Don't Know Much About American History by Kenneth C. Davis is a book that I believe is meant for adults who want to refresh their memories on what they learned about American history in high school in college. After all, since my parents got out of college I feel as though the text books have changed a lot or they've a least gotten  newer, updated ones. And ironic as it sounds history changes everyday...

Anyways, each chapter of the book deals with a certain era, for example, the first is explorers and first settlements. So it deals with who discovered America? How did the Indians get here? Why is America named America? What about Pocohantas and James Smith? What happened to the Lost Colony? etc.

Davis is very matter-of-fact in his writing and he's always quick to take a bite at any inaccuracy that history books, or stereotypes have stayed true to for years. For example, the big deal about Colombus, who necessarily didn't "discover" the Americas. Who really did is under debate, but, we know for sure that people were definitely here before Colombus, the Vikings and even maybe the Chinese.

One thing that Davis said that I took note of was, "Winners write the history books..." which is the reason why he claims that we hear so much about the English colonization, settlement and discovery of the United States mainland. People like de Soto, Ponce de Leon etc. from Spain could consider themselves played down as soon as Queen Elizabeth's "sea dogs" like Francis Drake. Which relates to the Queen Elizabeth biography that I read at the beginning of the year.

Things that stand out so far:
> Universities were founded in Lima, Peru and Mexico City, Mexico in 1551 (almost 100 years before Harvard)
> The Algonquian Indians inhabited the area of Virginia along with Powhatan and Pocahontas. The name of that tribe just reminded me of the Algonquin Hotel in NYC which reminded of me of the Algonquin Round Table in the early 1900s.

Getting In by Karen Stabiner is a novel about kids that go to a lovely college prepatory school in California and are bound for greatness no matter where they go.  In it's first 100 pages I've already met four kids:

Lauren: The girl who's trying so hard to get into the school of her desires, Northwestern, but won't get it because of her averageness and lack of connection

Bradley Preston IV: Basically the poor little rich boy who's a shoe-in for Harvard, but would rather pursue his architectural dreams.

Katie: The girls who's parents have worked their behinds off to get both her and her brother the best education at Williams, but she'd rather go to Yale.

Chloe: Lauren's best friend who used to go to prep school with the three above, but now goes to Oceanview Heights public high school because of her parents divorce.

Liz: Chloe's math tutor at Oceanview Heights who is bound to be the one public school kid who kids into one of the Ivy's.

Finally, the college counselor Ted, who's the top man at getting all of these prep school kids into college and their acceptances to the Ivies along with other grreat schools like Northwestern and Williams are what he controls.

So getting through the first 100 pages of this book was difficult. Not the reading itself, but the content is constantly reminding me of stuff I need to get done. Higher score on the SAT, subject tests, APs, National Merit, etc. And it just stresses me out along with the characters in that sense.

So far, it's looking good. It's one of those books where the point of view switches in between a whole bunch of characters, which is normally alright and easy to keep track of, except this time for me it's hard for me to remember which girl is which. Because they're all whiny in a sense and they all want to be annoying apparently.

Brad is driving me nuts. It's so annoying when people say: "UGH. I can't believe I'm good enough to practically walk into Harvard University anytime I want to enroll. I don't want to go there." He's really hard for me to sympathize with at the moment. However, I feel Lauren's pain. She's being prevented from where she wants to go by one point in what seems to be in every score, SAT, National Merit, etc. And she won't get into schools because of legacies like Brad, who've had their names down for these school since birth. Katie I also understand because my parents think that UGA is the perfect option for me, which in a sense it is, like Williams seems to be for her, but I want a challenge, I want to get out of my comfort zone and so does Katie. (Also I think her name is Katherine.) But that's all at the moment.

 Stuff White People Like has acutally begun to scare me. Sorry to interupt the previous scheduled blog with this different topic, but my copy of the book has gone amiss with my spring break luggage, which still remains unpacked. So instead of continuing like I did in the previous two posts for this book, I've decided to blog on the conclusion that I've come too.

The thing is that I don't know if Landers is being serious or not. Obviously there are white people that like coffee, music festivals, and traveling abroad, etc. But I'm really wondering if he's just having a laugh or criticizing white people for this, if that makes sense. It's making me question the white people that I know and what they do and why they do it. Do they do it because they're white? Do they do it to immulate white people that they know?

I even question my own motives because I find myself liking with many of the 150 things listed in the book. It makes me feel as if I'm a conformist or something which I don't necessarily want to be, especially if Landers is criticizing such people. How could so many people have so much in common? Even though I know for a fact, that not all white like all the 150 things in that book, I know that some like most. And the other white people like Sarah Pailin, Tea Parties, etc. the I doubt would even be mentioned in this book.

I'm just not really getting what Landers is going at, from his picture and biographical information he seems to be writing about himself. He's a white man from Canada who seems to be the kind of guy to like all the things he mentions. And that just baffles my mind. Is it a critique of white people or not? Is it a good thing to be one of these white people? What is Landers getting at???

In Jenny Woolfe's book, The Mystery of Lewis Carroll, the mystery is definitely left unsolved. Sure, you learn a lot about Carroll himself, his likes and dislikes recorded by him in his diaries and journals, accounts of what his contemporaries thought of him, and the author's speculation along with that of many more she references in her biography of him. Woolfe also brings you into the time that he was in, the Victorian era, where little children could not go out without a chaperone, and ankles could not be shown. Woolfe also shows how little bits that people said can become so blown out of proportion.

 I picked out this book looking for answers. One of them being: Was Lewis Carroll a pedophile or not?  I'm not sure where I first got wind of this idea. It was most likely posted on an AOL or Yahoo News link that I clicked a while back, and had not forgotten since. According to Woolfe when Alice Liddel was still alive and was asked to be interviewed, she was too sick to be interviewed, so her older sister, Lorina or Ina, was interviewed instead. When asked why Carroll stopped coming around to visit the Liddel's, Lorina answered something along the lines of  "Mother thought that Alice was to young to be thinking of such things." Making any reader of the interview or quote infer that Alice, who was VERY young at the time perhaps between 10 and 14, I cannot quite remember, that Alice was thinking of marrying Carroll or vice versa. Along with this interview for a 1930 biography came suspicions of things not common to be speculated upon in the Victorian age, like pedophilia.

Anyways, though all of the papers of the Liddells regarding Carroll were for the most part destroyed and the diaries of Carroll during this time have been censored or gone missing, I think that Woolfe does a good job of crediting Carroll as a good, wholesome gentleman who would never hurt any little girl in any little way.

I ended this biography on a nice note. It was tied up in a nice neat package, although it would be amazing to read Carroll's own diaries, especially the missing ones. Woolfe has struck a chord of curiosity in me with Carroll and I'm very interested in reading other works of his other than Alice.  I actually saw the complete collection of Carroll's works in the library the other day, which I'd love to read, but am afraid that I will not have time this year, so perhaps over the summer, or next year.