Final Blog Post

I really enjoy reading because I have fun learning about characters and their situations and how they change throughout the course of the book. Sometimes I really connect with the characters in the books I read, which is mostly why I like reading. 

Unfortunately, I don't make a whole lot of time to read on a daily basis, but I would like to change that. The biggest obstacle I face in making time for reading is the fact that I hate sitting down and actually starting a book, even though I know I'll really like it. I am either reading constantly, every single day, or not even touching a book for months. I read a lot of the same books multiple times because sometimes I have trouble branching out.

The worst reading experience I had this year was reading The Color of Water. I can mostly handle sad books, but TCOW was really depressing and really prevented me from enjoying it. I also could not relate to the main character at all, which made it even harder to read.

I have gotten "lost in a book" many times, but the last time was when I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower. It is one of my favorite books and I loved reading about the main character's freshman year of high school. It made me cry at the end, and I feel like a book has to be really good to be able to do that to you.

I think choosing books independently is really important to me because I like reading really specific kinds of books. A lot of the time when I have to read a book for school, it puts me off because I don't like what it's about or I don't like the way it's written.

My main goal is to read more books more frequently. I enjoy reading, I just don't do it enough.

The best part of blogging was that I got to talk about some of the books I've read. The worst part about blogging was that I had to keep up with it, which I didn't do a good job of.

There is some value in making your "reading life" public in that you get to share some of your favorite books with your classmates and the world.

I would like more prompted blogging, because I sometimes have trouble knowing what to say about a book I'm reading.

I changed a lot over the course of my freshman year! I have a much more positive outlook on everything and I've made close friends by participating in marching band, which is the first time I've ever participated in any kind of extra-curriculars in school. I've also learned that I really need to start putting in the effort to get where I want to be in school and in life in general, but I've been motivated to do so, which is very unlike how I was in middle school.

One out standing positive experience for me is marching band, which has taught me hard work, dedication, and what it's like to work together with intensely talented people who have a unified passion to create something we are all incredibly proud of. It has opened me up to new people and friends and made me much more confident in myself. I can genuinely say that I have more than 300 people in marching band who really care about me and every other person in the band, because at the end of the day, we are a team.

I didn't face too many challenges this year, other than learning how to be more comfortable with speaking in front of a large group I'm not very familiar with. I overcame it by just doing it, and while I'm not totally comfortable yet, I'm getting there.

My goal for sophomore year is to make more friends and and become more comfortable speaking to people I don't know that well.

Dover Beach

Mrs. Phelps could not stop crying on her way home from the Montag's. She thought about what the poem was about and how it really did affect her life, which brought her to the cold realization that she really wasn't happy with the life she was living. She didn't see it before, but her vision of love was entirely skewed. Who was the man who wrote the poem? Why didn't she have that kind of love in any of her marriages?

She got home, climbed the stairs to her bedroom, and shut the door slowly. She wondered when her husband would be home. Mrs. Phelps reached for the sleeping pills, so that maybe she could actually sleep through the night for once. Would she ever be able to feel the same type of love toward her husband as that poet did for his wife? Would Mr. Phelps ever return? A sadness overtook her as she downed one too many sleeping pills.

Mrs. Phelps woke up days later after a neighbor had reported her overdose. She never remembered a thing Mr. Montag read to her.

Fahrenheit 451

So far, I think the Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is really good. The setting of the story is actually very similar to the world we live in today, where a lot of things get dumbed down or shortened and we rely a lot on technology while not making a lot of time for family. I'm sure that the similarities between the book and our world will only grow as time goes on, which is kind of scary to think about.

Captain Beatty's lecture about how their world came to be that way was also really good, however;
it makes me wonder if Captain Beatty has some books of his own. He seems to know way too much about these books and can even quote them from memory; something I can't even do, even though I read. If Beatty actually has books, I wonder why he became a fireman in the first place and why he's going along with what the government tells everyone. He seems knowledgeable, so why isn't he trying to help?

Tears of a Tiger

Tears of a Tiger by Sharon M. Draper in summary: One of the most depressing books I've ever read in my life. This book was recommend to me by someone who read this in high school and I honestly can't believe this was part of her curriculum. Tears of a Tiger is about some high school kid getting drunk and killing his friend in a car crash. I kept reading this book thinking it was going to get better but upon finishing this book, it ruined my entire day. Way to go, Sharon M. Draper.

The main character in this story is Andy. Him and his friends are super stereotypical athletic types who play basketball and think it's a great idea to drink and drive. Especially Andy, who was behind the wheel the night of the accident. Characterization wasn't that great. So after watching his friend burn to death in a car after an accident, Andy and his friends "could not find any meaning to their life after the accident."

A month after the accident, Andy goes to a psychologist but has trouble talking to him very openly about what he had done. After a few more sessions, Andy begins to open up and then convinces his psychologist that he can "handle his own problems" and that he's "better now." And when you're reading it, you actually believe it and think this book is a really good example of getting help after a traumatic experience without turning to substance abuse (that's what I was thinking, anyway), but no. After Andy breaks up with his girlfriend, he kills himself the next day. So it wasn't the murder of his best friend that really got him, it was the lost of his girlfriend.

You could argue that Andy was still really mentally unstable and his girlfriend just pushed him over the edge. And that was sort of the case, but the author tricks you into thinking that Andy really is learning how to cope with what he had done and Andy seemed happy for a while. And then he shoots himself. What made it even worse was that Andy's little brother saw Andy's blood leaking through the living room ceiling downstairs. Sweet.

This was just a vile story that I would not recommend to anyone. This book is a part of a trilogy. That's so messed up.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Once I figured out what was going on, I love the style of writing this book has. It may be benefical to note the fact that there are two Will Graysons each telling their story (hence the title), something I didn't realize until halfway through the darn thing. Duh. Will Grayson, Will Grayson is co-written by two of my favorite authors, John Green and David Levithan. Green's character, Will Grayson, has the same name as Levithan's character. To keep the characters seperate, they have different chapters and Levithan's character uses all lower case letters and even writes his own name as "will grayson."

The first Will Grayson is a confused teenager whose rules are 1. Don't care too much and 2. Shut up. He tries to get through life as removed as possible. His best friend, ironnically named "Tiny," breaks both of these rules. Will sums up tiny as "Not the world's gayest person, and he is not the world's largest person, but I believe he may be the world's largest person who is really, really gay and the world's gayest person who is really, really large." Will suffers typical teen angst and his best friend really doesn't get it.

The second will grayson is angry about everything all the time. He's not even sure why. Both boys struggle with relationships self-acceptance. But this changes when they end up meeting each other and going to Tiny's highschool play, which is the major turning point in the story.

This book is one of my favorites becauase both authors go into depth about relationships in each teen's life, friendship, self-identity, acceptance, and love. You can relate to at least a few aspects of each character in the book, and I really think it's worth the read.