The Rules of Survival: Week of 11/17

**What did you think of what you read?**
Pages: 70-END

     This book was very...OK. Not bad, but not very good either. However. it leans more towards the good side. The Rules of Survival is a first person take on child abuse. I originally just wanted to read this book because it sounded interesting and well...it had a cool cover. After reading it, it turns out I've actually learned a lot about child abuse.

     I've always liked reading books where the narrator, in first person, has something that separates them from most other people (in the most not-offensive way possible). Books where the narrator suffers from depression are interesting because if it's not something you experience  reading the book allows you to get a better understanding of what depression feels like. Books told in first-person where the narrator has autism or Aspergers are really interesting to read because you get this totally different view on normal life. Those are the kinds of books I read to get an understanding of what something that I don't experience feels like. I wasn't expecting it, but I got that same experience with The Rules of Survival.

     I wasn't expecting to actually learn anything about child abuse. At first glance, it seems like such a simple topic. The parent or guardian or whoever it is is simply abusing their child. It's a bad thing but it seems so simple to understand. This book helped me understand that it's not very simple. It's especially not very simple for the children involved. The author did a great job of describing through Matthew what being in an abusive home feels like. She describes it as constantly living in fear because you never know when your abuser is suddenly going to explode on you. You never know what going to happen. You never know if today is the last day you'll live. When the author said that it feels like you're "living with fear all the time," it was a very sort of straightforward way to say what it feels like. My favorite way she described the feeling of living in that kind of home was when she described it as living in a constant play. She says,

"I was the director of our theater, arranging the stage set, telling you and Callie to take your places, prompting you to do or say this or that, whisper-feeding you lines of dialogue and bits of businness. "Don't forget to hug her!" "Go get her some Advil and a glass of water, fast." "Ask her if she'll help you with your homework later, she likes that."

And all the while I was directing, and acting, I also had to gauge the reaction of our audience of one--Nikki--and make adjustments to our play so it would suit her mood. Her picture of who she was. I knew every move, every motion in every possible scenario, and all the plays melted together onto an endless onstage nightmare, all  of them beginning with the sound of the downstairs door slamming open and her high heels clacking on the stairs. "

     The trio of siblings in this story, I learned, are one of the lucky families. In the end, they end up leaving their abusive mother and travel into the safe hands of other guardians without being separated. The narrator tells us how many siblings are separated when they're saved, so he was really grateful he and his siblings were able to stick together. With a whole trio of kids being abused by their mother, I wondered why they never told anyone about it. The narrator eventually tells us that he wanted help--he wanted to get his siblings out of there. He was worried that no one would believe them, people would make matters worse, or he and his siblings would be split up into foster care. This immediately reminded me of why kids don't want to tell adults that they're being bullied. However, in child abuse cases, the person that has been around raising the child is the one hurting them.

     Overall, I think I would recommend this book to someone who doesn't know much about child abuse. If you don't know much (or anything), then this book seriously teaches you. However, I'd give it a 7/10. Not bad, but not too great. There were somethings that could be improved in the book, I think. It's not like the book is unreadable or anything but it doesn't really make you not want to put the book down. There are books that you simple cannot put down because they're that great. This is not one of those books. It's an OK book with a terrible little twist near the end but twists and turns doesn't make a good book. It helps, but it doesn't automatically make a book memorable. The Rules of Survival was good, but it's definitely not one of my top books.

Twisted: Week of 11/3

**Draw a picture for what you just read. 
Pages: 0-END

Tyler, the main character, thinks his life is falling apart. He's being accused of committing a crime he had nothing to do with, his father isn't the best, his mother is upset, and he might just be losing his best friend. I wanted to draw an interpretation of his life falling apart, because that was a big part of this book. I shaded the entire page dark gray to sort of represent how his life was already pretty dark before anything started happening. I thought of his life like a piece of cloth. Every time something bad happened, the cloth tore and fell apart. Eventually, you can see what's underneath the cloth -- you can see all the badness that caused it to tear. 

In the tears in the cloth, I wrote quotes from the book that show the different events causing his life to suck. "Migraine," represents Tyler's mother. His mom is very upset, I guess is the best way to phrase it. She resents her husband because of the things he does. She ends up arguing with him so much she drinks and gets migraines. Tyler knows why she gets them and it makes him hate his father even more. The tears in the lower left corner say, "Don't help." Tyler's best friend was trying to help him get through his problems. Tyler tells him not to help him because he'll just make everything worse in the end. I made that corner of the cloth not completely torn. You can see their are small fragments left. I did that to show that even though Tyler had hurt his friend, his friend still wanted to be there for him when Tyler needed it.

One of the larger sections says "I didn't do it. I didn't do it." Tyler is being accused of a crime he did not commit but it seems all he can say is that he didn't do it. There's no evidence to prove he didn't do it. It's all he can say in his defense. I made that section really big because it one of the things really tearing him  apart. He's being accused of hurting someone he genuinely loved and cared about, but no one believes him. The other large section has multiple quotes in it. They're all quotes from when Tyler had spurts of violent thoughts or actions. A lot of those quotes came from moments where Tyler was fighting or when he was having thoughts of violence against his father. His father, who was in one way or another, connected to all the events. 

On another note, this was a really good book and you should totally read it because it was such a really good book. Like really good.

Good book.

Like really good.

Brave New World: Week of 10/20

**Describe the major conflict. What side are you on?**
Pages read: 72-112

The major conflict in Brave New World is definitely the society itself. Is it right or is it wrong? Utopia or dystopia? I'll go more into the society more once I learn more about it, so here's just a small run down of it:

Everyone is trained, in a way, to develop in a certain way. Certain children will be trained to love certain things and associate them with happiness so eventually they'll love the job they are assigned to. Because of the training, no one hates their job and everyone is happy. The downside, however, is that no one really has a choice of wether or not they want that job. But, they're happy. So it doesn't really matter, right?

It's so hard for me to say whether or not I support that. No one gets to pick their job, but no one hates their job. But no one gets to pick their job. But they're happy with their job. You could go on with that forever. They may be happy with their job, but is it OK to not let them pick? Is it OK to train them to love it? Morally, I suppose not. I mean, a very big thing people support is the idea of freedom. The idea that you can do what you want, say what you want, think what you want. The society allows you to think and say what you wish, but it does sort of take away the "do what you want" factor of freedom. And that's where it gets really tangled again. They don't have the real freedom to do what they want, but the job they've been trained for makes them happy. That's the job they want to do. To them, it's freedom to be able to do that job they love.

It helps to think, "Well, if they weren't trained for it, then they wouldn't necessarily all want the job they've been assigned to, right?" YES. It is VERY helpful to think about that when it comes to this book's conflict. It also helps to think, "Well, they're trained to love it, right? So, is it real happiness?" That is also very helpful to think! And after you stop and think of these questions alongside the society's happiness and training, it's still very hard to come to a conclusion of whether or not the society is good. It all just comes back to the whole point of they are happy, whether they like it or not -- and apparently they all like it.

I think people would take different sides on this conflict. Some people may think the society is bad because it sort of takes away freedom. Others would say it's good because everyone has a form of happiness, the economy is stable, and no one is poor. Happiness; freedom; stableness. Opinions on this society are going to based off of what the person thinks is most important in a society. Do you want everyone to be happy at the cost of freedom? Do you want a stable society? A society filled with freedom? You'd get so many different opinions on their society. I, frankly, am in the middle. With this society comes many ups and downs. Happiness, but missing freedom. Stable economy, but controlled population. (Controlled population is very controversial. It creates a steady economy but the pop. is being controlled.) I can't pick a complete side. I'm in the middle, sometimes leaning towards bad and sometimes leaning towards good.

This book makes you think so much and it makes the book a hundred times better than it already is.

The Rules of Survival: Week of 11/10

**Analyze the impact word choice has on the meaning or tone of a text. 
Analyze how dialogue or specific incidents reveal information about characters**
Pages read: 0-70

The Rules of Survival  tells the story of Matthew, a thirteen year old boy. He lives with his eleven year old sister, his five year old sister, and his abusive mother. The story is told in Mathew's POV as he writes the abusive events in the form of a letter to his youngest sister. He wants to write her this letter so that she can truly understand what she went through as a child and so she can know the rules of survival (hence the title).

With the book's topic being domestic abuse, a lot of the word choice has been negative. One of the first examples of this is, "I wonder if you really need to know exactly what happened to us -- me, you, Callie -- at the hands of our mother." Most of the negativity in this sentence comes from him just saying "at the hands of our mother." When people use that phrase (at the hands of whatever), they usually mean that something bad has happened and this person has caused it or been the one to inflict it. So from that, even if you didn't know what the book was about, you could come to the conclusion that he's going to tell the story of bad things that happened to him and his siblings because of his mother.

The topic of the book not only allows for negative events, but it allows for positive events as well. These events, both good and bad, help give us an understanding of which characters should be labeled under good  or bad. One example of this is when Matthew directs to his youngest sister: "I don't want to hear any details about what happened when our mother kidnapped you -- so long as you've forgotten it, anyway. So long as you're not having screaming nightmares or something." We can learn quite a bit about a few characters just from this one quote. We learn that Matthew is bothered by the things his mother does. We can see that he hates them and does not want to hear about them. But, we also learn that he cares about his sister very much. We know that he hates hearing about the terrible things his mother does. Even so, he'd be willing to listen to his sister talk about them if the events have frightened her and talking to him would help. We can also see he cares because if she doesn't even remember it, he isn't going to interrogate her on the kidnapping and risk her remembering even the smallest detail of what she went through.

There is a character is this book named Murdoch. So far, he's the only character that has stood up for Matthew and his siblings against their mother. When we're first introduced to Murdoch, we can already get a bit of information about his character. "The father's eyes bulged. His fists were clenched. He drew one arm back. But Murdoch was still looking straight at him, and I knew--you could feel it vibrating in the air--that even though Murdoch had said he wouldn't hit him, he wanted to. He wanted to hurt him. 'Hit me,' Murdoch said. 'Come on. Better me than the kid.' "  In this scene, Murdoch was standing up for a child that was being abused by his father publicly in a store. We can see that Murdoch has a strong sense of justice. Instead of ignoring the events like many of the other shoppers, he confronted the father to help the child. Along with that, we can also see that he knows what's OK to do and what's not OK to do. It was OK to stand up to the father. It was OK to tell the father to hit him rather than his child (it was brave, too). However, he knew that it would not have been OK to hit the father, even if he wanted to; even if he felt the father deserved it. We can see he knows where to draw the line.

I don't know how I feel about this book...Right now, 5/10. Not bad, but not very good either. I'm not very far into it so it's hard to say. There's just something about it that bothers me a bit. I might even go as far as to say it's ever so slightly boring. Maybe, it's a good idea for a book but it's just been executed a bit poorly? Right now, I just wouldn't recommend this book. It's very so-so.

Brave New World: Week of 10/27

** Do you like what you are reading? Why or why not?**
Pages read: 112-153

      Am I enjoying this book? Yes. Yes. Yes. Very much so. It is seriously so interesting, no one has any idea how interesting it is until you've read it.  So far, it's great.

     The book is about a utopian society and like The Giver, it's showing the reader the darker side of that paradise. The dark side of the society has already been revealed but even so, I think you can still consider it a utopian society. On some level. Maybe. It's so interesting because it makes you think about what a utopia really is. In The Giver, as soon as the dark side is revealed, we can all agree that their society is actually much like a dystopia rather than utopia. However, in Brave New World, it's hard to tell.

Their society is centered on the idea of the assembly line created by Ford, the creator of the Model-T car in 1908. This is where utopia and dystopia clashes. Children are no longer born by mothers and fathers. Rather, they are created artificially. In labs, eggs are fertilized and from there, things get a bit more...Futuristic. The eggs are then "conditioned" to become whatever the lab workers need or want. The society is broken up into five classes, with a highest and lowest class. The people in the classes have different jobs depending on what class they have been created into. For example, someone in the lowest class would be a person pressing buttons for you in an elevator. Someone in the highest class might be the director of a company or a specialist. So labs can take these eggs and condition them to fit into which ever class they want. Need more geniuses? All they need to do is put certain chemicals into the eggs and they will develop to fit the needs of the society.

But again, this is where the line between utopia and dystopia is blurred. Everyone is conditioned to fit into their own class. Everyone is conditioned from the very beginning to fit their job. Everyone loves their job. No one is unhappy. Because they can create workers when they need them, the economy is stable. People have also been conditioned to help keep the economy booming. When the embryos grow into babies, the conditioning does not stop. Again, certain classes go through certain stages of conditioning to suite their job and class. However, there's one really clever part. The government wanted people to spend money and travel, so they conditioned babies to associate plants with happiness and joy. This made people travel like the government wanted to. However, they loved plants so much that they no longer wanted to stay in cities (with no wilderness) and work. The government then tried a different tactic. They conditioned a new set of babies to hate plants. How did they do this? They would put a group of toddlers in a room. Whenever they touched a plant or got closer to it, the babies were shocked with electricity and they suffered through a terribly loud and painful noise. They grew to associate wilderness with pain and suffering. But, the government was clever. They conditioned the children to hate the wilderness but love outdoor sports. This meant that the people would still work in cities and factories but they would no longer have that need for wilderness. Instead, they would only travel out to the country to play sports (which required them to spend more money on gear).

All in all, everyone is happy. No one hates their job and the economy is stable. But it makes you think about what a country being "stable" really means. Yes, no one hates their job but they have been trained to do so. They, essentially, have no choice. People have been so conditioned to stay happy and content that when someone shows the slightest sign of being unhappy or different, they all freak. They freak out or they simply don't understand how this person is not having the time of their life. The main character, for example, is one of those people not having the time of his life. Bernard is an Alpha, the highest class. People of his class are to be respected always, and even feared. However, that is not the treatment he gets. Bernard is shorter than the usual Alpha (by eight centimeters), so he's scene as a joke. Because he is shorter and not respected as he believes he should be, he is unhappy. Because he is unhappy, he is an outcast from everyone else. Because he is an outcast, he doesn't view things as a utopia. In a way, he is a person looking into their world but he just sees a zoo. He sees these animals and he sees what they are doing, but he doesn't quite understand why.

So...So far it's pretty good. It's really interesting with the points it brings out that can be applied to today's society. I don't recommend it if you can't handle a bit of mature topics...I guess is the best way to phrase it.
Just don't read it with someone looking over your shoulder.
That would not be best.