The Shooting Star Blog

     The Courage to Be Disliked  is a great novel written by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. It follows the conversations between a philosopher and a youth over five nights, as there philosopher, using Adlerian psychology, helps his young student understand that life is simple and happiness can be achieved by anyone. During each night, they talk about different, yet quite related, topics. I will admit that I have only read about the first three nights, but because there isn't really a plotline, every one of their discussions is extremely insightful and information-heavy. I think that it works for this novel.     During the first night, the philosopher teaches his student about denial of trauma. He says that past experiences only determine the self through the meaning we give them, and we are controlled neither by emotion nor the past. The philosopher then talks about how people want to change, but are afraid to and lack the courage you need to change and ...

  I've never really liked science fiction. I felt like it was either too much violence, cheesy plotlines, bad editing or unlikable characters. My dad is an avid sci-fi watcher, contrary to myself, so I would try to watch some shows or movies with him. However I really only enjoyed the time spent with my dad, not what we were watching. As I got older, we really only watched cartoons together. But this winter break, I was really bored and wanting to do something and so I asked if we could rewatch “firefly,” a sci fi show I remember vaguely from when I was 8 or 9.  If you haven’t seen it, it’s sort of a bridge between western dramas and space travel sci-fi. It had a distinct folk aesthetic, which sets it apart from other series. It follows the crew of the ship “serenity,” with characters ranging from stubborn captains and bubbly engineers to shepherds and government fugitives. Each episode plays into a larger storyline, but contains different sub-plot lines that can be either fun...

I was bored of reading really old books that my dad forced me to read, so instead he let me read a still old childrens book. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a book about 4 children going into a wardrobe and arriving in the land of Narnia, where there's talking animals. The animals are facing a crisis of the evil witch declaring winter in Narnia for over 100 years, but the children are prepared to stop her. The four children, Lucy, Edmund, Susan, and Peter, were just on a normal vacation when the lion, Aslan, required their assistance in killing the witch. There is a little bit of a betrayal and a 'sad moment', but it was what I would expect of a children's book. Firstly, the book itself was a normal length of a children's book (about 160 pages) which made me want to read it even more, since I usually don't finish longer books. Secondly, I like how Aslan is very powerful but is a lion, which shows appreciation to cats, which I like (literally the whole re...