Looking for Alaska

I decided that I wanted to read the book, Looking for Alaska because I had heard about the book before and that it was pretty good. I thought that that the book was very good and I am glad I chose it. I wouldn't say that I made that many connections to it because his life is very different than mine. But he is a kid in high school and in that way there is some connections like the different cliques and how his relationship between his friends strengthen as they go through tough times. I think that this book would be good for a large variety of people. It is focused towards high school students though because they can probably relate to it the most. But I think that even if you were older you could enjoy it because everybody goes through tough times in their life and they have to overcome it and keep going with their life. It is a fun book to read because the author is really good wording and making it feel as if you are talking directly to the person. And he has them use different slang based on where the come from.

Looking for Alaska

The book that I am reading is split up into two parts. Because of this the author has to make the sure that the first part of the book has to really hook the reader so that they keep reading past the first part. My quote that I decide to use is from the very end of the first part and it really leads you into the next part and foreshadows what may happen later. In the book, Looking for Alaska it says,

 “We did not say: Don't drive. You're drunk.

   We did not say: We aren't letting you in that car when you are upset.
  
   We did not say: we insist on going with you.

   We did not say: this can wait until tomorrow. Anything - everything - can wait. "

 I don’t want to give anything away but here is a short explanation of what is going on at this time. Right before this point in the text Alaska, Pudge, and the Colonel were up until late drinking and then Alaska wakes up to the phone ringing and a minute later starts freaking out and wakes up the others and tells them they have to help her get out. So they distract the Eagle and she is able to get out but then they run into trouble.

 

Looking for Alaska

For my summer reading assignment I decided to read the book, Looking for Alaska. Right now I am about half way through the book and so far I am really enjoying it. The main characters in the book are Pudge, the Colonel, Alaska, and finally Takumi. This book takes place at a boarding school called Culver Creek. Each character faces there own smaller problem but he main problem that these for characters face is that the are currently in a rivalry against some people called Weekday Warriors; who are kids that are rich and only stay on the campus over the week. They are mad at each other because someone ratted out a couple at the campus for being in each others room after ours. Each party thinks that other one did it. I predict that by the end of the book they are going to figure out who ratted the couple out and it is going to cause some huge conflicts. The whole book doesn't remind me of any other work that I have read but I know that there are boarding schools and it kind of sounds like a college. I also I seen the play a west side story and it sort of resembles it but only because of the two sides that don't get along.   

Looking for Alaska

In the book I am reading the main characters are Pudge, the Colonel, Alaska, and Takumi. Pudge is the character that the whole book is centered around. His main goal in the book is to hook up with the girl named Alaska. The only problem is she is dating a guy back in her home town. Alaska is a girl that is smart but has gotten herself into some trouble. She seems to be very outgoing and not afraid of anything. She seems to hold a grudge and is very persistent. Chip, also known as the Colonel, is friends with Alaska and recently befriended Pudge. I feel the he is a lot like Alaska and holds a grudge and always wants revenge. The author doesn't focus on Takumi to often. He is always hanging around Alaska and Chip and seem to know a lot of their problems. A theme that stands out right now is to not jump to conclusions before you absolutely know the entire story. And also not to hold a grudge for to long. My book is stricter kind of like a diary. They have it count down the days to a big event then it counts the amount of days after the event but they don't say what the event is so it makes it suspenseful. 

Woman in the Mist

 

 

  I would recommend this book if you enjoy animals. Obviously if you do not enjoy animals or reading about them then you would not really like this book. I think that it was cool to be able to see what she went through when she was in Africa and how she made a difference. Over the years of her being in Africa I believe she learned a lot and became very adept in her studies. She learned a lot of new stuff about the animals she loved and was able to teach a lot of stuff to other people. I was astounded with some of the things she came in counter with and thought it was crazy how calmly she fixed them.

      I think that this book definitely went in depth and explained her journey well without making it too hard to follow. Throughout the book there were definitely some points that were very sad and hard to read through. Over these parts I just pushed through and soon they started to talk about something different. For this book I would rate it 3.5 stars out of 5. I think that it was a very good book but they needed to explain places better and there were a few parts that were sad. I would recommend this to someone that wants to work with animals or already is working with animals. I think that it is cool that she was able to make a difference in our world and really impact the animals that she loved.

Women in the Mist

Vocab

In my book the vocab isn't that hard. The words they use aren't too difficult I can figure them out by context clues and if I can't then I just look them up. Throughout the novel they do like to use a lot of locations and cities and a lot of the cities in the United States I know about where they are because they are major cities, but they also like to use cities in Africa and i have no clue where they are or even remotely where they are locates. It would help if they could put something at the bottom of the page or a caption next to the cities so you can follow where she is traveling better. This is a minor setback though because it is not the most important part of the book to know where they are as long as you know if they are in Africa or America.

This is a general map of the place that she went to (Rwanda) but it doesn't have the actual route that she traveled.

 

In the book she talks about how pretty it is especial at night and how all of the clouds clear and you can see the stars and off to the side there is the volcano. She explains that the animals will travel up and down the valley, so I am assuming that Rwanda is pretty hilly. Using the map I gave above it is still hard to tell where about she might have been because it talks about how she can see the volcano but she also says that there are a lot of trees and undergrowth. So it also seems that she might be around the Forest down in the south of Rwanda.

blog reflection

During this trimester I have been Blogging on a book called Woman in the Mist, in these blogs I have use my voice in it and really showed my personality. In one blog post in particular I talked about how I thought it was cool that she was really interested in these animals and wanted to help them. This is using my voice because I really like animals and I think this would be really cool to get the chance to do.  I also relate a lot of what she is doing to what is happening in life right now. I can showcase my personality in my blogs because the book that I am reading relates a lot to what is happening in the world and what I think is really cool. In my blogs I put in my personal opinions about the world and how we treat our environment. In this post I say “Hopefully in the future people will be able to keep raising awareness about the animals they love and keep helping those animals.” I show my opinion in this sentence because I talk about how I hope that there will be other brave people that follow in their footsteps and try to help the animals they love.

In my blog post I use all different types of diction. For example in this post I say, “This is happening all over the world and humans are often poaching animals and are destroying their habitat just like what we have seen in the book.” This quote is using formal diction because I am addressing a real problem in the world that needs to be changed. I talk about how the people are poaching the animals and how they are destroying their habitat. The word choice I use in the sentence helps get across the seriousness of this topic. In this sentence I have used a lot of medium to long sentences because I am explaining thing that are happening in the book and relating them to what is happening in the world, if I used a lot of sort sentences they wouldn’t get the point across and it would make it really confusing.

Woman in the Mist

Dian Fossey is the woman that this book is centered around. I believe she is a very tough woman that hasn't had a very good connection with the people around her. It seems that she doesn't know how to connect well with people but she understands animal. She was very interested in animals especially the mountain gorillas sense she was little. For many years she had wanted to go to Africa to explore the area and meet them. She didn't have enough money for a lot of time and when she did get to go it put her into dept. She took her first trip there and met a guy that she seemed to like and later got engaged to but unfortunately he was too involved with his schooling and didn't pay much attention to her. She eventually got into contact with a person that could help her get a job studying the mountain gorillas. He takes a long time to call her back about the job and she begins to get worried.

            If you would like to study more about Dian Fossey you can use the link below to read about her and you can also read the book Woman in the Mist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dian_Fossey

Woman in the Mist

The book that I am reading is about Dian Fossey and the mountain gorillas. I think that she is going to learn a lot about the gorillas and help inform many people about them. She will end up helping these animals a lot but maybe not enough. It will take people in the future to come along and do what she and Jane Goodall have done and help raise awareness for the animals. Unfortunately I think that humans as a species think mainly about them and not about anything else and they don't care what they do to the environment and who we share it with. 

I know that there are people like Jane and Dian that go and do stuff like this but I haven't heard of something like this happening in a long time so I wonder if there are people that are doing this stuff that we don't hear a lot about and I think that should change and we need to hear more from them. I think people should listen to these people and think more about these animals because we are the main cause to many of the animal extinctions that we know of due to poaching and the harming of their environment for our good. 

Krista Ramsey

In school we have just started studying columnist and in particular Krista Ramsey that works for the Cincinnati  enquirer. I read one of her columns called Raising Kids to Embrace the Worls, then they do. 

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/columnists/krista-ramsey/2014/03/06/krista-ramsey--adults/6144909/

 

In this column she talks about how as the kids are growing up the parents are always telling them to go out and enjoy the world and have fun with what you're doing but then as the go to leave you you don't want to let them go. I think a good quote to sum up this is, "It's the most humbling lesson of parenting: We may be in charge of the prologue, but only they get to write the story of their lives" this line is so good because it sums everything up and it says that you can tell your kids what to do but they are the one that get to decide what they really want to do. This quote is so well written because it relates life to writing a story, which is what she knows well about. It also uses good wording because it says that the parents are in charge of the prologue so we get that they are in charge of the beginning of their life's and they get to direct them in a certain way but they can't tell them everything. Krista Ramsey likes to write about the little that effect society and that we see every day but we may not think of it in a big way like a lot of the news that we hear about everyday. 

 

A few questions that I would like to ask Krista would be, What do she like about writing columns? Another question that I would ask her would be, how does she think of the things that she writes and not get writers block? Finally I would ask is how did she choose to be a writer?

Woman in the Mist

 The book that I have been reading is called Woman in the Mist. It is a true story about Dian Fossey. This book relates to a lot of what actually is happening in the world and even related to me. It relates to the world because it takes place in Africa and talks a lot about how people have cause the loss of habitat in the area of Africa that she has been studying. This is happening all over the world and humans are often poaching animals and are destroying their habitat just like what we have seen in the book.

Dian Fossey grew up wanting to be a vet because she loved animals and felt like she could really connect to the animals. When I get older I want to be a vet because I really love animals. Dian Fossey grew up around animals and on a farm constantly with them. All though I have never lived on a farm I was born and grew up with 2-4 dogs my entire life and with lots of interesting animals like turtles, Lizards, Hamsters, and rats. I think it would be amazing to get to travel to an exotic place to see the animals out in their natural habitat.

I believe that Dian Fossey is a lot alike Jane Goodale. I don't know a lot about either one so far but what i know is that the both went to see Large monkeys. In Jane's case the were chimpanzees and in Dian's case they were Mountain Gorillas. They both spent lots of time with the animals and learned a lot about them and their habitat. They have raised awareness of the animals they loved and have helped the animals. Hopefully in the future people will be able to keep raising awareness about the animals they love and keep helping those animals.

Woman in the Mist

I just started the book called Woman in the Mist it is about Dian Fossey and her time spent in Africa with the mountain gorillas. Throughout the book it switches between comments of hers and writing from the author Farley Mowat, which allows you to see how what she thought it was like and have the author explain what was happening. I decided to pick this book because I enjoy animals and like reading and learning about them. I thought that I would enjoy it because when I get older I want to be a vet. She grows up wanting to be a vet and eventually drops out of vet school to work with children but over the years she work on accumulating enough money to go to Africa to raise awareness of the gorillas. She seems to connect well with animals but has trouble getting along with humans so she feels like she fits in better in Africa with the animals.

When we think of Africa we think of this big flat land with a whole bunch of animals but she realizes when she gets there that there is a lot of that that has been inhabited by humans and many of the animals have moved out. While there she makes her guide take her to see the gorillas and after a lot of convincing he agrees to go. She isn't happy though because she isn't aloud to spend a lot of time with the gorillas. I think that later in the book and in her life she will eventually go back to see the gorillas and learn more about them and their way of life. She will also raise awareness of the loss of habitat due to humans and tell people more about the mountain gorillas.

Fahrenheit 451

Section 1

One of the four main characters that we have met so far in the book is Guy Montag. For his job he burns books so that people dont know about the past. I imagine that Montag is about 6 feet tall and is pretty thin. I believe that He is often covered in ash and soot because he spends most of his day at the firehouse. It says in the book that he has been doing his job for about ten years since he was 20 so that means that he should be about 30 years old. Montag i think is not that strong more averaged size because it doesnt say much about working out and he doesnt have to pick up alot of heavy stuff at his job. Montag is probably pretty hard working and is serious about his job but is begining to become more curious about what might be in the books. Without him there wouldnt be much of a story becasue he has been the center of everthing so far and i dont think that is going to change.

In the book Montag says "We cant do anything. We cant burn these. I want to look at them. At least Look at them once." In this quote Montag is talking to his wife Mildred after he showed her all of the books that he has collected over the years. Since we know that he has been working for about ten years we know that he is probable pretty dedicated to his job but he is still curious of what they might say even though his boss says there isnt anything good in the book and that he could go to jail for having them in his house. In the begining of the book Clarisse said "So many people are. Afraid of firemen, I mean. But your just a man, after all." This shows us that inthese days firemen werent looked up to like they are now but many people are afraid of them. There must be a gentleness in him that makes Clarisse feel safe around him. In general firemen are scary and mean and we can figure this out because she says that most people are afraid of firemen.