More please!

Last night Bo and I rented I Am Legend, starring Will Smith. I've heard good things about the movie and I know the book it is based off of is supposed to be quite good, but I found the movie to be a bit of disappointment. There were so many interesting ideas hinted at in the movie, but there was no follow through on these ideas. The basic idea behind the movie was only sparsely sketched out and much was left to speculation. Not that I mind speculating about what is going on in a movie, I just think too much was left out.

The movie felt like it was very short and over too quickly. When it was over, I understood that there was a virus, where the virus came from and that this virus killed almost everyone. But I was left wondering why specific people were immune and did all the people who survive have immunity or were some just lucky? Why was New York City considered "ground zero" of the infection? Why was finding a cure Neville's responsibility when another scientist was the one who invented the virus? At least, I think that opening bit indicated that the "cancer cure virus" was the one that caused all the problems.

I just think the film could have done a much better job of probing the depths of this story. It felt more like the series premier of a new TV show rather than a full-length movie! Despite that, I think Will Smith did a very good job in this movie and the sets for the abandoned New York City were very impressive.

Remembering college

I graduated from a very liberal liberal arts college: Oberlin College in Ohio. Sometimes I forget how crazy it was going to Oberlin. Those memories blur into the fond recollections that everyone has about college: late nights of studying and partying, close friends, new ideas, uncomfortable dorm experiences, and various other typical college experiences. However, mixed in with all of that is something so uniquely Oberlin that sometimes I forget other people haven't had the same college experiences. Most people haven't eaten at a vegan co-op, haven't negotiated their way through complex discussions of racism, sexism and sustainable practices while just sitting around in the lounge after class, haven't forgotten to flip the shower sign to Women only and be joined by the guy that lives down the hall, haven't been paid to use the bathroom in a specific building that is a living machine. They certainly aren't familiar with the phrase "If its yellow, let it mellow" and they most definitely don't understand why Harkies dressed as pirates were terrorizing the campus.

I talk about these experiences with my friends and co-works when we are sitting around sharing funny stories from our past and many times I get incredulous stares and hesitant laughter. I never hear people say "Oh yea! I did something like that!" Instead I hear things like:

"You mean, you took a shower with 3 other people and some of them were guys?"

"Wait, you guys all lived together, cleaned your own dorm and cooked all your own food?"

"So, you not only had co-ed dorms and co-ed halls, but co-ed rooms?"


Yes, we did. And I loved it and I think I'm a better person because of it.

Then again, maybe I am just a little weird because in many ways Oberlin is a little weird. Of course, that's why I loved Oberlin and I wouldn't change a second of my time there.

This nostalgia was trigged by a New York Time article about sustainable practices implemented by students at Oberlin. What really made me think about all this was the fact that this article considers what these students are doing as new, unique and innovative. The fact is, Obies do this stuff everyday. And they don't think of it as new and different. They think of it as normal.

Books

I have nothing to say for my long neglect of this blog except this: work + crap busy work for class + attempting to have a life with my husband = no time for writing.

So, I saw this meme in a friend's blog and I thought I'd post it as well, for fun. Usually I ignore this type of thing, but since I adore books and regularly eat several in a week, this seemed perfect for me!

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users.
Bold what you have read, italicize those you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand.
Add an asterisk* to those you've read more than once.
Underline those on your to-read list.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice (I love Austen, really. Its just more fun to hear her writing aloud.)
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods*
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha*
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales (in Old English, by the way!)
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984*
Angels and Demons*
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes : A Memoir
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

I feel that I must point out that even though I have not read most of these books, I am intimately familiar with their content. For a lot of them, I've seen the extended, authoritative (supposedly) movie version. For others, they were constantly referred to and compared with other things that I read. Because I already know all about them, I don't plan to read many of them. I consider myself a well-read person. Does this meme say otherwise?