#aplit15pick

You know how some people flip a coin and are disappointed with the results so they don’t go with what the coin picked and that’s how they figure out what they wanted all along??? That’s kinda what happened with my eenie meanie-ing. I eenie meanied but the whole time I was hoping I would land on Wise Blood ((and luckily I did)). Idk why I just have a good feeling about this book. Flannery o’Conor doesn’t have nearly as much criticism as Faulkner yet I’m so adamant on choosing Wise Blood for this big project. I think the problem with The Sound and the Fury is that I read that it’s a really hard read because of how it’s written and I’ve been in kind of a slump with books lately… Just a couple in a row now that have been almost too much work to read you know? I did not want another book like that, which is what I’m fairly certain The Sound and the Fury would end up being. I’ll read it eventually, but I need to wait for the right time for it. Right now I’m I’m the mood for a weird and out of the ordinary pick and so Wise Blood it is.

I kept hearing the title "The Sound and the Fury" being mentioned... Like an uncanny amount of times.... So I was thinking it was a sign from the universe to read it. And there's a ton of criticism on Faulkner so it really seems like the perfect choice. But then I was also researching into the peculiar genre known as "southern gothic" which intrigues me cause I like peculiar things and,, wow neato, The Sound and the Fury was on the list. But also was this book called "Wise Blood"? And this book was also in the related books section for The Sound and the Fury. So I just oddly gravitated towards this book... And it strange cause a religious book isn't something that would normally catch my attention but it's... southern gothic... And it supposed to be weird... And now I find myself oddly leaning towards reading Wise Blood instead of The Sound and the Fury.

 I've read the first four chapters and I think it will be a challenge to get through because it was written in the 1800s and the language is different. So I usually have to read each page twice to get the most understanding out of the book. I have read some Hemingway which tends to have some old language like this so i'm used to it in a sense. I'm gonna stick with it because it comes so highly recommended and it's quite unique. I'm excited to finish it. 

5. A movie version with Mia Wasikowska and Ezra Miller (love) is going to be released this year, and I always read the book before watching the movie.

At the beginning of this process, I had two books in mind.  Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.  I learned about BNW in AP Lang, and I found the concept fascinating.  I really love fiction that seems scarily real, or that makes me say, "whoa, that could totally happen."  I had read an excerpt of it while working on my Atwood project, and I was all set to pick it.  Then I came across Madame Bovary, also while working on my Atwood project.  Flaubert's classic gives really interesting insight into boredom as a literary technique (which I'm all about now, thanks to Atwood).  Also, as I plan on majoring in French when I go to UA, having a background in some French literature could be helpful.  Either book would be great for my project, and beneficial for my literary knowledge(?).

I went to Barnes & Noble to pick up a copy of Moby-Dick for myself. I was planning on starting to read it the following day, seeing as I would have a lot of time during an ISS I was to be serving. I wanted to get as much background as I could before starting the actual novel so I read the entire 18 page Introduction. It took me almost all of first hour to read and it finished with almost a challenge. It was telling me good luck reading this book because you're going to need it. That challenge was all I needed and I began to read this monster. "Call me Ishmael."

I have said that I came into the project expecting to read A Clockwork Orange, but I'll admit that my reasoning was not originally because I have always wanted to read the book. As I'm sure many people would guess, I spend a lot more of my time watching television and movies than I do reading. The first time I heard of the novel titled A Clockwork Orange was on the cover of the DVD. I was going to watch it with a few of my friends, but we only got through about 5 minutes because one of them was very disturbed by the first rape scene. I still want to watch the movie, but when I learned that I could read the novel for this project, I decided I wouldn't until I was done. Another part of television that exposed me to A Clockwork Orange occurred when I was watching an interview of Andrew Lincoln from The Walking Dead. He said that when he applied to his college of theatre he performed an original scene inspired by A Clockwork Orange. I now want to see how Burgess's writing could have influenced Lincoln as an actor. I figured that this could be a style of his writing that I could explore during my project.

To be honest, I approached this project without really giving any other book a chance. At the top of a long list of books I would like to read, but still probably won't is A Clockwork Orange, and since I have to actually read one I figured it might as well be something I've had an interest in for a while. I already know a little about the book and from what I understand, the lives of the characters in the book are far different than my own. I think that this is something that will make me want to explore more into the society and pressures that created these characters, rather than being bored by something I have already heard. With this in mind I considered a few books that could spark my interest in the same way. Ultimately they had either already been chosen or I just decided against when it came to picking A Clockwork Orange, the book I intended all along.