Sabrina Lee: Lit/Horror/Fant/ScFi

12/5/2020 This week I read The Gospel of Loki by Joanne M. Harris . This is probably the first time I read a story about Norse mythology. The story is narrated with Loki’s point of view, and the book shows us the Norse mythology, from beginning to the end (from the birth of the world to the end of the gods). At the end of this book, I can have a general idea of the Norse gods and their stories. After reading, I realized that Odin is just a "normal person" born at the beginning of the world, and has a bright mind and long-term vision and uses means to make himself stronger. Myths always have some historical basis, maybe there was a man named Odin in history, who did great things, he modified history, he made stories, later legends deified them.  All in all, Odin's image needs to be corrected here. He is not omnipotent . And it's not exactly brilliant. He maintains a positive image and order on the throne, but he needs someone to deal secretly with things that are below

12/5/2020 I decided to revisit The Handmaid’s tale that I read a couple years ago. I noticed the resistance and the subversion in the novel seem really restrained. I kind of see it as an internal form of resistance or subversion. I think since they are not fully brainwashed but are living under that system, they can not really do anything but thinking about that in their heads even though they know what is wrong or right. They surely are the presentations of the opposite attitudes toward a pressing authority. I think it’s because of the situation the characters are in, which is a strict and over conservative, “protective”, society. One of the examples is when Offred comes back from shopping at the grocery and met Nick who was still polishing the Whirlwind. He “looks up and begins to whistle. Then he says, “Nice walk?” to her, and this is considered prohibited. However, Offred quotes what Aunt Lydia saying “ They can’t help it, she said, God made them that way but He did not make you th

11/29/2020 This week I read Beloved by Toni Morrison . I found the way the community treats Sethe and the residents at 124 is jumping between protecting and betraying back and forth. Sethe flashes back on when she first escaped from Sweet Home and arrived at Baby Suggs’s house, the community made her feel accepted and not left behind. She recalls, “One taught her the alphabet; another a stitch. All taught her how it felt to wake up at dawn and decide what to do with the day. That’s how she got through the waiting for Halle.” That was probably the first time that she felt as a free person living in a community. Even though she also has her community back in Sweet Home, it’s a totally different experience as she mentioned, “Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.” However the happy moment did not last long. Later on, the community did not warn her about the schoolteacher’s approach. This results in the fact that Sethe has to kill her own baby, t

  11/21/2020 This week I read Neuromancer by William Gibson. Most of the science fiction stories I have read are good at telling stories and full of climaxes and surprises. But Neuromancer is not like that. The story is surprisingly simple: in the future, a self-conscious AI wants to be free and hires a hacker, a female killer, a special forces officer, and a mind control expert to steal a key and get a password. There was nothing new about the adventure story, and it wasn't much going on to attract me to keep reading. What actually makes me want to read on is curiosity. I feel like I was “fooled” by the author because he breaks the world into pieces. Each piece is scattered in every action of the "Group of Four". I feel like I am like a collector, who collects the valuable pieces when I see them. This is kind of the way I like how a story is written. I have to put all my mind into it, fumble between the lines, can't miss a piece, and feel very engaged. When I finish

  11/27/2020 1. What is your reaction to the text you just read? I have to be honest that I am a little bit confused by what I just read. I think it is probably because it is a short story and you kind of have to be stuffed with all the information that the author wants to communicate, and I’m not sure if I fully understand everything. But I think if I had a chance to read it a couple of times, maybe I will get it and be more familiar with the characters. 2. What connections did you make with the story? Discuss what elements of the story with which you were able to connect? Since I was kind of confused by the story, I feel like the thing I felt most connected to was how the aliens give birth. I grew up next to a maternity clinic, and I was alway seeing people run into the clinic at night to give birth. I didn’t know what were happening inside the surgery room, so I kind of have to use my imagination to depict the scene, and it’s like how the author imagine aliens giving birth. 3. What

  11/14/2020 This week I read The Left Hand of Darkness. Well, I didn’t expect this book is about a group of very special humans living on a distant, cold planet. I would not know about that just by looking at the name of the book. They have five or so days each month when they are in heat, and the rest of the days are really just  bisexual people, or to be more precise, asexual people. That is to say, except for those days when no matter how beautiful a woman is, no matter how seductive she is, no matter how beautiful or naked a woman is walking down the street, no one will bother to look at her. They become temporarily male or female only during the rut, and it is random. The setting of this concept is so interesting, I have never seen such a concept. This month you may be a woman, the next month you may be a man, and once the rut is over, their bodies quickly revert back to the intersex state. But it's hard for them to understand what "gender" is, or why one can call t