A (School) Year in Review June 18, 2010

I got out of school for the summer last week.  There’s a spot in my agenda to write down a book you read each week.  I may be the only one in my class who uses this feature, but I kind of enjoy seeing exactly what I’ve been doing.  So: here’s what I read during my 8th grade year. There may be books not listed, but I’m going strictly from the list in my agenda. Also: I tried to keep them mostly in order, but it’s not perfect. An asterisk (*) denotes that I re-read the book.

1. “Gone With the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell (To be honest, I’m still not finished. It’s a great book, but it’s also a book that can easily be read at a pace of twenty pages a week for a very long time, which is what I’m doing. I started it on the first day of school.)

2. “Congo” by Michael Crichton (My favorite author.)

3. “Vanity Fair” by W. M.  Thackeray (Didn’t finish because, apparently, libraries need books back when they’re due, not a few months afterward.)

4. “Dracula” by Bram Stoker (Loved it enough that I got my friend a copy for her birthday.)

5. “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck (Loved it enough that I kept rereading it throughout the year. Yes, the library copy. Sorry. That’s why it was never in.)

6. “The Mosquito Wars” by V. A. MacAlister (Lent my copy to my grandmother, who loves it.)

7. “Terminal Man” by Michael Crichton (More Michael Crichton. Got a copy for my birthday.)

8. “The Lost Symbol” by Dan Brown (Another book that I got for my birthday. No “Angels and Demons”, but still interesting.)

9. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain (Much better than “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, if you ask me. No “Prince and the Pauper”, however.)

10. “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins

11. “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley

12. “Catching Fire” by Suzanne Collins

13. “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair (Quite disgusting, but a good book.)

14. “The Fellowship of the Ring” by J. R. R. Tolkein

15. “Nineteen Eighty-Four” by George Orwell

16. “Macbeth” by William Shakespeare* (My favorite Shakespeare play. Ever. In fact, I’m wearing my “What Would Lady Macbeth Do?” shirt right now.)

17. “The Language Police” by Diane Ravitch (Fascinating. I read this before the whole Texas textbook scandal, which is lucky.)

18. “Catcher in the Rye” by J. D. Salinger (I started reading the day after Salinger’s death, but I didn’t know that he’d died. Strange coincidence!)

19. “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle* (My favorite series, if that’s what Sherlock Holmes is.)

20. “The Last of the Mohicans” by James Fenimore Cooper (You already know that I couldn’t finish. Refer to first blog entry.)

21. “Across Five Aprils” by Irene Hunt* (Found on the floor of my closet, decided to re-read.)

22. “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque

23. “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes* (Read in English class.)

24. “Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare

25. “The Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer

26. “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens (I had seventy pages left when it was due back at the library. Sad.)

27. “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner” by Alan Sillitoe

28. “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck

29. “The Illustrated Man” by Ray Bradbury (A great- and slightly disturbing- book.)

30. “The Outsiders” by S. E. Hinton (Read in English class, now one of my favorite books.)

31. “The Mysterious Benedict Society” by Trenton Lee Stewart (I needed A.R. points quickly and it came with my younger brother’s highest recommendations. It was quite good, surprisingly.  My school’s A.R. program has very few classics, which is annoying for me because that’s what I read during the school year.

32. “All’s Well That Ends Well” by William Shakespeare*

33. “Animal Farm” by George Orwell (Read in my English class.  Interesting because of the hidden political meanings, but a few too many talking animals for me.)

34. “Johnny Tremain” by Esther Forbes* (Re-read in my English class. Always worth re-reading. (: )

35. “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank* (Re-read in my English class. Also always worth re-reading.)

I’ll post my “To Read This Summer” list sometime soon, too.

“Demolition Angel” by Robert Crais

I just finished “Demolition Angel” in a very long car ride this afternoon.  It was a good book, and great for road-trip-reading, but if I find a mistake in a book it drives me crazy for a long time.  It’s too bad that this was my first Crais novel, I’m sure he’s written better or my mother wouldn’t have seemingly thousands of them in our basement!  Anyway, Tennant’s mother supposedly yelled at police for stepping on her flowers after Tennant’s arrest.  How is that possible if Tennant’s mother died about a year before his arrest, as told by his landlady, who had coffee with him after his mother’s death? It’s a very small mistake, but little things like that bother me!  I don’t really have much more to write about “Demolition Angel”.  I was planning to read “Hostage” (another Crais) next, but I’m thinking I’ll start another book off of my summer reading list.   “The Taming of the Shrew”, maybe….

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner May 11, 2010

I finished “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner” by Alan Sillitoe about two weeks ago.  I liked it, and it was relatively easy to read.  However, apart from all the stories being fairly dark, there’s the story “Noah’s Ark”.  Now, I’m completely aware that England is a strange place.  Do they really call carousels Noah’s Arks, though?  Or is that just because it was written in the mid nineteen hundreds?  I’ve never heard anyone else call it a Noah’s Ark, so I’m not sure.  In fact, I’ve been forgetting just about everything else about “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner” because this bothers me so much! ;)   And how can the long-distance runner not win his race? The entire story is about what a good runner he is, and how, if he wins, he won’t have to worry about that money he stole from the bakery, and… he loses the race. Wow.  It was a good book, though! Really!

(Interpretive dance is the punchline that works for any joke.)

The Shining April 24, 2010

I picked up Stephen King’s “The Shining” last week because I’ve been doing a lot of heavy reading and wanted something creepy.  I was sorely disappointed.  The book was good, the plot was good, it was an all-around good book.  That wasn’t what I wanted, though. I wanted to be scared out of my mind and never be able to sleep again.  I’m sort of worried that there isn’t a book out there that will scare me now, as Stephen King is the great horror novelist of our time, and “The Shining” is arguably one of his scariest books.  Maybe I should write one of my own!  My favorite character was Mr. Hallorann, even though he wasn’t the most important character.  Admittedly, the woman from room 217 was creepy, but only at first.  Plus, Grady made very few appearances, and his daughters made a grand total of…. none.   What happened to that famous hallway scene?  As much as I’m complaining, I still enjoyed the book a lot.

Up next: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner  (unless I finish one of the other 12 books I’m currently reading first!).

My Social Studies Textbook April 15, 2010

Now, nobody expects textbooks to be perfect.  As long as they have all the facts right, who cares if they’re interesting?  I do….  I’m a huge Civil War buff, and there was a half page of Antietam.  Yes, only one half of a page was devoted to this famous battle!  Gettysburg was covered almost entirely by pictures.  So, what was the free space being saved for? The clashes of the Monitor vs. the Merrimack.  Three pages of ironclad ships battling.  Whoever wrote that book has a twisted sense of humor!  On the other hand, my ideal textbook would have Thomas Jefferson references on every page, and three chapters devoted to him- one for Jefferson during the Revolution, one for Jefferson’s presidency, and one for Jefferson’s retirement at Monticello and his founding of the University of Virginia.

Needless to say, I’m a bit angry with Texas.  At least my textbook isn’tthat bad!

All Quiet on the Western Front April 14, 2010

I read “All Quiet on the Western Front” (by Erich Maria Remarque) a few weeks ago, and I forgot to blog about it!  I really enjoyed it, too, although I’m getting tired of all these unhappy endings in the books I’m reading.  I’m making a list of books everyone should read at some point, and “All Quiet on the Western Front” is definitely up there….

If you haven’t read it, it follows a German soldier (Paul Bäumer)  during World War I.  Remarque fought in WWI, and everything in the book was something that either happened to him or to someone he knew, which is why AQOTWF is so believable.

That’s all I really have time to say, but I’ll get a blog up on “The Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer soon- I have fifty pages left and it’s due back tomorrow at the library, so I know I’ll finish it!

Flowers for Algernon March 29, 2010

My English class just finished reading “Flowers for Algernon” (Daniel Keyes).  I liked it, but we read the screenplay, so I don’t know if I can have a good opinion on it.  The storyline was genius, though.  My favorite progress report was where Charlie is trying to read Milton’s “Paradise Lost” (an ironic choice of literature) and can’t understand it.  I guess it’s my favorite because it really captures how desperate one human can be; in Charlie’s case, for knowledge.  My English teacher picks marvelous books for us!

1984

I loved “1984” by George Orwell.  Books like “1984”, “Fahrenheit 451”, etcetera show society in a new way.  They show not what we are, but what we could so easily become.  I love science fiction because it’s such a misunderstood genre.  When you think of science fiction, the first thing most people think of is an alien or a UFO.  Personally, I think aliens are horribly boring.  Authors like Michael Crichton, George Orwell, and Ray Bradbury put their own spin on old science fiction.  “Jurassic Park” (Michael Crichton) is my all-time favorite book, because it combines suspense and science and… dinosaurs. :)

Anyway, back to “1984”.  It’s one of those books that you need to read at some point in your life.  It’s provocative, inspiring, and a heck of a story!  I don’t want to give away the ending, but it’s certainly unexpected.  The last sentence makes it a book you won’t forget, and that’s the power of four words.

Does anyone understand the symbolism behind the Ministry of Love?  I know that it’s slightly ironic and its name refers to its purpose, but this is George Orwell we’re talking about.  Everything has a hidden meaning!

Julius Caesar March 28, 2010

I recently read “Julius Caesar” (by Shakespeare, but you knew that), and I was surprised by how little I’d known about the story before!  I really like Shakespeare, but I tend to stick with about five major plays that I just re-read.  I’m not saying that “Julius Caesar” isn’t major, I just hadn’t read it.  My favorite character was Mark Antony; he gave the best speeches!  Plus, it was kind of interesting reading about how Portia killed herself- she ate burning stones (I’m not glorifying  suicide here! I’m just glorifying Shakespeare’s creativity) .  I was also pleasantly surprised about how well the play followed Caesar’s real life (except for the ghost part, of course!).  I’d recommend it, but if you haven’t read any Shakespeare before, you might want to start with something else.

“The Last of the Mohicans” March 15, 2010

I’m about to raise some literary eyebrows.

Please, tell me– has anyone ever been able to make it through “The Last of the Mohicans”?  I can understand Shakespeare, Chaucer, Beowulf….  I just can’t follow the plot of Cooper’s most-read novel.  Anybody care to admonish me for giving up and starting “Julius Caesar” just because it’s the Ides of March?