Book 4 Reflection

Dear Caleb,

I am very surprised you chose to come along with us outside the walls of the city.  I would assume you would do everything Jeanine would ask you to do because you are Erudite and you have done everything she has told you in the past. I need your help. I'm trying to stop Cara from stealing a serum to kill everyone inside the walls of the city. I need you to help me distract them so I can get inside the place where its held to get it before she does. The only problem is that I don't have the password to unlock the doors to get it, I have to break in.  The only problem with breaking in is that they have a death serum gas that leaks out when you break open the door. Since I'm divergent, I think I can go in because my body doesn't react to serums the way that everyone else's does. Tobias doesn't want me to do it because the death serum is really strong and he thinks I'm going to die. I'm pretty sure I can handle the serum though. I'm really scared that I won't make it because it is strong. Although I would love to make Jeanine suffer for what she is doing to the divergent people, I don't want anyone else to die like our father. Now that I know that mother is the one who started this whole city as a project to see what would happen if everyone only had one personality, I realize why. People that live with people of different personalities tend to not get along as well, unless you're dauntless of course, then it doesn't matter who you are with to not get along.

Anyways, I hope you will consider helping me. There are not many people willing to help me because we are going against the headquarters rules so if it doesn't work, we could get sent back to the city, put in jail, or worse.  We are going to do it when Tobias leaves so he can't try to stop me. I really think that we can do it successfully. I know you are thinking, "Why should I help her?" The answer is simple. If you help me, we can take down Jeanine together so she doesn't hurt anyone else, I saw her kill multiple people while I was in that elevator being taken to my death essentially before I escaped. She killed many, many innocent children that still had a very full life to live. Some of them didn't even know what divergent means. I would have easily died if it wasn't for Tobias and his crew that went and attacked Jeanine and her men. That's why you should help me. Thank you for considering and please either write back or tell me in person. I couldn't tell you this in person risking someone finding out our plan.

                                                                                              Your sister,
                                                                                                           Tris

Post #10: Reading Wishlist

  An Abundance of  Katherines by John Green

Its Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini

Who We Are by One Direction

The Book Thief  by Markus Zusak

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank

Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer

The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks

The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks

Book 2 Trailer

Book Talk

5 reasons why Water for Elephants is a bad book.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen might be the worst book ever made. The book has some positives, but the negatives greatly out weigh them. 

1. It doesn't keep you hooked throughout the book

The author gives you something to hook you in the very beginning, but after that it just goes downhill after that. Gruen just tells you about his life on a daily basis. The jobs he has, the people he talks to, just your normal everyday life. Her writing does make up for it though because she makes it feel like you are there with Jacob (the main character) and going through his day with him. 

2. Some of the scenes in the book are confusing or weird

Some of the scenes in this book are weird and somewhat disturbing. She describes jacob going to see a stripper in detail and made me slightly uncomfortable while I was reading it. The detail she put in it is very disturbing and wasnt really necessary to the story being told at all. it confused me because I couldn't figure out why it was a part of the story. 

3. It jumps around from different ages 

Jacobs first story is told through him when he is in a nursing home. That confuses me because it's hard to keep up with what's going on in the particular chapter because of the different things happening within his different ages. For example, when he is in the nursing home, he complains about the food and is fighting with this other man about the circus he used to work in. In the chapters where he is younger, he also complains and fights with the other people. 

4. The language 

The language in the book is very distracting from the story because there is so much of it. It is used almost every other sentence and it gets annoying after a while. Some of the characters from the circus are worse than others but it fits their personality that the author has made for them. 

5. The love interest gets introduced way to late

This book is considered a romance novel but the girl doesn't even get introduced until like halfway through the book. Even then she doesn't come off as a love interest because she has a husband and is mean to Jacob because she is a preformer and he is just a worker that doesn't get any special attention. 

This book shouldn't be as widely known and popular as it is. It is really annoying and doesn't even make since half the time. Maybe if the book was written differently it would be a lot better than its all cracked up to be. 

Post #5

For a book to be non-fiction in my mind, it has to be mostly true.  It's okay if some of the non-important information isn't true like, for example, if you couldn't remember what you had for breakfast that day or something like what words you got in a spelling bee. If the book is considered a memoir, then the major events should be true.  Like if you write in your book that you got arrested for killing people in a car accident but in real life you weren't the cause of the people dying but you were involved in it and only had to go to jail for a few hours then that's not okay.  Half-truths are okay only if its not a memoir. In my opinion, genres shouldn't affect the way you write so it can be placed in a genre.  Books should be written whether or not there is a genre for it. Even if you can't tell what the genre is, most of the time it fits into a genre.

This chart has genres and sub-genres that most books fit into. Every book fits into a genre even if its not directly stated or if its not obvious.

 

Post #4

A scene the movie should keep is when Leigh Anne Tuohy shows Michael his room in their house and he tells her hes never had a bed before. Another scene they should keep is when Michael always comes home with extra food to keep for himself even after Mr. Tuohy told him he didn't have to do that because he would always have food as long as he stayed at their house. The last scene they should keep is the scene where Sean Tuohy finds Michael walking to the school and asks him why he's going to the school and Michael tells him because its warm.  

They shouldn't keep the football stats in the movie unless they are related to Michael because they don't make the book any better or worse, it makes it a little confusing because they would be talking about one thing and then jump to another thing within a few sentences and it's hard to keep up with it.    

I like the way the filmmakers made the movie because they really emphasize what Michael's life was like before he met the Tuohys. They show a bit of what his mother was like and why he had to live with Big Tony. The movie makes more sense to me than the book does at the point I'm at right now because it doesn't include the football stats unless they were related to Michael.