by Jun Ho Hwang, (24 posts) on May 12th, 2013 I think maybe people might know this book? It’s a famous book and I personally really enjoyed it so I read it again during the break and I’d love to introduce you guys this book!
The author of the book is Enid Blyton and he wrote series of this book. It’s a story about a group of children going on a trip all by themselves having adventures and its really interesting book hope you guys read it. I guess and hope it’s a novel that all sort of age groups would love to read but maybe the age group of us would most likely want to read it. People who don’t like children having adventures, then I recommend not to read it because it’s all about children having THRILLING adventures!
As I said at the beginning, I personally really enjoyed it so I’ve read it twice. There are as you can notice from the title 5 main characters in this story and their names are Julian, Dick, Anne, George (Georigina) and Timothy the dog. Julian, Dick and Anne are one family, George and Timothy the dog are one family. Then they become one group and often go on hiking then face some crisis. They become a team and they work together to solve the crisis. It’s a series of book so there are lots of crisis that’s interesting and exciting. I really do recommend this book.
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by Jun Ho Hwang, (24 posts) on May 12th, 2013 From my personal view I thought Merchant of Venice was not the most delightful movie and story I’ve seen. Actually it’s been quite a shock for me. I’ve heard of Jews being ignored and abused before in books and what teachers had told me before but I never actually thought that it would have been this serious and it has been a shock to me how people treated Jews like dogs and slaves with no respect.
I felt pity and poor for Shylock because in the story, Antonio borrows 3000 ducats from Shylock so that he can lend money to his friend Bassanio when he used to call Shylock a usurer. Then Shylock gave him an offer that he would take no interests and would take no more than 3000 ducats however Antonio needed to pay him back right back at time or else Shylock would take a flesh of pound from him so they sealed a bond with an agreement. Then Shylock’s daughter ran off with most of Shylock’s money because of love. Antonio was not able to pay Shylock back in time, so due to the bond Antonio had to give a pound of flesh to Shylock. Then Bassanio’s wife disguises as a lawer and defends for Antonio and orders Shylock to only take a flesh of pound and if it overweighs a pound or if there is blood on it he shall be killed. Shylock gives up and wanted to take the 3000 ducats but he was taken away all his property because of the attempt of killing Antonio.
In reward for saving Antonio, Bassanio gives the ring that his wife has given him. The ring that they promised it shall never come off him until his death. They seem to have a small argue or fight but in the end they become happy again and live happily. I didn’t like this ending because after all they did to the Jews, they live happily ever after because it’s unfair and and I feel sad for Shylock. Although he acted wrong too but the main cause for him to do such thing is the people who has mistreated him and the Jews.
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by Jun Ho Hwang, (24 posts) on May 12th, 2013 Sandpiper was written by an author called Ahdaf Soueif a FEMALE writer in 1994. I found this boring for me to read because I couldn’t really get what the story was about. The story starts with a woman who lives in Egypt, watching the waves on the beach thinking about her marriage. She was trying to figure out what had gone wrong in her marriage and she seemed depressed. After reading this, I realized how important it is to have background knowledge because when I first got this and saw the title. I didn’t know what the sandpiper meant and due to that, I didn’t get any of the story until the teacher explained to me.
I think I’ve learned a lot after reading this, because it made me think about the different perspectives of people on men and women in Egypt. Also I thought about what would be a perfect marriage? Was the woman in the short story truly in love with the her husband? But since I didn’t quite get it so I maybe missing parts that I don’t understand which is a shame! It was hard for me to approach to what the author was trying to tell us.
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by Jun Ho Hwang, (24 posts) on May 12th, 2013 “The Maze Runner” is a science fiction novel thats written by an author called James Dashner. I personally really liked this book because of it’s interesting ideas and how the author continued the story. It really does have a fascinating idea that catches the reader’s eye and I strongly recommend this book. The novel starts with this kid called ‘Thomas’. He suddenly wakes up and founds out he is trapped somewhere in a maze. In the maze there are other kids too and the have some common facts. They only happen to remember their first names and they are all boys. The oldest kid in the maze is only 17 years old. Every month a new kid gets ‘delivered’, and Thomas was the most recently delivered kid in the maze. Then straight after Thomas was delivered, the first-ever girl gets delivered and everyone in the maze gets confused. Thomas starts to adapt to the life in the maze, and slowly starts to find out the hidden secrets in the maze…
Read the novel to find out if you’re interested!
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by Rebecca, (31 posts) on May 10th, 2013 Recently I read the book ‘Dead To You’ by Lisa Mcmann. Overall the book was quite good but the ending was terrible. The story is basically about a boy who is 16 who gets reunited with his family after he was abducted when he was 7. The story was really interesting but when you read the story there seems to be something going on in the background that makes you want to read more because you can’t shake the feeling off of you. Now the ending was terrible. In a way I would imagine some might find it a good ending but for most it was terrible and utterly shocking. It almost makes you wish you had never read that last chapter, at least I do. It isn’t a girly book so I imagine most people would like it. I might recommend it to a friend but probably not.
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by Hyeong Jin, (24 posts) on May 9th, 2013 The romanticism presentation was very informative and interesting. There were tons of information and detailed background knowledge of romantic artists. Before I watched the presentation, I wasn’t quite sure about what is romanticism and the difference between realism and romanticism. “Tyger” by William Blake had a great impact on me, because this poem explained almost every key features of romanticism.
I learnt quite a lot of romanticism features from Jesses’s presentation. I heard of “The Sorrows of Young Werther” so his presentation was familiar to me. I learnt that this novel is extremely emotional. It was very interesting to hear about Werher syndrom which means young people suiciding the same way as Werther did.
I liked Rebbeca’s Da Ye’s and Mizuki’s presentation because it was very detailed and they talked about american transcendentalists which I had no clue about it. They really showed a value of each transcendentalists well. I read some part of “Nature” by Emerson. Eventhough I read only part of it, I was still amazed at the idea of living in the nature.
Janani, Denise and Sunniva’s presentation was the most eye catching presentation because it was about art work and music. I really liked how they picked most famous work from them and find connection and similarlities between them. They also talked about variety of different style each individual artisits used.
Overall, it was very interesting and informative to listen to all of presentations. I’ve got a confidence in answering romanticism questions.
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by Hyeong Jin, (24 posts) on May 1st, 2013 Personally, Sandpiper was quite boring for me to read, because I couldn’t really understand the story. When I first read this story, I didn’t know what is meaning of “Sandpiper”. Eventhough I learnt the meaing of sandpiper, I still can’t figure out why did the author named this story as “Sandpiper” I really like this story because it explores difference in cultures between men and wife.
This story is about a wife who lives in Egypt, near a beach thinking over what went wrong in her marriage. This is the first story which taught me that difference in culture and belief can have a serious affect on marriage. It was very hard for me to think about marriage breaking apart because of different belief. If I was the wife, I would have changed my belief to keep the marriage not to fall apart.
I didn’t enjoyed the story more than other stories. I think this is more suitable for girls because it is a love story. The main reason why I didn’t find this story interesting is because I couldn’t really find connection between me and the story.
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by Tanmay, (30 posts) on April 29th, 2013 The Romanticism project was a ver insightful and very interesting project because I personally know a very few poets and artists and its these types of assessments which make me really learn more about the vast world out there with a huge about of literary poets authors and artists. We started learning about different types of artists and poets and even some authors who have written ver well read books and have been about a lot of philosophical values and prinicples. Romanticism itself connects itself to nature and the heard instead of the mind. Unlike neo-classicism which is about realistic approaches.
What I learned from Rebbeca’s Da Ye’s and Mizuki’s presentation was that romanticism in America was mainly started by Ralph Waldo Emerson a great poet and thinker. He was the leader of the transcendentalists. They also talked about Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry David Thoreau and Bronson Alcott. Each of them had significant value. Emerson was very famous for his book “Nature” and Alcott was a fairly mystical person although the idea still bemuses me.
Jesse and Guillarme worked on 2 romantic artists Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Jesse read the book about The sorrows of young Werther which talks about how Werther loved someone so deeply but in the end kills himself using the gun from the person he loves. In my eyes it was kinda funny really. Personally I did not learn much from Guillarme’s presentation but i know the Rousseau wrote a book about some girls and when one of them dies.
Janani, Denise and Sunniva did the project on Bethoven and J.M.W. Turner. Beethoven was a romantic composer in a way and J.M.W. Turner was a romantic artist. Personally this was one of my favorites because i really like the work of Turner and not just that his work also showed up in world’s scholars cup which made me want to listen even more. Plus Turner in each of his artwork you can really see the trends and the style painting and the style of his own art that he uses. This is what I like about this presentation.
I was absent from Eric, Junho’s and Hyeong Jin’s presentation but i know the talked about the romantics of William Blake, Percy Shelly, Marry shelly and lord Byron.
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by Jesse, (32 posts) on April 29th, 2013 The story is about Fitz, the bastard son of a fictional kingdom, as he trains to become an assasin. He turns up, out of nowhere, at an outpost in the mountainous borders of the empire, and is left there by a man who remarks that he is the long lost bastard son of a knight. He is then taken to the capital, by the guards. He immediately develops a bond with the Prince, Verity, and the master of the stable, Burrich, his father’s right hand, who has been instructed by the father to raise the boy as best he could. His father had left the castle to live with his wife, so as to avoid shame.
The boy, whilst working in the stables, discovers he has the “Wit”, a forbidden ability that allows him to telepathically communicate with animals. The secret is closely guarded by Burrich, and prince Verity, and his Assasin mentor, Chade, a mysterious, hermit like recluse who lives in a secluded tower, entry to which is protected by a hidden mechanism in a wall, so that it appears as though there is no door, nor handle. The boy swears an Oath to become a “King’s Man”, which means unrequited loyalty as well as learning how to become an assasin. Shortly after, his father dies, and the queen is suspected of having had him assasinated. The whole plot would be far too long to describe, and it unravels in interesting ways. I would certainly recommend this book, as it gives a creative spin to the usual concept of medieval life, despite it being set in a fictional setting.
The stories Royal Assasin” and Assasin’s Quest” continue his story, as he completes quests for the king, and in the other 2 books, Royals Assasin and Assasin’s Quest, fights Raiders and Forged ones. (Forged ones are civilians whose brains have been numbed, effectively making them zombies.) To find out more, you’ll have to read the books, as, once again, they are too substantial in their plot to describe them adequately.
A quotation from the book Assasin’s Quest:
“For a long time, Burrich was silent. Then he said, “I should have found a way togo with Kettricken and the Fool. But there were only 2 horses, and only supplies enough for two. I hadn’t been able to get more than that. And so they went alone.”He glared into the fire, then asked, “I don’t suppose anyone has heard anything of King-in Waiting Verity?”Chade shook his head slowly. “King Veriry,” he reminded Burrich softly. “If he were coming back, I think he’s be here by now”, he said quietly. “A few more days like this, and there will be Red Ship Raiders in every bay. I no longer believe Verity is coming back.”
If you’re wondering whether he is proven right, or, more likely, what this quotation is talking about, you’ll have to read the books. I found them veyr much to mjy liking due to their vigorous plotline that seems to drastically pull you in. The start of the books may be tiresome, but it is completely worth it, with none of the melodramatic elements present in most contemporary “Literature.”
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by Jesse, (32 posts) on April 29th, 2013 This book is about highly covert operations executed by a Navy Seals Team in the international conflict for the Falkland Islands, which the Argentines, with minor Russian help, take from the Brittish. In this fictional plotline, the events of 1982 happen all over again, except with a win for the Argentines. When the British set sail against the Argentines to attempt to recapture their islands, with a highly outdated and weak force, the Argentines are able to destory their entire fleet, with help of a Russian Nuclear Submarine, which sank their flagship, an aircraft carrier.
In the book, the US, under pressure from BP and Exxon, move in with a covert SEAL team, and terrorize the Argentines, by destorying their air bases, their prime aircraft, and kill their men. The Argentines eventually agree to give the oil rights back to BP and Exxon in exchange for full governance of the islands. The Russian Submarine is sunk by a US Hunter Killer Submarine.
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by Tanmay, (30 posts) on April 29th, 2013 I think that sand piper is a bit boring compared to some other stories I have read lately. Sandpiper however still remains a mystery as to why the author named the story sandpiper. What still amuses me is the overall theme and the style of writing that the author has used to either express his thought and feelings. What I really liked about the story was about that it really explores the difference in the cultures between the man and his wife. We know that the setting of the story is in Egypt near a beach and the wife is basically contemplating on what went wrong in the marriage.
Usually most authors I read they easily tell you what went wrong but they wont make the story so detailed and interesting. This story in my eyes really talks about the vast differences in cultures and beliefs and how this cause the couple to drift apart slowly without them actually knowing about it at the start.
Although in my opinion as I have sad earlier it is more suited to girls as it is more like a romantic love story. Thats why I have not been able to really connect with it. Other stories are okay and stories like the Destructors was fairly interesting. Although what I did like about this story was the fact that even though the couple was drifting apart they still stayed together because of their immense love that they have for their daughter Lucy.
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by Jesse, (32 posts) on April 29th, 2013 Based on the best-selling Assasin’s Creed games, it tells the story of a young assasin completing various tasks, battling a group called the Templars. The story can be linked to the classic battle of the orderly, organized (neo-classicism) vs. The freedom fighters (romantics). The plotline, rather energetic, follows the assasin through each of his ordeals, and though maybe not a masterpiece, the plot is certainly entertaining. At times, it is rather cheesy with its overly dramatic heroics and its sentimental characters, thus I would not recommend this to adults, however, it is a fun read, and if you want to read for entertainment, this is a book to consider.
As the title indicates, the story is set in the Renaissance era, featuring some key novelty like Leonardo da Vinci, and the Spanish General that conquered Italy from the French, as well as the Pope. Fictional events predominated by supernormal actions like jumping from a 5 story building, or the notion of all the major powers in Europe in a madcap chase for some precious artifact called the “Apple of Eden” makes the book somewhat weird… However, the concept is richly imaginitive.
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by Janani, (30 posts) on April 28th, 2013 “Sandpiper” by Ahdaf Soueif is a short story about an European woman’s relationship with her husband and family. The story start at a beach, where the woman starts to tell us readers about her past and how she first fell in love with her husband. She then talks about how they got married and how they had their first child, Lucy, as her expression of love to her husband. We then see their relationship break away because of certain differences between them.We can see this when she sais “My foreignness which had been so charming, began to irritate him. My struggles with his language, my need to be protected from the sun, the mosquitoes, the drinking water.”(374) The story then shows us that the woman’s sole purpose for living has become Lucy.
In this story, the protagonist is surrounded by many people but she still feels very lonely. Also, by seeing that she keeps thinking about her past, it looks like she regrets whatever she has done. “I should have gone.”(372) She keeps repeating this sentence which shows how much regret she has. There is also a clash in cultural differences between her husband and her. She also lives in a foreign place which gives her a more lonely feeling. The woman is also unnamed which shows us that she doesn’t have much of an identity, she feels left out and isolated.
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by Jesse, (32 posts) on April 28th, 2013 The story sandpiper seems to be predominated by notions of captivity, small hints that we must thoroughly scrutinise in order to become any wiser, but subtly, it seems to hint at the fact that the main character, a woman, is restricted in her movements, as though she was a sandpiper, chained to her needs, helpless. Her seeming sagacity shows through when she says “I used to see patterns in their drift. [...] Just the balm of my foot, because there was never much room, on those white spaces that glinted flat and free of sand. I had an idea that the patterns on a stone should be made by nature alone. I did not want one grain of sand, blown by a breeze I could not feel, to change its course because of me. What point would there be in trying to decipher a pattern I had caused.”
This sugests a rather venerated attitude towards both nature and her aesthetically impregnable decisions, as well as prudency when she remarks that nature is not a force to be tampered with, and respectfully acknowledges its significance when she says “To change its course because of me”, showing her humility when she recognizes that nature is above her understanding.
The metaphorical comparison between a sandpiper and this woman helps to amplify the bitter aspects of the woman’s life, and how she is constained, how she, again metaphorically, only eats, runs from the water, and then eats again. The ambiguous mention of the water does much to confuse me. Is she talking about the husband? Is she talking about her child? Both are, effectively, restricting her.
Overall, this story made me feel rather sad, but I loved the way it was written, with a lot of thought and care, and very realistically balanced. I really like how the author somehow manages to find this way with the words, that makes it sound melancholical not because of the words themselves, but because of the order they are in. These small, insignificant words like ‘used to’, “Never much room”, “To change its course because of me”, the tone here suggests sorrow, the diction is sad. In my opinion, it was the best story so far, despite its apparent lack of a plot.
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by Eric, (33 posts) on April 26th, 2013 Yesterday in class, we read Sandpiper, by Ahdaf Soueif, and it was a very interesting piece of literature. Soueif uses very convincing and emotional words to convey the slightly depressed and melancholy feelings of the main character, a memsahib married to an Egyptian. She builds up a very sentimental narrative that makes the plot extremely enjoyable and interesting. I think this is one of the best fictional biographies that I have ever read, though it may be because I haven’t read too many.
One of my major feelings of this short story was how much information was stored in it. The author must have done a lot of research for her to have been able to write this story out. I had to search up at least 4 different words that came from Indian or some other language. Memsahib, mentioned in the above, I now know to be the polite way of saying a married white woman in India. Not only was there plenty of new vocabulary for me to interpret, the story had a lot of powerful feelings that was really strong and overwhelming.
The main theme of regret and feeling like an outcast really made me sympathise with this poor main character, who at first enjoyed this foreign life, but then came to regret this decision. Throughout the entire narrative, I felt a build-up of feeling for this poor woman.
Overall, I felt Sandpiper to be an extremely beautiful and well-written short story. Although it is a bit boring, it was worth it at the end. Out of the few short stories we have read in class, I enjoyed this one the most.
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by Rebecca, (31 posts) on April 25th, 2013 In my opinion ‘Sandpiper’ by Ahdaf Soueif is one of the best stories we have read in class yet. The story is somewhat like a movie almost, with the flashbacks of the past that help us as readers understand the story and the character better. The story itself is quite sad, how she was in love, and it broke apart. I really like how her husband is made almost into two people. The lover and now just her husband, as if she barely knows him and her lover is gone.
I never see my lover now. Sometimes as he romps with Lucy on the beach, or bends over her grazed elbow or sits across our long table from me at a dinner-party, I see a man I could yet fall in love with, and I turn away.
The idea that her marriage collapsed and she can’t escape and spends her days wasting away thinking of memories of the time that were good is sad. The atmosphere is almost somewhat gloomy, as she is lonely,
My only playmate now is Lucy.
and Hopeless. She also isn’t use to the culture and so she has issues with it which adds to why her marriage had trouble.
My foreignness, which had once been so charming, began to irritate him
The story really makes us as readers feel sympathy for this woman who is stuck in a foreign country because she loves her daughter so much that she would stay with a man she no longer loves. Though this is one of the best stories we have read in class, it is really quite sad, but at least it makes more sense then a man who is obsessed with pumpkins.
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by Da Ye Lee, (27 posts) on April 25th, 2013 Sandpiper is a shortstory written by Ahdaf Soueif. The main character is a lady who has a Egyptian husband and a daughter. I believe that the main theme of this short story is how she doesn’t love her husband anymore and how they are just staying as a couple because of their daughter. I could feel that she doesn’t love her husband anymore. She even says,
I never see my lover now. Sometimes, as he romps with Lucy on the beach, or bends over her grazed elbow, or sits across our long table from me at a dinner-party, I see a man I could yet fall in love with, and I turn away.
This shows how her mind has changed a lot since the marriage and how she doesn’t see the person that she used to love in her husband. She even calls her husband, “her father” and does not bother calling him differently. She doesn’t even bother to love him again and she lets go of her love. However, I could feel that she still misses her husband because she talks about the beach she went with her husband for so many times.
After reading this short story, I felt like the lady was neglected by her husband and is now trying to find the happiness from her daughter. I think this short story also deals with cultural difference. She is from a European country, and her husband is from Egypt, so they must have different lifestyle and I feel like the difference in their lifestyle caused them to not love each other anymore. I think this is how all marriages go at the end. We see it in the movie, in the books and everywhere. They love each other so much and they decide to get married. Then few years later, they don’t love each other anymore. After their love is gone, the only thing that is holding them together is their kid. This short story reflects the reality very well and this story makes me feel so sad because I feel like this is what is going to happen in our future. I really enjoyed reading it.
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by Kim, (17 posts) on April 24th, 2013 After thinking the author couldn’t write anything better then Eragon i was proven wrong when the author wrote Eldest. Eldest continues the story of Eragon and tells it in a even greater way the Eragon. The story is very intresting and very fast paced you will find t hard to put the book down. The book is quite long however it is not that hard to read. would recommand this book to everyone.
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by Kim, (17 posts) on April 24th, 2013 Eragon is a epic about a simple farmboy whose life was transformed forever when he fond a dragon egg. The finding of the dragons egg transformed the young boy’s (Eragon) life forever. He is whisked into a world of adventures, deceit and magic. He suffered losses, griefs in his adventure but also found a purpose for himself. I really enjoy reading this book, i think the words are masterfully crafted and the descriptions are just plain beautiful. I really like this book and would recommend it to anyone who like a good fantasy novel.
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by Kim, (17 posts) on April 24th, 2013 This book is very interesting, it deals with small adolescent things like sex, dating and friends. However it also deals with the big religious/philosophical things like “what happens when we die?”, “How do we live our life?”. I really enjoy reading this book as i really enjoying reading books about other teens and what they go through/ their problems. However i also like the big philosophical questions as they started to get me thinking about these questions. If like novels about teens or to challenge your brain i would recommend this book for you.
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by Denise, (30 posts) on April 23rd, 2013 “The Gift” by James Patterson.
The Characters Whit & Wisty were imprisoned by the wicked forces of the totalitarian regime known as the New Order. They were barely able to escape with their lives, they became part of a hidden community of teens like themselves. Whit and Wisty established themselves as leaders and they were willing to sacrifice anything to save kids from being brutally imprisoned by the New Order. Wisty has a special power. When i started reading the book, i was interested in the story really quickly and it was hard to put down the book. It is great how James Patterson is always able to keep that ‘interesting’ factor alive , i never have to be told twice to buy the second book in the series after reading the first one. I read the first book of this trilogy and i absolutely loved it, i really enjoyed this one too and i can not wait to read the third book. I recommend this book to anyone who loves to read mysterious, sad, exciting stories.
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by Jun Ho Hwang, (24 posts) on April 23rd, 2013 I am Number Four is a novel written by Pittacus Lore. It’s a fiction novel where this teen called John Smith is actually extraordinary and he is from out the space. There were nine of them including John Smith but 3 of them were already killed by the brutal Mogadorians. The Mogadorians are a spices that invaded the ‘Cepan’ where John Smith were born. They are born to kill and they track the nine teens one by one. The special extraordinary teens have number on their body and the Mogadorians have to kill them number by number for some reason (Read to find out!). The teens has guardians with them to be protected. Number 1,2,3 has been already killed and number 4 the main character John Smith knows that he is next. The novel is about how number 4 has survived and how he gets his extraordinary ability and fights back with the Mogadorians. He then goes off to find the other teens. I personally really had fun reading this book. It was really great reading it because I like fiction books and the story’s setting was really fresh and new to me. Lots of people enjoyed reading this book and a movie has been published, so I hope you guys read this book. There are some different things between the book and movie so I recommend to watch or read both of it!
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by Mizuki, (25 posts) on April 23rd, 2013 Paper Towns, written by John Green, is a novel about two children called Quantin and Margo.
The story starts from the scene where they go to a park and find a dead man who committed suicide after the divorce with his wife. Then, the story jumps to the present, where Q and Margo are high-schoolers. Margo has become a very popular person in the school, however Quantin is more of a quiet, ordinary student. They still go to the same school, but the “world” they live in are very different so they hardly talk. Margo suddenly goes to Q’s house and asks him to help her do something. They had a weird, special night and Q thinks that they might be able to have a “special” relationship, but Margo disappears after the night.
“That’s always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people want to be around someone because they’re pretty. It’s like picking your breakfast cereals based on color instead of taste.”
This is a quote from Margo. I really like this line because i agree to it, and think that so many people are like that, and I always thought that was such a ridiculous way of “choosing” friends.
I like this book because I really like the way Margo thinks.
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by Mizuki, (25 posts) on April 22nd, 2013 Room by Emma Donoghue is a novel about the love of the mother and the son.
It is about Ma and his 5 years old son, Jack, who are locked in a small “Room” by a man called Old Nick. Ma got kidnapped when she was young, and was being raped by him. Jack was born there, and he never got out, so Room was the only place he knew and he thought that everything else were fake and they were the only “real” people. One day, Ma suggests to escape from Room because she found that he was unemployed, but Jack refuses, because he didn’t know the outside world, and was scared of it. However, he finally accepts it because he found out that they might not be able to live if they stayed in Room. They succeed to escape from the room, but because of the persistent interviewers, it becomes impossible for them to have a normal life and Ma suffers from mental breakdown. He lives in his grandmother’s house, but he gets more confused and eventually got put into a living residence.
The theme of this book is innocence and childhood, and people that are used to the modern, convenient world might enjoy it because they might notice new things by reading this book. People who do not really like children might not enjoy it, because sometimes Jack is a little bit annoying because of his innocence and ignorance.
I enjoyed reading this book, because the words used are very easy and the story was also not very difficult to understand. In addition to that, it made me think about how the media could affect people in both good and bad ways.
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by Tanmay, (30 posts) on April 22nd, 2013 I’ve persisted with the a song of ice and fire series to continue reading the next gigantic book. I’m not sure why. I don’t find it as compelling as many others seem to. It’s not bad, but I don’t think I have the memory to keep up with the visual descriptions of emblems he keeps giving as I have said in my earlier post he likes to describe the scene very clearly but sometimes the description lasts a long time and it can get boring.Clash of kings is a very serious novel but with hints of jokes and humour. This book is more than a 1000 pages and consists of many concurrent stories going on at the same time which is what makes it interesting. The speciality of George R.R. Martin is the fact that he can tell a story with more than 10 things going on at the same time and sometimes also at different times. This is probably one of the most unique things i thought about george R.R. Martin.
The clash of kings follows the story from Game of thrones which i have talked about in the last post and has the very detailed story line. The description and the story line basically follows although the people narrating the story changes. Some of the main character in Game of thrones which narrates the story from some different points of view. One thing that I really like about the book is the title because in its own little way it fits perfectly. Martin could have given hundreds of different titles which all might have fitted the book but this one fits book more perfectly and by looking at it it already gives a sense of what might be in the book.
This book was a very catching and gripping book with a lot of melodrama inside it. If you like a tint of fantasy action and a story which is set in the medieval times then this book and this series is for you. Hoever i recommend you read the first book before starting on this one.
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by Janani, (30 posts) on April 21st, 2013 “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini is a book about two woman, Mariam and Laila, who live in Afghanistan. This book is split in four sections, focusing first on Mariam, then on Laila and then them coming together and their relationship.
Mariam lives in Herat, a small town, with her mother. They are very poor and live on the outskirts. Her father is a very rich man who almost owns everything in Herat and visits her every week. Soon Mariams mother dies and Mariam keeps blaming herself for not being at home when it happened. Her father takes her in but soon arranges her marriage to a man thirty years older to her called Rasheed. Rasheed is a well known shoemaker in another town called Kabul. Mariam hats her father because she feels as though she is unwanted and never sees her father again. In Kabul Mariam gets pregnant about seven times but is always unsuccessful so Rasheel becomes really abusive.
In the next part we see Laila and a boy called Tariq falling in love but because of the are they are separated. The war kills Laila’s family and injures her a lot. This is when she is taken in by Mariam and Rasheed. Laila finds out that she is pregnant with Tariq’s child but after some time she also finds out that Tariq is dead. Rasheed gets eager to have a second, younger and more beautiful wife and so he marries Laila and makes her his second wife. The child Laila has is named Aziza. Rasheed is not happy with having a girl and so he start being violent to both Laila and Aziza as well as Mariam. This forms a strong bond between Mariam and Laila. They try to escape from Rasheed but are soon caught and and things get worse.
Soon Laila has a child from Rasheed, this time a boy called Zalmai. There is then a drought which makes everyone poor. Aziza is sent to an orphanage. Rasheeds workshop gets burned down and he works somewhere else. When he is away, surprisingly Tariq visits Laila and they fall in love again. When Rasheed return Zalmai tells his father everything Rasheed almost kills Laila and thats when Mariams kills Rasheed with a shovel. Mariam is then assasinated. Tariq and Laila then take care of the orphanage and Laila gets pregnant. We dont know if the child is a boy or a girl but if it is a girl she will be named Mariam.
As you can see this story has very strong and powerful feelings inside. It really made me cry a lot and it was really hard for me to stop. The story, its descriptions, the feelings in it all is just so wonderful and it makes you feel like your in it too. I recommend this book to everyone who likes stories about friendship, tragedy, happiness and strong bonds. This book is the best book I have read so far and it has really taught me a lot about Afghanistan and more about friendship.
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by Janani, (30 posts) on April 21st, 2013 The presentations about Romanticism all gave me information about people and ideas I did not know about before. The artists, poets, writers, musicians all had different jobs and expressed themselves in differently but there were many similarities which were mainly linked to Romanticism but the artists life also had an impact on their work.
Shawn, Kim and Tanmay worked on William Wordsworth and John Keaths. William Wordsworth was a romantic poet who lived in Lake District. This was important because it was a big influence to one of his works called “Nature”. William Wordsworth wrote a lot about nature because of where he lived and everyone loved it a lot. Another work from him is “The Prelude”. This poem has a lot of feelings put into it. John Keaths was also a romantic poet. One of his works was “Bright Start” which was written for his lover. He links nature to the woman’s beauty and captures the feelings and passion he has for her through the images of the nature in his poem. The main thing I learned from these two poets was how their surroundings can have an impact on their work. Their work was all linked to nature and love which brought in the romanticism.
Rebecca, Da Ye and Mizuki worked on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Bronson Alcott. Although they worked on these people, their work was split into two sections, Transcendentalists and Romanticists. Emerson, Thoreau and Alcott were Transcendentalists. I learned was this meant for the first time. Transcendentalists were a group of American romanticists who followed the path of nature. Emerson was the leader of the transcendentalists. He was famous for his book “Nature”. Alcott was known as a very mystic person. He was into spirituality and philosophy. Walter was a writer. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a Romanticist.
Eric, Junho and Hyeongjin worked on William Blake, Percy Shelly, Mary Shelly and Lord Byron. Mary Shelly was married to Percy Shelly. She is the author of Frankenstein. She had got the idea from one of her dreams. Frankenstein was related to romanticism because it was Gothic. It was also about how you are born good but the things around you and the people around you make you ‘bad’. Her husband, Percy Shelly, was a very famous lyricist. His first attempt in Gothic Romanticism was “Zastrozi”.
Jesse and Guillaume worked on Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and The Sorrows of Young Werther. I didn’t learn too much about the links to Romanticism in Guillaume’s presentation but I learned that Rousseau was a writer who wrote a book about two girls where one dies. Goethe wrote a book called “The Sorrows of Young Werther” in which a man loves a woman but in the end kills himself using the same woman’s gun.
Our presentation was on Beethoven and J.M.W Turner. J.M.W Turner was a romantic artist. He loved the waves and the sky. In most of his work you can see water and a thunderstorm but there are also other works from him which show more of a heaven than an earth. “Fisherman at sea” is a great example for Romanticism. In it you can see the nature fighting with the fisherman. The thunderstorm, the waves and the who painting it self gives a very frightening and Gothic feeling to it. The dark colors gives a mysterious aura. Beethovens childhood was very important and had an influence on the rest of his life. Beethoven father would abuse him and get drunk a lot, which is when Beethoven had to use his music to support his family. Beethoven had a lot of lovers, usually from his piano lessons. He always wrote music for them, example “Fuer Elise” and “Romantic”. In this music you can see him completely expressing himself and showing his feelings and passion through his music. Beethoven was also interested in Napoleon.
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by Janani, (30 posts) on April 21st, 2013 “Crazy Beautiful” by Lauren Baratz-Logsted is a book that Mrs.Fitzgerald and few few other girls recommended to me. This book has two main characters, Lucius and Aurora. Lucius blew both his hands off in an explosion. He made this explosion himself while trying to ‘make something’. This is the reason he has hooks instead of arms and this is also the reason his family and him had to move. Aurora has just lost her mother due to cancer and has also moved with her father, a librarian who will work at her new school. She loves him a lot. This story goes on about how Lucius is treated and Aurora, a popular and beautiful girl, cant do much to help because of her friends but tries in every way to talk to and spend time with Lucius, the man she loves. With both of them attracted to each other in secret, this is a strong book about friendship, love and recovery.
I liked this book a lot but there were somethings that really annoyed me, example : the story is really slow so when you finish the book you would say “Is that it? Nothing much happened!”. So if the book had a longer story it would have been better because the ending makes me feel like the author was just too lazy to write more and just quickly ended it. People who love short stories would enjoy this book because even though there are many pages, the story is pretty short. I love how there are two narrators in this book. One chapter comes from Lucius’ point of view and the next chapter comes from Aurora’s point of view. People who have read “The Future Of Us”(my first dear post) , which I have seen a few people in my year read, will really enjoy this book because they are a bit similar. The girls should read this book, it wont take too much of your time. This book is very beautiful and the descriptions and feelings in this book are really heart filled.
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by Mizuki, (25 posts) on April 19th, 2013 From the presentation, I learned that Romanticism is a movement during the 18th and the 19th century that is against the Neoclassicism. People were being very idealistic and extreme ideas, the good people are good throughout the story, and bad people were completely bad. Transcendentalism is a movement in America from the 1830′s to the 1840′s, and is very similar to Romanticism.
William Wordsworth was a Romantic poet who loved nature, and was greatly influenced by his childhood. He loved freedom, and the many of the writings he did are about freedom and nature. Beethoven is a very famous German composer. His mother was very nice and moralistic, but his father, who taught him music , was always drunk and slapped Beethoven every time he made a mistake. He thought music was more important than words, so he struggled with spelling and math, and quit school when he was 10, to concentrate on music. He started working to earn money for his family when he was 12. He wanted a perfect wife, and fell in love a lot, but he was getting deaf and he was poor, so he died alone when he was 56. As he got old, he was getting insane and his songs became weird as well.
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by Shawn Hsu, (29 posts) on April 19th, 2013 In the recent classes, we have been looking at different artists and poets of the Romantic era. We were split into 6 groups to research about individual artists and poets. Our group researched about John Keats and William Wordsworth. Others researched Mary Shelley, William Blake, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ludwig Van Beethoven, J.M.W. Turner, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Amos Bronson Alcott, and Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe.
Our group went first, as we presented the poets Wordsworth and Keats to the class. We analyzed their poems and their lives. Keats was born in 1795, and Wordsworth was born in 1770. In contrary to Keats, Wordsworth lived a long live, and passed away at the age of 80, while Keats died of a serious symptom of Tuberculosis at the age of 25. Both of them had made huge contributions to the Romantic era, considering Keats’ writing career had only started 5 years before he died. Wordsworth practically started the Romantic era in England. He published the “Lyrical Ballads” along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The book of poems consists of new ideas and elements, like emotions and descriptions of the nature. Wordsworth got the idea to write such a innovative style of poem because he was inspired by the French Revolution, the rebel-like event that revolutionized the ruling of the people, in a way that people could actually get their own freedom. As we all know, freedom, is something that Romantic artists are fond of.
The other groups went behind us, and I got to know all about the other Romantic Artists and their works. For example Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein” talks about how people were born good, but the society forces them to become bad, in the description of the monster’s experience. I also got to know about how Beethoven was this Romantic genius who had so many thoughts in his mind that he wanted to express, yet couldn’t because of his deafness and disabilities. He isn’t a typical Romantic as his works aren’t always optimistic. One of his most famous optimistic works actually was created after he went deaf, the 9th symphony, or known as “Ode to Joy.”
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by Eric, (33 posts) on April 19th, 2013 In English class for the past few lessons, we have split into groups and studied different Romantic artists to present to our classmates. The different artists available included Samuel Taylor Coleridge, J.M.W. Turner, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Throeau, Bronson Alcott, J.J. Rousseau, von Goethe, von Beethoven and a lot more. My group researched Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Blake, Mary Shelley, and Lord Byron. These writers were Gothic Romantics, but I won’t elaborate on that until later.
The first group presented to us an analyses of the poems and works of John Keats and William Wordsworth. These writers were more famed for their works than their biographies. Keats was born in Moorgate, London on October 31, 1795. He wrote many poems including “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” (The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy) about a woman temptress who destroys men as well as “Ode to a Nightingale” and “A Bright Star”. There is a lot of dramatic irony in the former poems and the latter describes how stars are steadfast in comparison to love. Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770 and died on April 23, 1850 at 80 years old. I didn’t catch anything else about him but I am pretty sure he had some very famous works.
The second group, us, focused on both the works and the biography on the writers. I learned that Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” was actually Romantic due to the focus on human nature, not only because of the mystery and horror. Also, William Blake’s “Tyger” was Romantic because of its very personified descriptions. I focused on two writers, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. These two were both Gothic Romantics, and took a lot from Greek mythology to describe the aspects of human nature. Byron was a cripple born with a club foot, and Shelley married the famous Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. Blake was a very dramatic poet who used a lot of dramatic words to create a mystical and somewhat tense atmosphere. I learned the most from my own group’s presentations and it was very fun educating the rest of the class about my Romantic artists.
The third group focused on the American Transcendentalists. These included Henry David Thoreau and Emerson. They were very influential Romantics who focused mainly on nature and its impact on humans.
To sum up, I learned a lot about Romantic artists as well as the features of Romanticism itself in relation to the works. I thought this was a very interesting project and it really helped deepen my knowledge of this era of literature.
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by Jesse, (32 posts) on April 19th, 2013 During the presentations on the various leading figures of the romantic era, it became clear that these men signified emotional qualities, and they represented these with passion, all their works are based on either inspiring emotions, describing emotions, or both. A recurring theme that all these authors present us with is nature and their philo for it. Example:
Their love of nature is, most probably, a reaction to previous times. Before the Romantic era, people were afraid of nature, but gradually a change came along, inspiring a love of nature, and views drastically changed, so that the trees in the forest were no longer menacing, and only just waiting to pounce, nor the plants vicious, poisonous traps of nature set out for evil, but benevolent hatchlings of nature, that would allow one to relax, go back to one’s natural surroundings.
Goethe, in Faust, starts of, quite remarkably, with an elaborately eloquent description of the majesty of the waves, and he portraits them as these phenomena that characterise elegance rather than brutal force, that they were beautiful rather than malignant.
In his other book, The Sorrows of Young Werther, Werther, the main character, is predominated by simple pleasures and impulses, like when he draws this little boy sitting next to a plough. This everyday scene is described so lyrically and with so much passion that it becomes almost ironic.
In Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, we once again find characters that are by emotions. The monster was at first good, but then people were all horrible to him, and he turned evil. This supports the Romantic view that all people are good, and that society makes them evil. Alternatively, we can argue that the character Frankenstein’s monster was Frankenstein’s baby, and that he represents this turning evil due to society, and that even though he was pure on the inside, humans care about aesthetics, rather than emotions. This also brings into play a special view of children, which recurs throughout Goethe’s novel, where he philosophically argues that e are all children, but that some of us are young, and some of us are old, and when Frankenstein’s monster is shot at trying to save children. He can be viewed as a child, with his purity and his innocence.
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by Da Ye Lee, (27 posts) on April 19th, 2013 Forever is a book written by Judy Blume. This book mainly discusses the first love and first heartbreak. My favorite line was,
I wanted to tell him that I will never be sorry for loving him. That in a way I still do – that maybe I always will. I’ll never regret one single thing we did together because what we had was very special. Maybe if we were ten years older it would have worked out differently. Maybe. I think it’s just that I’m not ready for forever.
I hope that Michael knew what I was thinking. I hope that my eyes got the message through to him, because all I could manage to say was, ‘See you around…’
Katherine says it when she breaks up with him and gets her heartbroken. This book was all romantic, sweet and so on except for the parts where they get too extreme. Girls who don’t mind reading inappropriate parts might like this book.
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by Rebecca, (31 posts) on April 19th, 2013 Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler is possibly one of the best books I have read. The book is so much more then some silly teenage love story novel. It is not some cliche story that you read of commonly, but a story that keeps you on the edge, It almost feels as if you are someone in the relationship recounting on what happened. The story won’t be relatable to you and not as enjoyable if you cannot relate to the main character. The book is really strange and different from every book I have read because it is from the view of the weird “arty” girl in the year rather then the popular pretty girl or some random normal girl. The people this book would appeal to those who are a little different from everyone else and wants different things from everyone else. I have no favorite quote from this story as the book itself is amazing. To be honest I wish more books like these were written because there are people like myself and others who are a little different from everyone else and there are times when you feel as if the characters in the book are not relatable, but this book is perfect.
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by Janani, (30 posts) on April 19th, 2013 “Au Revoir Crazy European Chick” by Joe Schreiber is a story about a boy named Terry. A foreign exchange student, Gobi, starts to live at his house. She is really awkward, doesn’t have any friends, nerdy and …. wants to go with Terry to the prom. Terry refuses because his band is performing the same night but his father makes him go to the prom instead. Thats the night when everything changes in his life. Gobi isn’t what he thought she was. So he ends up driving around town with an assassin next to him ordering him around to drive her to the places where all the people she wants to kill are. This story goes all around NewYork City.
The thing I like about this book is its story line and also how fast paced it was just like driving in a car. The author has made the characters really interesting with very good, bold characteristics. This book is really exciting and another thing that was good is the end of the book and all the suspense in every chapter. This book was easy to read and everyone should try reading this book. Its one of the best action books that I have read (without too much information on blood  ) and the ending is perfect for this book. So if you like good endings, you will really enjoy it!
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by Denise, (30 posts) on April 19th, 2013 “Ravens gate” by Anthony Horowitz, is about a 14 year old boy called Matt Freeman. One day Matt decides to break into a warehouse and gets caught by the police. The police then send Matt to yorkshire to live with Mrs.Deverill on a farm for a L.E.A.F project. While Matt lives at the farm, at night he sometimes hears whispering from the forest. Later in the story, he finds the police report from his parent’s death. He tries to escape, but there is no point because he would always ends up back at the farm no matter which way he tries. Matt decides to go into the forest where he discovers Omega One, an abandon nuclear power station. In the forest Matt meets a man named Tom Burgess, who invited Matt to come over to his house. Matt visits Toms house and finds Tom Burgess brutally murdered and ” Ravens Gate “ written on the wall.
This book was very interesting, whenever i had to stop reading it i always got left with suspense. This is defiantly a mysterious story, maybe even a little bit scary because there is some murder. I would recommend this book to anybody who likes to read mystery and adventure stories. Anthony Horowitz is a very good author in my opinion, after reading this book i read the second part and i loved it.
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by Da Ye Lee, (27 posts) on April 19th, 2013 I really enjoyed researching information about Romanticism for my oral presentation and watching others’ oral presentations about Romanticism. I found some useful and interesting information from oral presentations.
First of all, Shawn, Kim and Tanmay had an oral presentations about William Wordsworth and John Keats. The names were familiar but I didn’t know anything about them. I found out that William Wordsworth lived away from the city, and he was greatly influenced by nature. I believe that him not living in a city had an influence on him to write about the nature a lot and believe in nature. William Wordsworth and John Keats used nature like moon, butterfly and so on to describe their feeling and they enjoyed describing the nature a lot.
Secondly, Jun Ho, Eric and Hyeong Jin had an oral presentation about Mary Shelley, William Blake and Lord Byron. Mary Shelley is really famous for her work, Frankenstein. I have read Frankenstein so many times but I didn’t know that it was written by Mary Shelley. It was pretty interesting.
Next oral presentation was done by Jesse and it was about Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe. Just like other Romanticists, he wrote about the nature and he is famous for his book Sorrow of the Werther (?). He wrote this when he was 25 years old and Jesse found the book boring but beautiful.
Next one was done by Denise, Janani and Sunnivah. Their presentation was about Beethoven and J.M.W Turner. They focused on their paintings and their life. Beethoven had a hard time during his early life. He was overloaded with his feelings and music was really important to him.
I did learn a lot of things from these presentations. Some really valuable information and some really small but important information.
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by Sunniva, (22 posts) on April 19th, 2013 I am recently reading a book called “Skulduggery Pleasant – The Faceless Ones” by the Irish author Derek Landy. This novel is the third book in the Skulduggery Pleasant series.
The main character is fourteen year old Stephany. She is learning how to use magic and works with the detective Skulduggery Pleasant, who is an alive skeleton. All Teleporters got murdered except for one, Fletcher Renn, and they are trying to help him. They try attempt to prevent the Diablerie from finding a way to open a gate between earth and the Faceless Ones. This quote is when they first meet Fletcher Renn who is being threatened by Sanguine, a serial killer working for the Diablerie.
“Don’t listen to him,” Skulduggery warned. “Why would I need money?” Fletcher asked. “I teleport wherever I want to go and I take whatever I need. I don’t have to pay for anything.” “There are other rewards,” Sanguine tried, “We can work something out.” Flechter shook his head.”I’m sorry, I don’t know what any of you want, or why guns and knives are being waved around, and why the girl has been taken hostage, but everyone seems to be acting like having a talking skeleton in the room is perfectly normal. And you , where are your eyes? How can you see? How come the only people in this room with eyes are me and her?”
I love this novel because it never gets boring and made me laugh out loud. The plot sounds very crazy but the book is really good. I recommend it to boys and girls my age, who like books about action and fantasy combined with a fantastic grim sense of humor and sarcasm.
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by Rebecca, (31 posts) on April 19th, 2013 Recently we had oral presentations where we presented different people from Romanticism to our peers. Most of the presentations were pretty good and I managed to learn several things from them.
From Shawn, Kim and Tanmay’s presentation I learned that John Keats’ first book was an utter failure, and that he was about to marry another women but then died. I also learned that romanticism consists of writing about nature, writing about daily objects and using dreamy language. In quite a few presentations it was said that romanticism was finding beauty in simple normal things and that constantly talk about Nature. In one presentation I learned that in Romanticism there is two extremes, either everyone is happy in the end or everyone is unhappy. Another thing I learned from the presentations was that many of the ideas that were written had to do with the influence of the French Revolution. From Janani, Denise’s and Sunniva’s presentation I learned that James W Turner used images of weather and the mood of the weather to help him paint. I also learned that since Beethoven was deaf no one wanted to marry him.I learned from my project that Henry David Thoreau was one of the few writers who actually spent most of his time in the outdoors and writing about it compared to writers who wrote about the outdoors but did not experience it as Thoreau did.
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by Eric, (33 posts) on April 18th, 2013 The Warlock is the 5th fantasy novel in the series The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. The novel tells of a completely fictional world where the Gods and monsters that we know from myths and legends are real. This book is another epic success for New York Times bestselling author Michael Scott and it is worth a read.
The story plot revolves around two supposedly ordinary human twins, Sophie and Josh Newman. They are 15 years old and have just realized that they are the twins of legend foretold 10,000 years ago. Together, they are prophesied to save the human race from extinction.
Their tutor and companion is the immortal human Nicholas Flamel, who is an alchemist born in 1330 and was assumed to have died 600 years ago. In this fictional series, Flamel makes himself and his wife immortal via the Codex, a book made 10,000 years ago containing the whole world’s knowledge. The couple try for over 650 years to try and find the legendary gold and silver twins who will save the world from extinction.
In this novel, unlike other fantasy novels, there isn’t a good side and a bad side. All the characters in the book believe they are fighting for the good cause making them all on the good side. However, because they all believe in different ways of constructing a utopian world, the sides oppose each other.
Nicholas, Perenelle (his wife) and Elders like Prometheus support the humani race and believe that the twins will be the saviors of the world. Immortal humans like John Dee, Machiavelli, Billy the Kid and their Elder masters Aten, Isis and Osiris want a world without humans. They believe that if all the Elders were brought back to be worshipped, Earth would be a better place.
In The Warlock, John Dee has rebelled against his Elder masters and instead wishes to destroy all the Elders so he can rule the world himself. Dee is, in my opinion, the most cunning and ruthless character in the whole book. At the start, he has already persuaded Josh, the Gold twin, to be on his side. Dee is very persuasive through his use of words and he knows how to bring the wildest dreams into use. Dee is also very ruthless and will not hesitate to kill for his own benefit or run when his life is in danger. He is a coward and that is how he has survived for so long.
Josh Newman is one of the legendary twins foretold to save the world. He always thought he was an ordinary teenager who lived in San Francisco and did what normal 15 year olds his age did. He is quite stubborn and gets angry very easily which is why he doesn’t like the Flamels and revertes to Dee’s side. He doesn’t trust the Flamels and is easily confused.
Sophie Newman is Josh’s sister and she is the Silver twin destined to save the world. While Josh is easily hostile towards people and suspicious, Sophie is kind and considerate. Although she doesn’t necessarily trust the Flamels, she still feels it is beneficial for the world that she continues to help them. Unlike Josh, she thinks before she acts.
You would think that since all these humans are immortal they would have different emotions to the kind that we have. However, they are just as childish as adults in our time. In the quotation below, Machiavelli the Italian immortal is taking Billy the Kid, an American immortal, as an apprentice.
“He stopped, tilting his head back, long thin nose testing the air. “Billy,” he said quickly, “I will take you as a student and teach you all that I know- on one condition,” he added.
“What’s the condition?” Billy asked warily.
“That you keep your mouth shut for the next ten minutes.”
“To live life, you got to have fun,” is what is shown in this novel. Even with extraordinarily long lives, humans can still retain their humanity. I think that this is the most important lesson shown in this novel. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in fantasy stories and imaginary worlds. This book may not be too suitable for adults since the storyline is a bit childish.
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by Denise, (30 posts) on April 17th, 2013 I learned a lot from the presentations about Romanticism. Before the presentations i was not sure about what Romanticism and Realism was, but now i know their meanings and what their differences are. Romanticisms was discovered in the mid 18th, it was an artistic movement that arose in Europe. It was seen was as an alternative to the ideals of Realism. It emphasised on the beauty of nature and glorified the medieval periods and folk cultures. Romanticism was expressed in many ways such as art, literature, music, theater, nationalism and politics. People who believed in Romanticism were called Romantics. These people believe that great mysteries of life can be uncovered with imagination, emotion and intuition. Their life was filled with deep feelings, spirituality and they had free expressions.
Realism is the complete opposite if Romanticism. It followed the romantic movement and was at its peak at the later half of the 18th century. It presented the truth of life without adding color to it. In Realism things were not out of the ordinary, the language used was very simple. Be it Art or literature, realism focused on real life situations and ideas. There may not always be a happy ending in Realism. Romanticism has a very idealistic view of life. All the characters in a Romanticism novel are usually extremes. The artwork highlights beauty and focuses on every little thing that is about nature and life, it tries to make things stand out vividly. In Romanticism everything has a happy ending.
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by (Jolly) Nga Wan, (36 posts) on April 16th, 2013 Perhaps, out of our entire English class, I was the one who struggled the most to complete an essay within time restraint. In the first few practices, I absolutely did not know what to write. I just could not understand the question.
In Summer Farm, the essay question says,
How does MacCaig shift the perspective esablished in the first three stanzas to a different viewpoint in Stanza Four? Are there any hints of the change in the first three stanzas?
Apart from the abstractness in Stanza Four, I did not see any other perspective change. And so the only word I wrote done in my plan was
 abstract
I could not possibly write anything else, since that was the only point that made sense to me. That lead to a lot of generalisation, because I did not see any “hints” or anything. I just thought the imagery of the “nine ducks [that] go wobbling by in two straight lines” is very fun and interesting.
In Where I come from, the essay questions asks,
“What are the effects of the overall structure of this poem, in which the speaker begins with a grand generalisation about people, changes in Stanza Two to the first person, and ends with the strong image of the third stanza?”
The place where I do not understand is the effect on the reader. How does the structure of the poem effect the reader? How does the strong imagery affect the reader in any way?
If there were no exam practice questions, I would not have realised that I lacked quality in my answers, or that I faced difficulty while composing the essays. Therefore, I need to do more exam practices to overcome the difficulty and increase my observation skills.
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by Sunniva, (22 posts) on April 16th, 2013 The oral presentations taught me a lot about Romanticism. Now I know what Romanticism is and how it is expressed.
Romanticism started in the mid 18th century as an alternative to the ideals of the Industrial Revolution and Enlightenment which emphasized science, empirical evidence, and rational thought. Romanticism was expressed in literature, art, music, theater, architecture and nationalism and politics. It emphasized the importance of emotion, sensitivity, passion, imagination and intuition over reason. The beauty of nature and the wilderness also had a great value. Nature was especially celebrated as a classroom for self-discovery and spiritual learning, the place in which mysteries could be revealed to the mind of man. Romantics emphasized a life filled with deep feeling, spirituality, and free expression, seeing such virtues as a bulwark against the dehumanizing effects of industrialization. Romantics believed that God’s presence was embodied in nature and evidence of his existence. Artists of this time focused mainly on the expression of mood, starting first with images of weather and landscapes. Combining extremes in nature with real historical events was a popular trend. Looser, more expressive brush strokes were common, and artists often chose Gothic, macabre or nostalgic subjects. Important painters of the period are Francisco Goya, Theodore Gericault, Eugene Delacroix and J.M.W. Turner.
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by Alissa Yap, (40 posts) on April 14th, 2013 For the past few lessons in class, we had been doing some practice on some exam style question on the poems on “Song of ourselves”. “The Great Gatsby” and “Death of Salesman”.
From the feedback that I got back from these practice papers, I got to know some of the mistakes that I made. One of the most common mistakes that I made in all my papers would be grammatical mistake. It is apparent that I have some problem with my subject-verb agreement. Another problem I have would be the structure of my sentences, I need to start writing some shorter and simpler sentences and make sure that those sentences only contain one idea so it would be clearer. To add on about my problem with structure, I also need to make sure that I begin my paragraph with an assertion, not with facts and knowledge. In terms on content, I need to be more specific, as at times my ideas and points are too generalized.
Doing these questions have helped me pinpointed the mistakes that I made when I’m writing that I could improve on for the upcoming IGCSE examination.
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by Marion, (8 posts) on April 14th, 2013 For several English classes we’ve been practicing the unseen papers in IGCSE. We practiced answering questions about poems and about the texts we read. Even though I will not be taking the exam I still think it’s good practice especially for the poems. Practicing test taking allows you to feel more comfortable at the time of taking the actual exam because of course practice makes perfect. It also avoids the nervousness of not knowing what to expect the day of the examination.In addition, the most useful part about the practice exams was the feedback obtained from them which made me realize several points.
The first point is that feedback helps me find all the grammatical mistakes and learn how to correct them. I noticed that I should also proofread at least two, or three times to avoid foolish mistakes.
The second point is that I learned how formulate a poem exam response. The first step is to skip the useless paraphrasing, the second step is to begin my paragraphs with an assertion and then back it up with facts/evidence, and the third step is to be specific.
The most difficult part of this exam practice was when we had to answer a question asking about the rhythm and how this affected the poem. It made me aware that I do not know much about how poets use rhythm in their poems to create an effect. I didn’t know how to answer the question so now I know that I have to study poetry more in depth. While doing the questions about the books I noticed that I should go over them too.
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by Dawn, (47 posts) on April 14th, 2013 When I write the exam practice paper for the first time, I was really lost. I do not know how to start the essay.However, through multiple practices, I get more confident. I really appreciate the corrections from Mr. Macknight, because from the corrections, I am able to know my weaknesses. Every time before I write the essay, I would read through the questions carefully. And then, I will plan in my head, about how I am going to structure the essay. I did not do that for the first few essays, so they are very messy and they do not answer the questions completely. I think the key is to organize the essay first in your head, and then write it. It’s not good to rush it, since there’s not a lot of time to spend on the essay. When I am writing the essay, I think I should always stick to the main points and assertion that can support my idea the most.The most important thing I learn from the practices is that I should “ALWAYS start my body paragraphs with assertions”. If I start the paragraph with assertions, I will be able to use evident from the text or the poem to support my idea. I have to show the examiner what are my ideas first.
Also, I still make a lot of second language mistake. I hope for the last few week, we can practice writing as much as possible, to make sure we get enough preparation for the exam.
The next thing I really have to work on is time management. I should plan about what I am going to write in the essay first and make sure that I have a strong conclusion. When I write the essay, I tend to write a lot of unnecessary information that does not support my idea fully. This wastes my time when I am analyzing. I need to be aware of that.
Overall, I think this is a great practice.
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by David, (41 posts) on April 13th, 2013 Exam Practice ~ Reflection
During the period of this week, not only have I become more confident with writing ‘unseen’ papers. But also I have learnt to manage my time more efficiently and also learnt the benefits of planning. Previously I may have skipped planning simply because the time pressures have led me to immediately start writing, but after this week, I have leant that by taking a couple of minuets to stop, and plan, you are able to produce a piece of writing that is a lot better.
In addition, this period of practice has also given me some experience in some of the poetic techniques that are usually forgotten or simply not included. Questions about the structure and rhythm of a poem are both examples of this, as when I begin to write an analyze about a poem, rhythm and structure are not usually the first things I think about.
Shockingly, this stretch of exam practice also has highlighted some attributes of some of the syllabus that I am lacking in. The play Death of a Salesman was the most concerning area we were given questions about. As it just seemed harder to think of valid points for Death of a Salesman, than for anything else we were given during this week. Not saying that the Great Gatsby was a walk in the park. Instead I am just stating that I may need to spend some more time out of school reading the books (sn).
Therefore not only did this week highlight my flaws, but it also immensely improved my ability to work under time. As unique questions about known poems, truly gave me that little bit more, that I hope I can use in my exams. So consequently I think that this week was beneficial but at the same time, I would not want every week to be as work packed as this one was.
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by Aaron, (46 posts) on April 12th, 2013 Reflection on the exam practices
The exam practices certainly taught me a great deal of things. One of the things I learnt is that whenever I receive a practice poem be it analyzing a poem or an essay question, I should always keep calm and not panic. Keeping calm proved to be very helpful as this allowed me to think properly. This is especially important because, the questions asked would most probably be something we have not seen before or (worst case scenario), something we have never thought of before. For example, when doing the exam practice on the poems, I start to see new questions in which I have never pondered upon.One type of question was about explaining how the use of punctuation broke up the iambic tetrameter rhythm and how this affected the overall poem. I have never even written anything close to this before. This is one such question in which proved to be difficult as that was my first time thinking about it. I feel that this is an extremely good practice as I am seeing and doing ‘new’ questions in which I have never seen before under time limit. This is good as it forces me to think on my feet. I take this as a challenge as I have to start thinking quickly. Overall, this goes for the same as the essay question on both ‘The Great Gatsby” and “Death of The Salesman”.
From the comments given, I start to see where the majority of my mistakes lie and I will definitely try to avoid them (habitual mistakes) in my future essays. One thing good about these exam practice is that it allows me to sort of ‘experiment’ with new things. Things like, how I structure my essay, how long I should take to plan my essay (Things like that). With exam practices, I am not afraid of trying new stuff as this is where I start to discover if certain things I do is right or wrong.
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by Aurora, (46 posts) on April 12th, 2013 I have always struggled with planning an essay. Either I have omitted the planning, and gone straight to writing, or I have started trying to plan, gotten too scared I’m spending too long on it and just started writing without a plan. During all these practices I really began to understand the importance of planning. I discovered that the better my planning was, the better and more organised my essay came out. Additionally, I got familiar with the amount of time spent planning that works for me, and found out that for me it works best if I spend around a third of the time sorting my thoughts, both in my head and writing them down on paper, as well as understanding the question and the poem (if it’s a poem).
I think the poem practice papers were the most useful as they forced me to look at stuff I would normally ignore when trying to analyse a poem. Some of the poetical devices I discovered I was worse at than others, such as the one we did yesterday. However, I think it was still helpful as it gave me something new to look at in the poem, which I hadn’t looked at before. These papers made me understand the poems more, and despite the fact that I didn’t really want to do exam practice, I realize how beneficial it is, because I think this practising helped me a lot. This is especially since we got feedback on all the pieces we wrote, because then I could see mistakes that I wouldn’t necessarily spot by myself, and some things I do I just don’t know is wrong.
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by Alissa Yap, (40 posts) on April 9th, 2013 Once again as I reread the Great Gatsby, I deicide that this time I would try to focus on the minor character, to see if I would be able to find something that I had missed, that would be revealed more about the other characters.
The first time read the book I hardly paid any attention to Jordan. I felt that she was just a shadow of Daisy’s. The first few times reading the novel I did not think that she held much importance in the story. My previous assumption was that Jordan’s existence was to show once again, the similarities between Gatsby and Nick. By showing the similarity between Daisy and Jordan it help enhance the fact that Nick and Gatsby are identical to each other, as their love interest are similar to each other. To a certain degree this helps gave reason why Nick understood Gatsby’s infatuation with Daisy, as me too have a mild fascination with Jordan.
“The only completely stationary object in the room was a numerous couch which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both dressed in white, an their dresses were rippling and fluttering around the house.”
When Nick first introduced Daisy and Jordan, he tarts off by giving the idea that both characters are similar to each other by describing how the stood still as id they were ‘anchored’ as well as the image of the ‘rippling’ and ‘fluttering ’or their ‘white dresses’. Only after building the image of two of the, only did he proceed to talk about them individually. This is an example that showed how Jordan resembles Daisy, as Nick started off describing together. Therefore, as I reread the Great Gatsby again, I tried to look deeper into Jordan’s character. Rereading the story, I notice that out of all the character Jordan is the only one that accused Nick of being dishonest and confronted him about it.
“You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn’t I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.”
She accused him of being a ‘bad driver’ and that he is more careless them herself. While partially I do believe that she had said this to Nick out of anger, or mockery, after all Nick did broke her heart. At the same time I do think this held some importance, as none of the character actually questioned Nick’s personality. Nick is accused of being a politician in the beginning of the novel; stereotypically it means that he is a liar. There are evidence that suggest that Nick is not and honest person. I believe that this question Nick’s liability in his narration. Jordan assumed that being ‘honest, straightforward person’ was Nick’s ‘secret pride’. I do think that Nick took pride in reserving judgments, in the beginning he mention how not every one have the advantages that he would have he even admit that he was ‘boasting about his tolerance’ in the begging. However, by time Jordan confronted Nick about his ideals, Nick had already decided not to reserve judgments as he said that he is ‘to old to lie to myself’. Nevertheless, I found it interesting that out of all the other characters Jordan was the one that figured Nick out and question him.
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