Word Choice

I have noticed that Veronica Roth has used many works that I have never heard before throughout her writing that seem very unique I might want to use them in my own writing. Some examples of words she has used in the text are "His expression is calm, but he's angry-the terseness in his voice betrays him" (Page 40) and "His hatred of Erudite was so vehement it must have been personal" (Page 116). She uses the word "terseness", which means that you few words to convey a larger meaning so when he's calm but uses few words and quickly explains himself it's a contradiction. She also used the word "vehement" which means uttered with forcefulness which better explains his hatred for the Erudite. By using these words it sets a elevated tone in the writing unlike when uses words like "C'mere" (Page 47). Those words are more casual and are used in conversation and typically hold less meaning.

I am now about halfway through the book and I can definitely say that this book is just as good if not better than the first, there are now so many characters and twist that there are probably a hundred different ways the book could go. Veronica Roth has a very good way of making you want to keep reading there is always something interesting going on. In some other books I read there are large portions of no action and it gets really boring but then there is one chapter that is very good then its over. With how she writes you are never bored and being someone who can't still for long that is a good thing or else I would never be able to read anything. If you get bored or need something to read I would highly recommend this book for all those who like action.

Insurgent - Veronica Roth

I just started reading Insurgent, which is the second book in the Divergence series and it is already just as good as the first book in the series. And I already notice that Veronica Roth uses a large variety of sentence structures in her writing, such as really short sentences like "So I agree" (Page 32). Which add a lot more emphasize on those sentences and she also used much more complicated sentences when describing some things like "It is large and open, with black-and-white cloth draped on every wall, and a circle of podiums in the center of the room" (Page 228). This kind of sentence goes into deep detail about the description of the room and really paints an image in your mind of what it looks like. 

In the book there has been an all out war between the factions and Erudite is at the helm and they have been using serums to put people into simulations so that they can do their dirty work for them, but in the book there are people that can resist these simulations and they are called "Divergent". So with those who are Divergent threatening the Erudite's plan they are trying to kill them all, but they are also saving some and taking them back to the Erudite headquarters which is making me curious what could they possibly want from them? Do they think they can get information from them or learn how their unique traits work, with all these open ended questions that seem to be piling up faster than they are being answered I can't wait to keep reading to find out what will happen.

Book Recomendation

I just finished reading Divergent by Veronica Roth and it really escalates quickly near the end making it very exciting to read. One of my most favorite things about the book is how there are so many twist that you never know what could happen making the book veery unpredictable. The author wrote the end of the book in a way that leaves you wanted answers and it doesn't really provide any closure to the issue at hand which makes you want to read the next book in the series before you even finish the first. The only thing I wish was different about the book was that the author explained more about how the factions were formed and why.

 Divergent is probably in my top most favorite books. It has a lot of action through-out the entire book and there are so many twist and turns it will always leave you wantign more. Numerous times through-out the book the most unexpected and story changing things happen making it interesting the whole time, there are not any points in the book that will bore you. Veronica Roth's writing style is very good because it's not too difficult but there are some areas with more complex vocabulary which can help you grow your vocabulary as well. I would highely recommend this book to anyone who likes action and constant plot changes to keep you wondering whatas going to happen next.

Blog Reflection #2

In my blog post Good Beginnings I talked about how Veronica Roth started the book Divergent and how I thought it was unique. The line I think best demonstrates my writer’s voice is “The book starts off by describing the main character Beatrice Prior, but the author does so in a very unique way which I have not seen before.” Here I explained my opinion on how the author had a very unique way of describing the main character other than just flat out saying it.

Some purposeful diction that I used in my writing was elevated or formal writing. “One giant wall encompasses all the factions” I used the word encompasses instead of; One giant wall goes around all the factions. Some examples of syntax I used in this post were word order, sentence length, and punctuation the line, “she doesn't just flat out say, Beatrice has a narrow face, wide round eyes, etc.”  Uses commas and etc. to help give an example of what the author could have done but instead took a unique approach. I also use punctuation in the following line in order to help list things. “Abnegation-the selflessness, Erudite-the intelligent, Dauntless-the brave, Amity-the peaceful, and Candor-the honest.” I also used dashes to group the meanings to the title and commas to list them.

High Level Vocabulary

As I have been reading the book Divergent I have noticed that the author uses some higher level or complex vocabulary such as "The uniform pounding of feet in my ears and the homogeneity of the people around me makes me believe that I could choose this"(Divergent Page 39). The word homogeneity means the quality or state of being the same or alike. After learning what this meant it adds a lot to the sentence in that she means everyone was walking in a similar fashion and state. She also says "The room is arranged in concentric circles"(Page 39). by uses more complex and higher level vocabulary it gives a more deeper meaning and understanding to the text. It is weird because she uses higher level vocabulary but she writes in a way that is very easy to understand, if there is an unusual word you may not know there are probably a lot of context clues that you can use to easily figure out the meaning of it.

In the book they had to run and jump off of a moving train onto a nearby rooftop and if you didn't do it you would become factionless. Being factionless is said to be worse than death in the book and its the last thing you would ever want to happen to you. As people were jumping off one missed the jump and fell to her death, "There us a body on the pavement below us; a girl,  her arms and legs bent at awkward angles, her hair spread out in a fan around her head."(Page 55). It goes onto say "he stands on the ledge like it's a sidewalk. Like someone didn't just fall to her death from it"(Page 56). The guide or instructor for the group that is leading them on the trip doesn't even acknowledge the fact that a person just fell to her death which shocks Beatrice and shows how much the Dauntless have to deal with pain and loss.

Good Beginnings

I've just started reading Divergent by Veronica Roth which is about a society split into multiple factions, Abnegation-the selflessness, Erudite-the intelligent, Dauntless-the brave, Amity-the peaceful, and Candor-the honest. Each faction lives by their own code and morals and once you are 16 years old you have to choose what faction to join, you can stay in your families or change entirely. The book starts off by describing the main character Beatrice Prior, but the author does so in a very unique way which I have not seen before. Beatrice was born into Abnegation and they only allow you to look in a mirror once a month, so its starts by off with "I sneak a look at my reflection when she isn't paying attention-not for the sake of vanity, but out of curiosity...In the reflection, I see a narrow face, wide, round eyes, and a long, thin nose-I still look like a little girl, though sometime in the last few months I turned 16" (Divergent page 2). This is a very good vivid description of her and it is done in a way where she doesn't just flat out say, Beatrice has a narrow face, wide round eyes, etc.

The story takes place in a modern day world with the exception of a few futuristic things. "The building that was once called Sears Tower-we call it the Hub-emerges from the fog, a black pillar in the skyline" (page 4). "Like all the other buildings around it, it is made up of glass and steel" The author describes a modern day city and things that we have today such as paintball guns, trains and normal schools. There are however some things that are more futuristic. "Then she passes me a vial of clear liquid"(Page 13). The liquid is a hallucinogen serum and if makes you feel like your in a very real dream but they can watch whats going on from a computer screen. One giant wall encompasses all the factions and is defended by the Dauntless but no one actually knows what they are being defended from, or what is outside of the walls.

Krista Ramsey - Columnist

Our kids tell the story of why preschool is a must is a column by Krista Ramsey who writes about lifestyle. In this column she talks about how preschool is underrated yet it is very essential to a young child's growth into education. She tries to persuade people that preschool doesn't just teach kids simple things such as the alphabet but it prepares them for kinder garden and gives them the experience they need to to excel in school.

In the column one of the best written lines in my opinion is "But if it was essential for your kids – if you watched it transform their lives and wouldn't have done without it – how can it be denied to children with so few resources, children who need it so desperately?" In this line Krista Ramsey is pointing out that children should not be denied the chance to go to preschool and to help them to grow. She uses hyphens  to separate or list her thoughts and by doing so it makes a pause in between adding more impact or emphasis on her thoughts. She also talks about how the children desperately need it which makes you, after reading it almost feel guilty if you don't send your children to preschool because you are denying them something so important in life.

Krista Ramsey's style of writing is very oriented around society and big overlaying problems or debates. In one of her articles about phone usage and how it can damage your eyes she says. "But before parents claw back the iphones the experts say the problem may not lie in the technology itself, but the amount of time spent on it." In another article about how pro athletes dress she says "Whatever the score of the game they both look like winners." and in the article about the preschool she says. "And numbers do matter. It's just that children matter more." If I could ask Krista Ramsey three questions I would ask her how she comes up with what to write, what inspired her to become a writer and how long does she spend on a piece before its published?

Divergent - Veronica Roth

I am just about to start reading Divergent, by Veronica Roth, which most people probably already know of from the movie that just recently came out. I remember seeing the trailer for Divergent and I was instantly interesting in seeing it. It was when third trimester was starting up that I learned we would once againt be blogging so I decided to read the book Divergent. While i am still waiting on amazon for the book to come I decided to do some research into Veronica Roth's life and to learn about the author.

I learned that Veronica Roth was born in New York City but raised in Barrington Illinois and she was the youngest of three children. Her parents divorced when she was only five years old. Her mother's parents were concentration camp survivors and it caused her to be pushed away from religion because of it. Roth however joined a Christian Bible study group and she has kept with it ever since. She married Nelson Fitch, a photographer, in 2011. Roth is most known for her trilogy Divergent, Insurgent and Allegiant. She wrote Divergent over winter break at college and her career took off, she sold the movie rights to Summit Entertainment before even graduating college. From what i've heard and seen from the trailer of the movie I am very excited to start reading it.

Fahrenheit 451 - Montag

In the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury the main character is Montag. Montag is a firefighter, but no ordinary firefighter we know of. The firefighters in their society do just the oposite of what they do in ours, they start fires. Montage, just like almost all other firefighters look pretty much the same, with black hair and brows, ashe-smeared cheeks and closely shaven face. Although the main goal of firefighters is to destroy books after meeting Clarise and talking to her and listening to her talk about why stuff is the way it is and how firefighters used to prevent fires and not start them made Montag begin to question their work. "just how would it feel. I mean to have firemen burn our houses and our books"(Pg. 31).

When Montage and Clarise are talking Clarise says. "You're very peculiar yourself, Mr. Montag, sometimes I even forget you're a fireman."(Pg. 21). Clarise points out here that Montag is not like most other fireman because she keeps forgetting sometimes that he is a fireman when that is a big thing. Clarise changed Montag from the very begging because I think that Montag is starting to question what he is doing as a fireman and why they are buring peoples books and how it would feel if other people came to your house and began to burn it down and burn your books. I dont think that Montag is very satisfied with his life at this stage because he is not sure about his job and Clarise has opened his eyes to the society around him.

Blog Reflection

Throughout the whole trimester is think the best blog post I did was the How Long can they Last post - http://ericgilenesreadingblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/how-long-can-they-last.html. In this post I think I did a very good job of analizing the text and making connections. I made a connection when saying "The first thing this made me think of was the Simpson's movie when the government put a dome over their town because of pollution." I also didnt just summarize the text instead I gave a breif overview then talked about what this would be like in real life and how the town would have to handle this to survive. I then ended by giving my opinion on the dome "The dome was going to be an ultimate test of how well the citizens of Chester's Mill could work together and for how long they could do it."

Next Trimester my goals for reading will be to get on a normal reading scheldule instead of reading a lot at a time. I would also like to improve upon my creative writing and using figuritve language in my writing. I am already pretty good at non-fictional writing and writing reports and research papers, its also really easy for me to write about history so I am taking APush next year and honors english so I can improve even more in my writing skills and analization skills. Overall I think I did a good job with the writing I did but I needed to be way more consistant.

Book Recommendation

I am nearing the end of the book Under the Dome and it is one of my most favorite books I have read. The entire time you are always trying to solve some mystery like how the dome got there and why its there. Stephen King did a very good job of making the book entertaining and interesting. Its cool to think of what would happen in real life if something like that happened there are so many possible ways it could turn out.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys mysteries, action, or science fiction. There were so many twist and turns that you never would have thought of which made me never be able to predict what would happen next. The TV series was quite different than the book which makes it interesting to see the different ways the director and author took the story. I'm glad I chose to read the book and I would  definitely recommend others to read it. 

Resources are Scarce

As the weeks go by resources are dwindling down and the citizens start getting protective. A week after the dome came down the store owners started only accepting food and other supplies instead of money, the restaurants all closed and saved the food for them. Big Jim went to the farmers and told them to give some of their crops to the town so they can feed everyone but some farmers refused and things of violent. They also started running low on water because normally they get their water from the next town over but they have had to use the towns well which had been drying up because there wasn't any rain since the dome came down.

In a desperate attempt to get the town food they got a group of men together and they attacked a farm to get food. After a lot of violence the farmer gave them some food, and then later the next day it finally rained and they collected water anyway they could. Unless someone can get better control of the town things can very easily get out of hand very quickly.

Well that escalated quickly

When i first started reading Under the Dome is pretty much was the same as the TV show but there are actually big differences. One of the main characters in the story for the TV series dies within one chapter of them being introduced in the book which really caught me off guard because I wasn't expecting that at all. Junior the boy who killed the character was talking to them but he has really bad headaches and was very agitated and when he got angry he killed them over pretty much nothing.

Other than some very obvious differences the characters in the book and TV series are very much alike in how they act. Big Jim is the antagonist and always wants to control everyone and Barbie the protagonist wants to help people. While Barbie is helping people there is a struggle for control over the town between Big Jim and Barbie. Most authoritarian figures were also not in town when the dome fell, the fire department was doing a training exercise in a neighboring town, the city council was gone in a neighboring town as well. The Cheif of police touched the dome and his peacemaker exploded leaving the town with no one to run it.