cuddlefish (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cuddlefish) wrote2009-09-10 05:48 pm
cuddlefish) wrote2009-09-10 05:48 pm
My Summer Book Report
Today I went to the gigantic Barnes and Noble in Kenmore Square. This one store is Boston University's bookstore so it has several floors, one of which has furniture and clothes and stuff like that. It is a cool place. I drank a green tea latte and pretended to be much more pretty and interesting than I really am while reading a book called The Unit.
Imagine my amusement when I discovered it was The Island only with old people. I was walking by it and I could tell it was a sci-fi book from like a mile away. So The Island is this movie where a whole bunch of clones are being grown for their organs in an underground facility, and every time one of them gets harvested the rest are told the harvest has gone to "the island," a natural paradise. It's a really smart kind of movie but it was made by Michael Bay to be an endless string of needless explosions and shit >:| anyway, in this book, women at age 50 and men at age 60 who aren't really doing anything and don't have kids are sent to a facility where they are kept in perfect health while scientists do experiments on them and doctors take their organs for other people. I guess the government makes them go...anyway, barring some uneasiness about someone possibly referring to and complaining about Obama's nonexistent "death panels" in the presence of the kind of first-year college students that require actual education, it looked like fun. I read a few chapters in the store that were just fine.
Then I took it home and read the next chapter, where the protagonist complains and whines about how feminism ruined her life. Her mother taught her never to depend on man, and as a result she was always terrified of contracts and responsibilities, to the point at which she never got married, had a child, or had a really steady job. I'm sorry, but if you you YOU went that far with it, wouldn't that mean you were just stupid? If you hadn't found a husband, wouldn't that mean you just didn't have the right person around? (Or you were gay---I get the feeling there are a lot of gay people in this facility) If what you really want is to be a 50s housewife, but society says you musn't so you never tried...doesn't that make you a spineless wimp? Would it even be that hard with the way the world is now?
Sometimes I think it's going to be okay, and then she complains about how she's not supposed to accept strange men flirting with her even though it makes her feel so special and nice. Dude, men are not supposed to catcall you on the street because every person wants to feel like they can walk around wherever they like, like other people, without being reminded that they are woman and could be raped or beaten for existing. It's outlawed in her futuristic European country and she's such an idiot, she complains.
I'm keeping up with the book but every time this stupid woman she starts up again with some basic anti-feminism sentiment it's like a sock in the gut. Amazon reviews make it sound a little bleak---people hoping this main character will change and then not seeing it :(
In other words, SPN TONIGHT OMIGOD OMIGOD *kermitflail* I USE THIS ICON TO MAKE MYSELF FEEL BETTER ABOUT THAT DUMB BOOK, AND BECAUSE MY HEAD IS IN THE CLOUDS---PILLOWS---SHOUJO BUBBLES---WHATEVER. IT'S THERE IN A FLUFFY HAPPY PLACE.
A conversation recreated from when I had it last night in Aion online:
Me: Your AIM away message says 23 more hours. Omigoooood. When you put it that way I start to get too excited. I MIGHT BARF.
My fangirl friend: lol. Well, if you did, maybe Dean would hold your hair for you.
Me: ...is it so wrong that I've wished for that before? When not barfing?
おにーちゃんいたわってー
Imagine my amusement when I discovered it was The Island only with old people. I was walking by it and I could tell it was a sci-fi book from like a mile away. So The Island is this movie where a whole bunch of clones are being grown for their organs in an underground facility, and every time one of them gets harvested the rest are told the harvest has gone to "the island," a natural paradise. It's a really smart kind of movie but it was made by Michael Bay to be an endless string of needless explosions and shit >:| anyway, in this book, women at age 50 and men at age 60 who aren't really doing anything and don't have kids are sent to a facility where they are kept in perfect health while scientists do experiments on them and doctors take their organs for other people. I guess the government makes them go...anyway, barring some uneasiness about someone possibly referring to and complaining about Obama's nonexistent "death panels" in the presence of the kind of first-year college students that require actual education, it looked like fun. I read a few chapters in the store that were just fine.
Then I took it home and read the next chapter, where the protagonist complains and whines about how feminism ruined her life. Her mother taught her never to depend on man, and as a result she was always terrified of contracts and responsibilities, to the point at which she never got married, had a child, or had a really steady job. I'm sorry, but if you you YOU went that far with it, wouldn't that mean you were just stupid? If you hadn't found a husband, wouldn't that mean you just didn't have the right person around? (Or you were gay---I get the feeling there are a lot of gay people in this facility) If what you really want is to be a 50s housewife, but society says you musn't so you never tried...doesn't that make you a spineless wimp? Would it even be that hard with the way the world is now?
Sometimes I think it's going to be okay, and then she complains about how she's not supposed to accept strange men flirting with her even though it makes her feel so special and nice. Dude, men are not supposed to catcall you on the street because every person wants to feel like they can walk around wherever they like, like other people, without being reminded that they are woman and could be raped or beaten for existing. It's outlawed in her futuristic European country and she's such an idiot, she complains.
I'm keeping up with the book but every time this stupid woman she starts up again with some basic anti-feminism sentiment it's like a sock in the gut. Amazon reviews make it sound a little bleak---people hoping this main character will change and then not seeing it :(
In other words, SPN TONIGHT OMIGOD OMIGOD *kermitflail* I USE THIS ICON TO MAKE MYSELF FEEL BETTER ABOUT THAT DUMB BOOK, AND BECAUSE MY HEAD IS IN THE CLOUDS---PILLOWS---SHOUJO BUBBLES---WHATEVER. IT'S THERE IN A FLUFFY HAPPY PLACE.
A conversation recreated from when I had it last night in Aion online:
Me: Your AIM away message says 23 more hours. Omigoooood. When you put it that way I start to get too excited. I MIGHT BARF.
My fangirl friend: lol. Well, if you did, maybe Dean would hold your hair for you.
Me: ...is it so wrong that I've wished for that before? When not barfing?
おにーちゃんいたわってー