Sabrina Lee: Lit/Horror/Fant/ScFi

Midterm: 36 Final: 48 Class attended: 14/  Missed: 1 Total: 98

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. W...

  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...

  11/6/2020 This week I chose The Martian by Andy Weir. I was very excited to read The Martian because I was curious how the book is different from the movie version. I enjoyed watching the movie version about four years ago, I thought this is a great opportunity to revisit the story in book format. The biggest difference is that the novel is presented in the form of Mark's task log. For each problem to be solved, multiple backup solutions are proposed but are eliminated one by one, then they come up with the final solutions. On the other hand, the movie can only show the final solution directly, and the process of brainstorming is completely ignored. I have to admire the outstanding writing skills of the author. It was a quality science fiction novel that is not hard to read at all. However, to read it carefully and fully understand the science and the reasons for their actions is a little bit hard. Plus, it was so realistic that I was a little nervous the whole time because I tho...

10/29/2020 This week I read Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. The first thought came into my mind is that I feel like most of us are as ordinary as Charlie. So ordinary that we will not look at him or say hello to him. Charlie is next to me and you, and there's a good chance I'm the “Charlie” and you're the “Fat Charlie”. We are all looking forward to a brilliant, charming world, but unfortunately, we must face the conflict between our internal expectations and external environment, and It’s not easy to accept this fact. That is to say, we tend to be ordinary and not attractive. Fortunately, if Charlie had never met Spider, he might have lived the same life for the rest of his life and accepted it as a normal life. The arrival of the spider changed all that, and finally, Fat Charlie can become someone he used to look up to and feel a little jealousy. I think self-cognition and self-orientation is a very important subject in the process of personal growth (in both the story and in...