DRAGON QUEST

I am two chapters of finishing Dragon Quest. what I like of this book is all of the battles happening in the book and the characters of the book. There is mostly different characters in the book and new ones popping out of the book and there are some that are hard to pronounce. I like the battle mostly because of who will win.

IT by Stephen King

IT has gone back to when they were kids and it is reallllllllllllllllllllllllllly confusing. IT first started out with S.K telling about Derry (the town they live in) and the clown killing people. Then IT changed to telling about the kids, then the adults, then about other character, then about adults, then about kids!!!!!! IT's hard to follow because S.K keeps going back and forth in time.

War Stories

I seem to be reading about war and refugees a lot. I'm almost through What Is the What, which continues to heap on more and more varieties of tragedy and atrocity. I've also started Katherine Paterson's new book The Day of the Pelican, another novel about a real-life modern bloody conflict which the US largely ignores. Reading these stories, learning about the government-sponsored massacres and butchering in Sudan and Kosovo, makes me wonder what we're doing in Iraq. This willy-nilly raping, burning, and slaughtering still happens daily in places like the Congo, and we only catch rumors of it. We choose to stay on the sidelines because we don't want to get involved in "tribal disputes" or "regional conflicts," as if the right to kill people in order to grab their land is a sacred piece of one's culture.

The Day of the Pelican reminds me of Number the Stars. Both stories feature young girls living in the build-up to war. Serbian soldiers stand at corners, an unobtrusive but menacing shadow on daily life. The girls coming from home from school temper their natural exuberance so as not to raise suspicion. As if running down the street is illegal, or ten-year-old girls are plotting the revolution. I wonder what happens to a young man, be he German or Serbian, that he looks for an excuse to harass young school girls. How does one build up the hatred or blindness that sees these people as annoying, expendable things? And when do I do that? True, I'm not kicking people out of their homes, but how would I act if I had a large gun and responsibility? Do I see the brotherhood in everybody, or are there people I write off?

on the far side of the mountain

in this book the writing is vary detailed for example: the birds right wing has specks of brown and a white patch on its left. It is a good book

_EAGLE STRIKE_

I Am The Cheese by Robert Cormier

Just Liste

I am now read "Just listen" by Sarah Dessen. This book is about this girl named Annabel who thinks she has everything because she played the role in a play. She was a top student and popular cheerleader, and a dazzling prom queen. But she really has nothing. She doesn't have friends, no peacefulness at home, and she doesn't have the ability to tell anyone whats on her mind. She then meets this kid named Owen Armstrong who's obsessed with music, very strong and determined to always tell the truth. She hates telling the truth all the time . I will find out what happens next when i read more.

SKELETON KEY

POINT BLANK by Anthony Horowitz

flying aces of world war 1

this book is medium diction example: the german armies were forced to retreat. This book is structured in chapters. When an old subject ends and a new subject starts, there's a chapter. It goes back and forth from German people to British people to French people. The main topic is flying aces and it all fits in because each chapter is about a French flyer or German flyer or British flyer who invented something or did something amazing in that time.

What is the What

What Is the What, by Dave Eggers, is a novel broken into chapters, as novels usually are. However, within each chapter are many stories. The book so far flips between the present action, in which Achak, the main character is being robbed, and his memories. The memories appear as shorter stories interrupting the present action. While the present action follows linear time, with one thing happening after the other, the memories are pulled up as things remind Achak of his past. Some of these memories are after he came to the United States, some are of the refugee camp he lived in for ten years, and some are of his early life in his village in southern Sudan. By dropping these crumbs of his life story piece by piece, the variety keeps the reader interested in the story and in suspense. One can read this story a little at a time, rather than having to dive into it.

The author also makes it an easy book to sink into by using a conversational diction. It is written in first person from Achak's point of view, as if he were telling the story to the reader. For example, in this account of a lion attacking a group of young boys, Eggers writes, "I remember the first boy who was taken. We were walking single file, as we always did, and Deng was holding my shirt from behind as he always did." There is little poetic language and few extra details. Eggers uses mostly simple, common words that are easy to understand. However, he reveals the origin of his character by occasionally using more formal words than found in every day diction. For example, he writes, "I do not know why she wants to call the police for a car in need of repair, but I consent....It does not make sense to me to leave the door open but I do so because she desires it." The words "consent" and "desires" are more formal than most English speakers would use commonly; by this word choice, the reader realizes that Achak has learned English and is not a native speaker. He also uses very few contractions. Achak says, "I am unwilling to agree," rather than "I'm unwilling," and "I tell her that I do have a phone," rather than "I tell her I do." He speaks very properly, without shortcuts, unlike many who grew up speaking English in the United States.

False Starts

There are lots of books out there, so I guess it shouldn't be such a surprise when I don't like a lot of them. After dropping The Land of Green Plums, I started a book by Paul Auster and Tempting Faith DiNapoli, by Lisa Gabriele. Both of them sounded promising--one is an account of a man who wakes up in a cell and can't remember who he is or what he's doing there, and the other is a not-too-sweet memoir of a Catholic childhood--but both became a chore to read. Maybe I was turned off by the suffering in the stories. However, the book I've currently settled on, What is the What by David Eggers, is about one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, certainly not a light story of good times. Maybe it's the stakes. In the books I dropped, the suffering seemed to be an internal dilemma of achieving happiness. In my current book, the suffering is escaping lions and militia men with machine guns. It's a lot easier to be gripped by stories of boys getting eaten by lions than by a girl facing 1950's social demands. Also, Eggers's writing is witty and quick, and the story jumps from the present day to reminisces of the main character's life in Sudan, so there are short anecdotes. However, right now, there are philosophical ramblings which are getting a bit long. When is a shark going to come along and eat somebody? When is somebody going to be thrown in a pit of rats?