A Little More About Me

Okay so someone (my boyfriend, Mr. T) has suggested that I try to write something about my life so this is my first attempt.

I am the assistant manager at a convenience store which my grandparents own. It is one of two; the other one my mother manages. I love my job very much sometimes and not so much at others. I enjoy my interactions with my customers; we have regulars just like any other business, but ours are there at the very least once a day usually two or three times. They make TV shows about restaurants and bars but they have nothing on our stores. Some days with the general public wear you down, but its the days where you get to touch peoples lives that make it all worth it. I love having an ongoing joke or a little argument. Sometimes you harass someone and its the special attention they get from you when you're giving them a hard time about their drink choice or their silly Velcro wallet that keeps them coming back. Its just always awkward when you run into them outside of work and they call out "Hey, Jesse! How are you?" and I'm all "Heeeey . . . . . . . .!" Sometimes I think life would be a little easier if everyone had on name tags.

I started this blog because I love to read sci-fi and fantasy books. It all began with a very well known book series about a wizard named Harry Potter. I was in fourth grade when I first heard about him; on Halloween a kid who lived down the street was dressed in a black robe and holding a short thin stick. His mother had drawn a lightening bolt scar on his forehead and I remember asking him rather rudely "What are you supposed to be?".  By the end of fifth grade I had read books one through four several times over and was eagerly awaiting book five. This is a picture of my first copy of book four:

 

 

I was hooked. I was Hermione Granger for the next three Halloweens. I went to all the midnight releases for the last three books and all eight movies.

 

My interests range from Greek mythology to aliens to magic.

 



My absolute favorite author is Orson Scott Card. I love the voices and personalities he creates. you want to get to know these people, be their friend. You want to join right in and help them in whatever adventure they have been roped into. 

Sphere - By Michael Crichton

Before you read:


This is a great book if you are looking for adventure, action, mystery, suspense and psychology. Odd mix, I know; but somehow it all fits together nicely. This book starts with Dr. Norman Johnson, professor of psychology, being flown out into the Pacific Ocean in a Navy helicopter. In the past the FAA has had Norman visit plane crash sites to help ease the anxiety and guilt survivors experience after the such traumatic events. At first Norman assumes that this is just another plane crash but quickly finds out otherwise. A few interesting tid-bits about Norman are that the U.S. government has commissioned him to write up a contingency plan in case of a visit or invasion by extra terrestrials (foreshadowing) and that his specialty is group dynamics and anxiety (more foreshadowing). This is a great book for teens and its fairly short, I finished it in roughly 10 hours, so I believe it would make a good book report.


After you read (Spoiler Alert):


What I loved about this book is that there were so many twists and turns and you really didn't know what to expect next. Norman is the voice of reason all the way through and though he has a few moments of doubt he stays true to himself. I hate to see a character die, lots of characters die in this book. I always hope for a happy ending, so when a story ends on a sad note it takes me a few days to get over the injury and love the book for its depth.

Now lets talk about Ted. Ted is that guy that you like but at the same time he drives you nuts. I thought he was a very full character, interesting and intricate. The references to his boyishness make you think of him as innocent and show that his intentions are good. Then he confides in Norman about how he is afraid of not making it into the history books and you finally understand his juvenile behavior. He is clinging to youth because he feels time slipping away and he hasn't really accomplished anything in the scientific world yet. You end up rooting for him even though he is obnoxious.

Harry's turn now. The twist with Jerry is misspelled Harry was awesome! Like most of this book, you didn't see it coming. When Norman was decoding the original message from Jerry I thought that there would be a secret message entirely different from the one Harry delivered. I loved how such a big clue the one wrong letter was. Crichton used the chip on Harry's shoulder wonderfully, it really brought some internal strife to the group.

Beth was another big character who rounded out the dynamics of the group. Throwing her psyche into the mix was a good touch. I felt bad that she had the credit for her work stolen from her; it made you like her in spite of her being such a big monster in the end.

Ah the end! Norman proves that humanity can triumph over our cowardly flight response and gives you hope for the human race! Then they decide to forget the whole thing! Except you never really know if Beth gave her powers up. then there is the little tid bit of the officers outside the decompression chamber becoming attentive and Beth is still beautiful. It makes you really wonder what happens next. Does the military buy their explanation? Is the sphere ever used again? Who created it? Humans or aliens? You are left with a flood of questions. Perhaps the most relevant one of all is the question as to whether the subconscious mind can ever me mastered.

I had never really heard about Michael Crichton until about a week ago; a good friend who shares a favorite author referred me. Crichton has written many famous books including The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, and The Lost World; all which have been made into motion pictures. I plan on reading many more of his books since this one was so rewarding.

Pathfinder - By Orson Scott Card

Before you read:

 

This is a great book to read if you like mystery, revolution, science fiction and a little fantasy; Orson Scott Card knows just how to mix it all together without being obvious. All of the chapters start out with a short clip of what seems to be another story about a boy on a colony starship that is manned by androids, and the bulk of the book is about another boy named Rigg who is in a setting that seems to be more like Earth's 1800s. You are left wondering for quite some time what these two very different situations have to do with one another. All of the characters are unique and have heart. I love this book because as always Orson Scott Card explains the science to you.

Pathfinder is the first book of a saga and it promises to be very interesting.

 

After you read(Spoiler Alert):

 

After reading this book I cant wait to get my hands on the next one and see what everyone does next. The expendables are an unknown variable throughout the entire book. You begin by trusting them because they serve Ram and seem to be your normal everyday garden variety android but then you throw in the 16 Rams and they instantly annihilate 15 of them. For a minute you are left with a what the hell feeling, then everything is explained to you and you understand the necessity. Then you are left thinking about Ram and how he ordered the expendables to kill the other Rams and the only reason they obeyed the one Ram was because he didn’t say immediately like the others, so his sentence ended before theirs. Talk about close call.

I love Rigg because he as so many skills. And he is one of those altruistic individuals. I think that’s why I like Orson Scott Card books, because the main characters are all innately good people who are given these huge challenges to overcome. Rigg and the rest of the gang managed to escape the city and make it to the border; and the way they get through is ingenious, creative and inventive! Of course they had to be to cross such a loathsome but effective wall. I love the time traveling and how it takes more than some silly machine to do it, it takes practice and skill. And it was so interesting the way Param's skills worked, Mr. Card how the hell did you come up with that?!?!

The idea to make 16 different colonies and let the 16 hopefully different cultures develop was magnificent. I cant help but wonder if the people in the other colony sections have stayed the same and only the cultures are different or if they have mutated in some way as well. Or if by some accident of human nature and biology the people are identical and managed to marry the same people as the people in the other colonies. But even if it started out that way it would probably stray after time because of accidental deaths. Or I wonder if the expendables would kill the same genetic match in the other colonies to keep them all the same for some sort of experiment. Now my imagination is running away with me, I better stop while I'm ahead.

In summary this was a very intriguing book and I cannot wait to get my hands on the next one and find out what has happened in all the other colonies.

The Time Machine - H. G. Wells

Before you read:

I thought I’d start with abook well known and part of the beginning of the Sci-Fi and Fantasy scene. Thisbook moves fairly slowly as most books of its era, but it is well worth the wait. H. G Wells infuses his story with beautiful scenery and an intriguing mystery. It is a story about a man who builds a time machine and travels to 802,701 A.D. where he comes across the Eloi and the Morlocks, the beings that inhabit future earth. The man, who is referred to as the Time Traveler, ends uplosing his time machine and has to fight to get it back. One of the reasons I love this book is because contrary to popular time travel books and movies, the main character’s purpose is not to change the past or use the future to make himself rich or well off; his is an innocent exploration of scientific inquiry. I also love this book because it makes me think and challenges my own idea of the future.

After you read (SPOILER ALERT!): 

It blows my mind to thinkthat when this book was written, nothing like it had ever been written before.  While I was reading it, I imagined the time machine to be just like the collectable time machine that the guys on the TV show Big Bang Theory bought and shared. Come to find out it was actually a portrayal of the time machine I was reading about. After I finished reading the book, I went back and watched the episode of Big Bang Theory and found it five times funnier when Sheldon was dreaming while asleep in the time machine and the white apes with glowing eyes wearing jumpsuits labeling them as “Hungry Morlocks” attacked him.

The difference between the two races, The Eloi and Morlocks, is interesting. In our society now days I have a hard time imagining that humans would ever separate out into two verydifferent races, but after a bit of thought I realized that when this book was written (1895) the classes were much more separated, so it was much easier to conceive a world where they had grown so far apart. I find it a bit horrifying that the Morlocks feed and take care of the Eloi just to eat them later, but I suppose that is what humans do right now so . . . .

I wasa bit frustrated when the Time Traveler loses Weena, I hate when an innocent character dies, but I guess it gives the story more depth and evokes emotion so I suppose it was necessary to make the story as good as it is.