A Wrinkle In Time

For week 4/23
**Pretend you get to create the music soundtrack for what you've been reading. What five songs would you include? Write an explanation for each song: why would you include it, how does the song connect to events.

Pages Read: 38-132

One of the songs I would include would be First Of The Year by Skrillex (hereee). I think that this song connects to the book in three different ways, which I wouldn't normally expect since this is a dubstep song. But. Whatever. If you go and listen to the song, you'll of course notice the general sound of it. The sound of the song connected to my book because, to me, this sounded like the song that could play during a couple scenes in the book where the characters are traveling through dimensions. The feeling the characters get when they do this is described as a suffocating feeling and they feel filled with panic. To me, this seemed like a song for that as they're rushed through space and time. The other two reasons have to do with the lyrics to the song. Which are very hard to understand, and so people have come up with two different sets of lyrics for the song. Giving me two different connections to the book. One of the sets says the little voice is singing about a nightmare, over and over again. This connects to the book because the girl, Meg, does seem to be in a nightmare. Her father is gone, she hates school, and so many strange things keep happening to her. The other set is saying that the voice is singing about wishing it could go back in time to a certain night in their life. Again, this connects to Meg. I connected this to her because she misses her father being there, and I'm sure she'd want to go back to the days when he was around. Another thing was that with some people helping the characters travel dimensions, they could take Meg back in time to the days where he was around.

Another song I would use is Fly Me To The Moon by Frank Sinatra (hereee). I would use this song because it's sort of from the POV of this guy who's really happy and has a special-someone. Guess what? It connects to Meg! Meg just so happens to have a special someone in the book (Calvin) and this song could literally be about them. Just look at the lyrics. Another thing is that the song also mentions flying the guy to the moon and that he wants to play in the stars and stuff. There's actually a part in the book where the characters are on the back of this creature that is flying them up into the sky and even higher than the tops of the nearby mountains. The scene is described as beautiful because they can see everything, including the stars. The parts in the song about the sky and stars really reminded me of the book.

The third song I would use is Nine In The Afternoon by Panic! At The Disco (hereee). If you've been going through this post without listening to any of the songs and simply judging by title, I suppose you're thinking this is a song about a time of day. If you're thinking that, you're partially right. This song is also about where memories begin. In particular
, memories with the person or people you love. This connects to the book because of the couple-ish couple in the book. It's like Calvin and Meg are a couple, but they haven't come out and said it. I connected this with the song because of the memories they've made together so far in the book.

The next song I would use is Just A Girl by No Doubt (hereee). I'd use this song because it's about how girls are treated like they're much more fragile than we really are. Again, Meg connects to this song. She is a girl who gets into a lot of fights and obviously isn't weak like a stereotype often plastered on all girls. Since this song is going against the idea that people have of women being weak, I thought this was like Meg because she seems to be the exact opposite of weak like the stereotype on women says. I think that if someone were to call her a 'weak girl', she would definitely defend herself like they do in this song.

The final song I would use is Que Sera, Sera by Pink Martini (hereee); an oldie, but a goodie I think. This song is about a girl who doesn't really know what to expect in the future, so she asks the people around her. I connected this song to the book because the girl in the song doesn't know what she should expect for her future. In the book, a lot of the characters don't know what they should expect. For example, Meg doesn't know if she'll have her father in her life anytime soon or far away. Her little brother doesn't know what will happen with his powers or the old women guiding him with his powers. So, the characters in the book are much like the girl in the song; they all can't know what their futures hold.

A Wrinkle In Time

Week of 4/16/14

**Are the characters realistic (do they seem like they could be read people)? Why 

or why not?

Pages Read: 1-38

Three chapters in and I'm still not sure how I feel about A Wrinkle In Time. I'm still not very sure on what it's about (yes, I read the summary) but excluding that, I don't think I like it very much. It's not because it's a classic, as I've read slightly older books that I've really enjoyed. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think it might be the character development and the dialogue of the characters that cause me to not enjoy this. For the character development, I can't even name exactly what bothers me about that! I think the characters are developing really really fast and so...it's weird?

The first character we meet is Meg, the main character (yay Meg!). Meg is your average something-age-kid-because-the-author-doesn't-tell-you kid. Well, she does seem realistic. At the beginning of the book, Meg goes through a possible hurricane and she is very. Very. Scared. This makes her realistic because she has realistic fears. Very often, we see characters that aren't afraid of anything. This makes them unrealistic and I don't want to hear a word about how your not afraid of anything. Not a word. But, Meg was afraid of it, and that was great. She was also realistic because two other reasons. One is her school life. She isn't a good student and often gets into fights. There are actually a lot of people like this, so I took this into account. The other thing was that her father hasn't been around for a year. This made her realistic because there are also many people that sadly, do not have their dad in their life. All those kids and adults who don't have a dad went through a time when their dad was gone for a year, like Meg.

The next character I'd like to bring out is Charles Wallace, Meg's little brother. Is he realistic? No. Why, you ask? Well, think of it like this..How many six year olds have you seen that can speak in clear, complete sentences, know middle school words, kind of know what people are thinking, and whose parents let them use knives. If we're similar, you thought none. Or one, if you've read this book. Charles Wallace seriously does all of those things. For example, right at the beginning of the book when Meg is afraid of the hurricane, she goes down to the kitchen to have some cocoa to calm herself. When she gets down there, Charles Wallace says, "Hi, I've been waiting for you." He then goes on to say that he knew she'd be down. So he's a psychic six year old. Average. What really really makes him unrealistic is the fact that his first name is Charles Wallace. Not his full name, but his first name. I mean.
Seriously.
Forget the psychic part.

So far, the cover has proved to

be more interesting than the actual

book itself. Just look at that pony guy.

I Was Told There'd Be Cake

Week of 4/9
** Draw 4 objects that represent your reading. Write a sentence for each, telling what each item says about what you’ve been reading.
Pages Read: 53-END


 I drew this unicorn to represent the first chapter in this book. In the first chapter, the author talks about how she got a pony, horse, Pegasus, etc, toy from each of her boyfriends. She kept her toy collection under her sink until she finally couldn't live with them under there anymore. She stuffed them all in a garbage bag and left them on the subway. Sloane imagined a woman seeing a sketchy bag on the subway and becoming horrified at the idea that it's most likely a bomb on the train.

When Sloane was a kid, she would often say "Skyblankeyspeechkim". Yes. All one word. She explained that each of the words actually meant something to her, and that's why the whole mess of words became something she said frequently as a child. Sky, short for Skyler, was her beloved childhood cat. Kim was her imaginary friend, blankey was her favorite blanket. Speech, didn't really mean 'speech'. It symbolized the end of the day when she would line up all her toys and talk to them about her day. In my drawing, I drew all these things the way I imagined a kid might draw them. All in different colors, all next to each other, and the weird in-the-corner-and-triangle-sun. I drew "Speech" as a sun because she would tell her toys about her day, so that seemed to fit.

I drew a thermometer that reads 2057 degrees because of the last chapter in the book when she has a health/death scare. I chose this chapter because she talked about how, when she thought she was going to actually die, she did absolutely nothing. When  she found out she was going to be OK, she was relieved, but she was also disappointed in herself. The whole week, she did nothing exciting even though she was positive death was near. I chose to draw that thermometer because she mentioned how she once faked a fever as a child. She put the thermometer in the microwave and gave it to her mother in hopes of staying home from school. Sadly, the temperature was 2057, and she had to stay home.

As you can probably already tell, this final picture is of 9/11. Sloane talks about how the twin towers were both attacked when she was quitting her job as an apprentice to a fashion magazine writer. Near the end of the chapter, the towers are hit and everyone at the office watches it happen on TV. Since 9/11 is a significant date in history and I also really enjoyed this chapter, I decided to draw the TV the office workers were watching.

I Was Told There'd Be Cake

Week of 4/2/14
**Do you like what you’re reading? Why or why not?

Pages Read: 1-53    (Short Stories: "The Pony Problem" "Christmas In July" "The Ursula Cookie")

I Was Told There'd Be Cake is the third essay book I've read this year. One of these books was a scifi theme, and the other was comedy. It's easy to tell what genre I like better when you look at the genre of I Was Told There'd Be Cake. Drumroll...It's a comedy. Of course. The essay book i read before this one was Me Talk Pretty One Day, and I found it incredibly enjoyable and funny. Because of this, I was expecting a lot from this book as well, since it had an attention grabbing title and someone had told me that it was a really good book. So, to move on with it, here's my current situation with I Was Told There'd Be Cake. 

When you have an older sibling (like I do), you get very used to hearing people say stuff about your older-whatever and then compare you to them. And as random as that might sound, it actually has to do with what I want to say about this book. As I mentioned before, I read an essay book before this that I enjoyed so much that I fully expected the same from this book. Of course, I didn't want the writing to be the same or the stories to be shockingly similar (as that would suggest something of this writer), but I wanted it to be as funny. Now that I think back to it, this may have been wrong for me to do, since it sort of kind of not counts as judging a book by its cover. Anyway, I don't mean to sound like some horribly mean critic, but I think I rose my expectations to high for this book. Again, I don't mean to sound as mean...as that sounded.  But that's honestly how I feel.

So, why do I feel like my expectations were to high? Well, frankly, I don't find this book very enjoyable. I mean, it is enjoyable, but not as much as I hoped it would be. Some parts of this book are really very funny, but those parts haven't been very common throughout what I've read so far. Another thing was that some of the essays would drag on and become less interesting as they didn't have many parts that I found funny. And then that ties into the fact that sometimes, things that were meant to be funny didn't really make me laugh or smile or anything. But, that's just my opinion on some of those jokes. Yet another thing is the very common talk about the author's religion (or just religion as a child). Throughout a lot of the essays I've read in the book so far, her religion was talked about a lot. I didn't really mind at first, since at first, she brought up her religion for the purpose of making the part of the essay funny. But then later on, a whole essay was about her religion and Christianity, and it wasn't talked about for the purpose of making her audience laugh. After a while, it got a bit repetitive and even made it drag on a bit.

Pretty much, I'm enjoying this book, but equally, I'm not. Fifty-fifty, really. Don't get me wrong, some parts of her essays are actually really funny. And some parts are equally, not as funny. Then again, it's really only the beginning of the book. I have much to look forward to.

**Sorry this is so late! I wrote it and somehow forget to actually publish it. HERE IT IS ANYWAY!