10 year reading syllabus

Books and reading them... A fun activity nonetheless, and something I rarely do, and on occasions also. The last time I ever read with intense purpose was for class, not for pure enjoyment. However, since freshman year, I've just read the Battle of the Books list and planned each year to follow it. But this year I don't plan to participate... Even though I won all three years and won some prizes, sad to end the streak. Books... Let's get to it. A book a year for a decade... 😭

1. The Count of Monte Cristo: Alexandra Dumas

After hearing this book online many times, I decided to check out the book online, read the first page, and left it at that. Would like to finish this book at some point in the future as a light reading book. 

2. To Kill a Mockingbird: Harper Lee

While it seems everyone has read this before and also in school, I've only ever seen the cover of this book and the allusions to it in films and other notable novels, 

3. Project Hail Mary: Andy Weir 

AMAZE AMAZE AMAZE!!! Grace Rocky save STARS!!!

If it's not obvious enough, I've watched the movie and absolutely loved it. Never thought I would be almost tearing up over a talking rock in outer space. Hopefully the book proves it as well as the movie. 

4. Dune: Frank Herbert

Another movie based on a book, this is also something that I plan to read, but I've only watched I belive the second one, and even then I couldn't really get a grasp of
the whole idea, but like I know the idea... tsk nvm moving on. 

Just going to list the next few books that I went through and found interesting, especially historical books. 

5. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

6. Shogun - James Clavell

7. Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austin 

8. Catch-22: Joseph Heller 

9. Silence: Shusaku Endo 

10. The Da Vinci Code: Dan Brown 

Cleaning up the basement, I found a DVD that was titled The Da Vinci Code, and going through a list of books I thought the movie was on the book. I don't know is it. Hold on, lemme check ........ ye it is... cool. 

AMAZE AMAZE AMAZE AMAZE AMAZE AMAZE AMAZE 

I like poetry don't worry...

    Poetry... Always has always been something I've tried to avoid, unless the teacher assigns a reading, and I'll look towards poetry because there's less to read. However, with the recent increase... INCREASE in reading poetry, my thoughts have changed, well kinda... 

    Like art, literature can be expressed in many ways, and poetry is just one of the many ways. But like with any other activity, doing it too much makes it eventually become redundant and boring, but like with sports or anything else, I've realized that to become good at something you need practice until your somewhat proficient, and I'm not even close to that. 

    It has somewhat become satisfying reading poetry, like those brain riddles/ puzzles where you have to guess x, and when you finally get the correct answer after thinking about trying multiple idea it becomes somewhat enjoyable, and this goes for poetry. The ability to hide messages through simple diction that dictates connotation, which therefore creates emotion, is simply amazing and something I wish to do.  

    A simple color or item can be expanded upon so much that it somehow takes up two pages or has a colored farm item (you know) dictate so much meaning with less than 10 lines is just unfathomable to me, but what's even harder to imagine is being able to decipher this. 

    It's got to the point that decipher poems is impossible, either the author has written it so beautifully that you can't do anything but just sit there in awe that taking the words of the English language and putting it together in this pattern is possible or the fact that any idea I generate is delusional or crazy to imagine that the author intended it like that. 

    I don't know... maybe I'm not cut out for this poetry life, but it's certainly made me view it differently, that instead of using it as an easy way out, I should value it for what it actually is... 

( I apologize to my elementary school teachers; maybe I should've actually tried instead of using poems as an easy read, or at least tried to read them.)

   

(Mrs. Knudson, when she hears someone say that they don't get it. "WHAT!!!" I'm joking, I'm joking... sorry... not)

Becoming to be like... no becoming like me

 "You're becoming like him!"

"Your going to become the next ___!"

No, I refuse to become the next ___. Why would someone become the next ___. Wouldn't that just take that identity away from them and put you into a set of expectations? 

Well then, who are we? And how do we decide who we want to become? What are we becoming like?

Without being too self-reflective, I've emerged from my former self by destroying part of it; it would've been impossible to do what I've done if I were the same person I was before, the same person but a different person.

I don't want to be more like anyone else, and I absolutely hate the fact that anyone would like to be more like someone else. Sure, I want to become more like someone else; I want to swim as fast as him, sprint as fast as him, be as smart as him, whatever... The point is that at no point will anyone will or should be happy with who they are, then they are just too blind to see it, or am I? 

No one is truly themselves, not even at the moment of birth; you were yourself; you were defined by your parents, ethnicity, labeled onto a document, with no choice for yourself in what you were. Even then, you didn't make choices for yourself, and by the popular saying, "you are who you surround yourself with." That would be the best suggestion of who you are, you are the sum of the people you surround yourself with, even in sports, you're put into the group you are, sprinter, distance, slow or fast, point scorer (you're important), exhibition... we need you to support the team and cheer (you're not important).

I don't see myself in a "place." I don't see myself at this university, that company, this, that, whatever, I see myself in a state, a state where I can operate on my own, where I'm just me, that the thoughts and expressions don't drag me, that I can finally be free from the expectations and that I can just do whatever I want, where I'm not becoming like a failure or becoming successful. But becoming like myself. 

Siddhartha realized this too late, chasing someone else's idea of enlightenment and stillness, while never chasing his own enlightenment until it was too late to enjoy. 

geee.... color is important!

     There are times when I realize something and cannot unsee it now, when watching the analysis of 500 Days of Summer in class and making the connection that Summer always wearing blue was a marker that showed that Tom and she were never meant for each other. Watching it again, a second time, I couldn’t help but notice all the times that this was displayed. A small detail that was built into the film that wasn’t yelling at us to notice it. But there are times when color is displayed for us to see, screaming at us to notice it. 

 Colors have been slowly ingrained within us to the point that it has become tools used to elicit emotions, for example, pink and blue. What do you see? For many people, this is displayed as girl vs boy, gender coding many items, but did you know that pink used to be a color for boys and blue for girls? Once seen as a stronger and more assertive hue now turned to a feminine color, and blue, once seen as delicate, is now a masculine color. Why this change? A method used for marketing efforts during the mid-20th century that flipped the whole idea to boost clothing sales by creating distinct gender color codes. (I saw this in a short video and now can’t unsee it, just like the 500 Days of Summer).  

Even when I was young, I could still remember that color was still seen at most places, vibrant elementary schools, and colorful toys, but the world is slowly turning colors, turning dull, no, literally... The ocean has been slowly and subtly turning from blue to green due to climate change, and another noticeable change was after the great recession (2007-2009), when colors shifted from bold colors to this minimalist, mutated tone. Is the world a reflection of who we are collectively, but to understand what we are, I think we should understand the meaning behind the colors that we generally see.  

Color psychology is “the analysis of the effect of colors on human behavior, mood, cognition, and other mental processes.”  So, what does each color mean? Going down the rainbow, red, depending on who you are, can represent many things, but for some, the first thing that comes to mind is love or blood, either you're a wholehearted person or someone filled with violence and hatred... See, even with one color, we can deduce so much about an individual's psyche and affect the emotion. Orange is a weird color; there are no ideas that pop out to me, but I just think of the fruit, which represents the humor and energy an individual can have, releasing warmth and enthusiasm. Yellow can be best described as the color of happiness and optimism, and the color used to describe the season summer and Summer from 500 Days of Summer. When paired with blue, it represented Summer’s vibrant presence and the optimism Tom had at the beginning of an ideal romance. A symbol of the sunny, hopeful days of their relationship, but with the color palette of Tom. Green is often seen as youth and luck; on the other hand, it can also be seen as jealousy and envy, just like red, two sides of the same coin that are vastly different. Blue for the beautiful skies and the calmness that follows suit with it, purple is best known for royalty and power which by themselves are nearly synonymous, and a little history lesson, the color purple is associated with royalty because of an ancient dye from sea snails that was used to make the color and besides the fact, it was incredibly expensive and labor-intensive to produce, making the color a status symbol reserved for the elites.  

Let’s actually get into examples in literature, using How To Read Literature Like Professor, we can go off from Foster that the lavish parties Gatsby had that were filled with gold, yellow bright colors were nothing but for spectacle and none for connection, all that glitter hiding the emotional emptiness which is ironic with the color having done the opposite, representing happiness and fulffilfument. The excessive brightness is exactly what Foster describes as false communion, appearance without meaning. Following the same ideas, if we were to refer to Foster’s chapter 10, we can see that the literal weather and environment can be a reflection of the emotional states. The reunion between Gatsby and Daisy was a gray, rainy scene, an emotionally tense scene, and the weather reinforced the washed-out dream Gatsby had, becoming fragile.  

 

 

Or we can move on to how the wealth disparity can be exploited through color, the Gray Valley of Ashes representing the exploited working class, and the bright wealth of the West and East Egg. Even then, we can still see the differences in the KIND of wealth. Daisy’s wealth is “golden”, and Gatsby’s is more of “yellow”, more flashy than truly grounded wealth. Even the same color can encode differently based on the person. Daisy in white can be accepted as innocent, while white in Gatsby isn’t purity, but just an illusion.  

Wrapping Gatsby up, a single moment can show so much, not just by context, but by background details that add up to have just as much of an impact as context. Just in these few scenes, we have learned what color can do, what if it wasn’t just in word form. (Gatsby reaching for the green light has me reaching for the end of senior year) 

500 Days of Summer also had many colors, each signifying the stages of their relationship. Blue dominates Summer’s wardrobe while Tom’s is filled with more earthly tones (more of brown and beige). In contrast, blue was used to not just portray the loyal and trustworthy character, but also to match the actresses' eyes (Zooey Deschanel’s), and the same was done for Tom, to match the actor’s brownish eyes (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Marking the progress of their relationship, at the peak  

Tom is surrounded by blue, but despite this, he is the only one wearing brown in a sea of blue people. 

 

 

 

 

This is one of the most prominent scenes depicting the fact that they will never be together, with the film slowly transitioning back to brown at the end of their relationship. And when Tom moves on, accepting that he won’t be with Summer, we see the change back to his brown and beige hues. No longer a background detail that entails his personality, but now coupled with his actions, showing he has moved on.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We eventually meet Autumn, who slightly fits into Tom’s world of color, downed in grey-ish tones, and the only instance within the film that utilizes red in the sense of romance. A small detail that can impact our subconscious is that between Tom and Summer, there isn’t any love, while during Tom and Autumn’s first impression, we are given subconsciously the hope that it works out.  

In the end, color is more than just decoration. From Summer’s blue signaling their emotional distance or Gatsby’s gold covering the void. Color silently works in the background, speaking to our subconscious, causing us to feel before we even understand why. And once they are noticed, they cannot be unseen. Not only do they carry meaning in literature or every film frame, it’s in the world around us, carrying hidden meaning.  

Color reflects who we are, our desires, and what we choose to ignore. To understand color is to understand the intentions, and in doing so, we go beyond surface level and go deep into emotions, illusions, and the truth.  

 

(same actress btw that made this song)