A Separate Peace by John Knowles

Completion Date: 3/16/2009
Rating: <3
Number of Pages: 204

A Separate Peace by John Knowles is really an incredible book. It takes place in the early 1940's at Devon, a boarding school in New Hampshire. World War II is raging on and this book shows how the seniors at Devon see the war and deciding whether to enlist.

The main characters in this story are Gene Forrester, the narrator, and Phineas, or Finny, Gene's best friend. Their personalities really aren't especially similar, Finny being more athletic and carefree as opposed to Gene who takes life more seriously and is an extremely good student. But they are best friends. The story also follows a few other characters, though not as heavily, the main ones being Brinker Hadley and Elwin "Leper" Lepellier. An accident occurs that incapacitates Finny, and this book follows how Gene and Finny lived through the summer and fall sessions at Devon and how they mature in who they are and in their take on the war.

I refuse to spoil the plot of such a magnificant book because people should really just read it. I was captured into the story from the beginning. A Separate Peace is not only extremely entertaining to read, but it also contains in it's pages many important lessons you can learn. I probably could've just read the whole book in a night if it weren't for facebook (yes, that is my weakness). If you have not read this book, read it. I doubt you will be disappointed.

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1984 by George Orwell

Completion Date: 3/4/09
Rating: *
Number of Pages: 267

I have to admit to you, this book went slightly over my head. This is a rather heavy book, I must say. This book is extremely difficult to explain or to give the basic plot of due to the complexity of the story. It is basically set in a time where all is controlled by "The Party", including thought, action, etc. Everyone thinks, acts, and works for the Party and Big Brother.

"Ministry of Truth bureaucrat Winston Smith is the protagonist; although unitary, the story is three-fold. The first describes the world of 1984 as he perceives it; the second is his illicit romance with Julia and his intellectual rebellion against the Party; the third is his capture and imprisonment, interrogation, torture, and re-education in the Ministry of Love." -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_book#Plot (I'm sorry, I just couldn't phrase it much better).

In terms of the book itself, 1984 was extremely well written and very interesting. It used a very wide vocabulary, it went into great detail, this book was just very well put together. But what made this book so . . . interesting and incredible was the way it could be applied to life today. Of course it's shown at a magnified scale, but some things in that book could be slightly frightening.

Some parallels were rather obvious and caught my attention immediately. One was at the beginning of the book when Winston goes to the movies. The movie that he sees shows many brutal killings, of a lifeboat full of children who get blown up, of a man fighting to stay alive and being shot down. Meanwhile, the people in the theater are applauding and laughing and yelling in encouragement.

Now think of movies today. People spend, oh, $9.50 to see movies just like that. What are the "Saw" movies all about, really? It just shows a bunch of people getting brutally murdered in different ways. No, most people don't shout and laugh at those movies, but there's a sick sort of enjoyment that people see in it that compels them to spend x amount of dollars to see it.

Other things, not so obvious, were the Party's slogans. War is Peace. Slavery is Freedom. Ignorance is Strength. Also things like "newspeak", "doublethink", etc. I find that newspeak can definitely be applied to the world today. Our vocabularies are steadily becoming more narrow, despite the copious amounts of words available to us. We look for what is simplest, therefore lessening our ability to think. (it's a good thing I read all the time...my brain capacity is growing rather than shrinking! whoo!) Think of texting and its effect on young minds, using acronyms that soon enter their day to day speech. Omg, lol, ttyl, brb, all of these I've heard used by peers in actual conversation at some point or another. I'm sure there are others, but I can't think of them right now. This simplifying of the human language, and therefore human thought, was the main objective of the Party. If they could control thought and speech, they could control humans and their world.

This may not be making any sense. I'm probably totally off on lots of things, but there are a lot more connections that I could make from this book to life today. This is what really made this book worth reading. You just go through and as you read, connections are made in your head and you're just in awe by the end of it.

This is in no means a happy book, but it IS a good book. I would suggest it to anyone.

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