The Secret Rapture and Other Plays by David Hare

David Hare has been described as one of Britain's best contemporary playwright. I don't particularly agree, but I don't disagree. The reason for this would be that David Hare isn't the best playwright I have ever read, but he is the only contemporary British playwright that I know of so... yeah. This book contains 5 of Mr. Hare's most successful plays. One of them, which isn't even a play, stars Judi Dench. I think that my favorite play in here is called "Fanshen." It is about a village in China during the war between the Nationalist Party and the Kuomintang. The word Fanshen means to turn over, which is what most Chinese people were doing with their land. They were giving it all away to the party that was in power in the area. This play is about a village that refused to do so and overthrew the landlords in their area, taken over all of the land in the area, and manage for themselves, something which was unheard of in their feudalistic society. This play is basically a commentary on the workings of a communist society and who should really be in charge. The thing is about his plays is that all of the characters are amazingly developed. The characters really just jump off of the page. The only thing that I don't like about these plays is that most of the time, I have no idea what was happening during some these plays. The plots to 2/5 of these plays made no sense to me. One was about some divorce or something, and the other one was a play in a play in a movie, which REALLY messed with my brain.

genre 4th quarter

I think that I want to read more plays and scripts for things this quarter. I am currently in the middle of The Secret Rapture by David Hare, which is a collection of 5 of his greatest plays. His plays are about contemporary issues and I think that I enjoy contemporary plays better than older plays like Shakespeare and things of that nature. Definitely the best book that I have read this quarter would have to be Callisto by Torsten Krol. It had a very good story with a lot of humor thrown in and it had quite a lot of controversy. I think that over all, I really would prefer to read a book with some humor thrown it. I think I’m too immature to handle something that’s not funny. I think that I have read at least one book from every single genre.

book review response

Read the review of Torsten Krol’s “Callisto” which was written by Jack Pendarvis on April 10, 2009. The article was published in the New York Times. I really like this review, although it doesn’t offer a deep analysis or thoughts on the book. I agree with what Jack says when he says that Odell seems like he is a Bill Maher duplicate. He’s supposed to be that way. The character Odell is portrayed as is supposed to be a commentary on how ignorant and superior thinking Americans are, especially during the early post 9-11 era. I also like how he talked about how Odell’s voice is so fundamental of the book. His “Deefusisms” as he put them, are a very unique part of the book and is also a parody of what people called George Bush’s “bushisms”. What I most agree with is when Jack states that, “our identification with his clumsy charmer becomes at once the scariest and most appealing thing about the book.” Odell Deefus’ character is on the surface, stupid and dumb and nonsensical, but if you really look at his character, you can find a deep and complex figure who embodies the people of this country.

Callisto by Torsten Krol and beginning of Microbe Hunters by Paul De Kruif

To say the least, Callisto was exactly what I expected it to be....readable. Not only was it readable, but it was a good book too. I finnished it a while ago, so it's not that fresh in my mind, but I can still remember exactly everything that happened. Callisto is about a southern man named Odell Deefus who, whilst on his way to sign up for the us army in Callisto Tennessee, ends up on a crazy adventure which lands him on the FBI's top ten list. The book takes place in the early post 9-11 years, so security was very high and there was a lot of talk of terrorists. Odell is suspected of being a terrorist after a series of events, which to try to explain without revealing any important plot details would be impossible, makes him a terrorist suspect and lands him a lot of publicity. This book was written by the same author who wrote The Dolphin People, Torsten Krol. The reason I bought this book, his/her first book, the second being The Dolphin People, was because I loved the writing style of this author. I also like the subject matter of their stories. It is rumored that Torsten Krol's next book will be on the topic of Atheism, which, if true, I will read because I am interested in Atheism.
The book that I am currently reading is called Microbe Hunters. It is a book of stories of the different scientists who have accomplishments in the field of microbiology. The first story is of Anton Van Leeuwenhoek, the man who invented the first microscopes and discovered the first microorganisms. So far, this book, even though it is really long and hard to understand, has been very interesting/informative.

The end of the Time Traveler's Wife and the start of Callisto by Torsten Krol

So, I just want to say that you can ignore all of that stuff that I said before about this being a good book. Holy fill in the blank!!!! This was one of the worst books for a few reasons. The first one being that the love stuff totally ruined the whole time traveling concept of it. Audrey Naffleberry or whatever her name is (I'm kind of too lazy to go find the actual spelling for her name, so I'll just call her Naffleberry) had a really cool concept of what time travel could actually be. It is much different from the Back To The Future concept and the Terminator concept. Another reason why this book sucks is because Naffleberry didn't have enough content for the book to look like the size of a brick (therefore making it seem like she wrote a lot and maybe people would love her more), so she just added chapters upon chapters of stories that didn't tie into the whole story at all. The third reason that I didn't like this book was because of the ending. It ends with the main character, Henry, time traveling forward in time to see his wife at the age of 82 and it's sad because by then, to her, Henry has been dead for 6o-something years. YYYYAAAAWWWWNNNN!!!! Yes, I know, that was a spoiler, but I didn't tell you because you're not going to read the book anyway, so there's no point in hiding anything from you. So in conclusion, Naffleberry should stop writing. Also, the movie was terrible on the scale of Cloverfield and the newer movies of Leslie Nielsen.

I also started to read Callisto by Torsten Krol. This book is about a man Odell Deefus, who decides that his life is pretty much going no where, so he joins the army. That's all I know so far and so far it's ok. I hope it gets better.

The Time Traveler's Wife (part two)

The more I read this book, the less I remember that this is a romance book about a time traveler. Is that weird? (the answer is yes by the way). There was one scene from this week's reading that really struck me. There was a part where Henry was telling Claire about how he hates Christmas because that's the day that his mother died. They were in the car and they crashed into a truck with it's back door/platform thing down. They crashed the car into the door/platform thing and it decapitated his mother. Henry, right before impact, time traveled 2 seconds into the past, on the grass right next to the crash. He was 6 years old. However sad that may be, the real tragedy is that for the next 10 years or so, Henry time travels back to that same place and time, over and over and over and over again. Also, he doesn't just go back to the same spot, he time travels to a bunch of different places around the crash, so that he sees it from every possible angle. I read this part on Monday and I still can't believe that such a thing could come from a human mind.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (part uno)

So, here is what I think happened to create this book. There was a woman who never saw any of the terminator movies, never got a full synopsis of the story, and all of her knowledge of the movie was references to it in pop culture. Then, she decides to write a book about what she thinks the terminator is. Then, some other woman reads the book and thinks, "oh, this is cute. But it should be a sappy love story!" Then a book is produced that is pretty much fan-fiction of a book written by someone who kinda-sorta knows what the terminator is. That is what I think happened to create The Time Traveler's Wife. So far, there is a guy named Henry who, due to some genetic deformity, spontaneously travels to different places in time and meets either himself at different ages, or his love, Claire, at different ages. That's all I can really tell from what I read so far. My mom recommended this book to me so it probably is going to be horrible. I keep trying to convince myself that this is going to be a good book because they made a movie out of it (this is bad logic though, because Twilight was made into a movie.....just saying).