With a side of random

The book I’m reading is called Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. I have to say, it’s a good book but it’s no hunger games. To be honest, you eventually drift off and fall asleep from your book. That is what I get from some scenes in the book. Besides that, I’m okay with this book.

Cold Mountain is the story of Inman, a wounded and soul-sick Confederate soldier who, like his literary fellow-traveler Odysseus, has quit the field of battle only to find the way home littered with impediments and prowled by adversaries. Inman's Penelope is Ada, a headstrong belle who has forsaken her place in Charleston society in order to accompany her father -- a tubercular southern gentleman turned missionary -- to a new home in the healthy mountain air of North Carolina. Frazier divides the narrative between Inman's homeward progress and Ada's struggle to make it on her own after her father dies, establishing an underlying tension that is at once subtle and irresistible. 

Inman is critically wounded in the fighting outside Petersburg and, after a rough triage; he is "classed among the dying and put on a cot to do so." When his body stubbornly refuses to comply, he is evacuated further south to a hospital where he may succumb at his leisure. But against all odds, Inman's terrible injury insists upon healing itself. During the long months of convalescence he struggles to shed the hated, insulating numbness put on against the carnage he has seen -- Malvern Hill, Sharpsburg, Petersburg, Fredericksburg -- and probes his psychic wounds for the shrapnel of his former self. He finds instead a refuge in the "topography of home in his head" and the Cherokee folk tales of his childhood friend Swimmer: 

"As Inman sat brooding and pining for his lost self, one of Swimmer's creekside stories rushed into his memory with great urgency and attractiveness. Swimmer claimed that above the blue vault of heaven there was a forest inhabited by a celestial race. Men could not go there to stay and live, but in that high land the dead spirit could be reborn. This is all I know so far, I still haven’t finished the whole book, but I look forward to the end.

Fish

Fish: Add a touch of nature to your page with these hungry little fish. Watch them as they follow your mouse hoping you will feed them by clicking the surface of the water.

The story that they carried

          This week I’m reading The things that they carried. By Tim O’Brien, Due to my packed schedule, particularly towards the end of the school year; it has been a considerably long time since I've had the opportunity to so thoroughly drink in a book like this. The past week or so I've spent reading and reading (and reading, and reading) The Things They Carried, living in its pages, watching every word, hearing every phrase in my head, exploring, searching for meaning and truth and lies in every corner... 

I'm breathless as I'm typing this, actually. I just have so much to say about this book. I'm sure I could fill pages upon pages, examining every drop of ink in this brilliant text. I'll spare you, of course. 

I'll do you all a favor and give you with a quote from my point of view on O'Brien's masterpiece! 

I'm breathless as I'm typing this, actually. I just have so much to say about this book. I'm sure I could fill pages upon pages, examining every drop of ink in this brilliant text. I'll spare you, of course. 

I'll do you all a favor and give you with a quote from my point of view on O'Brien's masterpiece! 

"The only way to represent the self is to delicately smash that self into pieces, spread those pieces around, and create something new from the remnants of what previously existed. Some tremendous work, an engrossing web of stories and ideas and truth and lies, The Things They Carried and all characters and events in it were created by a Tim O’Brien who took the intricate ceramic vase of his own life and broke it into dozens of small and large segments, and, with fiction and lies, constructed and restructed his own experiences in order that they convey the real truth, beyond the 'truth' of what really happened and what did not... O’Brien put the fragments together to form a unified, fictional, honest story which I wish to mentor."So cool!!

Response to Eli's post

Eli’s post on the book The mysterious benedict society and the perilous journey by Trenton Lee Stewart was pretty interesting. I’ve read the book in 6^th grade and forgot all about the characters and their details. But when I was scrolling down the blog posts I saw Eli’s post about the book and it instantly rung a bell. In the blog post each character was specifically described. It made me feel like seeing an old friend that you haven’t seen or heard from in two years. It also gave me an idea of how the characters would look like in real life. My memory was also refreshed by the way he summarized the book and does he think how the character feels, but he also explains why the character would feel that way.

 to see the blog post for yourselves visit: http://blackmarketaj.blogspot.com/2011/12/lol-i-did-this-one-in-purple.html

Nope, not letting go

This is part 2 of my blog on The knife of never letting go by Patrick Ness and I have got to say, this is the first book I feel truly addicted to throughout this short period of 8^th grade. Now I have read up to 219 pages of this book.

          One thing I have noticed is Todd’s changes throughout the story.

          From a regular kid in his village to discovering things he’s never seen before, Todd is the only character in the book that interests me the most. He lives in a town with no women, a quiet town, and every political figure there has a secret. And Todd then starts to unveil a secret so dark, that to his hometown, he’s become public enemy#1. In my perspective, at the beginning Todd was another teen trying to live his life, in the middle he’s kind of scared, scared that if he dies, no one will know the town’s horrible secret. And through out the rest of the book he becomes noble and willing to sacrifice.

I just hope I’ll be satisfied with the ending. 
For more on character developments in the knife of never letting go visit http://blogaddressurlz.blogspot.com/2011/12/character-developments-in-knife-of.html

Should I let go of the knife?

                      I just started to read the book The knife of never letting go by Patrick Ness and I've just read the first 30 pages and so far, so good. For now I’m pretty hooked with the book, it’s like every character in the town knows this big secret and yet keeps it away from the rest of the world. I’m curious to know. I still have the same questions from last week.

    Is there justice being served in the text?

Who blocks justice, what is their motivation?

    Is there justice being served in the text?

            I wish to know if there was justice being served in the text by now, however, a conflict is yet to be resolved. I just hope justice will be served later on throughout the book.

Who blocks justice, what is their motivation?

            I think mayor Prentiss and some politicians in Todd’s hometown are the antagonists in this book. Because they’re hiding something that they think no one else can find out, must be really bad. I wonder if someone finds out, Prentiss’ career will be decimated. If I keep reading, Todd & I will find the truth.

       

     That is if I don’t quit while I’m ahead. It’s books like these that have a crappy ending, I hope this one doesn’t follow up.

Bullies & Aspergers syndrome

My book Perfect targets by: Rebeckah Heinrichs explains how kids with AS (Asperger Syndrome) are being affected by the bullying in their schools and more than we think. There are dozens of stories of kids who have or have bullied a kid with Asperger’s explaining how the problem starts, what’s the outcome, and what is a possible solution and can it be used for similar conflicts?  But there are few questions that stick to my mind when I read this book.

            Is there justice being served in the text?

I don’t know if justice is being served in the text, since it’s already been done but this could prevent this from happening in the future and justice could be served to the victims of this bullying (spiritually of course)

Who blocks justice, what is their motivation?

Obviously it’s the bullies that block justice for the kids with AS either for fun or for revenge because on some cases kids with AS blurt out some hurtful and angry words, next minute they don’t even remember saying it.  The bully finds it fake and retaliates  by pummeling or mocking the child with AS and it actually makes them even more depressed than they are.