The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

This week I finished The Jungle, my classic. It's not particularly long but the language is really hard to read. The book took a while to get into, the middle was great and very interesting, but the end lost my interest a little. I think that the main problem with this book is that instead of one main story arc the book is made up of small events and conflicts that are solved quickly. That is less interesting than having one bigger conflict. Overall, I liked The Jungle but it was not a quick read, it was more of an in-depth look at a time period and type of people.

Slice of Life 5

This started out pretty normal and got weird fast. 

I'm always torn when my phone has low battery. It always seems to shut down right as I get into something, but when I do not use it, I am disappointed by what I am missing. That raises a truly 21st century conundrum, use the limited battery supply, or wait until it is plugged in? On one hand, it is good for the battery life to drain it completely once in a while. On the other, it makes me feel so helpless to be stripped of that communication. For all I know, the zombie apocalypse could be upon us and I would never have a chance to say my last goodbyes to Siri as the rotting monsters overtake me. I can imagine the scenario, the other way, only two percent battery to send me off, half finished unsent texts haunting me. Do zombies eat metal, glass and plastic? I am sure they are not much tougher than bones. Maybe the zombies will set America back a century so we can start over with solar-charging phones.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

I have been reading The Jungle. It was published in 1906 and it is about a Lithuanian immigrant, his wife and her family when they move to America and look for work. The story is set in the stockyards and industrial areas of Chicago and it follows their lives as they struggle to pay rent and feed their family.
I think that this is a classic because after it was published it brought awareness to the situation of families like this one and it set new standards for meat products. It made life better for a lot of people, so I think that it is a classic. So far it is a pretty good book. The language is really old fashioned to it is sometimes hard to read. It took me a while to get in to it, but once I did, it is a really interesting story. There are some intense and gory scenes as well as adult themes, so I would recommend this to anyone who is aware of that.

Slice of Life #4

When I watch TV I like to be isolated. I like to utterly unreachable, never bothered by my family's mundane needs. My parents are always accessible and willing to help, in fact, begging to help. Today they sit completely unresponsive, watching the football game. In a way, it's nice to do my homework in peace, but it's disconcerting. How important does something have to be to be 'just not the same' when recorded? How meaningful can it be when all I see is guys shoving each other and hitting their heads on the ground for an oddly shaped ball? I'm pretty sure we're the orange ones? It's a change, for sure, but in the end, I'm glad that we have more than one TV.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

This week I read The Book Thief. It has been on my list for a while and it's been recommended to me by a ton of people. This book is about Liesel Meminger, a girl who was put into foster care for unspecified reasons after her brother dies. She spends a while with her new parents and learns about the realities of WWII and hides a Jew in her house. She also learns how to read and steals books.

I liked this book a lot. I know a fair amount about the Holocaust and have read a lot of Holocaust books because my Hebrew tutor assigns them, but this is one of the best. The perspective was very unique and I thought that the narration by death worked very well. It reminded me of The Boy In the Striped Pajamas, but I liked this book a lot better. It was very sad. The ending was not at all what I expected. My only complaint was that everyone had such dimensional personalities except for Liesel, the protagonist. I would recommend this to anyone, keeping in mind that it does have some heavy subject matter and is not a quick read.

Slice of Life #3

This is a Portuguese Man O' War jellyfish.

It took a while to sink in, the freedom. It was only two weeks, but on that first day I wasn't counting. I was excited to do nothing. I had the opportunity to do nothing as much as I wanted. As much or as little. I wasn't ready to argue with my parents. In my mind, no one was at that point, but no one knew it.  I was ready to disregard everything and recharge, to sleep past 6:45 and laugh when I woke up because a week ago I would have been four hours into the school day. I wanted to watch more t.v. than I had in the past month, and so I did, because I had priorities. My priorities were to wear pajamas the entire day and put school out of my mind.

Finally the day-counting started and I realized that I would not stay here for eternity because I have a life to live and decisions to make, and most importantly, loose ends to tie up. I had to start projects, finally ending up where I had been before, tangled in the loose ends until I tie them up for good.

The Edge of Nowhere by Elizabeth George

Before break I read The Edge of Nowhere. It is about a girl with this mind reading power who hears her stepfather's thoughts and learns that he committed a crime. Her mother drops her off on Whidbey Island to stay with a family friend who died before she got there. She has to find a place to stay and a way to blend in while hiding from her stepfather.
It was okay. The author wrote "can" as "c'n" which made the dialogue really irritating to read. The characters had interesting names which kind of hid the fact that none of them had any dimension. The setting was supposed to be really unique, and I have never heard of Whidbey Island, but it was meaningless because the setting consisted of lists of locations that only readers from the island would know. The plot was unique and so were the themes and ideas of the book. It was a fast read and it was very entertaining. I don't know if I will read the others in the series. I have no idea where the author could go with that. I would tentatively recommend this book to anyone in our class because hopefully you would like it better than I did.