Punkspopuptonite's Blog

Annie’s War, Jacqueline Levering Sullivan, pages 1-183, 1-22-2010

punkspopuptonite — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 00:52:31 +0000

I connected with this book a lot. It’s about a young girl who lives with her Grandma at her business. A new tenant moves in, and she’s an African American lady. The young girl, Annie, has an uncle, Billy, that just got back from fighting in the war. As soon as the African American lady, Mrs. Gloria, moves in, Billy is extremely rude to her including setting their front yard on fire. Annie doesn’t understand his unbelievable behavior throughtout the book.

I’m like she is about not knowing why people are treated differently due to their skin color. I never judged anyone due to the color of their skin. Everyone is the same to me like everyone was just the same in Annie’s eyes. The only explanation the book gives us for the way Billy’s acting is that “when a man goes to war, he has to turn off his heart to do vicious things. He just can’t quite turn it back on.” Though Annie says over and over that she understands that, the reader (me) knows that she doesn’t. You can’t understand unless it happens to you. You may have a slight idea, but your imagination is rarely as powerful as reality is. I can relate to her being oblivious to how much the war can effect someone’s personality and mind-process. I know how it feels to lose someone close to you, but I hope I never know how it feels to “have [my] friends’ blood on [my] hands and have them lying dead by [my] side.” I am guilty of saying that I can relate to people’s situations when I really can’t. I might have a little clue about what they’re going through, but usually we aren’t living similar lives. But, of course, there are many times when I really do know what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling, what they’re praying for. Annie was a very mature and liked to make people feel better when they were in a slump, so she insisted that she knew what Billy felt, but she knew inside her that she really was clueless. Still, when she went to Billy and talked about the war with him, he felt so much better and the amount of bitterness in his heart started to lessen.

http://www.biggerbooks.com/bk_detail.aspx?ISBN=9780802853547

Time Windows, Kathryn Reiss, pages 1-260, 1-22-2010

punkspopuptonite — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 00:35:33 +0000

I borrowed this book from Mrs. Martin a few months ago, but I only read it a few weeks ago. I chose it, because in one of its reviews, it said that it was a lot like a modern version of The Indian in the Cupboard. I watched that movie and loved it, so I decided to give the book a try, and it’s good that I did. It was extremely interesting, and though it was similar to The Indian in the Cupboard in several ways, it was also very unique. There was a blend of mystery, suspense, romance, immaturity, and reality in there. I’ve never read a book so full of different genres. I also chose it, because it looked like a good size book (not puny, but not huge, either). The cover was really creepy, too: there was a little girl with bright, blue eyes looking through the windows of a dollhouse, and it’s basically a close-up of her face. It’s actually almost hypnotizing. The book was in really good condition unlike most of the books on Mrs. Martin’s bookshelf (sorry, Mrs. Martin, but I think you know it’s true). There weren’t any scratches on it, and it was in perfect condition as if nobody had given it a chance yet. That’s the kind of book I like. Sometimes, a book that isn’t touched is the best book. It’s small in circumference, and the book’s binder is a very pretty blue. There were a lot of reasons I chose to read Time Windows, but the main one was that the cover itself was intriguing. And I have been accused countless times that I judge books, and only books, on their covers.

http://www.biggerbooks.com/bk_detail.aspx?ISBN=9780152023997

So Punk Rock (and Other Ways to Disappoint Your Mother), Micol and David Ostow, pages 1-246, 1-22-2010

punkspopuptonite — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 00:32:08 +0000

My favorite character in this amazingly funny book is the little sister. She reminds me so much of myself. That makes me sound really conceited, but she’s just exactly like me. She’s a bit of a tomboy, and people kind of judge her because of her older brother who is a complete nerd who has no life. When the boys meet her, though, they are surprised at how chill she is, and how fun her personality is. She’s down-to-earth, funny, smart, rational, and talented (at singing, mostly). Wow, now I sound REALLY self-centered, but I don’t mean to be that way. She just says the exact kind of things that I say, and she acts the same way and laughs at the same things. Last time I connected this much with a character was last year when I was reading Speak. My English teacher thought I was a lot like Melinda on the inside. I agreed with her 100%. But I connected more with the little sister than with Melinda. She’s short, too, just like me, and she has extremely dark hair, just like me. So, we not only relate with each other when it comes to personalities but with appearance, as well. It got to a point where the resemblance was almost scary. I’ve said before in a blog that I related to someone in the book, but this was one of a kind. Pretty much the only difference I found was that she’s a couple years younger and she’s Jewish. I’m not religious in any way, shape, or form. I don’t have my book right now, so it’s kind of stupid that I don’t mention her name in here, but I just can’t remember it. I know it’s Reyna or something of that sort. She’s pretty awesome…just like me. There I go again…

http://www.biggerbooks.com/bk_detail.aspx?ISBN=9780738714714

Stone Song, Win Blevins, 1-36, 12-13-2009

punkspopuptonite — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 02:01:38 +0000

I started to read this book, because it’s been in my house for over 10 years. My uncle gave it to my dad, because he knew that my dad never read and he wanted to get my dad into it. He liked Stone Song a lot and thought that dad would. Guess what? My dad never read it! Surprise surprise! But I took it from his bedroom since I love to read and he was never going to get to it, anyway. So, after I finished The DeVouring, I looked through my little bookcase and came across Stone Song. I hadn’t come across it in a while. I read the first page to see if it was interesting and reading the first page turned into reading the second page which turned into reading the first chapter and so on and so on. I wouldn’t say that it’s a favorite of mine (even though it might become one since I’m only on the 37th page), but it is definitely a good book. It’s the first book that I have ever read about Native Americans, and they are very spiritual as I presumed. Right now, the main character is trying to connect with his inner self. It’s very intense and hard to follow, sometimes. The characters all have unique names like Crazy Horse, Buffalo Hump, Light Curly Hair, e.t.c. That itself makes the book harder to understand, but the intensity of the topic is what intrigues me. Finding truth and purpose within yourself is extremely important. Stone Song is not an easy book to read and definitely not a book for anybody who is not an avid reader. Even for those enthusiastic readers, this book might be a challenge. The story is very complex with lots of characters, lots of enemies, lots of family, lots of different groups, and two different worlds: the real world and the world beyond what we can see. Keeping track with where the narrator (Curly) is hard at times. But, like The Time Traveler’s Wife, if you know where you are and who you’re talking to, it’s a very good book. It takes you to a place you didn’t know existed. It teaches you about spirits (not the alcoholic beverage), knowing yourself, knowing what you were born to do, and how important family is. I’m not far into the book at all, and I have already read about so many things that I have never read about before. The Native American culture was always just a subject we touched base with in history class. It wasn’t anything I was interested in studying, but Stone Song has given me an idea of what their culture is all about. I never expected this nationality to be so full of different ideas.

http://punkspopuptonite.wordpress.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=polls

The Devouring, Simon Holt, 1-231, 12-10-2009

punkspopuptonite — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:40:53 +0000

Being a book I finished in two days, The DeVouring was definitely memorable though short. It’s just nasty sometimes. Stephen King status. My friend, Brooke, let me borrow it, because she kept talking about it for a couple of weeks and how much she liked it and how good it was and how it was actually scary enough to keep her up at night. I had never really read a horror book before, and it souded pretty exciting, so I told her to bring it to me. She forgot to for three weeks, but finally, she got it to me a couple days ago. And I didn’t think that I was going to be scared at all when I read it, because Brooke is only 11 and easier to scare, most likely. I was wrong. Not only is it scary, but it’s disgusting. A girl eats a spider! Millions of spiders drop from her ceiling and skitter up her legs and into her mouth! Ugh! Gross. Don’t even wanna think about it! I mean, it didn’t keep me up at night, but it did leave me a bit shocked when I put it down. I’m not one much for scary stories, so I wouldn’t consider this a “can’t-put-down” book, but it was still purrty good. Brooke has every book in the series, and I definitely plan on asking her for the second one, even though I just started another book. The second book is called SoulStice. Don’t the names alone just freak you out? And there’s a ghost’s face outlined by smoke on the cover of The DeVouring. And you can tell, merely by the picture on the cover, that it’s not the most pleasant book you’ll ever pick up. For all you horror fans out there who love blood and guts and vomit, this book is totally for you!

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_6T7xBNjGUcw/SnkF8O8zoWI/AAAAAAAAAAs/twosBL1hoOo/s320/the+devouring.JPG

The Time Traveller’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger, 1-560, 12-6-2009

punkspopuptonite — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 16:46:18 +0000

This is going to be a special blog, because I actually don’t like this book very much at all. Usually, every time I read a book, I’m always like, “OMG! This book is so good! It’s like so delicious!” But this one is just too “hoppy”. Like, a man time travels and one second he could be with his wife and the next second he is watching himself as a fifth grader, or a seventeen year old, etc…and some passages are from the view of one Henry (that’s the man’s name) talking to a younger Henry, and it says which Henries they are at the beginning of the passage, but it’s really hard to keep track. And when I’m not confused with what’s happening and who’s talking, the book is beautiful and very romantic and moving, but in passages with multiple Henries, I just get totally discombobulated. See, sometimes I forget who is talking to who. Like, one Henry could be conversing with the other Henry and having a nice conversation and I’ll be thinking that the one talking is the younger Henry when suddenly, the talking Henry is giving the other Henry advise for the future. That’s when I realise that I’ve read the whole chapter in the wrong perspective. Sometimes, the perspective is important enough in a passage that getting it wrong has the potential to mess up your entire view of the chapter in general. And if this is the case, the only thing I can do, is start the chapter over. It’s just aggravating. I’ve had to do this maybe three times. No wonder it’s taking me forever to finish this book. But, I can’t just sit here and constantly diss on a book and pay mere attention to its good qualities. It is definitely beautifully written with use of metaphors and similes galore. Most of its figurative literature is comparisons between the way Clare (Henry’s wife) moves and miraculous ways of nature. One of my favorite similes was a comparison between the way she paints across a canvas and the way a butterfly floats across a garden. Some similes, like this one, have been powerful enough to move me to tears. But, again, I’ll remind you that this book can be very confusing. To those who are smart and appreciate literature to no end, read this story. But to those who don’t pay attention in English, stay away.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-RWyORL1Jc

Angels and Demons, Dan Brown, 1-710, 11-30-2009

punkspopuptonite — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:15:16 +0000

This book may just be my favorite book of all time, but we can’t do summaries of our books as our posts, now, can we? So, I’ll just base this post on the statitistics of how many people know this story not by its book but by its movie. It just came out, and, no, I haven’t seen it. I don’t want to see it, either. Not because I think it’ll be bad, but because it’s rumored to be pretty much the style of The Da Vinci Code. I hated that movie. It was confusing, and I was lost the entire time. I think I loved the book, because, unlike in movies, it spends time galore on explaining the story and introducing the origin of the conflict. In a movie, this isn’t possible. Well, possible but not entertaining. In a movie, the viewers don’t want to hear hours and hours of an introduction to the movie they came to see. They just want to skip ahead to the suspense. But, in my opinion, a story with this much of a complicated and history-based plot needs to be thoroughly explained so that the reader isn’t always thinking, “Wait…what just happened?…”. My dad saw the movie and told me about some of it, and it sounded like the movie left out a lot of interesting information that was originally in the story and is written in the book. Also, it sounded like there were some parts that the director of the movie actually CHANGED from the book. Not sure, of course since I wasn’t the one who saw the movie, and there’s always a chance that my dad’s just getting old and doesn’t remember things very well. I feel bad dissing on the movie, so I’ll refer back to how wonderful the book. It was almost twice as big as most of the books I have the patience to read, so when I started the book, I had it in my head that this was going to be one of those books that I just started reading and carried with me since it would most likely make me look smarter than I actually am. But the day I started reading it, I got totally and utterly hooked. In a mere four days, I had finished reading the last page of the book and was honestly kind of sad that I’d finished it already. I stayed up till 3:30 in the morning once to read more of that book. It was insane. I understood everything, and, considering the complexity of the story’s problem, I’m pretty darn proud of myself. I never would have guessed that a book with such a historical background as part of what’s great about it would appeal to me so much. But, golly, this book was incredible. Okay, I’m getting a bit too into this post, so Ima wrap it up. Peace up, A town….don’t really know what that means.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/angelsdemons/

Ghost In the Graveyard, Johnathan Rand, 1-326, 11-21-2009

punkspopuptonite — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:49:17 +0000

This book was a collection of 5 adventure stories with an average of 65-pages per story. The single author, Johnathan Rand, is a famous writer, known for his two series of books: Michigan Chillers and American Chillers. Unlike many authors who only write one genre of books, he makes every story completely different. I remember when I read this book of three called The Night of the Living Dummies, and I swear…all three stroeis were identical, just with different people, practicaally. It drove me insane, because it was a big book of the same thing over and over again. With Ghost In the Graveyard, though, every story was completely different and unique, so I never was expecting what was going to happen. That’s what kept the book interesting. The way that the stories were different was that they had totally unrelated concepts and plots, unlike that other book that was all about three different people finding a scary doll thing. There was a story about discovering a secret tunnel that bank robbers used many years ago, rebuilding a run-down submarine that was found in a junk-yard, hand-making an original biplane type contraption, setting up a prank in a graveyard including scary sound effects and a fake ghost with flashing red eyes, and making a whole town believe that Bigfoot was terrorizing their neighborhoods. How could they have anything in common at all? Though the story has a low reading grade level (4), it has some very smart and intellectual words in it that even I didn’t know…anybody wanna give this book a try? It’s good.

http://www.americanchillers.com/faqs.html

I love Mitch Albom!!!

punkspopuptonite — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:36:57 +0000

I just finished Mitch Albom’s brand new book “Have A Little Faith”. He has written seven books now, and I have read a whopping four of them: two nonfiction and two fiction. I have read “Tuesdays With Morrie”, “Five People You Meet In Heaven”, “For One More Day”, and, now, “Have A Little Faith”. All of them were absolutely wonderful, but this new one was better than all of the other three. It’s a true story about Mitch’s long lost childhood priest asking him to do his eulogy and also about another priest who used to be into drugs, theft, and trouble. I’m not much one into religion, but this book really expanded my mind into religious concepts I have never thought of. These two priests answer questions like “Why are all faiths respected when they have completely different beliefs and it’s obvious that not all of them can be correct since they overlap?” I have pondered on this myself several times before. And I will not tell you what I have discovered through reading this book since I strictly believe that this book is by far good enough for me to respect its lessons by letting other people read it. Simply, this book has taught me so much about respect, kindness, hospitality, and what real love is. It can come in all different forms from all different types of people: mean, nice, smart, stupid, troublesome, innocent, it doesn’t matter. All these good qualities in a person can be found anywhere and within any heart. I’ve never been much of a stereotypical person, but this true story has changed the way I look at people, and I have become even more motivated to make a positive impact on someone’s life. It’s not hard to do. Just listening to someone’s life’s story could really change a person. They could feel loved and important instead of insignificant and useless. It’s amazing how much a little thing like paying attention could make a humongous difference. I love the way Mitch compared two storied that seem, at first, to be completely seperate, but have so much in common once they are observed. It shows how connected the people of this world are to one another.

New Book: We Are Quiet. We Are Loud.

punkspopuptonite — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:39:07 +0000

I started reading this book a week ago. It is a combination of essays, poems, and short stories written by teenagers of all different nationalities. I chose to read this book because since I have started my Creative Writing class in school, I have started writing essays. I’ve always enjoyed many sorts of writing, but essays on the topic of personal things such as my life have never been intriguing to me. That is, until this school year. I had to write a Personal Narrative on somehting that happened in my life that took a short period of time to occur but made an immortal impact on my life. I wrote about the first time I felt rejected by my friends since that is very memorable to me. I read other narratives of my classmates and found it relaxing and interesting. So, when I saw this book in the nonfiction shelf of the public library, I thought of how much I liked reading about other people’s stories and experiences. Along with this book, I checked out a book on publishing my own work, a biography on a deformed child, and a compilation of essays written by girls of all ages about their mothers, but these are not books that I will wrtie about today. With a whopping 57 stories and poems, this book’s contents have entertained me endlessly. Some stories are of love while others are of attempted suicide. The range of subjects in this book is so wide, and that is what kept me reading through all 357 pages of it. The many authors of this book have won the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. All of them are sensational young authors whom have things to say and feelings to express. I related to some of their memories and was beauitifully moved by my inexperience and the expertise of other authors. In the middle of this book, there are 16 colorful pictures, paintings, and photographs taken by multiple amateur yet extremely talented artists. They are dark, light, sad, happy, black, white, deep, conspicuous, and everything in between. Rarely can anyone come across a book so genuine.