Summer Assignment #4 (7/23)

In this post, we're supposed to be talking about what made us want to read this book and also who would we recommend it to. So the reasons I had for reading this book were not super profound and planned. I had already seen the movie and we owned it before I even knew it was on the list. When I was looking at the book list, I didn't see any books that seemed really interesting to me and then I saw this one. I enjoyed the movie when we saw it, and thought it would probably be a good book too. The fact that we already had a copy that I could write in made the reading part a lot easier to go back to and know what I was going to write in these posts.
    
     As for connections I made to the book, I made a couple. When I was in the 4th and 5th grade, all I did with my free time was read, very similar to Liesel reading anything she could get her hands on. Another I made was to the rough foster mother (referenced in one of the previous posts) who did not seem all that nice but did love Liesel and was not as mean or rough as she seemed at first.

     Who would I recommend this book to? Well I'm not entirely sure, but I guess that's the idea of a recommendation. Well, if you want a happy story (at the end, at least) that's a little different from the others, this is your book. If reading is your life (and you haven't already read it) I recommend this for you because you'll find many connections with Liesel and will like the characters.

I found a short biography/article of Markus Zusak that includes his other books here.

Summer Assignment #3 (7/23)

This hook that I thought effectively grabbed the reader's attention, is found near the beginning:

 

"***HERE IS A SMALL FACT***

You are going to die.

 

 

 

 

I am in all truthfulness attempting to be cheerful about this whole topic, though most people find themselves hindered in believing me, no matter my protestations. please, trust me. I most definitely can be cheerful. I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that's only the A's. Just don't ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me."(3)

 

 

 

     So you have read the hook and now you have made your own opinions about it already, regardless of what I write here. So I'm not going to try and persuade you that this is a good hook, only that I think it is. What I am going to do is tell you the background to the quote/hook.

 

     The speaker is Death, if you haven't read my other summer assignment posts yet, and he's very sarcastic in his narration of the story. The book really focuses on what life means and how it matters. The how it matters to the people around you part is especially well hit on by the emphasis put on it by Death. He puts this emphasis on it by throughout the story, telling the reader how each person died, but in an oddly descriptive way. No, he doesn't tell the gory details if they died from war, but his details are focused more on the victims last moments of life as opposed to their first without. He talks about how they were feeling before they died, and how peaceful they were, and often tells what they were thinking about (if they were awake). I don't want to spoil the ending, but some people die suddenly close to Liesel and it has a very almost overemphasized peacefulness part to the description of the story by Death. That is how this hook ties in with the whole book and how the last line somewhat foreshadows the conclusion.

 

 





Summer Assignment #2 (7/02)

     For this post, we have to describe what each of the main characters want. So, I'll start with the most prominent character, who I talked about in the first post. So Liesel is learning to read and that's her main focus but as the narration put it, "What was there to be angry about? What had happened in the past four or five months to culminate in such a feeling? In short, the answer traveled from Himmel Street, to the Fuhrer, to the unfindable location of her real mother, and back again. Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness." I think that this starts to get Liesel a lot more developed in the story as her deep thoughts and motives are foreshadowed in this short passage. Her foster parents, like most people in their village, want to just stay alive but still keep their morality by helping a Jewish man stay there in secret for months. The Jewish man wants, like them, to stay alive but he also enjoys the time because he reads at night with Liesel. Those are really all of the characters with clear or implied wants/fears.

      One theme I think is appearing in the book, particularly emphasized by Death being the narrator is, "Life is so short so don't worry about the small things and make something out of your life, since it can be taken away at any time." I think this is one theme because the book is about these people that have physical problems (such as starving or for the Jewish man being killed), but what the book more focuses on are the moral problems (usually relating to putting yourself in more risk of the physical problems). I think this is a good theme because we are so focused on the things that don't matter when you step back and look at your whole life. We should focus more on what really matters and less on little problems.

      I already briefly referenced how the book is structured in the first post, but I'll get a little more detailed in this one. The book is narrated by Death, portrayed as sarcastic and humorous in this book. His little side comments are found every few pages and give some information to an interesting translation (because some of the insults are in German) or give us some information that we otherwise wouldn't have about a new character's background or relationship to the story. The rest of the story is just plain narration with some dialogue but more of the story as opposed to the characters talking. This is probably on purpose so the narrator can put in some of the character's thoughts and emotions instead of the reader having to try and figure that out from dialogue (because obviously you don't just blurt out everything you think and feel to the world so it's simpler for the reader).

I found an interview transcript with the author, Markus Zusak, and I thought it was really good and talks about what he thinks of the book and how he structured it and why.

    

Summer Assignment Entry #1 (6/29)

     For my summer reading assignment, I chose to read the book The Book Thief. There is a good variety of different level/importance characters. There's the main character, Liesel Meminger, who has just moved in with foster parents (in NAZI Germany) after her brother dies and her mom can't take care of her. She has integrated pretty well into her new life, and has made friends and helps out around the house. Her main problem right now in the story is that she wants to write to her mom but Hitler took her mom away (why she can't take care of Liesel). So that's Liesel so far in the book, next is the narrator.

     The narrator is Death, but not foreboding depressing death like you might find in some stories, but a sarcastic and humorous death with multiple side comments put in along the story to show you his perspective. An example is his description of Liesel's foster-mother:

   SOME FACTS ABOUT

ROSA HUBERMANN

She was five feet, one inch tall and wore her

browny gray strands of elastic hair in a bun.

To supplement the Hubermann income, she did

the washing and ironing for five of the wealthier

households in Molching.

Her cooking was atrocious.

She possessed the unique ability to aggravate

 almost anyone she ever met.

But she did love Liesel Meminger.

(35)

 

     Liesel's foster mother is described above, but her foster dad is about the opposite. He plays the accordion and annoys Rosa, and overall gets Liesel's adoration. Their family is very poor, because he's a painter and hardly gets work and Rosa has a little money from the laundry of the rich.

 

     I had already seen the movie before I decided to read the book, and to this point in the book I think that the movie portrays the story pretty well. The only noticeable difference is in the movie it portrays her forster parents as older than in the book and doesn't have Death's commentary on the story and characters.

 

     Right now in the story Liesel is at a NAZI book burning and I predict she will take a book from the things being burned because the title of the book is The Book Thief and Death referenced that she would "strike again" (taking a book) in this chapter so I'm guessing that'll happen here.

 

     I haven't gotten into the thick of the plot yet so everything up to this point is explained so I don't have any questions yet I'll be sure to include those when I get some.

 

Below is the most popular cover of the book.

 



Innocence #3

I'm still reading Innocence and they're still running around all over the place and Addison still has basically no idea what's going on but he's just going with the flow. I think that another emerging theme is that books are good to read and stuff, but doing the real thing is much, much better and a better experience. I think this is a theme in this book because it is constantly said in different ways in Addison's thoughts. I think this theme also applies to technology.

It applies to technology because yes, technology can be a good source of information. But the problem comes when we replace our lives with technology and consider it the same. I think everyone would agree, going to the Grand Canyon or Niagra Falls or some other place would be infinitely better than seeing a bunch of pictures of them.

So how do we change our lives so that we're living our life in the present and not technology? Well, the answer is pretty simple. Just turn off your phone or your computer, and go do something. Play a game of pickup basketball. Throw a ball in the backyard. Addison lived most of his life sheltered from society because he couldn't be seen by anyone. He had to try to replace his life with books, and what is he learning while he's being chased by people and chasing people with Gwyneth?

It's not the same as a book.

It's really not. Learning how to play baseball works better in a yard than on a book or phone. The same is true of your classes. You'd learn Spanish a lot faster if it was constantly spoken to you instead of learning it out of a textbook. So put down the phone and do the real thing for awhile every day.

Innocence Dean Koontz

I'm still reading Innocence  by Dean Koontz and nothing has really been cleared up that much. He's friends now with that Goth person he met in the library, and weird stuff is happening and he really doesn't have any control in his life anymore.

I think that Dean Koontz is having this chaotic plotline to show us that we have very little control in our own lives, and what we can decide wh should put at the top priority because that's what makes us different from the next person, because most of us have a similar lifestyle: Wake up, get ready, go to work/school, come home, maybe work some more, eat, maybe go out and do something, and go back to sleep. That's not really special. What makes us who we are is what we do during all of those times. So don't just go through the motions at school or work just to look forward to something else. Look forward to everything that you're going to do so you can be a happy person.

On the characterization part of the story, I think Dean Koontz is emphasizing the point I said above with the way the characters act and how they look. For example, Addison (the main guy) always wears a hood and a mask because people are repulsed by how he looks. This can relate to us because we all have weird fears or phobias that really don't make sense but it's there anyways. An example of this is if you're scared of spiders. Now, we all know that a regular spider in your house can't really hurt you or do anything, but lots of people freak out when they see one. Addison is taken to a house with people in it and he's only met like 5 people in his life so this really freaks him out so he just looks down all the time and doesn't look at anyone that he's "meeting".

Finished Salem's Lot

So I finished Salem's Lot, and I can't say too much about it because that would spoil the book if you read it. I thought it was pretty good, but had a good ending that wrapped everything up while still one of those endings that is like a new beginning.

The good stuff that I thought was in the book was it had a pretty unpredictable plot, unlike some books or movies that I've read, and it has a lot of aspects and stories that all basically come together in the story. Another good thing Stephen King does in the book is making the characters actual people, not just heroes that can't do anything wrong, they make mistakes and mess up quite often, so I thought that was real and good.

Some bad stuff is that certain scenes were pretty predictable and one character that he didn't really make you understand was the main bad guy, which I think would have added to the story. Those are really the only things that I thought would have improved the story, but like I said, a pretty good book overall.



I started another newer book by Dean Koontz, called Innocence. It is about this guy who looks weird for some reason and makes people hate him when they see him. I know, kind of weird but we'll see what happens. He has this underground place where he lives that's attached to the sewer system so he can sneak around the city, which hasn't been named yet.

I think that Dean Koontz has done a good job so far of characterizing the main character by having it narrated from his point of view and I think this book will have very few characters due to how reclusive the main character is.

I think that having few characters will allow the author to really get the chance to show the reader what each of the characters' point of views are and what they think about other characters and will do this to help you infer what each character's reactions will be to whatever happens throughout the story.

Still Reading Salem's Lot

I originally didn't think that this book would turn out to be that interesting. Well, I was wrong and this book is actually turning into a page turner and the plot has gotten really weird. Even for Stephen King, weird.

So the main weird part is that the problems that have been going on in Salem's lot is the guy, Straker, isn't a satanist (Which is good). He just worships this vampire dude (Which is not). His name is Barlow, and he got Ben's girlfriend and most of the town and they try to stop him, which is going to be the climax of the story, from getting the rest of the town and moving on from there.

One main issue that Stephen King has been focusing on is Fear. He constantly goes back to the idea that when we're kids we all are terribly afraid of that closet or the lamp that looks like a person when the lights go out and you can't tell your parents about it because only other kids understand. Then he tells his own definition of adulthood. "The essential and defining characteristic of childhood is not the effortless merging of dream and reality, but only alienation. There are no words for childhood's dark turns and exhalations. A wise child recognizes it and submits to the necessary consequences. A child who counts the cost is a child no longer." I think that this is true, and we all remember our own personal boogeyman when we were little and now we rationalize and think, "Oh there's a creaking. Well, I locked the doors, and the windows are shut, so it must be just regular house creaking".

Another factor of Fear that Stephen King considers is the effect it has on some people. Some of us are good under pressure and perform better than normal. Others are very skilled at something until someone is watching and analyzing them. I think that you are kind of stuck with which you are but you can change it based on the environment you grow up in. For example, if you grow up doing a lot of sports or live in a high stress environment, you'll probably be better under pressure or with fear. If you live in a sheltered environment where you have time to do everything really thoroughly, but have few deadlines, you might be less productive under stress. In our society, there are jobs that match each of these personalities. A surgeon literally has someone's life in their hands, so they can't have nervous shaking in their hand, while an engineer that designs bridges is in a less personal environment and has less stress to deal with. We need engineers and we need surgeons. I think every job is split up like that, with more jobs that have low stress compared to jobs with high stress.

I found this article about fear, and it seems pretty interesting. View it Here

Salem's Lot

So I've been reading some more of my book, and some new things have happened. The older brother of the kid that was taken just died from some anemia stuff that noone knew was there, and after the funeral the guy that was burying the coffin got possessed or something and redug out the coffin to shut the eyes and then he didn't remember any of it and he got REALLY sick and slept through the next few days and then this guy (Matt, Ben's friend) takes him home to sleep and get better and then later that day Matt hears the guy open the window and say, "Yes, come in," That's where I stopped reading because that's when the reading time in class ended so that's a pretty big cliffhanger so I'll tell you what happened if it's not a big spoiler next time. The guy calls Ben to come right away and I thought that was kind of funny. Who you gonna call? Ghost Busters! That's what that reminded me of and I just thought that was funny

HW Post Column

The column that I read for the homework assignment was called "Living the new adoption law" and was about this law in Ohio that will become effective in one year that will allow adopted people to see information about their birth parents. view column here

The line that I think was best written was "She still doesn’t understand why Ohio made it hard for a segment of its adoptees to find answers to those questions." I think that it is the best line because it shows the frustration before the law was passed and then the author includes quotes of how this will help the person understand things better.

I think that Ramsey's writing style is to take a serious or real story and make it more personal so that everyone can kind of relate to it. She does this by adding some meaningful quotes or by adding humor to her writing. Quotes from the columns that prove this are:

"active time outdoors isn't just good for young peoples' waistlines and social skills,"

"Probably half the population sees this as a problem and the other half, a blessing. The problem is both halves show up at the same events"

“I’ve always been one of those people who thought I had to wait until I was really ready to do this, but I don’t want to wait until it’s too late. I need to do it now – we need to do it now. Now is as good a time as any.”

Questions:
How do you find people to quote in your stories?
What is the biggest challenge in your job?
What made you want to go into that type of job?

Salem's Lot

Alright so now in my book the main character is kind of settling back in to his hometown and things are being more normal for him now he met this girl's parents but her mom wants her to marry this other guy but her dad really likes Ben. So I think that will become more important later in the book. On a more important part of the story, these two kids go out to look at one of their friend's frankenstein and other monster toys, which was not allowed by their mom, so they snuck out and something happened to the little kid and it skipped to a diner type place where they were talking about some satanic cults going on so I think someone might have taken the little kid from one of those groups. I think all of these stories will be tied in to the Marsten House, which I talked about in the last post so you can read that if you're really interested in the book.

I Finished Chromosome 6

So I finished Chromosome 6 over break and I started a new book by Stephen King. It's called  'Salems Lot. I haven't gotten that far into it yet, but I think that it's going to be a good one. I think the main thing that the story is talking about is that even though lots of things change, some things last forever like 'salems lot is this place in Maine that this writer grew up in and it's really scary and someone hung himself in the big house in the neighborhood and that kind of mood still hangs over the house a long time later when he goes back and some things have changed, but basically it's the same town that he grew up in. Ben Mears (the writer in the story) goes back to get ideas for a book that he's trying to write. He hasn't ever written anything scary before so he tries to rent the old big house but someone bought it and I think that might tie in to something later in the book because no one wants to live there and everyone knows what happened and no one ever goes near it and Ben had a personal occurrence with the house. To get into this group when he was eleven, their initiation was for him to go and get something from the house and he went in and up the stairs and saw the guy hanging there and then he moved. This is long after the funeral so either Ben was hallucinating or there is something seriously messed up in the house and I think that the cover provides some foreshadowing because it has a house with fire coming out of all the windows. You can kind of see that in the below picture but I don't know it might just show up as orange dots on the thing.

Chromosome 6 first blog

I started a new book and it's called Chromosome 6. I started this book a year or so ago and I didn't really understand it and so since i fiished 11/22/63 I needed a new book so I started again and it seems more interesting than it did the first time. I think a main reason I was able to understand it better than I could have a year ago is that it deals in the partial chemistry and genetics that we lightly touched on in the 8th grade. Basically the main idea of the story is that a pharmecuetical company is genetically altering a type of primate similar to chimpanzees and rich people can buy one to match them so they can have any transplant they need and don't need to take anti-rejection pills for the rest of their lives but the moral issue is that the guy who actually did this to the monkeys thinks that some of them were altered enough to become basically our caveman anscestors. He thinks that because he has seen smoke repeatedly coming from the same place on the island where the monkeys are kept and no person is allowed on the island. I think that the author, Robin Cook, has done a pretty good job of characterization because you actually are kind of inside each of the characters' heads and know where they stand to gain from everything that happens and also what they risk to lose. I thought that was pretty interesting and another weird thing that seems very disconnected from the main plotline is this side story about these people who live in New York and work in a morgue where a mobster just got killed and his body was taken from the morgue without anyone knowing. I think that the stories will probably entwine eventually, but right now it's kind of confusing to the reader.

I have finished my book week 1

As you could tell from the title above, I have finished 11/22/63. The ending of the book is impossible to talk about or it wrecks the book, because it has a very surprising last 10 or 15 pages, and it also wraps everything up very well. So I recommend that book to anyone looking for a book and chances are it'll last you most of the trimester unless you're a speed-reader so you'll have plenty to blog about. I will add a picture below. I think that the prevailing theme that became evident throughout the book is that whatever you do does have an impact on the world around you no matter how small that act is. I feel that this is a very applicable theme to anyone's life, including the life of a high school student. If you don't work hard at a class, even if it's easy, you will probably regret it later on in life. It also works in the positive sense. If you work really hard on some history project or do some blogging assignment that your teacher assigns, you'll A. get a good grade and B. be better at analyzing the world around you and thinking for yourself and not necessarily what others tell you to think.

11/22/63 Post #1

For this first post, I'm going to give a backround to the book in case some of you might read this book. Firstly, this book is pretty big (849) so don't read it if you need to finish a book really fast. On the other hand, this book is very good. The main character, Jake Epping, is an English teacher in 2011 and his friend Al Templeton owns a diner in that area but the back of the diner if you go in, takes you back to September 9th, 1958. Jake Epping, obviously is pretty skeptical of this until he went in and just walked around. The trick of the rabbit hole, as it's called in the book, is that no matter how long you stay in there, it is only 2 minutes later than when you went in. Then Al tells Jake his plan to stop Kennedy's assasination, and then Al dies and Jake has to go in and carry out the plan. First, he goes back to stop a man from murdering his entire family with a hammer. He then goes back up to 2011 to see if one of the guys is still around the same area and he wasn't, which showed Jake that whatever he does in the past can affect the future. I think that is the emerging theme of the book. Whatever you do, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, can drastically change your life for better or worse. Now, Jake, or George Amberson, as he's called in the fifty's and sixty's, has a girlfriend who was just attacked by her former husband and her face got all cut up and now she's gotten very depressed so Jake is trying to raise money for her surgeries and stay at the hospital. Jake also has a notebook from Al Templeton telling the outcome of every major sports competition until the mid-60's. That provides for some source of funds but Jake can't place any huge bets because he doesn't want to look to suspicious.