FUN HOME

I'm not sure how I feel about this book. In the beginning, I was very interested, and enjoyed reading it. However, once it started really jumping around, and sort of rambling on about her father, I lost interest. I skipped around, trying to find where the story picked up again. This book was very different from all the rest we've read.

SKIM

I enjoyed this book, although I was surprised at how easy a read it was. I read it in about an hour. However, I expected it to be much different than it was. On the front cover it mentions that it won some sort of children's book award. But after reading the book, I would in no way consider it to be for children. The characters say "fuck" waaaay too many times for it to be appropriate for kids. I would say it's more "young adult" than "children". I could see kids in high school reading this, MAYBE even middle school. But when I think children's books, I think of things like Clifford, or Dr. Seuss. Not Skim. However, for the purposes of our class, I enjoyed it. It was a nice change from standard books.

VOICE - Express yourself through words.

BODY- We all have one.

WRITING - a way to express ones self .

WOMAN - Hear me roar.

Kinky

I really enjoyed reading Kinky. I found it to be a surprisingly easy read. I loved the Barbie theme, but my favorite poem would have to be "Buddhist Barbie".

In the 5th century B.C.

an Indian philosopher Gautama

teaches "All is emptiness"

and "There is no self."

In the 20th century A.D.

Barbie agrees, but wonders how a man

with such a belly could pose,

smiling, and without a shirt.

I just like that it's short and sweet, and to the point. The last three lines just crack me up everytime.

Some of the lengthier poems at times seemed to drag on, which could also be why I liked this one so much. There wasn't one poem that I didn't like, but this one just sticks out in my mind.

Cover Songs

Okay, here are 2 different versions of Rhianna's "Umbrella":

NOTE: you may want to right-click and select view in another window or whatever)

The Original (forgive the ads on this one. That's youtube for ya!)

The Cover

The musical differences between the two are obvious. But what I wanted to talk about was how the 2 songs made me feel. I think the way a song makes you feel is one of the most important things about it. When listening to the original, I think of it as kind of a "pump-up-jam", a song that you might listen to at a party, or when you're getting ready with your girls to go out for the night. The way this version was done makes it a more upbeat song. But with the cover, it seems more of a sincere love song to me. The acoustic feel just makes it sweeter, and seem like an actual good song, as opposed to Rhianna's....stuff.

BJD movie v. book

After watching the movie and reading the book, I noticed some striking differences. The main one was the subplot with the mother. I was glad they toned down Mrs. Jones' criminal side in the movie. The way the book had it just seemed so outrageous to me. Unbelievable, practically. I also liked that her parents got back together at the end. I'm a sucker for happy endings. Also, I feel like the Daniel in the book was much worse than the Daniel in the movie for some reason. I'm not exactly sure why. Also, was her gay friend (whose name escapes me right now, and I'm in bed so I'm too lazy to go look for it) a one-hit-wonder in the book? I kinda felt like that was unnecessary.

I really liked this movie though! Minus Renee's accent.

What is a "Writer"?

When I think of a writer, I tend to think of it in a professional sense. As in, someone who writes for a living. An author, perhaps, would be more like what comes to my mind. I tend to picture someone who will sit in a room for days on end writing a novel. In my head, this person is a male, with classes, and a sweater vest. I have no idea why he looks that way, or why it's not a woman, but that was the image that came to mind. Obviously there are many other kinds of writers. The next thing I would think of would be my sister, Lauryn, who writes alot of poetry and short stories, and at one time wrote X-Files fan fiction. I'm not sure if she looks back on that with embarrassment or not....

I don't, however, tend to think of a "writer" as someone like Bridget Jones. As I mentioned before, a writer to me tends to be someone who writes as their job. I wouldn't consider myself a writer, even though I'm clearly writing in this blog right now....

Thoughts?

2 Articles

The two articles I chose were from Cosmopolitan and Redbook magazines. They were both about sex, which obviously ties into dating and body image, two things we've talked about with BJD. Although these magazines are aimed at 2 different types of women, the young 20-30 something, and the older, married woman, I was surprised to find that they had alot of the same things to say. Although the Cosmo article was much more crude, they often used similar language. I expected the Redbook article to be completely different, but it wasn't. While the Cosmo article was longer and had a larger variety of tips, the Redbook article repeated alot of the same things.

An Introduction.

Hey everybody! I'm 21, from Cincinnati, and a junior at OU. I just transferred here last year from the Savannah College of Art and Design where I majored in Musical Theater. I'm currently a Music Education - Choral major here, but am planning on changing that to Women's Studies, which is why I'm taking ENG306J this quarter, and therefore writing this blog. There were alot of commas in that sentence. Sorry.

I am much more comfortable doing personal or private writing than public, so this blog is something new for me. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet, ha. We shall see.

I'm excited to start reading Bridget Jones' Diary, and I'm glad we're reading books like that in ENG306J instead of a more traditional textbook. Because that would be no fun.

To be continued....