Kaitlin's Blog

Today we had to writers-who are married-come and speak at our school for us. They were Alice Kuipers ( Life on the Refrigerator Door ), and Yann Martel ( Life of Pi ). I unfortunately was unable to stay for the whole thing but I hear it was great! Our teacher has read both of the books I listed above that the two author’s had written. I was really interesting in reading Life on the Refrigerator Door , and so was every other girl in my class. I was, however, able to read it today. It’s a quick read book but incredibly moving! It was an amazing novel and it only took me about 40 minutes to read. It’s really quite sad because there are families out there that don’t get so see each other often and they probably communicate through notes as well. This book really pushes you to review your relationship with your family. When you think about how much time you spend with your mom or your dad or your brothers or sisters, is it enough? Are you satisfied or are you taking advantage of the chances...

I have been waiting for something bad to happen to Alice. Waiting for Ray to hurt her so bad that she needs to be taken to the emergency room. Ray does so many horrible things to Alice, but none of it is his fault. When Alice is bad, she makes him do these things that hurt her and that he claims he doesn’t want to do. He thinks all girls should be loved and taken care of, yet he still feels ok with stabbing a knife into her shoulder. Once I read farther into the book I found out that Alice was ten when she was taken by Ray and that was five years ago. So she is fifteen right now and showing Ray how much she loves him in ways that no fifteen year old girl should. She is also being shown how much she is loved in a way that nobody should ever show a fifteen year old girl. It’s a story about physical, verbal, and sexual abuse that is incredibly appalling. I have 30 pages left to go and I am determined to finish them all today. Shouldn’t be too hard since some of the pages are just a few wo...

I am now reading my second book called Living Dead Girl . It is written by Elizabeth Scott. I am about halfway through the book already and I don’t know what to think. It’s a little confusing because some chapters can be three words, three sentences, or three pages. There isn’t even the slightest bit of consistency and that seems to confuse slightly. At first I thought that it was jumping from chapter to chapter, with this girl in present day, and back to when she was younger and had been kidnapped. Later in the book I realized that it is written in present, and it’s about her life now, since she has been kidnapped. Some of the chapters and stories told are indescribably uncomforting. At times I almost don’t want to read it, yet I want to know what is going to happen to her next. I’m not sure how old his girl is but she can’t be older than fifteen. Her kidnapper seems to like his girls young. In my opinion, Ray, the kidnapper, is a very unstable man. He wants to take care of the girls ...

My last post about No Right Turn might have come off as more of a summary but I just wanted to explain what was going on and how it was different from how I thought the book was going to conclude. It was hard to really feel for this character and what he was going through because I have never experienced anything like that. It was interesting, however, to see how the character dealt with his grief and how he kept making up lie, after lie, after lie. I felt bad for him but at the same time I thought that he wasn’t disciplined enough. But I guess nobody else except for his friend new what he was doing and how good it felt to him and how “ok” he was with it.

I finished No Right Turn in one day. There was nothing really special about the story that caught my interest, I just didn’t want to stop reading until it was done. I was expecting something totally different to happen. When Jordan started taking out the ‘Vette more and more, I thought for sure that he was going to get really upset, take it out again, and crash. I thought that he would be think ing about the day his father killed himself at one moment, and then the next thing he would remember would be waking up in a hospital bed with his mother at his side and Don in the cafeteria grabbing some coffee. That is not what happened. Since Jordan was very careful when he was taking out the ‘Vette and Don never suspected anything, Jordan got a little smug. One of the kids at Jordan’s school, Adam, was bragging about his classic GTO. Jordan wants to put Adam in his place so he tells him, and all the freshman listening to Adam brag, that his ’76 Stingray would beat him any day. They end up ra...

I had a few books in mind from my list that I ABSOLUTELY wanted to check out. Not all of them were available at the time but I did manage to find 4 books that I think will be really good! The book that I choose to read first is called No Right Turn by Terry Trueman. http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/0060574917.asp Here is a link that will provide you with a summary of the book. (A couple hours after we’d talked, I was in my room and he was still in his office. The shot wasn’t that loud, really, just one pop, not even as loud as a big fire cracker, but I knew instantly what it was, and I ran downstairs) That is a pretty powerful paragraph on the second page of the book. I didn’t even know how to react to the next paragraph. I would share it with you but I don’t want to give too much away. I’m almost halfway done the book and it’s only the first day! There is nothing special about it. It’s just interesting!

Hola! I am a grade 11 student and my English 20 class will be blogging about books that we are reading in class. We will be adding new posts every week! My posts will be based my thoughts on the book, new events that have occurred, and how I felt about it. My posts will also include some of my predictions. I did some research on books and made a big, long list of ones that sounded interesting to me. It’s difficult for me to find books that catch my interest and keep it. My class went to the Public Library this morning and I checked out a few books that caught my interest. I am currently reading one now that I don’t want to stop! I have a Shelfari Bookshelf on the side of my page that contains some of the books that I read that I couldn’t put down! Mistaken Identity by Don & Susie Van Ryn, and Newell, Colleen, and Whitney Cerak was a book that caught my interest SO FAST. I read it in 2 days. That is definitely a book worth reading. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/23824767 - This lin...