A side story before I talk about stuff from class. Tonight I was talking to my mom on the phone and I mentioned that I had the read some of the Arabian Nights for the class. It turns out that she used to read the stories to me when I was a little kid. I can’t say I remember the stories from it, but I do have a vague recollection of my mom sitting in the rocking chair next to my bed, with me either in the bed or sitting on her lap reading me a book that after all these years I can still see the cover. (I’m not sure if this is the Arabian Nights or a different book). But when I go back home after the summer session I am going to try and track down this book and add it to my small collection of literature that I have. Just so every one knows I have three shelves on my bookshelf. The top row is half filled with lititure and has a few cookbooks on it. The next shelf is mostly full of textbooks, or the tall ones, but I’m pretty sure they are all textbooks, exciting things like Organic Chemistry, and Genetics. The bottom shelf is full of all of my history/ non-fiction books. And most of them are military history books. I am currently working on expanding my litutare collection. When I go home in a few weeks I am going to steal books from my parents so that way I will have more to read. And now, one on the list is that hard back copy of the Arabian Nights with the colorful Genie on the front, and I think maybe a fisherman…

I want to talk a bit about Mr. Pip, from last Monday, (my cat has been sick so I have not had much time to blog until now, and she is doing better). The most obvious theme I noticed in the book was this battle between reality and fiction. There is a movie that came out less than a year ago from Disney of all people that has this as a major theme in the movie. The movie is “Enchanted.” It is a cheesy Disney movie about a cartoon princess who gets banished to the real world of New York because the evil step mom does not want her marrying her son the prince. Of course she meets a man who has a daughter and is planning on getting engaged to his girlfriend. And then like any other comedy (like The Importance of Being Earnest) it all works out in the end, and this story has two weddings. (So not quite as funny as “The Importance of Being Earnest,” because that has three weddings, but back to my main point). The man the princess meets in New York is not a literature, imagination person. He works as a divorce lawyer and his ex-wife leaves him. So this man is a single father raising his 10year old daughter and he does not let her read fantasy princess story books to her, because he does not want her thinking the world is a “happily ever after” type of place. Of course when he meets the princess she is all about the fantasy books because she is from one. There is a clash between the two worlds in the move and in the end there is a hybrid of the two world that all three (the princess, the father and the dad) characters believe and live their lives. This seems like an unlikely place to compare an award-winning book to, but they are the same story. One is just oriented towards kids a little better. So this goes back to every story is a retelling of another stor