tales of a fourth grade nothing. superfudge. judy blume (157-158)

i recently purchased a superfudge tee from out of print, which inspired me to revisit judy blume's beloved classics.

since superfudge is a sequel to tales of a fourth grade nothing, my revisit had to start there.

in tales of a fourth grade nothing, we are introduce to peter hatcher and his family, which includes his mom, dad and of course his little brother, two-year-old terror, fudge.  before i go on i have to share that as a kid, fudge's antics were a little annoying, you felt bad for peter (his poor poster board for school!), but fudge was so crazy you couldn't help but like him.  however, as an adult, all i could think of was how did the hatchers end up with such a horrible child!  peter is well-mannered and caring kid.  fudge, on the other hand, is the type of kid i give dirty looks to when i see them misbehaving.  i also silently judge the parent for being a horrible and ignorant person for raising a indecent little monster that will contribute to the world's ultimate demise because only stupid people are breeding (harvey danger reference).  if i was in that movie theater with fudge, would have definitely demanded my money back!  but i mean fudge did have his moments, i thought it was adorable how he wanted to be a bird when he grew up and it was kind of funny how he would only eat if served like a dog.

here are some of my favorite parts. i loved when father poured fudge's dinner on his head, i viewed it bad parenting but didn't stop it from being hilarious.  the story of the birthday party was too much, all i can say is that kids are a mess.  also peter was right about the fat kid not needing a second helping of cake!  the story of the commercial totally reminded me of the full house episode when stephanie steals the commercial from dj.

the one thing that i couldn't believe was the ending!  how did fudge swallow a turtle?!?!? i mean i didn't believe until the x-ray showed it!  i kept on thinking, why are they getting an ambulance there is no way he could have swallowed a turtle, but fudge did.  but i mean it was the perfect ending to the book, peter gets a new dog that he names turtle and fudge lives!  btw kudos to judy blume for starting and ending the book with pet turtles!

*tales of a fourth grade nothing was part of flavorpill's 50 books every parent should read to their kids.

i learned via the dedication, a lot fans asked judy blume for a sequel so she made one, superfudge.

she also did a great job of referring tales of a fourth grade nothing in this one!  

in this book, the hatchers have a new edition to the family, baby tootsie (i loved how peter pointed how his siblings candy inspired names).  when peter found about the baby being on the way, he freaked out! but i mean if you had fudge as a sibling you would too!  aside from the baby, some new changes are that father decided to quit work and write a book and mom decided to go back to work (way to go mom!  she also wanted to study art history, double way to go mom!) and the whole family moves to jersey!

of course fudge is fudge, craziness follows them to jersey.  again i was outraged by some of things fudge did like playing hide-n-seek with tooties.  it freaked me out to imagine him carrying an infant and hiding her in closets!  and of course him kicking his first kinder teacher and calling her rat face though she was totally uptight but still

he should respect his elders!

but fudge did have some great moments.  i could not get over how cute he was about the santa letter writing and then of course telling peter he only pretended for their parents.  also the story of the visiting author and the picture was hilarious.  and fudge's use of big vocabulary words was great too!

i also loved the new people they met in jersey, well except that annoying kid daniel.  i really liked alex but primarily because of his halloween painting!! loved that he was jimmy's dad's painting anita's anger.  how clever! i might have to steal that costume idea from him!  i also liked mrs. muldour and her worm cookies!

and i have to add there were so many things in the book that adult me appreciated.  i got the charm of their jersey home esp the bathtub thought peter hated it.  also their use of the garden and growing organic!  i also liked how the parents were honest with fudge about where babies come from.  

all in all, two wonderful books that have stood the test of time.  i loved them just as much as fourth/fifth grade me loved them!!  can't wait to pick up fudge-a-mania on my next library trip!

great expectations. charles dickens. (155)

a couple months ago i purchased a used kate spade great expectations book clutch.  they normally run $328 but lucky me i found it used and in good condition for $62 on poshmark!  and as much as i love it, it isn't worth the $300, i mean its laminated!  but $62, yes it is.  but here it is:  

anyway, i felt like a poser because i never    read all of great expectations yet here i was carrying it around as a purse.  it was an assigned reading my senior year but i totally cliffnoted it. (i had a really bad case of senioritis).  i knew pip and of course remembered miss havisham, but they were all i could recall.  well i did have an scene in my head of someone, running in and tearing down the curtains in miss havisham's room, but i think that was because of the movie because this scene, i would discovered on this reading did not occur in the book.  

this rereading or actual first reading of great expectations epitomizes why i started this lets-read-those-high-school-assigned-readings-now project!  because i regret not reading this the first time i was assigned it.  i will admit that 30

year old me is a better reader than 17 year old me (i remember being lost vocab wise.  those macbeth references definitely would

have been lost on me the first time!) which may be the reason for my enjoying great expectations on this round but i absolutely loved it.  there were so many twists and turns and sadly (or gratefully) i didn't pay any attention in class because i did not recall any of them so i was actually surprised!  i mean even the identity of pip's benefactor caught me off guard.  (in retrospect, i deserved that b+ in ap engish).  modern day soap operas have nothing on this dicken's classic, it was amazing how everyone's secret connections were revealed in the end. i really was not expecting any of it. 

i won't rehash the story since the story is so well known.  or give a deep analysis other than looks can be deceiving.  plus the most important lesson of just because a person is high class doesn't mean they are classy and the vice versa being in the low class doesn't mean you are trashy.

i do want to discuss my love for certain characters.  who doesn't adore joe with his heart of gold and love for pip? society would not have labelled him a man of good manners and pedigree but there was no denying that he was a loyal and reliable friend.  i thought it was amazing that though "poor" he had the means to settle pip's debt in the end.  i was also happy he got a happy ending with biddy and kids of his own!!

i also enjoyed wemmick and his two personas, not mixing business with pleasure.  his home self was the best, how he took care of his aged parent.  and the surprise wedding could not have been more adorable! i had a total book crush on him!

and though she was batty, you can not deny that miss havisham was great.  i mean she would make an excellent halloween costume!  one would need a wedding dress, once white now yellow, one shoe on also once white now yellow, and a watch stopped at twenty to nine.  she was scary but such an excellent villain that you can't help but love her.  and in the end,  like the grinch her heart does turn three times in size and she regretted what she did to estrella.

i love/hated pip.  i hated how he treated joe when he came into his great expectations.  i hated how he was in love with estrella though she was proud, their first day together was a red flag that she would make him miserable.  but he redeemed himself when he accepted and helped his benefactor.  also i loved how he secretly helped herbert and made sure miss havisham did too.  

but i must add that my disapproval of his love for estrella caused me to dislike the ending and i wish the original ending was the standard ending.  the ending i read was all hollywood where pip and estrella randomly meet up at miss havisham.  she recently discovered, he in town for a visit.  they meet and it's hinted that they end up together.  boo!!! because he was not worthy of her love!

in the original ending, estella discovered the spider and fell in love with a poor doctor.  she and pip run into each other on the street.  pip has joe's son with him and she assume it is his and that his life is better without her (which it is) and he sees that she has actually has a heart and is capable of love!  

i like that ending because they both become better people which i doubt would have occurred if they ended up together.  

though i will add if they originally ended up together out of actual true love i could have dealt with it.  how happy would pip's benefactor be to discover that his the wife of his gentleman was his daughter!  so for his sale i would have been okay with it.

i am glad i ended up enjoying great expectations as much as i did because i would have felt lame carrying that clutch around if i didn't.

also if you were in mr. brice's class with me and didn't read this, you really should!

amendment:  so after posting this on fb i thought to myself, maybe we didn't read this in brice, so i consulted my classmates.  we didn't, it was assigned our freshman year!  freshman year!! there was definitely no way 14 year old me could have got this!  but i will add, i did get an a in that class.  lol

bunnicula. deborah and james howe. (149)

so i have to admit that it was urban outfitters that inspired my rereading of "bunnicula".  sue me, i have hipster tendencies.  so their site was selling the book for halloween and i decided i should reread it for halloween.  being a kids book i saved it for actual halloween to read and to celebrate.  (it took me like 2 hours to read.)

i remember reading "bunnicula" as a kid, i remember loving how clever the title (and name of bunny) was.  being a gemini, i have always had an appreciate for word play.  and i mean a bunny vampire, too cute.  (ps i am thinking a bunnicula costume next year!)

rereading as an adult, i feel even more in love with "bunnicula" because of its cleverness.  i had forgot how the book is "really" a manuscript the authors found on their doorstep,  so cute! as an "educator", i think this book would be great as the basis for so many lessons:  parody, character analysis (which is mentioned by name and given an example), homophobes, foreshadowing, and prediction. it's almost as they wrote this book with these lessons in mind!

and back to the homophobes, i was very disappointed with chester confusing stake with steak.  he was such an intelligent cat, as demonstrated in his parrot definition that he would have not been an error he made.  also how sad was the image of him beating that poor bunny!

i also appreciated how harold, acted as a means to define words that kids could not understand.  this was very clever since it is a kids book.  often times i forget students do not have the same vocabulary as me, so i appreciated how howe used high-level words but also gave definitions.  (note:  add context clues to the list above.)

if you didn't encounter "bunnicula" in your youth, he is a vampire bunny.  he sucks the juices from vegetables leaving them white.  i have to add i was impressed with the howe's call for eating organic back in 1979.  since the organic trend is so 2010's, i was a bit caught off guard by their discussion of buying organic but way to go "monroes" and howe.  (i don't necessarily buy organic but i would if i bought grocery regularly and cooked.)

the family and harold is obliviously to the fact that bunnicula is the source of the white vegetables.  but chester who is a bookworm and has a wild imagination starts to put two and two together. the story is told from the perspective of the dog, harold, and through his eyes we see all of the wildness that unfolds as chester sets out to stop bunnicula.

in the end, harold, realized bunnicula is harmless, sure a tomato and cabbage are harmed but they are just vegetables.  chester goes overboard and tries to starve bunnicula, but the family intervened and put chester in therapy and bunnicula on a juice diet (which he stayed on, so no more weird veggies).  and they all lived happily ever after, until the next adventure.  this book is apart of series,  which i will prolly read every halloween.  can't wait til next year!

ps how cute is this book club page that james howe wrote:

something wicked this way come. ray bradbury. (71)

a couple months ago i picked up "something wicked this way come" but after reading its jacket cover and saw that it was about halloween coming early, i decided to save it for october. so when october came, so did my reading.

the first thing that amazed me was that the book was dedicated to gene kelly. my first thought was not the gene kelly, but i googled it and yes that gene kelly (i know there really isn't another). turns out that bradbury wrote a screenplay for kelly to direct but they couldn't find backing for it so it never happened so bradbury turned it into a novel. but it still made my heart happy to know they were friends. my friend cody used to do this thing where he imagined what dinner parties with kay-z, beyonce and chris martin and gwenyth paltrow would be like. so this made me wish i could have attended gene kelly and ray bradbury dinner parties.

the second thing i noticed was that this story takes place in green town, illinois, which is the setting of "dandelion wine" and since i loved that book, i had high hopes.

i hate to admit this but "something wicked this way come" will not be listed as a bradbury favorite for me. it's not that it was bad, it just wasn't for me. well for me now, as i was reading i couldn't help but think of the nickelodeon show "are you afraid of the dark?" and r. l. stine's "goosebumps" and "fear street" series, all of which i was obsessed with as a kid. twelve-year-old me would have been crazy about this book, but twenty-nine year old me enjoyed it but wasn't on the edge of her seat reading.

it was still well written. there were things i enjoyed. it did inspire me to write a whole blog devoted to women as time (see: "time (is never time at all . . .). and it was filled with the poetry that is bradbury's writing:

". . . the air so cold they ate ice cream with each breath"

"oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are."

"her nose breathes in the air of the world that i know, therefore i love that nose."

and since this is a library blog, i loved that bradbury had the library play an important role in the book. it is described as a mystical place that allows the boys to travel over distance lands and times. he describes how one could adventure to tanganyika in '98 and at the time he wrote it, that would be the future but me reading now, it is the past. the library was also a safe haven and where the halloways and jim gain the power and knowledge to fight the wicked that had came. i may even create a list of books (ala flavorpill) of my favorite stories that feature libraries and this would be one.

last but not least, there is a carousel that played a very important role. it symbolizes immortality which i am okay with not having. i am
very happy with going through the stages of life and one day growing old and dying. however the carousel reminded me of a piece i saw at the new museum, new york. charles ray's carrousel. it was an optical illusion, i remember standing by it to listen because you could hear the motors. but the top moved forwards while the bottom moved backwards so it looked like it was standing still. and in the context of this book and time, it's kind of amazing. life can be propelling forward (planning for the future) and backward (dwelling on the past) so quickly in time that sometimes it looks like we are just standing still but life is actually going on.

but still not wild about the book. i will recommend it to others and have my future kid(s) read it. it was creative and interesting and loved the father-son element, but would have rather seen it as a film directed by gene kelly.

the rabbi and the twenty-nine witches. marilyn hirsh. (70)

while looking through the table of kids halloween books at the library, i came across this gem. since one day i plan on converting and marrying a nice jewish boy, i had to check it out. the book is based on a talmudic legend, and stands as an example of why i plan on converting.

the story is about a village that is haunted by twenty-nine witches every full moon. the only time the witches did not come out was when it rained. as a result no one in the village ever saw a full moon. one day an old grandmother went to the rabbi to share her despair at the fact she had never seen a full moon. her exact words were "i want to see the full moon before i die! is that too much to ask?" (for some odd reason i heard it in fran descher's mom on the nanny's voice.) and so the rabbi came up with a plan to get rid of the witches. i have to add that every time the rabbi was mentioned it was normally followed by the line, "after all, he is the rabbi."

so the rabbi made it rain and then had twenty-nine of the cleverest men go with him to where the witches lived. he told the witches that he was a witch too and that they should teach each other magic. so he had the witches create a wonderful feast and then his "magic" was that men appeared to dance with them, and the men went into action. and the men danced the women out of the cave and into the rain, where they melted. how very wizard of oz, i know, i'll have to google to see if it's inspired baum.

so with the witches gone and their magical feast still there, the village threw a party! for "a good feast should not go to waste." that is the real moral of the story, because the one thing that i have learned from my jewish friends is that they can throw an amazing party and have the best holidays.

the witches. roald dahl. (69)

in honor of halloween, i decided that brother bear and i would read roald dahl's "the witches" together. but sadly with my work schedule, we didn't get to read together. also he checked out books from his school library and lost interest. but i still read it.

as a kid, i was scared of the book because the movie dramatized me. i never watched scary movies growing up, but saw "the witches" at the afterschool program i attended. i remember being freaked out when angelica houston peeled off her fake face and revealed her grotesque witch one. that scene alone may be the sole reason i never read it as a kid. come
to think of it, i'm not sure if i saw the ending of the movie, i was that scared.

i know this may sound odd but i may have owned a copy or maybe my sister did because grandma bea definitely read the book. so maybe i got older and tried to brave it but never read it. until now.

and what a delightful book. i regret not reading it as a kid and being such a chicken. but i know that elementary school version of me would have loved it especially since the grandma played such a important role in the book. grandma bea will always be my most favorite person in the world and in elementary school she definitely was. if i read this back then i would have been reminded of how fortunate i am to have such a great grandma (because i was reminded now). and though it may seem morbid, as i was reading i worried about the fact that his grandmamma would probably die when he was still young and then he would be all alone in the world. i also thought it was just me being a worrywart but dahl did address this issue. i was so relieved when dahl turned him into a mouse so his life expectancy shorten so he wouldn't end up alone. it sounds crazy as an adult to want to shorten your life so you won't be alone but to kids this would be comforting.

worrying about your grandparent's death might seem heavy for a kids book but it is something that kids do (i know i did). and that is what is great about dahl's books, he writes for kids but doesn't treat them as children. dahl discussed "adult realm" things with subtlety in terms that kids could/can understand. what i love best (and this is something that dahl does in all of his books) is when he gives philosophical insight on society via his characters. like when the boy turned into a mouse and realized that it's not all that bad because "when mice grow up, they don't ever have to go to war and fight against other mice. mice, [he] felt pretty certain, all like each other. people don't." most kids probably never viewed war in this light before. i think it's important to give kids this other perspective considering that war is never demonstrated as being something negative in grade school but is usually taken up as a display of patriotism. yet by showing how silly a war with mice would be, it ultimately shows how silly war is for humans.

i think another important lesson in this book is unconditional love and that hopefully all kids have it. it was gruesome to think of bruno being offed by his parents simply because he was a mouse. but in contrast it was wonderful how his grandmamma loved him regardless. for as the boy told his grandmamma in response when asked if he was sad about being a mouse, "it doesn't matter who or what you look like as long as somebody loved you." the boy would always be okay because he would always have his grandmother's love.

this all seems deep for a kids book. but the great thing about dahl is that his stories are so creative and enjoyable that these little life lessons are dropped in your lap versus forced in your face. it's like pixar movies in which the adult and kid experience are completely different. in my "old" age, i may have focused on parts that would have meant nothing to me as a kid. but that is the beauty of a good book you can go back and find new things.

(ps after reading this i think next year i might dress up as a roald dahl witch. if i was a school teacher i would read this to my class and then on halloween, wear a wig and claws and show my no-toes feet to my class. lol.)

the time machine & the invisible man. h.g. wells (5)

"the time machine" has been on my to read list ever since bravo's "work of art" book cover challenge. not because "the time machine" was the winning cover (it was cool, i almost bought it for that reason). but because the other artist's cover had flowers, a teddy bear (?) and a girl. this sparked my curiosity: what did she read to make a cover like that (turns out she didn't read it. but to help her out, the girl is weena and flowers were mentioned but still confused about the bear).

i read "the time machine" back in october, when the occupy wall street movement was in full force and i was disappointed that the 99% didn't take up "the time machine" as a metaphor for the current class divide and what can occur in the future if things do not change. (i can't be too mean, i for one had no idea that h.g. well's sci-fi classic was so political). "the time machine" can serve to the 1% as an example of what will happen to them if they don't improve the treatment of the 99%; they will be eaten (literally).

as the time traveler discovered 800,000 years into the future there are two species derived from humans, the eloi (the 1%) and the morlocks (the 99%). the traveler first encountered the eloi, lazy, stupid, pleasuring seeking pink-skinned creatures with curly hair, large eyes and tentacle-like hands. at first, he admired them for their "social paradise" but soon discovers that the morlocks (a subterranean species, ape-like with dull white skin and "strange large greyish-red eyes" and "flaxen hair" on their head and backs) are terrorizing the eloi. it is discovered that the eloi's paradise is the result of the morlocks who labor to feed, cloth and house the eloi. but here is the twist! the morlocks no longer have a food supply and since they are carnivores start treating the eloi like cattle and eating them!!! the rich, you have been warned. if you don't start treating the working class better then they will bite the hand they feed.

in addition to this, wells' explanation of how the classes diverged also serves as a warning to the super rich about what the future contains for them if their reliance upon the working class continues. the aristocracy becomes the unintelligent eloi due to their dependence upon the morlocks' labor. as a result of the upper class' lack of labor, they become devoted to leisure which leads to their minds deteriorating due to lack of stimulation. as the traveler explained "the too-perfect security of the upper-worlders had led them to a slow movement of degeneration, to a general dwindling in size, strength, and intelligence." in addition to this, the working class continued labor results in an even wider gap between the classes for as the traveler observed, "in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour." does this sound familiar? it's interesting to consider that although wells' future can appear far-fetch (giant crabs in the even farther future?), however when it comes to class relations 100 years from its publication, "the time machine" is pretty on point.

so why are the morlocks the "monsters" and the time traveler sympathizes with the eloi? because this story is to serve as a warning against the evils of capitalism. wells' was a socialist and wanted to stop the exploitation of the working class. he is not calling the working class monsters but understands that if their oppression continues they will start to push back. (see: occupy wall st, labor strikes)

lastly i want to point out that the eloi were vegetarians. and would just like to share a random fact that i learned at the natural history museum of los angeles. when meat was introduce to our prehistoric ancestors diets, their brains grew and their intelligence increased as a result. so i for one am worried with the current trends of veganism/vegetarianism that the absence of meat in our diets might result in the opposite effects. just some food for thought.

ps being a huge fan of natural history museum, i was happy to see the appearance of one in this novella. it makes me happy that museums ruins will be around in the future.

---
the book i checked out also included "the invisible man." i will say that i didn't enjoy it and i hated the invisible man. i was disappointed by the novella because as a kid, i always wanted my super power to be invisible. (as an adult, it would be to teleport and for those of you who have had my teleport convo with me, the ability to teleport out my fat cells and also babies.) but i learned if you are invisible, you'll go crazy. the invisible man was horrible and i am glad (spoiler alert!) he died in the end. i am not sure how to analyze this work. other than people go crazy with power. and science in the wrong hands can be destructive.

all in all, check out "the time
machine" but don't bother with "the invisible man". and do not watch "war of the worlds" (just cos i hate tom cruise.)

dracula. bram stoker. (4)

i never got on the vampire bandwagon.   i've never read (or have a desire to read) "twilight"; never watched "true blood" (again who has premium cable?), i will admit that i have sat through episodes of "vampire diaries" with my cousin erin but nothing in our vampire saturated culture caught my interest. i also never got caught up in the anne rice's work either. i was young when "interview with a vampire" came out and loved "queen of the dead" but mostly cos stuart townsend was hot. so "dracula" was my first vampire read and i mean where else does one start but with the original vampire book. (question: do all other vampire works acknowledge dracula as the og vampire? like does edward come from his line?)

the funny thing about reading "dracula" is that you have to read it with a clean slate.  you have to act as if you have never heard of edward, or buffy, even dracula himself (i mean you are meeting the guy for the first time, if its your first reading). if not, you will be frustrated with characters for their lack of vampire knowledge.  i first encountered this with jonthan harker, and what feels like his inability to instantly recognize the true nature of count dracula.  though i shouldn't be so harsh on jonathan, for someone who has never heard of vampires superstitions prior to his working with count dracula, he did well with recognizing that the lack of mirrors or his host's disappearance during the day and lack of appetite at dinner didn't add up to that of a normal human being.  i mean the weird group sex fantasies were a good red flag that something was up too, but he did well in trusting his suspicions. 

another character i wanted to kick because of her lack of vampire 101 was lucy's mother, i know garlic smells gross (i personally associate it with food so love the smell of it) but she should have never removed that garlic garland from around lucy's neck.  but i have to remember she didn't know better.  and in addition to this, why was mina the only one that noticed the two red marks on lucy's neck and in what world would anyone see vampire marks on their neck and think they pricked themselves with a pin!?!? (that is like girls trying to convince themselves that their hickey looks like a curling iron burn!) but i guess their lack of knowledge is in line with the tradition of horror, where we, as the viewer, always know better than the victim (and would have never ran in that direction.)

as much as i was upset with their naivete, i was impressed with their, well primarily, van helsing's medical knowledge.  (and yes, as i read, i totally envisioned huge jackman as van helsing.  swoon.)  what amazed me was that van helsing performed blood transfusions!  "dracula" was published in 1897 so i guess it isn't as old as i thought it was.  but still blood transfusions seem like a modern (granted "dracula" is turn of the century.) phenomenon.  maybe i'm biased because i'm a chicken (fear of needles) when it comes to giving blood and think the current way of giving blood isn't that sophisticated, so i can't imagine what people a hundred years had to endure. so when van helsing suggest that they perform a transfusion for lucy. i immediately googled on my phone and it turns out (thanks to wikipedia) that the first successful blood transfusion was performed in 1818 by british obstetrician dr. james blundell.  pretty impressive!  and how create of stoker to use it as a means to try to combat the dracula's converting of lucy to the darkside! 

blood, obviously is very important throughout all of "dracula".  that is his source of life, (it's our source of life too).  but there was one blood issue that i figured would arise especially with dracula's female victims, but it was never addressed.  (and if stoker really wanted to push victorian buttons he should have talked about this.)  but what effect does menstruation have on vampires?  a small amount of blood could provoke a vampire, when jonathan nicked himself while shaving, the count reacted with "eyes blazed with a sort of demonic fury" and he "made a grab" at jonthan's throat.  imagine what a woman bleeding for 3-7 days could cause a vampire to do? does twilight even address bella's cycle?  i mean it seems like a good deal for edward.  we, women throw out that blood each month, so bella could start using a diva cup and save it for him.  that sounds gross but i think it's thoughtful.  i mean did buffy the vampire slayer ever discuss that in the movie or in the series?  i mean at the risk of sounding like a perv, this could be the premise for a great twilight parody porn.  i know, inappropriate!  but is it . . .

it's not.  that joke would be in stoker's vein of humor, if he told jokes about oral sex, not sure if he did, but he did write about it.  i was shocked when i read mina recounting her interaction with the count:

With that he pulled open his shirt, and with his long sharp nails opened a vein in his breast.  When the blood began to spurt out, he took my hands in one of his, holding them tight, and with the other seized my neck and pressed my mouth to the wound, so that I must either suffocate or swallow some of the--Oh my God!  my God! what have I done?

when i first read it, i thought i was a bit of a pervert for thinking inappropriately about what i had read but after reading the intro written by brooke allen, it is to mimic fellatio. vampires were sex-driven creatures. and if one googles there are tons of essays on sexuality and "dracula". i came across one that explained how the two dots on lucy's neck were suppose to resemble a vagina?!?! that seems to be stretching it for me!

there are also tons of essays on stoker being sexist and his portrayal of female sexuality in "dracula" as well. but without getting too deep into the topic. i will say that i did not find "dracula" sexist. the sad reality for us women is that we have to be both the virgin and the whore, this dichotomy has plagued us throughout all of history and our current mass media only endorses. so yes we are the orgy loving vampire trio along and virginal lucy needing men to keep us safe. it's like luda says "he wants a lady in the streets but a freak in the sheets."

also i did not find stoker to be sexist due to the fact that mina was a strong female character. i would add her to my canon of amazing females. i found it interesting how she criticized the "new woman" and their unconventional views of marriage yet her own involvement to stop dracula was unconventional. it's her intelligence and brilliance that pieces together the accounts that lead to the exposure and ultimately destruction of dracula (sorry for the spoiler but for a split second when i was reading, i thought he was going to survive). in this light mina to me is a true feminist, one that is not embarrassed to hold on to conventional female roles yet still has the open-mindless to embrace new ones.

all in all, is dracula worth a reread? i enjoyed it, so yes. it's clever, and i enjoyed how it was told from different perspectives. and if it's a choice between this and "twilight", go for this!

ps i was also upset with "twilight" because in "dracula", dracula and the wolves get along? was there some great schism that stephenie meyer included in "twilight" to explain the team edward/team jacob hatred?

quotations:

"if ever a face meant death--if looks could kill--we saw it at that moment."

(is this where the phrase come froms?)

pss- i have included a little film
short by spike jonze that features mina from "dracula". enjoy!

frankenstein. mary shelley.

back in october, i decided to do this whole monster books reading in honor of halloween.  i picked mary shelley's "frankenstein" to start.

if you are a hardcore fan of this blog, you may have noticed that i didn't number this one.  it lacks a number because i didn't check it out from the library. i read my own copy.  my copy is ten years old and a souvenir from my time on the delano high school academic decathlon team.  sadly, like any other required high school reading, i did not read "frankenstein." what makes my non-reading even sadder is the fact that i had a class period specifically for academic decathon in which we spent weeks reading the novel and i still did not read it.  in my (our team's) defense, our advisor left us in the asb room to read on our own.  i know we were the nerds/geeks of the school, but we were still teens and some of us were starting to show symptoms of senioritis.  when given the choice between reading or playing with random toys leftover from afternoon rally games, we always chose the later.  (sorry ms. andreas if you are reading this.)

and sorry mary shelley but the 28 year old me got why the 17 year old could not get into the book. it is quite slow to start. at first the book is a series of letters from captain walton to his sister explaining his voyage to the north pole. it all seems unnecessary until we find out that captain walton saw some monster out in the ice and then finds victor frankenstein who then shares the story of his monster making. (side note: i would also like to encourage everyone to stop calling the green monster with bolts in his neck, frankenstein, he is actually frankenstein's monster. frankenstein is the scientist. i think a modern family episode covered this but wanted to reiterate the distinction.)

back to the creature making, i personally found it disappointing. i was expecting a grandiose and grotesque description of how the creature was created start to finish but there wasn't that much detail. i get that shelley prolly did not have an strong bio background but she could have utilized her imagination more . . . though i guess the whole creating life from human remains is original on its own and i, having grown up with frankenstein's monster every halloween, find it commonplace so i may have had too great of expectations . . . sorry shelley for being so harsh.

i was really harsh on shelley a second time, when frankenstein came into contact with his creation for the second time. i was upset cos all of sudden the creature knew how to talk. i was tempted to stop reading right there and then due to that being so far fetch (i know, like creating a monster is so realistic). but i read on and accepted how he was educated. i really wanted things to work out with him and that family. it was so sweet how he did chores for them. so i was extremely sad when the old man was scared of him. i know the creature turns into a monster but he just wanted to be loved.

it's interesting because even with all the killing he does, i did have a soft spot for the creature. he turns into to monster for understandable reasons; rejection by the ones he loved the most and the realization that he would never have a future mate and would be left all alone in this world. (i mean we all sided with carrie bradshaw in the first sex and the city movie when she went crazy for the same reasons!) also if frankenstein would have nurtured his creation at the beginning versus rejecting him, the creature would have never turn into a monster. (there is an early child development thesis in there somewhere). and they all could have lived happily ever after.

maybe i am just optimistic but i really believe that if frankenstein created a mate for his creature, she would not have turned into a monster. i understood his worries about her rejecting the original creature as a mate or her being just as violent the first, but he was only violent due to lack of affection . . . and then not getting his way (but his demand was for a mate would equate as affection as well). i believe she was would have learned by example just like he did. the creature's ability to learn how to care for others based on the example of the brother and sister caring for their blind father proved he was a blank slate with some kind of "soul" versus innately evil and soulless. he would have never attempted to do chores for them if by nature he was evil; he had to have a heart to respond as he did. so if frankenstein set up a loving environment for the mate, she would have developed according. (again a ECD thesis.)

all of this reminded me of kazuo ishiguro's "never let me go" and it's questioning of whether a man-made life would still have a "soul"? being one that doesn't believe too strongly in religion, i believe that yes the creatures created like frankenstein's creature and the children of "never let me go" would have a soul but not one necessarily issued by god. i believe that the essence within humans and animals to nurture their young ultimately is what constitute a soul. one possess a soul, if they show the ability to care for another's life and well-being, which therefore demonstrates the understanding of the sacredness of life. it can be assumed that i am supporting the idea that god gives everything souls when in fact, i believe that we gain our "souls" as we gain knowledge. which i guess is kinda how adam and eve started. but it's not something that is just given via god but developed from our environment. so due to this both frankenstein's "monster" and the clones of "never let me go" have souls and should have been treated as so. also in the future when we do start cloning people, i will still stick to my declaration above.

so i guess mary shelley's frankenstein is a lot deeper than just a monster story. aside from sorting out what is a soul, maybe it's suppose to be a discussion on religion as well? the subtitle is "the modern promethus", i guess frankenstein stole the secret of life from the gods? or is god like victor frankenstein? creating humans and then being frighten by us, abandon us to roam the earth? thus religion is our search to come to terms with what we are, just as the creature sought out frankenstein? all in all, i am glad that i finally read this, it wasn't too much of a page turner for me but has some important underlying themes.

also i wikipedia'ed shelley because i was curious as to whether she received recognition as the writer because she was a woman. it's interesting cos i always think of the past as being prim and proper but there was a lot of scandals in her life. she believed in free love and her sister got knocked up by lord byron. i mean it's the stuff of british tabloids!