An Abundance of Katherines Blog Post

An Abundance of Katherines Blog Post

            I’ve been reading An Abundance of Katherines by John Green, an amazing book about two friends who take a road trip and end up in Gutshot Tennessee. Recently, in the book, Hassan and Colin, the two main characters, have gotten into a fight. Hassan has been hanging out with people his age who live in Gutshot, and is making new friends, and Colin doesn’t like that, because he thinks that Hassan will “dump him” (as a friend) just like every Katherine he’s ever dated has (Colin has only ever dating 19 girls, all named Katherine, who’ve all dumped him.). I’ve been trying to figure out who’s to blame in this situation, but it seems to me as thought both characters have a point.

            Hassan has always been there for Colin. Every time he gets dumped, Hassan is always there to pick up the pieces and make Colin feel better. He’s been a great friend that way, because if it weren’t for him, Colin would only have his parents to cheer him up. Hassan does, however, make jokes about Colin, and tease him whenever he talks about things Hassan doesn’t find interesting. For example, if Colin states a fact that he finds fascinating, and Hassan doesn’t, Hassan will say “Not interesting.” Hassan also calls Colin names, which seem friendly enough, but might not amuse Colin as much. On the other hand, friends tease each other and call each other names, Hassan just seems to do it rather frequently and Colin is pretty sensitive- but that shouldn’t over shadow his faithfulness to always being there for Colin.

            Colin has never found it easy to make friends. Hassan was his first friend, and other than Lindsay, and possibly other Katherines, Hassan is Colin’s only long-term friend. Being dumped seems to be really hard for Colin, and to have that happen repeatedly, 19 times, is probably not the best for his self-esteem. It probably helps to have Hassan try to comfort him, but I can imagine that when you’re really feeling sad, Hassan’s humorous and sometimes demeaning attitude isn’t the best medicine. Colin also talks about how he’s disappointed in himself for not being able to quite reach the high standards his dad’s set for him, and for only being a prodigy, and maybe not a genius. I think when Hassan tells him he’s not interesting it affects him more than it would other people.

            In conclusion, I think both Hassan and Colin have a point. They are certainly opposites, but opposites attract, which I think is what makes them such great friends. I really hope they’ll be able to get over this fight and focus on what’s really important, which is their strong friendship.

January Nonfiction Blog Post

January Nonfiction Blog Post

            This week, I read, “US use sea lions in terrorism fight” by the foreign staff of “The Telegraph” newspaper. The text was mainly about what the sea lions’ jobs are in the Navy and how they do their jobs. In the text, it says, “Animals are used instead of humans because they are at home in the water and perform best.” The text also says that sea lions can attack leg cuffs (hand cuffs that attach to your thigh) to intruders, help try to locate explosives in the water, and patrol harbors and attempt to stop enemy divers who try to sneak into “friendly waters undetected”. The text says that marine mammals have been used in American forces since the early 1960s, and were first used between 1970-71 in the Vietnam War at the US Army ammunition pier in Cam Ranh Bay. These details show what the sea lions do, how they do it, and a bit of backstory to better understand their roles in the Navy.

            The author wants readers to think that sea lions are useful for the protection of the Navy and of America. They don’t indicate that they want us to feel a certain way; they don’t include negative or very positive facts about marine mammal use in the Navy, so I’d say they want us to feel like they’re being used for a good purpose. The author uses really good quotes that inform the reader, but don’t have a clear bias behind them. This helps readers understand the text, but makes them form their own opinion, not based off of an opinion that could have been given in the text. For example, “When an intruder is identified, the animal locating the intruder would be provided with marking hardware to localize the intruder and interdiction hardware to enable apprehension of the intruder by security personnel. The Navy marine mammals would also participate in periodic training exercises.”  This gives the reader a good chunk of knowledge on how sea lions benefit the Navy, but it can be interpreted as a good or a bad thing.

            From this article I will take away the skill of including purposeful quotes that don’t sway my reader in an obvious direction. This is a good skill because you don’t want to enforce too much of your opinion on your readers, but you still want them to know more about your topic and to be able to understand it. Since now I know about marine mammals being used in US armed forces, I definitely have a different perspective on animal rights/cruelty. I think using animals to fight not the best possible solution, but I also think it’s better that they’re in their homes and natural environments rather than in a zoo, or even being killed. This article didn’t include any statistics of marine mammal casualties caused by working with the US armed forces, so I don’t know about that. However, that is one thing I would like to know more about. I’d also like to find out where and how they get the marine mammals to work with, if it’s from a zoo, aquarium, the wild, and endangered, etc.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6653439/US-use-sea-lions-in-terrorism-fight.html

PLL12 Blog Post

            Right now I’m reading Pretty Little Liars #12: Burned. In my last blog post I talked about how the setting benefited the plot. By reading further, I’ve discovered that the main issue is that they need to find out who A is, but they also need to find out what their relationships with one another really are.

            I think that since Spencer, Emily, and Aria are doing to hula dance in the ship’s talent show, it shows that they are getting closer. Hannah really didn’t want to do it, even if she was with her “friends”, so I think that Hannah is less willing to become friends again as the others are. Maybe that’s because she was tormented so much by “Ali” that she doesn’t feel like her friends are really genuine and want to become friends again. I also think that since Hannah dropped out of the dance to be in the talent show with Naomi, she’s reinforcing her distance with the group.

            I think it’s a bit strange that Spencer, Emily, and Aria are so willing to do this hula dance together. They went from barely ever speaking to being best friends all of the sudden. I think the whole A thing has definitely brought them all closer together, maybe Hannah less than the rest. However, I think that this is such a drastic and big change in all of their relationships with each other that it seems weird that they would become acquaintances to best friends so quickly.

            Overall, I think that Spencer, Emily, and Aria are very eager to stay friends like when they were before, and Hannah just doesn’t want to get hurt again.

January Nonfiction Blog Post

January Nonfiction Blog Post

            This week, I read “On Staten Island, Relentless Bullying Is Blamed for a Teenage Girl’s Suicide” by Vivian Yee. It talked about how 15-year old Felicia Garcia committed suicide, perhaps because of bullying from the football team. Felicia lived in the foster care system, and had a prior history of being a “rebellious” teenager. However, she’d seemed fine before she committed suicide, apart from crying in the hallways once a few days before her suicide. The football team tweeted defenses, saying they barely knew Felicia. I think that the football team’s response using social media was definitely not the right decision to make.

            Social media and the Internet have literally been taking over the world. Bullying has even taken a completely different form through technology- cyber bullying. I think defending yourself after someone has committed suicide is by itself, a selfish thing to do, you can at least show respect for the person and have a moment to reflect on what their lives were like, and not immediately think about how they will “get in trouble” for it.  So not only do I think it was wrong for the football team to defend themselves so quickly, but I think it was a really bad idea for them to use the internet to do it. People read things differently on the Internet than how the writer intended them to be read, and while the football team may not have intended for their comments to sound selfish, they did. I think if there was any way for them to defend themselves, it should have been done in an interview, or a press conference if absolutely necessary. They brought it upon themselves to defend themselves, when no one had asked them to, and they didn’t need to. Perhaps if they’d waited until they’d been questioned, this situation wouldn’t have happened.

            In conclusion, I think that this football team made the wrong decision when they decided to write a comment on Twitter about Felicia’s suicide. I wish things like this didn’t happen, and that bullying could be less of an issue in our society. It’s something we really don’t need and that could easily be avoided. Maybe then horrible things like this wouldn’t happen so often. My thoughts go out to Felicia’s friends and family.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/nyregion/suicide-of-staten-island-girl-is-blamed-on-bullying.html?ref=bullies&_r=0

Pretty Little Liars #12: Burned Blog Post

Pretty Little Liars #12: Burned Blog Post

            I recently started reading Pretty Little Liars #12: Burned. It’s quite different than the other Pretty Little Liars books, but it’s a nice plot twist. I think that this is a unique craft the author used to get readers thinking. Being stuck in Rosewood wouldn’t help the story advance any further, so they kept the same story and characters, just shifted the setting. This keeps the reader on their feet, aware of characters and possible conflicts, but they have to keep the new setting in mind, making it difficult for the readers to predict future events.

            Every main character is on the trip, and most of their friends are also on the trip. This makes the story “work” because you don’t out of the blue, lose a vital character, only “extras” are missing. For example, Riley Wolfe isn’t there, and she’s not a main character, but I can tell that since they keep referencing her, she’ll be important, as well as the reason as to why she’s not on the cruise. So having the characters there helps the reader feel as in the moment as they did in the other eleven books, and missing characters helps spark new conflicts and mysteries.

            Introducing a new setting makes new plot twists less predictable. I love this series but sometimes you could knew exactly when one character would get into a fight with another, or get killed. Now that the setting is on the cruise, we don’t know everything that could happen. We haven’t explored the ship as we have Rosewood, and since the ship is docking in three different islands over the course of the trip, there’s even more to discover. The girls are in the middle of the ocean, and A can still contact them. This means that the girls are less protected- they have nowhere to hide if they are among A- and have more of a chance of finding out who A is. This is going to help the story advance much more than it would in Rosewood.

            I think this is really helpful for authors writing series of books, or short stories. It really doesn’t help me in my writing, since I don’t continue on with my stories and make them into a series. But, if at any point in the future I do decide to write a series, I’ll definitely use this tool of setting change in one of the later books.