before i fall

I have finished the book Jane and I am now reading the book Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver. It’s about a girl who dies but keeps reliving the day that she died for one whole week. It’s up to her how she can save others and herself. The main character’s name is Samantha Kingston. She’s got the looks, popularity and the school’s hottest guys following at her feet. She could care less about school and her grades. Sam would much rather go out to drink and party. In the book, Sam has a group of best friends. Their names are Elody, Lindsay and Ally. They do everything the same every single day. Pull up to school, blasting the same music and always get the last lower level parking spot. After Sam dies she keeps waking up the next morning on the same day, Friday, February 12^th. Each day that she does this, she decides to change one more thing than she did the day before. Usually she chooses to help someone. This person’s name is Juliet. She is always being teased and made fun of for no particular reason. Everyone in school just doesn’t like her. Sam realizes that she should have stuck up for Juliet when she could of. So far I believe that this book is all about having no regrets and not going with the crowd because you’re pressured into it.

The Hunger Games

I have just finished reading The Hunger Games by Susan Collins. It was absolutely amazing! It had my full attention the whole time, and I could not stop reading it. It was about 375 pages, so you would need to read another book as well to meet the 500 page requirement. Other than that I can find no flaws, or uninteresting parts through out the book. It was manly about a pair of teenagers form a district in their country who had to fight 22 other kids from the other 11 districts. They are trying to stop the capital from killing other children in the hunger games. The book shows that sometimes a government can not just help the people, but actually hurt the people instead. Will they survive or be destroyed before they can win The Hunger Games? That will be for you to find out yourself. There are 2 other books to the series, which I haven't read yet. Both I am guessing they are just as good if not better then this one. I would give this book a 9.5 out of 10.

The Night Circus

The Night Circus, by Eric Morgenstern

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern is a book unlike any other. Written with incredible grace, the book follows the journeys of two young magicians, Marco and Celia. Marco, with his shyness and powers as a illusionist, and Celia, the young daughter of Prospero the Enchanter are competing in a game. With a circus cloaked in black, white, and every shade in between as the backdrop, Celia and Marco compete with each other through a series of constructing tents, filled with wonder and magic. The story begins at their youth, then explains the process of their training. I highly recommend this book because it has been written with extreme thought and beautiful craftmanship. The plot is that of their lives, and though the circus journeys around the world as a ‘circus’, the two stay in love though out. This book shows just how deep true love is, and how truly magical it can be.

Awake at Dawn

I just finished reading a book called Awake at Dawn, by C.C. Hunter. It was about a girl named Kylie Galen, who found out that she wasn't like any other human. She has the ability to talk to the dead, and see them too. She thought she was the only one in the world that was different from all the other humans. Until she found Shadow Falls Camp, a place for supernaturals, like herself, that didn't have anywhere to live or were in danger where they live. She quickly befriends Madison, a witch, and Della, a vampire. As Kylie embarks on a dangerous journey to find out what she really is, she comes across the spirit of her late father, David. The one that she thought could answer all her questions. But she soon finds out that her father was adopted, and he too, was puzzled as to what they are. Kylie also gets stuck between two boys, Lucas, a werewolf, and Derek, a half fairy. But when Lucas leaves camp with another werewolf, Kylie feels like she is by herself, because Derek is acting strange.

The It Girl

I am currently reading a series called The It Girl. It is about students at a boarding school called Waverly Academy. It follows different characters and everyone's stories come together. There is a lot of fighting and scheming and it is really fun to hear everyone's side of the story and what they feel like is going on. Waverly students are referred to as Owls, and each chapter is a "rule" about what a good Waverly Owl does. It is so fun because the rules show what the chapter will be about and are always very creative.

Water For Elephants

I am currently reading Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. This book goes in and out of two different time periods in a man's life. This man's name is Jacob Jankowski and at the start of the book he is 90 years old and about 20 pages in he becomes 25 years old. The writing is really descriptive. Jacob's 90 year old self is living in a nursing home and he is bored out of his mind. He was diagnosed with depression and got in a "fight" with another elderly man at the nursing home. His 25 year old self dropped out of college (Cornell in fact) because his parents got in a tragic car accident and died. He soon found himself on a circus train, The Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. He gets a small job as the veterinarian for the animals and has a small crush on the circus leaders' wife. I am not quite sure, but I think this book is set in the 1950's (as his 25 year old self). I'm really excited to keep reading this book because I am not quite able to identify the genre yet. It seems that it is realistic fiction right now, but I have a feeling there is more to this book.

Right now, I am reading the book The Lone Survivor, by Marcus Luttrel. It is a first person account of a Navy SEAL operation redwing, in which many lives were lost. In the beginning, the book focuses on describing the Navy SEAL, at what it takes to become one. The life of the narrator, is somewhat what you would expect from a Navy SEAL, Marcus Luttrel and his twin brother Morgan, lived on a ranch in Texas. They were taught to swim and scuba dive by their father at a very young age. Also, they wrestled alligators and chased water moccasins in nearby swamps. I thought that that was very interesting, because that is what I would have expected, just really tough guys. They both trained to become Navy SEALs at a very young age and actually went into real training long before they were going to do the tests. The book describes SEALs as the toughest, smartest, most honorable people. The book picks up when a few SEALs are riding in a large military cargo plane bound for Afghanistan, where their mission would begin. Overall, the book is very fun to read, and is also engaing.

Brandon Boyd-Hunger Games

I have recently started reading the Hunger Games mainly because of how popular it is and its high praise. Almost all of the examples Ms. Post gives about a book she uses the hunger games and always talks about it, so I took her advice and started to read it. So far I am really impressed with the book, at first I expected it to not be as good as people say it is like most books are, but I think it is really interesting and unique. The book is set in the future, people are divided into districts and it is very hard to survive. There is a tournament hosted every year and people are picked out of a hat to go. Basically you need to survive by yourself and you are against all of the other kids in the games. This genre or type of book I find fascinating the kind of gloomy, futurist survival always keeps me reading and the survival aspect kind of reminds me of the Lord of the Flies. It took me a couple of pages to find out the gender of the main character which I thought was weird and I wonder if anyone else had that happen to them. Right now I am really enjoying the book and it is a page turner that I hope I will love throughout every page.

Nick Washuta- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Over the past few weeks I have been reading harry potter and the goblet of fire. I am one hundred and ninety three pages into the book and still love it. It is still very interesting and I would recommend it to all you.

So far Harry Potter has been at the Quidditch world cup with the Weasley family and Hermione. He has met bagman and crouch and got to know them very well.  They were the announcers who got them the tickets to the Quidditch Cup. Pretty much what happen was; they were in their tents when they heard the bell ring… it was time. They walked through the forest eager to get to their seats. They got some of the best and most expensive tickets in the stadium. They got the "box" seats of the Quidditch world cup, AKA the announcer’s seats. They were stationed way up at the top they were able to see the entire field. Harry, Hermione, and Ron, were all using the toys they got from the concession stands with a great deal of happiness. They were using their Omnioculars (magic binoculars where you can pause, replay, fast forward, and zoom in and out). It was all going well until Harry’s “enemy” shows up; Draco Malfoy. The Malfoy family greets Mr. Weasley as he did back, while Harry, Hermione, Ron, and Draco get into a little scrum. Just a moment later Bagman and Crouch too out their wand and pointed them at their throats, and said “Ludos.” They were able to make their voices extremely loud then started announcing the teams’ players. Not too long after the ref on the field yelled: 3, 2, 1, GO!! The match had started.

The book has been great so far and has kept me hooked… you should definitely read it.

Confessions of a Stud/ Wintergirls

I just finished the book Confessions of a Stud by John Foley. That book is about his little life stories that you can compare to your life now. The stories are about his family, social life, school and nythign else. The irony to this book is that he was not a stud at all, bu he liked to think he was. I really enjoyed that book and hope to read more by him. The book I am just starting is called Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson. I chose this book because it closeley relates to my speech topic. This book is about two best friends, Lia and Cassie, who are both fighting anorexia. But, Cassie dies. Lia's mom is busy saving lives and her father is away in bussiness. Her stepmother is clueless. Lia keeps talleing herself to stay strong, control herself and loose weight. If she keeps loosing weight, she herself could die too.

Parallel Worlds

Currently I am reading Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku, who is a theoretical physicist. It is basically a non-fiction book about anything and everything related to the mysteries of our universe. It is specifically focused though on the relatively new discoveries made by scientists in the last 50 to 100 years regarding quantum theory and string theory. It also highlights the history about how these theories were created, and how pretty much all of modern physics started from Einstein's breakthrough theory of relativity. The book was published in 2004, so a couple of minor things are outdated because the field has progressed so rapidly since then.
Now I know that some of the material sounds complicated, but its really not, because the author does a very good job of explaining very complex concepts in simplistic language, and using lots of easy to understand analogies. I would recommend this book to anyone who has wondered, "Why can't we travel faster than the speed of light?" or, "It is possible to travel back in time or teleport?" I have always been fascinated with the answers to these types of questions and more importantly the "why" behind them and have been loving this book.

The Hunger games

So far the hunger games has been an exciting and fun book to read. I really like that book is all about kids our age. Its Also a new and exciting concept for a book. The book has taken a very diffrent aproach on what the world and our society could be come. Although this book is fiction i feel as though the concepts and feelings in the book are very much realistic. This is a very diffrent book then i am used to reading. I usually read more suspense full and mystery book. So far in the book im at the point where they are all in time swear and the crowd is cheering because she desided to take the place of her sister. This moment in the book was very cute to me! Especially because i do have and older sister and i would do this for her in a heart beat and vice versa. I desided to read this book after the constint talk about it and the constant praise i have heard from my friends. I'm glad i chose this book to read, but i'm just sad that i waited till know. This book has so far been exciting and deffinetly and edge of your chair book.

CHERUB: Divine Madness

For my independent reading book, I am reading the 5th book of the CHERUB series: Divine Madness. In this book, our old hero James Adams is sent on a mission that includes finding out more about a terrorist organization called Help Earth. Help Earth's goals are to eliminate all of the wealthy mean people that own things that hurt the environment. This time, they plan to bomb a plane full of CEOs of oil companies. But to find out how to prove that the people helping Help Earth are guilty of homicide, they must get to know and hack into the people supporting Help Earth, an organization of people who call themselves the Survivors. The Survivors believe that the world will end soon because of nuclear war, so they built a huge ark in the Australian outback. James's mission will to go into schools around the world to get trained as a Elite Corp, so he can live on the ark to hack into their database. He has to make friends with the kids at the school and the ark, and then find papers or documents that prove that the Survivors are helping Help Earth. Unfortunately for James, he doesn't know the high risk of this mission, the fact that he wont be able to pull out at any moment, he might be far from friends, and he wont have any contact to his buddies back home in England.

The book I'm reading is called Perter and the shadow thieves, and it's about Peter who has the ability to fly because he handled the star stuff, and he needs to save his friend molly from a man who is trying to kidnap her to get her dad to tell her were the star stuff is. Peter has a fairy Tinkerbell but only he can understand her. The evil guys are Captain Stach, an evil pirate, Captain Nezzer, another evil pirate, and Omba, a weird thing that can take control of your shadow, and then take control of you. Peter is stuck going to molly's house right now after escaping from a jail. But Omba is already at Molly's house.

I am currently reading The Total Outdoorsman Manual by T. Edward Nickens and the editors of Field and Stream. This book seemed perfect for me when I first saw it, it includes tons of facts, tips and stories about hunting, fishing, camping and survival. If you love the outdoors I would highly recommend this book to you. The forward at the beginning of the book actually seemed like something I would have been proud to write. It relates to the life of hunters and fishermen like the author knows who you are. One thing I love about the book is that it can be picked up for 30 seconds and you have already learned something, there isn’t much of a main plot since it is non-fiction. This is great because you don’t have to recall previous readings to understand. I am going to be honest, if you aren’t interested in hunting, fishing, camping or survival I wouldn’t recommend this book. So far I have been very satisfied with my choice of non-fiction. If you haven’t tried non-fiction I would strongly consider it. I am planning on finishing this book and then possibly going back to a chapter book or just try another non-fiction.

Terrier

Im currently reading the book Terrier by Tamora Pierce. It is part of the Beka Cooper series. It is about a young girl living in the renaissance era. She wants to be part of the Dogs. They are a group of law enforces organized by the government. Its been her dream for as long as she can remember. The only problem is proving herself. She is a very very shy girl. She cant help turning away or looking down when she is being talked to. Not only this but two of the most famed Dogs in the Lower City are her assigned mentors. She also has a secret, a secret that people would not understand if they found out. She can hear the whispers of the dead from pigeons. There has been a terrible murder of a young boy. But the boy is one of the grandson of one of the biggest crime associated people of the Lower City, so who would kill this boy? It is up to the Dogs to find out! They find her and whispers ghastly secrets of murders and sudden deaths. How will she be accepted by her peers and her mentors? And most important of all will they find out who is behind this murder? I think that this is a really good book. Its good for people who are into female fighters and role models.

Best of The Best

I just finished the book Best of The Best by Tim Green. It's about this boy who's parents are breaking up. His dad met this realistate agent and they've been going out ever since. He hates his dad's girlfriend. He also plays baseball. He goes to The little league world series with his team. Too make matters worse he ends rooming with his dad's girlfriend's son (who he ends up punching in the face.) He and his friend Jaden discover that the agent's ex-husband is trying to take all of the main character's dad's money. To stop them, Jaden steals a very important contract. I'm not going to give away the ending though. If you like spoorts books I would recomend this bok to you.

Seabiscuit

The book that I am currently reading is Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand. The story is about a racehorse during the 1930-40's. Seabiscuit was owned by Charles Howard and was trained by Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons and Tom Smith. Seabiscuit was a horse who was considered a less than ideal horse for successful racing, and he was very lazy, but later on he became a very successful horse and one of the most loved of all time. Horse racing was very popular in this time period and Seabiscuit was a symbol of hope and overcoming all odds to thrive and be successful.

Ashes, Ashes (continued)

For the start of this quarter I have finished the book Ashes, Ashes by Jo Treggari. I really liked this book, but in the middle I had to take about a week break because it just dragged on for what seemed like forever. But when I started reading the book again it took me no time to finish it. I liked this book because it was very action pact, and it would probably be fairly realistic if our world would come to an end where only 1% of the population lived and "Sweepers" were combing the streets looking for survivors to do who knows what with.

After the plague and the melting of the polar ice caps, Lucy went off on her own to attempt to live by herself. She didn't care how many survivors were left; all she cared about was that she was surviving. Then, when a pack of hunting dogs came to feast on her, a boy named Aiden comes and rescues her. This was the first contact with any other living human she has had in months. The dialogue was actually kind of funny, because she didn't know how to respond and she was just very awkward. So, due to the contact with Aiden, he persuades Lucy to join his camp of survivors. This might be looking up for Lucy, but just as that happens a series of bad things happens for Lucy. A horrible flu has come because of the birds and the "Sweepers" are becoming more desperate to find people (Lucy).

I also think that I found out where the title Ashes, Ashes comes from. I hope everybody knows the song "Ring around the Rosie".

Ring around the Rosie.

A Pocket full of Posies.

Ashes, Ashes.

We all fall down.

I think that this song is some sort of metaphor to the book. I think that the first two lines show like a peaceful world because Ring around the Rosie maybe means like a wedding ring (happiness and joy). Then the second phrase says "A pocket full of Posies," and posies are like a banquet of flowers. Then of course the phrase "Ashes, Ashes," which of course means destruction or catastrophe. And then the ending "We all fall down," which could mean that everyone is dying or maybe buildings are crumbling, there are many different ways to interpret this song. So this song basically goes from happy to death (sad) in 4 short phrases. That relates to the book in a lot of ways. Therefore that could be where the book's title came from.

The Help

Currently I am reading the book The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. Although I am not very far I really have enjoyed reading it so far. The book, so far, is from the view points of Aibileen, Minny and, Skeeter. Aibileen and Minny are both African American maids working for white families, whil Skeeter is a white woman who is a writer. These ladies all live in the same town and their lives all connect in a way. Aibileen is Minny's very good friend. Skeeter asks Aibileen for help when writing her newpaper articles. I think that Skeeter and Minny well create a connection later in the book. Currently the book is on the topic of bathrooms for the help. I feel that the help should not have to have their own segregated bathrooms, but back then that's how things were. This book is a very good example of how life was back then. I think that all the characters will be connected in some way that affects how African Americans are treated. I am really loooking forward to reading the rest of it.

Lord of the Flies

I am currently on page 239 in Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. This book is a classic, and was published in 1954.

This book starts off with boys (no adults) of all different ages ending up on an island because of a plane crash. The main character, Ralph, gathers the boys by blowing a conch. From then on rules were set, but over time people challenged Ralph, and the boys grew more restless and violent.

The very first thing set in stone is to always have a fire burning, so that the smoke can signal any ship passing by to rescue them. This in itself creates many problems as it seems like only Ralph wants to be rescued compared to the other boys. This creates conflicts such as the fire going out, and other boys questioning why there is a fire. Even as the story goes on, Ralph begins to question his main purpose on the island. This shows how much the boys stray from their beginning goals, and how on their own they can change their state of mind.

This book simulates society, how people rise to power, and the beginning intentions. Much similar to Animal Farm, you witness an innocent intention turn into a bad situation. I find this book very fascinating because the boys civilized nature soon turns into something representing a savage.

I recommend this book to mature readers who are interested in classics, or would like an interesting read.

I. of S. in the fiction of C.S.L.

So, the book I am reading is Images of Salvation in the fiction of C.S. Lewis. I know, it is has really long title, which is why I didn’t write it out. It was recommended to me by the person who actually is lending it to me, he is a friend from church who had seen me reading the Chronicles of Narnia around the church building, and did not think I knew some of the connections between the books and the Bible, which was not true (or at least that was what I thought). Carrying on, I took the book gracefully, and started reading. Fortunately, I have been surprised by my overlooking of some very interesting facts that have popped up just thus far, and I now can see that it is a great follow up book that will test my reading in depth of the books I have already read in the chronicles.
Right now, at this moment, I am at the part where the author, named Clyde Kilby, is explaining some connections between the book: The Horse and His Boy, and finding God. It is very insightful, and interesting!

Reading check

The book I read was called Chase by Jessie Haas. It was about a young boy named Phin who lived in an Irish town in 1880. His mom died and his dad left for the war and never came back. He lives with a girl who loved his mother. he gets blamed for a murder he didn't commit. He escapes on a train, and hides in a rail car, then he try to run i the woods, but he is being tracked by a privet eye. he has know idea how the guy keeps finding him, but he keeps running. He stumbles into a small farm, and steals some food and a jacket. In the morning, the find him, and he has to run. The guy keeps tracking him, and Phin finds out the guy trained his house to track him. Phin close lines him with a rope, and the guy gets badly hurt. Phin brings him back to the barn he stole stuff from, and a few days later Phin has to face the guy who accused him. he tells the guy about how wages are about to be cut and a bunch of people are about to be executed, and he lets Phin go.