The Bowl

Taking a break from my normal book reviews, here are some instances where a movie accurately encapsulates (or improves) the novel it is based upon. Normally, when someone is confronted with the idea that there was a movie adaptation of their favorite book, they automatically think that the movie remake will always be worse. However, Forrest Gump would prove them wrong. If you haven't watched the movie yet, Forrest Gump is a movie about a man with an IQ of 75 with good intentions. We are taken through the life story of Gump, through his ups and downs, but he always stays optimistic about anything happening to him. However, the book was very disappointing and only remotely enjoyable if you had already watched the movie. The actors, including Tom Hanks, Elvis Presley, etc, and the director, Robert Zemeckis, brought this subpar novel to the screen in an amazing fashion. The second novel I'll be talking about in this blog post is Jaws. Again, this book was rather unremarkable, thril...

     12 years ago back in 2009, manga artist Hajime Isayama created the manga Shingeki no Kyojin also better known as Attack on Titan. As a 3-year-old, I made the worst mistake of my life. I didn’t start reading Attack on Titan until 2019. With the decade-long series having finished just a few weeks ago, I have bestowed it the title of the greatest story of all time (in my opinion..). For those of you who do not know, Attack on Titan is mainly known for its incredible success in the anime adaptation which started in 2013 and has been going strong with 4 seasons with the last one ending next year. Despite its greatness, it has yet to finish catching up with the source material, so I am here to talk about the original manga which finished on April, 9th and is better than the anime fight me, but that’s a topic for another day.      As someone who was heavily invested in it, I found it to be a hell of a journey following Eren Jaeger and his friends trying to ...

                                        We are okay book review We are okay is a book by Nina Lacour. In this book, something tragic happens to the main character, Marin, and not being ready to forgive, she tries to forget. She leaves for college, planning to never look back. Calls and voicemails sent to her phone never got an answer and the friend she leaves behind never heard a good bye. However, now in the midst of her winter break, her friend Mabel is coming to visit her college for three days and upon arrival, Mabel tells her upfront that she wants her to come home. With no longer any known immediate family left of Marin’s, Mabel tells Marin that her parents are willing to take her in. However, Marin says no. Although she wants to say yes, she can not face going back you California. Mabel, rather intent on her mission continues to stay for the next thr...

       I read Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy. The book was a story about the birth of modern-day computers and the transition to modern-day PCs. It was a very interesting read that really humbled my previous understanding of computers. One thing that was very interesting to me about the book was a thing called the Hacker Ethic. It was a term born in Tech Square in MIT, and it describes the working ethic that the computer hackers that lived there had while they worked with these huge computers. The moment they entered the room, they would forget about everything else. They would forget about doing well in school, sleeping, eating and all they did was just give 100% all the time to hacking a computer. It was very interesting. They would set up strange sleeping systems where they would stay awake and build programs on a computer for 3 days straight, then sleep like a baby for another few days straight. This kind of unconditional dedication ...

                                                                                       Dewey Decimal System I vaguely remember learning about the Dewey Decimal System in second grade. I thought it was pretty boring and useless because most of the time I would directly ask one of the librarians to find my request without even trying in the first place. However, I never knew how the books were organized within the Dewey Decimal System and how it allowed librarians to easily spot specific books and requests.  The Dewey Decimal System is a library classification system that organizes contents of a library in 10 main groups; General Knowledge, Philosophy and Psychology, Religion, Social Sciences, Languages, Science and Math, Techno...

Blood on the Tracks      Recently, I was able to catch up on the manga Blood on the Tracks . Blood on the Tracks is written and illustrated by Shūzō Oshimi and has been ongoing since February 2017. The story is very suspenseful and dives into the many psychological pressures and complex social relationships the main character has to deal with. Currently, the story is at its climax or possibly a major turning point and though slow at first, the payoff is very well worth it, so I recommend it. If anyone has read the webtoon Bastard, the premise is very similar. Seiichi Osabe’s mother is a psychopathic murderer but also a loving and overprotective mother for Seiichi. As a witness of his mother’s crimes, he is split over whether he should confess or pretend as if nothing happened. Though it may seem like a 2 sided story of justice and evil with Seiichi’s love for his mother causing most conflict, the most recent chapters take a turn in a surprising direction. Surprisingly, ...

This book, White Fragility , by Robin DiAngelo, is about how the term “white fragility” is used and what it means in society. This genre is usually out of my comfort zone for reading, but I decided to read this because of the Black Lives Matter movement and other current events going on related to racism.  To start off, white fragility is “the intense emotions, the defensive stance, and the argumentation white people experience, take and utilize when confronted with the topic of racism”. To put it short, it means that whenever the topic of racism is discussed around a caucasian person, they immediately get very defensive and flustered in comparison to a person of color.  One example of white fragility in real life could be when the Black Lives Matter movement was taken by select caucasian people and made into “All Lives Matter”. This may not seem bad at first glance, but in truth, it means that they were drawing attention away from the injustices done to the black communit...