Random Literariness

Not to derail the blog, but as I'm reading Anita and Me (for my dissertation and for a conference this weekend), I came across another literary me moment as the young girl describes her daydreams:

"My mind drifted into practical overdrive, as it did with all my daydreams. It was never enough to have a vague picture, such as 'I save Donny Osmond from near death and win a medal'. I had to know what I was wearing, whether it was a fire in a top London hotel or a runaway horse in a summer meadow, what the weather was like, who was watching and how my hair looked at the moment of rescue.

It was an annoying trait, I admit, and often I got bored with the fantasy halfway through, bogged down by stylistic detail when I should really have been concentrating on the emotion and wish-fulfillment side of things." (202)

I do that so often, any one else?

Ender's Game

I'm excited to be reading this book; I've heard about it for so long, it's a classic in the sci-fi cannon, people have suggested I'll love it...so, I'm glad to have started, and I like it so far.

I'm not sure that I have much to say at this point. I'm a bit incredulous that Ender is so cognizant and talented at six. But, hey, a Christ figure has to be super-special. I'll admit that I was sad that I never caught the idea of "Ender" as one who ends things, one who finishes, until it was pointed out to me by the book--I guess subtleties are still lost on me at times.

The thing that keeps running through my mind is Battlestar Galactica; I don't think anyone else here reads it, but the general gist is futuristic space fleet fighting for the survival of humanity against Cylons. The admiral of the fleet is a mostly good leader, but he is a very human figure with lots of flaws. I'm kind of hoping this isn't the future for Ender--sometimes I just want my heroes to be seemingly beyond human, to be able to rise above the complications that everyday people like me have to deal with.

I'm looking forward to more about the history of this world, the war, who the "buggers" are, etc.

Ender's Game Part I

I don't have a lot to say thus far except this is definately a strange book. I felt like I had no idea what to think for the first three chapters and was a bit confused by what I perceived to be fantasy and was supposed to be reality in the book. Still, by the end of Chapter 5 I was feeling more involved and I'm now curious to see what happens to Ender at this new school of his. Though did anyone else feel like they were readin a child's copy of something akin to Brave New World? Also, did anyone else feel almost dizzy when they described the whole gravity or non-gravity experience on the shuttle? Personally I felt like a dunce trying to figure out what seemed natural to Ender.

I have to admit I felt pretty sorry for Ender thoughout most of the book so far. It sounds like he's had it hard his whole, be it short, life and will continue to have it pretty hard throughout the rest of the book as "they" whoever the heck "they" are, throw challenge after challenge his way to make him the best possible leader, fighter and "hero." I wanted to cry when he had to leave his sister and didn't even feel he could turn around and wave to the camera. I really hope that they allow the poor kid to have some friends up there at space training camp or whatever it is.

I also found myself reacting very negatively to the society presented in the story. The fact that Ender was a third child and thus shunned of course got my hackels up, being currently pregnant with my own third child. It made me sad to think of a society so controlled that having more than two children was shunned...but then I suppose China and its one child policy isn't that far off when you think about it. Perhaps the scariest thing is seeing nuances of our own modern society reflected in a science fiction book written 30 years ago. To reiterate an earlier point, the experience seems reminicient of Brave New World. I just hope things turn out well for the poor little boy that everyone seems to shun (except the commanders of course).

Ender's Game

Sorry it took me so long getting to this.  There was some miscommunication, and I wasn't able to get my hands on the book until yesterday.  Anyway, I think this will be a quick read.  We could probably do it in two weeks, but lets stretch it out to 3 just in case.  Looks like there's 15 chapters, so lets shoot for the first five chapters to be commented upon no sooner than Friday the 26th, chapters 6-10 no sooner than October the 3rd and the entire book no sooner than October the 10th.  Please feel free to suggest alternatives in the comments.

I Want to Go to the Fair.*

Okay, my nose is stuffy, and I'm disinclined to do too many drafts, so forgive me if this is a bit scattered. Also, some of this perhaps could go in the comments to Katie's post...

The Holmes stuff: His victims seemed to belong to the Victorian era of trust and decency whereas Holmes seems to be a product of the Modern era. Katie asks if serial killers are a newish phenomenon or if we just didn't know about them. While I'm no expert, I would think that they're a product of urbanization on some level, or rather the city allows them the space to act. The horror of this tale is definitely that the modern city allows for isolation, alienation, and duplicity in ways previously unknown. While Holmes's victims did seem a bit too trusting and needy, it was partially that they were ill-equipped to be on their own it seems. Not to seem like a proponent of infantilizing women, but part of the growing pains of women finding an independent place in society may have had to be that they learned to deal with the wolves of the world.

"With its gorgeous classical buildings packed with art, its clean water and electric lights, and its overstaffed police department, the exposition was Chicago's conscience, the city it wanted to become" (210). I find the title The Devil in the White City so apt because it truly embodies the two halves of the book, we have the darkness and evil of Holmes jarringly juxtaposed with the dream of the fair that was a testament to the good of man, the industrious heights that can be accomplished.

The Burnham/Fair stuff: I loved loved reading about the World's Fair--I've learned a bit about other ones: the Great Exhibition of 1851 in England that gave us the Crystal Palace and the one in Paris in 1889 that produced the Eiffel tower (and Chicago's benchmark), but to have one so close to home made me feel proud of the city even a century later. I was ridiculously excited and oddly choked up reading about the talleys of attendance on Chicago Day in the Fair--"751,026, more people than had attended any single day of any peaceable even in history" (319). Maybe I'm naive--but if that's the case I wanna stay that way--but it seems so inspiring that art and everything that it encompasses architecture, landscaping, etc. can be lived and be beautiful and be good.

(Court of Honor and Grand Basin of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.)

Sigh, but just as the Fair was burned to the ground (okay, Larson, a bit heavy-handed on the 'foreshadowing'), the book is over--when do we start the next one?

*Apparently, these do still happen, but it doesn't look like I'll be able to catch one anytime soon--unless...Shanghai 2010? Roadtrip, anyone?

The End!

So, I could be getting into some trouble here by not posting anything on Devil and the White City until now when I have finished the whole book and will post on it in entirety. I'm not sure when we are allowed to post on the entire thing since we have all took much longer than "the plan" of reading this book. Anyways, I was amazed at how much I liked this book, it being non-fiction and all. To echo all of you, it did kind of read more like fiction, a lot of times I forgot that this was stuff that actually happened. Growing up near Chicago, it was so neat to hear the descriptions of the city from a hundred years ago and hear how it's changed. It was neat to hear of the buildings that are still around. I don't think I have ever been to Jackson Park or the wooded island, and now I want to take a trip out there to look around. It's very sad to me that the buildings burned down and most are no longer around since I would have loved to see it and been there. I liked in the afterword how the author said how this city was like a dream city and inspired people to see that cities could be clean and powered by electricity. It was neat seeing how minimum wages and 8-hour working days came about, and how the Ferris wheel was invented. It made me kind of in awe at the architects and engineers for imagining these wonderful buildings.

Maybe there's something wrong with me, but I was really interested in the parts about Holmes and wished they were longer or had more information. I wonder how many people he really killed, I definitely don't think it was 200, but I also definitely think it was more than 9. I think I probably would have fit his victim profile, I'm sure I could be flattered into not even noticing he was some serial killer. I think because it happened so long ago, I wasn't really disturbed by it. Maybe also because he mostly gased the victims to death and didn't actually slash them or kill them in a very violent way. I guess if I had to be murdered, that is the way to go. Seems pretty painless. I thought there would be a more direct tie at the end between Burnham and Holmes, but it was more the juxtoposition of the dream city and the horrible crimes that were being done in/near it. I was also sad Holmes' Castle of Horrors burned down because I won't be able to go see that either. That place definitely sounded a bit creepy. And it's weird that he was one of the first serial killers in America, around the time of Jack the Ripper. It makes me wonder, were there not really serial killers before that and people started becoming more perverted in recent years, or did we just not recognize the patterns of serial killers before then?

I was surprised at the amount of freedom that women had at that time, I tend to think of the late 1800's as being pretty oppressive towards women, but they were able to work and live by themselves and travel to big cities without family, which was impressive (all things considered.) I like how Larson wrapped up everyone's story and told us what happened to everyone in the end. It is weird how after Holmes died all those people connected to him had horrible deaths. In all, I enjoyed this book. I guess there's a Devil in the White City tour of Chicago, and now I want to go and take it to see what is still around. It definitely made me feel a lot of pride for Chicago, in regards to its pulling off the fair and all the achievements that happened as a result of that.

Officially Bad and Booted

Sorry, I'm bad. I didn't read the book. I started to and then Chris found out about the murder part and told me I probably shouldn't read it...I have a tendancy to overreact to things like that and become extremely upset when pregnant - it's the hormones. Anyhow, by the time he finally finished it and decided I could just read the parts about the fair, the book was severley overdue on interlibrary loan and being waited on by other patrons, so reading it was no longer an option. I could go try and find another copy but it would take a while and we're being booted from our apartment at the end of this weekend so I'm very overwhelmed...hope you all will forgive me.