Poem

I was just think about the fish. The fish has no life, but never mind- who knows? The fish does have a life. We always make assumptions like that. We think that there are like "lesser beings" than us, not knowing what's beyond their fish tank, or whatever. But don't we do the same thing? We totally immerse ourselves in our own world, and our society,not knowing what's beyond our world.  So we are judging the fish. I don't know what I think of that. I still think that it's impossible to write down what your thinking on paper, because I don't think in words, exactly. Wonder if I'll get to watch the voice tonight. My thoughts always seem to circle back to the voice. That's perfectly fine with me.

Racing in the Rain

This week I read Racing in the Rain  by Garth Stein. This was the teenage/ young adult-/whatever adaptation of the book The Art of Racing in the Rain, which I've also read, but I think that this adaptation is probably more connectable to people our age. This book is told from the view of a dog, and is probably the best dog biography that I've ever read; it's not like other books told at the viewpoint of a dog at all, it's totally different. Racing in the Rain is also really good; I read it in less than a day and it's about 350 pages long. The book kind of follows the storyline of the dog's life, focusing in on eight years. It talks about how the dog (who's name is Enzo) gets affected when a couple of awful thing happen to his family, when his owner's wife dies of brain cancer, and his mom-and-dad-in-law start trying to take custody of his toddler, insisting that his career is getting in the way of taking good care of her, which is definitely not true. It talks about everything happens around this point in time from Enzo's perspective. WARNING: This book is really sad, and really relatable. I mean, really sad. Overall though, the message is positive, and it's a great book. Really. You should read it. I think it's worth reading both the adult adaptation and this one, the one for adults is on the higher end of our reading level, and this one is on the lower end, but the teenage adaptation is more relatable and I would start with that. I would compare this book to books like See you at Harry's and A Mango Shaped Space, but it's really not like either of those and is totally original. Overall, great book.
Wow. That was a lot of writing.

Oh Brussel Sprouts, why?

A master composition by Sarah London. Not really (about the masterpiece part)...
Why, brussel sprouts,
Why?
Why do you continue to dissapoint me so?
I do not know
All I know is that you can go sizzle up in that vat of oil,
You can end up under the dirty fingernails of my brother,
You can burn until your crispy little skin falls off.
May You be eaten by fleas, tortered until you bleed your horrid green juices out onto the clean, polished table.
May your brain be eaten by a half-starved cat,
May your little sister crawl inside your head and stay there and never come out.
May you end up on the bottom of the toilet bowl, being retched upon,
And finally, may you end up strangled in a dusty chimney somewhere, choked like you have done to us all of these years with your horrible taste.
Oh why, brussel sprouts, why?

The Pact

This week I finished reading The Pact. This book totally was better then first expected. I felt like it ended kind of abruptly, but it's a non-fiction book, so maybe that was actually the way it was. This book is about three boys who live in The Central Ward, basically the ghetto honestly,  of Newark, New Jersey. In High School they meet each-other and make a pact that they are going to become doctors. This is a big deal, because many of their friends and family are either dead or drug dealers/and or addicts. It takes a lot of hard work, but eventually they become doctors. NO, this is not a spoiler. The last part of the book is kind of about them reflecting on their life, becoming doctors, and seeing what could have happened to them in some of their patients. This book is fast-paced, interesting, and inspiring, and I would really recommend that you should read it. It's better then this boring description makes it sound like.

Free Verse Poem

Alright, here it is. It is really dramatized.
She sits there
alone
the snow falls all around her, gathering in banks by the side of the street, and on the thin roof that just happens to be above her.
She snuggles closer into her black down jacket, shifting slightly on the rock hard bench of the bus station.
Lights shine and delicious smells waft out from the houses all around her, through the gently drifting snow.
She hums a song to herself.
Finally, headlights appear out of the fog, she runs a hand through her hair and climbs in.
The headlights fade into the snowy darkness.

The Pact

I am in The Pact book group, so kind of obviously I am reading The Pact.   Ok; you knew that. This book is about three boys who grow up in a really poor part of whatever town, I think that it is NYC, but anybody who is reading this and in my book group feel free to correct me. Everyone else, look at the comments. They make a pledge-or a pact-when they start hanging out with each other that they would all grow up and be doctors. This would be a big accomplishment, considering that they have no money, not a very good education, and almost everybody in thier life is either addicted to something, getting in trouble, or selling and/or dealing drugs. They have very few good roll models and no matter how much they try to stay out of trouble they pretty much get pulled back in. Slowly they inch their way up, get better education, and finally get into a special program called the Pre-Dental/Medical Program, and then into another college, but they are not done with all of their challenges.
This book so far is really good. I think that almost everybody in our class should read this book; in some ways it could be life changing. You get to know Sam, George, and Rameck pretty well, and really admire their success, and the amount of difficulties they faced. This book is an autobiography, but a really interesting one, and the story and writing is pretty amazing.

Allegiant

For the people who didn't check book blogs last week, here is: Allegiant! I feel so behind!
Anyways, I read Allegiant by Veronica Roth. This was the third book in the Divergent series, and it was second-best in my opinion to Divergent, but better than Insurgent. Let's start this off by saying
WARNING: You will read this book in about 2 hours maximum. It's really good. In this book, Tris and Co. finally find out all of the secrets that people have been keeping from them. A lot of people die and it is really depressing, especially the ending. Honestly, the ending was super depressing but I felt like it fit in very well with the whole book series and was actually pretty good (that does not mean it wasn't depressing). I love the fact that everything doesn't go right the whole time/in the ending, like most books. It was extremely fast paced, maybe not quite as much as the other two, but still. In one moment the characters were in one place, the next moment there was something else and totally different going on. I would call this book dystopian/adventure, and definitely would recommend reading the other two books before you read this one, Divergent and Insurgent. Overall, this was a great book, and you have to read it if you've read the first or second book in the series, or both!!!