Wow, I can't believe that I haven't posted in my blog for over a year now. I want to take this time to apologize to all my fans... haha.
Maybe one day.
~
Anyways, hi, hello, I'm still alive (thankfully). A lot has happened since that last time I wrote in my blog. The COVID-19 Pandemic, Kobe Bryant's death, Apu Fely's death, finally moving on from my childhood friends, becoming a teacher, being offered a Teaching Assistant position at UBC, gaining 20lbs of mainly muscle, etc. Oh, and my birthday was yesterday. I turned 24.
Creo que mi español ha mejorado también :) Ahora estoy aprendiendo francés y un poco de tagalo.
I really do want to write here more frequently. I want it to become a habit. Let's make it happen.
That being said, one of my goals for 2021 is to create a personal website, and it would link to this blog. The website would be something like an online portfolio, linking to my LinkedIn, YouTube, blog, and other online medias.
But anyways, sticking to the main topic... I might have read more than three books, but I can't quite remember, 2020 has been a bit of a blur and has passed by rather quickly. The three books that I know that I read this year are:
1) Born a Crime - Trevor Noah
2) Persepolis The Story of a Childhood - Marjane Satrapi
3)El niño con el pijama de rayas
Surprisingly, there are a few common themes among each book. For example, all three of them illustrate a story of a child. In Trevor Noah's book, he talks about his childhood in South Africa and provides the reader with memorable stories - his narration is awesome, though he tells it from an adult perspective to address an adult audience. Satrapi also talks of her childhood growing up in Iran. The style of the book is like a comic, with more dialogue and seen interaction amongst the characters. Lastly, el niño con el pijama de rayas is about Bruno, a german boy who is forced to move from his house in Berlin to another house near his father's work (a camp in Auschwitz). Although the story is not told from the perspective of Bruno, it still has a sense of innocence to the narration.
Another common occurrence among all three books is all three children grew up in a war setting. Trevor Noah grew up during apartheid, which was a South African government movement to divide 'black people' amongst themselves, along with 'white people', 'colored people', 'Chinese people", and "Indian people". Satrapi grew up during the Islamic Revolution. This book taught me that I don't know much of the history of the Middle East, and perhaps I'm a bit ignorant towards it. From what I remember (I read it back in May), the war involved censorship, political corruption, and religious conflicts. Boyne's story is based on the holocaust from the Second World War. The protagonist is a german boy, with his best friend being a Polish boy of his age. You know how history goes down, but I'm not going to spoil the book.
As I've mentioned before, these wars were based on race and discrimination, which are two other important themes. Skin colour is frequently mentioned in Born a Crime, along with discrimination against women. Discrimination against women is a strong topic too in Persepolis. Lastly, the hate that Germans had towards the Jews almost seems unreal nowadays, even though it happened barely over half a century ago.
-I enjoyed all three books. I feel like I may have read more (aside from mandatory texts from my University classes), but I can't remember. In 2021, I have a goal of reading one book in English and one book in Spanish once a month. I hope to be able to maintain that goal, knowing how busy I'll be in the upcoming year. I hope you enjoyed this blog post. I hope to be back soon!
¡HAPPY NEW YEAR! 2021☺
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