Serious and daily things are around us

Hello!

     It’s not a secret the older you are the clever, wiser and more experienced you are. In my opinion, the reading is one of the hobbies which you can appreciate when you get older. Why? Because you can see hiding ideas, you can change your mind about some things. The main thing is you are capable of reflecting. What about you? Why do you like reading (Sure, if you like…)? As for me, I like to find interesting ideas and author’s suppositions, reflections which make me think and compare with my own thoughts, with my real life and my real actions. That’s why I want to present you some sentences from the book which seem readable.

 “I’ve learned to get really good at this—say one thing when I’m thinking about something else, act like I’m listening when I’m not, pretend to be calm and happy when really I’m freaking out. It’s one of the skills you perfect as you get older.”

   

  Can you agree with this? I can. The characters of the book live in an authoritarian society. They hide their real feelings because they are controlled in everything by the government. They are afraid of pronouncing words like love, sympathizer because they will be punished for that. (“You have to learn that people are always listening”). I think this statement is partly true. Sometimes we say something but actually we don’t think so. Maybe we don’t want to offend a person, maybe we are afraid of being misunderstood etc. Sometimes we are listening but not hear. We try to be patient and calm for anybody else (maybe because we want to support this person) but actually we are "freaking out”. Anyway, we try that our behavior, our actions agree with our moral values. It’s our target.

“It’s so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it’s taking forever to come. Then it happens and it’s over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed”.

     Indeed, sometimes we ask yourself why it happens the way but not another. When you have a burning desire (it might be weekends, first love, date, New Year, holidays, an important meeting etc) you can’t wait when this day will come. It happens and then finishes. When we recall these events, all we think about that it went so fast. Everyone had a dream to get a chance or an opportunity to repeat something or correct. It would be priceless gift. Would we appreciate all these moments if we could repeat them?

With best wishes,

Kate

First steps

Hello, my dear readers!

     A puzzle. According to the book, it is the deadliest of all deadly things: it kills you both when you have it and when you don’t? What is it?

     LOVE. What feelings and thoughts do you feel when you see or hear this word? Think. In my opinion, this word has so many meanings and definitions. For someone it’s happiness (the most sincere feeling), the butterflies in stomach, smiles and hugs, for others it’s obscurity, fear, pain, waiting…but for the society in which Lena lives love is a disease, named amor deliria nervosa which “affects your mind so that you cannot think clearly, or make rational decisions about your own well-being”.

     About the plot. The story is set in Portland, Maine (the United States), in an alternate present. There are such characters as

• ·         Lena Haloway is the main character. “I’m not ugly, but I’m not pretty, either. Everything is in-between”. Her mother committed suicide when Lena was six. Her mother didn’t believe that love was a disease, that’s why the cure couldn’t help her.
• ·         Rachel (Lena’s sister).She has had the procedure already. “She’s been disease free for nine years”.
• ·         Carol (Lena’s aunt). Lena lives with aunt Carol and her cousins.
• ·         Gracie and Jenny are Lena’s cousins. They also have no parents. Their father was suspected of being sympathizer; then he disappeared before his trial could begin. Marcia (their mother) died from heart attack a few months after her husband’s disappearance.
• ·         Hana (Lena’s best friend). She is a beautiful, sociable and cheerful girl. Her parents are rich. Lena says that Hana is much more beautiful and popular than she is.

     If you are 18, you should have the procedure that not to be infected by amor deliria nervosa. Lena has looked forward to the procedure for years, convinced that love is a horrible disease. Lena will have the procedure in 95 days (on her 18^th birthday). But now Lena is waiting Evaluation Day. The evaluation is the final test she will take (she has already had all her exams in school). According to the results of the evaluation, she will be assigned to a college and she can get paired. If she passes her evaluation test well, in the coming months the evaluators will send her a list of four or five approved matches. One of them will become her husband after she graduates college. The evaluators try to avoid any huge disparities in intelligence, temperament, social background and age.

     Evaluation Day has become. Lena and Hana go to the laboratories to pass their final exam. They are filling in papers and then the nurse is seeing them off to different rooms where they will be asked by the commission. During Lena’s Evaluation happens a strange incident, it is interrupted by screaming, drumming sound and the cows come thundering into the lab. Lena understands (when saw on the cows’ flanks: NOT CURE. DEATH) that Invalids (the people who live in the Wilds, the unregulated land that exists between recognized cities and towns) have done all it. Every couple of years they make some kind of protest in Portland. “The Invalids don’t see love as a disease, and they don’t believe in the cure. They think it’s kind of cruelty”. Suddenly, among all these scream and fuss, Lena hears the laugh. She notices the boy (“His hair is golden brown, like leaves in autumn just as they’re turning, and he has bright amber eyes”) who is standing and watching the chaos. And he is laughing. Lena is sure that he is an Invalid and one of the people responsible for the chaos. Will Lena fall in love with him? That is the question!

     In conclusion, I want to share with you an idea which set me thinking. “You can’t be really happy unless you’re unhappy sometimes”. This is the truth of life. We wouldn’t appreciate happy moments if we didn’t know what the difficulties, disappointments, offenses were. I remember the talk between friends from the book P.S. I Love You, which explains right and simple things by simple words.

  - ''if only every minute of my life was filled with perfect little moments I would never moan again"
- "nobody's life is filled with perfect little moments. And if they were, they wouldn't be perfect little moments. They would just be normal. How would you ever know happiness if you'd never experienced downs?"

With love,

Kate

Let's start

Hello, my dear readers!

   

   Today I’d like to tell you about my book-choice. This time I wanted to choose something really interesting and exciting. I had no special ideas about the book and the author. I just came to the bookshop and started to overlook different books. I was confused because I liked more than one book and I couldn’t choose. So I decided not to hurry and read about these books at home. By the way, it was a good decision. Reading some reviews and the extracts at home, I chose the book which is called “Delirium” by Lauren Oliver.

   I haven’t heard about the author before. But now I know that Lauren Oliver is the rising star of young adult fiction and an American author of the novels “Before I Fall” and “the Delirium trilogy: Delirium, Pandemonium, and Requiem”. These books are real bestsellers.

   Delirium is a dystopian young adult novel, published in January 2011, about a young girl, Lena Haloway, who falls in love in a society where love is seen as a disease.

   Lauren Oliver says that the inspiration for Delirium came to her one day at the gym. She had recently read a Gabriel Garcia Márquez essay where he said that all books were about either love or death. Her first book (“Before I Fall”) was about death, she wanted to write a book about love. At the gym she was watching a news report about a pandemic, and the two ideas combined in her head to form the central concept of the Delirium books.

   

   That’s why the slogan of the book is “What if love were a disease?”. It’s very enigmatic and exciting, isn’t it? What do you think about the title “Delirium”? What can it mean… As for me I’m going to get to know. Later I’ll share with you all my thoughts and impression. I hope it will be interesting. See you soon!

Best wishes,

Kate