After Eli

One of the books that I read over break is called After Eli  By Rebecca Rupp. This book is about a guy in high school, Danny, and his brother Eli, who got killed in Iraq, when he went there as a medic and his car ran  over a roadside bomb. It's all about the problems he faces at home and the changes that happen to him because of Eli. To try to cope with everything, he keeps a book of the dead, about dead people, which if you ask me is slightly creepy, but y'know, well, whatever. He also struggles over whether he should ditch his super-popular old friends to hang out with the guy who's his actual friend, but totally an outcast. And of course, because of the fact that this is a modern book, there's this girl that he likes, Isabelle. I would recommend this book to almost anybody. It was good but it wasn't like amazing or anything. It's also a really easy read.

Because of Winn-Dixie

 This week for my short classic I read Because of Winn-Dixie. This book has the most amazing first line, which is “My name is India Opal Buloni, and last summer my daddy, the preacher, sent me to the store for a box of macaroni-and-cheese, some white rice, and two tomatoes and I came back with a dog.”  It's really awesome. The girl narrating is a 10-year-old named Opal, who finds a dog, Winn-Dixie, at the grocery store, and decides to adopt it. The dog, Winn-dixie, gives Opal the courage to ask her dad 10 things about her mom, who left both of them when she was three. The author also shows Opal trying to survive in a new town, and being introduced to a whole bunch of new strange people. This books is really great, and I definitely see why it is being called a young modern classic. Even though this book is probably beneath our reading level, it's definitely worth reading, especially if you love dogs.

Going to the Grammys

We managed to spend 3 hours stuck in traffic, missing the opening ceremony-type-things. Wonderful. Actually, I don't even know if I would have been excited to see them, because apparently there's no signal in downtown LA. Really? This is actually the first time I've been glad my dad was a lawyer, and not a secret agent or something cool like that. Seriously, I told him that when I was five and got in lots of trouble. But Grammy tickets is pretty sweet. But finally, we're there. It's a commercial break, so the whole stage has gone quiet besides the crackly sound of people's voices over walky-talkies and the low hum of a Beyonce performance from 2007 or something to entertain the crowd. Not that I need to be anymore "entertained" or anything. I mean, this is sweet! And so fancy! I  mean, it's just a huge concert, but whatever, it's kind of cool that they make us all dress up. Especially for a music awards show that get broadcasted all over the world. I look around to see what's going on and notice Adam Levine for the first time, sitting about two rows behind Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift. I mean, I'm like IN THE SAME ROOM as Taylor Swift! Ohhh, maybe she's performing next! I flip through my catalogue like my like a little kid, or my brother, at a candy store. Yep. Having nothing else to do I take ANOTHER selfie. I mean, this is pretty cool sitting here and eating sushi and chocolate chip cookies for dessert, which is basically the only thing that they serve at the Grammys. I wonder what everybody else at home is seeing right now. There's probably a tape delay so I bet it's just started. Have they seen Katy Perry yet? OK, so maybe I am kind of little kid at a candy store-ish, but, hey, it's the Grammys!

The Fault in Our Stars

THIS WAS A REALLY GOOD BOOK!!! This book was about a 16 year old girl named Hazel who has cancer. She has to be connected to an oxygen tank at all times, and she takes drugs and stuff. She meets a guy at her support group type thing and he becomes her boyfriend... I guess it's basically about her fight with cancer and helping each other through the ups and downs of their life. I really can't say more than that without giving it away, but just please READ THIS BOOK!!! It's crazily good and really makes you not take what you have for granted. It's not really a traditional love story at all, I wouldn't really call it a romance story. My description sounds really boring, but it's not. The characters are actually really connectable and totally just could be someone you know. The plot is totally surprising, and even when it's not just really smart and well written. It also makes you not take what you have for granted and really enjoy all of the amazingness of life. OK, now your probably going to read it and be disappointed because I made it sound so good, but it's definitely worth reading. The style is pretty cool, I read it in about 3 days, and it's not that hard to read. So yeah, read this book!

In a Heartbeat

This week I read In a Heartbeat  by Loretta Ellsworth. One of the main characters, Eagen, died when she was 16 because she hit the boards just right in her ice skating competetion. I mean, that sucks. The other one, 14 year old Amelia, is dieing. OK, that also sucks. Amelia needs a heart transplant, and finally gets the call to be transplanted. Amelia doesn't know how to feel about this, actually, because she's worried about having someone else's heart. After the transplant, Amelia starts to take on traits that she had never had before; she starts almost acting like Eagen. Amelia thinks that it's almost like Eagen is trying to communicate with her. After a lot of searching, Amelia finds Eagen's family, and tries to get in touch with them. At the same time, Eagen finds that she can't move on into the afterworld or whatever until she sets things right with her mom, and tries to tell Amelia to help her with this. This book was good, and a really fast read; it's almost so short that it kind of feels abrupt. I would recommend this book to mostly girls in our class, just because I think that the characters are more connectable to girls, but whatever.

SOL

The buzz and the shaking comes first. My eyes flutter open, my head propped up against the headrest. The plane shakes, and I have that brief moment of panic thinking that it will crash that you always have when you wake up on an airplane, and then remember where we are. On a plane, headed to middle of nowhere, Dominican Republic. I pull out my iPod headphones, snagged in my ears, which apparently were playing music while I slept. Great. The plane shakes again. I unlock my iPod and see that it's playing If I Lose Myself by OneRepublic. How ironic, actually. The lead singer, Ryan Tedder, wrote that about a plane crash. Not that this plane is going to crash or anything. I pull my head off of my headrest, static popping against my hair, which is all over the place and has apparently, despite all of my efforts, become frizzy because of the humidity in the plane. I mean, it's a plane! Where do we even LIVE that's less humid than a plane?!? I peek out the darkened window at the night sky and notice that we must be descending already. The lights from the little city twinkle like stars. "air planes, and the Night Sky, and Shooting Stars", and start singing to myself. "I could really use a wish right now, wish right now, wish right now"... Wow,ok, seriously. Why does everything have a song today?

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/claudio_ar/1454446652/">Claudio.Ar</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a>

Huckleberry Finn

This week I read Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. It is also the sequel to another Mark Twain book called Tom Sawyer, which most of you probably read (I haven't). You can still read Huckleberry Finn if you have not read Tom Sawyer, though. Huckleberry Finn is about a boy named (guess what?) Huckleberry Finn. The book starts with him in the home of someone who is apparently his foster mom, completely disobeying her orders and joining a gang. It doesn't seem very serious though, that's kind of the whole point of the book. It's about a boy who I think is about eight, maybe a little bit older who doesn't really know anything about the world, who has to make some pretty serious decisions. The book is written from his viewpoint, so that makes it really entertaining to read.It's actually kind of funny, and the writing and storyline is too. It is, though, in Southern-ish dialect so that makes it a little harder to read, but it's not awful or anything. Anyways, Huck Finn eventually gets basically captured by his dad, who's a stupid drunk, basically. He escapes and finds a former slave that he knows, Jim. He has to decide if he is going to help Jim escape or watch him be sold as a slave.
I won't give too much away, because I don't want to ruin it. Right now I am about 20 pages from the end, so I haven't finished it yet, but pretty much everything has been resolved, and I can predict the rest.
I think that this book is a classic for a couple reasons. One is that it just fits all of the standards the a "classic books" kind of fit in. It has that 'the journey is more important then the outcome view, although the outcome is still pretty important. It probably might have had some new view on slaves at the time, too? I really don't know. It's also just great writing; the viewpoint is pretty amazing. I would agree that this book is a classic, for all of these reasons. I wouldn't call it lifechanging or anything like that quite yet, and I'm almost at the end of the book, but it's pretty funny and interesting and definitely worth reading.