Blog Post #6

I just finished reading a novel that my Dad wrote.  He just got it published and I was excited to read it when it was in the actual bound, professional style.   I have a very bias view, but I thought it was good.  It was about a 14 inch tall boy who lived in a colony of small people hidden in a world of big people.  He was considered a freak for being the tallest.  The book is for younger kids around 12, but I still liked it.  I liked the adventurous story and i thought that the imagery was fun.  I loved seeing the cover and seeing it as an actual book.  It was so fun to read!!

Book Thief #4

I finished The Book Thief last week.  I thought it was good.  The story wasn't really driven by a suspenseful plot, so by the end I was getting somewhat bored.  Overall, I really enjoyed it and I would recommend it for the people who like books like books like that.  

This is somewhat of a stretch, but the ending reminded me of the movie Titanic.  Liesel, the main character, who was a young girl living in the middle of World War Two, was forced to move to a small town In Germany and live with her foster parents.  She made many friends, her best friend was a boy named Rudy, and she loved her foster parents.  The book itself was nothing like the story of Rose and Jack on the Titanic, but the endings had the same feel.  Throughout the book, Liesel didn't act like a normal German girl should.  She played with boys, stole, and wanted to learn how to read, but most of all she liked the Jews and opposed the Nazis.  This is somewhat like how Rose didn't want to live a rich, lady-like life, and how she opposed her parents.  At the end of the book, the whole town was bombed and nobody survived, much like when the ship sunk and only few survived.  Liesel was the only survivor, and it was only because she was in the right place at the right time, just like Rose luckily floated above the water until the rescue boats came.  Then, her best friend Rudy died in the bombing and Liesel was very sad because she loved him.  This is the same idea in the Titanic when Jack died.  Liesel then moved on in life, got married, and lived like a normal person, just like Rose did.

I think the book really had a powerful ending and I though the characters were very good.  I also like that the book was narrated by death, I don't think the story could have been told in a better way.

The Book Thief #3

I am almost finished with The Book Thief.  In the story as the war goes on, the Nazi's prove to be less innocent.  They march long lines of starving Jews through Liesel's city on the way to the camp.  They whipped Liesel's dad for giving bread to the starving Jews, and forced him to go to war as his punishment.  His job was to pick up dead bodies during  air raids.  The book is really good.  The story is told in a way that makes you feel you are in the story.  It' not very plot driven but you understand the characters so well and it gives you new perspectives on World War Two.  You understand the lives of the average German citizens better, instead of categorizing them all under the idea of Nazi's.  In the story everyone is suffering of hunger and air raids.  Families lose their fathers and even young sons to the war, after being drafted without a choice.  People are taken away for the smallest thought of rebellion and cities are being destroyed.  The feelings of the characters relate very much to those of the characters in Night, and many other WW2 books I have read.  

The Book Thief #2

I have been reading The Book Thief, and it is pretty good.  The book itself doesn't have a suspenseful plot, yet, but it has really good characters.  Each character has a very "human-like" personality with many positive and negative traits.  They interact with each other very realistically.  

I feel the book gives a perfect example of what life was like for an average German family in the middle of World War Two.  The main character's, Liesel's, family does not support Hitler and the Nazi's.  They have been negatively impacted by the Nazi's, but they fake support.  They even are hiding a Jew in their house.  The dad is trying to join the Nazi party to get on the safe side, and in public they pretend to love and "hail" Hitler to stay safe in their Nazi town.  In class when we talked about the by-stander effect and how everyone who knew about the genocide didn't do anything, I think this book answers the question of why.  People either supported  the Nazi's completely or were to afraid to speak out.  Everyone kept quiet about their disagreements, so if people did share the same beliefs, they didn't know it.  People also didn't want to help the less fortunate because they were so worried about themselves.  They either had to completely follow Hitler, weather they wanted to or not, or were going to be taken away/killed.  

I think the book is really good.  It is a great story told in a different way than most other books.  It's interesting to read a World War Two story through a different perspective than most (the German perspective oppose to the jew/genocide victim).  

Outside Reading #1

For my outside reading book I am reading The Book Thief.  The book is different from most of the other books I have read.  The overall book itself is an easy read, but it's filled with vocabulary words that I don't know, which makes it more difficult to read.  The author also writes a few words in German which makes it hard to understand as well.  The book is also written in a unique way that is hard to describe.  The story is told in a very matter-of-fact way.  It has little paragraphs, almost like headlines, spaced in between the paragraphs that basically stop the story to answer a question, and then the story proceeds (kind of like in The Princess Bride when the grandpa talks about the book to his grandson, and the story takes a break).  The book is told from death's perspective.  I think it's interesting the way the story is told.  The book seems as if it is more about the "story of the story" than the "story of the characters", if that makes sense.  The book so far is about a girl living with her foster parents to escape the violence of WW2, and she stole a book, that she can't read.  I am just in the beginning and the story is still building so I don't have anything to say about it now, just that the book itself is interesting.  So far it is good.       

Overcomming odds

I read a little MN state overview of the High School boys hockey game against Hill-Murray on this web page.  Hill Murray was the underdog and Edina was ranked number one.  Edina thought they would win.  Hill Murray would have to overcome the odds to beat Edina.  Edina played a not-so-very-great game against the pumped up Hill Murray team.  Hill Murray won by a lot.  Even though Hill Murray was defined as the underdog, i think Edina was the lesser team that.  They worked hard and played together as a team.  Edina was cocky and lazy.  I think it was a typical underdog-beats-the-best team situation and a typical Edina outcome where we were super cocky.  Hill Murray deserved to win!

Love

I read a lovely poem about love.  It expressed how the writer's love grew like a bud into a flower and always grew bigger.  It was a typical love poem.  I read it on the internet.  I think when you truly love some one, that is great and wonderful.  I personally have never fallen in love before but I bet when I do I wouldn't read that poem to the person I love.  I don't think love can be expressed in a poem like that.  Although, I think the person who wrote it wrote it for love or maybe not, but it wasn't very original and they should not be a poet.