ap lit(erally gonna hang myself)

I should’ve approached reading my book differently now that I’m looking back on it.  The way I did it was just reading it all the way through in a huge burst. This made it harder to keep track of all the things happening and all the characters it really hurt my brain.  If I had gone with a nice schedule and read the book gradually, I think it would have been a lot better.  Looking back now I’m realizing that this is a book you really have to take your time with, each chapter you read you need some time for it to sink in, so you don’t confuse it with the other chapters. Everything blended together in my mind into such a huge mess that now that I am pretty far in the writing process I’m realizing it would have been easier if I took my time with the book instead of reading it all at once.

For some reason the writing about the critiques was the hardest part because you had to write about someone writing about the book the author was writing and it just messed with my head.  there were so many different parts to the project the hardest part as keeping track of all of them and figuring out how they were all different from each other so that I didn’t say the same thing over and over again.

I was working on my annotations and i found a tv series of my book, The Master and Margarita, from 2005.  The screencaps here kind of capture the whole tone of the book. Which is completely just absurd and why what is happening. The absurdity in the book has a purpose though and contributes to the overall satire and mocking of the soviet union and stalin.  It’s just hard to write about because its so weird and hard to follow because this happens and then this happens I’m having trouble figuring out how to write it so that it makes sense to someone who hasn’t read the book. Because if someone else read my annotations as they are now it would probably just confuse them more so I have to go back and figure out a way to explain them better so they make more sense which is just hjsdkflje frustrating because this book is frustrating and it doesn’t make any sense but whatever i picked it so its my fault but this is crazy and im having a ball of a time just the balls i swear 

My good old buddy boy my mans my boy my homie my writers notebook is here for me in Ann Arbor for spring break

I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into but boy is it something. What is surprising me the most about this book as I'm reading it is it's actually funny. Purely because of how absurd the situations are and how they are described it is very comical and dramatic. Just in the first few pages two men are going around drinking apple juice and then a weird shadowy figure appears then disappears and then they write a poem about how Jesus wasn't real and then see a man with one "platinum" eye and one green eye coming toward them, and this was all on like the first page and I was so engaged. It's surprising how quickly the author was able to grab my attention which is very hard to do and keep it, especially considering this was written in the 1930s in a stalinistic russian environment. I can see already how many political and moral questions are being brought up just in the first page and I'm excited to see how it comes into play later in the book.

I was looking around a lot for a book and honestly I was having a lot of trouble finding something I would be interested in. I looked on a list of classics or something on good reads and the cover for this looked so gross I was like oh baby this looks spicy. After reading the synopsis and finding out it was about Satan visiting Soviet Union Russia I was like oh this is the one for me I've found her.

Are you a messy bitch??? Do u live for drama???? WELLLLL ladies and gentlemen do I got a read for u. Bel Canto by Anne Patcherr is one of the SAUCIEST books I've ever read. It's about a bunch of rich people at an opera party but it's HIJACKED by terrorists!!! Scare Bleu! But then after like three months they start to like each other. And then there's affairs and death and opera oh my!!! But hey even if u don't live for the drama like me, you'll still probably like this book. Ya see all of drama and intrigue still serves a porpoise and contributes to subtle themes throughout the book. So even if u don't love the drama there is still subtlety and beauty to the book that u can appreciate.

I was looking for poets because I don't really read poetry or read at all so I had to dig a lil and I found this lady named Cynthia Cruz and she's pretty chill she has a lot of books out and her poems r really like soft but creepy? I don't even know how to describe it they make me think of smoke, like when I'm readin em I can like visualize just some candle smoke or something in the air, that's what her poems feel like and I'm really diggin it. Idk if I'm gonna do her for sure because I haven't looked at many other poets but she's a cool lady

Sooooo bel canto the title translates to beautiful song, and I think that Anne patchett really embodies this throughout the whole thing. Her writing is in a sense almost lyrical, i kept reading certain sentences over again because they just sounded pretty. Also the beautiful song thing comes into play because the thing about a song is that it is a sliver of beauty that only lasts like three or so minutes, the characters in the book themselves are put into this hostage situation which they know will end eventually very badly but while they are still in it they start to live life in a heightened way, a way that is more passionate and condensed than normal life. But that beauty and love they find in each other is eventually cut off, just like a song. Beautiful but it doesn't last forever, and maybe that it can only be experienced for a short time makes it seem even more beautiful.

OVerall it’s a pretty okay book. like it’s alright. The switching between characters and viewpoints confused me a lot until the very end when it was explained, but it was a good aha moment y know. What i like about the book is how it emphasized the little connections that overlap all of us, and how you might not even know how your life is inexplicably connected to another persons. It makes you think about like the map of your life and all the little interactions snad stuff you’ve had with other people and how your life ebbs and flows into anothers. Book had me a little messed up as you can see. But overall good good. Some frustrations with the characters and things i didn’t like . but mostly good.

so there’s like a common theme i’ve noticed in this book right here right here, a lot of things that the book focuses on have to do with intangible things, like stuff you can’t see or touch.  I thought about this when I read the part where his grandparents are talking about how they mark off sections of their apartment to be “Nothing Places”.  And how eventually they came into conflict between what was something and what was nothing.  They wanted a place where they could fade away into nothing and stop existing, where they could become something intangible.  Because he no longer spoke, almost everything they had all their agreements, their little rules, their feelings for one another were left unsaid. Left to be something that neither of them could really be sure was there, intangible. Every feeling and thought people have towards one another starts out as something that is intangible to anyone else, unless we choose to act or speak on that feeling which brings it about in a physical sense and makes it tangible to others.  Oskar’s mom at one point tells him that she cries all the time, and he is skeptical of if she is really sad because she keeps it to herself and he doesn’t physically see the effects of the sadness on her. He seems to be accusing her of not actually being upset about his dad because her feelings remain hidden and intangible to him.  Now i am rambling and i’ve lost the main point of what i was talking about. but theres lots of intangibles.

okay once again, he acknowledges that what he’s doing isn’t really good, he says himself that he’s sexist. BUT THEen he just keeps on going???LIke this is rude too, he’s just complimenting her because he thinks it will make her want to help him not because he believes it’s true. I just i don’t know how to feel about this, there’s another part later on where he’s also remarking on the beauty of Abby Black and even asks her if he can kiss her.  Like yes he’s nine, yes he’s going through a lot, and he’s got a lot of other stuff going on, but you still can’t deny these like subtly racist and sexist overtones in him.