For my last blog post, I thought I’d review some of the books I’ve read this past month. I’ve recently been reading books that deviate from my usual picks, so here are my opinions on them! 

The Stranger – Albert Camus

The Stranger was quite an unusual, yet thought-provoking, read. I’ve been putting it off for so long, but I finally got to reading it. It was a rather short read (~150 pages) so I was able to finish it quickly. I will admit, I didn’t know much about Albert Camus before reading this book. All I knew was his famous poem “Invincible Summer”. However, The Stranger caught my attention immediately with its blunt opening line:

Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know.

There are two reasons why this makes a fantastic opening: 1) It makes the audience question how a man could possibly be detached from the death of his own mother 2) Although the audience doesn’t know it yet, this line is a keen reflection of the main character’s mental state

The story follows a man who spontaneously murders someone on the beach without obvious remorse. The narrator’s apathy and detached nature alienate him from his own actions. His disregard for harming another, and his detachment from love, raises the question about the purpose, or lack thereof, of life.

I enjoyed the book more after reflecting on it than I did while reading it. I could only recognize certain concepts after contemplation. It seemed absurd when I read it, but I saw its value after having time for reflection.

Misery – Stephen King

Another book I read recently is Misery. It’s been my goal for a long time to read a Stephen King book because he’s so popular and I don’t want to miss out (I haven’t watched any of his movies, either). I picked up The Shining around Halloween, which was my introduction to King. If I’m being honest, I wasn’t a fan of The Shining. The concept was intriguing, but it was drawn out. Misery was slightly better, in my opinion. Perhaps it’s because this book is less “horror” and more “thriller”. 

Misery is about a famous author who gets into a car accident during a severe storm and is “rescued” by a superfan named Annie Wilkes, who proceeds to hold him hostage in her house. Annie is a vastly different emblem of horror compared to the hotel in The Shining. Unlike a supernatural hotel, crazy fangirls are real. Although Annie takes obsession to a whole new level, I admire how Stephen King twists mundane aspects of reality and amplifies their scary properties into something truly horrifying.

However, I feel like Misery dragged on a bit too much, just like The Shining. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy slow-paced books, but I think there are parts that could have definitely been condensed since this is supposed to be a horror/thriller. I’m concluding that Stephen King isn’t for me, although I’m willing to give him one last chance (if you like Stephen King, please give me recommendations, I promise I’m trying).

The Astonishing Color of After – Emily X.R. Pan

Someone recommended The Astonishing Color of After to me a while ago, but I never got the chance to pick it up (you can probably sense the theme here) until I saw it in Barnes and Noble and was in the right mood for it.

In a few adjectives, this book is heart-wrenching, raw, sorrowful, and captivating. The story follows Leigh, a biracial teenage girl whose mom dies by suicide. However, she is certain that her mother has turned into a bird. The book follows her trip to China to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time and discover more about her mother’s past.

This book was emotional, exploring how memories affect us and our relationships with the people we love. I appreciated how this book took its time, which allowed the descriptions and details to soak in. I’m also a sucker for books about kids who are passionate about art; I have no idea why but I’m assuming it’s because their focus on passion and discovery is really admirable. In this book, Leigh and her best friend are aspiring artists and even communicate their emotions by describing certain colors.

This book also had a great opening line:

My mother is a bird. This isn’t like some William Faulkner stream-of-consciousness metaphorical crap. My mother. Is literally. A bird.

Thank you, As I Lay Dying, for helping me understand this reference.

The One – John Marrs

The One has such a wild concept. In the book, a company has created a DNA-matching service allowing people to be genetically paired with their “soulmate”. Think Tinder, but erase all doubt with a simple DNA test.

The book follows multiple perspectives, each with its own twists and turns. Without spoiling anything, some examples include a cop matching with a serial killer, and a girl matching with someone who just died.

Toward the end, it emphasizes questions around the possibility of “true love” existing and the line where technology and ethics crash. It also highlights the human need to be remembered, to make an impact, and to leave a permanent legacy. There are secrets, twists, and betrayals that make the story gripping. Although the novel doesn’t flesh out the characters much, I approached it more for the cool concept. Before this, I hadn’t picked up a true mystery/thriller since the phase I had in 8th grade, so this was fun. 

This month, I’ve been reading a lot of books that I’ve put off and also books that I wouldn’t normally pick up. So far, nothing has stood out to me as a new favorite, but nonetheless, I hope that I’ll have a good reading year.

When I was a girl scout back in elementary school, our troop once did a scavenger hunt as a bonding activity. The game took place outdoors, and we split up into teams to win the final prize. I don’t remember much about what happened, but I do remember that one of the steps was to translate a slip of paper with a message written in morse code. 

After finding the paper, my other three team members immediately began searching the campsite for clues to decode the message. However, as I helped them look, the same thought kept repeating itself in the back of my mind. If I just knew morse code, I could save time and translate the message without searching for clues. 

But that’s exactly why the adults arranged this activity. Morse code is a seemingly dead method of communication that we primarily associate with sailors in the 1800’s. However, morse code has always intrigued me. Named after Samuel Morse, it encodes characters as a sequence of dots and dashes (also referred to as “dits” and “dahs”). Electrical telegraphs were important in the 1840’s to communicate in a quicker manner than physical transportation would allow. The electrical telegraph uses electrical pulses surrounded by periods of silence to transmit messages. 

Morse code originally focused on numerals, and one would have to look up the corresponding letters in a codebook. However, Alfred Vail later developed the code to include letters and symbols as well. Since each dash is the length of about 3 dots, the code can be sped up or slowed down and still be understood.

Although it may look like a random series of symbols, there was planning involved to make the code as efficient as possible. If you look at the sequences corresponding to each letter, the most frequent letters we use in the alphabet tend to have easier codes. For example, E is one dot, while Q is 2 dashes, a dot, and another dash (–.-). 

Even the famous SOS was chosen because it was easily recognizable: a simple 3 dots, 3 dashes, and 3 dots (…—…). Since SOS is 9 symbols long, it is easy to identify. Although many people believe that SOS came from the phrase “Save Our Souls”, that saying became popular after the code was widely used. Before SOS, the distress signal had been CQD. In fact, while the Titanic was sinking, they originally sent out CQD but later, desperately turned to the more modern SOS signal.

A big misconception is that morse code is only visual when in reality, it can be taught audibly. In fact, that’s how I ended up learning morse code. One day, during quarantine, I found a video about the history of morse code. With so much time on my hands, I decided that I was going to learn it. 

At first, I tried staring at the dots and hoped that, somehow, I would miraculously be able to memorize them all. But it was harder than I thought to memorize so many dots and dashes for each letter. Instead, I lied down and played an audio that went through all 26 letters (I know that sounds incredibly boring, but it was probably the most mental activity I had during the entirety of 2020). I tried to memorize the letters however I could, whether it was by forming tunes to each sequence or associating phrases with them. In the end, it paid off, because now I know Morse Code.

I don’t think anyone is even aware that I know morse code, which isn’t a surprise considering I’ve never really had the chance to use it. I would like to seem intellectual and claim to have learned morse code to challenge my mind or for a sense of accomplishment. Although that’s partially true, deep down, I think I learned morse code because I have this fantasy that one day I’ll be threatened by some nefarious plot and have to translate a message in morse code to defeat an international villain.

Unfortunately, the only time I’ve ever used morse code is to be one step ahead of TV show characters. There’ve been multiple shows and movies I’ve seen where the characters spend time trying to decode a message in morse code, and I can simply laugh while knowing the message the entire time. Morse code sometimes comes up in mystery shows, and there are scenes in popular shows like Stranger Things and The Office that included it. I might never be able to use morse code in a dire emergency, but it’s still fun to know it.