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