Flying High in the Skies:Review of Airborn

Hey everyone, I am back today with my final blopost for this school year. I am going to be talking about the same book, Airborn from my past 2 blogs as I have just finished it. I am going ot do somethings that I liked and dislike in the book as well as how I would rate out of 5 stars.  So lets dive right into the book (no pun intended).

I throuoghly enjoyed the book the whole time I read it. Our assignment was to read about 20 pages over testing inorder to get ready for this final blog post. At that time I was a little under halfway through a 500 page book. By the end of testing I was done with the book. Yeah 250 pages give or take, thats a lot of reading. Granted, I had plenty of time, like everyone else, to read after slaveing over my PARCC test, and being completly bored. One day i forgot my book at home and boom, worst day of that entire week right there! I am straying away from my main point though, I thought this book was awesome.

I you wall want a summary of the book click here 

Now you may ask me,"Sudar why did you like this book, what was so special about it?" Well I am getting to that. Just a warning, I may get all fanboyish here. Ok so one of my favorite things that Kenneth Oppel did was he he has the characters going through everything from a romance that has just started to bloom  on a gianormous airship,

Supposed drawing of what the Airship would look lik in the sky

 to bloodthirsy pirates on an island trying to kill everyone, to adventures through a wild forest on an new, undiscovered island looking for an a supposed undiscoverd animal (called a cloud cat) your grandfather saw as he was dieing on a hot air balloon over the island. Yep this story has you covered. This story has so much plot twists and turns compiled with so much action that if i had read this before I would have been like, "there is no way an author can insert that much info and still draw the reader in." Well congradulations to Kenneth Oppel, he did just that for me. 

My favorite moment in the book though, is when Mr. Oppel managed to combine all the elements in the book into the climax where the major fight goes down. It says,"One of the cloud cats dipped lower than the rest, and its rear claws, maybe unintenionally, struck Szpirglas (the pirate and main villian) on the shoulder. His feet went out from under him, and he skittered down along the elevator flap headfirst. The safety line was plucked from his fist, and this time he did not regain it. He shouted out and tried to clutch at the fin's edge, but he was too late. Down he went spinning through the air. And I (Matt Cruse) thought: his boy. Theodore. His poor boy,"(Oppel, 481). It has so much action packed into it but has that one humanizing, down to earth moment even at the climax where you want all the events in your story to play out. That was what sold this book to me more than anything else. 

In my first blog about this book, I rated this a 4.5 out of 5 stars, but after reading through it, this should come as no suprise at all, I am giving it a 5 start rating. It combined all the elements in my mind near perfectly. 

As I wind down this blog and my freshman year, I would like to thank all my readers for making this blog interesting and always adding a little more of a push to get these blogs out. Thanks everyone and have a wonderful summer.

Airborn: Look at the Main character

Hey guys, I am back here today with another blogpost and today I will be talking about the Main Character of the current book I am reading, Airborn. So Main Character's name is Matt Cruse, a 14 year old cabin boy for the Aurora, an airship that floats by a made up gas called hydrium. In the picture on the right he is working as a lookout for the ship. Looking at the kid's background, he comes from a lower class family, his mother being a seamstress and his father, a sailmaker who died in an accident on an airship in the the Himalayas. He has ambitions to one day become a captain of his own airship. He is described as careful but curios and also very courageous, willing to jump from one airship to another in an attempt save someones life. As people in the the south would say,"I haven't seen anythin like him".


"I felt no fear. If someone had put an ear to my chest, he'd find it beating no faster than it had in the crow's nest. It was not bravery on my part, simply a fact of nature, for I was born in the air (literally born on an airship) and so it seemed the most natural place in the world to me. I was slim as a sapling and light on my feet. The crew all joked I had seagull bones, hollow in the center to allow for easy flight. To swing across this little gap, four hundred feet aloft was no more to me than skipping a crack in the pavement." The amount of description and qualities the author describes shows how he wants you to think that he is one very courageous person.

Airborn: First Impressions/Thoughts

Hey guys I am back here today with a new blog post. Its been a while since I did have talked about the books I have been reading because of different assignments in English and having to post them instead. Anyway as you can probably tell by the title, I started a new book called Airborn, by Kenneth Oppel. From where I have read so far, it feels like a real good book. It's in a world where instead of planes being the dominant form of air travel it is instead blimps. Think of a cruise ship flying in the sky and that basically describes it. Immense. Exciting. Worthwhile.

So what was my first impression? I liked the introduction of it," I was keeping watch on a dark stack of nimbus clouds off to the northwest, but we were leaving it far behind, and it looked to be smooth going all the way back to Lionsgate City. Like riding a cloud." This to me really sets up the scene for the rest of the book. I can always kinda relate back to that whenever I want to imagine a the blimp flying in the sky.  The front cover of the book also helps in this as it shows the POV from a ship looking up to the blimp flying.

As of right now I would rate the book a 4 out of 5 stars. I am 50 pages in and the only reason why i wouldn't rate it higher is because the main action of the story hasn't really started yet. The book is quite long though so at the point I have read it, i think the main plot points of the story is still being built up. SO guys what do you think. If anyone has read this book already tell me down in the comments,  but until then, ill see you guys next time I upload a blog post

Columnist Unit: Thoughts after reading the columns

Hey guys I am here today to do another blogpost :). Anyway, this week I am going to be talking about some columns I had to read for English. One stood out to me though of all of them. This column was the story about the Boston Marathon bombings and its connection to things you will always remember in your life. I think the reason why this connected to me though was because it has some key things that I like, sports, and a modern event. Since this bombing only happened a couple of years ago when I was old enough to comprehend what was going in, it seemed to connect to me. Also the images coming out of the tragedy are horrifying but also humanizing.

I dont want to post the more graphic images but this itself shows what this event did and so thats why this colmun was my favorite.

My least favorite column we had to read? I really didn't have a least favorite to be honest but if I had to choose it was the Kate Middleton dress story. It was a decent story but I never really liked fashion and this story falls under that category. Plus when reading through it, it wasn't really about the dress and more of fashion in general. to pull a quote from it,"Royal fashion was not much kinder to Sarah Ferguson when she married Prince Andrew in 1986. Her dress was designed by Lindka Cierach and featured a 17-foot train. But really, the most striking aspects were the enormous puff sleeves that spoke so eloquently and unquestionably of 1980s style." The author,Robin Givhan, seems to go on a tangent about royal fashion and its past. Thats just my opinions though. What do you guys think?

Theme Assignment

Theme Statement:

Censorship causes diminished individual thought

By:Morgan Register, Abigail Gunter, Sudarsana Addepalli, Brianna Smith, and Megan Hernandez

Timeline:

• In the beginning, Montag burns books because as a fireman he thinks that it is best for society.
• Montag meets Clarisse and finds her peculiar due to her deep insights on society and how she spends lots of time thinking.
• After Montag sees a lady go down with her books, he begins to question his beliefs on censorship.
• Montag goes and talks to Faber.  He thinks Faber is interesting because Faber is not affected by the censorship surrounding them in society.
• Montag tries to shed some light for Mildred and her friends by reading them a poem, but the plan backfires.
• Montag returns to the firehouse to continue the “book burnings” but finds that their next assignment is his house.
• Montag runs from the government and escapes to the woods and joins Granger and the book people to continue his growth of individual thought and knowledge.

Quotes:

1. “It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed”(Bradbury 1).
2. “The Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy to truth and freedom” (Bradbury 122)
3. “So long as the vast population doesn’t wander about quoting the Magna Carta and The Constitution, it’s all right,” (Bradbury 147).

Theme to story importance: This theme is crucial to understanding the book because, the premise of the story is based upon the censorship of books and knowledge.

Theme to society connection: This theme is relevant to our society today because censorship plays a major role in how economical information is presented and how it is designed to sway opinions.  It is important for us to study this theme because it helps us to remain aware of the freedom of having individual thoughts and the ability to gain knowledge.

So I started another book...

Hey guys, I am back with a new blog post here today. So its been a while since i have last talked to you all. I did some reading over the "winter break 2" but not much. I started a book called Kite Runner which I have to say was pretty interesting. It is about a boy and his life growing up in Afghanistan before the Russians invaded it. I want to pull a quote from the book saying,"It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime...". What made this stand out to me was the fact that its a direct reference to when the Russians attacked and later on the Taliban. There were a lot of these eye opening quotes scattered through out the book.

 Another thing I wanted to talk about referring to the book was that it goes into and talks about the traits that make human a human. Traits like love, hatred, anger, betrayal etc... All these are present int he book. For example in the book, it deeply goes into racism. "It also said some things I did know , like that people called Hazaras mice-eating, flat-nosed, load-carrying donkeys. I had heard some of the kids in the neighborhood yell these names to Hassan." To flat out talk about racism without any sugarcoating is rare and what makes this book unique  to others. The only thing I really didn't like in the story so far is trying to keep up with all the characters in the book. You are hit with so many different thoughts and ideas in the book making it hard to comprehend.

Mrs. Bowles reaction to Montag's outburst

Hey everyone. This weeks post is going to be something different in that I am going to continue on the story of Mrs. Bowles after the incident of Montag. This is all coming from a book called Fahrenheit 451 and this is what I will be talking about. To give anyone who isn't in Mrs. Bross's English class some context, I have been asked to write a continuation of a part of the book in a characters point of view. I have to write what happens after a certain instance(which I stated above). So anyway lets get started.

Mrs. Phelps and I left Guy's House shell shocked and distraught, feelings I have never felt before. Mrs. Phelps was crying and wouldn't stop so I tried to comfort her and took her home. 

At my home, my mind was still experiencing what happened at that house. All the feelings people get when reading a book! Its absolutely crazy! How people manage to read back then is beyond me. To get my mind off the topic, I put my seashells into my ears and try to take a nap but its no use. 

After being restless for a couple of hours, I end up deciding to do the right thing and call the authorities...

"Hello is the fire station?"

"Yes what is it you would like to report?"said the operator.

"I am calling to report a person who appears to breaking the law and is reading books," I reply with tears in my eyes as I remember the events.

"What is the person's name?"

"His name is Guy Montag," I said barely holding on as I am about to start bawling from what happened.

"Ok thank you we will look into it. Have a nice day"

I just manage to reply, "You to" and hang up, before I just start crying like there is no tomorrow. Everything comes back to me and i just can't handle it. I cry for like an hour before I finally stop and try to go to bed. The one question in my mind as i fall asleep is did I do the right thing? 

Semester 2:Blog Post #1 - What I am reading right now

Hey everyone, this week we start up posting reading blogs again. Its been a while since the last blog post I did so I might make some mistakes, bear with me please. Anyway, with the start of the new year and school coming back from winter break I didn't really know what I was going to read. Well I managed to decide on a book called Battleship. If anyone has seen the movie Battleship the book is based off of that. I recently just finished it and i have to say I kinda liked it. I liked the movie when it first came out and so when I saw this book sitting on a shelf at Half Price Books I'm like,"Why not try reading it." I am going to say Spoiler warning now because I am going to go through some things that I liked in the book and compare that to the movie and so if anyone reading this hasn't read the book or seen the movie you have been warned.

So lets start off. One major aspect of the book that I like is that it gives you the perspective of the aliens invading the planet and what their thoughts are. The movie doesn't really do that as you cant really see what someone is thinking. For example," The humans seek to help the others, plucking the survivors out of the water. Let them gather themselves together so they are a single target. That will allow the most efficient means of utilizing resources. The objective is not to overwhelm them. The objective is to prolong this engagement in order to fully determine what they are capable of doing when presented various opportunities. Dead, they are of no use. Alive, the make interesting ...experiments." After reading that part I was a bit surprised. Most stories only show one side, they never really show what the "enemy" is thinking and why they committed those actions. Plus, this is kind of what people would expect in a alien invasion. It doesn't leave some parts of the story open to interpretation which for me at least is annoying. Its fine if they put it at the ending of a story so that the author can draw them into the sequel, but not when it leaves you like, "Why did they do that?".

Tying into what I said in the last paragraph, I liked the ending of the book compared to the movie. The book adds an aura of mystery and also opens up the possibility of a second book, whereas in the movie the ending is set, Hooray we won, lets forget about this every happening and move on. The ending of the book states,"Hopper nodded even though Shane couldn't see him. 'When one of their...'people'... fall... if they're still alive, then they'll come back for him.' 'They'll come back.'" This ending unlike the one in the move really gives a chance for another book without leaving me the reader hating it because of a huge cliff hanger. Anyway, thanks everyone for reading my blogpost. I will, by next week, have started a new book so that will be interesting. I will see you all in my next blog post. Bye :)