Philosaphy in my book

          Okay Ms.Rear so i wrote a letter to skeptics but forgot to relate it to a book, lets see if this post about freedom in real life and my book. It was surprisingly harder then i thought, maybe its my book or maybe it is just the way that i was thinking about it. I hope it meets your expectations!

          In my book each chapter is told from a different point of view. But I only want to focus on one of the two main characters, Anne. In the book Anne is a girl who is focused on two things: School and surfing. Because they live all the way on the west coast pretty much everyone surfs, but their aren't that many girls who can surf as well as Anne can. After Annes mother dies her dad pays even closer attention to her and pushes her harder and makes her work even more then she already does. 

          I never thought that it was possible to help take away your own freedom but i think that is exactly what Anne is doing. She shoves her self in a corner and barely makes time for anything other than her main focuses. Ofcourse the book wouldn't be complete unless you knew that Anne is a stunning girl who can turn heads when she walks in a room. This only makes it more confusing on why she would literally take away part of her freedom by shutting herself out from anything that could potentially get in the way of her goals.

          When you think about this it isn't that strange yet the more you think about it the weirder it is (ok sorry that might have not made much sense ill rephrase it) when you just think about it off hand it does't seem that weird, ok yeah the girl has goals that she wants to accomplish, ok so what? But then when you get into it and go deeper it is actually really strange. This whole week we were talking about WHO controls your freedom but we never really came up with an answer, well i think i just figured it out for at least some cases.  

The summer of firsts and lasts: characters

          This book is interesting it has an interesting style that i haven't seen a lot and can't decide if i like it yet. Each chapter is in the point of view of different sister. There are three sisters in total, Daisy, Calla and Violet and each chapter is told from one of their perspectives. It is an interesting writing technique so that you get to know all of them in different ways. But the bad part is that it is hard to keep track of what sister is doing what, and what sisters chapter you are reading. Another problem is that their are three main characters so instead of connecting with all three sisters or all three of the main characters i only really like and connect to one out of the three sisters (actually i don't know if that is a good thing or bad).

          The story takes place at a summer camp, which is cool because it sort of reminds me of my sleep away camp. I can relate to how the characters feel, for example: how much they like the first day where you meet all of the people in your cabin, and about half way through the session they start to get a tad bit home sick. In a way it is a little creepy how i can relate on so many different levels. Even the part about sisters because i have a younger sister. This book reminds me just how much i love camp and i can definitely understand what they feel in parts of the book but for people who never go to sleep away camp this probably is no the book for you because it might be hard to understand why the characters are so in love with the camp that they go to unless you yourself have experienced the same thing. 

          One thing that i think they got wrong (or just haven't shown yet) is the fighting part of having a sister. Yes you want what you can't have so anyone who does not have a sister, or any sibling for that matter will know that it isn't all laughing and best friends. You do fight, its just part of life. But in the book these sisters seem to look up at each other with love and respect (not that this is bad or wrong and i do love my sister but it is not the only thing that happens) . They know everything about them, and always talk about times when they were laughing or having fun. But being a sister i know that it isn't like that (at least not all the time). Personally i go to camp to get a break from family but all these girls can talk about is how close they are and that they get to hang out with their sister. Im not trying to sound like a bad person and if you do have a sibling relationship like that then i truely envy you. But no one that i know is like that with their brother or sister. 

          Maybe this makes me seem like a bad person, but everyone needs a break right? I know i said i could relate to them and i CAN. Just not on family levels. I am interested to see how these perfect sisters unfold, and what will happen in the future.

Skepticism- I wonder why

Dear Skeptics,
       
          I don't even know wether Skepticism is considered a personality trait, a word we use to describe someone with a lot of questions, or even something as big as a life style people resemble.

         Skepticism and skeptics. I wonder what the point is in really questioning everything that happens in life... or doesn't... wether what is happening is really going on, if anything people say is true, you don't know what to believe and what not to believe so you choose to believe absolutely nothing at all. Why not have fun instead of questioning if what your doing is even considered fun. We have our own ideas of what is right and wrong and we all have our moral values- that for the most part we try to stick to and follow in our life. But instead of trusting no one and knowing that good enough just is not good enough we use our common sense to decide what to do and not to do and we pick and choose what we want and what we need.

         As much as i don't understand certain things you do, i do admire your creativity and your soaring imagination. When you just go with the flow of life and don't pay attention to tiny details, the farthest your imagination goes is alternate universes and the fact that there could be life on mars. But real skeptics know that miracles happen all the time. I will try to write you some smart lines and give you great examples but all real skeptics know that an extraordinary explanation is always preferred to an ordinary one. So trust me i will try my best to make you see it my way. Believe me now because who knows what your going to believe tomorrow.

         I understand how you can analyze historic events or life changing decisions, but why focus on such tiny things like why the chicken crossed the road? You actually need to focus on details for certain things because no one wants to be a doormat that you can just walk all over and who believes everything they hear. As you get older you gain knowledge and learn not to trust everything you hear, like government promises or when they tell you that your airplane will take off in just another ten minutes.

     
                                                                                                                Sincerely,
                                                                                               Sophia Gordon

The Lost Hero

How much longer can piper go on like this she is either betraying her friends, Leo and jason, or she has to let her dad die. What a choice she has to make. I am surely glad I am not in her place. The worst part is when her friends herd that her dad was in trouble they wanted to help him, but if they go to help pipers dad then they will die, but they don`t know this. Jason and Leo are so sweet it breaks my hart that they want to help piper. I am very excited to see what piper chooses to do.

In medea`s "mall" even when they were under a spell they herd that pipers dad was in trouble. Jason barley remembered a thing from the big fight because of medea`s spell but yet the words "piper let them die and your father could be with you right now" were stuck in his head. He really wants to help, but piper wont let him because she doesn't want to see him get hurt. If my friend wanted to help me but i thought he was going to get hurt i would do the same thing a Piper because i wouldn't want any of my friends to get hurt because they were trying to help ME! 

It almost reminds me of a personalized version of Sophie`s choice. Piper has to choose between her dad or her friends. Either way she knows one of them will die and one of them will survive. I can't even begin to imagine what i would do if i was given the same situation as the characters are in right now!

The Sculpture of Memory Themes

I think there are a lot of themes in this book because each of the characters are so complex and different and there are so many issues that they talk about in this book. I don't focus on themes a lot but when reading a book with so many different events going on it is easy to get distracted and i feel that writing about all the themes is a easy smart way to organize your thoughts.

One big theme in this book is trust. I think this is important because they are a group of orphans living alone with just each other. Obviously you have to trust these people if your going to go on a great adventure with them and spill a lot of your secrets. But what also comes with trust is secrets. You can have a ton of trust with someone and you can tell them everything but there will always be that one thing that is just your secret. I think everyone deserves to have their little secret no matter what, unless it is harmful in some way i think you owe it to yourself to keep some things private.

 One secret is different then many secrets which brings me to the theme of secrets. Its okay to keep one little secret but if you have your "best friends" telling you everything you should at least share something, and it should be the truth! In the book the boys Clove and Angus share a lot of their past even if it isn't always pretty. But Mary has been hiding a lot and even what they think might be true, most likely isn't. I don't want to spoil it, because this book is not actually published yet but i will say that you can't anyway believe what you hear or even worse what you remember, especially if your a character in this book.

Memories can be deceiving. You might be positive that something happened this way and then be proven completely wrong and realize what you remembered was just a figment of your imagination. for me dreams sometimes get mixed up with reality and i can't even remember if this certain even even happened to me or it was a dream. In this book the main character can control peoples memories, and make them remember stuff that isn't even close to reality. It makes me wonder if what i remember from my childhood is even true or not.

The sculpture of memory

This book is disturbing in many ways. Remember at the beginning of the year when we talked about how authors sometimes want to make you feel uncomfortable, well this author is deffinetly doing that. The book that i am reading is called The Sculpture of Memory By: John Elder Lloyd (i know the author!!) In the book the boy watched his parents get robbed and then murdered, all through a little key hole in a closet.

Later he discovers that he can control peoples memories with his mind. If he concentrates on them really hard and thinks about a certain thing they will remember it. For example, if he looked at me really hard and thought i had a sandwich for lunch. No matter the time of day or what i really had for lunch i would truly believe that that is what i ate. BUT if i tried to remember the real memory like what i really had for lunch then my head would hurt and it would not be fun. Of course he uses his powers much stronger then just what people ate for lunch.

OH! i forgot to mention, because both of his parents got murdered he now lives in an orphanage where he meets his two partners in crime, Cove and Mary. Clove has been in and out of the orphanage since he was a baby. May on the other hand is new to Avondale as well and is very sensitive when it comes to the topic of her parents. Later in the book they sneak out to an apartment to live. As hard as that sounds it is really quite simple, all you must do is make the people in charge of the orphanage THINK that a foster family has taken all three friends and you make the people who own the house think that you already gave them a check for rent every month. They are doing this to try to track down the killer (the one who murdered Angus' parents)

This book is very elaborate and Angus uses his powers in the typical way you would assume a boy would: free arcade tickets, prevent him from getting in trouble, free food, and more. But if i had these powers I think i would use them mostly for the same reasons BUT i would be very careful. They ended up on the wanted list at the police station because according to security cameras they did not pay the people at any store they went to. If i were Angus i would not use it for silly stuff like free food. You have to know who is watching because you can only change one persons memory at a time.

I think this book is a loss of innocents story. The character goes from living in a happy family, to trying to live on his own (with two friends but still hard work) and he is trying to find the murderer. This book is very suspenseful and it always has me on the edge of my seat. I can not wait to read more and see if i agree with what Angus, Mary and Clove end up doing.

Irony: Its everywhere!!!

For the past few days in class we have focused on the subject of irony. This is personally a confusing topic because it is hard to tell sometimes when it is irony or sarcasm or if you are just completely confused. The type of irony i find most easy to spot is probably dramatic irony. You don't always know that whats happening IS intact dramatic irony but now that you know what it is: Knowing something that certain characters in the play, book, movie, ect.

But after we learned about irony and what it is i can't NOT notice it!! In my book for example the boy is running away from home and is at the train station, i know this, meanwhile the dad is looking everywhere for him and has no clue where he could be. Dramatic irony is even on popular t.v. shows like Modern Family! I saw an episode the other day where they were trying to get sympathy from someone so a boy pretended to recognize a lady and talk about how great his dad is, I know that the dad gave his son a complete pep talk right before but the lady just thinks it is so sweet and that he must be a really great guy!

Dramatic irony is my favorite i think of the three. Not because it is easy to find or anything like that but because everyone likes to feel like they are a part of something and when you know something other people don't (even if they are fictional characters) you feel smart and included. If any writer or director can make you want to teleport yourself into their scene, chapter, setting, anything, they deserve a gold star!!