Sabrina Lee: Lit/Horror/Fant/ScFi

Total: 43 points Zoom: 7 out of 7 classes (7 pt.) Frankenstein (6 pt.) Interview with a Vampire (6 pt.) A Wild Sheep Chase (6 pt.) Annihilation (6 pt.) The Hobbit (6 pt.) The Night Circus (6 pt.)

  10/23/2020 For this week’s reading, I choose Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. The story is well descriptive, and it’s interesting that it is not only a story about a circus, but also has a fairly realistic sense of the changing times and the emotional changes between the characters. The story is obviously fictional, but Morgenstern clearly lists the time of the event, separates the characters according to the group, and takes care of every detail, so that the whole story becomes extremely realistic to me. I can almost believe that the circus really existed when I read it. Even though the story is mainly about the love story of Celia and Marco, but honestly, I did not know why Marco fell in love with Celia so suddenly and can not hold back that wild love. On the other hand, Celia has spent her whole life to hold back herself, but suddenly collapses in front of Marco. Because both of them have great looking appearance, so I personally understand it as due to them adoring each othe...

10/16/2020 I read The Hobbit for this week's reading. I have seen the movie version before, but never finished it. This is a great opportunity to finish the story. It’s funny that, when I finished the reading, the first thing that came to mind was, “What would I do if 13 strangers burst into my house to eat and drink, and the next day left a note saying I must go on an adventure with them?” Obviously I have a good life, a comfortable cave, and I have two breakfasts, two lunches, two dinners every day. Under this circumstance, an adventure is not something I have to do in my life. But the more carefree I was, the more likely I will be like Bilbo Baggins, catching up with the dwarves and going on the journey that might make me want to go back home in the first place. I almost feel like the story is a fairy tale of children. The story has elements of the dwarves, elves, orcs, troll and dragons, and when I look at the adventure in the words, I can visualize what they might look like, t...

10/2/2020   For this week’s reading of The New Weird topic, I read the Annihilation the novel version. I had always wanted to watch the Annihilation movie since it had released the trailer, but I found it really disappointing how the movie loses a lot of the great details and ideas of the book version, as most of the movies do with the book adaptation. Such as, the story strips down the need of the names, and I found to just concentrate on the experience and the metamorphosis. However, I like how the movie visualizes the well descriptive environment of the story.  For me, Area X is like a creator god in another world, constantly destroying and reconstructing everything on the earth, but it doesn't have a personality of its own, and it doesn't apply to any moral judgment. There is no good or evil in the hands of creation. When the human race is driven crazy by fear, it doesn’t really matter there. Other than what I thought of Area X, Area X seems to be just a platform for the c...

  9/25/2020 This week I read A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami. I have only seen a movie called Norwegian Wood, an adaptation of Murakami’s book Norwegian Wood, so I was excited to read this week’s novel. But honestly, when I finished it, I was a little confused. I wondered if I read too fast? Maybe I missed some important part? But maybe the story is like how it is. The story might be referring to the process of finding something would be fun and interesting, but at the end of the day, the thing we are finding is either destroyed or gone forever. Or maybe we realize that it has always been on our side, and there’s no need to search. Overall, the storytelling of the novel is very integrated and interesting. It almost has a sense of a detective story. But compared with pure detective novels, it has a unique sense of freshness and it feels kind of laid back just like the movie, Norwegian Wood I watched. I found it interesting that the characters have no name in the story. For exa...

Week2: Interview with a Vampire 9/19/2020 This week I read Interview with a Vampire, which I have heard songs named after it, and I have seen clips of the 1994 movie version. The book depicts Louis’s psychology in a very delicate and descriptive way. I can feel his loneliness and confusion clearly which makes me constantly fall into that atmosphere. The most painful thing is the feeling that everyone is drunk and I wake up alone. That's what happened to Louis. He couldn't find a place that he belongs to. He has immortality but he doesn't know the meaning of it, and he can't even find a companion.  I felt heartbreaking when he says, “I had now lived in two centuries, seen the illusions of one shattered by the other, been eternally young and eternally ancient, possessing no illusions, living moment to moment in a way that made me picture a silver clock ticking in a void: the painted face, the delicately carved hands looked upon by no one, looking out at no one, illuminate...