Liszette

September 10th: I've just started to read //In Cold Blood// by Truman Capote. Dave told us about the book during class and I thought it sounded really interesting. It's a little confusing at first because the author keeps switching back and forth between scenes. One scene is about the Cutter family and another scene will be about the killers. It's sad and funny at the same time, because the reader knows what is going to happen to the family, and you get to see how they spent their last day. As I read I hoped I could have somehow warned them of what was coming, but they're so happy as they go through the day. I felt bad knowing that they won't be alive the next day and that the plans they've just made won't be finished.

September 17th: Perry Smith is my favorite character in the book. He's just a big bucket full of different emotions and feelings. He's shown as impulsive and psychotic but also conscious and remorseful. There's two quotes in particular from him that I think show this. Perry says, "I'd like to apologize, but who to?" and "I didn't want to harm [Mr. Cutter]. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat." Both quotes make me feel as though Smith truly does feel badly for his crime, but in both quotes the last phrase he says makes me think that he's not sorry at all. That he's even sort of making fun of the whole thing. It's this constant contradictory feeling he puts out that makes me feel drawn to him and makes me want to read more so I can figure out how he truly feels.

September 24th: This quote was way in the beginning of the book, but I remembered I stopped because it didn't make sense to me. I was thinking about it for a while and eventually just had to forget about it because I was spending too much time on it and it never made sense to me. It wasn't until later on in the book that I finally understood what it meant. The author introduces the murder of the Cutter family by saying, "At the time, not a soul in sleeping Holcomb heard them—four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives." It didn't make sense to me when I read it. In my mind I tried to figure out how four shotgun blasts could kill six people (I had these whole intricate scenarios in my head), and finally it made sense. I felt dumb when I finally figured out that the four shotgun blasts literally ended the lives of the four Cutter family members, but they also ended the lives of Smith and Hickrock because they ended up dying for the murder. Even though it takes me a while (in this instance several days) to figure out what Capote means, I love his style of writing.

October 1st: I've started to read //bone// by Fae Myenne Ng. I had planned to read it during the summer, but there were other books I had also planned to read so I never go to it. So far the main character is just talking about how she is the oldest daughter of a Chinese family of three girls. The community looks down on the family because they only have daughters and they don't have any sons. This book is written in the form of a memoir, but it's fiction. Although, it does have a good way of showing how things are in other countries and their traditions and what they look down upon and stuff. This made me think about how in China girls are considered worthless to a family because when they marry they become the property of the husband's family and so they're not any good to their original family. There has also been stories of families abandoning their babies when they see that it's a girl.

October 8th: I've finished reading //bone// by Fae Myenne Ng. I'm always sad to finish a book, especially when I feel the author didn't really tie things together. If I don't know the fate of each character (//did so-and-so ever find what they were searching for?//) then I'm left with an empty feeling. I think something wasn't resolved and that makes me fell a little bit unsettled. This book, though, didn't make me feel like something was missing at the end. I felt like every character was taken care of. I don't think there was a "point" to the story. I guess it was just Leila trying to overcome the problems her family have always faced along with the extra burden that fell on them when her sister took her life, but I think they just learn to live with it. Well, I'm conflicted, because Leila wasn't super strongly impacted by Ona's death. Although she would think of her often, and I don't think she ever really resolved anything, but I guess at the end she does cope with it. Hmmm, this is something to think about.