Semester 1 Reflection

Independent reading this semester was very very disappointing. And I have a number of excuses, but they're all pretty stupid. I almost feel as if I've lost interest in reading. I read a total of 4 books this semester which is probably the least amount of books I've read in a span of 4 months. They are The False Prince, The Book Thief, The One, and The Runaway King. The way I select books is usually just by recommendations. I'm usually reading new young adult novels because that's just what most teenagers read. They're easily understandable with the writing styles and vocabulary at least. It's not exactly a good thing as I should be challenging myself more. My favorite genre is science fiction and fantasy. I just love reading about other worlds and how they compares to our real one.The False Prince and The Runaway King were fantasy novels which I lovedddd. Nielsen had amazing characterization and very engaging plots. They're aimed more toward younger ages but I thought they were just fun reads. The Book Thief was brilliant. It's a historical fiction novel about WWII and the writing is beautifully crafted. It has a much more mature topic and Zusak has a very interesting perspective of the world and humanity.The last book is The One which was...pretty bad... It's a science fiction novel and my opinion is that it's cheesy and the dialogue especially seems awkward and fake. 

I don't know if I can say whether my blog posts have evolved over the course of the semester. I think certain ones are just stronger than others.Overall, I'm pretty proud of my blog. I suck at posting on time, but I'm a perfectionist and knowing that my writing is going to be put online where anyone can read it makes me want every post to be exactly how I want it. The process takes awhile and if I feel unsatisfied with a draft I'll scrap it and start over. Most of my posts meet the requirements for the highest-quality blog. I try and make them all focused and actively engaging for a reader. One of the requirements that isn't always met is the specific textual details from the book. I don't always use them to support an idea I have. My writing also can use some work. There's a few posts when I start becoming jumpy between my ideas because there's just so much I want to say. It's usually unified and have a coherent sequence and structure in my writing though. My blogging prompts usually aren't just summary writing. I try to expand to write about an important theme or just something really meaningful I took from the book that I can apply to my own life. I guess I just want to tell the reader why a book is worth reading and if I learned from the experience. My writing voice is present in all of my posts. I make sure it sounds casual but still informational, like if I was talking to a person. I always reread a post to make sure there's correct grammar. Another requirement that I struggle to meet is consistently including links, pictures, and videos. I don't always want to go and search for an outside source that connects with what I'm presenting in my own post. But despite some of the missing requirements, I'm extremely happy with how my blog turned out.

Three goals I have for blogging and independent reading during second semester are to fine books from a variety of genres, include more quotes as support from the book, and to make more connections to other online resources. Reading from a variety of genres allows me to step out of my comfort zone of science fiction and fantasy. It becomes more interesting for me as a reader and writer. Including more quotes in my posts allow me to explore the syntactical structures and diction of the author's writing. This can really enhance the analyzing I do with books. Making connections to other online resources allows me to relate books to real life. I can see other people's opinions of the book or just similar stories to the topic. I think blogging was a great experience and I hope I can make some improvements next semester.

The Runaway King

The Runaway King is the second book of the Ascendance Trilogy by Jennifer A. Nielsen. And it's amazingggg. I would really really recommend this series as it's one of my favorites. Everything about the writing; the plot, the characterization is so incredibly well done. I've already talked about Sage aka Jaron on this blog. And again in The Runaway King, he is the extremely intelligent, sarcastic, selfless, rebellious boy I came to loveeee. Nielsen is just brilliant, her style is flawless.

Since Jaron's character is one of the best things about the book, I want to focus on that. More like I just want to share the parts I thought were hilarious, not sure if you will think the same, but I laughed.

"Her eyes scanned the dark skies. 'Did it rain? Why are you all wet?'
'A nighttime bath.'
'Fully dressed?'
'I'm modest.'" (pg. 12)

It's pretty obvious that Jaron is a very sarcastic person, which I like even more.

"'You wouldn't want to be king of my country,' I said.
'Why is that?'
'Well you're rather fat. I doubt you'd fit onto my throne.'" (pg. 242)

C'mon, Jaron is pretty good at this. You got to admit.

"He put a finger to his face while he studied me. 'You’re such a young king. I barely remember being your age.'
'Then clearly we’re talking about how old you are, not how young I am.'" (pg. 18)

Another clever comeback of Jaron's.

So this post was more of a fun one for me at least. These quotes are just examples of how little pieces of dialogue are so important when it comes to the characterization of a character. It's clear what Jaron's personality is like. He's funny in his own way. Immature but still there's just something about him that you can't help but like.

Overall, I just think everyone should read this book and series. It has phenomenal writing and a very exciting storyline. I'm very excited to read the last book.

The One

So I finished The One by Kiera Cass and... I don't even know what to say about it...

The One is part of a series about a girl named America and this competition for the prince's love. The setting is all completely imagined, as I would hope we never drop so low to have such an unjust caste system. And also I would feel horrible for the poor prince. The Selection is just stupid. Love don't work that way.

I'm sure many girls have read this series. They're typical teenage romance novels. And it's not a horrible story, but definitely one of the worst... (That didn't make it sound any better). But my point is that the writing style is just so juvenile. It's ridiculous how cheesy most of the book is. And I would love to pull out some specific scenes but unfortunately I returned the book right after I finished it. It's kind of difficult to get some quotes.

I think the book lacked an exciting plot. Like all I got from America was: "Maxon loves her, not me :( But today I was really feeling something from him." Yes, life is cruel. It's somewhat of a conflict but not anything that really stood out. And Cass does add in a climatic event that is actually not about the romance, but the character, America herself, seems to be more focused on winning Maxon more than anything. That leads me to the most annoying part of the book. Literally, the competition could have been over in the first book if either Maxon or America said "I love you!" But no, they were too scared and a whole fight erupted out of this. "You should say it first!" "No! You should!" Ugh, it just annoys the crap out of me.

Overall, the book is kind of worth reading. I don't think you're going to get anything out of it because it never really showed what real love is. But there are many times when girls may find Maxon sweet and America to be admired. Rare times, but they exist.
For example, "Break my heart. Break it a thousand times if you like. It was only ever yours to break anyway.” (I don't know the page number, it was found off goodreads quotes)
That was sweet wasn't it? Yeahhh. So you should read the book for more of these sweet cliche lines:)

I am Malala

Tina and I are reading the memoir novel, I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai. The book covers the life of a young girl living in Swat Valley, Pakistan and her fight against the Taliban for girls' education. Malala Yousafzai became publicly known after appearances in a number of interviews and also her own diary entries on the BBC Urdu website. The day everything changed was Tuesday, October 9, 2012. The Taliban came after this defenseless young teen and shot her in the head. But even after going through this, Malala continues to be a inspirational figure in the battle for girls' education.

 The idea around her story is that people should not feel oppressed from fear of a greater power, but rather speak out against their wrongdoings to promote for the good of many. Specifically, Malala cherished learning and felt education was something to be offered to anyone who wanted it. And she refused to be silenced and never bended beneath the threats of the Taliban. I never imagined that anyone would have to go through what Malala went through. But that just proves how naive I am to think everyone in the world receives free education. No, there's a price to pay. Mason is just too guarded. Most of us don't understand what it's like to not have. That's why we open our eyes and ears to the stories like Malala.

I connected I am Malala to outside research through an article from NBC News detailing on how Malala felt after the gunshots. Those gunshots were meant to silence her, but they completely failed. She said the "terrorists thought that they would change my aims and stop my ambitions, but nothing changed in my life except this -- weakness, fear and hopelessness died, strength, power and courage was born. I am the same Malala, my ambitions are the same, my hopes are the same and my dreams are the same." Malala has incredible bravery and compassion. She speaks out not only for herself, but everyone without a voice. She forgave the man who shot her, said she wanted education for the sons and daughters of the Taliban. The Taliban was only afraid of the power of education and they felt the only thing they could do was destroy that power. How big is her heart that she would be defending the people who tried to kill her?

The Color of Water

I finished reading The Color of Water about a week ago, and if you're wondering why these blog posts haven't been coming out, it's due to my procrastination. But I also know that rushing and throwing a crappy post together isn't going to help anything. So I've slowly caught up and that's relieved some stress.

But anyway, I just wanted to blog about some of the things I took out from James McBribe's book. Not just book, but the story of his life and also his mother's, as they have changed the lives of many.

During my class' socratic seminar, I had posed the question of whether race or religion was the greater boundary between people. And at the end of the discussion, we all realized how neither boundary had to exist at all. That's what Ruth realized at least. Didn't she?

She loved 3 black men in her life even though her father clearly despised blacks, as page 107 noted, "If there was one thing Tateh didn't like more than gentiles, it was back folks. And if there was one thing he didn't like more than black folks in general, it was black men in particular. So it stands to reason that the first thing I fell in love with in life was a black man." Also on page 215, "He said, 'If you marry ___ don't ever come home again. Don't come back.'" Ruth had sacrificed her whole family for Dennis, and she did it willingly because she never saw anything different in colors of skin. None of that mattered to her. And then she later broke the boundary of religion. She pushed away her Jewish past and turned to Jesus. There was a time when she couldn't even make herself step into a church and years later, she couldn't stand not being there. Of course time passed, Ruth was able to go back and face her past and remember all the good things that happened among all the pains she suffered. I just feel everyone should be inspired by this woman who accepted every person as they were, just like how God wanted us all to do. "God is the color of water. Water doesn't have a color." (pg. 51)

Starting Before I Fall

I started Before I Fall a few months ago. But I haven't gotten a chance to finish it yet.

The novel is written by Lauren Oliver. Basically, the main character, Sam Kingston, is the typical popular high school teen who goes to a party with her friends. Then gets into a drunk car crash and dies. For the next 7 days, she has to relive her last day.

I'm only a little way into the book, but I can guess the book is going to focus on the change in Sam throughout the 7 days. She'll probably realize how much better life is when you live it for genuine happiness and love. That was like a really informal prediction of the book. But the point is that Sam thinks she has everything she wants. I mean she is happy, but this is all superficial happiness. She basically has to tell herself she's happy and so in love. The book has also brought up a good point on the cruelness of bullying and the carelessness of teenagers in high school.

Focussing more on the character of Sam Kingston. She's snotty, mean, self-centered, etc. Let's just say you would probably hate her and all her friends. Lets just look at something she said: "I'm not going to lie, though. It's nice that everything's easy for us. It's a good feeling knowing that you can basically do whatever you want and there won't be any consequences...Nobody ever said life was fair" (p. 13). She is just sooo grateful for everything. I don't know about you but this quote just shows me how little she knows about other people's lives. People are out there with nothing, no clothes, food, money, and she just says "life's not fair". She's going to waste her days drinking and smoking because that's what "cool" kids do. Good thing she's going to change right?

The Book Thief

Markus Zusak said his novel, The Book Thief, symbolized for him everything that is beautiful and everything that is horrible about humanity.“We have these images of the straight-marching lines of boys and the ‘Heil Hitlers’ and this idea that everyone in Germany was in it together. But there still were rebellious children and people who didn’t follow the rules and people who hid Jews and other people in their houses. So there’s another side to Nazi Germany.”

My blog post could never do any justice for this book. And no matter the amount of time it took me to read the whole thing, in the end I finished. And in the end, it was worth it, every single word. Because I really did love it. Those last 100 pages I read in an hour. And I ended up crying. But because Zusak made me feel what Liesel felt. Her pain is unimaginable to me. One second, her life was fine, and the next, everything was gone. How could that have happened? All it took was a bomb.

Zusak had written his book centered around Death and Death's contemplation over the worth of humanity. The whole reason why Death had read Liesel's book was because she was a symbol of hope. Hope that there were people out there whose hearts were filled with as much compassion as Liesel. The last line of the novel was: "I am haunted by humans." It was a note by Death. Because after Liesel, he found himself unable to judge us, and instead stuck in the mindset of fear and awe of the abilities of humans.

I honestly wasn't very interested in the book until nearing the end. And I have no idea what to say about those last pages. Idk... but its's still during World War II. There are "parades" of Jews going to concentration camps and Liesel ends up seeing Max during one. She runs to him but a soldier tells her to get away. She refuses and recites part of The Word Shaker to Max. If you end up reading this book, this will probably make a lot more sense. Then she and Max end up getting whipped by the Nazi soldier. Everything starts to go downhill from that. Max is stuck in the concentration camp. And then her neighbor commits suicide because of his guilt for wanting to be alive. Then the day when the bombs drop, Death comes to collect the souls. Everyone is goes with him, but Liesel who's safe in the basement. Himmel Street is piles of rubble, Liesel is the only one who made it out...

Okay, so that was a really messy blog post, but I just don't know how to prove how amazing this book really is. Just read it, pleaseeeee.

Here's a better review over the book
And also a short interview from Markus Zusak

Update #2: The Book Thief

The progress I've made in this book...It's astonishing. Almost half way!  I can't believe I'm writing a 3rd post on the same book. At this rate, there could be another 6 more...I'm working on it though. Don't worry.

Okay so I guess I'll choose a random prompt.
The most important line from a chapter is...Let me find one...
"As it had turned out, the promised return visit in the room of darkness didn't take days; it had taken a week and a half. Then another week till the next, and another, until he lost all sense of the passing of days and hours" (Zusak 158)

This quote doesn't have anything to do with Liesel. It's not even part of her story. She knows nothing about it. But this man, Max, I think you could guess it. He's a Jew, a Jew during Hitler's reign. He's in hiding waiting for people to help him get to the Hubermann house. So he can go into more hiding? This is his life. Scared, alone, starving. This quote is important because it allows the reader to see how bad life really was for people. It helps connect the story to what most people have heard about Hitler and the Nazi party. This quote has a huge impact over the plot of this story. It's Zusak's own way of adding foreshadowing. Imagining how much change is going to happen to Liesel when Max arrives at her house. It makes you want to keep on reading. And I shall do that.

Update: The Book Thief

I'm having a lot of trouble finding time to read. I haven't made much progress in The Book Thief, but I've got to write about something.

I guess I'll focus on the main character, Liesel Meminger, and the relationships she has developed since moving into her foster family. The first is her foster father, who she was immediately drawn to. "...Liesel observed the strangeness of her foster father's eyes. They were made of kindness, and silver. Like soft silver, melting. Liesel, upon seeing those eyes, understood that Hans Hubermann was worth a lot"(Zusak 34). Ever since Liesel's brother died, she has had nightmares where she would wake up screaming. And it was always her Papa who was there. One time he changed her bed sheets and found a book, "The Grave  Digger's Handbook". Liesel actually found this book in the snow during her brother's burial. I loved how Hans Hubermann taught his daughter to read with this book. An odd book, but an important one to her. They would have "midnight classes" whenever she woke up from her nightmares. This was the start to her obsession with books and their words.
Her foster mother, Rosa Hubermann, was a complete different story. I mean she calls her daughter saumensch, a pig. I mean she does love Liesel, but I guess has an odd way of showing it?
And then there's her friend, Rudy Steiner. They met playing soccer. "Insane or not, Rudy was always destined to be Liesel's best friend. A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship"(Zusak 48). Yeah...That quote doesn't make much sense. But that's why you read the book to get the whole story about "The Jesse Owens Incident" where Rudy painted himself with charcoal and pretended he was in the Olympics. Anyway, let's just say Rudy and Liesel are best friends and he always sticks with her, while all the other kids are bullying instead.

Starting The Book Thief

I decided to read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak after hearing nothing but amazing reviews of the book. 552 total pages, but I'm only on 14... So I don't really have any idea what the story is about.

The book starts out with a prologue, where Death introduces himself as the narrator. He describes the 3 times he saw the book thief. The first was when her brother died on the train to their new foster home. The second was when Death came to collect a pilot from a crashed plane. And third, after the bombing of a German town.

Reading from the perspective of Death is quite different. You get to see the world in colors. He associates a color with each sighting. White, for the snow on the ground next to the stopped train. Black, for the darkness before dawn when the plane plummeted to the ground. Red, for the red sky with the ashflackes falling to the ground. Put these colors together and you get the Nazi flag. "They fall on top of each other. The scribbled signature black, onto the blinding global white, onto the thick soupy red" (Zusak 14). This allows you to conclude that the setting of the book is in Nazi Germany during World War ll.

The movie for The Book Thief recently came out last year. Here's the trailer:

The False Prince

Over the Summer, I read The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen. The main protagonist of the book is Sage. Sage is that character who you can't help but fall in love with. He made the story come alive. So my whole post will be about him.

You first meet Sage as an orphan boy, stealing on the streets for survival. Then Bevin Conner finds him. And he is given the opportunity to compete for the throne, Prince Jaron's crown. The long lost Prince Jaron of Carthya to be exact. Basically, the royal family is dead, and Conner's plan is to have an impostor become king so he can have more power. That's the basic plot of the story. Sage meets the other "contestants", Roden, Tobias, and Latamer. But what makes Sage stand out from the rest is his defiant nature. When the boys were taken to Conner's manor for training, Sage was the only one who had to be tied up and forced to go. He knew that following Conner's orders would leave him a puppet. "'He wants to own me. If I give in to him on this, then there's nothing left of me.'"(Nielsen 138) Freedom or the chance to be King? Sage would choose freedom. That's all he ever wanted. 

This ties into a theme of the book, which was fulfilling your role in society. And that probably makes no sense. How does Sage wanting freedom connect to his role for his country. Well, there's this huge plot twist, which I guess I will talk about. So if you don't want to read spoilers, stop right here.

SAGE IS THE PRINCE JARON...

What happened was that when Jaron was young, his parents decided to send him away to a school so he could learn to be more of a prince, and control that mind of his. His arrogance plus his smart mouth got him into a lot of trouble. But of course, Jaron didn't want to leave. He decided he would sneak away to his "freedom". Little did he know that the ship he was to be on was attacked by pirates and Prince Jaron was presumably dead. His father told him he could not come back and now had to take upon a fake identity, the identity of Sage.

Once this was revealed in the book, you were able to see how much Sage cared for his country. Haunted by his past, yet determined to have Carthya ruled under the right king. Sage took responsibility. Yes, he was the same 14 year old boy rebel, but he now put Carthya above himself. As his father had said, "'You're not disowned and it's not a punishment. It's what your country demands of you now.'"(Nielsen 267)

The False Prince Review
This link leads to the review that made me choose this book for my summer reading. I hope it will convince you to read it too.