Summer Blog Entry #4

            The reason I chose to read the book Ship Breaker for my summer reading was mainly because after reading the descriptions of many books, this one really stood out in my mind due to how similar it was to other books I have liked in the past. It is a book about a dystopian society which is the same type of books like The Hunger Games and Divergent. Also, the protagonist, Nailer, is a teenage boy at right about the same age as me which definitely makes the book easy to relate to. Another way I related to this book when I read it was because it is based in a future, drowned city of New Orleans. This especially made me want to read it because my parents grew up near there and I have been there many times and have always loved it.

            I would recommend this book to anybody who likes books based in Dystopian societies. I would also say that nearly any teenage boy would love to read it because of how easy it is to relate to. One day earlier in the summer a friend of mine asked what book he should read for the project and I suggested Ship Breaker. After describing it to him, he decided he will read it. Yesterday, he came to me and said he loved it and is now choosing to read the second one in the series.

Summer Entry #3: Hooking the Reader

A section of this book that really provides a good hook for the reader is:

“’I won’t let you die, son. Don’t you worry. We’ll get you taken care of. You’re my blood and I’ll take good care of you.’

And then he was gone and Nailer sank into forever.” (Bacigalupi 146).

     This part of the book is at the end of a chapter and is intended to make the reader want to go on to the next chapter and read on. At this point in the book, Nailer’s father had just found him and the wreck and Nailer is seriously injured in his back. He is fighting for consciousness while they negotiate and finally, his Dad joins Nailer and decides to support him and take care of him. It hooks you in by ending right when Nailer goes unconscious and you aren’t sure whether or not he will die. As a reader, you really want to go to the next chapter to make sure Nailer wakes up and has received medical treatment. Also, you aren’t sure whether or not his father will actually take care of Nailer because his father often beats him or doesn’t care for him. This greatly adds to the suspense that the author leaves at the end of the chapter.

Summer Blog Entry #2

Nailer, the protagonist of the story who is followed the entire time, mainly wants to know what it is like to live luxuriously and be rich. All he wants is to be rich and to get away from the horrors of light crew and living on the beach in poverty. He had a chance to do this when they found the wreck of the clipper ship but, Nailer felt terrible if he left the girl alone to die. This means he must want to be a good person before wanting to become wealthy. Pima on the other hand, was ready to cut off the girls rings and leave her for dead before Nailer stopped her. She is a very strong, tough girl who wants many of the same things Nailer does. She dreams about making it big and living a life of luxury.

            A theme that is beginning to appear in the book is doing good deeds will eventually have a good effect on you in the future. The characters in the book believe a lot in Karma. When Nailer was severely injured and lucky that he lived, they all bought him luck gifts in hope that they may gain some luck from him.

            The way this book is structured is there are many 8-12 page chapters. Many of these end with cliffhangers to drag you on and make you keep reading. The chapters are headed using only numbers and there are never any subtitles in the book. Also, the book is full of a lot of dialogue between characters and is narrated in third person.

Summer Blog Entry #1

The book I am reading for this summer is Ship Breaker by Poalo Bacigalupi. The main characters in the book so far are Nailer (who is also called Lucky Boy by many), and Pima, one of Nailer’s long-time best friends. Nailer and Pima are both light crew members who go through old air ducts to find copper wire. They are both very clever and know their place in society but they frequently dream about being rich and living luxoriously.

            The setting of the book is a dystopian society on of a storm-ravaged Gulf Coast. The people who live on the beach are all workers who collect the raw materials from old oil rigs that have washed up and been abandoned.  These workers sell the raw materials to big companies like Lawson and Carlson and General Electric that then pay them just barely enough to live off of.

            The conflict at this point of the book is that Nailer and Pima have stumbled upon a huge wreck of a very expensive, new, clipper ship. They think that their dreams of becoming rich have finally come true but they then find a young, rich girl, barely alive on the ship. They feel bad just leaving her for death so they rescue her and now have to decide whether or not they can trust her. The girl says they will be rewarded greatly when her people come to find her since they saved her life. Pima and Nailer aren’t sure whether or not to believe her because she is definitely very secretive and sly. For now, they decide to camp out by the wreck until the rich people come to find her. I predict that they will take Nailer and Pima with them but will end up treating them like a much lower class and Nailer will realize that he is right back where he started, no money and treated like dirt.

            You could relate this book to nearly any dystopian themed book. One good example is The Hunger Games .They are both books about a teenage character who has grown up in a very poor society who only works for the rich people who live elsewhere. They have dreams about being rich but with the social classes, there is nearly no way to get there.

The Finish

Well that was....um...interesting? I can't think of a great word to describe it quite yet. I just finished the ending of Allegiant. I'm still not sure what to make of the ending though... It was definitely a surprise but the epilogue does help you get through it. It also makes me realize that it fits the series better. I'm not sure why the author made it this way but probably because she just intended for it to make a lasting effect on people. It will definitely cause you to continue thinking about it for a while after finishing. Have any of you read this series and felt the same way about the ending? Or a different way?

The author building suspense

 The author has done a great job building suspense throughout the course of this novel. Especially near the end,(See my last post for how that's affecting me). She does things like put in lots of drama between Tris and Tobias, have people switching sides, even people dying. It is a ton of suspense for the inevitable ending that I'm not quite sure what will happen during. I have made a few predictions like they will overthrow the Bureau or save the city, but those are pretty typical. I think something shocking might happen but I still have no idea what. Do any of you have any predictions? Don't you dare spoil anything on purpose.



Hey look, a lawnmower ............................'\.-. .......................

The worst thing about my book..

I'm still reading Allegiant and now, since I talked about the best thing last time, I will talk about the worst part of reading this book. The worst part of reading this book is that, from alot of people I have heard that they hate the ending to the Divergent series. Even Ms. Cohen! She loves books! I am still about 50 pages away from the ending and nothing terrible has happened yet so I am a bit scared while reading. Nobody spoil it for me I am almost there and will most likely come across the ending this weekend. I have no clue what will happen. Will somebody die? Will their plan work? This is tough.

Final Blogging Assessment English 1B

From Real Life Issues in the Text

In Allegiant, you can really see some of the real life issues that are reflected in the text. The main issue is just human nature in general. How humans can have the tendency to separate people and consider themselves more superior for whatever reason. This is shown in the book by the "genetically pure" group of people who consider themselves superior.  They give themselves higher jobs in the government than the "genetically damaged" people. They also blame them for all crimes that occur and are basically racist towards them. Here, Tris explains how the "higher up" people see others, "To them, the people in our city are just containers of genetic material-just GDs [Genetically Damaged], valuable for the corrected genes they pass on but not for the brains in their heads or the hearts in their chests." (Roth 377).


Behavior like this is shown many times throughout history, the Holocaust, segregation in America, peasants in the Middle Ages, etc. One example is during Hitler's rise to power in Germany when he blamed the Jews for all of Germany's problems and used them as a scapegoat. Another example is in America before Martin Luther King when blacks and whites were segregated in all parts of daily life. Bathrooms, bus seats, lines, schools, everything. Also in the Middle Ages with Kings and Nobles thinking that peasants were worth nothing and deserved to be treated like dirt. There are plenty of examples of humans behaving like this throughout history even though we are all created equal. In Allegiant, the only difference is someone's "genetically pure" genes. These genes don't actually cause a change in the person and shouldn't cause that person to be looked down upon.

The Best Thing About My Book Is...

The best thing about Allegiant is the fact that it can relate to anybody's daily lives. It can help teach you life lessons about bravery and courage. It teaches us about what is morally right and what to do in situations like they have. At one point when Tris and Tobias are trying to make a very important decision, they say "'But we're acting out of desparation to save something that's important to us-just like the Bureau is. What's the difference?' 'The difference is what's right...'" (Roth 388). They aren't sure whether to do what is right for them, or what is right to the Bureau. Tris believes to support the people they have grown up with but Tobias thinks that may be just as morally wrong as what the Bureau is going to do. Have any of you read a book that can make you think differently?

Vocab in my Book

In my book, Allegiant, there is lots of simple vocab but there are also examples of elevated diction. When the scientists who live in the Bureau are talking, they use lots of elevated diction. For example, when a scientist, Matthew, is talking to Tris he says, "It'a a better model for having the option to select particula members of a population to opt out-you inoculate them, the virus spreads within twenty-four hours, it has no effect on them." (Roth 279).  This is when Matthew is explaining something very scientific. He naturally uses bigger words since he is a scientist but since he is explaining this to Tris, he tries to dumb it down and use simpler diction.

Since that probably wasn't very interesting, here is a link to play Crazy Taxi.
http://coolmath-games.com/0-crazy-taxi-m12/

Krista Ramsey Introduction Activity

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/columnists/krista-ramsey/2014/02/22/krista-the-very-poor-case-for-arming-teachers/5744065/

This article that I hyperlinked is a article by Krista Ramsey in which she crtiscizes the idea of arming teachers in schools to help prevent school shootings. She thinks that this is a horrible idea and she lists many reasons why it should be stopped.




"It's unrealistic and, in fact, insulting to think people who entered the profession of education should be turned into teacher-law enforcement hybrids." The way this line affects the reader is it uses a metaphor to show what the teacher would be turned into. They would now be "teacher-law enforcement hybrids." The use of the word hybrid is a great choice in diction. It shows that it would be very hard to conceal the weapon and still teach normally.


The style that Ramsey writes with is a comedic but accusing style of writing. "Why, out of all the things we told them – get good haircuts and keep a half-tank of gas in your car, pay off your credit card every month and get a flu shot – did they lock onto the stuff we said about following their dreams and listening to their heart?"


What kind of responses do your articles usually get?
Why do you write with the comedic accusing style you have?
What is your favorite topic to write about?

Real Life Issues in the Text

In Allegiant, you can really see some of the real life issues that are reflected in the text. The main issue is just human nature in general. How humans can have the tendency to separate people and consider themselves more superior for whatever reason. This is shown in the book by the "genetically pure" group of people who consider themselves superior. They give themselves higher jobs in the government than the "genetically damaged" people. They also blame them for all crimes that occur and are basically racist towards them.


Behavior like this is shown many times throughout history. One example is during Hitler's rise to power in Germany when he blamed the Jews for all of Germany's problems and used them as a scapegoat. Another example is in America before Martin Luther King when blacks and whites were segregated. Also in the Middle Ages with Kings and Nobles thinking that peasants were worth nothing and deserved to be treated like dirt. There are plenty of examples of humans behaving like this throughout history even though we are all created equal. In Allegiant, the only difference is someone's "genetically pure" genes. These genes don't actually cause a change in the person and shouldn't cause that person to be looked down upon.

A text-to-text connection

(You may want to stop reading my blog if you haven't read Allegiant and are still planning to, just saying I'm bad at not giving things away.)


I noticed a text-to-text connection while reading Allegiant. The connection I thought of was a connection to The Hunger Games. I connected the game makers in The Hunger Games to the people who had been running the experiment outside the city in Divergent. I believe I made this connection because the game makers run the hunger games from outside the arena and can see everything that the tributes do. This is related to the agency running the experiment in Chicago because they just sit and watch the entire experiment go down. They can see everybody's each and every move but they never  do anything to stop the violence just like the game makers. There are also other connections between these books, such as how they are both Dystopian American societies with teenage girls as the protagonists. They are also both great and fun to read books that everyone should check out.

How the different characters react to the main conflict in the novel

I am currently just passed chapter 18 in Allegiant. Now that they have discovered what is outside the fence, Tris and Tobias are reacting differently and worrying about different things to the same problem.


Tris is more worried about the fact that they have been being watched for their entire lives. People have been observing each and every action that has occurred within the city and it has all been documented as an experiment. I think that she is more bugged by the people watching not intervening when innocent people in the city were being killed.


Tobias was bugged more by the fact that everything he has ever lived for had all been a lie. It was just part of one huge experiment and he doesn't like that. For example, on page 136, Tobias says, "But there's so much that was a lie, it's hard to figure out what was true, what was real, what matters." He is thinking about how his entire life wasn't at all what he thought it was. He is worried that because all he was was an experiment, he didn't truly live for anything and wasn't truly able to do anything that could have changed the world.

Describe the Setting of the Book

I have just started a book called Allegiant by Veronica Roth which is the third and final book of the Divergent series. So far, the setting of the book is still based in a dystopian Chicago. The entire series is a dystopian society in the future. Currently, Tris and Tobias are deciding whether or not they should leave the city and venture out to see what lies beyond the boundary fence. At the end of the second book, it is revealed there is a whole other world outside the fence and that the people who live in Chicago were placed there on purpose to eventually come back out and save and rebuild the old world which tore itself apart. I believe that sometime soon in the book they will leave to discover what's out there. The leader of the new government, Tobias' Mom, doesn't want anybody to leave. This means that they must leave in secret. Nobody knows what they will find out there but I predict it will be an anarchy with chaos nearly everywhere and a collapsed government. If anyone has any other predictions what they will find please comment them.

Final Blog Reflection

I think that the blog post that best exemplifies my ability to analyze characters is this one where I analyze a minor character's role in the book.

http://mattmsreadingblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/minor-characters-roles-in-insurgent.html

This blog post is the best for analyzing characters because in it, I talked about and analyzed a minor character, Peter, in Insurgent. I explained the way he chooses to live his life and how he goes to whichever side he owes somebody. I also used examples of times in the book when he did this and explained how they made his character appear.

One thing that I struggled with this trimester during our blogging experience was keeping my blog up to date each week. With all the snow days we had on mondays, I rarely got a chance to make a blog post during class like we usually do. I didn't get around to it very often at home so this put me behind for much of the trimester. The way I worked through this struggle was on days we actually did go into the computer lab I would make two blog posts that day instead of the usual one per week. This helped me get caught up and have all 10 posts by the end. Finally, one strength I had while blogging was that I kept up to date with reading weekly. I read at least 50 pages every week and finished the book by the end of the trimester.

What do I read next?

Since I finally finished Insurgent, I am wondering what book or series I should dive into next. One obvious option would be the third book in the Divergent series, Allegiant. This may be a good idea since I still have the end of Insurgent fresh in my mind. Another option would be starting a new book or series such as I am Number 4 like I talked about in a previous post.




I am debating between these two options but if anyone has a suggestion they think I might like then tell me about it.

Finished book

I finally finished Insurgent! It was a great book but the ending made the entire thing 10 times better. I won't give anything away for those of you planning to read the series but there is a huge reveal at the end. Now if made me excited to read the third book, Allegiant. 

I have no idea what will happen or how the next book will start since they basically accomplished the goal they had been trying to achieve the whole time at the end of Insurgent. But, with the reveal, there could be tons of new possible conflicts. They may have to go to the unkown land that is outside the fence and have to work together without any factions. I think it will be a very good book and I'm very excited to read it.

Books I want to Read

I have been wanting to read the book, I am Number Four, for a while now and I am going to read it once I finish Insurgent. I have heard that it is a great book from everybody I know who has read it and I am excited to read it. I have always liked science fiction books and I think I will like this one just the same. If any of you have read this book also please comment and tell me how you liked it.

I couldn't get the embed video to work so here is a link to the movie trailer that came out in 2011:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5djHG3hPu0

Minor Character's Roles in Insurgent

What is the role of a minor character in the book I am reading, Insurgent. The character I chose to analyze is Peter. Peter isn't mentioned very often in the book  but whenever he is, he nearly always drastically changes the plot of the story. He also changes sides often in the book. Him and Tris met when they were both initiates at Dauntless and they hated eachother and tried to sabotage eachother.

At the beginning of the second book, Peter is revealed to be a traitor and on the Erudite's side. But, when Tris is about to be killed, Peter saves her and they escape Erudite. Tris was very confused why he did this but he later reveals that he lives a very extreme sounding life. He basically just always lives so that he never owes anybody anything. Tris had saved him before when she didn't kill him once so Peter felt like he owed her back. He fulfilled this by saving her from Erudite but he is still very unpredictable since he always goes to whichever team is the highest bidder.

Literary Elements in Insurgent

I found many different literary elements in Insurgent. One example is the setting which is set in a dystopian society in Chicago. I don't know why she made it in Chicago but it is most likely because it is one of the largest cities in the US. She uses imagery a lot to describe Chicago when she talks about the marshes that used to be a lake and how there are many abandoned buildings.


There are a lot of types of conflict in the book. There is Man vs. Self, Man vs. Society, and Man vs. Man. An example of man vs. self is the struggle that Tris is going through to try and decide what the right decision is to make about attempting to save the information that was stolen or to listen to her boyfriend and go with him instead. A man vs. society example is Tris and all of Factionless' struggle against the Erudite. They want to take them down and form a new society without factions but it is very hard to do. A final example of conflict is one for man vs. man. There is plenty of fighting and combat throughout the entire book such as when the Erudite attack other factions like Candor.

Why do I think the athor wrote this book?

I am still reading the book Insurgent by Veronica Roth. In this blog, I am going to answer a question instead of ruining the rest of the book for those of you who haven't read it yet. So why do I think that Veronica Roth wrote this book?

I believe that the biggest reason she wrote this book is that she saw the success of The Hunger Games and other Dystopian books. She probably already had the idea for Tris and the different factions but hadn't put them into a series yet. It's a good thing she did write it because the series has been very successful. Also, the first book in the series, Divergent, was very popular and she had to make a sequel especially when Divergent ended with a cliffhanger. If you think she wrote it for a different reason then please post it in the comments.

Winter Break Reading: Insurgent

Over Winter Break, I read over half of the book, Insurgent. It has become not as quickly paced as it was before but still very interesting to read. Tris has decided to turn herself in to the Erudite to prevent any more deaths in Dauntless. Tris is now becoming a test subject for the Erudtie to test the Divergent. She is trapped there and they are planning on executing her when they are finished testing.

I think that somehow Trist will get rescued by Tobias or her friends at Dauntless while she is stuck in Erudite (how else is there a third book?). Tris is very deceptive and she is trying as hard as she can to not be helpful for the Erudite. She knows that they are the reason that many of her closest friends and her family have been killed. She nearly always resists the simulations they put her through and resists leaving her cell. I predict the Erudite will not be able to kill Tris because they won't be able to get enough data about the Divergent from her.