The blog of Allison!

For our last post, we were meant to review someone else's blog.  SO, I chose to check out Allison's :)
Going into the blog, I didn't really know what to expect.  I knew that Allison had a small obsession with celebrity, and the only piece of writing that I had ever read of her's had been an essay on the afterlife that had been written to try and intentionally fail.  I knew Allison had more potential than that, and so I clicked onto her blog, hoping for the best.

I was not disappointed!  Allison's blog had everything: quotes about life (my favourite was
"Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want something badly enough. They are there to keep out the other people." - Randy Pausch) which I'm a little suspicious of having been on One Tree Hill, and even poetry!  In the past, poetry has never meant anything to me.  I have always looked on it as sloppy lyrics missing musical backing.  But Allison managed to take the most bizarre SH5 and blend it with her own memories and reading experience, creating something unlike anything I had ever read before.  But I'll elaborate on that later.
The link to the first post I will discuss:
http://allyinline.blogspot.com/2011/04/9-could-have-should-have-would-haveand.html-Lazarro's fulfillment

There were several things that caught my attention about this post.  When I read Sh5, I remember being confused and truly frustrated with the lack of direction and order the novel possessed.  What is the point of reading a novel that's not in order?  It made no sense to me as to why a renowned author would take suspense and action out of his novel, especially one that he worked on for YEARS.  But in this post, Allison really made me appreciate Sh5 for what it is. I particularly enjoyed her example 'It's like a PowerPoint presentation, you present Table of Contents  for what you will cover, and then you break it down. It helps organize a reader's thought process'.  This helped me to appreciate  Sh5 for what it really is, and it also helped show me that by doing this Vonnegut has allowed his novel to truly do its job.  Novels should not only be about the plot and what happens next.  A truly fantastic novel is one that makes you think, and delivers a launch pad for your own ideas.  I kind of questioned Allison's finding humour in the death of Valencia.  I used to think it was tragic that a girl's only love could be taken from her, and she resultantly and inadvertly kills herself (kind of Romeo and Juliet-ish) . But when I analyzed the situation from Allison's viewpoint, I could not think of Valencia the same way.
the second:
http://allyinline.blogspot.com/2011/04/6-slaughterhouse-five-catch-22.html-also read catch-22
The second post of Allison's that interested me was her comparison of Sh5 and catch-22.  I read catch-22 a couple years back, and I was so irritated I had to put the book down, unfinished.  In Allison's comparison, a point that really struck me was the theme of insanity.  Pilgrim spent time in a mental hopsital when everyone thought he was sane, and when he was enlightened about fate and free-will, he was called crazy.  This is just like Yossarian's plight in Catch-22.  If you click on the above link you can read more of Allison's elaboration on this topic, which I highly recommend.  All I really can say about this post is that it makes perfect sense.
the third:
http://allyinline.blogspot.com/2011/03/im-on-verge-of-chapter-seven.html
Before I start talking about this post, I just want to say that Allison's  poetry is awesome.  I loved reading about her own reading experience because it was also fitting for my own.  Do yourself a favour and go read it! I think my favourite lines were
Scrawled out every possible way to describe all that happened
Yet my paper heart is still as blank as a cloudless sky
AWESOME!
But back to this post.  This post really gave me a lot to think about.  I can't say I agree with the idea of fate and also a higher being presiding over our destinies.  To me, these are just two entirely different things and I feel that you can't have both.  I can't say that I also believe in fate, I'd like to believe that I have a little bit of control over my future.  However, the perspective in the post really made me tilt my head to the side and think that maybe everything actually does happen for a reason.  I really liked this part:
"Because for all the bad memories, the nothing-at-all's and the closed glass door, I suppose there are just as many good memories."
So true! But anyways, that's all.  Allison's blog had great ideas, and they were written which such fluidity that I did not only recall her ideas but also her writing itself.  Great job :)