The God of Small Things

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy is several stories within a story. The story takes place in India. Its a story about love between a touchable and an untouchable. Its a story about a nun who fell in love with a priest. Its a story about two twins made to be a part most of their live and what happens in their childhood together, and its a story about a father whos English ex wife and child come to visit him and his child soon dies by accident.
I give this book a 4 out of 5. Its beautifully written where things are detailed with such paticular, unusual, and beautiful descriptions. Although, with that said, one small event takes forever to happen in this book...thus the books main story, which stretches out throughout the book, only really takes place in a matter of a week or so. Its a bit of a slow read, but a beautifully sad story.

Running with Scissors

Today I read Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. This book is the memoir of a Augusten's childhood. His parents divorce leaving him with his mother who is mentally ill. His mother can not handle him and soon signs him over to her psychiatrist to be his legal guardian. This house is nothing but a psychiatric ward itself where the many children of the family are allowed to do as they please by the age of 13. One example of the craziness of this family is how the father, Dr. Finch, at one point believes God is sending messages to him through his balve movements and saves them to dry on the picnic table in the back yard.
This book is funny, sad, and just plain astonishing all at once. I give this book a 5 out of 5. It is definitely in the running for my favorite books list.
I feel like I cheated my mom with this book in a way. My friend had recommended this book and I asked my mom to send it from America for me. Im sure she intended it to give me at least a half a week of entertainment, where in reality it only gave me one day. Its the kind of book you just cant put down. I started last night and every free moment I had, in between classes and after school, I spent reading this book. In short it is just awesome and will give you the sense that you're family could never even compare to this guys family.

Birthday Boy Bom

Two days ago was my Best friend in Thailands birthday. Bom turned 25. I joked with him because now he is my P. In formal situations you call someone who is older than you P and someone who is younger Nahng. He doesnt like it when I call him P Bom...but I do it just to get a rise out of him. Last night I gave him a little party. I got him a little cake, made him a sign, and a hat. Then we had some beers. It was a really fun night. He especially liked his birthday hat. On it I wrote Birthday Boy Bom. He thought this was really funny.
Here he is with his sign I made. It says Happy Birthday Erny. Erny is the English nick name I gave him.

The Great Train Robbery

This weekend I read The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton. It is based off of true events taken from Victorian England when the train was being developed. It is basically about an impossible one year planned out robbery that takes place in the mid 1800s. It uses a lot of cool criminal jargon, from that era in England. This is called the great train robbery because it was so impressive and such an impossible to believe happening, that it is just plain amazing, or great!...for that time period of course.
Out of 5 stars I give this book a 3.5. I dont know if it was me or what, but it took me a week to get into the first 20 pages of this book. After that I read it in 2 days. I had been putting this book off for a while, but am glad I read it. It was very historical and interesting. Its a decent enough read.

The Rhinoceros Beetle

Its time for another creature feature. These pictures are of the rhinoceros beetle with some of my students. My students will occasionally bring them to class with them in their pockets or in little jars as pets. They look scary, but are actually very slow and easy to pick up. The children will feed them sugarcane as their food.
They are really fun to watch interact with each other because they really do fight each other with their big horns. A quick fact about this beetle: They can lift up to 850 times their own weight. To put this into perspective, if a human of average height and weight had the strength of the rhinoceros beetle, it would be able to lift a 65 ton object

The Last Battle

Today I finished The Last Battle which is the 7th and last in C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. It was basically a play on revelations. It is about how an ape (or the anti-Christ) found a lions skin and dressed his friend the donkey in it to deceive the people of Narnia into believing that it is Aslan the lion. Since none of them have ever seen a lion, they are misled. The ape is in cahoots with the Calormen, people from a neighboring nation, who the ape is preparing to sell the creatures of Narnia into slavery. The king of Narnia then asks the real Aslan for help who sends Eustice and Jill from the real world back to Narnia. Eventually, everyone that has been to Narnia from our world, except Susan who chooses to believe it was just childrens play and is truly an adult, comes back. Then Aslan comes back and divides the creatures of this world into those who believe in him, who go to his right, and those who don't, who go to his left into darkness. Then Aslan ends the world before everyone's eyes and they find they are in the real Narnia, or heaven. They realize before they were only in the shadow of what they thought was Narnia. Here they find they are strong and healthy and meet all of the creatures they loved of Narnias past. In the end the characters from our world find they have been in an accident and their greatest wish has come true, they are there to live with Aslan in the real Narnia forever.
I give this book a 4 out of 5. I thought it was very clever how C.S. uses it as a play on revelations. I think that the Chronicles of Narnia are truly a piece of classic art and should be part of every person's childhood, be them Christian or not. I really enjoyed each and everyone of these stories!

The Silver Chair

The Silver Chair is the sixth book in the series The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. It is about a prince that gets enchanted and is held captive down under the earth by a giant green worm witch disguised as a woman. Aslan calls fourth Eustice, from the last book, and a new character Jill to go across the mountains into Giant Land with a Muddwuggle, a creature who is very negative but nice, and go under the earth to find the Prince and only eir to the throne.
I give this book a 4 out of 4. It was a lovely tale. This is one Ive always been interested in reading for some reason. At any rate its a very good read!

Memoirs of a Geisha

My latest book is Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. This book is about the secret life of geisha, and one geisha in particular. It is basically how her father must sell her into the life of a geisha where she does the last thing a geisha is allowed to do and falls in love with a man. Her whole lifes work is only to get closer to him. Many of you have seen the movie so you know the story line.
I give this book a 5 out of 5. I have never read a book before where I was immersed into it from the moment I started reading. I learned so much about life in Japan and geishas. If you liked the movie you definitely have to read the book, because as always it is much better. I thought they had cut and changed appropriate things in the book, for the movie, up until the last hundred pages. Then I realized they changed quite a bit of the ending of the book. The same idea is the same, but a lot of the ideas and characters have been changed. Also, the movie ends where the book goes on to say what happens to the Geisha Sayuri after she has received her lifes goal. I am most impressed how Arthur writes a book about another culture, and about a topic many people with in the Japanese culture dont know such intimate details. As my friend Merissa says, Im also impressed how well a man can write so well about the female mind. This book is awesome and is a wonderful read for anyone!

Pitchit Boat Festival

This weekend I went to my friend Katie's site Pitchit for an English Camp. This was also the same weekend of a very famous boat festival in her town. As you have seen from my pictures, many festivals and celebrations revolve around the water in Thailand because it is such an important part of their daily lives. Below are some pictures of the opening ceremonies. These are all replications of royal boats. That means these are the type of boats that in the past might have carried the king when he went to travel by river.


The boat above is my favorite boat. You see this paticular boat in a lot of pictures in Thailand.

The pictures below are of the opening ceremony. I was in an area where officials were meant to be, so I got very close to the action. These pictures of the men are of them doing very high and deep "wais" ,or bows, to the king, while the kings song was being played. The last picture is basically what most people come to see at the boat festival...the boat races. As you can see these boats are very long and thin and hold many men. Its a bit like crew on more canoe style.