Final Semester 1 Post: Review and Look Back of Blog

Hey everyone. This is going to be my last post for the year ( I know very saddening). After the year is over I will start up blogging again but that will be a while. This blog has been a lot of work but over all I think has been totally worth the time I have put into it. So without further a due lets begin the review of this blog.

So over these past couple of months I have done a lot more reading then I would have thought in the beginning of the year. The books I have read have been basically fiction writing which has been interesting. Usually I read a bit of both categories but over the past few months I think I decided to delve more into fiction writing and trying to understand it better. Next year I will try to mix up my blogs in order to add more variety of what I have read. I have blogged on 10 different books spanning 4 months! That's quite a lot of reading but it helped me understand fiction writing and helped me find new authors I liked. Looking back on what I have read, I am quite surprised at the fact that I never decided on a specific genre of books to read. In the beginning I started on fantasy (Dragonswood), quickly moving to science fiction, (Artemis Fowl), then switching to sports (New Kid, Football Genius), and changing to historical fiction, (Rangers Apprentice), and finally ending with Dystopian Fiction (The Maze Runner Series)*. I guess there really wasn't any pattern between all my posts which is kind of odd since usually I will stick to just one kind of book for a couple of months, then move on. The way I selected the books I read was usually going to Half-Price books or Barnes and Nobles and just grabbing a book I thought looked good. I know it wasn't probably the best way of choosing my book, but hey, it worked.

Lets move on to the quality of my blogs. If you look at my first couple of blogs they weren't the best to say the least. I was just starting to get the hang of things in my first couple so the really didn't look that good. Let me pull a quote from my first blog," As I started writing more and more though, they steadily ended up getting better.  By the time I was on my fourth blog, the quality had greatly increased. I think the the experience of writing blogs and posting them to the outside kind of taught me something about how writing papers or what publishing a paper is like. Let's get back to the quality and let's continue the comparison between my first and fourth blog. In my first blog the content of it wasn't the best. I wrote a small portion an about the book, but when u look at fourth blog, there is a lot more quality content there.

To wrap up this blog I want to talk about three things I could do next year to improve theumderstan One big thing I need to improve on is adding textual evidence to all my blogs. This would make the blog longer and easier to umderstand as the text would exactly show them the authors wprdonf and meaning. Another major piece I could add is maybe a video clip of the author or maybe a movie trailer so you guys can understand better the book. The last piece that I could improve on is to vary what my blog is about. For the first couple of blogs, I would do book reviews but that got time consuming and boring. This change would make my blogs more interesting maybe. What do you guys think, you are the readers. Anyway thats going to wrap up my blog giny for this year. Leave a comment if you maybe want to suggest a book I should read or something along those lines. The next time I talk to you it will be 2015 see you then. Bye.

*The 2 memoirs I read don't really count as I read those 2 books for projects in School.

The Maze Runner Series: A look into the First Books Setting.

Hi everyone and welcome back to another week of blogging. This weeks reading took me through the first book of the maze runner series and this weeks blog is going to be about the setting of the book, the maze itself. This may give some spoilers away so if anyone hasn't read the book yet you may not want to read this next part. I am also going to add some pictures from the movie as well for a visual so lets get things rolling.

So lets begin. The first book starts off with the main character, Thomas entering the maze. This gives us a big clue that the maze is going to play a huge role in the book itself as the author starts with him going in. The maze basically is thee biggest challenge the gladers need to figure out as it plays a crutial role in the book series. Now lots move on to what the maze looked like. As you can see in the map below the maze itself was very intricate and complex. In the center of the maze was where the gladers lived and managed their day-to-day lives.



So that's it for this weeks blog. Next week's blog will be the last one of the year which is exciting and kind of saddening at the same time (I have no idea how). I will see you all next, bye.

The Maze Runner Series: A fresh start

Hey guys how have you been? This weeks blog post is about the Maze Runner series. I am completely done with both 12 Years A Slave and The Color of Water and so I have decided to start a new series. I have just started the book series so instead of doing a review or talking about something like the setting, I want to talk about my reaction to after reading the first page.

So, I am going to quote the first paragraph, "He began his life standing up, surrounded by cold darkness and stale, dusty air. " When I read that I was like wow. Usually other books start of with the main character giving a short speech about the setting or background of the story. This one on the other hand was something quite different. After I read that, I felt goosebumps crawling down my neck as I thought, what is going on?

The beginning kind of perplexed me and actually almost made me reconsider reading it. I know it isn't good to judge the book after reading 1 paragraph, but hey why not. I sat there for a couple of minutes pondering that question but then decided to read on. After continue reading the book, my question did get answered and I felt better.

So guys that was my reaction to the first page. I am a bit farther now in the book so things are better. If u guys are wondering anything else post a comment, but other than that, I will see you all next week.

12 Years a Slave Overview

Hey everyone. How have you been? This blog post is going to be about a memoir called 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup. For this blog post I am doing a group project with a friend of mine, Brian Whitney. A link to his blog will be posted below. http://brianreadingblog.blogspot.com/ So lets get down to it.

To start, my partner and I believe that the central idea for the book is that slavery can be brutal in many ways and should not be something that any person should have to endure. For example, Mr. Chapin (a slave driver) explains in the memoir that ,"'in the first place, he does not deserve this treatment. It is a shame to murder him in this manner. I never knew a more faithful boy than Platt (Solomon)'"(Northup, 75). There many other examples of this horrendous punishments also given in the book to support this central idea.

A brief summary of the book is, Solomon Northup, who resided in the free state of New York, was lured by easy money down to the city of Washington where he was captured by slavers and sold into slavery. He stayed a slave for 12 years enduring many punishments and having to go through many changes in his life before finally being set free by his friends and family in the North.

An outside source that I found was the article Slavery in the Modern World. In the article it talks about another book that also documents slavery during that time. This connects to my book as they both have a similar theme, that the horrors of slavery shouldn't be experienced. The link will be posted below.
http://www.thenation.com/article/178136/slavery-modern-world

The Color of Water Character Review: Ruth

Hi guys, It has been quite a long time hasn't it? I haven't been really blogging much, but now its time so lets get right to it shall we? This weeks reading blog is going to be about a character in the book, The Color of Water by James McBride. Before I talk about the specific character let me give you a general overview of the book itself.

The book is about how the author James McBride, a black man, goes through life and tries to figure out who he is based off his comparison to his hero/mother him white mom, Ruth McBride. This is a very brief overview and if anyone wants to learn more about the book, I am going to be posting a link at the bottom of this blog so just look there

Moving on to the Character Review of Ruth, James's Mother. When I first started to read the book I got the feeling that
A)She was very strong willed and put up with many things
B)She had a really tough childhood and growing up was hard for her to.
It turned out that both of these feelings were right. Let me give you an example. When Ruth was younger, she was threatened in ways that if had happened to me at that age would have terrified me. I wont got to much in depth because I don't want to spoil the book for anyone but its interesting.

James and his mom Ruth.

Lets move on to when she was older. I think those characteristics that was stated before were there but on a much grander level. I am going to give away something now so if anyone who hasn't read the book i suggest you turn away. Again she is strong willed but I think the tough childhood ended up becoming a tough adult life as well. For example one of these hardships was that her husband died with lung cancer, leaving her with 7 children and an 8th (James) on the way. That would be crazy just to think about it if it happened to you. I mean think about it, you have an okay life with the man you love and 7 children with you but then all of a sudden that man who you have been needing, dies. That would leave anyone, including her even though she was strong, an utter mess. Just thinking about that happening to me hurts. I think this reflects quite a lot on her character though because of the fact that she manages to pull herself together and end up raising 12 children who all go to college. Ruth is my opinion is on helluva mother and really can show that anything can happen and when times get rough you just have to pull through.

Well guys we made it. That's another blog under my belt. If anyone reading this is interested in learning more about the book or just about their lives (which basically is the book) I will be posting a link below. My next blog post is going to be November 2 so a little while away from now. Till then, I will see you later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Color_of_Water

Rangers Apprentice: The Ruins of Gorlan: A look at the Author

Hey guys. Been a week already huh? Anyway its Sunday and time for me to do my blog post again. This week I have decided to vary things up a bit. For the part three weeks I have done reviews after completely finishing a book. I realized (with Mrs. Bross pointing it out) that this could get boring after a while so this week I am doing something else. Plus that was just taking way to much of my teams that I could sorely use for doing homework :).  


This week I have started a reading a book called The Ruins of Gorlan by an Australian author called John Flanagan. I actually got to meet him at my old school, and believe me it was quite interesting.

Mr. Flanagan had come to our school i would say mid way last year. He was a pretty popular author and his series (yes this is a book series) has had more than 2 million copies sold. That's quite a lot and you could probably imagine my surprise that this author was coming to me my school. He came to talk to us about his book and he was pretty funny. The reason I chose to read this book now and not sooner? Well to put it simply I forgot about all this happening until my friend brought it up when i was at his house. Opps. Oh well I guess. Hey I'm only human (no I am not referring to the song).

So what will this weeks blog post be about? Well if you guessed its about one of the characters you guessed right :).
 Just by looking at the cover the book seems to be vary mysterious and unique. It is quite interesting but this week I want to go into the Main Character's background. This is the first book of the series, fortunately, so I learned quite a lot about Will's background and characterization (yeah that's his first name and no he doesn't have a last name).

Will is an orphan that lives in a ward during Medieval Britain. Through the baron of that estates's kindness, all the orphans on his land are being raised in a ward including Will. Not much is said about his past, but I think they go into that more in another book. Will is described as, " ... Will was small and wiry. he was agile and fast and surprisingly strong, but he simply didn't have the size tat he knew was required of Battleschool apprentices." This gives us quite a bit of his physical attributes but now lets look at some of his mental and verbal qualities," Will's wit was as agile as the rest of him and he almost always managed to have the last word." These are both direct characterization of Will, but it speaks volumes about him as the describe quite a bit and help paint a picture of the character. Will

Football Genius: Rating and Review

Hey guys. This weeks book rating and review is of a book called Football Genius by Tim Green.  Again as like every week, as this is a book review I may give away some spoilers so you have been warned.

The story is about this kid named Troy White. He is just a regular kid who likes to play football but he has a special talent which allows him to see the defenses or of offenses play before they happen. This would be a tremendous help in a football game as player could correctly adjust their players to better defend the play. 

The plot of the story is about how he 

tries to use his ability to help the Atlanta Falcons win games and how he eventually becomes a quarterback on his football team. Ok I am going to give away  part of the beginning away so if anyone is interested in reading the book I suggest you skip this part. Troy and his mom live in the Atlanta Suburbs and life was ok for them. Things weren't so great for try as could play starting Quarterback on his football team just because  a kids dad is the coach and the coach playes him over Troy. Troy is a lot better then him though so it's a bit unfair. Troy kinda gets bullied by this kid for reasons you will find out later. Troy's life gets better when his mom all of a sudden gets a job to work for the Atlanta Falcons. Because of hits mom, he gets tickets to a Falcons game and then... You will have to find out yourself :)
Here is a quote

After reading it I have decided to give it

Its a good book but still has some small stuff missing from it that I think would complete the book.

 

 

 

New Kid: Surprise Ending with a Great Plot

Ok, so as you can probably infer by the title I really like the book I just finished reading :). It was very emotional which can be trying at times with certain kinds of stories but this book honestly was probably one of the best single book stories I have ever read. Again as I am doing a review of the book I am going to reveal some spoilers which some people may not like so you have been warned :).

So, lets get right down to the message of the book. The main morale I think the story was trying to get across was that you may have issues with your family, but they will almost always be there for you through thick and thin. They will look out for you and try help best support you the way they can. Now with that being said, I am going to do a small summary of the book and you should be able to infer what the conflict and plot of the story revolves around.

There is this 12 year old kid named Tommy Rust. This isn't his real name which you will learn the reason why later in the story. He is an amazing pitcher at baseball but never really gets to show his true talent because of the fact that he is always moving. This is partially his dad's fault. His dad has been on the run from so supposed "bad guys" that have been chasing them ever since Tommy's mom dies. The book starts when Tommy is in the middle of a baseball game and its the finals of the series. Its a 3-2 count and Tommy is up to the plate. With one hit he could win the game and the tournament for his entire team. He goes up to plate but then... You will have to find out for yourself if you want to know the rest :). See that was to bad now was it? There is a lot more to the story obviously but I decided to give you a brief preview of the story. As you can probably guess i am going to give the story a 5 out of 5.

 I was originally going to give it a four but then I read the ending and that itself bumped it up.
The next book I am going to read is also by that same author and its called,
Football Genius by Tim Green.

Here is a picture of the title. If you guys have read it or thought it looks interesting just post a comment in the comment section next week and I will see you next week.

Artemis Fowl The Eternity Code:Review and Rating :)

So this is my book review of Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code. I am still working out the kinks with my blogging so bear with me. I already posted about this book last week so if u want to read that go ahead. There will be some spoilers obviously as this has a summary as part of it so you have been warned.

So the Artemis Fowl series is about this 13 ( in the beginning of the series) kid who is a supposed genius. He is also a criminal mastermind and that is where the conflict is created. He discovers upon a text that helps him discover a secret underground civilization of   mythological beings, like fairies, centaurs, dwarfs etc.. They are smart though and are actually technologically  more advance than humans. The books in the series are about the exchanges between Artemis and the fairy civilization (specifically a fairy called Holly). Book 3 is one of those exchanges and reveals many things. This is when the spoilers start. Skip the next couple of sections is you don't want to know what happens.

In the Eternity Code, the book starts when Artemis and a shady man called Jon Spiro have a business meeting to discuss some revolutionary technology, called the Cube, that Artemis has stolen from the fairy's in another book. The deal goes south and Artemis's best friend and personal bodyguard, Butler, gets shot but manages to save Artemis's life in the process. Butler dies but through some of Holly's fairy magic, cryogenics and Artemis's quick thinking, he lives. . Jon Spiro ends up stealing the fairy technology and that could have disastrous consequences for the fairy civilization. Artemis unwittingly during a demonstration of the Cube detects the fairy civilization below and creates panic down below.

The send Captain Holly Short to investigate and she finds out it was Artemis who did it. She saves Butler, and together they have to capture the fairy tech back from Jon Spiro and ultimately save the day. Here is a quote from the book that could be considered a teaser:)"And one more thing. About my name — Artemis — you were right. In London, it is generally a female name, after the Greek goddess of archery. But every now and then a male comes along with such a talent for hunting that he earns the right to use the name. I am that male. Artemis the hunter. I hunted you."   The rest of the book is what they have to do to achieve that goal and how they go about doing it. In my honest opinion i like the book really well but the ending of it made wonder how the author will continue the series. I wont give anything away but it made me really want to read the next book (which i guess is the whole purpose). I would probably rate the book a 4.5 out of 5 stars

because it was an exciting book with lots of action and adventure (just my type ;)). It also discusses the characters more in depth and plays on their features more. I would definitely recommend this to a friend and it was an overall enjoyable book.
Below I am posting a video with author talking about the series itself a little more in depth. This might help you understand me review a little more so feel free to watch it.


For my next book i have decided to read a book is called the New Kid by Tim Green. The reason I choose to read this was just because i thought i could relate to him. I have just started to read it but I realize that a some of the things I have experienced he has to. I wont go into to to much detail but the only thing that I will say is that this kid has moved a lot and so have I. This relationship along with some others convinced me to read the book and see if I like it.
Here is a picture of the book:

Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code My new book

The new book I have just started to read is called Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code. It is about a boy genius named Artemis Fowl who is very cunning and tries to pull off one more heist before he comes he wants to come become clean. I have only read the beginning part of the book where Artemis talks about his meeting with a shady dude called Jon Spiro and how things go bad there because his friend gets shot. I literally stop at when he gets shot so i am like "Whats going to happen next, will he live?" It was probably a bad spot to spot at but whatever. I do have a prediction about what will happen in the future. I think that Butler, his friend, will live somehow through some help via fairy magic. It happened in book 2 of the series when magic saved Artemis's dads life.

 The reason i chose this book is because i have read the other 2 books in the series and wanted to give this one a try. It looked interesting and the summary of the book did help. A couple of friends referred this book to me at my old school and i though i might as well give it a go. What i liked when i first saw the book and read the first 2 pages was that it gave a mini prologue about his intentions and it built some suspense going into the book. A quote of how it built that suspense is "However, there is time for one last job. Something that my mother would not approve of. I don't think the fairy folk would like it much either. So i shall not tell them."

 Here is a picture of the book that made it seem interesting:

Summer Reading Book: Dragonswood

The theme to my summer reading book Dragonswood, is that love and friendship overcome everything else is not as important as that. This theme is developed over the story as when each mini crisis happens, those to traits show out most in Tess. This is very important as she shows these traits whenever a major event in the story happens
 An example of this is when Tess is going south to help a friend in need even though a fey enchantment tries to convince her to North to the fairy kingdom. "I'd felt it earlier but it was stronger now, harder to ignore. Wind twisted me hair whispered in my ear. Tess. Turn around. Come north, I leaned forward in the saddle. Tesssss. Your are going the wrong way. Seagull's ears pressed back. She tried to turn about. I gripped her reins, 'Stop this' I whispered (Carey 153).


This article talks about how Dragonswood is a special book and worthy of your time and effort of reading it.