Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Let's Booktalk: Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Book cover taken from Goodreads.com
Beautiful Creatures is about a sixteen year old boy that has always thought he was different from others, but he still has a decent amount of friends.

Ethan Wate is from Gatin, South Carolina. He really dislikes the town and wants to move away. Lately he has been having dreams about this creature, well more like human, but he dreams of her like someone who is different from any other person in the world.

Lena Duchannes is also a very different girl. She has different traits, or let's just say she is unique. Lena also dreams about a guy who is different. Well, Lena had to move to Gatin with her uncle. After she moved and started school, she observed everyone. And, BOOM! She saw the guy she's been seeing in her dreams, his name was Ethan Wate. Yes! The boy that also has been dreaming about a girl, Lena.

Well they met in a class, but Lena had people talking about her because of her family. They were saying her family were freaks or devil worshipers. What they didn't know is that what they were saying was half true. They were just starting to gossip and being jerks. But, Lena's family weren't devil worshipers or freaks, they were so much more.

Ethan and Lena finally met in a road where her car broke down and Ethan saw her there, offering her a ride home. When they got to her house, Lena's uncle came out and kicked Ethan off of the property without so much as touching him. Lena was told to get into the house. Her uncle said she was not aloud to ever see or talk to Ethan again, but she didn't understand why. Ethan, who had never done anything to the uncle didn't understand why. He never did anything bad and he was a really good kid. It wasn't until their live's changed and their paths united that they without knowing...

Well, let's just say without each other, the world itself could be ruled by darkness.

Booktalk written by Alexis Cano

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Let's Booktalk: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

“I don't like work--no man does--but I like what is in the work--the chance to find yourself. Your own reality--for yourself not for others--what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.” from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Marlow is a man of philosophy, skepticism and independence. As such he craves escape within his employment that will take him away from the mundane life amidst "civilized" society. So, when he is hired to be captain of a crew bound to enter the heart of the Congo he believes he has found what he wants. Yet, he becomes infatuated with the idea of the man Kurtz. Kurtz is the object of his exploration, as he is to deliver aid to a man who is overcome with illness. But is it a sickness of the body or of the mind?

Kurtz is the chief of the central station, however he has fallen ill from some sort of disease. He is known to be a man of artistic talent, but he has the power to bend men's wills in order to follow him. He is also a conspirator against his employers, and perhaps more. 

Is Kurtz's ability and prowess what has caused his illness and hunger for power? Or, has the illness caused this great man to become a representation of darkness itself? Can Marlow put a stop to the man he has come to admire? Or will he join him?


 
Apocalypse Now, a film by Francis Ford Coppola (1979) 
and based on Conrad's novel.