With Communication.

"Asalamu alaikum," she heard, and stopped dead in her tracks. A few meters to the right a man stood and she turned to towards him. "Wa Ailaikum il salam," she replied. Quietly. They both looked uncomfortable, but not painfully so. He spoke. His accent was so thick, to her it sounded like song. She had no idea what he said. She made a deliberate movement, as if shrugging off the shackles of social norms and took a step closer. He relaxed a little. But not too much. He didn't take a step. "Na'am?" she said. He repeated. Just as thick, only with hand movements. She paused. Thought. Trying to coax his sounds to words. She repeated what she thought she heard. It occurred to him that she might be daft. All he wanted, was the way to the door. 

With The Circle - A Book Review

The Circle is a book based on an eponymous company that monopolizes technology, internet and security. The book starts as Mae, a simple, average woman begins her work at said company. The book follows Mae as she climbs up the ladder at the company and is more and more engrossed in its values. The Circle became powerful through its program TruYou that unified everyone's accounts to one username and password, thus removing any anonymity from the internet.

Now, this book is on the precipice of intrigue, frankly verging on the mundane. Despite the interesting premise, it doesn't rise any new arguments about totalitarianism, or omniscient media. The characters are simply bland and predictable, not least of which is Mae, whose character is so thin that it raises the question whether or not this was intentional.

Did Egger deliberately use a petty, under-developed character as a protagonist as a representation of typical online personas? One could argue that; as she is at times dishing unwanted criticism, while completely disregarding the recipients feeling, and at others obsessing over how people perceive her. At one point she is crushed when a poll revealed she is liked by only 97% of the people in The Circle. And at times I could swear she was simply trolling.

Even though the faulty character might have been a brilliant move, the plot is uninteresting, and underdeveloped. The foreshadowing is blatantly obvious and serves, frankly as a spoiler to its own plot.

I was really excited when I bought this book because it talks about something I always think about: is our individualism giving way to "pop culture"? Is our security being compromised in the name of globalization? But I was genuinely let down. With people growing weary each day about just what large corporations may do with our information, I expected more of the book.

With Inspiration

If you've read Looking For Alaska, then you have to watch this video:

In February and March - A Book Haul

With John Green

I finished reading Paper Towns a few weeks ago, which marks the final book by John Green. Meaning that I have read every novel this man has put out into the world. Now if you know anything about me, you know that I am a hard core fan of John and Hank Green- The vlogbrothers. However, I admire John not for his books but for all the good he puts out into the world. From Project for Awesome, a project by The Foundation to Decrease World Suck inc. (That is the actual, official, honest to god legal name.) Which promotes people to post videos about a chosen charity between the 17th and 18th of December every year, and encourages people to donate to said charities. You will find beautiful, well made videos for this project on youtube. There is also Kiva, the Sci Show, the Crash Course series, Pemberly digital, which gave us The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Emma Approved and Welcome to Sanditon.  And of course, his and Hank's personal vlogs.

Together, the vlogbrothers have created a wonderful online community (the nerdfighters) that promotes knowledge and science and creativity, and all that is good in this world.

However, his books are an entirely a different story. With the exception of The Fault in Our Stars, they all feature the same characters: A scrawny teenage boy, on the edge of popularity. An exotic best friend, a miss-understood love-interest and of course, a road trip. Now this isn't to say I didn't enjoy reading each of his books, and that I won't read them again. But I just feel like John should be appreciated more for himself than for his books. You can sense his genius in the wording of his books, and the weird trivia he knows, but I feel like people should be more aware of John the person, as opposed to John the author. So if you are in the least bit intrigued by his books you are going to love everything else he does.

So take a few moments and delve into the world of nerdfightaria. I promise, you will be impressed.

So DFTBA, Don't Forget to be Awesome.

With The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - A Book Review

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon tells the story of Christopher, a fifteen year old with Asperger's syndrome as he tries to solve the murder of his neighbor's dog. This book is truly unlike any other book I've read. It gives us a glimpse of the mentality of a person with personality detachment disorder and has to be one of my favorite books ever.

The beautiful thing about it is that it doesn't victimize the parents. It doesn't even make us feel bad for the kid. It just shows us that he is living his own little life. And not in a sappy way either. He's happy about the way he is, and he can't imagine living any other way.

I learned so much from Mark, and I fell in love with him with every paragraph I read. But perhaps the most inspiring thing about this story is the social element of it; Mark's fascinatingly unbiased view on how the rest of the world treats him. It is obvious that his parents, like many in their situation, are utterly untrained to deal with Mark and, as cliche as it sounds, they "just don't get him". But Mark doesn't see that, his innocence and naivete make him truly a remarkable character, one we can all learn from.

Truth is, we probably can never find out whether or not this is what actually goes through the mind of someone with Asperger's, but it sure is a good theory.

The book is incredibly short, and the language, as expected is extremely simple. so I recommend it to everyone. I don't see how anyone, avid reader or not, could ever regret reading it. 

With Behind the Scenes at the Museum - A Book Review

This is Kate Atkinson's first novel, but its the second of hers that I've read. A few years ago I read Started Early, Took The Dog, and it was okay. Now that I've read behind the scenes, I'm thinking of re-reading Started Early, Took The Dog to look for plot twists I hadn't noticed before.

This is the first book I read after a dry-spill infested with exams and tests and assignments, and just plain laziness, so naturally I dived in full force. However, I found myself unable to continue the book a third of the way through. Up until that point the book had been slightly too "Little Women" for my taste. You see, the book tells the story of Ruby Lennox, and her maternal ancestors up to her great great grandmother. And it gets confusing. But I plowed through, because I thought it would be rude of me to not give it a chance.

Besides the over-whelming number of names and characters, or possibly because of them, the book starts slightly slow. But the slight turns of phrase soon got more and more interesting and it became obvious that there are further depths to this story that I hadn't seen.

You see, this story is narrated by Ruby Lennox, and one of the most interesting twists is that she actually has a twin sister who died when they were four. She has no recollection of this sister, but hints of her are subtly included, like how Ruby notices that there are double as many photos of her than there are of any other sibling. So I have to give Atkinson this, the book is cleverly written. The plot may not be the most engaging, but the writing sure is.

If there was one theme to this book it would be misery. Every character is unhappy. And it really got me down. It made me realize how easy it is for life to turn south, and it creeps me out. So, dear reader, please appreciate your life and remember that it could be substantially worse.

All-in all I wouldn't exactly recommend this book to anyone, unless they have nothing else to read. And I don't think I would be re-reading it anytime soon.