Animal Farm (middle)

I am halfway through Animal Farm by George Orwell.  And it only took me one day!  But on a more serious note, this book is actually very good.  Before I started reading the book, I thought it would be boring, but it is not in the slightest.  While there is not a ton of action, it is very interesting to see the way the characters develop and continue to try to make the correlation between the farm and Stalinist Russia.  I am constantly trying to see the relationship and I can see it very clearly.  I am also making the connection between the farm and events that have happened more recently, namely Syria and Egypt.  While these comparisons are not as direct and accurate as the one with Russia, they still provide an interesting perspective on the events that are occurring in the novel.
My favorite character in the novel so far has been Snowball, an obvious choice. What basically happened in the first half of the book is that animals on a farm revolted against their owners and created a new society of only animals.  Snowball became the natural leader and instituted good policies through mainly communism.  All of the animals enjoyed it and the societal improvements made by Snowball were huge.  However, Snowball was kicked out of his kingdom by Napoleon, who is the obvious antagonist.  He provides the reasoning behind the fall of communism and the prosperity of the animals. 
One thing that I think this book shows perfectly is how, if done right and in small groups, communism can be the best hing for a society.  During the "golden age" of the farm, communism is soaring and leading to a great life for all of the animals.  However, later in the story, the novel explains why communism is terrible in practice (although great in theory) and the reasoning behind the fall of communism.  This all starts with the danger of a naive working class.  Besides the pigs (Snowball, Napoleon, the smartest of the animals), no animal is educated.  They simply do what the leader tells them to.  Now, this works in communism when there is a great leader because then he has a loyal, reliable workforce, but when there is a bad leader, the animals cannot rebel and they now have to suffer.  Even when the animals feel like something is wrong with the leadership, they still do not do anything about it. At one point in the novel, Squealer (Napoleon's assistant) has clearly lied, but "[Squealer] repeated a number of times, 'Tactics, comrades, tactics!" skipping around and whisking his tail with a merry laugh.  The animals were not certain what the word meant, but  Squealer spoke so persuasively, and the three dogs who happened to be with him growled so threateningly, that they accepted his explanation without further questions" (Orwell 58).  Since the animals were so gullible and loyal, they just accepted a flawed explanation.  This leads to the destruction of the farm (or so I predict).

Animal Farm (beginning)

For my classic novel, I have chosen to read Animal Farm by George Orwell.  I have never read this book before, but I know many people who have, and they all said it was pretty good.  Now, I have tempered my expectations because it is an old book (although I thoroughly enjoyed the Catcher in the Rye even though I expected to be bored with it) and they are generally not appealing to me.  My mom told me that she does remember details about reading Animal Farm, but she remembers enjoying it.  She mentioned something about the book being a metaphor for communism.  On the back cover of the book, it states, "When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target" so I think that communism is definitely going to be a theme in the novel.  I truly do not know what to expect from the book in terms of the literal meaning.  Obviously it is placed on a farm, but besides that I am not entirely sure.  I do not know if the animals actually come to life and talk to humans, or if they only do it at night (a la Toy Story).  Hopefully there is some action involved to keep my attention, but then again, the major themes seem to be interesting enough.  I am expecting this book to be include very deep meanings with pointless literal meanings. I think my opinion of the book will correspond with how interesting Orwell makes the writing.  I hope it will be a fun book to read.

Blink (end)

Sadly, I am finished reading the novel Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.  I say sadly because this was such an amazing and fascinating book that I am very sorry to be finished with it.  The main reason I loved this book was because Gladwell took very advanced and sophisticated ideas and transformed them into something that I could easily understand and relate to.  I am aware that some people criticize Gladwell because of that very fact.  They say that he over-simplifies scientific work and it is not a good thing.  I disagree.  Gladwell intended this book for a general audience so that they could understand some complex ideas.  If his audience was supposed to be people highly-educated in the science department, then it is a different story, but his simplification was a strong point of this novel.
After reading, I am very tempted to read another one of his books (either The Tipping Point or Outliers) and there is a good chance that I will for one of my free choice novels.  Like I said before I started reading this book, I have read The Sports Gene by David Epstein which is a similar genre.  However, Blink was a lot better by my standards.  The Sports Gene was harder to understand, but that is to be expected.  Let me explain, The Sports Gene has a lot more to do with science and complex things like heredity.  I have absolutely no background in heredity so that made the book a thousand times more difficult to read.  Blink, on the other hand, is about the snap judgments that we make all the time.  In a way, it is common sense because we do it constantly.  Gladwell does not explore the science aspect of this (thank God), but rather he looks into the social parts of this phenomenon.
I found a Q and A with Gladwell about the novel.  Take a look at it: http://gladwell.com/blink/blink-q-and-a-with-malcolm/
The answer that I found most surprising and intriguing was what gave him the idea for Blink.  I thought it was crazy, but logical, that the reason he thought of this idea was because he was a victim of thin-slicing gone wrong.  It brought me to a new perspective, and made me think about how I personally got thin-sliced.  I am still trying to think about examples, but nothing stands out to me.  I do know, however, that it happens all the time, but we are not always aware of it.
This is a podcast by NPR with Malcolm Gladwell and Allison Keyes: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4280562
This podcast did not really teach me anything new that he did not go over in his book, but it reinforced the amazing ideas that he discovered and put into a great novel.  If you have not read the book, I definitely recommend listening to this podcast, and then reading the book!

Blink (middle)

I have now read half of the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.  I am going to be honest.  Before I started reading the book, I thought it would be somewhat interesting, but very dull, boring, and a long read.  I was almost completely wrong.  Blink is a masterpiece!  It is the most fascinating book I have read and was extremely fun to read.  It was absolutely insane to learn about the studies done and information available about the human brain.  The main concept of the book is about something called "thin-slicing".  Think about this as snap judgments.  It is when we take a tiny sliver of information about someone, or something, and make assumptions and decision based on those observations.  Surprisingly, a human's thin slicing ability is extremely accurate, and, in many cases, more accurate than learning all about something and gathering as much information as possible.  This entire book is basically an account of unbelievable studies with crazy implications.  One of my favorite examples is about Millennium Challenge, a "war game" that was supposed to become the way war would be fought in the future.  It was a simulation war with real commanders, leaders, and generals (if you've read Ender's Game it is like the battle room).  There are two teams: red and blue.  The blue team was "given greater intellectual resources than perhaps any army in history" (Gladwell 105).  Basically, it new everything it needed to about the red army, besides what they are thinking.  The blue team also had far superior weapons, personnel, and resources.  The red team had basically nothing, however, their commander was someone by the name Paul Van Riper. Van Riper had a reputation as being on of the best generals in the military because he acted on instinct and thin-sliced every opportunity he got.  During the Millennium Challenge, Van Riper launched a surprise attack because he thin-sliced the situation and acted on instinct.  This surprise attack destroyed half of the blue team's ships, biggest cruisers, 5 of 6 amphibious ships and, most importantly, showed that superior knowledge does not necessarily correlate with success.  This proved the point that it is sometimes better to act on instinct and thin-slicing rather than well thought out decisions.
I really enjoy this book not only because of the interesting topics, but also because Gladwell writes in a way that is easy to understand while still conveying a complex idea.  It is the perfect balance between slang and jargon that no average person would understand.  It is truly a wonderful book.

Blink (beginning)

My choice for my non-fiction novel is Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.  Gladwell may be best known for his book Outliers, but I have not read that book or any other books by him.  According to many sources, he is a fantastic author with fantastic research and his books are extremely interesting to read.  I have only read one other novel truly in this category of literature.  That book was The Sports Gene by David Epstein.  That novel is expands upon the 10,000 hours rule that Gladwell explains in Outliers but focuses only on sports aspects.  It was a very cool book to read and I learned a ton of new information.  I expect great things from Blink. A couple of friends told me to read it and they said it was amazing.  The subtitle of the book is "The Power of Thinking Without Thinking".  I assume that this book  is about snap judgments and what goes on subconsciously in the human brain.  With a bit of quick research, I am in fact correct.  I think I will learn a ton of new information about the human brain, as well as have an enjoyable time reading it.  I am very excited to finally read the book that I have been told is so fascinating.

The Bean Trees (end)

I have just finished reading the novel The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver and I found it to be amazing.  In the midway review of the book, I said that the story was slow and it was only an average book.  The second half of the book turned out to be great, however.  The plot developed a lot more and there was action involved.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel.  The book was incredibly satisfying to read because the novel goes full circle.  In the beginning, Taylor moves out of Kentucky and has to drive all the way to Tucson, Arizona.  Along the way, she picks up her now daughter, Turtle.  In her initial journey to Arizona, she is constantly complaining about how the road is very flat and it is a terrible time.  However, at the end of the book, she goes back to Oklahoma (where she received Turtle) in order to gain legal custody of Turtle.  She achieves this goal and then has to go back to Tucson, obviously.  This time on the road to Arizona, Taylor is happy and enjoys being on the road.  The book states, "We had cleared Oklahoma City and were out on the plain before sundown.  It felt like old times, heading into the low western horizon" (Kingsolver 232).  In gained much satisfaction in knowing that everything was going to be alright with this family that the reader truly understands.  At the end of the reading, I couldn't help but have a smile on my face and genuinely felt like I fulfilled a goal.
I want to talk a little bit about the story structure.  Like I said earlier, the beginning of the book was very slow and a little bit tedious to read.  However, the end of the book was really interesting and I could not stop reading.  I think the exposition was a little bit too long and the inciting moment does not really occur until around the midpoint of the novel.  The rising action was very good, but it was cut a little bit short because of the length of the exposition.  The climax occurred towards the very end of the story, with maybe 15 pages afterwards.  The falling action was very satisfying because it achieved the goal of unraveling the story without being boring.  I think the story structure looks something like this:

 

If I were to talk about the story structure as Kurt Vonnegut would describe it, I think it would be something along the lines of this:

The story starts off with Taylor in a poor, poverty-stricken Kentucky neighborhood where she hates it.  Then, things get worse when she decides to leave Kentucky and hates the road even more.  She starts to think she may regret leaving.  But things get better, quickly.  She then receives Turtle, her joy in life, and finds her six best friends.  She is living happily in Tucson, until two of her friends, illegal immigrants, must go to Oklahoma in order to not be captured by border patrol.  She drives then there, and feels extremely sad and depressed.  But, this trip was not all bad.  She legally adopts turtle and returns to Tucson with a heart of happiness and fulfillment.

 

The Bean Trees (middle)

I am now officially halfway through The Bean Trees! Hooray! This book has been decent, so far.  I don't know if I would call it great, but it is enjoyable enough to read.  It is probably a 6 or 7 out of 10.  One main thing I noticed throughout the first half of the novel was the way in which Barbara Kingsolver writes.  It seems so elegant and fluid, although it is still easy to comprehend.  It mixes poetry with the common tongue and makes for a delightful read.  An example of this nice language is in the chapter How the Eat in Heaven.  Kingsolver writes, "Mrs. Parsons had on a churchy-looking dress and a small, flat white hat with a dusty velveteen bow" (Kingsolver 103).  I think it is very cool how Kingsolver uses the words "churchy-looking" while still maintaining a professional dialogue.  She engages me with her use of adjectives and sentence structure.  The main trouble I have with this book is the lack of action.  The plot so far is of a country girl name Taylor that moves to Tucson, Arizona and adopts a native-american girl named Turtle.  She rooms with a woman named Lou Ann.  Lou Ann also has a small child and they befriend a delightful woman named Mattie.  It is a story about friendship and growth, but it is not particularly exciting.  One theme that I believed to be common throughout the novel was gender equality.  This story takes place in the late 1980's, so women supposedly have equal rights, but this story sheds light on the true information in American culture.  In the beginning of the novel, Kingsolver makes it clear that being a woman is much harder than being a man.  The book states, "The Indian child was a girl.  A girl, poor thing.  That fact had already burdened her short life with a kind of misery that I could not imagine" (Kingsolver 23).  Being a woman is very tough in this society, as made clear by the narrator, Taylor.  Kingsolver is making the statement that the girl is symbolic of women in general and how much harder being is woman is than a man.