Summer reading #4

Out of all of the books I could have chosen I chose this because it is different than every other book that I have read and I wanted to try something new and different.  The main thing that drew my attention to this book is the title because I found it kind of humorous.  One connection that I made with this book is that my brother plays in a band so I know all of the practice that it takes to prepare for a gig.  Another personal connection I made with this book is that a good friend has your back and you have theirs. 

At the beginning of the book Curt has Troy’s back by stopping him from committing suicide by just being nice to him.  Troy has Curt’s back when Curt is in the hospital Troy motivated him to get out of the hospital with music.  This is a great example of true friendship and having each other’s backs.    Even though I was not a fan of this book I would recommend it to anyone who likes music or someone that plays music.  I would also recommend it to someone who is going through a loss of a close family member or a role model.  You can get through that loss by finding a new passion just like Troy did.

Summer reading #3

One part of this book were K.L. Going use the hooking method is when Troy and Curt are standing outside watching traffic and all of a sudden Curt passes out all of a sudden.  As a reader it keeps you interested and makes you want to find out what is going to happen next in the book.  This part of the book is right after Curt and Troy play their first gig and Troy throws up all after stage.  Troy is so mortified after the incident that he quits the band and Curt fells abandoned and he like he has no were to turn. 

       

     You later find out that Troy has pneumonia which is a deadly inflammation in the lungs which can be caused by some drugs.  Curt likes the hospital because he has nowhere else to go so Troy takes up drums to pull Curt out of his depression.  The same that Curt did for Troy when he they first did by saving him from jumping in front of an oncoming train and he also got him to try new things like playing music and playing in front of people because Troy turned to food after his mom passed away.        

Summer reading Entry Two: Fat Kid Rules the World

Troy is the most complex character at the beginning of the book he feels alone and is contemplating suicide.  But later in the book he wants to play great music and does not  worry about people always looking at him and making fun of him and laughing at him.  One of the themes that are starting to emerge is do not judge people.  Even though Troy may not look capable of playing music he is committed to playing great music.  One example of this is when Troy is at his first gig as soon as Curt starts to play Troy throws up all over the stage in front of everyone and is so embarrassed.  He quits the band but when he hears his best friend Curt is homeless he takes lessons on drums and gets better by the motivation of his best friend Curt becomes a great drummer.  He even helps Curt overcome his drug abuse and play a gig like they never have before.   Another theme that is developed is to be you.  Troy does this by stop worrying about what other people think about him and focuses on his goals like becoming a great drummer and playing great music.       

Summer reading entry one: Fat Kid Rules the World

               The story begins with the main character Troy Billings who is an overweight 17 year old with no friends.  He is standing at a subway station in New York City and is planning to throw himself into the oncoming train until he meets and unlikely friend in Curt MacCrae who he meets in the subway.  They become the best of friends.  The main conflict is that Curt asks Troy to play drums in his band and play in but he doesn't know how to play drums, and on top of that they have a gig that is only 5 weeks away.   I think that not only will Troy discover that you don’t have to be skinny of like other people to fit.  I also think that there band will be a success and that when he gets on stage people will not judge what he looks like they will only judge him by the music that he play when he is on stage.  One connection I made very quickly to this book is the old saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover”.  One other connection I made to the book is the movie the rocker were its about a band and one of the members is overweight and gets nervous about going on stage but when they get on stage people don’t care because the music they play.

Friday Night Lights Vocabulary

The sentence average sentence lenght in this book is medium this is a good tacic because he can still give detail in his sentences but he also doesn't carry them on too long and make them boring and carry on too long.  He also uses a mix of vocab in the book he will throw in higher level words and he also uses slang and common terms.  This is good in this book because when the charecters are talking they sound real.  But the higher level words also add another dimention to this story.

I like the staragies for vocab because I know what the book is talking anout but it also chalanges my knowlage of vocab and forces you to use context clues or look up words.  I also like the sentence lenght that he used because he breaks up the paragraphs so your not reading one block of text and it makes me feel like I am reading less.

Blog Reflection

I chose my connections blog as my blog to reflect on is my connections blog. This is the best blog because it uses diction and syntax. One example of diction that I use is low or informal word choice so when you read my blog you know what all the words mean and it doesn't feel like you’re in a class at Harvard. One element of syntax that I use is long sentence length because when you are comparing to books for example like in my post you don't want to leave out any important information about either book. Some examples of long sentence length is when I compare the books The Blindside and Friday Night lights. I also have voice in my post because I talk about my opinion and my past experiences.

Book Recommendation: Friday Night Lights

Almost everyone has watched a football game weather it is just going to a super bowl party or watching it every Saturday and Sunday, or playing it as a kid almost everyone knows what football is in america that is why I think this book is great it is universal.  If you like watching or you play football you will love this book.  This book doesn't just talk about the the flashy sports center top plays that you see on Saturday and Sunday.  

This book talks about the things behind the scenes like all the workouts and practice and the things that you have to do when people aren't watching that matter.  It also shows the comradely that you have as a team.  This is why I think it's such a good book because it shows all the things that you don't see and if you did than you would probably know why your favorite team went 0-16.  This is a great book for anyone who loves the game of football. 

Krista Ramsey

The column that I chose it the magic of Legos by Krista Ramsey.  This column is about how when parents buy there kids legos they are actually buying themselves peace and quiet.  It also talks about how there are benefits to kids playing with legos like building confidence and using there imagination instead of playing video games. this column can be found at http://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/columnists/krista-ramsey/2014/02/15/krista-locking-into-the-magic-of-legos/5521245/.  I think that the best line in this piece is "Like sparklers and hugs, Legos are things a child can never have enough of." this line show good use of diction because of figurative language.  

One thing that I noticed about Krista Ramsey is that is that in almost every blog post she compares it to something.  In the first one she compares eye site to iPhones next she compares dressing nice to two super bowl quarterbacks and finally she compares legos to peace for parents.  Some questions I have for Krista Ramsey are; how long does it take to write a column?  How much information does it take before you can even begin to write a column?  How do you chose your topics?

Friday Night Lights: Connections

Reading is only a small part of this book I could sit here and list connections like a robot. Playing football you can relate to them so easy because most that happens in the book from a football perspective has happened to you or your team-mates. Weather it something like messing up a play in practice, or just having days in practice wear nothing goes right at all. Anyone who has played football would be able to have many connections in this book.

Another connection that I have with this book is a text to text with the book The Blindside they are both about football and have similar stories the only main difference is that The blindside is about one person’s struggle were Friday night lights is about a team's struggle. If you have read either one of these books I would highly recommend reading the other. The last connection that I have made is a text to world and that is that football is the most popular sport in America. If you love football then you would love this book and you should read it.

Friday Night Lights: Chapter 2 The Watermelon Feed

This chapter starts off in the school cafeteria as the team gathers in front of a crowd of people that love football.  They talk about there treasured past and how there past teams were but they also talk about how you have to work hard to become a champion and how it is not just given to you.  This is very easy relate to because when play any sport you have to work at it to become better.  This is a great lesson because you can apply this in your life every day for most things they are not just handed to you you have to earn them.

This chapter basically tells you about their dreams and aspirations for the season.  This chapter starts to build up suspense because you want to see what this team will accomplish and how they will get there in the season.  With a game just a few weeks away on the horizon how will they live up to the past teams and champions?  Will they become champions themselves or will they just be another team to forget about and chasing somebody better than them?

New Book: Friday Night Lights

My new independent reading novel is Friday Night Lights By H.G. Bissinger.  The first chapter (Odessa) talks about the first day of practice on a Monday in mid August.  That's about all the football in that chapter the book goes on to talk about the history of the town how it was founded by men from Zanesville, Ohio in the 1880's.  The town was not good for farming because it is hard to get water to and it is not good for raising livestock.   But it was good at producing gas and oil nearly twenty percent of the nation's domestic Gas and oil.  It had one of the highest murder rates in the nation and was dubbed the 5th worst place to live in 1987 in Money Magazine.

It's hard to give an opinion on this book so far because the first chapter doesn't give much but background information.  One thing is even though it hasn't talked about football much yet I can already make a connection with this book because I play football.  That is the main reason why I chose this book to begin with because I love football.  I will continue reading and I think this book will be very good because I will be able to relate to this book very well.  

Fahrenheit 451

The character that I will be talking about is Montag he is a firefighter in a futuristic society that burns books instead of putting out fire.  he has a normal life at the beginning of the book then he starts keeping books which is illegal and he is torn between being a firefighter and reading books instead.  The fire chief wants him to turn in the books and he says "Books so snobbish critics said were dishwater no wonder books stopped selling" (page 61 by captain Beatty).  He is torn between continuing to be a firefighter or not he said "It's only a step from not going to work today not going to work tomorrow, not going to the firehouse ever again" (67-68).  This quote show how he is not sure about weather to continue as a firefighter.

Montag is no sure about the society that he is living in because he is torn between reading and keeping books and continuing being a firefighter and fallowing all the rules of the society that he lives in.  I think that he is not satisfied with the relationships in his life because his wife almost overdosing on sleeping pills and disapproving of him reading books.  Another reason that I think hes is unhappy is because Clarrisse who probably agree with him reading books because she was out of the ordinary like walking outside enjoying nature having deep conversations with people ect. things that aren't normal in their society has gotten hit by a car and died.  To see what I think Montag looks like click the link.  http://www.kenokel.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/firefighter.jpg

Final Blogger reflection

Click here to view my best blog post.

I think that this post is my best blog post because it demonstartes that I can identify theme.  One example of me identifying theme in my blog is when I say "The theme of The blind side is that your background doesn't matter but if you work hard you will be able to achieve goals that you set" (Hiltenbeitel theme and summary post).  I also show that I can identify how a theme emerges in a story because I did it this post by saying  One example of when this is present in the story is when he gets a scholarship to the University of Mississippi because when you think back to the beginning of the book when he has nothing and no football experience he doesn't let it stop him he works hard and eventually get to the University of Mississippi"  (Hiltenbeitel theme and summary post).  I think this last quote also shows how I can use spacific examples in my book to relate to what I am blogging about.  I think this is my best post because I do everything that on the rubric and I think that I do it very well.

For my second paragraph I chose option number two.  One think that I struggled with on the blog post is doing everything that was on the rubric because for almost every post I would think that I was done then I would check the rubric and I would realise that I had forgoten one or two things then I would have to go back and edit my post.  But the free post I liked more because it wasn't just a set of directions like the posts on the rubrics.  I overcame this struggle by double sometimes even triple checking that I had covered everything In my post and that I was done.  One of my strenghts in blogger was the free post that I said before the free post was the best part of the blog each week because I felt like I could really talk about what I want.

My new book

I just started a new book Heat by Mike Lupica.  So far this book is about a boy named Michael that lives with his older brother and neither of his parents aren't around.  Michael is also a very good baseball player.  So far this book is very good and I like it very much.  The best thing about this book so far is that it doesn't give you very many answers to your questions so it makes you want to keep reading so you can find out what happens next.

Reading Skills

In my new book Heat by Mike Lupica some predictions that I have is that the main character Michael will eventually make it to the majors.  One question I have about this book so far is it says is he has no mother.  But where is his mother?  One text to text connection I have is the narrative that I wrote this year in english because they are both about baseball.  One text to world connection is that America's past-time is baseball and thats what what this book is about.  One text to self connection that I have is that I used to play baseball when I was younger.    

Michael Oher early childhood

The book does not do a great job a telling how michael's parents are not their for him and why he ends up out on the streets.  After some further research I found out,  Michael's father was constantly always getting in trouble with the law and was in prison for almost all of his childhood.  As for Michael's mom she was addicted to drugs and was never there for Michael as a child.  But thankfully Michael has a new loving family the Tuohy's who are a great family.  

Links and Displays

the real Michael Oher article
Michael Oher biography
Michael Oher Interview

Tone and mood

I think that the tone of The Blind Side is selfless because when the Tuohy family adopted him they put Michael ahead of themselves.  One example is when Michael's dad is watching basketball he notices Michael is struggling with his schoolwork so he stops what he is doing and helps Michael instead of doing what he wants to do.  I think the mood of this book is confidence because at the beginning of the book Michael doesn't have much confidence in himself. But at the end Michael has a lot of confidence on and off the field.  One moment in my novel when Michael swayed the beliefs of others is when he first started playing football people didn't think that he would be any good but he proved them wrong by playing football at the university of Mississippi.     

Book Recommendations

I just finished my book The Blind Side by Michael Lewis.  Personally I really enjoyed this book the things that I liked about it were that I could make a lot of connections to the text because the book is about football and I play football.  This book is about a boy named Michael that is homeless, but he gets adopted and starts playing football.  Overall I would rate this book a 9 out of 10.  I really enjoyed this book and I think that if you read it you would enjoy it too.

Theme and summary

The theme of the blind side is that your background doesn't matter but if you work hard you will be able to achieve goals that you set.  This theme develops over the story because at the beginning of the story Michael has literally nothing.  But he is committed to football and he becomes very good at football.  One example of when this is present in the story is when he gets a scholarship to the University of Mississippi because when you think back to the beginning of the book when he has nothing and no football experience he doesn't let it stop him he works hard and eventually get to the University of Mississippi.