Literature of Horror, Fantasy, Sci Fi

  This week, I read The Night Circus  by Erin Morgenstern.  This was by far my favorite story I've read in this class, and may have even made its way up there on the list of my favorite novels.   I'm a huge Stephen King fan, and therefor one can deduct that I'm a big fan of description.  This book had a ton of description, and I really appreciated that.  With this lengthy description came an abundance of imagery.  The imagery in this book was so intense, I really felt like I was immersed in the story.  I felt like I could walk inside the entrance of the circus, smell the popcorn, and see only in black and white with flashes of red splashed in.  It's rare that I find a story's setting more fascinating to me than the characters, but this story actually accomplished that.    Although the idea of a mysterious circus that only comes at night is fascinating, it would be nothing without the characters.  Celia and Marco were interest...

  This week I read The Hobbit , which is surprisingly the first experience I've ever had with this story.  I'm a film student, and we have been taught year after year the Hero's Journey.  And, much like other fantasy/sci-fi stories (such as Star Wars ), this novel really followed it to a t.   The first step in A Hero's Journey is The Ordinary World .  In The Hobbit, this is fairly simple: Bilbo Baggins is perfectly happy in his little Hobbit home in The Shire, eating and socializing with others who enjoy their relaxed and predictable lifestyle.  The Call to Adventure  is when Gandalf approaches Bilbo with a quest.  The Refusal of the Call  is when Bilbo is apprehensive about going on the adventure, and the dwarves come to his house.  Bilbo literally reuses to go.  Meeting with a Mentor , is Bilbo's meeting with Gandalf when Gandalf expresses to Bilbo that he possesses skills that are needed in order for the team to be successful....

  This week I got a chance to read Aunt Maria  by Diana Wynne Jones.  This story was unique, mainly because going into it (knowing it was a witch story), I thought it was going to be similar to a children's book that I used to read all the time called Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola.  Strega Nona  is an Italian children's book that's about a witch doctor in Calabria who helps people throughout her village.  I thought that Aunt Maria  was going to be very similar to this, and I was very wrong.   Aunt Maria  is not kind.  She is a witch, but she doesn't necessarily help people.  In fact, when her power is threatened or questioned she lashes out and does cruel things like turning people into wolves.   The thing I really noticed and focused on while reading Aunt Maria is the focus on gender.  Specifically, the separation of genders.  To me, this story was clearly alluding to the detrimental effects of separating genders so...

  This week I unfortunately got sick and couldn't bring myself to read anything, but I did get a chance to watch Donnie Darko .  After watching the film, I definitely think that it falls into the "weird" category.   First off, the "scary" character in the film is a bunny.  This is pretty "weird", considering that a bunny is not conventionally scary, and I'm sure that there are very few people that are afraid of them.  However, this bunny was terrifying to me.  Something that I really liked in the movie was when Donnie went to a psychotherapist, he said that Donnie was simply having hallucinations.  This caused me as a viewer to constantly be wondering whether or not Frank (the bunny) was a hallucination or real.    I think something that really makes the story "weird" is that it's so original.  It isn't something that reminds me of anything else. 

  This week for J-Horror, I read A Wild Sheep Chase  by Haruki Murakami.  I'm very inexperienced in Japanese horror, and honestly most Japanese literature in general.  I didn't really have any assumptions for how the novel would be, but after reading A Wild Sheep Chase, I definitely have some opinions.    First off, I'm admittedly writing this blog a few weeks after I read the novel.  However, I remember in class even after I had just read it, the story seemed hard to remember and grasp.  It literally feels like trying to remember a dream, and I think that's because the story was just so weird and out there, and so different from everything that I usually read.  A great word to describe this book is trippy.  It has a lot of imagery, and the story is woven together in a way that I feel is supposed to make it feel very dream-like.    This book was honestly too hard to follow for me.  Because I feel like I only remember cer...

  For this week's assignment, I read Interview With a Vampire by Anne Rice.  I found this novel to be quite interesting, especially when evaluating the relationships between the characters.  One thing I found to be very interesting is the point of view that this novel is written in.  It is essentially told in third person perspective, yet it seems as though Louis is narrating the story.  In a way, he is, but it is told through pretty much all dialogue.  This way of writing makes the character of Louis seem more mysterious, because as readers we aren't necessarily getting all of his thoughts.  This (for me) makes Louis a fairly unreliable character.  I felt like I had a tough time trusting him, because although the story is told mainly within his dialogue, we still didn't truly get a deep sense of his thoughts about different characters and situations.    Another character I found fascinating in this novel is Claudia.  The portrayal...