everything is illuminated. jonathan safran foer. (38)

i first read "everything is illuminated" back in 2005.  i read somewhere that elijah wood was making a movie based on it, so i decided to read the book before the movie came out.  however, after reading the book i could not imagine someone capturing the beauty of it in a film, so i decided to not watch the film.  i knew the film would break my heart and disappoint me.  (check out my blog on the movie version.)

i loved this book the first time i read it.  and after my re-reading, i can add it to my list of favorite books of all time.  there is so much that i loved about this book and when i re-read it, it was just as good the second time around.  

the novel is the story of jonathan safran foer's (the protagonist and the author have the same name) search for a woman, augustine.  augustine is a woman in a photo that his left to him by his grandfather.  it is assumed that the woman helped him escape nazis and so foer goes on a search for her.  this is the basis and i would go into more detail but i want you to check it out and i don't want to spoil it for you.

first and foremost i loved reading alex's narrative because of his poor yet clever english.  the best description of his english was written by francine prose for a new york times review, "not since anthony burgess's novel 'a clockwork orange' has the english lesson been simultaneously mauled and energized with such brilliance and such brio."  (i think this is on the back cover.)  alex really does butcher the english lesson but it was done brilliantly.  and just as i loved picking up the slang of that alex and his gang, i loved reading alex's bad yet clever translations.  

alex's vocabulary:

dub-  nickname:  ". . . my many friends dub me Alex"

spleening- to make angry:  "If you want to know why I always spleening her, it is because I am always elsewhere with friends, and disseminating so much currency . . ."

to be carnal- to have sex:  "Many girls want to be carnal with me in many good arrangements, notwithstanding the Inebriated Kangaroo, the Gorky Tickle and the Unyielding Zookeeper.

miniature-  little:  "I have a miniature brother . . ."

promenading- walking:  " . . . Father dubs him Clumsy One, because he is always promenading into things."

the novel is divided into two narratives, alex's letters to jonathan about the search for augustine and jonathan's family history.  as much as i loved reading alex's letters to jonathan, i looked forward to reading the sections written by jonathan.  jonathan writes about this ancestors and their lives in trachimbrod before the nazis come.  his family history is a delight to read because they are like myths and with foer's (the actual author) colorful language, there is an element of magic to them.  

my favorite myths were:

the celebration of trachimday and how they would recreate the day that trachim b died and brod was found.

tale of the dial.  which is actually a gold cast of jonathan's great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, who while working in a mill has a saw lodged into his head.  his statue becomes a symbol of good luck and young men pay tribute to him on their wedding day.

the wisps of ardisht.  which are a clan that are worried about running out of matches, which would prevent them from smoking cigarettes until a child figures that one cigarette can light another which results in a smoking schedule.

one myth that kinda grossed me out was, safran, jonathan's grandfather and his wimpy arm.  his arm didn't gross me out but his sex life that started at the age of 10 grossed me out.  

i also loved the list of the 613 sadnesses which were found on brod's body.  my two favorite sadnessws were the "sadness of could-have-been" and "sadness of love without a release" (i feel like this one would be a great band name.)

here is an excerpt from that part:

The following encyclopaedia of sadness was found on the body of Brod D. The original 613 sadnesses, written in her diary, corresponded to the 613 commandments of our (not their) Torah. Shown below is what was salvageable after Brod was recovered. (Her diary’s wet pages printed the sadnesses onto her body. Only a small fraction [55] were legible. The other 558 sadness are lost forever, and it is hoped that, without knowing what they are, no one will have to experience them.) The diary from which they came was never found.

SADNESSES OF THE BODY: Mirror sadness; Sadness of [looking] like or unlike one’s parents; Sadness of not knowing if your body is normal; Sadness of knowing your [body is] not normal; Sadness of knowing your body is normal; Beauty sadness; Sadness of m[ake]up; Sadness of physical pain; Pins-and-[needles sadness]; Sadness of clothes [sic]; Sadness of the quavering eyelid; Sadness of a missing rib; Noticeable sad[ness]; Sadness of going unnoticed; The sadness of having genitals that are not like those of your lover; The sadness of having genitals that are like those of your lover; Sadness of hands…..
SADNESSES OF THE COVENANT: Sadness of God’s love; Sadness of God’s back [sic]; Favourite-child sadness; Sadness of b[ein]g sad in front of one’s God; Sadness of the opposite of belief [sic]; Sadness of God alone in heaven; Sadness of a God who would need people to pray to him….
SADNESSES OF THE INTELLECT: Sadness of being misunderstood [sic]; Humor sadness; Sadness of love wit[hou]t release; Sadne [ss of be] ing smart; Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean]; Sadness of having options; Sadness of wanting sadness; Sadness of confusion; Sadness of domes[ti]cated birds; Sadness of fini[shi]ng a book; Sadness of remembering; Sadness of forgetting; Anxiety Sadness…
INTERPERSONAL SADNESSES: Sadness of being sad in front of one’s parent; Sa[dn]ness of false love; Sadness of love [sic]; Friendship sadness; Sadness of a bad convers[at]ion; Sadness of the could-have-been; Secret sadness….
SADNESSES OF SEX AND ART: Sadness of arousal being an unordinary physical state; Sadness of feeling the need to create beautiful things;…Kissing Sadness; Sadness of moving too quickly; Sadness of not mo[vi]ng; Nude model sadness; Sadness of portraiture…..

(see how brillant and clever it is.  you need to check it out.)

without spoiling it for anyone, the story of alex's grandfather was so sad.  it is easy to judge however to be in that situation, i'm not sure many of us have the courage to do the right thing.  it is also a demonstration of what a challenging and horrible time in history the holocaust was.  it made monsters out of average people. 

i could go on and on about how great this book, is but i think i would give away too much.  i would also have quote after quote to the point where the blog would pretty much be just the book.  so i will stop here and just encourage you to read it.  it really is an amazing book and i love it dearly and know that you will love it dearly too.

quotations:

"if there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, and we will furnish it with soft, red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweller's felt so that we should never hear it. love me, because love doesn't exist, and i have tried everything that does."

"one day you will do things for me that you hate. that is what it means to be family."

"the more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them. it surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say i love you."

"the only thing more painful than being an active forgetter is to be an inert rememberer."

"from space, astronauts can see people making love as a tiny speck of light. not light, exactly, but a glow that could be confused for light - a coital radiance that takes generations to pour like honey through the darkness to the astronaut's eyes."

   

jane eyre. charlotte brönte. (10)

even though "wuthering heights" was horrible, i decided not to judge an author by her sister and moved on to charlotte brönte. plus people are always raving about "jane eyre", its like the quintessential novel every young woman should read. though i never did.

before i continue with "jane eyre", i would like to share that growing up i read a lot but never read any of the classic romances by female writers. i have no idea why. so now as an adult i have a lot of books to cover.

the beginning "jane eyre" reminded me of one of my favorite books as a kid, "the little princess". both novels featured smart and sincere little girls who are mistreated at an orphanage. i was sadden by the living conditions of the orphanage and was surprised that brönte wrote so critically of the church.
but being the skeptic that i am, i was not surprised by the church abusing a situation. also miss temple reminded me of miss honey from "matilda" and i kept on thinking that in some way it would be exposed that helen was her daughter. but that may have been too much. (also i would like to suggest that you check out the 1943 movie version featuring orson welles, a screenplay co-written by aldous huxley, and a young elizabeth taylor as helen.)

anyone who has read "jane eyre" knows that it is pretty lengthy, it does span her life and there are a lot of twists and turns. and i will have to say that with every surprise twist i was genuine caught off guard. but i won't discuss them here cos then this entry will read like a sparknotes summary.

what i will discuss is my skepticism when it came to jane eyre and mr. rochester's love. as we have seen before, i am not always one for love. hate to be the grinch that stole romance but i felt that the only reason jane fell for mr. rochester was that he was the only male she interacted with in life. there was her abusive cousin and the evil mr. brockehurst but other than that no one. and like any good girlfriend, i was worried about jane because rochester was her first love ad her first relationship. i mean the poor girl was in an orphanage her majority of life and then falls for the first guy she conversed with. in my opinion, she fell in love because there was no other option. and you have to admit he was extremely rough around the edges so it wasn't like her falling for him seemed reasonable at first. but as it turned out, i was wrong. he was extremely sweet and worthy of her love. i mean he won me over with the following declaration of his love:

"i sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you--especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if i had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. and if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, i am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then i've a nervous notion i should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you--you'd forget me."

and even after being being against their love, i was extremely heartbroken when their first wedding didn't happen. i thought jane's running away from mr. rochester was a huge mistake. she saw the monster he was married too so she should have overlooked his marriage to it. if it was me, i would have married him but i do have less integrity than jane. but my sadness soon changed because in the end, jane and mr. rochester get their happy ending. though sadly rochester did lose a limb but thankfully charlotte gave him his sight back.

i was extremely grateful to charlotte brönte for restoring my faith in the classic romance novels, after i had read her sister emily's disastrous novel. and i have also decided to one day, force my teenage daughter to read "jane eyre" so she doesn't wait so long in life to experience a great story like i did.

swamplandia!. karen russell. (9)

 because of my friend chris' facebook postings, i became obsessed with flavorpill's articles particularly their book articles.  one such article, the best debut novels of 2011, inspired me to take a break from my classics reading and try some new books.  i decided to start off with karen russell's "swamplandia!".

i had high expectations for this novel, because flavorpill said, "it's a coming-of-age story, it's a save-the-farm tale,  it's a strange love story, and it's a wonderful debut."  i guess i can call it the curse, (that sounds negative . . .) the standard set (?) by "catcher in the rye", but i assume that any novel that is described as "coming-of-age" will change my life.  and on top of that there was a love story and an alligator farm, how could it fail?  it kinda did.  it was a good novel.  however it didn't wow! me like i thought it would.

flavorpill did get it right.  karen russell is a wonderful writer.  her book was filled with interesting and quirky images.  my favorites were:

"he backed away from his thought and let it hang there, a Monet picture, beautifully out of focus."

"hopes hugged the perimeter of a dance floor in your brain, tugging at their party lace, all perfume and hems and doomed expectation."

"tv movies and radio songs were the only models i had for love transmissions, a boyfriend-girlfriend conversation."

"the knit of our hands on his lap looked so distant from either of us, like a sculpture we've made."

the story premise was interesting as well.  i loved the idea of the family-owned alligator farm. i, like ava, longed for the days when their mother was alive and the star attraction of their farm. their lives were filled with happiness and family love.  but sadly this did not last long.

i did become invested in all of the characters.  i hated their father for abandoning them.  i worried about kiwi and wanted to protected him from the outside world.  i was concerned with osceola and her "boyfriend." and lastly, i loved ava.  i wanted nothing but happiness for her.  she was such a sweet and brave little girl and i was angry with the world for dealing her such a horrible hand in life.  and my love for ava is why i disliked this book.  without spoiling it for anyone, there is something that happens to ava and i have no idea how or why russell let it happen to her.  her incident did make the novel real, in real life that is what would happen to her.  but regardless it broke my heart that it did.  i guess i was disappointed because i wanted everything to work out and it didn't.

so you should check this book out.  the writing is great, i just became too invested in ava's life and that may be why i was disappointed.

wuthering heights. emily brönte. (8)

i have no idea why "wuthering heights" is a classic. it doesn't deserve such a title. there is nothing timeless and enduring about this novel. i can't imagine a reader feeling any other emotion than disgust while they are reading. holly golightly cited it as her favorite novel in "breakfast at tiffany's" and as much as i love her, i do not value her opinion. though her admiration of this book makes sense especially since she is phony and a double rat when it comes to love.

the issue that i had with "wuthering heights" was that all of the characters were horrible. i did not and could not root for catherine and heathcliff's happiness or love because i found them unworthy of it. i could
not pity them. they were so cruel and evil that their miserables lives were their just desserts! furthermore, one could not side with the forces that kept heathcliff and cat apart because they were just as cruel and awful. there was on one to sympathize with because their were all appalling. the only person i felt for was the servant, nelly, she didn't deserve to be surrounded by such horrendous people and drama. actually i also felt bad for the isabella linton, because heatlhcliff took advantage of her love.

i will add that i was happy that in the end, the kids' found happiness because they did suffer due to the cruelty of the generation before them. but their happy ending does not save the entire novel.

to be honest the only good thing that came from this work was this kate bush song:

on the road. jack kerouac. (7)

in college, as a pleasure read versus an academic one, i read john leland's "hip: a history", sadly i wasn't too familiar with majority of the social movements or time periods it discussed.  i remember reading about the beats but hadn't read "on the road", "howl" or "naked lunch" so the impact of their hipness didn't really reach me. since then "on the road" has kinda haunted me. whenever i went to a bookstore, the back of my mind told me to finally pick up "on the road" but i never did.

what forced me to finally pick it up was an ed rusha exhibit at the hammer museum. on display was ed rusha's book version of "on the road". (the plaque next to his piece also taught me that kerouac wrote it all on one scroll. i can't remember if that scroll was on display, hmm). i can sadly admit that there were a series of pieces that i loved in this exhibit that i thought were solely ed rusha but turned out to be "on the road" quotes when i finally read the book. (yeah i am quite the poser.)

after reading "on the road", i reached one conclusion about myself. i have always been labelled a "flower child" by my family and though i do have hippie tendencies, i think my nomadic life is more on par with the beats. there is a rawness and grittiness to their lifestyle that is more attractive to me than putting flowers in my hair in san francisco.

if i was a male during the 1950's, i would have been a beat. i would have hitchhiked across the country, got drunk, got high and slept with girls and boys. and at the risk of sounding sexist, i would have to be male, there really wasn't a place for females in this movement; unless you wanted to end up used or abuse (not like physically or sexually though this did happen but also as a source of income as seen in the book) or dead like williams s. burroughs' wife (as in real life). as a female, i am not offended, these men were jaded by the war. did anyone actually survive the weird tension in the us caused by the cold war? all the creative spirits we recognize now were all tormented by it but that led to their genius. as i explained recently to darlene, i have a greater tolerance for communists and socialists in that historical context because society was so static that you had to believe in the extremes to have any hope for change. so i don't hold anything against the beats. they did let their women drink, do drugs and have sex so in a way that is liberating. their women were equal in their access to life's vices.

"on the road" is on flavorpill's 30 before 30 and it will probably be on my list too. it would make my list due the great quotes in it. what i loved most about "on the road" was kerouac's poetic style. he had a chaotic and beautiful way of describing life (surprisingly at times, my life.)

my favorite quote of course was:

"the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everyone goes "awww!""

i also enjoyed:

"people change, they eat meals year after year and change with every meal."
(why i am a foodie)

"she threw down drinks when it seemed she was about to chuck up the last."
(how i drink)

"...and like the prophet who walked across the land to bring the dark word, and the only word i had was 'wow'!"
(how i feel at coachella)

one quote that stood out, was kerouac's nostradamus moment. he wrote:

"dean has a sweater wrapped around his ears to keep warm. he said we were a band of Arabs coming in to blow up new york."

random, right?!?! i googled to see if at then time of 9/11, anyone drew a parallel to this. they didn't. but i did find an article about a professor who noticed post-9/11 that his students normally wrote their class papers on that excerpt.

but what i loved more was his descriptions of the city i love the most, los angeles:

"LA. i love the way everyone says ‘LA’ on the Coast; it's their one and only golden town when all is said and done."

"on corners old women cut up the boiled heads of cows and wrapped morsels in tortillas and served them with hot sauce on newspaper napkins"

while in LA, sal eats at what i assumed was clifton's cafeteria downtown, so i emailed "ask chris" from los angeles magazine on the topic and he said possibly though there were multiple clifton's back than.

i love this book because of its carefree spirit. sal just went with the flow of life. and sometimes it worked for him and sometimes it didn't. sometimes he lived like a king and other times he had to scrape and scramble to get life together. the importance was the experience of life versus living by society standards.

i will admit that "on the road" made me romanticize a time period that was not as glamorous as it read on paper. it made me nostalgic for something that i never lived or could have ever live or even survive. i realized that today, i can not travel like sal paradise did, especially being a female. i can even admit that at the end i started to get a little bored and found the lifestyle tedious. being on the road would be exhausting however like the saying goes, it isn't the destination but the journey. and kerouac proves that to a t by making the destination obsolete. and i think this is why i would be a beat, it's about experiencing life instead of where you end up.

ps here is one of the pieces from the ed rusha's exhibit. it reminded me of delano, which is why i initially loved it.

breakfast at tiffany's. truman capote. (6)

i absolutely love audrey hepburn's holly golightly. i always watch "breakfast at tiffany's" filled with envy. if only i could have her sense of style (and petite frame)! my dream item is her shades. one of my favorite scenes is when she is peering over them at the girlie show! i googled, i can own a pair of oliver goldsmith's "manhattan", they reissued them last year. but what i admired most was that she was so cool and it was so effortless. i mean my favorite outfit was the mens dress shirt as a nightgown complete with eyelashed sleeping mask and ear plugs (seriously does anyone know where i can find her ear plugs?). such a cute outfit, and yet it was something she slept in!

hepburn was so delightful and charming, you can't help but fall in love with her. i was so excited about reading the novella, but at the same time wondered if it had the same whimsical magic of the film? i know most films ruin books, but i love hepburn's verison of golightly so much, that i couldn't imagine another. however, there was nothing to worry about. the movie stayed true to the book (well as much as society standards would permit back then) and majority of the lines i loved came straight from the novella. and the crazy thing is that most of the storyline stayed the same (there are some major difference but read it for yourself, i promise you won't be disappointed). even with the sameness, surprisingly the film's "golightly" is completely different from the book verison.

as cool as she is in the movie, holly golightly is even hipper in the book. she is this raw, no nonsense, do-as-she-pleases, free-spirited boheminian. as much as i want to be her in the movie, i would much rather be her in the book (well minus all of the sally tomato and jose drama). she is edgier and way ahead of her time when it comes to sex and drugs. it's like this perfect person you always admired ends up having a sailor mouth and does drugs. its kinda like discovering that your grandma cusses (which grandma bea does and did shock me when i first heard her. lol)

holly was never much of a lady in the movie, she did drink at all hours, had numerous male callers, and did go to girlie shows. but that is all child's play in comparison to her behavior in the book. i was shocked that she smoked pot. she also used phrases like "nigger-lip" and "preggers". and though it was implied that she got around in the film, it didn't prepare me for hearing a story about her being bit during sex or advising her friend to have sex with the lights on!??! (remember this was 1950s) here are some things i was shock to hear (well read) from her lips:

"rusty thinks i should smoke marijuana, and i did for a while, but it only makes me giggle"

"i told him look, darling, you've got the wrong miss go-lightly, i'm not a nurse that does tricks on the side."

"i wish, please don't laugh--but i wish i'd been a virgin for him . . ."

the most shocking was how open she was when it came to sexual orientation. i know i shouldn't be too shocked considering capote's sexual orientation. but i was surprised to hear her speak so frankly about it in the 1950s (i mean this was the era of joan cleaver). she used phrases like "dyke", "bull dyke" and was convinced that rusty was gay. but she wasn't opposed to homosexuality. in fact, she thought it was fine for people to be in love with members of their sex. for as she explains, "of course people couldn't help but think i must be a bit of a dyke myself. and of course i am. everyone is: a bit."

even greater are her views on marriage equality:

a person ought to be able to marry men or women or--listen, if you came to me and said you wanted to hitch up with Man o' War, i'd respect your feeling. no, i'm serious. love should be allowed. i'm all for it."

i love that last quote not only for showing how silly it is for us to be concern with who others want to marry. but also because it reminded me of when my friend miguel when he told a panel of judges, it shouldn't matter if he loved men, women or giraffes on bravo's "step it up and dance".

but even all this aside, i fell in love with holly golightly for the same reason, one does in the film. her quirks (the stealing, not giving her cat a name becaus they don't belong to each other, her visits to tiffany's) and of course the little tibbits of life advice she gives out.

on diamonds:
"it's like tiffany's. not that i give a hott about jewelry. diamonds, yes. but it's tacky ot wear diamonds before you're forty; and even that's risky."

her mean reds:
" . . . the blues are because you're getting fat or maybe it's been raining too long. you're sad, that's all. but te mean reds are horrible. you're afraid and you sweat like hell, but you don't know what you're afraid of. except something bad is going to happen, I ly you don't know what it is."

her free-spiritedness:

"i don't want to own anything until i know i've found the place where me and things belong together."
-her card that read "miss holiday golightly, traveling." which were made because as she explained "after all, how do i know where i'll be leaving tomorrow."-her singing of "don't wanna sleep, don't wanna die, just wanna go-atravelin' through the pastures of the sky" (ps in the book, "fred" gives her a st. christopher medal from tiffany's. i googled and he is a patron saint of travelers. adorable huh. also i googled and you can purchase a st. christopher medal from tiffany's. i might!)

her musing on love:"never love a wild thing, mr. bell . . .but you can't give your heart a wild thing: the more you do, th estronger they get. until they're srong enough to run into the woods. or fly into a tree . . . if you let yourself love a wild thing. you'll end up looking at the sky."
"--i love new york, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street, or a house, something, anyaway, tha tbelongs to me cause i belong to it."

such a character and what a mess but a charming one. i actually think i will put this on my list of 30 before 30. she doesn't make the best decisions in life, but i think she has some great tidbits that one should live by. also who doesn't love a kinky pot smoker who supports gay marriage? so yes, definitely worth the read.

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.

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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.)