Children's books

I went to town with one book (Emma) a couple of days ago. I spent three hours in town, and then I came home with eleven(!) books. Five of them were children's books, and yes, I borrowed half of the ten books from the library. But that also means that I bought five books, so now I am the proud owner of the 'His Dark Materials' trilogy by Philip Pullman and 'Mystical Beasts and where to find them' by J. K. Rowling. I guess that is what makes me happy, as a girl who loves books. It is a really special (and good) feeling to buy a new book, open it for the first time, smell that wonderful new book smell and know what lies ahead of you, and finally place it in your home library in its designated place.

I thought I would make the time forward 'Roald Dahl week(s)'. I am reading his children's books, but although they are written for children, they can be quite disturbing. Like, for example, on Tuesday I completed 'The Twits' ('Dustene' in Norwegian). One of the things Mr. Twit did was paint a dead tree in his garden with super sticky glue to catch birds for his bird pie. One day four boys got stuck in the tree, and he wanted to eat them (but they got away). Seriously. How can you write stuff like that in children's books and get away with it? In all (or most) of his books, Roald Dahl is not very kind to grown-ups in general (that was a British understatement :P). It's like he is advocating the same moral as in Peter Pan (which I have never seen in its entirety, by the way), that children never should grow up. But in Peter Pan it's all cute and stuff, and it is possible to understand why.

In Roald Dahl books, however, the message is really gross and scary. But I sort of understand the thing, though. Roald Dahl doesn't want children to grow up to be grown-ups like the sort in his books. The sort who hate children and don't understand about families and bring up their children the wrong way. Basically staying childlike but not childish your whole life. By the way, most of the heroes/heroines in Roald Dahl's books are children who are really smart and not childish.

Oh, it just occurred to me that not everyone understands the distinction between childish and childlike. I suppose I define it like this: Childish is when you like throwing sand at people, eating dirt, bragging, talking/laughing about poop, and so on. The argument 'I was here first' and the act of 'if yours is better than mine I'll knock yours down' also qualify for the term. Childlike, however, is being open-minded, trusting, and thinking outside the box. My mother always says (tell me if I'm not allowed to quote you, Mom) that politicians often resemble children playing in the sandbox, throwing sand at each other and arguing over who has the biggest digger. I thoroughly agree. Politicians in general argue over very childish things, and if they would just stop to realise what they are really doing, I think maybe things would get done faster.

Oh well. I suppose this blog post has turned into a rant. Deal with it! I suspect there will be more. And on that note, I will finish this blog post/rant. Goodbye!

Books read: 5
Pages read: 1825

At the mercy of nature

I made a long journey by train here in Norway recently, and out of the window almost all I could see was wilderness, trees and more wilderness. I began thinking about how it is really nature that holds us all in its grip, and not we who harness and control nature. My country, at least, is more like a mass of wilderness with small patches of towns and cultivated land scattered around. At least that is what it felt like when I was sitting there looking out of the train window.

Often, especially when we are safely in our cities and towns, we can have a tendency to think that mankind is on top of everything, and that we have the power to control everything. But obviously we don't, and that is something many people all over the world have experienced recently. There have been floods in among other places Brazil, Sri Lanka and Australia. That is a blow to those of us who are too comfortable with our ability to stay on top of things, and the western world's power. When Australia, which is so much more developed than most of the countries who experience natural disasters, can have such devastating floods and forest fires (oh, don't say you don't remember those), are we any more safe?

In our fast-paced world, we often don't think about the power of the slow-moving forces of nature. If all the people of the world just suddenly disappeared today, nature would claim the places we have built up. Recently, actually while sitting on the train, I read the story of Machu Picchu. The magnificent town was just deserted by the people living there, and not destroyed at all by humans. But the jungle took over, and it took a long time before any humans found it again. It encouraged me to think of the inevitability of nature, and how the things we take for granted are only temporary.

Have you ever thought about how powerful water is? It can crumble mountains to dust and mould magnificent landscapes, for example the famous fjords here in Norway. It can destroy whole towns in just a little moment. But also, we are dependent on it for our survival, as we are approximately 70% water. Isn't it incredible that something that is so life-giving can also take so many lives?

So all the while we try to battle the forces of nature to keep it at bay, we should know that we are fighting a losing battle. I think that we should realise that taking on nature as our enemy is foolish, since we are living at its mercy. I think we should rather try to live more in harmony with nature, or at least listen to it and let it have its say in the things we do and build. I hope we can change the road we are headed down now, so that future generations can have better lives than what it looks like now.

Books read: 3

Pages read: 1499

Hyperbolic planes

I don't really like 3D geometry in maths that much, but when maths can become art, I think it is even more beautiful to me because of the maths behind it. So, I've been subscribed on youtube to a recreational mathemusician, whose channel is Vihart. She has introduced me to some really fun maths doodles, and, more recently, the hyperbolic plane. This is a mathematical plane in three dimensions which curves away from itself at all points (at least I think that is how they are defined). I know, it is hard to understand such things. But then I discovered that I could make a hyperbolic plane for myself!

A mathematician discovered that one way you could make real-life hyperbolic planes was if they were crocheted. A project called The Crochet Coral Reef uses this to create crocheted coral reefs as art to raise awareness that the coral reefs of the world are dying. A hyperbolic plane looks very much like a coral formation. On the project's website, I found information on how I could make my own crocheted hyperbolic plane. And, some hours later, I had my very own real life crocheted hyperbolic plane! And since Christmas isn't so far behind us, and our tree is still sitting in our living room (ooops...we still haven't thrown it out...), I thought that it could make a really nice Christmas ornament! So maybe I will make a lot of them before next Christmas, in more 'Christmassy' colours than this one. The recipe I used to make this one, I found here.

I had a lot of fun playing with it afterwards, bending it this way and that to see how it would behave. In a way, I only did this because I was putting off the time that I would have to dive deeper into Emma. I was dreading reading such a slow book, but after what I read yesterday, I think I will enjoy it quite a lot. I have decided that I will not read any more books before finishing Emma, so that I will have to get on with it.

I hope that more posts of the 'musing' kind will come in the future, but we will see. I like writing them, and I am generally more satisfied with that kind of post, which I feel gets a point across, as opposed to just rambling on about something. Oh well. I hope inspiration will knock on my door again.

Books read: 3
Pages read: 1435

Freedom

I am sure there are many people who have experienced this besides me. The autumn of 2010 I moved away from home, away from my parents, to live on my own. When I slowly but surely realised that no one decided over me any more except myself, I started doing small things that defied what my parents had taught me.

I say small things because I am either too scared or too sensible to do bigger things like drink myself senseless or stop doing schoolwork. So I do such things as wear home-knitted woolly socks to school or eat the same food for all the three meals in a day. Or go to school in smelly clothes because my friends don't really care, and that smelly jumper is the only one I really want to wear. Or, like I did more recently, go outside when it's -2 degrees centigrade and approximately two centimetres of fresh snow on the ground, with bare feet in crocs and only a T-shirt on my upper body. Small acts of defiance that makes the sensible part of you react with disgust. Small acts that reinforce the idea in your mind that you are really truly in control over your life.

It is really quite thrilling to do these things, especially the first time, and you can revel in your newly extended freedom. I think it is important to do such small silly things every now and again, to prove to ourselves that we really do have complete control. That we really are free. That our parents no longer have anything to say, and instead it's all us now. That sense of freedom is really nice. Also, breaking the norms of society is good, just to show (to myself, mostly) that I am an individual, and not some robot or cog in the machinery of society.

But now that I have discovered that freedom, I also feel a responsibility. I can now decide what or who I want to have power over my decisions. And if you think that you can just say: Well, me, of course, I think you will find that it is quite difficult to do everything based on only what you yourself think. I mean, where do your opinions and values come from? Those are the things you use to make decisions, and they are almost always based on something outside yourself. So you can choose whether you want fashion and popular culture to affect you, or some hero or idol, or religion. The important thing here is that you choose, because you can. And the only thing worse than a bad choice is not choosing at all.



Books read: 2
Pages read: 1264

Tickets!

One step closer to going to the Caribbean! I have booked my tickets! Wow. This just makes the whole thing so much more real! My feelings are saying: "Hold on, hold on, hold ON there. Wait...WHAT? I am REALLY going to the CARIBBEAN?? To work with HORSES?!? Are you nuts?" My subconscious obviously still hasn't moved out of that shocked stage into the looking forward to it stage. It still feels a little crazy. Oh well... I think I will leave my subconscious to figure that one out in peace.

In the meantime, I can talk more about books. I have finished the second book in the Hunger Games trilogy, and I liked it almost every bit as much as the first. I mean, if you set out on reading the first one, you can almost be guaranteed to want to read the other two, which are just as thrilling to read (at least number two is).

As of today, I am the proud owner of a box set of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. I am looking forward to reading them all, but it will still be a while till I do that since there are many other books in front of them in the queue. One of them is another book I bought today, The Forge of God by Greg Bear. Hank Green made a video recently where he said he would be reading this, so I thought I could have a go at it too. I also bought Nation by Terry Pratchett today, also recommended by Hank Green. So after I finish the last book in the Hunger Games trilogy, I think I will read the Forge of God.

As you can probably understand, I have plenty to do, and I am still working on Emma. That one is going a bit slow at the moment, but I am in no doubt that I will finish it at some point.

Number of books read: 2
Number of pages read: 976 (I thought it would be fun to count this too. The mathematical of you can then follow how much progress I am making on new books)

PS: If you don't know who Hank Green is: Google him or search YouTube.

PPS: Happy New Year! Even though I said it in the last blog post. Oh well. There can never be too much happiness in a new year :D