Blog post #23: Ditching SPOILED by Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan (for now) to read THE HUNGER GAMES, again

Right now I am currently reading, Spoiled, by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan. But I am going to ditch this book (for now) to re-read THE HUNGER GAMES!!!!! I felt that Spoiled wasn't really my type of book because it was to normal and plain, I guess to me. It was a realistic fiction book, and I'm not the biggest RF fan. Whenever I read a realistic fiction book I feel like it is probably never gonna happen or I feel like it is just to normal for me to read. I am really into Sci-Fi or Fantasy books, I really like all the action and suspense and it just gets me really interested for some reason. For example, some of my favorite books and series are, obviously, The Hunger Games series, Percy Jackson and The Olympians, Harry Potter, and The Future of Us. 

When I read Spoiled at first, I thought it was pretty boring but I kept reading because some of the best books ever start of pretty plain like for example The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod, it started off sorta boring but then it became one of the best books I ever read! I let Spoiled show itself in the first hundred pages, but after I read one hundred pages it still stayed plain so I decided to abandon it. I think the plot line was not as engaging as fantasy and sci-fi books. I think another thing that made me really bored with the book is that it took way too long to explain the whole background of the characters.

I decided to read The Hunger Games again because it is one of my most favorite books EVER. And now that I seen the movie there were so many ideas developing about the characters in my mind. For example, I am starting to think about Cato and the type of character he is. While reading the book for the first time I imagined a tough, cold hearted buff guy, but now that I've seen the movie and how the actor Alexander Ludwig plays Cato, I start to think more about the ruthless and vicious side of him, he is willing to do absolutely anything to get what he wants. I even think he would be willing to kill his family to have power. For example, when Katniss blew up the big pile of food and supplies by the Cornucopia, Cato thought the tribute watching it blew up the food and killed him, immediately. And also I started to think about Clove. Maybe she would have had a chance to win the games if she would have just killed Katniss by the Cornucopia without talking so much, she would have might had a chance to win. 

Blog Post #22: The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Macker- Book Review

I finally finished The Future of Us!!! I honestly loved the book and wish there can be a sequel. After I read this book, it made me think about my future. It made me think about the choices I make and how every little thing like eating lasagna instead of mac & cheese, can affect my future. Even maybe choosing to write this post can affect my future, maybe this post can be the one thing that lets me pass middle school. It's probably not true, but it can somewhat affect my life. 

In this book I really liked that we saw the story through the eyes of both of the main character. So we kinda saw 2 personalities and 2 point of view of the same situation. Emma is the kind of character that just does without thinking, and takes matters into her own hands. She is a very stubborn and complicated type of person, but at the end of the day, she always has her friends' backs and knows wrong from right. For example, every time she goes on Facebook, she mostly has a status about her being sad about her marriage or doing something she doesn't like, if the Emma that is a teen right now doesn't like it, she will do something to change it like saying she will never go to Tampa State so she won't marry Jordan Jones Jr. so she won't have an unhappy life. 

Josh is the type of person who isn't always in a rush, he thinks things out, and always looks out for his best friends. Whenever Emma does something stupid or wrong in general, he tries to talk her out of it, it doesn't really matter to her most of the time but the important thing is that he is trying. Emma is addicted to Facebook and she constantly checks it, she can't control herself anymore, she looks at it, finds something she hates about her future, then tries to change it. But Josh knows how to control himself, every time something big happens to him, he wants to check out Facebook because it can affect his life, but he knows trying to change his future can just make it worse.

Before I read the book, I always thought looking at my future would be a good thing. I thought taking a peek at my future can give me a chance to change it so I can have the future I want. But after seeing how a little thing Emma does to change a part of her future changes her entire future, it makes me sorta afraid to even think about my future. So after I read this book, it makes me think about my life, what I want to make of it, and I really don't wanna see my future anymore, I just wanna take one step at a time, anyways, there's no rush! 

Blog Post #21: The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler- Cross Book Inquiry

This book, The Future of Us, is similar to the book, Thirteen Reasons Why, by the same author. The book Thirteen Reasons Why (just to recap) is about a boy named Clay Jensen who receives a box of tapes by his friend/crush Hannah Baker, who has recently commited suicide. On the tapes there are 13 people on them and Hannah explains why each and everyone of them were somehow responsible for her death. 

These 2 books are similar because the way it creates suspense, is using the same technique. The element of the unknown. A lesson I learned in ELA class was that sometimes when you don't know what is happening, your mind creates all these out of this world scenarios so you believe that something bad is going to happening to you, even though everything is fine. What scares you the least, will eventually scare you the most. 

In The Future of Us, what scares Emma is that she doesn't know how to make her future a happy one. When she changes her future on purpose, it always ends up badly. But then whenever she goes back on Facebook, she gets afraid her husband is the reason why her life is ruined, or maybe she isn't happy in the future because of things going on in her life in the present. She doesn't know how to work this Facebook situation so she gets scared and thinks that if she doesn't change her future, she will never be happy. But she is probably making it all worse.

Also in The Future of Us, the character Josh is scared because he isn't checking Facebook. He kinda wants to be left out in it but at the same time he is afraid his future isn't looking so great. For example, he keeps on wondering if his future with Sydney Mills (the girl he likes in the present) will be a good one, or if he will end up hating it. Will his friendship with Emma ever happen again? He is to stubborn to check Facebook and just look at his future, so he thinks everything can be the worst it can be, but he will never know, so he should just stop thinking about it.

In, Thirteen Reasons Why, Clay Jensen goes through the same state of mind. When Clay receives the tapes Hannah sent out, he had no idea what he ever done to Hannah, so he creates all these situations in his head about what he might have ever done to Hannah. And when he starts listening to all the other tapes to get to his tape, he keeps on thinking of even worse situations because of what everyone else did to her. What he didn't know really creeped him out and the fact that he never knew when it would be his turn to hear his story, it created even more suspense and finally she got to his part of the story. And turns out, he wasn't exactly responsible for her death, but if he tried harder to help her, she might have not died. 

These two books are written by Jay Asher, which is probably why they use the same technique of suspense and they both have other things in common as well! But these things are really important because this is what makes the story interesting!

Blog Post #20: The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler- Setting

In this story The Future of Us, the two main characters Emma and Josh find a new website fifteen years in the future, and the website is Facebook. It's 1996 at the time so when they log onto their futures, they can see all their pictures, friends, status updates, and more. They soon try to change it and sometimes it turns out good, and bad. The two most important supporting characters are Kellan and Tyson, Kellan is Emma's best friend and Tyson is Josh's best friend. They don't know about the whole Facebook thing but are a really important part of the story, if they find out about it then they would be an even BIGGER part of the story! 

I think the setting really symbolizes what life should be. Before there was internet or Facebook or any other type of advanced technology people would actually call other people and talk to them instead of texting. And people would actually get up and go outside to hang out with their friends rather than video calling or chatting. I think the thing that makes this book so engaging is that they find things that we find so normal and simple today, for people back then to find so incredibly awesome and interesting. It makes you think, oh wow this is what they find so awesome? But back then it was incredible, like maybe in the future a machine that allows you to teleport from place to place is going to be invented, and maybe people in the future use it so often that it's no big deal, but if that was invented right now everyone would be so amazed at this technology. This setting is also in a way symbolizing life because it shows what life is supposed to be like, what life is here for. The reason why you live is to experience new things, new people, everything life has to offer, but you can't get all that from a computer which is why in a way this book is a way for us to realize we need to go out into the real world and do something with our lives! Log off any websites you're on and go have fun!

I think this setting is very significant to the story because it makes the story unique and different. This setting is very different from where most books are written today. In most books today the time periods are around the present or last few years or so, but this is one of the first books where it is in the modern sorta past. The setting and story together makes this book so engaging it is a book where the present meets the past and people learn about new things that are a daily thing for us today so it makes us think about how people back in the old days lived and what they did in their lives and what they would do for fun. 

In conclusion, I really like this book because the setting really makes you think  about what you have today. What if you didn't have email? Facebook? Twitter? Skype? What would you do then? Read a book? Go outside to hang out with your friends? This is what life should be and once was but now it's all about the internet and technology. This book makes you want to think to yourself, what would you do without all these things. Go do something with your life.