The Color of Water

Semester 1, blog post 3

This blog post may contain spoilers. Reader discretion is advised. You have been warned...mwahahaha. >:D

The 1900's in particular were a time of severe racial tension. Civil rights movements, coupled with violent backlashes, caused this time period to be both dangerous and intriguing to live in.

The two intertwined stores of author James McBride and his mother Ruth Shilsky, during this time of racial extremes, are detailed in the New York Times Bestseller The Color of Water.

The cover is kind of plain but whatever. Here's a picture of it nonetheless.

The Color of Water has quite a few meaningful themes. Of these, one that really stood out to me is: No matter what color skin one has, they are still a human being and God still loves them with the same intensity. This theme is portrayed countless times throughout the story, like when Ruth says, "God is the color of water," (51). Hence the book title (heh). The theme is also present when Ruth tells James,

"I bet you never heard the joke about the teacher and the beans, Mommy says...The teacher says to the class, 'Tell us about different kinds of beans.'

"The first little boy says, 'There's pinto beans.'

"'Correct,' says the teacher.

"Another boy raises his hand. 'There's lima beans.'

"'Very good,' says the teacher. "Then a little girl in the back raises her hand and says, 'We're all human beans!'" (92-93).

Anyway. The theme. No one deserves to be treated differently because they have a different skin color. Whether it was James for being colored in a nation that was then dominated by whites, or Ruth for being the only white person in a black neighborhood, this theme plays a major role in Ruth's and James' separate (a few decades apart) yet overlapping journeys of self-discovery and family.

To learn more about McBride and his books, click here. To view a Wikipedia article about him, click here.

You have now reached the end of my ramblings. I hope I didn't bore you to death. And now I should probably thank you appropriately for reading. So thanks, I guess.

The Bone Clocks

Semester 1, blog post 2

This blog post may contain spoilers. Reader discretion is advised. You have been warned...mwahahaha. >:D

A book I've started recently is The Bone Clocks, written by David Mitchell. The novel, set in the 1980's, is about a fifteen-year-old girl named Holly, who has run away from home. Possessed by a strong "psychic ability," she is contacted by strange voices, dubbed by her as "the radio people." Because of her strange skill, Holly has caught the attention of many groups – both friends and enemies. Her attempts to unravel the mysteries that have now taken over her life are chronicled by this novel.

I don't have much of an opinion on the book as of right now, considering I'm on, like, page two (I'm being completely serious here). So, for this post, I'm going to be talking about the author.

David Mitchell is an accomplished writer who has written a number of bestselling novels, including Ghostwritten, Number9Dream, and Cloud Atlas. When asked when he first knew he wanted to be a writer, Mitchell replied, "There was no single epiphany, but I recall a few early flashes. When I was ten I would be transported by certain books—Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy, Susan Cooper’s fantasy novels, Isaac Asimov—and burn to do to readers what had just been done to me. Sometimes that burning prompted me to start writing, though I never got more than a few pages down. A few years later I would indulge in a visual fantasy that involved imagining my name on the jacket of a book—usually Faber and Faber—and I’d feel a whoosh inside my rib cage."

If you want to learn more about Mitchell or his books, you can find his site here. You can also find a Wikipedia article on him here.

And to conclude, here's a video of David Mitchell answering fan questions...

Basically in the video you get to see which parts of the author's life are used as inspiration in his novels. Watch the video; you probably won't expect him to say some of the things he does.

You have now reached the end of my ramblings. I hope I didn't bore you to death. And now I should probably thank you appropriately for reading. So thanks, I guess.