So, what's happening in Olive Kitteridge? Nothing exciting. To be honest. I mean I knew from others that the first story would be brutal, but not this brutal… I mean it was really boring. There's a guy named Kevin, who has known Mrs. Kitteridge since he was a little boy. In the second storie, Kevin and Mrs. Kitteridge met up later in life when he visited his home town. Olive barged her way into Kevin's car and sat for a while. Kevin was very confused as to what was happening. She really had been thinking about Kevin ever since he left for New York. Kevin knew he had been thinking about her too, but was too ashamed to admit it. The weirdest thing happened. Olive jumped out of the car and ran to the cliff overlooking the water. One story takes place at the funeral reception of a man whose wife has just learned of his infidelity. Another features a hostage-taking in a hospital. Elsewhere, an old lover surprises a lounge pianist, sending her reeling back into painful memories. An overbearing mother visits her wary son and his boisterous, pregnant wife. Most stories turn on some kind of betrayal. A few document fragile, improbable romances. They encompass a wide range of experience. The presence of Olive Kitteridge, a seventh-grade math teacher and the wife of a pharmacist, links these 13 stories. A big woman, she’s like a planetary body, exerting a strong gravitational pull. Several stories put Olive at the center, but in a few she makes only a fleeting appearance. It’s no coincidence that the two weakest stories are the ones in which she is merely mentioned. Without her, the book goes adrift, as if it has lost its anchor. She isn’t a nice person. As one of the town’s older women notes, “Olive had a way about her that was absolutely without apology.” Olive’s son puts it more bluntly. “You can make people feel terrible,” he tells her. She dismisses others with words like “hellion” and “moron” and “flub-dub.” After swapping discontents, she says to a friend, “Always nice to hear other people’s problems.” But as the stories continue, a more complicated portrait of the woman emerges. Olive may hurl invectives at her son, but she also loves him, almost more than she can bear. Her husband is a kind man and she loves him too, although she has trouble expressing it. She’s prone to “stormy moods,” as well as “sudden, deep laughter,” and she harbors a sense of compassion, even for strangers. In one story, Olive bursts into tears when she meets an anorexic young woman. “I don’t know who you are,” she confesses, “but young lady, you’re breaking my heart.” “I’m starving, too,” Olive tells her. “Why do you think I eat every doughnut in sight?” “You’re not starving,” the girl replies, looking at this large woman, with her thick wrists and hands, her “big lap.” “Sure I am,” Olive says. “We all are.” It takes extraordinary presumption to say this to a girl who is starving to death, but from Olive the remark seems well-earned. Because the main thing we learn about her is that she has a remarkable capacity for empathy, and it’s an empathy without sentimentality. She understands that life is lonely and unfair, that only the greatest luck will bring blessings like a long marriage and a quick death. She knows she’s been rotten; she has regrets. She understands people’s failings — and, ultimately, their frail hopes.
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The choice reading… my oh my. I was not expecting that outcome. Honestly i love to read, but it’s so hard to find a good book to read... Luckily, Ms. Nelessen helped us with even that task. She taught us to actually read the back of the book and pick out what we like and don’t like. I was really expecting to have Ms. Nelessen help me find a book, but i found my own thanks to that technique. Other reading activities in english classes did not require us to pick our own books… We had to read boring and absurd class books. Some of them weren’t even books, they were poems or plays. This actually allowed us to pick our own book, and when we’re finished pick another! There was nothing I didn’t not like anything about this class assignment. I feel like it actually helped me grow as a reader and pass some good books off to others. One thing i may have not liked is the 10 minutes we had to read. I honestly could get lost in my books and not want to stop reading it!
The two hours for reading a week was actually not enough. I really needed more. I was actually upset when I had to stop reading to do actual class work. I can honestly say that due to the lack of reading time we got in a day, I did not reach my reading goal. I mean even with that hour outside of school, I didn’t have enough time to read. I got my two hours of reading done as I was supposed to. Well it really depended on the night. If I had a lot of homework, then probably not. It also depends on the book I’m reading. If I don’t really like the book then I won’t like to read it. I prefered reading throughout the week, honestly. It gave me more of a cliffhanger and something to actually look forward to the next day. I might try reading a more complex book. I want to expand my vocabulary and genres, and the only way to do that is to explore more complicated books to read. It most definitely got more difficult to do when we stopped in class, but only because my mind was more focused on the series Serial. I did exceed my goal a few nights. I would be in a bad mood, and then i would think of a character that was in a bad mood in the book, and I just get lost in it. How have I changed as a reader? Well that’s a very broad question. I could go into so much detail about how different I was going into senior year, as to how I am now. I think I’ve grown exponentially as a reader, due to Ms. Nelessen’s efforts to get us(students) to read more each day. At the beginning of the semester, I was a very uninspired reader. I have now discovered that I like a wide variety of genres. Including romance, biographies, fictional, etc. I started reading only when required. I wasn’t a very inspired reader at the beginning of the semester. I didn’t really like reading, until we had our first read. Then when I was home one night, I remember clear as day, I was really stressed out about a score I got on a test. I went into the kitchen, sat at the table and pulled out a book and read! Something I had never done before, and I was so surprised! I feel that now that I’ve been through three books this semester, I believe I’m becoming a very frequent reader. I’ve started to look into complex vocabulary books. That way I can learn new words while following a story plot. In the future, after graduation, I see myself still reading everyday. I’ve never been so inspired and pushed to read everyday and it feels great. I now read when I’m upset, when I’m tired, when I am bored. And that last one is something that is so hard to do. I could be spending my time, out with friends, but I’m at home reading a book. I’ve turned into such a nerd. I like books that have a bit of mystery behind them. A book that has fog so dense that you can’t see through it. Until the one chapter where everything becomes clear, and you have to go back and read it again to make sure you caught everything. I know I really like the book when I get lost in it and start placing myself in the setting and lose total track of time. I pretty much just dive in and grab a book. That’s what works best for me. I feel looking in the right section and just grabbing a book is good for me. That way I’m not always getting the same author, and I’m expanding my liking. Reading is most definitely something I want/will have after ELA 12. This is something that i can use in my life and pass down to children. And it keeps me busy. It keeps me away from my phone and T.V. I can’t explain how many times I’ve been reading and just get so many notifications on my phone, but don’t pay attention beacause at the time I’m Marguerite, or Augustus Waters, or whoever I am in my next book. May I start off by saying Bravo to Steven Chbosky for writing this awesome book. The perks of being a wallflower is a great look into the mind of a 15-16 year old who is actively struggling with depression, and the downsides of freshmen year of high school. Charlie Kelmeckis is a 15 year old boy(at the start of the book) who has just come up on the bright side of his recent mental breakdown. Charlie is severely depressed, but through the help of doctors and other professionals, he has learned to control his emotions and thoughts. He begins to write to a stranger who he knows of in his school. This stranger does not know who Charlie is. Honestly that sounds a little creepy to me, but if he's the only one that will listen without judging him on his past, that's what's gotta happen.
Charlie has a lot of breakdowns and blacks out. He doesn't remember much after he has them. He is triggered by the memory of his aunt, Helen. To be clear, his aunt Helen used to touch him as a young boy. She would always tell him "Don't wake your sister.." If you're someone who read or is reading this amazing book, look for those clues. They're very hard to notice, but you'll get it eventually after you watch the movie. Charlie's aunt Helen would go out every year to buy him 2 Christmas gifts. Charlie is the only one out of the family that she would do that for. On Charlie's 7th birthday, which just so happens to be on December 24th, Charlie's aunt was driving to get his second christmas present and was killed in a car accident. This is when Charlie's depression set it. Not only because he lost his aunt so tragically, but because he couldn't tell his family what she had done to him. He had to keep those little secrets. So coming into high school, Charlie had no friends. There was a kid named Patrick(AKA Nothing) who is in his freshmen shop class. He's known as the school clown, and not to be taken seriously. Charlie goes to sit with him at the school's football game. This is where he met Sam. Sam is this beautiful, insecure young woman, who is a senior at the high school. She hangs out with Patrick a lot! Which gave Charlie the idea that Sam was taken and not available. Luckily she was only Patrick's step sister. This gave Charlie some advantage! Sadly, Sam did not want Charlie to "Think of her that way..." She wanted him to not be into her because she was older and he was a child. Charlie just went along with it for as long as he could. Through these two lovely people, Charlie also met a few other people. Mary Elisabeth, the play writer for the school, Brad, the star football player (and also Patrick's boyfriend), Bob, Craig, Alice, and loads of other cool people to hang out with in his first and their last year of high school. For christmas, Sam got Charlie a typewriter for his present. So that when he became a writer he had something to write on. When she gave him the typewriter she typed on there, "Write about me sometime..." and he smoothly responded, "I Will." Sam and Charlie shared a kiss that night. A first kiss for Charlier and a meaningful kiss for Sam. even though she was dating Craig. ew. Charlie was very into Sam throughout the whole book. Yet he could not like her like that so he kept his feelings locked away. Mary Elisabeth was very into Charlie. She was also a really good friend of Sam's. Charlie and Mary eventually got together and had sex. Although Charlie did not like Mary Elisabeth in that way. He only like Sam. So, at a little party when the game of Truth or Dare came out, the truth prevailed. Charlie was dared to "kiss the prettiest girl in the room." by the way, His girlfriend and best friend are in the same room. Charlie then proceeds to kiss Sam and ticks Mary off. Sam was pissed for quite a while until Charlie saved Patrick in a fight. At the end of the book, Sam is about to leave for college and She confronts Charlie about how he hasn't tried to make a move on her yet. And that he should've done it earlier. Charlie is just speechless being that this is the girl that he's involve with and she wants him too. So they make out and get super close to sex, when Charlie has a flashback of his aunt Helen how she would feel him as a child. This triggered all of Charlie's emotions and anger and sadness all at once. He started to remember everything his aunt did, everything that happened the night she died, everything that happened during his black outs. He is found on the couch of he house unresponsive and watching the TV. He said that his father had to slap him to try to wake him up. He says that his father never hits anyone. Eventually he ends back up in the hospital because he tried to kill himself. This book can be very confusing to some people. It wasn't confusing for me because I like books like this. I liked how slow the pace was. Stephen was able to jam pack a lot of information, vital information, in one letter. Which is great. It's also written in the view of a 16 year old. Which is something we can all relate to. What I didn't like about the book was that it is so addicting. That's really the only reason that I don't like it. Oh and also Charlie cry a lot! I need to go and read it again to get the whole picture of the book because I didn't realize until I saw the movie. I recommend this book to any and everyone. |
Christopher SmithI'm an aspiring author who writes blogs because my wife died and left me with her cats. I also have a dog named Chewy. I have like 16 cats, and don't feel like naming them. ArchivesCategories |