Sense and Sensiblity and Sea Monsters by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters 2009

Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters puts a new spin on Jane Austen's classic. The Dashwood sisters grow up in the time of the Alteration, where all of the creatures of the sea have turned against humans and mutations have caused mermaids, seawitches and sea monsters to form. It is my opinion that the monsters make the satire much funnier and ridiculous. Upon the insult to her eldest daughter Elinor, Mrs. Dashwood decides to move their family out of the house belonging to their relations, to a seaside shack on the island chain of the Devonshire coast, the most feared in all of Britain. Later the extremity is shown again when the Dashwoods are visited by their landlord and cousin, Sir John, his wife (a captured island princesses), and their son. A quote given states that, "On every formal visit a child ought to be of party, by way of discourse, or in extreme cases, if someone needs be thrown overboard to satisfy the piranhas trailing the boat." Later, when Edward, the flame of Elinor, does not visit her sister, Marianne, confides to her mother that she believes he must have met a horrible fate with a sea monster, and can fathom no other reason why he has not visited already.
The absurdity of the book and it's situations do wonderfully to complement Jane Austen's satire, exspecially for someone such as myself who takes everything I read far too literally. I can't wait to keep reading.

#3 Dave Barry Talks Back by Dave Barry 1991

In one article Dave Barry admits to his readers that he is a really "big weenie". Every time he sees something scary, there is a part of him that convinces himself that it is possible. Once as a teenager he was so scared after seeing a scary movie that his date had to drive him home.
I have to say, it came as a very big relief that I am not the only (or the biggest) weenie in this world. Take just yesterday for example: I watched a movie on the sci-fi channel called Abominable. As you probably can guess, it was about the abominable snowman preying upon unsuspecting mountain tourists. I spent most of the time laughing at the majorly flawed plot line and downright stupid effects. They made no effort to make the blood not look like makeup, and I have a very high suspicion that they stole the Ewok masks off the set of StarWars to make their ambominable snowman costume. And yet despite all of that, I had to convice myself that the snowman was stupid, not real, and even if it was, what would it be doing in the middle of the city, at my house? I felt really stupid. But listening to Dave Barry having to convince himself the same thing about the Brainsucker, I felt a little more comforted in the fact that I am not alone.

(P.S. I am sorry to note that I have finished with Dave Berry's fabulous book, and I hope to read more from him to come)

#2 Dave Barry Talks Back by Dave Barry 1991

At one point, Dave lets lose on the police. They pulled him over one day because his registration had expired to write him a ticket on the side of the road "to avoid getting hit by the steady stream of unlicensed and uninsured motorists driving their stolen cars with their left hands so their right hands would be free to keep their pit bulls from spilling their cocaine all over their machine guns. Not that I'm bitter."
I share some of this same resentment towards roadside policemen. Once I was driving with my father when he spotted a state trooper car. We both glanced at the speedometer and found to our relief that we were going the speed limit. In addition, my father's radar did not go off, so we knew he didn't try to read us. But of course he pulled us over anyway, and had the gall to lie and said we were going over the speed limit. And that is not the worst of my police expirences.
Once when I was really little while I was at my grandmothers house, I fell and hit my head on a brick. We were an hour away from the nearest hospital, so my grandmother (who had not even dared to go past the speed limit) put on her emergency lights, which she mistakenly believed they were for. About ten minutes from the hospital, we were pulled over. My grandmother explained our situation, and instead of giving us a police escourt, like any SANE person would have done, told her to call an ambulence if I needed it that bad. (Hello? She just told you we lived an hour away!!) He let us off with a warning, but stopped us again to tell us her emergency lights were still on. I needed eight stiches to the head, and he still stopped us a second time!
I salute Dave, who immediatly after he got out of traffic court, made an illegal u-turn. Stick it to the man, Dave, stick it to the man.

Dave Barry Talks Back by Dave Barry 1991

Upon first reading Dave Barry's book, I did not think that I liked it very much. This is because it made me feel like the time someone told my friends and I if you said the word "gullible" really slowly it would sound like you had said "green beans". So of course my friends and I all start saying, "gu-ll-ib-le...", only to smack ourselves on our foreheads two seconds later. I couldn't ever figure out if Dave Barry was making fun of ludicrous claims and ideas, or if he was making the whole thing up. No one would really ever be stupid enough to blow up a whale, would they? To answer myself: Yes, yes they would. (I looked up the video on You Tube.) Once I figured out that all of his topics were real (sort of) I could enjoy his humor, laughing with him at the rest of the world and their ridiculous stories. Silly, silly world...
Dave seems particularly interested in things that blow up, whale carcases being only one example. He also studies spontaneous combustive cows, pigs, snails, toliets, and potatoes. He is very intregued by the subject and suggest we stay away from all objects until the matter is resolved. I think everyone should try and follow his suggestion. This is a very serious matter, and we need to heed him.

To see exploding whale video, click HERE

# 6 East of Eden John Steinbeck 1952

Today I finished East of Eden and I have to say, the book did not disappoint. Although admittedly I did bang the book against the table because I was so angry. I should have seen it coming. I know the story of Cain and Able, and I should have seen where it was going. (WARNING, the next few sentences are a spoiler for those who have not read the book) Adam Trask was the one who really made me angry. He was so proud of Aron for choosing to finish school early and go to college, and Cal wanted to make his father proud too. Instead of going the same path Aron did, he made a fortune in business and presented the money to his father. His father would not take it, claiming that rightfully belonged to the farmers who grew the crop that Cal got rich off of, and told Cal that a real gift would have been going to college like Aron had. In addition to being unforgivably rude, Aron was not even worthy of his fathers compliment. He confessed to Cal earlier that day that he did not want to return to college, and would rather settle down on a ranch. It hurt Cal vary much, and jealousy drove him to hurt his brother in the only way he could: introducing him to their mother. Aron went into a fit of rage, and ended up running away to be a soldier in the war, where he ended up dying.
But unlike in the Bible, this story has somewhat of a happier ending. Even though Adam Trask has a stroke afterward and can do very little, he forgives Cal and gives him his blessing. The last word he said was of great significance to the book. Timshel- Thou mayest. When put in the context it is used in the Bible, it is saying that you may serve the Lord, and that you do not have to. You are free to do as you will. With it, he set Cal free.

#5 East of Eden John Steinbeck 1952

At one point in my book, Aron goes away to college, leaving his family and his girlfriend, Abra, behind. While he was away he became more in love with Abra than he had certainly ever shown before. He wrote notes, composed poems, and could not wait to return to her again. It reminds me of a saying I have heard before that goes "absence makes the heart grow fonder." I happen to be a believer of this truth. Almost my entire family lives in South Carolina, and although I do not get to see them often, I have several cousins that are as close to me as sisters. (108) Both my father and two of my younger siblings also live in South Carolina, and we have a wonderful relationship together that we might have taken for granted if they had lived closer.
The one problem where the story is concerned, however, is that Abra believes he is building her up far too much. He only sees what he wants her to be, pure, young, and beautiful with no flaws. She becomes frightened that when he comes back and rediscovers these flaws he will no longer love her as much. Aron is doing the same thing to Abra that is father before him did to Cathy. He is blinding himself by his fantastical vision and is unable to see what is really there. I wonder if Stienbeck made that analogy on purpose, to illustrate how much like his father Aron really is. If this is the case, I believe Aron will react in a similar way of his father when he finds out who his mother really is.

#4 East of Eden John Steinbeck 1952

Recently in the book, Cal confronted his mother, Cathy. He had been following her for a long time, and when she called him out on it he explained who he was and why he was following her. I have to say that this revelation came as a bit of a relief to me. I was afraid that at one point one of the boys might have gone to the whore house she owned and accidentally... well, you get the idea. But now, Cathy has been following Aron around, as now he is the only one of her sons that she has not met. My new theory is that Aron will finally learn of the truth from her and make the discovery that much more painful. His own father and loving brother kept this from him, while his lying, runaway mother would have told him the truth. It is bound to stir up more family trouble than it would have had Adam or Cal told him in the first place.
I'm going to get a little off topic now, going back to the beginning of the book. Both Cathy and Adam's brother, Charles both had marks on their foreheads, bruises that they had acquired that never went away. These characters were the two that were the most corrupt, and I knew it must have been symbolic for something, I just never knew what. Now, I am more certian of just what that is. When Cain killed his brother Able, God banished him, but marked him so that none may kill him. He was forced to wander alone forever. Charles and Cathy were marked the same way. Both of them lived solitary and very lonely lives.