Upon This Rock Review-Response to Extra Reading

   This week in Journalism we had to read Upon This Rock,an immersion journal piece, by John Jeremiah Sullivan. I am going to share my thoughts on the piece for my response to a piece of writing I read. Let me start off by saying, I don’t think the author will want to read my thoughts anytime soon. For Starters, this article was more like a drawn out research essay instead of an immersion journal. It literally took me three days to get through this 15-page article on how this guy went to a festival called Creation and was suppose to write about what he saw. The idea was excellent but the execution was poor. If he had cut down the length to maybe six, seven or even eight pages, it would have been so much better. I felt like there was too much detail in every paragraph, after reading-and sleeping- for a while I just had to go do something else so my mind could process all the adjectives and understand what he was saying. Every time he referred to his RV, he wrote “the twenty-nine-footer”. Looking through his paper, I realized he referred to his “twenty-nine-footer”17 times. Seventeen times its mentioned in a fifteen page story where about three pages is John’s back story, two pages is his intro, two pages is about him getting to the festival and parking his RV, and about half a page is spent describing Christian Rock and what it is all about.

    My over all opinion of this immersion article, is it was too drawn out. If he had cut down everything he wrote about to half it’s size and took out a lot of adjectives then it would have been the right length, maybe even make you want to experience a festival like this. But after reading this article I feel like I can’t even fully grasp what they do at these events.

8/28-Upon This Rock (15 minutes)

8/29-Upon This Rock (10 minutes)

8/30-Upon This Rock (10 minutes)

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Late last week I finished reading I am Number Four by Pittacus Lore. That book was amazing! I strongly recommend it to anyone looking for a fast read. This week I decided to switch gears and read a romance novel, I choose Eleanor & Park by rainbow Rowell. I started reading this book because my book chat partner read it and said that it was really good.
 Eleanor & Park is a romance novel. It isn't one of those novels where you start and by page five you already know the outcome so you just skip a couple pages and read the last chapter or two. This book will literally have you begging for more. I feel like every chapter it throws you for a loop and then sees how far it can pull on your heart until it breaks-let me tell you it will break a lot. The book does move it focus around from chapter to chapter, it will always come back to the journey Eleanor & Park have embarked on. I hope that when we start writing fiction stories I can use some of the writing techniques Rainbow did. For instance, one of the things Rainbow is really good at is setting up for a big scene and then making sure the length of it isn't too long or too short.

Reading Log-September 3

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell:
8/23-Pages 1-40 (30 minutes)
8/24-Pages 42-60 (15 minutes)
8/25-Pages 61-84 (20 minutes)
8/26-None
8/27-None
8/28-Pages 85-100 (15 minutes)
8/29-Pages 101-151 (45 minutes)

Total Time:125 minutes

Reading Log-August 26

I am Number Four by Pittacus Lore:
8/20-Pages 173-200 (20 minutes)
8/21-Pages 201-223 (15 minutes)
8/22-Pages 224-240 (10 minutes)
8/23-Pages 241-261 (10 minutes)
8/25-Pages 261-300 (40 minutes)

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card:
8/26-Pages 1-35 (30 minutes)

Total Time:125 minutes

Something Big

This week our assigned topic is to write about something exciting that happened to us in the past week. I am going to talk about the first soccer practice of the season with the Lady Jaguars. Lady Jaguars is the recreational soccer team I play on in the fall and spring. We put this team together last year because we all used to play under one team, called the Rockets, but after we started middle school nobody could make it to the practices or the games, so we dissembled the team. We all got together and decided we wanted to start playing again, so we found a new coach, recruited some new players and got to work.
  It was 6:00 on Thursday August 22, Allison, Jane, Margaret, Jane, Cherish, Christina, Molly, Claire, Bozeman, Raven, Haleigh and me were all at Independence Park ready to start the first practice of the season. We started off by walking up and down the brown field, so the lacrosse team wouldn't take our spot. Then we just started chatting in the middle of the field. Finally our coach showed up, 15 minutes late, and told us to go run all 5 fields twice. Once we did that we stretched in what was suppose to be a circle but was more of a lump. We heard,"Get on the line!" and that meant it was sprint time. After we finished doing all over our sprints, we started a scrimmage. It started out 6v6 but one of the girls was knocked down by the beast, Claire is her real name, and couldn't play so we brought in Kate Holiday. Kate was my assistant soccer coach two years ago, and came back to give me privates so she came to watch me. We ended the scrimmage, 0-1, and ended practice with a couple more sprints.

Reading Response-I am Number Four

    This week I continued my reading in the book I am Number Four by Pittacus Lore. I picked this book out before we made our question in class,but the next book I am going to read will either be  Eleanor & Park or the next book in this series. This book is the one I choose because my book chat partner read it and it sounded really good.
   I continued to read my book, I am Number Four , this week the plot thickens and more people become aware of John's secret powers.This causes a problem because now the Mogadorians have an exact location of John. Having the Mogadorians on Earth is a problem because now the humans are in danger. While reading this book I payed special attention to the way the author set up big action scenes,and then went through with them. This author also payed very close attention to making all of the characters dynamic and when the big fight came it made us feel emotionally attached to a certain character. I hope to be able to make this connection with my readers.
 

Free Blog-#Freshie

This week we have a free blog topic, I choose to write about freshman year. It was a definitely a change from being the leaders of middle school, to the least respected class in high school. I feel like this year will be an important one to my grade.
   Freshman year is the time when people start the process of finding out who they are. This year is the time when people start to switch friend groups and make a new path for themselves. People start to figure what they want to do with their lives, what field they want to pursue, where they want to go to college, what they want to major in. High school is a difficult time for everyone academically, but an even tougher time socially. Everyone is changing and sometimes that means changing the people you hang out with, changing your sense of style, sometimes changing everything about you! You can basically label the fours years of high school as change.Being a Freshman or as some of us call ourselves "a Freshie" is a good time for change.

Reading Log- August 12-19

Secrets &  Lies By Kody Keplinger-
8/11:Pages 1-86 (70 minutes)

I am Number Four by John Green-
8/12:Pages 1-40 (30 minutes)
8/13:Pages 41-75 (25 minutes)
8/15:Pages 76-99 (15 minutes)
8/16:Pages 100-172 (60 minutes)

Total Time: 200 Minutes

Reading Response-The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

This summer one of the books I choose to read was The Fault in Our Stars. This is a book I have wanted to read for a while but never had the chance because I was always reading other school books. So when I got the chance to read it, I was ecstatic! When I picked up this book I hadn't really heard much about the plot other than some of the main characters end up dead.
     So when I started reading I was really surprised once I learned what the book was really about. The Fault in Our Stars is a wonderful book to read if you like romance and suspense mixed together. This book through me for a loop multiple times, for instance at the beginning when we were experiencing her support group she expressed how she disliked going to the meetings, because she hated having to hear all the peoples' problems which is not a normal reason to hate it. What I liked the most was the way the author wrote the main characters to be so vulnerable with each other but they appear to be tuff as nails when around others. I felt like this added a third dimension to the complexity of their characters and their growing relationship. Something I strongly disliked was how she made every person in the main character's life either disappear, die, or get cancer and die from that. I strongly recommend reading this book to anyone who likes a good book.

Welcome to My Blog!

Welcome to My English 1 blog!

Here I will be uploading posts about books I have read that week, in class and out of class. I will also be making some posts about class topics, or an assigned topic. I hope you enjoy my blog as much as I enjoy writing it!

        Mary Beth