Happicuppa
by: Margaret Atwood
Background
of the Author:
Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in
Ottawa, and grew up in northern Ontario and Quebec, and in Toronto. She
received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of
Toronto and her master’s degree from Radcliffe College.
Margaret Atwood is the author of more than forty
books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. Her latest book of short stories
is Stone Mattress: Nine Tales (2014).
Her MaddAddam trilogy – the Giller and Booker prize-nominated Oryx and
Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), and MaddAddam (2013) – is currently
being adapted for HBO. The Door is her latest volume of poetry (2007). Her most
recent non-fiction books are Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth (2008)
and In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination (2011). Her novels include
The Blind Assassin, winner of the Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the
Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; and The Robber Bride,
Cat’s Eye, The Handmaid’s Tale – coming soon as a TV series with MGM and Hulu –
and The Penelopiad. Her new novel, The Heart Goes Last, was published in
September 2015. Forthcoming in 2016 are Hag-Seed, a novel revisitation of
Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, for the Hogarth Shakespeare Project, and Angel
Catbird – with a cat-bird superhero – a graphic novel with co-creator Johnnie
Christmas. (Dark Horse.) Margaret Atwood lives in Toronto with writer Graeme
Gibson.
Summary
Of the Story:
Following graduation Jimmy was invited to spend some time at Uncle
Pete’s place in the Moosonee HelthWyzer Gated Vacation Community. Uncle Pete
spent most of his time playing golf, leaving Jimmy alone with Crake. They spent
their time watching the wars being fought over the new Happicuppa bean. The
creation of the bean pushed many small growers out of business. Riots had
broken out worldwide. Crake was disturbed by the destruction of forests fueling
the planting of the beans. A Boston Coffee Party occurred, protestors dumped
crates of the bean in the harbor.
The war got worse after the Lincoln Memorial was
bombed. While watching some coverage filmed outside of the Happicuppa
headquarters in Maryland, Jimmy saw his mother on the television. Upon seeing
her face, Jimmy calls out to Crake to freeze the frame. Crake gave him a glance
and changed the channel. Jimmy was full of fear that Uncle Pete had made the
connection. He did not want him to call the Corpsmen. Uncle Pete, however, did
not appear to notice anything.
Crake later asks Jimmy why he cried out and asked
him to freeze the frame. Jimmy does not want to say. Crake correctly guesses
that Jimmy saw his mother. Jimmy is convinced that Uncle Pete is in the other
room calling the authorities. Crake tells Jimmy that his father had also run
away and had gone over an overpass in the pleeblands. Crake confides that Uncle
Pete kept trying to have heart-to-heart talks with him, to assure him that his
father simply had problems. Jimmy asks Crake if he thinks it is possible that
his father simply fell off the overpass. Crake replies, with a smile, that his
father was uncoordinated snowman reflects on this conversation and wonders what
Crake had been trying to tell him. He feels stupid for not being able to read
between the lines of his conversation with Crake. Snowman decides that in an
attempt to shut out the world, Crake had simply walled himself in.
Appreciation:
The
Forest Of hands and Teeth( by: Carrie Ryan)
Background
of the Author:
Carrie Ryan was born in Rochester, NY
and moved to Los Angeles, CA in 8/1985 where she lived until 12/2005 when she
moved to Albuquerque, NM. Although she loved NM, things didn't work out as
planned and she moved back to Los Angeles in 6/2006 where she only lasted until
4/2008 when she couldn't take the city anymore. :-) At that time, she moved to
Lake Oswego/West Linn, OR and stayed there until 12/2009 when she was called
back to Albuquerque. As of this writing (3/9/2014) she is still living and working
in Albuquerque and has gotten back into the acting biz in what's known as
Tamalewood. The last few years while in Los Angeles, she worked for Sony
Pictures Entertainment, mostly at Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. Carrie's life
changed dramatically in 1996 thanks to healer Eric Pearl, and she became very
psychic (had an ability since birth but he really blew open her chakras) and
started being able to communicate with "dead people" and eventually
started trance channeling. Numerous spiritual experiences sent her on a whole
new path in life. In 2007 Warner Bros. chose her and 5 other psychics for a TV
series pilot called "Gifted". But, acting and singing are in her
blood and an important part of who she is. She is also a major animal lover and
has cat parent. You can also find Carrie on Twitter with the username Atheria,
which is her "soul name" and a name by which many friends know her.
summary
of the Story:
Once
upon a time, a fenced-in village existed in the middle of a Forest infested by
the Unconsecrated (i.e. flesh-gobbling zombies). Enter Mary. She's minding her
own business, washing her clothes in the stream, when her childhood pal Harry
pays her a visit. And pops the question—yup, thatquestion.
Before Mary can answer, the village sirens start
a-wailing, which is code for… zombies in the house. Save yourselves, people.
Mary hightails it for the village, knowing full well as she hustles along that
this siren went off because she dilly-dallied at the stream. See, her mom
really wants to find her newly zombified hubby, and Mary knows that because she
stayed away too long her mom probably got too close to the fence while looking
for him and is now infected herself. Bummer.
After Mary's mom joins the ranks of the
moany-groanies, Mary's brother Jed kicks her out of their house (as a Guardian,
he's not keen on having to chop off his mom's head if he sees her in the
Forest). So Mary joins the Sisterhood, led by the power-hungry Sister Tabitha.
Sister T can see that Mary isn't super happy about becoming a God-fearing nun
for life, so she threatens to sic the Forest of zombies on her if she refuses
to toe the line and act like she likes it.
While cooped up in the Cathedral, Mary finds out
her other childhood pal, Travis, has a ridiculously bad leg injury and the
Sisters are taking care of him. Mary visits him every day and "prays"
with him… which means she actually just tells him stories about the ocean.
Dreaming of the beach together means true love for Mary and the Travster, which
is too bad since he's Harry's brother and engaged to Mary's bestie, Cass.
Drama.
Harry asks for Mary's hand again, and she says
yes. Insofar as this means she can escape the Sisterhood, this is a pretty
awesome development; but insofar as she's in love with Harry's brother, it's pretty
lame.
In the meantime, Mary notices that a girl in a
bright red vest entered the village from Outside and is locked in a room in the
Cathedral. She finds out her name is Gabrielle and is eager to learn more about
her and where she's from.
Mary and Travis run into each other at the Hill
and have a nice make-out session. Mary asks Travis to come for her and whisk
her away from Harry, but before he can answer, they catch a glimpse of
Gabrielle, who is now a super-zombie and totally freaky. So much for getting to
know her.
Fast forward to the morning of the wedding (PS:
Travis never came for Mary). Instead of waking up to church bells, the village
wakes up to the screaming of the sirens. Turns out super-zombie Gabby and the
zombie horde are attacking the village.
Harry and Mary escape by the skin of their teeth
onto one of the fenced paths into the Forest. They're joined by Travis and
Cass, Jed and Beth, a little boy named Jacob, and Mary's new pooch, Argos. See
ya, village, wouldn't wanna be ya.
The gang wanders down the path for a while before
stumbling upon another village. Mary knows it was Gabrielle's village, though
it's also been overrun by zombies. While the rest of the gang escapes into the
tree house part of the village (zombies aside, Shmoop wants to go there), Mary
and Travis end up stuck in a big ol' house together. Alone. Ah, shucks.
At first it feels like heaven on earth, but then
Mary stumbles onto some old photos and dresses and becomes super obsessed with
escaping the village. Luckily for her, some zombies finally break down the
house door, forcing her and the Travster to get outta there. Thanks to Argos
and his furry jaws of death, Mary shoves Travis into the attic and swims
through a sea of zombies unscathed.
The tireless threesome crosses the divide into the
tree house village with a sheet-rope, a barrel, and some serious climbing
skillz from the Travster (who still almost gets chomped to death by the zombie
horde).
Mary and Travis have a heart-to-heart, and Mary
realizes that she needs more than the Travster to be happy. She just can't quit
thinking about her ocean. The others agree to head back to the forest paths
once the weather cools down.
You know that phrase about how the best laid plans
are meant to be broken? Jacob accidentally starts a fire and burns down the
village, so it's go time—so much for waiting for the weather to cool down.
Travis saves the day by running the rope through Zombieville to the gates,
though he also gets himself bitten in the process. Mary slides down the rope to
help him, but he's already on his way to becoming a zombie. Before Mary slices
off his head, he tells her that he'd already been bitten back at the big house,
so he was a dead man either way.
The gang is back to wandering through the Forest,
and by this point everyone's depressed and starving. They come to the end of
the path, and Beth about has a hissy-fit.
Mary leaves everyone in the dust and scoots into
the Forest to find the ocean. The Unconsecrated dogpile her, and she'd be dead,
except that Jed saves her life. Yep—he decided to help her follow her dream.
Unfortunately for him though, he slips off a cliff and dies.
Mary tries to find his body in a raging river, but
falls in and ends up gasping for air on a beach. Turns out the ocean is at the
end of the river (funny how that works). A man comes along and almost cuts off
her head, but she proves she's alive and they end up walking hand-in-hand back
to his lighthouse. The end.
Appreciation:
The
Boy Named Crow (by: Haruki Murakami)
Background
of the Author:
The Biography of Haruki Murakami reveals a life that could be called normal but
under no circumstances uneventful.
Not much about his private life is known (or has
not yet been translated). Unlike most other authors or writer in general he
leads a very healthy life. He quit smoking and started running amongst other
sports when he gave up the Jazz Bar. He is going as far as joining several
marathons per year all over the world.
He did however not leave his deep love to Jazz
music behind and is said to have a record collection of around 40'000 items.
Born in
Kyoto.
Moved to Ashiya (Hyogo Prefecture)
Theater Arts Major Student at Waseda University.
School didn't interest
him much and he spent most of his college days
reading thousands of
filmscripts stocked at the Theater Museum of
Waseda University.
Married his Wife Yoko
Watching a baseballmatch he suddenly had the
inspiration of writing his
first novel.
Opened the Jazz Bar 'Peter Cat' at Kokobunji/Tokyo
Moved the Bar to Sendagaya/Tokyo a quiet
neighberhood of the bustling city.
First novel Hear the Wind sing published. (Part of
the Trilogy of the Rat)
Gunzou Shinjin Sho (Gunzo New Writer Award) for
Hear the Wind sing
Pinball, 1973 published (Part of the Trilogy of
the Rat)
Sold the bar and started to write for a living.
A Wild Sheep Chase published. (Part of the Trilogy
of the Rat)
Noma Bungei Shinjin Sho (Noma Literary Award for
New Writers) for A Wild Sheep Chase
Moved to Fujisawa/Kanagawa Prefecture. A small
city on the shore of the sea about 50km from Tokyo.
Moved to Sendagaya/Tokyo
Hard boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
published
Junichi Tanizaki Award for Hard boiled Wonderland
and the End of the World published
Moved to Oiso/Kanagawa Prefecture.
Travels Rome and Greece
Norwegian Wood published
Moved to Princeton NJ and started as Associate
Researcher at Princeton University
Nominated Associate Professor at Princeton
University
Moved to Santa Ana CA to teach at William Howard
Taft University.
Yomiuri Literary Award for Wind-up Bird Chronicle
Underground published
moved to Oiso/Kanagawa Prefecture
summary of the Story:
In "The Boy Named Crow," a prologue of
sorts, "Kafka" Tamura is preparing to run away from his home in
Tokyo. He talks about his plans with his imaginary companion, Crow. Tomorrow is
Kafka's fifteenth birthday and he has taken a substantial amount of money from
his father, along with his cell phone and hunting knife. Crow warns Kafka that
he can expect many trials on his journey, and he must be the toughest teenager
ever to withstand it.
In Chapter 1, Kafka is planning his escape. He has
been planning to run away for years, and in preparation he has been working
out. He now looks older than his age. He takes a picture of his sister with
him. Kafka's father destroyed all the pictures of his mother when she left,
taking Kafka's...
Appreciation:
Coraline (by: Neil Gaiman)
Background
of the Author:
Neil
Gaiman was born in Hampshire, UK, and now lives in the
United States near Minneapolis. As a child he discovered his love of books,
reading, and stories, devouring the works of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, James
Branch Cabell, Edgar Allan Poe, Michael Moorcock, Ursula K. LeGuin, Gene Wolfe,
and G.K. Chesterton. A self-described "feral child who was raised in
libraries," Gaiman credits librarians with fostering a life-long love of
reading: "I wouldn't be who I am without libraries. I was the sort of kid
who devoured books, and my happiest times as a boy were when I persuaded my
parents to drop me off in the local library on their way to work, and I spent
the day there. I discovered that librarians actually want to help you: they
taught me about interlibrary loans."
summary
of the Story:
Our story starts out when a young lady named
Coraline Jones moves into an apartment in an old house with her parents. Her
neighbors include two elderly retired actresses and a strange man who lives
upstairs and trains mice for a circus act. Despite this weirdness, Coraline is
very bored. Her parents work a lot and they tend to just ignore her.
One day, Coraline discovers a door with a brick
wall behind it. Seems kind of strange, right? But get this: when she opens the
door later, there's a hallway back there. Now that's strange. When Coraline
goes through the door, she ends up in an entirely different world: it's kind of
like her own, but something's a little off. In the other world, Coraline has an
other mother (the beldam), an other father, and other neighbors. And bonus,
cats can talk.
Coraline decides this other world is weird (we
agree) and so she heads back home. But when she arrives, her parents are
missing: the beldam has kidnapped them, and Coraline will have to go back into
the creepy other world to rescue them. Fast forward a bit: and, spoiler alert,
she succeeds! She gets her parents back and, in the meantime, also rescues the
trapped souls of three kidnapped children who have been stuck in the other
world for a long time. Coraline beats the evil beldam, saves the day, and
returns home.
But wait: it's not quite over. It turns out the
other mother's hand has followed Coraline home (it's like Thing on the Addams
Family!). Coraline plays one last trick to trap the other mother's hand in a
deep well. Phew, finally the scariness is over. After all this excitement,
Coraline is ready to start the school year; and boy, is school going to seem
really tame by comparison.
Appreciation:
In this story it is about the child who has a disorder and
her imaginations conquer her it is between the reality and virtual and that lesson
hat will get in this story is that be content to what you have already got.
The Folded Earth (by: Anuradha Roy)
Background
of the Author:
Anuradha Roy
is an actress, known for The Festival (2000), I Love You (2007) and Fish,
Sweets & More (2013). She has been married to Debraj Ray since 1976.
Summary
of the Story:
Late in this quietly mesmerizing novel, set in a
Himalayan hill town in the north of India, Anuradha Roy describes the
crystalline beauty of the peaks in winter, viewed long after the haze of the
summer months and the fog of the monsoon, held in secret for those who choose
to brave the cold: “After the last of the daylight is gone, at dusk, the peaks
still glimmer in the slow-growing darkness as if jagged pieces of the moon had
dropped from sky to earth.” In the mountains, one of Roy’s characters observes,
“love must be tested by adversity.”
It’s the inherent conflict in human attraction —
the inescapable fact that all people remain at heart unknown, even to those
closest to them — that forms the spine of the novel. In marrying a Christian,
the narrator, Maya, has become estranged from her wealthy family in Hyderabad.
But after six happy years together, her husband has died in a mountaineering
accident. Rather than return to her parents, she seeks refuge in Ranikhet, a
town that looks toward the mountains that so entranced her husband. Overcome
with grief, she stows away his backpack, recovered from the scene of the
accident, and refuses to inspect its contents. She can’t bear to know the
details surrounding his death. In Ranikhet, Maya settles into a routine:
teaching at a Christian school; spending time with her landlord, Diwan Sahib;
and observing the sometimes comic rhythms of the village and its army garrison.
Roy manages to capture both the absurd and the sinister in even minor
characters, like a corrupt local official who embarks on a beautification plan
that includes posting exhortatory signs around town. (One, meant to welcome
trekkers, is vandalized to read “Streaking route.”) His crusade, inspired by
the Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who embraced caning as a
punishment, also includes the persecution of a simple-minded but harmless
herder.
Of course, a sedate world exists only to be
shaken, and soon enough the town is disturbed from all sides. An election
brings issues of religion to the fore, threatening to stir sectarian violence.
Curious military maneuvers prompt rumors of Chinese spies and fears of a border
conflict with Pakistan. Diwan Sahib’s nephew, Veer, a mountaineering guide,
moves into the elderly man’s villa, and Maya finds herself drawn to him,
despite the bad habits he encourages in his uncle and, more alarmingly, his
tendency to disappear without warning.
While there are scenes of tension and intrigue — a
political goon attacks a young girl, Veer’s work in the mountains starts to
appear suspicious — the novel’s mood remains elegiac rather than fraught,
expressed through small tragedies like the burning of a valuable manuscript or
the death of a beloved deer. Roy is particularly adept at mining the emotional
intricacies of the relationship between Maya and Diwan Sahib, which also serves
to symbolize India’s uneasy passage from tradition to modernity.
The novel’s one weakness is its culminating
revelation (and its consequences), which feels strangely insignificant, as if
Roy couldn’t bring herself to commit to the more outrageous implications she
has set in motion. “If you told a stranger that there are actually big snow
peaks where that sky is,” a character notes of a day when the Himalayas are
shrouded in clouds, “would he believe you? . . . But you and I know the peaks
are there. We are surrounded by things we don’t know and can’t understand.”
Perhaps Roy prefers to keep the heights of her story, like those mountaintops,
shrouded in mystery.
Appreciation:
The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier and Clay
(by: Michael Chabon)
Background
of the Author:
Novelist, screenwriter, columnist and short story writer Michael Chabon was born May 24, 1963 in
Washington, DC. He grew up in the
suburbs of Columbia, Maryland with his parents Robert, a physician, lawyer, and
hospital administrator, and Sharon, a lawyer. His parents divorced when he was
about 11, and Michael Chabon lived with his mother. He grew up reading comic
books and knew from an early age that he wanted to be a writer. In 1984 he graduated from the University of
Pittsburgh with a degree in English. In
1987, he received a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California
at Irvine. His master's thesis was the
novel, Mysteries of Pittsburgh, a coming-of-age story about a man caught
between romances with a man on one side, a woman on the other, and the shadow
of his gangster father over it all.
Apparently Chabon never intended to publish it but his professor,
thinking it so good, secretly sent the manuscript to an agent. The book not only found a publisher but
Chabon was awarded an advance of $155,000.
At the time this was the highest figure ever paid for a first novel by a
young, unknown fiction writer. The book
was published with a six-figure first printing and earned a place on the
bestseller lists.
Looking back on his early success some years later
(in 2001), Chabon reflected that the "the upside [to my early success] was
that I was published and I got a readership[, the] downside....was that,
emotionally, this stuff started happening and I was still like, 'Wait a minute,
is my thesis done yet?' It took me a few years to catch up. And I was married
at the time to someone else who was also a struggling writer, and the success
created a gross imbalance in our careers, which was problematic."
Chabon's first marriage, to poet Lollie Groth,
ended in 1991. At the time he was
struggling with his sophomore novel called Fountain City. At one point he submitted a 672-page draft to
his editor who disliked it, but Chabon was reluctant to drop the novel as he'd
already signed a contract and half of his advance had gone to his ex-wife. Eventually, he decided to abandon the novel
and, after staring at a blank computer screen for hours, started to writeThe
Wonder Boys, in which an author is hopelessly stuck writing his endless,
shapeless novel He completed The Wonder
Boys in just seven months without telling his agent that he had stopped work on
Fountain City. The Wonder Boys was published
in 1995 and was made into a movie in 2000.
Inspired by Jonathan Yardley's review in The
Washington Post, in which Yardley praised The Wonder Boys but suggested that it
was time that Chabon took "the next step up", Chabon started on The
Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,
the story of two young, Jewish comic book artists in the 1940s that
blended the world of comic books, the impact of World War II and the lives of
his characters. It won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize.
In 2002 he published Summerland, a fantasy novel
for younger readers. In 2004 he
published The Final Solution, a mystery starring an elderly Sherlock Holmes.
Between 1987 and 1990 he published a number of
short stories, mostly in The New Yorker,but also in Gentleman's Quarterly and
Mademoiselle. Some of these are collected in A Model World (1991), a second set
of short stories, Werewolves in their Youth, was published in 1999. Chabon has also written a number of pieces
for DC Comics, and co-wrote the story for Spider-Man 2.
From Jan to May 2007, a 15-part serialized novel,
Gentlemen of the Road, ran in the New York Times Magazine; Chabon describes it
as "a swashbuckling adventure story set around the year 1000". It was
released in book form in 2007. In May 2007 he published The Yiddish Policeman's
Union. In 2012 Telegraph Avenue and in 2016 Moonglow.
Chabon lives in Berkeley, California, with his
wife, novelist Ayelet Waldman, and their four children.
summary
of the Story:
Samuel Klayman is in his Brooklyn bedroom one
night in 1939 when his mother introduces him to his cousin, Josef Kavalier,
newly arrived from Prague, who will be staying with them, having escaped Europe
and the Nazis. Samuel is initially suspicious of Josef, but agrees to try to
help him obtain employment at the company where he works, Empire Novelties.
The son of two Jewish doctors, Josef had become
interested in the art of escape and studied with Bernard Kornblum, a famous
escape artist. To safeguard him, Josef’s parents arranged to send him out of
the country, but he was thrown off the train because of a change in
regulations. In desperation, he begged Kornblum to help him flee. Kornblum had
already contracted to arrange the shipment to Vilna of Rabbi Loew’s golem (a
giant clay man said to come to life to protect Jews) in order to protect it,
and he agreed to secrete Josef with the golem, allowing him to escape.
The morning after Josef’s arrival, Samuel awakes
to find him drawing on a comic panel and is very impressed by his work. Josef
reveals that he studied for two years at Prague’s Academy of Fine Arts. Samuel
asks Josef to draw a portfolio to show his employer, Sheldon Anapol. The
cousins meet with Anapol and propose that they create a new hero similar to
Superman. Anapol agrees to entertain the idea if they can come up with a good
sample comic. They leave to begin work and Samuel reminisces about his father,
the “Mighty Molecule,” a strongman on the vaudeville circuit who abandoned the
family during Samuel’s childhood. He returned when Samuel was a teenager and
promised to take him along on the circuit, but left in the middle of the night
and died soon afterward.
Samuel and Josef go to the apartment where several
of Samuel’s artist friends live; they all begin creating characters for the
sample comic. Samuel and Josef create The Escapist, whose real name is Tom
Mayflower. Mayflower trains with a famous escape artist and takes over his role
as helper of the innocent when the older man is killed. They present their work
to Anapol, suggesting that he start a company called Empire Comics. Anapol
agrees to finance the project, but only if his employee George Deasey is
editor. He asks Josef to change the cover art for the first issue, which shows
The Escapist punching Adolph Hitler. Josef refuses to compromise, feeling that
the anti-Nazi artwork is an important element in his quest to bring attention
to the plight of Jews in Europe. Anapol agrees to let them keep the cover, and
Empire Comics is born.
The Escapist is a huge success, and Anapol becomes
extremely wealthy, while Samuel and Josef earn good salaries. Now known as Joe
Kavalier and Sammy Clay, the team creates many successful characters, with
Samuel writing the stories and Josef providing the art. Josef is continually
trying to get his family out of Prague. He learns that his father has died,
prompting him to consider joining the Canadian air force. Eventually, he
rejects this plan and redoubles his efforts to save his mother and brother.
Distraught, Josef breaks into the office of the
Aryan-American League, run by Carl Ebling, an anti-Semite. Ebling catches him,
but he escapes. Ebling later places a fake bomb in the Empire Comics offices,
prompting an evacuation of the Empire State Building, though Josef refuses to
leave. Deasey, a disillusioned Columbia University graduate who feels comics
are beneath him, but who nevertheless needs the money and admires Josef, warns
the partners that Anapol is selling The Escapist as a radio serial. He advises
them to press Anapol for more money.
Josef begins a relationship with Rosa Saks, whom
he meets at a party given by her father, Longman Harkoo. At Harkoo’s party,
Josef saves Salvador Dali’s life and Samuel witnesses two men kissing
romantically, which surprises and intrigues him. Rosa introduces Josef to
Hermann Hoffman, who runs the Transatlantic Rescue Agency, dedicated to
rescuing Jewish children from Europe. Josef enlists Hoffman’s help in rescuing
his brother Thomas. Josef and Samuel create a new...
Appreciation:
This story is about joe who is jewish
that been scaped from the prague, in this story the jewish could no longer even
ride the streets car, they cant wear caps, and they were not allowed to carry
knapsacks. to compare it in philippines, it has similar to what happen when the
Filipinos are under the conquer and they are making slaves.
The
Thousand Splendid Suns(by: Khaled Hosseini)
Background
of the Author:
Khaled
Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. His
father was a diplomat in the Afghan Foreign Ministry and his mother taught
Farsi and history at a high school in Kabul. In 1976, the Foreign Ministry
relocated the Hosseini family to Paris. They were ready to return to Kabul in
1980, but by then their homeland had witnessed a bloody communist coup and the
invasion of the Soviet Army. The Hosseinis sought and were granted political
asylum in the United States, and in September 1980 moved to San Jose,
California. Hosseini graduated from high school in 1984 and enrolled at Santa
Clara University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1988. The
following year he entered the University of California, San Diego, School of
Medicine, where he earned a medical degree in 1993. He completed his residency
at Cedars-Sinai medical center in Los Angeles and was a practicing internist
between 1996 and 2004.
In March 2001, while practicing medicine, Hosseini
began writing his first novel, The Kite Runner. Published by Riverhead Books in
2003, that debut went on to become an international bestseller and beloved
classic, sold in at least seventy countries and spending more than a hundred
weeks on the New York Timesbestseller list. In May 2007, his second novel, A
Thousand Splendid Suns, debuted at #1 on theNew York Times bestseller list,
remaining in that spot for fifteen weeks and nearly an entire year on the
bestseller list. Together, the two books have sold more than 10 million copies
in the United States and more than 38 million copies worldwide. The Kite Runner
was adapted into a graphic novel of the same name in 2011. Hosseini’s
much-awaited third novel, And the Mountains Echoed, will be published on May
21, 2013.
In 2006, Hosseini was named a Goodwill Envoy to
UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency. Inspired by a trip he made to
Afghanistan with the UNHCR, he later establishedThe Khaled Hosseini Foundation,
a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which provides humanitarian assistance to the people of
Afghanistan. He lives in Northern California.
summary
of the Story:
Mariam lives in the small village of Gul Daman
with her mother. She is the illegitimate daughter of Jalil, a wealthy
businessman who lives in the nearby city of Herat. After her mother's suicide,
she is sent to live with Jalil. Jalil and his wives quickly marry Mariam off to
a shoemaker named Rasheed, and the newlyweds move to Kabul, where Mariam
becomes pregnant. Sadly, Mariam miscarries. Rasheed is furious and becomes
abusive.
Across Kabul (and in a galaxy far, far away…) a
girl named Laila is born on the same night that the Soviets take control of
Afghanistan. Her best friend (and love interest) is Tariq, a neighborhood boy
who lost a leg when he was a child. With the war worsening, Tariq's family
decides to leave for Pakistan, and he and Laila consummate their relationship
the night before he leaves. Laila's family decides to leave soon after, but her
parents are killed by a stray rocket as they're packing up the car.
Rasheed and Mariam care for Laila as she recovers.
A man comes by and tells Laila that he saw Tariq die in a hospital. Rasheed,
being the dirt ball that he is, uses this as an opportunity to ask Laila to
marry him. Surprisingly, she says yes. It turns out that she's pregnant with
Tariq's child. Her plan is to convince Rasheed that the child is his, and then
escape to Pakistan after she's saved enough money.
Mariam resents Laila at first, but she eventually
becomes close to Laila and her new daughter, Aziza. Laila tells Mariam about
her plan to escape, and Mariam decides to join them. They eventually go through
with the plan, but they're arrested before they can leave and are sent home
with Rasheed. He is so furious that he almost kills them.
Laila and Rasheed have a son named Zalmai. After
Rasheed's shop burns to the ground and the family goes broke, he forces Laila
to send Aziza to a nearby orphanage. One day, after visiting Aziza, Laila
returns home to find a very surprising guest: it's Tariq. It turns out the man
who had come by all those years ago was hired by Rasheed to trick Laila. Laila
tells Tariq about Aziza, and he promises that he will meet her the following
day.
Rasheed starts to beat Laila that night when he
finds out about Tariq. Mariam ends up killing Rasheed to protect Laila. Mariam
remains in Kabul to take the blame and is executed by the Taliban. Laila,
Tariq, and the kids move to Tariq's home in Murree, where life is comfortable.
After the U.S. invasion, however, Laila decides to return to Kabul.
Before returning home, Laila stops in Herat,
Mariam's hometown. She visits Mariam's childhood home, and receives a box for
the local Mullah's son that was meant for Mariam. It's from her father Jalil.
It contains a long letter, as well as her share of his inheritance. Laila uses
the money to renovate the orphanage in Kabul, and we learn at the close of the
book that she is pregnant with a new child.
Appreciation:
I really appreciate this story because it has a values
and when you read it, it can entertain you. Even its came from turkey
other Filipino will going to relate in this stories. because in
Philippines there are lots of religions and different people
to encounter.
The
Silence of Snow ( Orhan Pamuk)
Background
of the Author:
Orhan
Pamuk Born June 7, 1952, in Istanbul, Turkey; married
Aylin Tofajjal Turegen, 1982 (divorced, 2001); children: Ruya (daughter).
Education: Earned degree in journalism from Robert College; studied
architecture at Istanbul Technical College; received degree from University of
Istanbul, Institute of Journalism, 1976.
summary
of the Story:
Snow is set in the small Turkish town of Kars,
isolated from the rest of the world for three days by a snowstorm. The plot of
the novel is as intricate and symmetrical as the pattern of a snowflake. At the
beginning, the center of this rigid form is occupied by the poet Ka, short for
Kerim Alakuþoðlu, who arrives in Kars seeking Ýpek, a woman on whom he had a
crush many years before. Unfortunately, he finds himself not only cut off from
the outside world by the snowstorm but also by a military coup (and
increasingly by his own self-destructiveness). In the isolated town, much as
with a snowflake, the structure is rigid, with every person and group balanced
and even paralyzed by their opposites. At the center of all this stand Ka and
later “Orhan,” the narrator, who plays an increasingly larger role, eventually
taking the place of the murdered Ka so far as to fall in love with Ýpek.
At the start of the novel, Ka, who had returned to
Turkey to attend his mother's funeral, travels to the remote town of Kars.
Though seeking to court Ýpek, a love from his youth, he claims to be
investigating a series of suicides among girls who refused the secular
government's order to remove their religious head scarves in school.
No two characters agree about the motivation of
the girls or even the truth of the reports. Some see faith as the motive,
others the oppressed condition of women. Still others believe that the stories
of these suicides are lies circulated by enemies of Islam. One girl still
wearing a head scarf in protest says, “[A] suicide wish is a wish for
innocence,” even though suicide goes against the teachings of the Qurān. In
this, as in so much else in the novel, people believe what they need to
believe, while not affording the same liberty to others. Similarly, the
citizens of the town have developed such a mistrust of government
pronouncements that they do not even believe weather reports. In so rigid a
society, those who seek the freedom to act as they wish, to wear the head scarf
or not, for instance, allow no one else free choices.
At first, Ka feels taken back to his own childhood
and its purity, but this innocence is as quickly muddied as fresh snow. Though
claiming to having discovered faith, Ka enters a life of duplicity to win
Ýpek's love and convince her to leave with him. Moreover, he is unable to
prevent the betrayal that will cost him his own happiness and, after his return
to Europe, his life. Willing to say anything to get what he wants, Ka is a
pathetic hero, becoming more infantile over the course of the novel. Ever more
dependent on Ýpek, he demands her total love the way a child would from his
mother. Refused, he falls apart, as a child would, becoming rageful and finally
murderous.
Most of the novel's characters find themselves in
similar predicaments. Wanting something certain and pure, they have already
been disappointed and are far from innocent themselves. Social pressures
exacerbate the situation, undermining not just individual freedoms but also the
ties binding couples together. The bonds at the heart of lasting relationships
lie not between husbands and wives but among family members. Ka wants a dead
mother's love, while Ýpek cares most for her father. Likewise, what attracts
her to Blue, as the reader later learns, is not just Blue himself but a rivalry
with her sister Kadife.
Ka attempts to circumvent all this through
writing. Tormented by his unfulfilled passion and pressured by the events
unfolding around him, Ka writes twenty poems that delineate the structure of a
snowflake at the same time that the structure inspires the poems (and the
novel). However, only nineteen poems are actually written down, and these are
later stolen by Ka's assassin in Germany. The twentieth poem Ka extemporizes
onstage during the town's first televised variety show just before it erupts
into violence connected to a military coup. He needs this last poem to feel
whole, but he can never return to Kars because of his guilt.
One true innocent, however, is Necip, struggling
with the doubt that possesses him whenever he tries to articulate his faith or
form bonds of love and friendship. “If you can’t put your trust in people,...
Appreciation:
