Book Review: Where The Heart Is

Where the Heart is by Billie Letts is a story about a teenage girl who has to go through a lot of hardships in order to take care of not only her unborn baby, but herself as well. In the beginning of the story her boyfriend, Willy Jack, leaves her alone at Wal-Mart, in a city they’ve never been to, to take care of herself. Novalee, the soon-to-be-teenage-mother, is only 17, and unfortunately unlike the cliché, has bad luck when the number seven comes into play. Whenever she hears the number she automatically knows something bad has happened, or will happen, and that’s how she knew Willy Jack abandoned her.  She went in to go to the bathroom and get some “polka-dot flip-flops,” and the cashier handed back to her $7.77.There she was, alone in the Wal-Mart parking lot with nothing but her plastic beach bag and flip-flops, sweating from the beating sun and seven months pregnant.

                This is novel was one of my favorites to read for a few reasons, the main one being how original it was. Who has a baby in Wal-Mart? Novalee’s a character who’s innocent and good-hearted, along with that she’s young hearted as well as physically young, too young to care for a baby some would say but she does it extremely well. She has nothing but hopes and dreams for her future with her baby. While in the car with Willy she’s telling him about what type of house she wants and how she wants to sit on the patio with her baby and drink chocolate milk while they watch the sun go down. Novalee’s never  lived in a house that wasn’t moveable, she’s never actually settled down anywhere, she’s always been on the move, one place to another, and all she dreams of is to have a place to stay, where she doesn’t have to worry about getting up and leaving the second things go wrong, she dreams of having a home.

                That’s when she meets Sister Husband, a warm character with a heart of gold. She tells Novalee about home, and what it is. “Home is where your history begins,” she also tells her, “Home is the place that’ll catch you when you fall. And we all fall.” When Novalee has no other place to go, Sister Husband takes her in as if she’s family and treats her just that way. All the characters in this book are different and they do a good job of showing the difference between good and bad between people. When Novalee’s talking to Lexie, her best friend who’s a single mother of four children, there was a scene when Lexie and her children had just been beaten by a man Lexie thought would be “the one,” but he turned out to be a child molester and just an overall horrible person because of his actions. But what Novalee tells Lexie when she asks her what’s she’s going to tell her children, Novalee says, “Tell them we’ve all got meanness in us… But tell them that we have some good in us, too. And the only thing worth living for is the good.” Novalee has hope that the bad people can change, she believes that not all bad people are entirely bad and at the same time not all good people are entirely good. There’s good and bad in all of us.

                Willy Jack tells her in the beginning, before he abandoned her, that he couldn’t feel the beat of the baby’s heart. Throughout his life, everything he does revolves around the beat of a heart. He writes a song about it after he dies and is brought back to life during his stay in prison. Whenever he gets drunk he hears Novalee’s voice and thinks about her, and she always ends up saving him in some way even though she’s never with him again. That is until he gets his legs run over. She visits him in the hospital, she makes the drive to the hospital to find out that he had been on his way there to find her and Americus, the now seven year old little girl that he had no part in raising. When Novalee sees him again she confronts him about leaving her and he tells her that he came back to tell her something about the baby. He wanted to right a wrong he did on the day he left them. He tells her how he told Novalee he didn’t feel the baby’s heart, he reminded her how he said he didn’t feel “the little bomp… bomp… bomp..,” and of course Novalee remembers, but then he tells her that he lied. And he did feel the heart, he felt where the heart was and wasn’t sure why he lied about it, but then he asks why does anyone lie? He suggests that everyone has meanness in them and that’s overall what the book is about and what it’s showing, that everyone has meanness in them, but there are ways to right wrongs. There are ways to fix the lies that eat away at you, and there are ways to become good after all you’ve done is bad. That’s what this book is about.

Blog #5

I believe that for a book to be considerd non-fiction, it should be just that. Non-fiction. The only time where I see it to be okay is in cases like The Glass Castle, where she was a child and she may not recall exactly what she said but she gets the idea of what she said. I'm talking about dialogue. I think she has the basic idea of what she and other people said back then, and who knows, maybe it is exact. But there's almost never really a time when people recall exactly what they said to one another.

The half-truths matter when it comes to what type of story you tell people you're gonna sell. If you say it's fiction then it doesn't matter at all, but if you're gonna sit there and tell everyone that it's a memoir when in actuality a lot of it is made up, then turn around, admit it's only five percent true, then that gives reasonable doubt if any of it is true. So moral of the story. Either it's fiction, or non-fiction. When it comes to events and really important things that are said or done, those have to be exact for it to be considered a memoir or non-fiction.

Post 4

I’m no filmmaker, but I think when you read a book and watch the movie then look back on scenes the filmmaker cut out, sometimes it can become clear as to why they did so. Movies are typically an hour to two in length. The Lord of the Rings is one of those great trilogies where so much happens that it’s hard to include every little detail. I’m not that far into the book just yet but already there are a few changes that the filmmaker made when making the book into a movie.

I haven’t come across many scenes yet that I think are essential to keep that aren’t in the movie except for maybe the fact that so much time passes between the time Bilbo leaves to the time Frodo decides to leave. Frodo doesn’t know how dangerous the ring is until soon before he leaves in the book. I just think it would be important to show that Frodo doesn’t leave so suddenly, he leaves after a while.

Another scene in the book that needs to be kept is the whole birthday scene, which I believe that filmmaker did a good job of creating. I like how they showed the hobbits didn’t really care all that much about Bilbo’s speech which was definitely apparent in the book, some of them even got offended. But what I think should’ve been more clear in the movie is how the hobbits were greedy and wanted Bilbo to leave so they could have his things. There was no indication of that in the movie.

Something else that they needed to keep that was in the movie was the fact that the Ring Wraiths were searching for Frodo. I think in the movie they should've gone more into that because in the book the Wraith is asking the hobbits if they know where he went but in the movie the Wraith appears when Frodo has already started to hit the road. I think it shows that the Wraiths know he has the ring and that they're onto him, I believe it would instill more fear if they included that but all together from what i've read in the books I think the filmmakers did a good job.

Some scenes, such as where they're all singing about taking a bath together, I think should be left out. Not that I like the idea of leaving scenes out of the movie, but I see that the filmmakers left that part out because it doesn't really contribute to the plot. It mainly shows that after little time has passed since they left Hobbiton they're grateful to have hot water. Another part that I don't think is really all that significant that the filmmaker changed is the fact that Merry didn't leave right away with the other three, he joined them later in the book. Which I like in the movie that they all left together, it's more... symbolic I think.

Book 1 Project: The Night Circus

Come see what The Night Circus has to offer as it’s brought to life in The Night Carnival, a place where kids of all ages can come to enjoy true, believable magic. From contortionists who disappear, to gardens completely white made of ice, bottles that hold your wishes and dreams, to magicians, there’s nothing here that you won’t forget and it all starts when the sun goes down, unlike any other amusement park or carnival, any circus out there. This one will be different from all the others and it should be because this is real magic we’re talking about.

The carnival will be like an exact replica of the circus described in the book, as close as it can get at least. There are some aspects that unfortunately can't be incorporated just because they’re created with real magic in the book, and unfortunately though some people may disagree, the magic in reality isn’t the same as the magic that comes when you read the words of a book. If we’re able to find humans who can bend themselves in any direction and return back to normal shape, that’d be great. There are probably a good handful of excellent magicians out there who could give the illusion that their tricks are real magic. They’d come in handy for our carnival. Each tent would be black and white stripped, like in the book. And there’d be concession stands scattered around the carnival selling warm cider, chocolate mice, and hot cocoa, everything that was in the book. The carnival will be the circus brought to life.

Everything in the carnival will come straight from the circus. Including some of the rides and attractions such as the cloud maze, which is literally a maze made of clouds but you can spend as long as you want in there. There’s no rush to get out and you can climb as high as you want. In the book they say the easiest way to get out is to just jump down, and the characters don’t have to worry about getting hurt.

Obviously we can’t make a real cloud maze.

But we can make something like it. Something better than hanging pillows up in the air with ropes and screws. It’d be made to give the illusion that you’re floating in the air, and each platform would be soft, like a cloud is imagined to be. There’d be doors at each “safe cloud” which could be colored a light blue versus white to differentiate them from the others. Even though that’s not in the book, it’s safer than having the carnivalists jump from the “clouds.”

“The tower itself if a series of platforms swooping in odd, diaphanous shapes, quite similar to clouds. They are layered, like a cake.”

“Some platforms are suspended from ropes or chains from above. On lower levels, there are large poles driven through multiple platforms, though Bailey cannot tell if they reach all the way to the top.”

Another attraction we can create is called The Stargazer. It’s a rollercoaster in which you lean back, like you’re laying down, and you stare at the stars. Shocker, right? One of the characters, Poppet, looks up the stars and she’s able to read them, she’s able to read the future, though it’s fuzzy and she’s not always certain on some of the details.

“The tent has no top, Bailey realizes. The upper portion of it is open, with the night sky fully visible. It is a different sensation than watching the stars while lying in a field, something Bailey has done so many times. There are no trees creeping into the edges, and the gentle swaying of the carriage makes him feel almost weightless.”

The rollercoaster wouldn’t be like a thrill ride, it would be more soothing than anything. And like the ride in the circus, the ride in the carnival will only be open on clear nights, where there are no clouds so that all the stars can be seen.

And of course, what’s a carnvial without a fortune teller? There will be a tent set up in a corner somewhere, home to the fortune teller and behind a curtain of beads she would sit on a few pillows, her face hidden by a veil, and in front of her there would be a table that supports nothing but a deck of cards.

“The fortune-teller picks up the deck and shuffles, shifting the cards from one hand to the other. They fold over and under each other in waves. Then she spreads them across the table in one fluid motion, forming an arc of identical black-and-white-patterned card backs. ‘Choose a single card,’ she says. ‘Take your time. This will be your card, the one that will represent you.’”

She would be proffesional, and mysterious, and never give a clear answer but the people who go to her will always leave with a sense of direction of what they should do next, or what they’re supposed to do. What lies ahead of them. What their destiny is.

This carnival won’t be like any other, it’ll be truly magical because it’ll be based off a magical circus in a book, and books can hold the key to true magic.

What is a book?

A book to me is like a warm cup of hot chocolate on a cold, snowy day. It's refreshing and fills me with a sense of comfort and serenity, along with pleasure. I've always enjoyed reading books, the actual physical book, versus some elecronic copy because to me, it's a personal and intimate experience that you can't get anywhere else. I love the feel of the pages between my finger tips as I turn the page. I love the way that old books smell and crinkle when you open the cover.

Maybe it's because I don't like change, I prefer tradition. I've always read physical copies of books and when the idea came out to have books on a device like a kindle or nook or some other electric device, I wasn't too happy. I understand why people like them, they're small, easy to carry, the books are cheaper on those devices and you can store quite a few books on a single device. But what I don't understand is how readers can enjoy something that has nothing personal or intimate to it. With a physical book, you, yourself, have to carry out the motion of turning each page. You can write notes in the margins. If you like to buy used books, like I do, they may already be written in. I love when that happens because then I can see the way the readers before me interacted with the book and their thought processes and it becomes somewhat like some elite, silent circle of people around the book.

I hate the fact that ebooks are taking over, there's nothing personal about that and I want people to understand how much of a joy it is to own your own physical copy, to understand the different weights and feels, textures and fonts of books. It really is the most intimate thing that I feel I could experience, and I want everyone else to understand that the best things in life are things that don't come easy. I guess it just makes me mad that people are choosing ebooks because they're easier and quicker, but I believe that it's healtheir and more fulfilling to own a physical copy. Maybe that's just me.

Why do I read?

There are a variety of reasons for why any number of people may read. Some read because they have to, others to get information, and others read for pleasure. The reason I read is a collaboration of all three.

When I read it's like I can escape to a whole new reality, sometimes similar to the one i'm already in, and other times completely different. But that's why I enjoy it. You never know what you're gonna get and I believe that each book you read impacts you in a different way. With every book you learn something new, whether it's how to cook something extravagant, how hormones effect your decisions, or different love stories that are really pretty much all the same, they all widen your knowledge of different things, and that's what I love about books. Well. That's one thing at least.

What I really love about books is the creativity between the lines, how beautiful the story can be, the word choice especially. There's almost nothing that'll give me more over to a book than a collection of good choices of words, I believe they really sell the book. I love a book's ability to keep me wanting more, to stop everything and do nothing but read each word between the covers. The best books in my opinion are the ones that make me sad when i'm done with them, because once I finish, that's the end of my escaped reality.