REFLECTION, IMPROVEMENT, AND MORE REFLECTING- How did I do?

         We all improve in something no matter what. This time, I supposedly improved in my writing and blogging.
        Well onto the reflection. The blogs I will be using are:
Old: http://amandahbookblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/insurgent-my-thoughts-and-questions-so.html#comment-form
New: http://amandahbookblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/analysis-battle-royale.html#comment-form

       First off, my introductions to paragraphs! In my old post, I just went straight to it, but in my new post, I wanted something to hook people in! Next, my way of telling about the blog. In my old posts, I would just be like "oh, that happened, next event." No. In my new posts, I actually had my feelings and opinions into them. What I think is that the book I am reading, I am enjoying it more than the book I was reading in my old post. Just having feelings in my posts made a huge difference in change.
      Now to discuss how I did for this assignment! One thing I struggled with was not posting blogs at the right time, but that was ok I guess. One strength I had with my blog was being able to fit all of the requirements in for this project! And for my reading goal, I unfortunately did not make it. My reason for this is because I was reading books that were too big for myself to handle. But, I have improved as a reader over this trimester by gaining new vocabulary. I also now understand the meaning of "procrastination" and when the right time to use that is (it's never and we all know that somehow.)
     Uhhh that's all I guess, but I will blog more someday.
Good bye for now, readers~!
-Amanda

CHARACTER ANALYSIS: Shuya Nanahara (Another Battle Royale post)

       

         Since this book is really long ( a decent 570 pages-ish,) I might as well finish my requirements for this blog project. I'm getting really exited to because when I finish this book, I can write a really long post about a game that's really, really similar to this book (hooray, so excited, can't wait, etc.)
        Alright, but enough of that, onto the actual point of this, Analysing the main character, Shuya, from Battle Royale. Yeah, if you've been reading the past posts, I mention Shuya a lot (well obviously, he's the main character.) In my opinion, based on this quote-  "Shuya offered his hand to Shogo. 'What's this? I can't read your palm.' Shuya smiled and shoke his head. Then he said, 'I'm sorry I suspected you. A handshake. We're sticking together till the very end." (Takami 171)
         This characterizes Shuya as a friendly teenager who just wants to make allies in this game. He never did want to kill any of his peers, he was just defending himself and Noriko. When he met Shogo, someone who actually survived another game like they're in, he takes it as a chance to make a new friend to escape with.
          He thinks that he can be helpful where he can be and doesn't pay much attention to what other people (especially his female peers) think of him either. All around, Shuya is that cliche main character you would normally see in books like these. (Which is a good thing if you read a lot of these types of books.)
           Hoping to read more of this, I will be back with more posts of this book next week. Bye, readers! C:
                         

How far can I take my "feels" level without killing it, a look on the fallen (so far) in Battle Royale

Since I'm saving the character post for the end of this book, I think I'll just post as much spoilers as I can so here's what I read so far; death, death, murder, and a little bit of romance (which later moves on to death, again.) Basically this book's about death, ok? So that's what I'll be blogging about. Here goes everything...

(॓_॔) ＳＰＯＩＬＥＲＳ， ＤＵＨ！(॓_॔)

(By the way, this is the order of which they died.)

1. Yoshitoki Kuninobu: He didn't even get to be in the game for his rebellious behavior. He was shot down by the Special Defense Forces. Being Shauya's childhood friend and all, it really takes a lot of pressure on Shauya not to punch Sakimochi in the face. It was nice to get to know you while you lasted, Yoshitoki. (1/42)
2. Fumiyo Fujiyoshi: She was whispering to the female class representative Yukie Utsumi, in which, this got her killed. Knife to meet you, the knife said which pierced her forehead for a swift kill. Again, she was killed before the game but this time by Sakimochi. If the consequence was this for talking while the teacher was talking, I don't think I'll say a word during class. (2/42)
3.  Mayumi Tendo: The games have already started while she was killed. For this one, she wasn't killed by any of her peers but instead, she stayed in the forbidden zone for too long (which was the school. If you stayed at the school for more than 20 minutes after the games started, you would die.) I don't recall there being a reason of why she statyed at the school for so long, though well. Oh well, there's still more deaths to cover...(3/42), but wait there's more....it was said that Yoshio shot Tendo as well, hmmm... strange.
4. Yoshio Akamatsu: After being knocked out by Shuya, he finally wakes up. The first thing he sees is Mayumi's corpse , whoops. Now, he is said to have killed Tendo with the crossbow he recieved in his day pack. It's funny, you know... being shot down by the same weapon that you killed someone with because that's what happened to Yoshio. Kazushi Niida picked up Yoshio's crossbow when Yoshio was knocked out and shot him with it. Here's a tip, don't lay in the middle of the field with your day pack and weapon. Maybe you wouldn't of gotten killed...(4/42)
5. Ryuhei Sasagawa, Hiroshi Kuronaga, and Izumi Kanai: I'm putting these characters in the same area because they were all murdered by the same person at the same time. Their killer was Kazuo Kiriyama, one of the most intimidating guys in this game. How can I explain this....oh yeah, he's got a group of kids much like a gang to help him to all of the dirty work with him. I never got to know the 3 dead in this part of the book, but they all count as a death still so on to the next one. (5/42,6/42, and 7/42.)

I'll stop for now....

Analysis: Battle Royale

    Also today (whoops, another blog post,) I will be analyzing a chunk of text to figure out the deep meaning and make some inferences about it in 3....2.....1....GO.

Under this jumble of text, there is a major spoiler of the death of a student, read with caution because this is an actual quote.

The quote reads: "Megumi's throat began to burn, but it didn't last very long. She couldn't say a word and lost consciousness as her chest warmed over with blood. She expired, unable to form any idea of what it meant exactly to have a blade stuck in her throat. Betrayed in the arms of Mitsuko,she died without any thoughts of Shyua Nanahara or of her family." (Takami 98)
What I think it means: I think I should give you context of what's happening right now (AND I'M SO MAD ABOUT THIS.) So, this girl named Megumi is hiding in one of the houses in the island and the meanest girl in the class, Mitsuko, enters the house. Before this, Megumi was trying to call her parents with her cell phone. It was a failed attempt because now none of the students' wouldn't work, obviously. What makes it worse was when Megumi called her father, Sakamochi answered, AND HE CALLED BACK WHEN MITSUKO ENTERED THE HOUSE ABOUT IF SOMEONE ELSE HEARD HER PHONE, SHE MAY BE DEAD.
              Well yes, moving on, Mitsuko does find Megumi and she starts to "panic" (uuuugh) about being trapped on the island. Megumi saw this as an attempt to kill Mitsuko, but pulled away. She explained to Mitsuko that she tried to kill her and Mitsuko forgave Megumi. They hugged it out, but then Mitsuko saw Megumi's knife AND STABBED MEGUMI IN THE THROAT. (Oh, and did I tell you Megumi had a crush on Shuya if that helps at all.) So basically after Megumi said she tried to kill Mitsuko, Mitsuko saw this as a chance to say that she also tried to kill Megumi...AND DID. I think this is considered the most disrespectful way to kill someone in the game. Really though Mitsuko BETRAYED Megumi by fake tearing up to get Megumi to think that Mitsuko isn't that bad as she seemed. Now we can get to what the quote means is that Megumi actually trusted Mitsuko and when there was a open chance, Mitsuko took it and killed Megumi swiftly.
Predictions: What I think is going to happen to Mitsuko is going to try and trust someone else. When Mitsuko is that the point when she thinks she can fully trust them, it crumbles and she will probably die from betrayal.

Alright, that's all for today (I promise), bye readers!
-Amanda

SUMMARY AND THEME: Battle Royale

       

        Being as unproductive as I am, I started reading yet another book on top of my pile of currently reading: Battle Royale. It's a mix of The Hunger Games and Lord Of The Flies.
        42 students are brought to an inhabited island for one single reason- to kill each other. It's a type of program where a class of students are chosen just for the purpose of killing each other. During this book, it's said to be going on for about 50 years. Shuya's class has been chosen for the program. 42 students first came to the school and even before the "game" started, two students were already killed, right before their peers' eyes. One of the killed happened to be Shuya's childhood friend Yoshitoki- who was killed after protesting of the game.
        The game starts right when the students get out of the school. Already, one by one, students are falling, the number of survivors decreasing unsteadily. Shuya and his friend Noriko escape right away from the school top avoid being killed. Right before however, someone was trying to kill them.
         I'm not far into the book, but I can already grasp the main summary and theme of the book. I would highly, highly recommend that you shouldn't read this book if you get sick easily (triggered to violence and blood maybe?) And also, avoid all possible spoilers if you are. I don't care if they're little hints of events happening just please don't. Everything gets ruined for me because of spoilers, and I mean everything.
         Right, onto the main points of the book. at the beginning, our main character Shuya is introduced and a bus with his fellow classmates. During the middle of their study trip, some weird drowsiness gas forces all of the students to become unconscious. Moving on, Shuya is the first to wake up in a classroom surrounded by his classmates in desks still sleeping. He notices collars on the students' necks and realizes that he now has a collar of his own. Shortly after, a man by the name of Sakamochi arrives through glass doors. (I think I forgot to mention this book was actually translated from Japanese, my bad.) Sakamochi explains the rules of the program to the students and Yoshitoki protests in outrage. This is his mistake for speaking out because he was shot dead right after.
         Alright, I don't think I should say anything else about this amazing book, I have to go anyways. See you next blog post!
UPDATE: Well, it turns out that I'm also going to put the theme in here as well. My thematic statement for Battle Royale is cherish the people you spend time with the most because they may be gone quicker than you think. Textual evidence to support this is "we had a good laugh...Yoshitoki and I were always together. It was a fact. He was with me. So how could he be...gone now?" (Takami 39)
             The quote supports my statement because his childhood friend was shot dead so quickly, Shauya didn't even think about him when he did. This is why you should cherish the people you are so close to because you'd never know what could happen to them.
Ok, Now I'm really done!
-Amanda.
       

So I'm trying to decide what to read next...

There's a lot of books out there, but I really want to read one that hasn't gotten a lot of attention like The Hunger Games or Divergent. Any suggestions? Today, I bought a few interesting books that aren't from popular authors such as UnEnchanted, Just a Little Crush, Between the Lines, and Dollhouse.

All of these books are basically fantasy-like (which is what I like to read) and I got them from the Kindle book store for really good prices (some of these books were free so that's good to the least. (: )

So yeah, I promise the next post was going to be the characterization of Tris from Insurgent, but I really want to see which book I want to read next before I finish the main blog post of the last book I read. That's all for right now so bye, readers! :D

Insurgent, you should really read it.

Whoa, that was awesome.
Anyways, yeah, I'm almost done with Insurgent and it's getting really, really, good. This trailer of the book really captures the main aspects. Basically, Insurgent takes place right after it's prequal when Tris and the rest of her group are on the train to the Amity faction. Everything seems quiet because a huge war just took place and it ended right after Tris shut down the Dauntless power.
Referring to the link, it is indeed fact that the 5 factions are crumbling and tearing apart from each other. To all the other factions, none of them trust each other, all but Amity. Their faction leader proposed a safe house for all 5 factions if just in case something happened.
I'm not saying this book is filled with "feels", but this book is filled with "feels". "Feels" that can tear you on the inside and make your heart ache with pain, wanting more and more to break your heart. The next post that I'm going to make will be crawling with spoilers since I'm probably going to tackle the main theme of this book (or the characters, I don't know.) But yeah, see you next time.
-Amanda

Insurgent-my thoughts and questions so far

                

                     While reading the squeal to Veronica Roth's bestseller novel Divergent, I've have had questions about the plot elements to Insurgent. First, I was wondering when Tris calls Tobias "Four", who does she talk to when she refers to Tobias as "Four." Sometimes in the book, she called him "Four" to Caleb and other times, she called Tobias as his real name to Caleb. Does she refer Tobias as "Four" when she's telling someone important information or it's kind of a second nature, I don't know.
                     My next question is if Tris really cares about her parents, then is she actually going to go look for the truth of what happened to them? I keep reading her thoughts about her thinking about her parents and wondering if anything happened to them when the Dauntless raided on the Abnegation at the end of book one (spoilers!)
                    A connection for the part I'm at in the book is a text to self connection. Tris is similar to me because she's outgoing, stubborn, witty, and ignorant.(She describes herself in the first book to be stubborn, but outgoing.) My actions relate to Tris' characteristics because in my personal narrative, I describe how I didn't want to go to that rock, I didn't want to wear that lifevest, but I did jump the rock.
                    I predict what'll happen next is that Tris, Caleb, Tobias, and Marcus escape Amity in search for the remaining Abnegation and Dauntless members. How it'll end is that there will be a huge fight and someone gets severally injured. They'll have to maybe (?) go to a different faction for a period of time and investigate the Erudite headquarters.
                  Edit (9/10/13): Reading a bit more of Insurgent, I got to know it a bit more. Some of my questions were answered and I gained new questions as well. One of the new questions is looking back towards the begginning of the book, would the safe house be better in a situation like this? The Erudite are seeking more important information so would it actually be best if everyone was hiding in one place? The book is getting better since the last time I read it and probably by next week, I'll have it mostly finished.

Summer reading book

           

                Over the summer, I read The Fault in Our Stars. The book was about teenagers with cancer, specifically about a girl named Hazel with lung cancer. The book was not really about drama, but about the reality of life and how to get by with a difficult "hurdle" in the way. It contains love, medicine, and life in general.
              The overall theme for the book is love. Hazel and Gus, one of the teenagers described later in the book, grow more close to each other until they cannot be broken from each other. Their love emerges at the beginning of the book when Hazel sees Gus at the first Support Group meeting she went to. It grows more when they interact with each other. Towards the middle of the book, Gus confesses his love to Hazel while they're in a plane flying to Amsterdam. The quote “I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself in the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout in the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will be a day when all our labor has been turned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I’m in love with you.” (Green 153) What this means is that their love is forever and even after death, they won't ever split apart.
              One character that changes drastically is Hazel. In the beginning of the book, she was very unsocial with little friends since she dropped out of school at 13 years old. Later in the book, she develops her character by growing more friendly and showing affection for others. Instead of being unsocial, she becomes more friendly and shows a more positive side to herself and to others in the end.

                  In this video, John Green, the author of the book, talks about The Fault in Our Stars to The Interview show anout the important fundamentals of the book. I'm pretty sure there's no spoilers so it's just an interview about the main concept of the book.

              An article related to cancer.
In this article, teens in a high school have a dance party for more than a day to help raise money for cancer battlers and injured adults and children. It was very successful and they raised over $500,000 for the foundations.

             Until next post, I hope everyone has a great day and or week.
                                                                                     -Amanda