about Vlad and how he could somehow be involved in Helen's mothers death. I am hoping they do go down the "vampire" route in a more mature way. I was so tired of the teen romance vampire novels so it will be refreshing to read something more like Anne Rice or Bram Stoker's work. I would recommend this to anyone who likes historical creative fiction and long books (I believe it's over 600 pages.) Hopefully I will be able to tell you more about it once I finish it.