Week of 11/18/13: Boy Meets Boy

Prompt:  How did the reading make you feel? Why?
Pages read: 0-113

    Boy Meets Boy is an extremely fun, if not realistic book. Which puts me in a good mood, especially after reading the Chocolate War, which was a very dark book.  To sum it up, the main character is a boy who likes other boys and is in high school.  The story revolves around him and his friends, particularly him and his boyfriend (well it's early in their relationship, but there has already been complications).  One of the reasons this book is so fun and enjoyable is the interactions with the different characters, all of them being so different in personality to each other.  Some of my favorite parts are the conflicts between the Infinite Darlene (a drag queen) and  Chuck (who is a somewhat brute with questionable manners, and who used to like Darlene).

     This book made me feel like doing fun things with my friends because David Levithan, the author of this book, goes into vivid detail about Paul's (the main character) adventures with his friend, through the good times and the bad.  Boy Meets Boy also makes me appreciate my friends because it is set in high school, and as you know not everything is a fairy tale in high school.  "Fairy Tale" is actually a good way to describe this book, as it is very fun and kind of a breeze to read, but is also not entirely believable.  Which is a great thing after reading a lot of realistic fiction.

   Lastly, Boy Meets Boy makes me feel like not everything is as serious as it seems.  As an almost teenager, I am subject to be overdramatic about little things, which is not necessary all the time.  This book makes me think about the good things in life and has themes of friendship, life, and family which are all important topics but are portrayed lightly in this book.  Which is quite refreshing.  I have read books by David Levithan before and this, along with the others, is a fun, breezy, light-hearted book.  I have to say I like it a lot.

Week of 11/11/13: The Chocolate War

Prompt: Are the characters realistic (do they seem like they could be read people)? Why or why not?
Pages read: Start-End (I think a little over 260)


   This was a very upsetting book un which teenage boys attending an all make school use psychological warfare to try to do a variety of things.  Most of all, it causes the characters to break down, and has an immense affect on the mental state of the main character and those associated.  So in that case, these characters (which were very interesting, and I have to say this was a very well written book) were not believable.  The fact that one teenager could create an organization within his school and have that organization (the Vigils) terrorize students, and even scare administrators off, is not altogether believable.  But it certainly makes for a great story.

  However, I do believe someone could be evil enough to *SPOILER ALERT* try and kill off a classmate, or anyone who you've known for a while.  One argument I always have a say in is if people can be born inherently evil.  My opinion on this is that no one is born evil, just more clever and cunning than the rest.  Archie from the Chocolate War I think proved my point.  Archie is described as extremely clever and creative, which helps him do all the things he does in the book.  A favorite quote of mine from the TV show Sherlock when Moriarty (an evil genius) says "I am not normal", which describes Archie very well.  So in this case, the characters are believable.

  One final point I have about the characters being realistic or not is about the background characters.  The supporting characters, because I thought the main characters persona was believable.  An unfortunate character, who's name I can't remember, was very sensitive to what was happening, and behaved in the way I think people in real life would in that situation. Most times, I felt bad for him.  The teachers were absent during the book, so that was nice and I thought is was believable that they would stay out of the situation to avoid getting hurt, or avoid their reputation getting ruined.  The only teacher that was not absent was Brother Leon, one of the creepiest characters I have read about in a while.  Although he was a fantastic character, personally I thought he was cruel (in a very cool way) and I was wondering how he got away with it.  So his persona was a bit unbelievable to me.

That's all the characters I had a strong opinion on.  If you planning on reading this book, I warn you.  This book was quite upsetting.  But if you're like me and  love reading books with unhappy endings and evil characters, this is one of the coolest books you'll ever read.

Will Grayson Will Grayson Week of 4/11/13 *Spoiler Alert*

Prompt: Who are the characters? Describe who they are, what they look like and how

they are connected.

Pages read:  Start-End (about 300 pages)

There are two main characters in this book, Will Grayson and Will Grayson, as the title suggests.  I'll start with my favorite of the two, the one that "wrote" in the capital letters.   He is the less emotional, I guess more relaxed, Will Grayson.  He goes to public high school and has probably 2 friends, Tiny Cooper (who he feels is using him until the end of the book) and Jane (who he ends up dating).  This Will Grayson has a motto for life: Shut up and don't care (which is actually one of my motto's, it was funny to find a fictional character who thinks like that too) and he enforces it in his life, hence me saying the less emotional Will.  This Will Grayson is described by his flamboyant friend Tiny as "cute and too skinny" . He is portrayed in Tiny's musical wearing baggy clothes, old jeans, and normal stuff for straight teenage boys.  To elaborate on this description, he is almost the exact opposite of his friend Tiny, who is flamboyant, intensely emotional, and over 300 pounds.  

The other Will Grayson (who writes in the lower case letters) has a bit more emotion.  He is going through depression and lives with his mother.  He also attends public high school where his only "friend" is Maura, who later is demoted to "enemy" status.  Now both Will Grayson's go through something semi-life changing, but this Will Grayson's was the most dramatic.  In the end, he learns how to be closer to people and how to build relationships with them.  Physically, he has dark hair (or I think he does from his moody demeanor) and is skinny.  He is gay, but not the stereotypical flamboyant kind you would think.  Like the other Will, he isn't in touch with his emotions as much as other people, so he naturally is more relaxed about things.  

Tiny, Jane, and Maura are the secondary character's, but they play a big role in this book.  A subplot in this story is Tiny's musical, which gives meaning to the story.  His musical kind of helps both Will Grayson's through their trouble and sheds light on their problems.  Tiny is one of the Will's big, fat, stereotypically gay friend.  Maura is a goth girl who writes poetry in her "blood".  Jane is a normal teenage, who has a very cool taste in music for which she is very proud of.   All of these character's are believable and interesting, and so I thought this was a good book. 

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Week of 10/28/13

Prompt: What have you learned about life from what you’re reading?
Pages Read:  97-End 

   After reading (and finishing) the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, this particular prompt, among all of the others, caught my eye.  When I saw this prompt, I smiled and even laughed a bit.  How ironic that I would find this after reading one of the funniest and best chapters of a book I have read concerning this topic.  Of course, you probably don't get why I would even notice this kind of offbeat prompt, unless you have read this book (which I advise you to, it's really great).  But I will explain why this is funny, and what I have "learned" about life from what I am reading.

  To warn you, the Earth as we know it, was a 10 million year experiment/project that was run by mice.  Yes, the ones with the beady red eyes in labs across the world, the ones cartoon ladies in the 60's would stand atop a chair and scream about.  Basically, the mice ran this operation to find out the answer (or rather question) that would tell them the meaning of our existence.  Such questions as: Why were we born?  Would it matter if I skipped work?  What is my purpose?  These questions have plagued beings (notice how I did not say humans) for their whole existence.  And we finally have an answer: 42.  What? 

  This answer was given to us millions of years ago by the second greatest computer ever to exist.  One that could give you to the answer to anything in an instant.  Anything but those previous questions, those would take a few millions of years.  So philosophers and beings alike waited for the day to come.  And it did, but we only got the answer to life: 42.  This all-powerful computer had taken millions of years to tell us that we needed to build a better computer, one that would give us the question to the answer of life.  That computer would be called Earth.  Yes, the planet we reside on.  Crazy right?  At this point, I still have really learned nothing about life.  And that's okay.   

  Earth would take 10 million years to give us the question (to the answer), and that was what everyone was waiting for, until the Vogons (an alien species) came down and destroyed the planet 5 minutes before we would be able to know the eternal question to the answer.  This has taught me (well technically nothing) that life is unfair.  Plain and simple.  Were you surprised by this ending?  I was too, but that's what makes this book so great. 

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Week of 10/24/13

Prompt:  What has been the most interesting part of your reading?
Pages read: 0-97

   The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction novel, so all the topics discussed in this book are pretty much things I've never heard of, and are all very interesting.  Some of the most interesting parts of the book are the planet Earth being blown up, learning about all the different gadgets they use in the future, and hearing about all the other planets and their governments.  Although those were all pretty awesome things in the story, the most interesting part so far has been when Ford and Arthur (the main characters, one them human) are miraculously saved by the Improbability Drive ship.

  If you don't know what an "Improbability Drive" ship is, don't worry, I barely know what it it either.  All I can tell you for sure, without bringing the math they use into this, is that it is a spaceship that can travel much faster than the speed of light (without going into hyperspace) and has all sorts of weird side affects of going that fast on board.  As I said earlier, Arthur and Ford have been saved by this ship after being flung out into space by a Vogon (another alien species) leader.  Both Arthur and Ford have no idea what they are travelling on, but they can both communicate with the other species thanks to a Babel Fish, which translates everything into English for Arthur (the human one).  Ford, who is from the planet Betelgeuse 5, can understand the other aliens.  He picked up Arthur on Earth because he is a researcher for the travel book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  

 After Arthur and Ford are saved, they both experience the feeling of going faster than the speed of light, which obviously has some pretty negative side effects, they warm up to the feeling and explore the odd but fascinating ship, which was stolen by Zaphod Beeblebrox, the president of the galaxy.  I really loved how the author went into great detail about the ship's design.  Sleek, elegant, and brand new.  The way he explains all the different characters is really interesting, and even the robots have a unique and believable personality.

So that's it, I hope you thought that was as interesting as I did.  I can't wait to read more.