THE BEST OF DECEMBER

THE KORAN

"The Quran hates non-believers of their religion. They hate Americans too. (According to a news network, it speaks of over 100 references of hate towards Americans specifically)."


"I am close minded to Islam, Muslim, Koran, blah blah blah and don't care if I'm right or wrong : )"


DESCARTES - DISCOURSE ON METHOD

"I think, therefore I am. Can I just say something here? This Descartes guy was crazy! I'm sure people with more expansive minds than mine really get into this stuff but honestly, I have no use for it. Dude wrote three pages on what happens when wax melts and how he knows or doesn't know if it's still wax or not. This is relevant to making the world go around, how?

Philosophy lovers, please don't barrage me with comments or explanations. I'm paying big time money at the university to 'learn' this stuff. I don't need to hear it anymore."


KAFKA - A HUNGER ARTIST

"In all of his stories, he takes a fairly different approach in terms of writing style because he writes alot of stories in a 'show not tell' manner. Although all of his stories are quite hard to read and understand, it is still pretty evident that he used this category of writing. It seems to me that his stories are incomplete in a sense and very roughly translated from hebrew (he is a jewish writer i believe)"


SOPHOCLES - ELECTRA

"This book was about a young woman named Electra and how she would do anything to get what she wants. What is it that she wants? She wants to be ruler of course. During the entire play she starts off seeming like a really cool girl but during the middle you find out that she is after something sinister. Through the course of the play she gets into multiple arguments with another character named Clythaemestra. Very quickly you can tell as the audience that they don’t like each other, but it’s not until the end that you find out the extent of there dislike for each other is.
...
I for one was not a fan of this script/ play because I feel that nothing really happened until the very end. During the whole play the only thing it seemed that the main characters Electra and Clythaemestra were arguing and they were arguing about nothing in particular. To make it more interesting I would probably add more conflict or maybe have them do more things. Like go around the town, maybe they could get into a fist fight, anything that would add some interest into this play. In my opinion it was really dull of a play."


KIPLING - BARRACK-ROOM BALLADS

"When I started it, It was more interesting, but when I got to the end, my pants got bored off, & I put off finishing it (which wasn't good because it was part of my school!)."


DICKENS - A CHRISTMAS CAROL

"This book is not a good one to read to kids. My personal opinion is that I don't want to talk or read about ghosts for 'the fun of it' to my young children."


"What I noticed the most in the book is the usage of the many five dollar words (This might be the reason, I realize now, that there are alternate versions of the story and especially in abridged form). Not only those words made the book difficult to read, they helped to provide detachment for me from enjoying the story and being immersed in the tale. What is worse, I simply didn't like the story all that much because I felt my motivation to be lacking when Ebenezer Scrooge was hand-picked for the journey. Thinking of the kind of a person he is, why can't a worthier person be selected? That's why I prefer the tale of It's a Wonderful Life over A Christmas Carol, and it did happen to a better person than Scrooge. One worst part about A Christmas Carol is the force to love Christmas to death. I am not too keen about this approach because it feels too religious in the wrong way. Then again, the entire book was too religious for my taste with a lot of overtones in a spiritual sense. Charles Dickens also gives poverty a role in A Christmas Carol, but I didn't like the part where a character is judged by how he views money as he sees fit. All in all, I found A Christmas Carol a disappointing read, and all of the characters were unmemorable for me."


PLATO - SYMPOSIUM

"It’s well known that all Greek men are pederasts. Fact. This is another thing to keep in mind about the Symposium. By and large, it’s not concerned with sweet, romantic boy-girl love. It’s more about sweaty, angry, man-boy love. Bathhouse love. Just a word of warning in case you’re turning to Plato for Cosmo-style relationship advice. Unless you’re a member of NAMBLA, you’d best look elsewhere."