IB Without Hashtags

"Sooo much work 😢😢 #IBLyf"
The number of variants on this that I've heard from my classmates deserves a sarcastic #noreally because I've heard/seen it on Snapchat screenshots far too much. (Snapchat...captions? What do the social-media-savvy people call the text they carefully put over photos?)

And even though my FB news feed largely consists of fandom posts, photos of acquaintances who have social lives, and feminist articles, every once in a while there'll be an IB meme like:

This one is probably true, tbh

Welcome to the community of IB students. So far what I've seen of it is dire warnings and complaints about the amount of work we have. Literally the only positive things I've seen about it is on ibsurvival.com - which is proving to be helpful in figuring out the many odd things IB requires you to do - by people who've graduated IB already (yes, such people exist) saying "It'll help you in college, just get through this!"


I'm...hopefully going to do neither. Since I'm not an IB graduate but a current student, I will not be the encouraging "I got through it so can you" kind of person, but nor will I be the "IB IS DEATH" kind of person (in my personal experience, the people - at least in my class - who complain the most tend to do the least work).

I'm starting now, at the end of IB-1, and if you're graduating with me, good luck, folks. If you're not, sit back with some popcorn. It's going to be a rollercoaster ride.

...and even if it's not a rollercoaster, it's not like you need an excuse to eat popcorn.

AQB: The Red Tent

One kind of story I really enjoy is when an author takes a classic tale- a fairy tale, folk tale, mythological epic- and puts their own spin on it or writes it from a new point of view. In fact, two of my favourite books are this kind- Susan Fletcher's Shadow Spinner, a new spin on the classic story of the One Thousand and One Nights, and Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted, a retelling of the Cinderella story.

Anita Diamant's The Red Tent kind of fits into this category: it is based on a section of the Bible. Now, I know very little about the narratives of the Bible (so I'm not sure how the plot of the book matches with the Biblical narratives), but I did some research - because I believe in understanding at least some of the context - and here's what I understand from my Googling.
The Book of Genesis narrates the story of several generations. The last two of these individuals (representing their generations) are Jacob, also called Israel, and his son Joseph. Jacob is said to have had twelve sons - of which Joseph was the eleventh and fated to be the supreme - and one daughter, Dinah. Dinah is a minor character in Genesis - there is one story about her called "the rape of Dinah", a violent episode which ends in her brothers committing a massacre/genocide - but The Red Tent is her story.

The red tent is a sacred spot to the women of Jacob's family - it is where they must spend their periods and when they are in labour, a place where they give each other support. It's symbolic of the bond between women, and of the stories kept alive by the womenfolk. The Red Tent is the story of a woman in a man's world, an account of the sweeping stories of Jacob and Joseph but also of the small stories of forgotten characters.
 "...It is terrible how much has been forgotten, which is why, I suppose, remembering seems a holy thing..." says Dinah.

I decided to read The Red Tent for multiple reasons- it was on the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge, I had a copy at home, it was a suggestion when Emma Watson's feminist reading club (Our Shared Shelf) on Goodreads was voting for a book of the month, AND my mom recommended it (I trust my mom's recommendations).
I'm really, really glad these factors came together and I read it because it is one of THE best books I've ever read. And that's even though I didn't know anything about the Book of Genesis until my research. Seriously. It's fantastic.

P.S: If you read The Red Tent (and I hope you do, because it is REALLY good), I'd recommend knowing at least a little about the stories of Jacob and Joseph, just to provide context.

Of A Cursed Child

Disclaimer: This post contains no spoilers. This is largely due to the fact that I haven't finished the book yet, but also because #keepthesecret, guys, it's only been a few hours.

Before I begin, allow me to say something in a language popularized by the vast community of excited fans of anything:
ASDFGHJKL;ICANTEVENWSDJKAJFAHLJ

Unless you have been living under a rock, with no internet connection, by now you would have heard about Harry Potter and The Cursed Child, the much-publicized script of the (again) much-publicized play of the same name set immediately after "Nineteen Years Later", and dubbed the "eighth Harry Potter book.

Let me repeat that. THE EIGHTH HARRY POTTER BOOK.
*sigh of pleasure*
Since I was too young to have actually followed the entire series as it came out, I cannot paraphrase Sirius and scream- I DID MY WAITING! NINE YEARS OF IT!
But certainly, as a Harry Potter fan, I can hold the book and (changing fictional worlds here) whisper myyyy preeeecioussss.
(My classmates would trip over themselves running away from me, despite the allure of the "precious". I do a creepy Gollum impression. Thanks, Andy Serkis, for teaching me too well.)

Some people have said that this is a year when the Harry Potter fandom has risen again, what with Cursed Child and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them coming to theatres in a few months. This is my response:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHANO.

JK Rowling invites you to return to the wizarding world-
IT'S NOT LIKE WE LEFT IT.

So no, this book is not a return to the wizarding world, and no, the Harry Potter fandom has not "risen again" because we STILL talk about Harry Potter. We still argue about our favourite characters, we still write fanfic, we still draw fanart, we still defend our Hogwarts houses, we still complain about calmly (it's been like eleven years and we're still angry), we still pore through all the extra info on Pottermore and Twitter that JK Rowling releases. 

It's just that now we're seeing what happened after that scene on Platform 9 3/4, with Harry watching his sons leave on the train, a hand to the scar that had not pained in nineteen years, thinking that all was well.
(Apparently all is not well, since there's a story immediately after that thought.)

So now, on Harry's thirty-sixth birthday, and JK Rowling's fifty-first birthday (happy birthday, by the way), we catch the train with Albus and ride to Hogwarts for his first year and the story of the Cursed Child.

Because whether by page or by the big screen (or now the stage), Hogwarts will be there to welcome us home.

AQB: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

My name is Christopher John Francis Boone. I know all the countries of the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7,057.

When Christopher discovers his neighbour's dog dead in her yard with a gardening fork stuck through his body, he wonders what has happened. He sees it as a murder mystery- despite people telling him that most murder mysteries are about people dying. As someone who understands dogs better than people, the death of Wellington the dog is as important to him as any person's death.
He decides to investigate.

He follows the standard methods of detection, as set by his favourite detective, from the only genre of fiction he reads, Sherlock Holmes. Somewhat hindered by his difficulty in understanding human emotions and his own specific hangups, Christopher nevertheless uses his own observational skills and logic to find Wellington's killer- and in doing so, uncovers another, more personal mystery, a secret he never knew was being kept from him. (Can't tell you more without spoilers)

Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time was...interesting. The plot was fascinating and the point of view of the narrator- a boy who views the world somewhat differently from the majority of people (he has behavioural difficulties and it's implied he may have Asperger's, but this isn't confirmed or really relevant)- was intriguing. Another interesting aspect was that the chapters are numbered with successive prime numbers. However, it did sometimes drag, some exciting parts were quite blandly told (most likely because Christopher did not see it as exciting), and there were several profanities, so if you're thin-skinned to swearing, DON'T read it. If you can handle that, and you're interested in detective fiction, mathematics, dogs, or some combination of the above, then I'd recommend this book.

AQB: The Joy Luck Club

The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, tells the stories of eight women, caught between the cultures of China and America: four Chinese immigrant mothers, Suyuan Woo, An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong and Ying-ying "Betty" St. Clair; and their four American-born daughters, Jing-mei "June" Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan, Waverly Jong, and Lena St. Clair.

The Joy Luck Club is formed by Suyuan Woo as a club for playing mah jong and feasting, with three friends, also Chinese immigrants, who she met at church in San Francisco. It is started in memory of a Joy Luck Club Suyuan was in Kweilin, before a Japanese invasion during World War II forced her to flee.

The book is divided into four sections with four chapters each, broadly narrating different aspects of the lives of the eight women.
The first section, Feathers from a Thousand Li Away, focuses on the pasts of the four mothers when they lived in China. Suyuan Woo, at the beginning of the novel, has just passed away, so her story is told by her daughter Jing-mei. Each of the mothers had a difficult past, which eventually convinced them to move to America.
The second section, Twenty-Six Malignant Gates, has the four daughters tell the stories of significant moments in their childhoods, while in the third, American Translation, they talk about their current lives as adults. The final section, Queen Mother of the Western Skies, again focuses on the mothers, after the moments they described in the first section.

The Joy Luck Club is unlike any other book I've ever read before. It captured my interest with the unusual structuring (the division is, according to Wikipedia, like that of a mah jong game), the fascinating vignettes of the eight women's lives, the glimpses into a culture I know almost nothing about, and the way it portrayed the conflict the women feel between the two cultures they live with. I'd never before read a book with seven points-of-view, and seven storylines woven together, yet was so clear.

I was deeply intrigued by the stories in the books- stories of a search for twin daughters abandoned for their safety; of an unfortunate concubine of a rich man, who sacrifices her life to protect her children; of women with dysfunctional relationships with their husbands; of a teenage girl successfully scheming to get out of an arranged marriage; of a living ghost of a woman who sees things before they happen; of a talented woman holding herself back in fear and annoyance of her mother; of a directionless woman who realises her mother's dream.

I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in a conflict of cultures, multiple interwoven storylines, the surprisingly difficult pasts that haunt the present lives of eight women, or any combination of the above. It's totally worth reading.

AQB: The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is generally considered a literary classic. However, you may also remember it, from several years ago, when it was mentioned in the newspapers because Amitabh Bachchan had a cameo in the 2013 movie. (Although the movie starred Leonardo DiCaprio as the eponymous character, I only knew of the movie because of Big B. Leo fans, please don't get mad...)

 I was interested in The Great Gatsby because it was cited in a few sample SAT essays I read a couple of years ago. From those essays, I learned some things about the novel, and therefore when I picked it up to read it, I naturally had some... "preconceived notions".

Now, I had preconceived notions about The Hunger Games, which were dispelled the moment I realised the kids were thrown into an arena- I'd thought the Games were, like, televised gladiator-style fights, but no, it was cavepeople stuff, survive and kill. I was disturbed, yes, but I was expecting action, and that's what I got.

Where am I going with this? See, I was expecting this third-person account of the underworld of a Jazz Age New York City, and how Jay Gatsby fit into that world- so I was anticipating crime and mobster stuff, kind of a 1920s version of The Godfather. Instead I got a narrative by Gatsby's neighbour Nick Carraway about how Gatsby reconnected with Daisy (Carraway's cousin) years after they first met.

Yeah. If you're planning to read it, do not, and I repeat, DO NOT start it with the expectations I had.
Maybe I'm biased. Maybe, since I got something completely different from what I was expecting, I was disappointed. Maybe I just don't have the maturity to appreciate good literature.

Frankly, I didn't really think much of The Great Gatsby.
Set in in the fictional villages of East Egg and West Egg on Long Island, it tells the story of the mysterious Jay Gatsby, a war veteran who rose to riches in the hopes of winning the attention and, by extension, love of his ex-flame, Daisy Fay.

Nick Carraway, also a former soldier in WWI from the same division as Gatsby, moves to West Egg for his job in NYC. Invited by Daisy, his cousin, for lunch, he meets a young golfer, Jordan Baker, whom he starts dating.
Daisy is now married, to Nick's college senior Tom Buchanan, and apparently it isn't a happy marriage. Tom, in fact, has a mistress, Myrtle Wilson, and Daisy is aware of this. So when she meets Gatsby, who is obviously in love with her, again, she falls for him.

And it ends pretty quickly after that. I obviously can't tell you more without "spoiling" the plot, but let's say, with a premise like that, you'd expect an epic smackdown, or a horrifying revelation. Both happen, but nowhere near as dramatic as one would expect.

By the end of the novel, three characters are dead, and Nick quickly wraps up things and goes home, like, I am so done with this place.

To sum up my opinions of The Great Gatsby: it had far less drama than anticipated, it is not light reading, and isn't particularly absorbing.

I would recommend that anyone who reads this is a) in a philosophical state of mind, b) ready to handle the slightly confusing prose, and c) someone who harbours no delusions about the level of drama and action to be found in the novel.

AQB: The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo is the first book I've read in my reading quest (which I explained in A Quest Begins). First written as a serialized story in the Journal des Débats between 1844 and 1846, it was later compiled into a novel and is considered a literary classic that remains in print even today. I read the unabridged English translation of the original French (titled Le Comte de Monte Cristo), trying not to blitz through the 1100-odd pages in the small but fat edition I'd borrowed.

I'll try to avoid too many spoilers.

The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas, follows the story of a young sailor, Edmond Dantes. At nineteen, Dantes is happy with his life. He has a caring father, he is engaged to the woman he loves, and he is about to be made captain of his benefactor's ship, the Pharaon.
But two men are jealous of him- Danglars, his shipmate who wants Dantes' imminent position on the Pharaon, and Fernand Mondego, his fiancée Mercédès' cousin, who is in love with her.

Together they plot to get Dantes out of the way. They do this by framing Dantes as a Bonapartist. The late captain of the Pharaon (a known Bonapartist) charged the innocent Dantes to do two things: one, to deliver a packet to a general on Elba with the exiled Napoleon; and two, to hand over a letter to an unknown man in Paris. Dantes has no idea of the political importance of the packet and letter, and only does it to honour the last wishes of his superior- but Danglars and Fernand imply in an anonymous letter that he is fully aware of the contents of his deliveries, and is a fervent, violent Bonapartist.

Dantes is arrested an hour before his wedding.

The deputy procureur de roi at Marseilles, M. de Villefort, realises that Dantes is innocent and plans to acquit him. Then he finds out who the letter is addressed to- M. de Noirtier, a known Bonapartist, and Villefort's father.
Villefort, a royalist, has worked hard to reach his position and still dreams of becoming the procureur de roi of France. In order to safeguard his own career, he pretends that Dantes is, in fact, a Bonapartist, takes the information that there is a Bonapartist uprising stirring to the king, and throws Dantes in the Chateau d'If, a notorious prison, without a trial.

Mere days after Dantes' incarceration, Napoleon Bonaparte returns to France and the Hundred Days begin. M. Morrel, Dantes' patron, tries to petition for his release. Villefort stalls until Napoleon is finally exiled to St. Helena and the petition never goes through. Dantes is given up for dead.

Dantes, languishing in jail, meets the Abbé Faria, a supposedly mad Italian priest who is actually a genius. Together the two plot to escape the Chateau d'If. Faria tells him the secret of a great treasure, but dies before they can escape.
Dantes makes a daring escape after Faria's death. He has been in prison for fourteen years.
He claims the treasure Faria told him about, and proceeds to reinvent himself, as the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo, and search for his enemies.
Danglars is now a respected banker, who has been granted the title of a baron. Fernand is married to Mercédès, and having risen through the ranks of the army, is now called le Comte de Morcerf. Villefort has achieved his ambition and is the procureur de roi.
With his nearly unlimited new wealth and the knowledge Faria had imparted to him, Dantes proceeds to take his revenge on the men responsible for throwing him in prison.

Edmond Dantes' transformation from a cheerful, carefree young merchant sailor, to an enigmatic, bitter man who considers himself an instrument of divine justice is impressive to read. He is a master manipulator, pulling and slicing strings no one can see until a puppet falls and one realises what it was all about. His plans are so convoluted, even Albus Dumbledore (who, let's face it, is a majorly manipulative leader whose plans are far from straightforward) would be impressed.

I'd recommend this to anyone interested in a period thriller, who doesn't mind thick books, or wading through occasionally flowery language. If you want just the story (which is pretty awesome) and would prefer to skip the hundreds of pages and the elaborate prose, I would recommend an abridged version. Either way, it's worth it!