5. This reminds me of...

"And here at Alpha Academy, there weren't any salespeople at the ready to help her with her search. Girls like Skye and Charlie had talent. All Allie had was a class schedule packed tighter than Ugly Betty in a pair of Spanx, and still she was no closer to self-discovery." (Lisi Harrison, Belle of the Brawl Page 12)

Allie Abbott is a pretty young girl who had to pretend to be someone else to get into the prestiegious Alpha Academy. When her true identity was discovered, she was given a second chance to find her talent so that she could truly belong at the Academy. This quote makes me think of myself, and a lot of other teens. I always used to think my talent was running, but it's so hard to think of it as my talent when I know I'm not the best. Just like Allie, I'm still searching for my passion and it might be the hardest thing I'll ever do. What she is going through relates to a real world situation of finding one's identity and a personal experience of finding my passion.

My Main Character

Acceleration by
Graham McNamee

"I drop the book on the floor, wiping my palms on my jeans, feeling dirty just from touching it. I shake my head. The world is full of ugly twisted people. There, that's my Mr. Rogers thought for the day." (McNamee, Graham. Acceleration. page 7)

Just to explain, what I know about the book that Duncan was holding is that the author has been torturing animals and starting fires. The book is almost like a diary or a record of the sick-minded things he/she does.

Earlier in the book, I learned that the main character or the protagonist in my novel, 17-year-old Duncan, got into trouble a lot, and was caught breaking into houses and had been charged with theft. That makes me wonder if he will turn out to be the "bad guy" in the story. This quotation shows me that Duncan has morals and knows what is right and wrong in the world. It also shows he is sarcastic and lightens the dark moods of the story with his humor. His obvious sarcasm is present a lot in the book so I do believe it is an important trait that shows his characteristics and personality.

Based on what I have now discovered about Duncan, I predict that he will become the hero in the story, which is quite the opposite of what I first thought he was. I believe the book he found will become worse and more prominent and Duncan will stop the author from continuing his evil tasks.

The following movie trailer from A Walk to Remember connects to Duncan because the main character in the movie, Landon Carter starts out as a bad boy, getting caught by the police. But later, Landon turns himself around and becomes a hero for his friend Jamie.

Summary and Review


The first book I read this semester was a White Pine novel called Wondrous Strange by Lesley Livingston. Seventeen year old Kelley Winslow plays the fairy queen, Titania, in A Mid-Summer Night's Dream. While working in New York, Kelley meets Sonny Flannery and together they discover her strange and mystical past as a stolen child from the realm of faeries. She discovers her talents and finds ways to use them for good only. Kelley and Sonny stop the evil faeries from revealing the hidden realm and destroying the human realm.

Lesley Livingston finds a way to transform the 'concrete jungle' (New York) into a place of magic and weird allure. Wondrous Strange modernized Shakespeare's works into a thought-provoking plot about a not-so-ordinary girl living in the wrong world. I loved the book and when I found out there were a series of books to follow it, I squealed just a little bit..

I got the image of the book cover from Google Images. The link follows: http://teens.tbpl.ca/upload/images/wondrous_strange_bookcover.jpg

What kind of reader am I?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge may be a smart man, yet I failed to see a definition of the reader that I am. I am partly a sponge because I absorb a lot of what I read. But sponges fade and dirty with use which is unlike me. An EZ towel however, get bigger and better with absorption instead of becoming dirty. I profit from what I absorb so I am an EZ towel.  If a book has a plot and a story-line, I cannot stop reading it for the life of me! So therefore, I don't have a specific genre that I love. But some of my absolute favourite books are:
1. Harry Potter (obviously) -J.K. Rowling is a genius, I just adore the way she makes every little detail count, and by the end all the tiny puzzle pieces come together and it's absolutely mind boggling.
2. The Clique series by Lisi Harrison - It sounds peppy and silly, but it's honestly addicting, and very hard to put down.

Cover for Airhead by Meg Cabot

3. The Pretty Little Liars series by Sara Shepard - Scary, gave me nightmares. But I still worship it.
4. The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks - Sad. Very sad.
5. Airhead series by Meg Cabot - Gave me chills, it's great!

The list could go on and on and on, I'm easily impressed when it comes to books. It just astonishes me what goes through a writer's head. The amazing characters and places that these people think up and dream are truly unique and can only be seen in a book.

  

My First Assignment - The Quote

Getting lost in a book is something I have absolutely mastered. Without the small fantasy worlds that I wander into through reading, my life would be something out of a non-fiction article; boring in my opinion. I feel that unless I have a place to get away, my life would be, well.. lifeless. The quote I chose that best describes my relationship with novels is: 'A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.' The quote was written or said by Franz Kafka. The quote says to me, when life is as unconscious as a frozen sea, a book can relieve the hardness and bring creativity and colour through story. The pages of a book are like a pathway to a completely new existence. It might be in a different city, even a different world. An escape, even just for a moment, from one's place on Earth, is a gift that can only be given through imagination. I can hardly hear or ever think about my actual reality while I follow the characters through twists and turns, ups and downs, they can't speak to you literally, but hearing is different than listening. I hear the pain, torture, love, excitement and I can see the portraits that are painted through words. When life is unyielding and it seems to have solidified into punishment, slipping away into a book really seems to break through my mental concrete. Maybe I have multiple personality disorder or something along those harsh lines, but when I really get into one of my books, I feel like a completely different person, during and after I read it. But although a new life is quite the vacation, a book always has an ending and something else in reality will surely interfere. But for now, I will sit back, relax and enjoy my fragmentary and short-lived alter existence in my book.
Source for quote: http://www.readingrockets.org/books/fun/quotable