Persepolis

And so I begin my first graphic novel. I must say going into this I assumed that the pictures would merely slow down my reading and that I would be unable to focus on the plot and details that are happening in the book. But I find that the pictures do not bog me down as expected, but rather they make me read faster. However, this increased speed is beginning to make me wonder if I am missing some of the key factors of the story due to just skipping over them.

I almost prefer reading graphic novels the more I read into Persepolis. It feels as if I do not have to think about what the writer is trying to actually say to us and I can see what they mean. With this graphic novel I could merely look at the picture and still understand the concept of what the author is saying.

Monologue

For this monologue I will be taking the voice of Zero Punctuation. He is a video game reviewer who swears (i will not include that) and creates random metaphors and similes to show how much he dislikes almost every game he reviews. Some of the language that follows is still slightly vulgar and do not think that I actually think this way for I am merely copying his voice. Enjoy

So recently after years of listening to you half-wits out there going on about Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens being one of the best books ever I decided to review it, actually more realistically is that Academic Decathlon decided to leave the burning pile of dog crap in a bag on our front porch so I had to read it. This book was supposedly written about how London and Paris were in ways parallel or something during the French Revolution, of course this was told to me later because the actual book just switches scenes back and forth between each city and we are supposed to assume there's a reason to his mental ramblings. For the first two segments or "Chapters" of this book the reader is literally sitting around with their fingers up their butts wondering when the writer is going to get off his bong and start making sense. For it seems that the writer wants to make sure you know every insignificant character's entire family history and their life story, taking two pages to talk about the man who came in, said "message" and then walked back out of the darn door. Then you never see that character again in the god forsaken book. Now it only gets interesting in the third "chapter" when the French Revolution finally gets rolling and starts to involve the characters a little bit more then just fleeting glances. I don't want to give away the book but the true part I liked was probably only the last 10 pages or so. Otherwise the rest of the book follows my previous description as a burning bag of dog crap.

And so you historic book lovers you can keep your Dickens crap to yourselves.

The Lavender Ladies

When Holden decides to go to the Lavender Room Bar in the hotel he runs into three young ladies lounging around looking for movie stars to walk in. When Holden arrives at the bar he wants to try and order an alcholic drink but the waiter denies him without ID. This makes Holden a little upset at the turn of events. Then he starts eyeing a bunch of girls sitting in a booth a little ways from him. He decides that he's going to go dance with the blonde girl because the others were just out of "hunger". When he actually gets up to dance with her however he soon hates her for the way she acts and thinks. Once again Holden is following the path of bipolarism that his character constantly breeches on. This is a very confusing time for the reader because he makes us wonder why he got up to dance with them in the first place. Then when he finds out that the girls are merely there because they saw a movie star there recently, he jokes one of them how she just missed the movie star walking by behind her and then thinks that that was such a mean thing to do.

This once again brings about the question, "what is wrong with Holden?". We see that he decides to go to the bar to dance and drink yet when he gets there he hates the band and hates why he even went. Then he decides to dance with girls and hates every minute. He is able to torture people with his words and chooses to do so, yet he is sorry for how mean he is to them after the fact. "What is wrong with Holden?"

Catching Catcher Fever

I am much farther into the book then I was in my last post and yet I still find that the Holden's overall character has not changed much at all. When Holden went into the city to stay in a hotel he decided that he would go down to the club. But just like him what he thought was a great idea, when he got there he just talked about how much he hated the place and how he was surrounded by phonies and all that. He sees three girls sitting near him and he decides he wants to dance with them, and yet as soon as he gets near them he hates them. It seems as if noone is up to his level, as if he is superior in one form or another to every single person he sees or meets. And at the club when Lillian came up to talk to him he lied his way away from her after saying how she was kind of nice.

Later when he got back to the hotel, the elevator guy offered him a prostitute and he decieded that it would be a good idea to get one. When she got to his room however he decided against the whole thing and just talked to her. That scene reminded me of the movie Moulin Rouge, when Ewan Mcgregor just talked to Nicole Kidman even though she was a "whore" (apoligies for language and or bad feelings to anyone). And when the man came back to demand that Holden pay more he just tried to fight him after saying that he was one of the biggest wimps in the world. I am trying to decide whether Holden has some sort of mental "handicap" that stops him from 1. creating relationships 2. allowing people to see him for who he really is, or 3. hating everything and everyone around him for almost no apparent reasons.

Catcher

So far I'm only a little into the book; however, as much as a find the character to be a stupid kid who purposely fails his classes, I find a weird attraction to his character. His laid back hate-life attitude is appealing in ways and I find that his dialogues have hidden meanings to them and that he is really an intelligent young man beneath the outer layer. Except when he visits his history teacher, Mr. Spencer, he seems as if as much as he talks nicely about a person he finds every fault he can and then critizes them for it. Later I don't know if I can trust Holden due to the fact that he states "I'm the biggest liar you have ever seen". This makes me wonder if what he is actually telling the reader can be really trust worthy in his descriptions of what happens. He also seems to vary his feelings in record times. When he's with Sladlater he is pissed about how he is clean yet secretly not, and as soon as Sladlater mentions he's going on a date with Jane he becomes extremely hyper, but he keeps mentioning that he should go down and say hi, and yet he never does. This reminded my of Dr. House. How he hates life and hates people and seems to have relationship phobia. Almost as if he doesn't want people close to him and realize that he isn't a stupid kid who flunked but a kid who just didn't try. The book keeps leading me back to the idea that Holden is a liar when he starts lying about the lady's kid when he's on the train. What's the use of telling his mom the lies? It seems as if he gets pleasure out of seeing how many lies a person is able to take before they see right through them.

To Esme by J. D. Salinger

The entirety of this story very much reminded me of Band of Brothers. The scene when he went into the church to watch the choir reminded me of one of the episodes when the company watched a choir after the assault on Foy. And when Salinger met the girl in the cafe, it reminded me of when Winters ran into the young boy on a tram. But the way he talked about the girl sometimes made me wonder if he was a pedophile, until later in the story when he talked to her about how devoid of human contact he was and I realized he was just looking for someone to talk to. But the girl seemed to be beyond her age in intelligence, but there were times when I was reminded of how young she really was. However later in the story when it talked of him after the war was over I became slightly confused. He never explained whether it was the war or something else that happened that caused the mental breakdowns and weird habits. It seemed more and more as if he was suffering under post-traumatic-stress, and yet at times it seemed as though he was just under a lot of stress. By the end of the story it seems as if he has found a way to rise up out of his stressful slump and become a normal human being again.

"Who am I?"

My name is Alex Olson. Most of you readers will know me. However, for those who don't, I am 16 going on 17. I am about 6 feet give or take a foot. I like to run but I'm quite lazy. I love drumming but I don't like music that much. I compete in Drum Corps International which is marching band only professionally done and much more competitive. I am an avid reader when I can find the time. My favorite book series has got to be the Eragon series. Although the plot is not the greatest and it is not very intellectually challenging I very much like the idea of it. Those who have seen the movie of it after reading the books though will agree that the movie was one of the single worst remakes of a book that has ever been created.