The Pen Pal Club

Play the Game was kind of what I was expecting in a combination of comedy and traumatizing images of the elderly in the dating world. I did like the “twist” ending of this movie; it made the whole thing seem a little less pathetic and simple. The writing and acting weren’t great and it’s not a movie that I’d highly recommend but I do believe that it would be a fun movie to watch with friends when you feel like watching something light and easy. I wish I had more to say about the movie but it really wasn’t that memorable (for being either great or terrible). It was a palate cleansing movie to watch on our journey but now I'm ready to dive back into some more thought provoking movies.

            On the side of our various assignments I decided to tackle the epic War and Peace, just for fun because that’s what the cool kids do. My goal was to finish the entire book during the run of Hughie and I was very excited to achieve my goal.

            I have to admit that I kind of love Tolstoy’s way of presenting the facts and the different viewpoints of how history is presented in Russia to what really happened before he dives into the story from the various characters’ perspectives. Except for the second epilogue where he just went on his own philosophical discussion of history and religion that I didn't particularly enjoy. It’s interesting and engaging and makes me enjoy reading about the war even though I had to get though half the book to get to these beautiful insights.

            It’s funny but the largest frustration I have with this book is its epic size. I find it interesting, I enjoy the style it’s written in and although the numerous characters can sometimes be hard to keep track of (especially switching back and forth from Moscow to St. Petersburg to wartime to parties in the royal society to Tolstoy’s own history lessons) I like picking the book up. But when I look at how far I still have to go when I feel like I’ve been reading for a lifetime, I get distracted and frustrated. Maybe the quick pace of society now has transformed my attention span to make it hard to commit to such a long book or maybe it’s just hard sitting down and reading such a massive book. I did enjoy getting back into my school phase of highlighting and taking notes again though. So here are a few of the quotes that stood out to me that I’d like to share.

“One must be believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and now I do believe in it. Let the dead bury their dead, but while one has life one must live and be happy!”

“If there were no suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself.”

“We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is happiness.”

There were a lot of insights into religion, the part of free will vs. inevitability that made me think and want to right a term paper. Questions posed that made we want to dash to the library and research the war, Tolstoy’s political views and why he wrote the book. The second epilogue bored me with Tolstoy’s ranting on historians and their own prejudices skewing the facts and misinterpreting the role the leaders such as Napoleon and Alexander had on the people of France and Russia. But being the uneducated person that I am when it comes to history I still enjoyed his take on looking at the "facts" in many different lights. He would explain what happened in a battle about how the French would consider it a failure and why, how the Russians considered it a success and why, and what the historians were now saying about it changing the way that it happened at that time. I really found his insight into how history changes over time fascinating. It reminded me of when I was reading McNamara's book when I was working on Last of the Boys and the confusion and lack of accurate data that made it difficult for the men in charge to make decisions. But then once they were in the war and saw that they had gotten themselves too deep into a problem that they could not easily get out of, there was no turning back. And Tolstoy talks about how these Russian generals made decisions, hundreds of orders sent out that never seemed to make it on time, or the plans were never able to be fulfilled because war is unpredictable and doesn't make sense. But then years and years go by and historians write about what happened and what it led to and forget about all the failed plans until history is presented as a succinct timeline of events culminating in war. It become inevitable and the "genius" of Napoleon becomes exaggerated until that this the only way we perceive these events. People look back and question "why didn't the leaders see this coming and plan accordingly?" and forget all the hundred of other things going on and the thousands of possibilities that could have resulted. And I found this insight refreshing. Sometimes we need that reminder that there is more than one way to look at things.

            The final book of the Farseer trilogy, I have to admit that I was kind of eager to read it and then be done with the whole series. The farther I got in the series, the more Beth’s comment about the similarities between Fitz and Harry Potter became more apparent. Especially when just a small list of his heroic accomplishments was named back to him by the minstrel. How many times can one guy save the world, narrowly escaping death only to be needed again? The Catalyst is awfully close to the Boy Who Lived. The murderer with a heart of gold, who has magical abilities that cannot be matched by anyone and is surrounded by a loving network of friends that will die for him even when he rants and complains and takes out all his anger on them. 

            The farther I got in this series, the more irritated I got at the introductions at the beginning of each chapter. Fitz's excerpts from his histories that he is writing pretty much for no one but to pass the time in his lonely existence post-war and death. That was another Harry Potter similarity, the whole cheating death thing, which I honestly hate. I accepted Aslan's return in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when I read that book in middle school (and was naively unaware of its strong Christian undercurrents and teachings) but cheating death is usually cheap in my eyes.

            But there was a gnawing at me the entire time I read these three books. Why does this often used writing trope bother me so much with this particular series when I so readily accept it for other stories? I wish I had an answer to this but I'm just glad that I am done with these books, I do not recommend them to the general public. Our next book is Casino Royale by Ian Flemming, the first James Bond book. I'm eager to find out if I love the books that the movies are based on.

            So for our first documentary we tackled Life in a Day which I stole from Anthony’s Netflix queue list. It was a very interesting watch that was beautiful, horrifying, touching, intriguing and sad. It was a story without a story, a look into the lives of strangers. It was poetic and made me want to be philosophical. It asked what people love and fear. It made me feel superficial and materialistic and the desire to just give everything up and live simply pulsed though my chest. It made me want to call everyone I love and tell them how much they mean to me and made me sad that I am so alone. It made me think about myself and where I am and what I am doing, how I am both so small in this world and made me question what my dreams of the future are. It’s funny because where you are in your life and the people, places, books, movies, day-to-day experiences that you share are what make you who you are and influence your perspective at that moment. Because all my friends from high school are having babies I’ve been thinking about family a lot. Because Micah is going through treatments for his leukemia I’ve been thinking about death and how we never know how much time we have or what God's plans for us are. Because I’m reading War and Peace I’ve been thinking about love and hatred, the triviality of the traditional mating rituals and the futility of war. Duty and philosophy. All these things swirl around in my brain and if I wasn’t doing or seeing one of these things than my perspective might be completely different.

            I guess I don’t know how to write about this movie and how it made me feel. It made me feel a lot of things but it also made me feel my lack of feeling. It made me disgusted with the amount of time I waste, the amount of tv I watch and all the goals I have abandoned. It makes me sad that I don’t wake up and write every day, that I don’t go to the museums much any more and challenge myself in new ways. It makes me sad that I have become complacent with the way that I live. But this is me going off on a stream of conscious overflow.

            I enjoyed the movie but it made me sad because I wanted to know more about these people and their lives and I know I never will. I wondered how in the world so much beautiful footage was taken and I can’t even imagine how many hours in took to watch, compile and edit all of the video.I was interested the entire time and although I didn't enjoy the final monologue and it made me question what the original intention of the documentary was, I really take my hat off to all the people who made it happen. I totally recommend it and maybe I'll have to watch it again some time.

         So here are some thoughts from when I wasn't even halfway through this book. I realize that I have some major problems with it. I get the déjà vu of feeling like I already have encountered this story. The similarities between this series and the Alanna series overwhelm me. But unfortunately, I feel that the series written for teenage girls was more compelling. Or maybe it’s just because I found it easier to relate to, or because I read it first. But the farther I get in the book, the more I don’t like the character of Regal. I partially blame Anthony and his love of complex dark characters and anti-heroes. He and I actually talked a little about Once Upon a Time and how he felt that their “bad” characters were not interesting enough for him. Regal is a character that is immature, greedy, selfish, egotistic and presented as pretty much evil with no redeeming qualities. Now I feel that similar to the character of Roger in the Alanna series, he desires more power and the kingdom to bend at his will. He uses his good looks and cunning to sway people to his desires. However, Regal is impatient and does not seem overly intelligent as Roger was. They keep talking about how he was “weak” as a child and did not learn to Skill, so much so that he must have this power and was taught in secret by Galin who was so close with his mother. Spoiler alert! (in finishing the book, apparently I guessed wrong. Regal really is just a weak, manipulative douche) How else does he know so much of what is going on and seem to have so much control over everything? 

            I suppose one of my major disappointments with this book is in only seeing things through Fitz’s eyes.I don't get a chance to really understand the other characters or hear their stories even if I find them more interesting than his. I also have been swayed to Beth's initial reaction of frustration with the top of each chapter beginning with his ramblings or his history segments. If you are going to trap me in one person's perspective than stick to his story, otherwise give me a view of the enemy and his plans. I really hope that the third book reveals more to Regal's desires than just avenging his mother's supposed murder, because that felt like such a weak motivation for destroying the entire kingdom that I immediately rejected it as only a piece of the puzzle and not the full thing.

           Maybe it’s the combination of reading too much about war, maybe it’s seeing the similarities and comparisons between different art forms like I was taught in school but so much about this book frustrates me in a “haven’t I already read or seen this before?” kind of way. The ships fighting the Raiders makes me think of Pirates of the Caribbean, the whole story makes me think of the fantasy stories of my youth. At times it feels like a jumbled mess of every kind of fantasy thrown together to make sure that the author has hit everything that could draw in his readers, and at other time I really am intrigued by the interesting story. I want the mystery solved and I want to discover who and what is behind it all. So I keep reading even though the end of this book left a bad taste in my mouth.

       Typical John Wayne western that seems just ridiculous enough to be enjoyable but not real at all. There’s a love triangle, lots of action-packing brawls, a gold rush and a typhoid fever epidemic all thrown together in an hour and a half. Sometimes the scenes just rush by and you wonder how it’s possible that so much could happen in only a few short minutes. It was a pretty bad movie, although I enjoyed watching it for its “badness.” I have to say that I was surprised that there was not more time and energy spent on the love triangle (or square). Once it was set up, the other woman suddenly disappeared and became a silent, unseen threat. Then a totally unexpected plot twist with the gold rush coming on. So hat’s off to you, writers, on totally surprising me with that one. I was not expecting the singer to suddenly abandon the town and man she loved to become a nurse with all the grungy men of the gold rush. I also learned that if you ever want to prove yourself a badass without a fight all you have to do is bend a quarter and give it some kid like it was no big deal. I’d write more about this movie but really there isn’t a whole lot to say, it’s not John Wayne’s best. Our next movie to tackle is a documentary called Life in a Day.

            I actually wouldn’t mind continuing this series. Although I wasn’t too excited about the ending and I felt that there were a lot of interesting, unexplored subplots, one can only hope that they grow and develop in the following books in the series. There were a lot of questions posed that I felt never got answered and even if a book is part of a series, I believe that it needs to be a whole piece. That is the problem with most sequels in a trilogy that you are left with an ellipsis at the end. But overall I enjoyed the relationships and felt that it had a lot of potential to continue the excitement. I wasn’t too large a fan of the Raiders ability to turn the people into zombie-like shells of their former selves. I wanted the strange dynamics of the royal family, servants and soldiers to be explored a little more. And what is up with the Fool? Is he a prophet? What is his connection to Fitz and why does he take it upon himself to steer him in a certain direction or not? Also, I felt like the book kept hinting at the secret past of Burrich’s that I never quite understood. Even though I enjoyed the book, it left so many questions unanswered. I also feel that it could have been simplified a lot and still been enjoyable because they instead of a ton of little stories interconnected, their would be few fleshed out storylines driving the central plot. But that’s just my personal opinion and preference.  

            Side note unrelated to this “assignment;” after a couple of months of struggling through reading one of the “classics of literature,” I also finally finished reading One Hundred Years of Solitude. Although I have to admit I did enjoy it much more than Love in the Time of Cholera, I was still not a fan of Marquez or the magical realism genre. I know that it is a symbolic literary choice to make all the characters have the same name, but it makes for very difficult and confusing reading when people live to be over a hundred years old and are living in incestuous relationships and then naming their children the same names as their grandparents. Yet again, I am adding another literary classic to the list of books that I was not that impressed with. Maybe I just don’t give these epic novels the time and attention necessary to truly enjoy them but I’m finding it hard to stay engaged in these gigantic books. Atlas Shrugged made me angry with its black and white view of the world and its tendency to redundantly over-explain its methodology. Don Quixote I gave up reading three quarters of the way through because I was sick of all the side stories that took forever to tell and ended up going nowhere. I supposed some day I’ll pick it up again to finish so I can officially say I read it and disliked it but I was tired of spending so much time on a character that I didn’t find that sympathetic or heroic, but arrogant, selfish and foolish. I hope that my next epic classic, War and Peace fares better. I also want to finish the Sherlock Holmes series since I enjoyed the first couple of books I did read and I recently finished watching the television show Sherlock on Netflix, which was highly rated by both of my siblings. Although each episode is almost an hour and a half long, they are fascinating and I eagerly watched both seasons. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a contemporary look at some old classics that I can get behind. Although, I did find it interesting that they chose to give Sherlock an addiction to nicotine patches instead of his cocaine habit that he indulges in in the novels.