Alien, Aliens, and the Art of the Sequel (a review)

This week, I continued to chip away at the list of Movies I Have Not Seen And There's No Excuse For That. There's still a lot of films on this list, notably the Tim Burton era Batman films (and The Dark Knight Rises, I mean, come on, what am I doing with not seeing that?). But this week managed to knock two glaring entries off the list: Ridley Scott's Alien and James Cameron's Aliens. I've been meaning to see these for a while, especially because they've been in the pop culture consciousness a lot recently. Alien consistently shows up on lists of the scariest films ever made, I've read a lot of articles about this series on Cracked.com, a lot of discussion about the merits of Avatar include references to Aliens, and in the past five years we've seen not just a recent prequel to Alien but also the sequel to Alien vs Predator, and when they make sequels to crossover movies from overexposed franchises, not seeing the originals becomes akin to mortal sin for a film enthusiast like me. So when a friend of mine offered to show me both Alien and Aliens, I couldn't turn down her offer.

Before I continue forward, I should probably make good use of a SPOILER WARNING in case you, like me, have waited too long to watch these movies.

But that might not be terribly necessary for discussion of Alien, at least. There's not much I can say about this film that hasn't already been said. It is a very tight, very well-crafted horror film. The villain(s???) are threatening, the suspense is well done, the atmosphere is rarely broken, and except in one or two cases, the plot does not rely on characters making idiotic decisions. So you're not going to hear anything particularly novel on the topic of Alien from me.

No, what I really want to discuss is Aliens. A straight sci-fi action contrast to the first installment's Gothic-horror-in-space, I've heard a lot of opinions on this film in a number of directions. I mean, it's certainly classic: a lot of the mainstays and iconic moments come from this film rather than the predecessor. But there's a lot of discussion on whether this film is good or bad, better or worse than the original, an example of James Cameron as a good director or a bad director, etc.

I think there's a very strong reason for such split opinion. When this film is good, it is excellent action with high stakes. When this film is bad, it is cheese and schlock and questionable one-liners. Let's not be mistaken: this film has flaws. Space Marines are often kind of hit or miss, especially being everywhere these days, and Aliens has them in all their meatheaded, obnoxious glory. You won't feel for the ones that get killed off early, and you likely won't remember any of their names. The young actress who plays the little girl Newt is not very good at all, though at least she feels important. More than a bit of the dialogue is bad, many of the line reads are either flat or hammy, the list goes on and on.

I would argue that these flaws to not prevent it from being a good movie. But even more than that, I would state that this film is an example of how to make a fantastic sequel.

Sequels can fail for a lot of reasons. Airplane 2 made the mistake of trying to be exactly the same as the original. Indiana Jones 4 was hated because it wasn't enough like the originals. Iron Man 2 is unsatisfying because the stakes feel too low. Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3 spiral out of control by raising the stakes too high and too fast. A sequel has to have enough continuity without being a carbon copy, and it has to feel bigger while not getting away from itself. This has often been a difficult thing to do. Some times sequels are studio-slaughtered abominations of filmmaking. And even when a sequel is a great movie, like The Dark Knight, it can still be an ill-fitting sequel. So the balance between respect for the original and creating something new can be incredibly touchy.

Aliens hits this balance almost perfectly. James Cameron couldn't have possibly captured the same sense of suspense and terror that Ridley Scott managed in Alien; no one could have. So he made the right decision and didn't even try. Instead of focusing on the isolation and fear of a small group of untrained survivors fighting off a single unknown foe, Aliens brings in a squadron of marines with guns blazing against an army of hivemind xenomorphs. But at the same time, Cameron manages to hold back, showing the aliens in surprisingly few shots, much like the original. Additionally, Aliens expands on a lot of concepts and story presented in the first film, while never really contradicting existing mythos or derailing the one recurring character.

In Aliens, the stakes are higher and the action is grander. More people are involved, more lives are lost, but also more is risked on a personal level for these characters. The insider isn't acting merely on orders, he's acting out of self-interest, as idiotic as it might be. Ripley isn't just fighting for her life, she is fighting for the lives of the colonists and, when that doesn't work out, for one colonist in particular. There is a sense of pathos on some levels of this film that doesn't get achieved in many sequels, and indeed in many films in general.

Is Aliens as good or as tight of a film as Alien? Certainly not. Have better science fiction action films been made before and after it? Goodness me, yes. But Aliens succeeds on possibly the most important front for a film like it. It expands upon the original while keeping true to its roots as a story. Aliens is a fantastic sequel. And that, for me, is enough.

There's Nothing Wrong With That

I touched on a topic on Wednesday that I feel I should explain further. My daily writing, as I said, doesn't always have to be good, and this is one of the things that very much helps me to keep doing it. But this raises the question, I suppose, on whether or not that's a good thing. Does writing then become something I do to maintain a schedule or a habit? Is that the only benefit I gain from those days where no ideas come?

The reason why many people often don't like putting out sub-par work is probably related to the belief that writing without substance isn't truly practice. Certainly in the past I, too, have held this view. Something should be done right or it shouldn't be done at all. How can you practice if you don't practice doing something well? Why bother writing if you cannot show it to someone else? Why would you ever work on something that won't come to anything?

But the thing is that, as a writer, any writing I do helps. Every time I put my thoughts down in words, I am honing this ability in a certain way. Certainly, not all work is equal or produces the same effect. Writing a novel helps you in a different way from drafting an essay, and both of those produce a much different effect from everyday journaling.

But the point is that every type of writing that you do is helpful. Writing frequently in a number of styles allows you to experiment in order to find what works and what doesn't. The book Composition in Four Keys contains an essay by James Moffett called “I, You, and It”. In this essay, Moffett discusses the differences in various types of writing, as well as how ideas evolve alongside considerations for audience and the amount of thought and reflection that has gone into them. The argument continues by stating that if he were to teach a writing course, it would cover all sorts of different genre work before ever approaching argumentative essays. He probably says this far more eloquently than I could:

Many teachers may feel that such a program slights exposition in favor of so-called personal or creative writing. In the first place, one doesn't learn exposition just by writing it all the time. An enormous amount of other learning must take place before one can write worthwhile essays of ideas; that is in the nature of the whole abstraction process. All writing teaches exposition.(Moffett 27)

This is an important thing to keep in mind because it is something that so many people will judge you for. A lot of literary study seems all wrapped up in itself, arguments about the literary canon, this belief that there is a set collection of works that should be deemed literature and that nothing else contains any value. I have heard of creative writing professors who will severely downgrade students who write anything that is not strictly realistic fiction. I may be only a student, but as a writer, I have to say this is nonsense. The only thing you will learn by just reading the literary canon is how to be narrow minded and unoriginal. The only thing you will learn never challenging your writing style is how to get stuck in a self-recursive rut.

I myself feel inadequate a lot about the things I read. If you look at my summer reading list, there are some classics, but there are also a lot of young adult, fantasy, and humor books in there too. When I got back to school, I was discussing books with a classmate only to find out that the reading he did included Vonnegut, Cormac McCarthy, and a number of other things that were intensely cerebral and highly regarded. I honestly felt embarrassed, and I changed the subject.

But the thing is, I shouldn't have felt that way. There is a time and a place for everything you will read, from modern masters to literary classics to groundbreaking science fiction to erotic fanfiction to bad novelizations of blockbusters. Everything you read can influence you or inspire you in some way. My challenge to you this year, for every book you read for either fun or for classes, is to find something that really stuck out to you either as a good idea for later use or a bad idea to be avoided. Approach everything you read and write with the knowledge that it's a good decision.

On Writers' Block

Part of what helps me write every day is keeping in mind the fact that not everything I write has to be good or even presentable. My life has often been plagued by this notion that I either have to do something write or not do it at all, and I think I know a lot of people like that. It is the reason why the better portion of my education was dominated by the ever-present spectre of missing assignments, and it has always been the main thing that prevents my writing. I never felt that I could write unless I was inspired, unless I could figure something out in advance, unless I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I don't mean to say that I outlined, because I never did, but there was this unspoken agreement with myself that I should never produce anything that couldn't be shown to someone else.

I don't think I am the only person who has felt this way. So many people I have met have told me about their great idea for a book, or a play, or a seven volume series, but they always seemed reluctant to start until the moment felt right. The problem, however, is that the moment almost never feels exactly right. That sort of mindset will prevent you from almost anything you want to do. And I know that it's difficult to get past. Goodness knows it still stops me from taking action on a lot of ideas or emotions that I have.

But at least in the area of writing, I have gotten past that feeling. Even if I have nothing to write, I can sit down at a computer and write four hundred words on the fact that I have nothing to write. It's a rather freeing thing. I only regret that I had not found out the key to successful journaling in the past. For me, that key is a comfortable medium (in this case, computer and keyboard) and a suppression of critical instinct if needed. Anything you write can be revised. Ideas don't always come on their own; most of the time you'll have to force things out. And that is okay.

A Summer Reading List, Part 3

Seeing as classes start tomorrow for me, I cannot think of any better time to finish up my thoughts on the books I read this summer. Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here.

15. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

I already explained how I feel about this book earlier, but I figure it cannot hurt to gush a little more. For those not in the know, this is one of my favorite novels of all time, and this summer was probably my fourth time reading it. It's interesting that I haven't read this book as many times as some others of my favorites – Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card have been read five or six times already, and nothing comes close to the number of times I have read Jurassic Park and The Lost World by Michael Crichton. But that doesn't mean I love this any less than them. The perfect blend of ridiculous sci-fi, insane humor, and the most logical faulty logic in writing anywhere come together to make this one of the greatest books ever written. I also hope to reread the rest of the series soon; I've read Restaurant at the End of the Universe a couple times, but I've only read all the others once each. It's possibly because the series takes on a very different feel in the fourth and fifth books. They're still good though! They're just a little more cynical than even the others.

16. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

After reading Good Omens, I knew I had to find some more stuff by Neil Gaiman, and my eyes naturally settled on his well known works American Gods and Anansi Boys. On the recommendation of a friend, I started with the latter. At first, I wasn't particularly sold on it. It wasn't bad by any means, but I couldn't get into it. The first half of the book took me about two weeks to read. But then the second half of the book took me about two hours. Once this book gets going, it really gets going. It's fun, it's fascinating, and the characters are great. I've always been a sucker for mythical themes in fiction, and this is certainly no exception. A great book, and I recommend it highly.

17. 1984 by George Orwell

As an English student in years past, people had always been shocked by some of the books I haven't read, the two chief ones being The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and 1984 by George Orwell. People have been pressuring me for years to read these books, saying that I couldn't truly call myself a student of literature without reading them. And since I eventually read The Great Gatsby at the beginning of this year, I decided it was time to finally get around to reading 1984. I'm glad I did. For me, it wasn't the most gripping book. I didn't particularly like or even care for any of the characters. But the book was tight. It was so well thought out, so thorough, that it almost felt real. There was some distance, obviously, but so many of the things that happened in this book seemed so logical that you couldn't help but wonder if these could be the natural progression of things. In my mind, of course, it would be basically impossible to pull off a society like that in today's world, and the book seemed to leave out exactly how a government like that could fully come to power. But in the world of the book, it is watertight in a way that is thoroughly impressive and terrifying. And when the events of the book are explained, when someone finally says why this all is happening, it's the most unsettling reveal I have ever read. This is a very, very good and thought-provoking book, but you probably did not need me to tell you that.

18. Henry IV part II by William Shakespeare

If you are a consistent reader of this blog, you might remember my thoughts on reading this play. But if you are not a consistent reader, and statistics indicate that you are not (Hello, Russia! I don't know why you are reading this!), then allow me to reiterate. I hated this play. I generally do like Shakespeare, and I enjoyed Henry IV part I, as difficult as it was. But I sorely disliked Henry IV part II. Perhaps some of the fault goes to the Shakespeare class I took recently, which informed me of the popularity of the character of Jack Falstaff, the charmingly insolent ruffian sidekick of Prince Hal (later King Henry V). Knowing that he was so well received makes me awfully suspicious of the merits of a play that gives him a much expanded role, similar to how a Hollywood studio might conceive of a sequel where a popular bit character is given greater prominence to the point where they focus on nothing else. In any case, the biggest problem with this play is the fact that almost nothing significant happens until the fifth act. That's honestly too much time to spend with nothing but Falstaff being sassy. It'd be like making a sequel series to a groundbreaking cartoon fantasy epic with a well-developed mythos and beloved characters and then spending half of it on playing sports and unjustified love triangles.

19. Steam Ticket: A Third Coast Review Volume XII Spring 2009

This might not completely count. This is a volume of a national literary magazine that is produced out of my university. I hope to get on the staff before I graduate, so I figured I should read some of it before I apply. It was good! I mean, there's not much else to say about it. There was an especially good story that imagined what R.L. Stine must be doing with his life now. It was equal parts depressing and hilarious. But there was a great mix of enjoyable poems and memorable stories. I look forward to looking into this magazine further.

20. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Every English program everywhere has that one book that shows up again and again in the curriculum. At my school, that book is Frankenstein. A friend of mine had to read it five times before she graduated, and I myself have been assigned it twice. It's kind of a bad thing, then, that I'd never read it all the way through. Oh sure, I read parts of it, but I jumped around a lot to catch up in class, filled in some blanks with SparkNotes. I even wrote two papers on it without ever reading it all the way through. So naturally, I decided that it would probably be in my best interest to finally read the whole thing from front to back. This decision was aided by a particularly inexpensive hardcover edition I found in the Barnes and Noble clearance section. I like this book. It's dense, it moves too quickly at times and too slowly at others, but all things considered, I like this book. The nice thing about it is that it lends itself to so many different readings, messages and explorations. As long as I'm going to have to study a book over and over again, it's nice to know that it's a book that can be taught in a number of different ways. It's not light reading, not by any means. But if you have the guts and the fortitude, it's a pretty damn good book.

21. The Importance of Being Earnest, and Four Other Plays by Oscar Wilde

Ah, Oscar Wilde. This collection, featuring The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and Salomé, has been sitting on my bookshelf for a while. I had been meaning to read it for the longest time, since the little I had read of The Importance of Being Earnest was fantastic. I finally did, and I must say it was a good decision. There is a reason Oscar Wilde is so well-regarded: his humor is incredibly tight and incredibly influential. I'd wager that the writers of Monty Python, Douglas Adams, and many others owe at least some of their inspiration to the man's writing. Granted, some of the quips get a little predictable after reading four comedies in a row, but the characters remain charming, the plots (while not necessarily groundbreaking) remain entertaining, and the plays remain thoroughly enjoyable. This collection also includes the tragedy of Salomé, the story of the daughter of King Herod and the death of John the Baptist. Some critics hate it, but as for me... Biblical themes? Again, I'm sold.

22. Selected Poems by Langston Hughes

If there is one poet who can challenge Billy Collins for the position of my favorite poet, it is Langston Hughes. His work is just so phenomenal, working in a number of recurring themes that overlap just as easily as they work on their own. This collection was selected by Hughes himself, arranged in several sections by either recurring themes or continuing stories. I've always loved his work on its own, and in this collection, it is absolutely sublime. The poetry I write has borrowed a lot from his style and influence, and his work will always be close to my heart. I may not be able to relate to the oppression and striving that he encountered and his poetry describes, but I will always, always love it. I thoroughly recommend this book, and all poetry by Hughes in general.

And here, with 22 books, is where my summer draws to a close. Tomorrow, I begin classes in my third from final semester as an undergraduate. I've changed a lot over the past year, and I've changed the way I view my work as recently as this summer. I've never read so much or written so much as I have in 2012, and a great deal of that is thanks to the reading and writing I have done almost every day this summer. I recommend all of these books very highly (well, except Henry IV part II, which I hated, or Kingdom Hearts, which was all right but not astounding) and I would love to hear what you think of them or what you have been reading lately.

A Summer Reading List, Part 2

Continuing from Wednesday, here's part 2 of my thoughts on all the books I read this summer.

8. Brooklyn, Burning by Steve Brezenoff

One of my weaknesses is young adult literature. Even better when it's kind of a romance. I can't help it! I've always really liked the way that sort of thing goes. Brooklyn, Burning is a really unique example of YA romance, however, and I really especially loved it. The romance isn't the only point in the book, large amounts of it concerning an arson investigation. Also, the main character's relationships with their parents, peers, and adult friends are very much important parts of the novel. A lot happens in a short space, and it happens really well. Plus, this book just hits a lot of the right emotional chords with me, with a lot of emphasis on music, movies, cities, and poetry. It took me a bit to warm up to everything, but when I did, I found myself engrossed in this book. A wonderful example of young adult, romance, and LGBT literature.

9. Rhinoceros and Other Plays by Eugene Ionesco

When I was in high school, I only ever got to perform in one play. And if it could only be one, I am glad it was Ionesco's Rhinoceros. Avant Garde absurdity about people turning into rhinoceroses? I'd never have looked at it before, but it exposed me to a lot of the things I love in studying literature. Plus it was just a hell of a lot of fun to perform. This was my first time rereading it since then, and it was such an enjoyment. This edition also includes The Leader, which is a lot of fun and not subtle at all, and The Future Is In Eggs or, It Takes All Kinds To Make A World, which is.... weird. But that's the point! Social commentary through batcrap craziness is something we could use a lot more of these days. Worth a read, but not for the faint of heart.

10. Looking for Alaska by John Green

There's that young adult stuff coming up again. This was great. After a long time of being told how awesome John Green is, I finally decided to see for myself. I watched some of his famous YouTube videos, and I really loved them, so it was only natural that I decided to go pick up some of his books from the library. I decided to start where he started, with Looking For Alaska. This is an excellent book. It took me a moment to get into it, because the characters were not what I was expecting. The biggest problem I've often found with YA literature is that my teenage years were rarely like it. But once I got past some of my preconceived notions, I actually found a lot in this book that hit home with me. I'm honestly kind of envious of the way John Green writes his characters: recognizable and consistent, very likeable, but also with a lot of realistic depth. This will certainly be one of my inspirations as a writer.

11. Ballistics: Poems by Billy Collins

My first exposure to Billy Collins was through his appearances on the incredible radio variety show, A Prairie Home Companion. My second exposure to Billy Collins was through his wonderful book, The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems. My third was through so many literature classes. He's a fantastic poet, and he writes meaningful, accessible poems in a literary climate that doesn't like to call someone a true poet unless they deliberately obscure any sense of actual point in smug, jumbled pretense. That might be a generalization, but I assure you, Billy Collins is still a breath of fresh air among a lot of today's poetry. This particular collection does seem much more melancholy than usual, but melancholy has never been something Collins has shied away from. I might not recommend Ballistics as much as The Trouble With Poetry, but I assure you that reading it would not be a mistake.

12. The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

Well, I can't acquaint myself with John Green without reading his most popular book, now can I? The Fault in Our Stars was one of those books that really appealed to me as a reader and a writer. It has this wonderful focus on literature and the way people can develop personal relationships with books, which probably is a good part of what makes this book so beloved. Besides that, the main characters are very enjoyable, and their unique insight to the nature of mortality doesn't take away any of their familiarity at all. Plus, who can resist a novel that discusses the nature of Swedish hip-hop? (protip: check out Movits!)

13. Happy to Be Here by Garrison Keillor

This is a collection of short stories by one of my heroes: Garrison Keillor, the creator of A Prairie Home Companion. It was something of a slow read for me, as short story compilations tend to be, but I very much enjoyed it. A great mix of subtle comedy, absurd humor, and distinct melancholy fills this volume, just like all the best things Keillor has done. The best stories in this volume are the ones about radio – well, they were to me – but the others are good as well. There's a story that wonders what Washington D.C. would be like if it were more like Hollywood, there's a staff report for the world's least qualified baseball team, and there is a great tale about a young man in a high school punk band as they debate whether or not they should bite the head off of a live chicken. It's a great book, and even if you just read it a story at a time, I recommend it.

14. The Raven and Other Poems by Edgar Allen Poe

I was browsing the “Last Chance” bargain bin in a Barnes and Noble when I came across this really lovely publication of some of Poe's poems. I really liked the visual style, and I knew I needed to further acquaint myself with this legendary writer, so I picked it up. Though it wasn't the best book I read all summer, and wasn't the best poetry collection I ever read, I still very much enjoyed it. I don't really have much to say about Poe's poetry - I like it, but I'm not in love with it. Besides, what can I say here that hasn't been said much more eloquently by people who studied his work much more thoroughly? I will say that it definitely piqued my curiosity to further experience his writing. And again, it was very attractive, visually.

That's part 2! Part 1 is A Summer Reading List, part 1. Part 3 will be up on Monday!

A Summer Reading List, Part 1

This blog has been a little bit neglected for the past couple weeks, much to my own disappointment. I've just been very busy with preparing for my return to school, and sometimes that got in the way of the writing and updating I've been meaning to do daily. I have been doing it some, though, which I am very glad of. And I know neglecting this won't be a habit; updating this blog and daily reading and writing have been a source of great pride for me this summer. I will continue to do so.

But since summer draws to a close, I figured it would be a good idea to share my thoughts on what I have been reading over the course of May through August.

1. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
2. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

I've always really enjoyed Sherlock Holmes since I was a kid. Growing up, I read a short story here or there, watched adaptations on Wishbone, passively enjoyed a weekday morning cartoon that placed him in the 22^nd Century, things like that. And since then, I have loved the BBC's current adaptation, and have found myself pleasantly surprised by the films starring the incomparable Robert Downey, Jr. So this year, I managed to track down a few of the books and read them. Honestly, these two books could not be more different from each other. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of some of the short stories, and each one is quick, direct, and concise. It's not bad, but sometimes it feels like the story ends just as it gets interesting. The Hound of the Baskervilles, on the other hand, wonderfully takes its time. There is a sense of enjoyment that comes from just the nature of the narration, the way words flow together and describe things in such a slow, lush way. This novel definitely takes the reader along with it, which stands in stark contrast to the short stories often featuring an arrest long before most of the evidence is even shown. I did enjoy both books, but it is not a stretch for me to recommend The Hound of the Baskervilles much more highly.

3 and 4. Kingdom Hearts volumes 1 and 2 by Shiro Ama

Not everything I read this summer was high literature. In this case, some of it was a manga adaptation of a popular video game franchise. In this case, it was Kingdom Hearts, a JRPG video game crossover between Square Enix's blockbuster Final Fantasy franchise and assorted Walt Disney films. If that sounds like an odd choice of things to crossover, it is. But the games work well due to enjoyable gameplay and beloved characters. You kind of lose the first half of that with a manga adaptation, though. But I can't really give this much of a review, since manga is a difficult medium for me to really get into. The way storytelling moves along in often cluttered pages is not something I find easy to read, at least when it comes to action series. But fans of the games and manga enthusiasts might have a different take on this.

5. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

I've been meaning to read this for the longest time, and I am quite glad I did. It was a very enjoyable read. It's always an interesting experience reading something that you know only from adaptations. I was surprised to find that Alice was not as sensible and blameless in things happening as some versions have suggested. Altogether it is a very fun children's book, and it can be read as a very interesting study on post-modernism, regardless of what the original intent was. Hey, I never said I wasn't pretentious.

6. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Though I read a number of good books this summer, if it came right down to it, this would be my favorite of them. I adored this book from beginning to end, and I had troubles putting it down. When the final page ended, I went back and read the publication information, praise blurbs, and every single other word in the book, just so that I didn't have to stop reading it. I could get into the plot, but that would take so long, and there are probably many other places that can summarize it coherently. I can say though that the characters are fantastic, the plot is great, its interpretation of Revelations is really interesting, and it is extremely funny when it tries to be funny, incredibly exciting when it tries to be exciting, and incomparably heartwarming basically all the time. Read it, you fools!

7. The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa

This is the seventh book in a series of Japanese light novels that I am thoroughly enjoying. There are actually somewhere around ten books in the series, but they are being officially translated into English and released gradually. In any case, this was probably the best entry in the series since the fourth book. The pacing was good, and I was pleased to see almost every character get some development over the course of the book. A lot of the books will focus on just a few characters, or feature stories that really only develop one, but this novel managed to grow the roles of each main character and even one of the minor characters. A lot of questions are answered in this volume, and more than a few more are raised. This is definitely a great book in a great series.

That's the first seven books on this list, making this part 1 of 3! I'll continue this on Friday.

Wild Green Thoughts

I've been thinking a lot lately about how other people perceive me. I know this is generally not a good thing to do, but I haven't been thinking about it in a way that makes me nervous or bad about myself. I more mean that I have just been curious about what other people say when they talk about me. I know they do – everybody is talked about to some extent. You exist to other people when you are not interacting with them, just as they exist to you. I've just been really curious how.

I think part of this curiosity has come about because of the books I've read recently. I'm currently reading a collection of five plays by Oscar Wilde, and it begins with a brief rundown of his life followed by an introduction that discusses his life and its effects on the things that he wrote. The biographical briefing is only a few pages long, hitting only the most important parts of his career. I started wondering if those points that the book deemed important would have included all the parts of his life he considered significant. Biographies are wonderful things; I want to be the kind of person they write biographies about someday. But I can't help but wonder how much they leave out. Would Oscar Wilde's autobiography look different from the ones written by everyone else? Does one exist? I don't think one does, otherwise I am certain this biography would have mentioned that. That, at the very least, seems like something they wouldn't leave out.

But if, against all odds, a biography about me gets written some day, I can't help but wonder what would be in it? Certainly there wouldn't be a passage about every single person I dated in high school or college. What would be considered the turning point? Where would they say my big break came? I might just be wondering these because I'm trying to figure out what my plan is after graduation. But I do think these are interesting things to consider. A biography absolutely cannot include everything about someone's life. Considerations must be made for cultural significance, what is interesting to read, and the fact that extremely long books can often be intimidating for publishers and audiences.

However, this question of mine doesn't just come from the introduction to a collection of plays.

This summer, I also read two novels by John Green: Looking For Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars. I loved both of these books, of course; I'm not the one person in the world who doesn't like John Green. I might have been rather reserved at first, going into Looking For Alaska, but once I let my preconceptions about the characters go and allowed them to speak for themselves, I really found myself in love with the book. After the heartbreaking and lovely ending that was that novel, I went excitedly into The Fault in Our Stars and found exactly what I was hoping for. John Green writes young adult novels the way I wish I did. His characters are flawed but infinitely likeable. The emotion is always palpable between them, and their dialogue switches well between quick and lengthy. Not to mention I felt tears in my eyes at the end of both novels. I'm not afraid of that.

In The Fault in Our Stars, there is a big deal made over the significance or insignificance of funerals. Now, discussion over the validity of eulogies isn't particularly new. The Orson Scott Card novel Speaker for the Dead concerns itself with this as the majority of its underlying plot, and, putting aside my polar differences with Card's personal philosophy, that will still always be one of my favorite novels. But whereas Speaker for the Dead decides that the only way to truly remember the dead is to put their full, uncensored past on display, the characters in The Fault in our Stars disagree. While they hate the superficial nature of eulogies, the cliches that are spouted, the sugarcoating that happens, they ultimately decide that a funeral is never really for the person who died. Rather, they say, it is to comfort those left behind.

And while I would agree with that, I would also disagree with a larger theme that plays out in both Green novels. There seems that the characters hold a great deal of resentment towards those who are left behind. Not the close friends, of course. But many of the characters state that they feel that people who mourn but weren't close are fake or insincere in some way. I am inclined to disagree with that. Maybe I'm not the best person to state this, since I haven't particularly mourned the passing of anyone in a long time, but I think that someone touches the lives of a lot more people than they realize. Sure, there might perhaps be those who pretend to feel bad just to get attention, but I legitimately believe there will me more people than someone might expect at their funeral.

I think my point is that I would be curious to see who would be present at my funeral. That's something of a morbid thought, I suppose. I'm certainly not wishing for death, or even contemplating my own at all. I just really do wonder how I would be remembered if I was gone tomorrow, or how I will be remembered when the time actually comes. This isn't out of some vindictive spirit, nor do I think this with any particular vanity. But I really do wonder what exactly my significance is to people. I want to make a difference in people's lives, and I would love to be able to know exactly what difference I have made.

I think maybe that's one of the reasons why I write.