The Shooting Star Blog

I didn't know what to do for my blog post, so I'm doing it on a random children's book series about cats, named Pete the Cat . Pete the Cat, written by Kimberly Dean and James Dean, is a picture book series for small children to read. I'll be discussing the symbolism and meaning of the first book, Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes .  At first, Pete the cat gets brand new white shoes. He seems to be very excited with his white shoes, and starts singing about them. However, the story takes a big twist when Pete the cat happens to step in a large pile of strawberries randomly on the street. The strawberries then dye his white shoes red. The biggest mistake here from Pete the cat was getting white shoes in the first place. It could be assumed here that Pete the cat is a child cat, considering he also didn't see the big pile of strawberries on the sidewalk. Pete the cat doesn't let this get him sad though, and he starts to sing about his red shoes. Then, he steps i...

No, I don't actually hate men. That'd be betraying my own kind. But over the past few weeks, I have been reading the appropriately named I Hate Men  by Pauline Harmange. It was almost banned in France (the country that it was originally published in) for promoting gender discrimination. I found this one day while looking through the wonderful catalog of the Uni Library, and I knew instantly that this would both be an interesting read and an interesting blog post. I Hate Men is an essay on why women need to become misandrists (people that hate men) to combat misogyny, and how hating men can offer women sisterhood and resistance against the patriarchy. Harmange also argues that misandry is a justified belief due to the risk of physical harm that women face because of the actions of men (an unfortunately true fact). In contrast to men harming women, misandry is okay because men are not hurt by misandry: it is an "intolerable brutality that adds up to the shocking outrage of p...

          I was thinking about what blog post I should do for my week and I had thought back to my first post on The Smiths. It clicked that I could write about their lead singer who had gone to do his own solo work. Originally I was thinking about writing about Jonny Marr the guitarist, but I feel Morrissey's solo career is better.  Every day is like Sunday      Every day is like Sunday , is a song about the narrator's boredom and every day being repetitive. In the lines "This is the coastal town That they forgot to close down Armageddon - come Armageddon! Come, Armageddon! Come!" The narrator states that this town should have been closed down and wants armageddon to come down and close it down. Then the narrator says "Every day is like Sunday Every is silent and grey" showing that every day is boring and dull. Then he says "Etch a postcard: "How I Dearly Wish I Was Not Here" In the seaside town ...that they forgot to bomb Come, Come, C...

    This is Quintus, and I read The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. It tells the story about an old Cuban fisherman who has recently been very unlucky and unsuccessful. He goes out to sea in the early fall to try to find a huge fish. He goes far out into the sea, and eventually, his bait attracts a ginormous marlin, which dragged him and his boat around for 3 days straight. In that time he had to find ways to get food for himself, which he did by fishing and eating his catches raw, as well as endure excruciating pain and work without much sleep at all. Finally, on the third day, he managed to catch the fish, which was larger than the boat itself.     On the long journey home, the catch attracted many sharks, which the old man had to fight to keep them from eating the fish. However, when he finally reached home, the sharks had eaten the catch to the bone, leaving only the fin and the rostrum (the "sword" of a marlin).     In this book, the old man i...

Romance has been a feature in literature since literature itself began. Poems from Sappho to Shakespeare, to YA authors like Jenny Han or Lyla Lee. The forms in which literary love presents itself shifts from decade to decade, year to year. However, t he 2010’s have brought a new wave of romantic literature known as fanfiction. Some authors use their imagination to create offshoots of their favorite pre-existing stories, perhaps to satisfy abandoned plot lines, or to create a modernized version of older characters.  Others take beautiful stories, characters, and real people and turn them into strange fantasies that make everyone kind of uncomfortable.  As with every genre of writing, there is variety in the quality and enjoyment between every piece. Not all fanfiction is bad! But these are 5 reasons why I think some of it is pretty bad. (Yes, it was supposed to be like the movie 10 things I hate about you but I ran out of things to hate on. Sorry guys.)  Quality of writin...

I was bored over Christmas break, and my dad thought that was the perfect opportunity to force me to read. I complained about reading enough, though, that I could convince him to let me read some children's books, which would still count as reading in his eyes. And so he forced me to read the Chronicles of Narnia series, about a different world with talking animals. I already made a blog post on the second, most popular book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis, and now that I finished the series, I'll do a review of the last book, The Last Battle,  and tell you if you should consider reading this old children's book series. First, I'll start with a summary of The Last Battle, while avoiding any big spoilers. It starts with an ape and a donkey finding a lion's skin. The ape then told the donkey to impersonate the lion Aslan, the 'god' of the animals. It then switches perspectives to the king of narnia, Tirian. Tirian learns about Aslan returni...

Hi everyone,  I've been reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 for the past couple of weeks now, and today, I'll be giving my review of this book and how it eerily connects to our modern world. Fahrenheit 451  is set in the future, where the government has outlawed books and sends "firemen" to go and burn all books. As a result, society as a whole has been dumbed down through different forms of entertainment (more on that later), and learning is not considered important. Guy Montag, the story's protagonist, is a fireman who burns books, and like most of society, despises books and truly enjoys burning them. His opinions change when he meets his new neighbor, Clarisse, whose free-spirited nature makes Guy question his life and whether he really is happy. As the novel progresses, he starts reading and becomes a rebel towards society. I think that Fahrenheit 451 is quite interesting and thought-provoking because it connects so well to things that are happening in ...