F451

Isn't it ironic that we're reading a book about not being able to read books?
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is such an odd novel to read and comprehend. In fact, I'm still having trouble figuring out what it was all about.
Clarisse McClennan is what we, as teenagers, in this day and age, are all about. She represents us, right now. Her love for life itself made me genuinely happy about the book. Unfortunatly, everyone else, especially Mildred, made me very unhappy about it. The fact that Mildred could care less about Clarisse getting killed made me so angry inside. I hated how the death of Clarisse was never fuly developed because of how Mildred delivered the news. I think I was affected more by the death, than Guy ever was shown being affected.
It's close to impossible to think about America ever becoming the way it is in F451. I think that we, as Americans, love reading and classic literature way too much for it to be destroyed like it was in the novel.
The reasoning for the books being burned makes me mad. People are so 'offended' by things in books that they have to take those out to try not to offend people. GET OVER IT. There's always going to be something out there to offend you. It's life. Things usually offend people because they don't believe in them, and people fear things that they don't understand or believe in. We're already experiencing people being offended by books, TV shows, music, etc. and it drives me crazy to hear things like that. People are always going to be offended. They have been since the begining of time and they will be until the end of time.
Fahrenheit 451 was one of the hardest books for me to read, ever. It was hard to grasp the whole concept of the book. I think that because this book is based so far in the future, it is very hard for us, now, to comprehend and believe in it.

Ray Bradbury

Personally, I think that Ray Bradbury was so caught up in his novels that he became sort of insane. The interviews were so hard for me to watch because he was all over the place, talking about this and that.
He wanted to write a novel about how television was ruining people minds. He wanted to show that if TV kept developing, we would eventually not have any more books. He shows us that he feels this way, in the novel, by telling about Mildred's TV's being 'walls' and the actors & actresses being 'family members.' I don't think that you would understand his reasoning for F451 without reading/watching these interviews, therefore, no, I don't think he was accurate. He's a very hard person to understand, and I still find myself sitting here, dumbfounded about the reading and the author himself. He was so into his literature that he lost the reality of life, itself.

I'm a trekie! [Star Trek Blog]

Q: Can we relate to the Star Trek episode 45 years later?
A: We can relate to some aspects of the Star Trek episode this many years later. Their forms of comunication[communicators, earpieces, etc.] are much like our cell phones and Bluetooth's of today. In the episode, Capitan Kirk and Spock were talking to someone through a screen. They could see him and hear him and vise versa. That idea was just like today's 'Skyping'. Other things though, like, 'beaming' to other places is physically impossible as of now.

Q: Was it Gene Roddenberry's creative imagination that gave scientists ideas for new technology or was it the existing technology that influenced Roddenberry?
A: Frankly, I can't believe that scientists were getting ideas for new technology from some fake TV show, int he 60's. I think that Gene Roddenberry just had a very creative imagination and guessed at what kind of technology our civilation would have hundreds of years from then.

'It's a sin to kill a mocking bird.'

This has most definitely been my favorite book to read for Honors 10...and we're not even done with it! It has kept my attention throughout the whole first part. I love the writting; it uses enough 'old time' language and enough modern day language that it's easy to understand. It also is interesting. The things that these kids, Scout, Jem and Dill go through are things that we, today, would never go through, but at the same time, they're exactly what we would go through. I think that's why it's so easy to read. I, personally, can relate each character to someone in my life, which makes the reading process so much easier. I'm very excited to find out more about the mysterious Radley house, and hear about Dill, Scout and Jem's new summer together. This has been the best book, so far, because of the way the author grabs my attention and the different situations he puts the kids, and even adults, into, that are easy to relate to.

A Separate Peace

One of my least favorite reads of the summer, 'A Separate Peace' was slow and repetitive. The whole book was about two kids being friends but one hating the other because of his athletic skills. How can an author write a whole book on jealous teenage boys? It didn't make sense to me. The repetitiveness was overbearing, I felt like all the author talked about in the book was Finny's leg being broken and Gene feeling guilty about breaking it. I honestly don't have too much to say about this book.

The ending also bothered me. For Gene to apologize to Finny and then have Finny just die was horrid. You would think that Gene would be the one to be punished for his jealous actions throughout the book, but no, the good kid, who never did anything wrong, died.

The Crucible

When I first got my summer reading books, I was most excited to read 'The Crucible.' I did a report on the Proctor Family that was involved in the witch trials, so I was very excited to learn more about them in this book. I must say, though, it was a hard book to read, because of the 'play' aspect of it. It was hard to keep track of the characters, and very hard to understand their reasoning for things.

Frankly, the story is disturbing. It's one of those stories that leaves so much to the imagination that it becomes more disturbing. First off, Abigail having an affair with a much older, married mad, John Proctor, the syptoms of being 'bewitched', and the general concept of these witches and what they do are all very disturbing things.

This book was very interesting, but a very difficult read. It was slow and the concept of the witch trails, in play form, was hard to grasp.

The Scarlet Letter

This was a great read! It was almost chilling in parts, which is something different.
I liked this book because you can so easily relate it to alot of events in our culture today. Adultery, obviously, being the main one. It's almost odd to hear that the same thing that has happened to people like Tiger Woods and Jesse James happened way back when. It really showed me how much America hasn't changed in years.
One character I want to really focus on is, Arthur Dimmesdale. The man was crazy, if you ask me. The way that he would torture himself for his sins was insane. He was messed up. It was really surprising to learn that he was Hester's lover. I wasn't expecting it.

I really felt bad for two characters in particular during the novel: Pearl and Dr. Chillingworth. Pearl suffered so much because of her mothers mistake and had to go through public torment for a really long time. That brings me back to how much America hasn't changed. The public eye is always on so many celebrities who have 'messed up', even if it wasn't their fault for their misfortune. Pearl reminded me alot of that.
Dr. Chillingworth had no need to be treated the way he was in The Scarlet Letter. His wife cheated on him with someone much younger, while she was waiting for him to get to America! Ok, maybe she was suffering depression or something because she was missing him, but it shouldn't have been a reason to have an affair with someone else.

The best part of the novel, to me, was hearing that Hester got burried next to Dimmesdale and their tombstone just had a single scarlet letter 'A' on it. So mysterious.

The Great Gatsby

After ready The Great Gatsby, I can honestly say it's one of my favorite books. I loved the mysterious elemant of the book and of course the 'love' part. Frankly, thought, this was sort of a depressing book from the love loss to the deaths.
One of the things that hit me hardest while reading this book was when Tom and his secret lover, Myrtle, are at the apartment that Tom uses for the affair and Myrtle is giving Tom a hard time about his wife, which ends in Tom breaking Myrtle's nose. For something like that to happen to a woman because of a man back in those days was just very hard for me to grasp. Did anyone else have a hard time understanding that?

The characters in this book were so well written, I felt like the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, did a great job at letting us get into the characters mind, but still leaving some of their reasoning to the imagination. The characters, though, at the begining were very hard for me to understand. I couldn't keep track of them! Who was Daisy married too? How was she related to Nick? Who was Jordan dating? It definitely took me a while to understand who was who. After I did, though, the characters reasoning for things, and their actions made total sense.

I personally think that what really made the novel great were the characters. Some may disagree, but that's really what made the novel a great read for me. I felt like I could get inside the characters brains and really contemplate what they were doing during the novel.

The Grapes of Wrath

This book had to be the most depressing, ironic book I've ever read. I felt like the depressing element of the book never stopped. It went all the way to the end. OK, so maybe everyone learned something in the book but the constant tragedies to get to the 'lessons learned' never ended. Motif is a great literary element in the book because of the ongoing struggles of the characters.
Tom Joad is the 'protagonist' of the book: the hero. When Tom kills the police officer as a retaliation for his friend being killed it shows that he is a very passionate person, even if his passion is convayed the wrong way in that part.
Tom Joad's sister, Rose of Sharon is a very self-centered person in the book, but by the end, when her husband, Connie, abandons her and her first child is born still-born, she realizes it's not all about her. I think that her journey in the book was the best because it shows how much someone can change and it's very relatable. Alot of us seem to not be grateful for what we have and just think about the negative, like Rose of Sharon.
Was anyone else confused about her name, like I was?
This book was so hard for me to read, compared to Huck Finn. It went very, very slow and was frankly, very depressing. I hope I wasn't the only one who had trouble reading this book.
The novel does show how we should not look at the negative all the time, and we can learn things from bad situations.
Not my favorite read, by far, but still a good lesson.

Huck Finn

There is a reason that this book is called 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'. Throughout the whole book, Huck gets himself in many sticky situations including running away with Widow Douglas' slave, Jim.
'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn starts out by telling about the events that went on in 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'. Huckleberry then starts telling about his life after he got the robber's gold. Huck was adopted by the Widow Douglas' who lives with her sister, Miss Waston. Huck does not adapt well to the 'proper' way of living. It's hard for him to use maners, attend church and school and have an actual home to live in and take care of. Tom has the brilliant idea to create a band of robbers that includes Huck and Ben Rogers. After their plan for the band of robbers doesn't work out too well, Huck's dad ends up coming back to town. 'Pap' as Huck calls him, ends of harassing Huck then kidnapps him from Widow Douglas and Miss Watson and Locks him in a cabin on the other side of the Mississippi River. Whenever Pap comes back to the cabin he is drunk and beats Huck. Long story short, Huck fears the beatings will get worse so he ends up meeting up with the slave, Jim and they run away together. They meet many fun and odd characters on their journeys but end up making it home in one piece by the end of the novel.

Huckleberry Finn is a very complex character. Although he is fun and wild on the outside, he is very loving and cares deeply about those in his life, on the inside. The life that Huck has in the novel, is the only one he's ever known, so for us, we say, 'Wow! I'd never be able to make it through everything he's gone through.' But that's all he's every known so it's easy for him. However, Huckleberry is one of the easiest characters to relate to or to see yourselft in. I think that's because there's one point in all our lives when we've wanted to have a great adventure. Or maybe we've been pushed into a great adventure because of previoius events, just like Huck.

A Mark Twain novel, for me, is never a non-challenging read. The language he uses(this is based in MO before the Civil War, after all), is very different from our own dialect we use everyday. Once you get past the language used in the book, 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' is an easy, fun read!

My Thoughts on Honors 10

I'm really stoked for Honors 10! Already it seems much different from Honors 9(not saying that honors 9 was bad, it just seems different). I think that the schedule for our summer reading will be good and keep everyone on track. I'm also really excited about having both of the classes from last year put together. We'll be able to learn even more from and about each other! Ms. Jesik also seems like an awesome teacher! I'm really excited to start summer reading blogs and for the class in the fall!