Review #8 - The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde

The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde is an odd book. It was recommended by the woman who will always be a role model to me - Rosianna Halse Rojas. She posted her video on her book clear out and I needed more non-fiction books so I decided to read it.

a photo from Rosianna's instagram and tumblr.

The Gift is an odd mix of literary criticism mixed with psychology. Every chapter is a new idea about giving gifts ranging from your talent to women (yes, I know, we'll get onto that later). The Gift kept my attention despite the fact it was projected to take me six hours to read so in that regard, and the way I rated it, it was good but I did have several criticisms of the book.

The first chapter was all about the movement of gifts between person to person. I read this for half an hour and I still don't get the point he was trying to make. The chapter mainly included examples of Hawaiian tribes and the circulation of gifts and a bunch of Scottish myths. It was never explained how the movement of gifts could help us from day to day and I didn't like that. It should have been made relevant for the reader. There were also no real arguments for why this was important. I felt like I had just read all these examples for nothing.

There was a really weird chapter about woman as gifts and giving away women. Is this because this was written 40 years before I read it? It still felt really, really odd. It felt like it had no real place in the book.

The last two (massive) chapters of the book changed the tune so entirely I looked for the announcement that I had changed books. It went from giving gifts to poetry analysis. Yes, it was about gifts (loosely) but it felt completely irrelevant. It felt like Hyde decided to go "yes, ok I want to write about everything that interests me ever and shove it in a book." I got really bored at these parts as it felt like a historical analysis rather than a language analysis.

After years watching speeches in class I have learned something important which Lewis Hyde has never learned:

never ever ever introduce new points in the conclusion.

Seriously, what was he thinking? I was like, oh great, a summary, but he introduced new points and new myths and I just started to monitor how close I was to the end to the book. I just lost interest.

I've sounded very negative but it did have a really interesting perspective on gift giving (especially as a person who cares a lot about it). It also did keep my attention for the first 66% which is impressive for a humanities non-fiction book.

I gave this three stars.

Review #7 - Eve and Adam by Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate

Ok.

This book is good.  Not ok, not very good but good.

Eve and Adam is a book about a girl who is in a car crash and is shipped to her mother's hospital in her giant research company.  Her mother decides that Eve can create the perfect person on a computer similar to The Sims but much much more complex. It's about the ethics of genetic modification and also has a love story.

Firstly the book is split perspective. I hate split perspective like my cat hates the hoover i.e. RUN AWAY AT ALL COSTS. I had to separate out the two different story lines in order to like it. It just didn't feel like a book, it felt like a husband and wife bonding project.

I loved the genetic modification parts. It was the reason I kept reading. It was just so fantastically done. I am such a Biology Nerd with a love of The Sims (3, of course) and these parts really appealed to me. I looked forward to these parts more than anything else in this book.

I didn't really like Solo as a character. He was whiney and I didn't like his constant "us-and-them" attitude towards everything. He was very wishy-washy. I know everyone always go on about (and rightly so) that we need 3D female characters who are both strong and weak but this book seriously needed a male character with depth.

This book is a three star book. It would be a 1 or 2 star but Eve's dialogue and the genetics parts of this book pulled it up to good. Well done Katherine Applegate.

My Bloggiversary

Last year on this date I was at my friend Nina's for burns night (n.b. a scottish poet celebration where you eat haggis) where she said I should get a blog.

She designed it, help me set it up and I wrote my first ever post.

4802 views later and I love this blog. It is me all over and I love my stats I could not be more proud of my blog.

Honestly,  setting this up was a great thing to do so thank you Nina. I've written reviews and articles on medicine and put up photography and lists and things that I care about.

A complete set of stats should go up soon. Expect lots of pie charts.

Happy Bloggiversary Kaleidosophie. I love you.

Review #6 - When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

If you read my blog regularly/stalk me/Miranda you've found my blog you'll have seen I put this book on my Bout of Books wish list thing. I send Miranda my list and she let me borrow her copy (in exchange for Wreck it Ralph.

When You Reach Me is a book about a girl named Miranda living in New York City. One day she gets a mysterious note telling her what to do and she could save someone's life. 

The narrative is disjointed between past events and present events which I really liked especially because the kids talked about time travel through a lot of the book. The book is in first person and really captures the spirit of being a child, not just an adult narrative with simpler words.

I loved Miranda as a character. It was like she was just starting to notice social interaction and how society functions. I especially liked the parts about her wealth and her self-conciousness. It made her very real as a character. The narrative was fantastic. It was like she was trying to make friends with you across the page.

The ending wow. If you closely read it as well there are links towards the ending and it was just really gorgeous. It was like everything you thought was just description fit beautifully into the plot.

This is a fantastic children's book I would really recommend it for both children (9-12) and adults and teens. Seriously. Read this book.

Five stars.

Access to stories

Today in chapel (yes I go to a cofe school) my maths teacher announced that we would be having a collection for a charity that donated books to Ethiopian schools because of the lack of books there. I've sort of been subconsciously thinking about this all day for various reasons.

I saw Rosianna's video about a month ago about donating all but 50 of her books to charity in which she said "I have always have access to stories." I don't know it's just daunted on me how lucky I am to have this access to books. I go to a school with a large library (most of it non fiction but I'll get on to this at another time), a local waterstones, a kindle and my parents who let me read whatever I want and support my love of reading. It just made me acutely aware of how much I get to read and I love that.

Secondly, I have an (unnamed) friend who is the sweetest who I am currently on a book lending spree with. I read The Gift by Lewis Hyde (reviews are coming) and this idea of the movement of gifts really struck me in regards to books. I just love circulating books like I read my friend Miranda's copy of When You Reach Me and her annotations just made the experience so much better. I felt like I was sharing something.

Thirdly, I am acutely aware that in a year and a half I will no longer live at home. When I leave home I will no longer have an income (babysitting) or my parents credit card details. I have been told that you are going to be a med student you won't have time for a job get a loan and I know at this point I will no longer have access to books and this will be probably the hardest thing to lose when I go to uni. But tis better to have loved and lost that have never loved at all. I am so grateful for my access to books.

I can't imagine living without books.

May access to books become worldwide and nationwide.

N.b. I am a world book day giver (more on this closer to the time) in regards to this which I am so excited by all brits can have access to stories.

Sophie, no one cares.

Why do I keep writing these to buy lists? I know most of you won't care. Sure, you want stuff. Seriously though, review When You Reach Me. Iphoto crashing is not an excuse.

I like to have goals. I don't know why but I'm very driven by them. I know what I want in the near future and most of the time I know what I want long term. That's why this year new years resolutions have become very important to me. One of the things I plan to do is have a monthly "wrap up" where I tell you which posts I've written, how many books I've read, which films I watched and how far I am into my New Years resolutions.

So these TBR posts aren't for you.They're for me.

Now go away Sophie and get some sleep.

Night

My Ultimate To Buy/TBR list

A.k.a. buy them for me

Why do I blog?

Frankly I ask myself that when browsing my archive.

In "It's kind of a funny story" by Ned Vizzini there is a lot of focus being placed on Craig finding his anchor.

I am not always an articulate person.

But when I write I feel very comfortable.

It has become an anchor of control because I hate being out of control.

That's why I blog

I'm taking part in the become a better blogger lift challenge and the first question was why.

Review #5 - This Is What Happy Looks Like by Jennifer E Smith

I absolutely loved Anna and the French Kiss and I believed I had misjudged YA romantic fiction. I thought I'd been overly harsh, that it was enjoyable fiction overall. I was wrong.

This is What Happy Looks Like has potential as a story: it's about Ellie who lives in a small town in Maine who gets an accidental email one day from a boy who she talks to for many a month (stranger danger). In other completely unrelated news, there's a new hot celebrity guy in town shooting a movie called Graham (be still my heart).

This is What Happy Looks Like is not a book that I had a specific problem with as such (I say as I tear it to pieces), but it was just boring.

The characters were boring, the plot was boring and oh how Graham was boring. Ellie was so 2D she was verging on 1 dimensional. The plot was obvious and lacked subtly. And the writing! Seriously,  it was so shallow. It just seemed very basic.

Romantic fiction should make you fall in love. It didn't make me feel warm or fuzzy. That is why it truly failed.

Two stars.

Review #4 - Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral

Chopsticks is a sort of scrapbook: photos of artefacts and people and web chats and newspapers. There are these big double page spreads of photos taken on film. It's a coffee table book but with a plot. It's beautiful however I found it breathtakingly average.

The plot lacked substance. It was just boring and the end became confusing. The romantic plot line lacked any form of chemistry and there were a few photos between the girl and the boy that suggested that they actually were in a romantic relationship at all. Their conversations were mainly about her father and how annoying he was. It came across as a very biased view of teenagers and their parents so much so that I felt it was trying to push me away as a reader. Why do you write a book for teenagers and then try to annihilate them?

I will be fair to this book and say it is a pretty book. However, coffee table books are expensive and there are so many more that I could spend my money on (I'm very lucky, this is a book of my sisters) for example Rookie Yearbook 1, Rookie Yearbook 2, A Maps of the World The World According to Illustrators and Storytellers. So many books are truly beautiful, you have to stand out as an artist. This book was beautiful, but there's only so much grainy photography a girl can take. Have you heard of a digital camera?

So thank you Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral. I was worried my reviews were too positive that I was coming across as one of those people who doesn't give negative reviews because everything is so awesome.

Your ability to create a completely and utterly average book saved me. 

Lots of hugs and kisses,

Sophie

p.s. I'm big on lindsay lohan movies today.