Anonymous asked:
Have you read any Sylvia Plath? I think you might like her works.
omg im literally reading the bell jar right now
Rip Harper Lee
You will be missed.
Anonymous asked:
Hey Yasmin did you hear that Netflix is making Thirteen Reasons Why in to a mini series. And Selena Gomez isn't staring but is producing.
YESSSSS omgosh I read about this yesterday and MUCH EXCITEMENT!!!
After all these years of rumours and whatnot, IT’S FINALLY HAPPENING. WAHOOOOO.
Anonymous asked:
Hey Yasmin did you hear that Netflix is making Thirteen Reasons Why in to a mini series. And Selena Gomez isn't staring but is producing.
YESSSSS omgosh I read about this yesterday and MUCH EXCITEMENT!!!
After all these years of rumours and whatnot, IT’S FINALLY HAPPENING. WAHOOOOO.
Gladiator in a suit ↳ 1x01 | 5x04
Me, on Monday: ADELE!!!
Me, on Tuesday: GILMORE GIRLS!!!
Me, on Wednesday: BACK TO THE FUTURE!!!
Me, tomorrow: please world just let me breathe
Correct predictions in Back To The Future II
Olivia Pope are you the president’s mistress?
What Girl Meets World got Wrong
Disclaimer: If you are a fan of GMW I strongly recommend that you leave right now because you may get offended by this post. So Girl Meets World yesterday covered a subject that is very important to me. That subject is Aspergers and the reason that it is so important to me is that I have Aspergers. So when I heard that they were covering Aspergers I thought, “ Yes this is so great” but, that quickly changed after the episode name I Am Farkle aired in Canada and I heard bad things about it. So I fount it on YouTube and watched it. I thought that it was terrible and I’m going to list some of the many reasons that it was portrayed poorly. 1. It reinforced some of the old stereotypes about Aspergers. 2. When they were listing some of the Symptoms they were wrong including an “inability to love” as one of the symptoms which is 100% untrue. 3. When they find out that Smackle has Aspergers I think that the writers thought that everyone with Aspergers is the same which is untrue. 4. Instead of having these “Experts on Aspergers/ Autism” they should have gotten actual people on the spectrum to talk too instead. 5. My final reason is that one of the girls thought that if Farkle had Aspergers it was a death sentence of sorts in which made me so mad.
This is Miley’s actual reaction to Nicki calling her out at the VMAs.
“Do you think we’ll be friends forever, Phil?”
“I think we will, Chuckie. I think we will.“
Lol
*BOOK REVIEW* Go Set a Watchman - Harper Lee
★★★★★ – 5/5 stars
*SPOILER FREE*
Synopsis: Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch–“Scout”–returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise’s homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt. Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in a painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past–a journey that can be guided only by one’s conscience.
I finished this 3 days ago and I think I am emotionally ready now to talk about it after how it broke me. If you didn’t know, like many people, To Kill a Mockingbird is very dear to me and possibly my favourite book. Everything about it just warmed me and I love every character to pieces, while teaching me a lot. So, naturally, I was over the moon to have found out there was to me more from this distinctive lady but wary it could all go wrong and be so very different. As you might have seen from press/hype/other reviews, the book was all very different not in style but the way people hoped although that doesn’t mean it was all wrong. I will say it now, do not read Go Set a Watchman if like me it is so precious to you but you don’t want everything you have learnt/taken away from Mockingbird to be challenged (to me, as I have come to learn, in a good way).
I was so happy with Scout all grown up and to see her traits and characteristics that were so beloved not to have been lost when she moved away to New York. Her temper, her righteousness and morals are all so gratefully present and unsurpressed and it is what carries her through ’til the end. That being said, I would have liked to have found out more about her and her life since moving away and during the two decades that have passed but I think the flashbacks to home as a girl with Jem made up for that as the two books became at times synonymous and you got to re-live it a little without feeling like it’s been overdone.
It is when you come to look at our other beloved character, the morally sound and highly regarded Atticus Finch that things have changed. However, upon reflection these changes in opinion from Atticus (remaining spoiler-free) are not a bad thing and do not ruin him as his temperament and affliction for justice remains sound. While condemning Atticus and this book many literary critics have forgotten the context and era that Go Set A Watchman was written in, and that this book reflects that time. Let us not forget that it was only in 1955 that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus for a white person this novel written not long after reflects the fear of the white southern American, which is what we find with Atticus in the mid ’50’s.
I also loved the biblical reference of the title which is Isaiah 21:6 which later in the book Dr Finch, Scout’s uncle, reminds us that our own conscience is our own watchman for our minds, and our thoughts. Something that this novel screams as challenging our consciousness about racism and reminds us that no person is an on their own in what they perceive to be right, especially in Alabama in the 1950s. From what I can see, we can look at this novel 2 ways – it is a sequel to Mockingbird and we take what we learn as character development and reflecting the views as the characters molded their morals to the time or it is an early draft version of Mockingbird that Harper Lee just hadn’t published but was remodeled by her editor into the the distinctive Atticus we know. I don’t know what I am going with but I sure do know that either way, it does something to challenge our views by teaching us a lot about civil rights pressures and context of the time – not ruin them.
So to conclude this long and poorly constructed review, the 5 stars is topped off with the fact that we find stunning nuances and details that makes Watchman read like we are visiting old friends but it is not just selling on pure nostalgia because the distinctive writing style and genius flair Harper Lee has allows us to become enveloped in the times all over again but with fresh ideas and storyline. We need to give credit where it is due. When I can read a book and be moved by it, when it makes me think, when it resonates with me on a personal level and when I want to recommend it to everyone I know, then it is usually a damn fine piece of writing.
Anonymous asked:
Is it weird that I think that Harper Lee left the ending of Watchman hopeful. She makes it seem Atticus could change his views and I think people are ignoring that.
(Spoilers Ahead) For most books, an open ending is a bad thing. For Go Set A Watchman, the ending could only be open-ended, because the novel is about how far the road ahead is. It’s a satisfying ending because it implies some things but doesn’t rule anything out.
- Atticus Finch: Atticus himself says that he’s open to changing his views if he hears a compelling argument. Scout doesn’t want to debate the topic when she “has no fight left in [her],” but her passion flares up and she becomes unstoppable. Now that she has her fighting spirit back, she is certainly going to do her best to talk sense into Atticus. Although Atticus is racist, his main concern is knowing who the violent racists are and what they’re up to so that he find them guilty of their crimes in a court of law. When it comes to Civil Rights, he wants to hear Scout’s thoughts so he can moon them over. Not bad, for someone born in Alabama in 1883.
- Walter Cunningham: The first name of the ice cream parlor owner (”Mr. Cunningham”) is never mentioned, but since he’s a friend of Scout’s and a lover of sweets, I think it’s safe to assume he’s Walter Cunningham Jr. Now that he’s no longer “trash,” Walter can afford molasses to pour on all his vegetables.
- Jack Finch: Since Jack left his medical practice in Boston, MA and moved to Maycomb, one wonders why he hasn’t married Maudie Atkinson. This isn’t directly addressed, but we have enough hints to know why - Mockingbird says he’d been proposing to her for 40 years and each time she rejected him for fun & Watchman says he’s still in love with Atticus’s deceased wife. At least his cat loves him.
- Scout Finch: Scout was going to go home to New York, but she decides to miss her train and drive back to Atticus’s house because they’re starting to bond again. Maybe she wants to stay a couple more days like she had originally planned so she can become closer to her father. Maybe she’s going to move back to Maycomb. Maybe she’s going to wait around for Dill Harris to finish traveling and marry him; after all, she misses him and they were ‘engaged’ as kids. Maybe she’s going to marry her beau, Hank Clinton - she had argued with him but around that time she had also argued with Atticus, Jack, and Zandra Finch and came to realize that she deeply loves them. Maybe she’s going to ‘become a lady’ like the other women in Maycomb. Maybe she’s going to remain her roisterous self - Zandra, the quintessential Southern lady, says Scout is already a lady in her own way. The impression my father and I got was that Scout’s going to move back to Maycomb to take care of her father, retain her raucous personality, and marry Hank.
- Famous Last Words: The last line is “She went around the car, and as she slipped under the steering wheel, this time was careful not to bump her head.” I take that to mean Scout has learned how to have civil discussions about important issues with the people of Maycomb without taking what they say too personally.
What is clear in the end is that Scout is going to pick up where Atticus left off in the fight for equality and justice.
Anonymous asked:
Is bad if I feel as though people are not looking at the investigation that Alabama did about Harper Lee? It stated that she was able to consent to the publication. Why do you think people aren't paying any attention to it?
It bothers me too! There were two investigations and they both came to the conclusion that Harper Lee wanted to publish Go Set A Watchman. She also made two press release statements (one for her publisher & one for the American Masters show on PBS) about how delighted she was about the book being published. When it came out, she even held a small luncheon where she autographed some copies. I think people want a reason to deny that Watchman is canon because they want to deny that racism in our society is canon.
In 1957, Lee wrote Watchman - a novel about Scout learning how to stay true to herself in a tumultuous post-WWII world, where Civil Rights, feminism, and counter-cultures were brewing. Her white male editor rejected it and told her to write a book about Scout’s childhood. So she wrote To Kill A Mockingbird - a novel where things are right vs. wrong & good vs. evil, where people just accept the way things are, and where race is the main focus yet the white man is the hero and the black people (except for Calpurnia, the hero’s servant) are more like voiceless symbols & plot devices. Not to mention that it’s similar to Carson McCullers’s Gothic novels, which were popular at the time. In short, she seems to have been asked to conform.
Fast-forward to Watchman’s publication. People are heartbroken, angry, and in denial about the revelation that Atticus has always been a racist. They’re saying Mockingbird is completely ruined and that kids will never be taught the wonderment of it ever again. Probably the reaction Lee expected when deciding to shelf the book for 58 years. If you re-read Mockingbird, Atticus clearly is a racist; eight year old Scout just doesn’t understand that yet and adult Scout narrates from the vantage point of her childhood self. In other words, people largely choose to overlook the racism in Mockingbird and embrace the aspects that make people feel good about ‘how far we’ve come’ so that they don’t have to think about current racial inequalities. They missed the point, and Watchman provides the much needed conversations about gender and race.
Even with the wall to wall news coverage of women’s reproductive rights, police violence against people of color, immigration, and the LGBT+ rights movement in the past 2 or so years, for the most part, Americans are still refusing to talk about inequality. This is why we needed Go Set A Watchman, and this is what I believe prompted Lee to publish it.
Go Set A Watchman
The Most Important Book You’ll Ever Read (Spoilers)
What You Need To Know
- To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) is the prequel to Go Set A Watchman (which is why Watchman is considered a “sequel”). Watchman was written in 1957, but it wasn’t published until 2015.
- Watchman is not ‘just a draft’ of Mockingbird. The plot and lessons have absolutely nothing to do with Mockingbird.
- Watchman is not a parallel universe or alternate reality. There isn’t a single thing in Watchman that contradicts Mockingbird’s events, characters, or the narrator’s ‘voice.’ For instance, I keep hearing people say that the Tom Robinson trial exists in Watchman and that Atticus wins the case. That’s simply not true. In Mockingbird, Mr. Robinson is a 25 year old man who is married and has three kids. He is a field worker and handyman. He can’t use one of his arms because it got caught in a cotton gin. A 19 year old white woman named Mayella Ewell falsely accuses him of raping her when in fact she tried to rape him. Atticus loses the case. The case is the main focus of the book’s plot. In Watchman, a 14 year old white girl falsely accuses a black teenage guy of raping her. The guy only has one arm and the sex was consensual. Atticus wins the case. The case is only mentioned in passing. Scout later mentions that when she was a kid, she knew a black field worker named Tom. Jack Finch says white supremacists accuse black people of rape all the time in order to scare people.
Why It’s Phenomenal
- Watchman is unique in the genre. Southern Gothic, a subgenre of Gothic literature, uses elements of Gothic literature to expose social problems in the American South. Mockingbird fits very neatly into this mold - a ghostly man fittingly named Boo lives in a spooky old house, people do Voodoo and Hoodoo to keep spirits (haints) away, there are murders, etc. Watchman has a much subtler, more complex approach. Southern Gothic normally sound like Edgar Allan Poe, but Watchman’s narration sounds more like a coming of age novel. Southern Gothic normally are loaded with symbolism, but Watchman focuses on Scout’s thoughts with literary allusions peppered in (Scout loves to read). Southern Gothic normally have an overarching plot, but Watchman is more like a series of conversations and flashbacks that add depth to the characters. However, Watchman is still a Southern Gothic because it has gender-bending, eccentric characters, social issues, and dark themes (ex. Scout is suicidal).
- The moral of the story is be yourself. I’m going to compare this to Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll because Scout calls Jack Finch the Mad Hatter. Scout is masculine the majority of the time, doesn’t like kids, and doesn’t like the idea of marriage. Alice’s personality is a parody of the ideal Victorian gentleman, which is clearest when she meets the White Knight, who is trying to be a perfect gentleman. Scout wants to go around Maycomb, Alabama to find out why Southerners are racist. Alice wants to go around Wonderland to find out the rules for everything so she can write a rule book. Neither Scout nor Alice succeed in fitting in. They both realize that most of the rules and protocol are nonsense, so they have to think for themselves.
- A heroine, not the usual hero. In Mockingbird, Atticus gets to be the gentleman hero who preserves the status quo, while Scout passively admires him. She is narrating the story in her adult years, but she only conveys to us the ideal way she used to see her father. In Watchman, Scout gets to be a tragic hero and calls people out on their racism and hypocrisy.
- It centers around the topic of racism in its more nuanced yet equally appalling forms. Scout comes home for a visit and thinks everyone has a different personality. Jack Finch explains to her that they’ve been this way all along, she just wasn’t paying enough attention. Accordingly, you can find instances in Mockingbird that show Atticus isn’t always morally sound, but those are eclipsed by his good deeds, so they get lost unless you’re looking for them. For instance, even though Scout and Jem see their black maid Calpurnia as almost a mother to them, Atticus never brings them to her house and makes her come in through the back door. In Watchman, we see that he’s not the easy to spot type of racist who sets black people’s houses on fire, but the kind who is anti-integration, only wants black people to be unharmed and treated equal under the law (as opposed to him being a lawyer who fights institutional racism), and doesn’t realize that black people can organize and prosper. (Even during slavery, black people formed complex communities and support systems to buy each other out of slavery, provide health care, etc., such as the confraternities in Latin America.) A progressive would’ve become a Civil Rights lawyer and would’ve actively looked for cases of injustice to pursue out of compassion. Instead, black people come to Atticus for help and he agrees to help. That makes him a great hero and a great villain.
- It will force you to look at your own actions and ethics.
Go set a watchman… to wake you up from your childhood dreamland.
Booklr seeks book-buying advice.
Guys, what do I do?
First, you need to know my book-buying policy. I have limited space and limited self control, so I have imposed this guideline upon myself: I will only buy books that I have read and deemed worth reading again or forcing upon others. Thus, my bookshelf is essentially a collection of my favorites. I feel good about it.
EXCEPT, I am willing to buy Kindle books if it will get them into my hands faster, even if they’re not worthy of a “favorite” label.
If you’re still with me, I need your advice.
Harper Lee’s previously unreleased book, “Go Set a Watchman” comes out in July. I want it as soon as possible. My options are these:
A. Preorder the hardcover, assuming that it will be wonderful and worthy of adding to my shelf.
B. Preorder the Kindle book at a savings of like 10 cents, running the risk of regret if I happen to really love it.
I’m pretty much just preordering the hardcover.
BUT, then there’s this.
Look how pretty!
I don’t have “To Kill a Mockingbird” (yet), but I’m re-reading it now and remembering how much I love it and thinking it’s shelf-worthy. And look how pretty this set is. And if these are both hardcovers I may need them.
BUT THE SET ISN’T AVAILABLE UNTIL OCTOBER.
Why? What is this? I cannot wait until October to read the new book.
What do I dooooooo?
C. Preorder the hardcover now, have it for July, and then hope that this matching, pretty version of “To Kill a Mockingbird” is also available outside of the set later?
D. Preorder the hardcover and also find a non-matching “To Kill a Mockingbird” to order, too?
E. Preorder the new hardcover, have it in July, and then also preorder the set, meaning I’ll have two copies of the new book, and then just share the first copy with someone else?
I’m so riddled with indecisions that I’m not even sure this makes sense.
Please send help.
If you go to Amazon and look up To kill a Mockingbird Hardcover it will come up.