The Fault in Our Stars

This is the movie trailer of the book I am currently
reading.  So far the book has been great and there are many dynamic plot twists and meaningful lines throughout the text. Hazel Grace and Augustus travel to Amsterdam to meet up with Hazel’s favorite author Peter Van Houtan to find out what happens to the characters of his famous unfinished book An Imperial Affliction.  While on the plane; Augustus says something absolutely wonderful, he is talking to Hazel on the plane. ‘I’m in love with you,’ he said quietly. ‘Augustus,” I said. ‘I am’ hesaid. He was staring at me and I could see the corner of his eyes crinkling. ‘I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all
doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to
dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have. And I am
in love with you.’ (Green 153).  Gus tells Hazel the story of his old
girlfriend Caroline who died of a brain tumor. She was mean to him but the
doctors said that the cancer “poisoned” her brain. She joked around saying
crude things like, ‘Gus has great legs. I mean leg,’ (Green 176). She would laugh
about it over and over again. Hazel tells Gus that she never wants to do that
to him and he responds with the famous quote; ‘Oh, I wouldn’t mind, Hazel Grace.
It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you,” (Green 176). I think
this line is so important because it shows how much he loves Hazel. He is
willing to go through heartbreak just to enjoy the happiness of being with her.
Augustus is one interesting dynamic character; I look forward to see him
develop even more. So far I love this book and I want to read more books by
John Green.

Blog Reflections

Looking through my past blog posts I have noticed that they have become more detailed and in depth. I have read a total of four books this trimester. I used Good reads and found out about the Divergent series which 3/4 of my blog posts were about. I chose to read Divergent because it had good ratings and a lot of my friends were reading it. I noticed in my past blog posts I didn’t explain very well and I wasn’t as interested in the book I was reading so I read less often. The quality of my writing has improved immensely over the course of the trimester, my first blog post compared to my last are very different. You can tell by my use of vocabulary and detail in my last post compared to my first post that I have improved a lot. An example of my first blog post is; “The theme of my book is that with every good thing that happens a bad thing follows shortly afterwards. For example my main character Ren, gets adopted when his chances were very slim which was fantastic but; he doesn't get the "perfect" family that he has always dreamed of. A quote that supports this from my book is "We all need prayers," Said Brother Joseph. "Especially when something good happens to us" He sighed. "Bad luck follows anything that’s good" (Tinti 12).” What I said in my first blog post wasn’t bad, I like how I included a quote from the book and stated the theme. Now here is an example of my most recent blog posts; The new discovery is that the Bureau gave Jeanine Matthews the serums! So they helped her kill the Abnegation. Why? I don't know, I suppose they do whatever is best to heal the genetically damaged people. They will stop at nothing to do so, and kill as many people as they want. Tobias recently discovers that he is a GD and this informer Nita who works at the Bureau explains how the government has treated GD's so badly and that we have had wars before people were GD. So the question to ask is, why waste time fixing the GD? The tragic event that occurred was a plan to steal death serums in order to get revenge on the Bureau. Nita however told Tobias that they were going to steal the memory serum. A series of explosions occur and Uriah gets hurt. He still remains unconscious. Later on Tris and everyone teams up with some Nita and her inside people in the Bureau as well as some people from this place called the fringe.” I paraphrased on my most recent blog post and really summarized what happened in the book and included a lot more detail. I also can tell just from comparing the two blog posts that I was more passionate about the book and enjoyed reading it more than reading my summer reading book. I think this was because I didn’t really have a wide range of options to choose from. One strength I had while blogging was summarizing and including a vast amount of detail. Also my use of vocabulary was good. I struggled with coming up with a topic to blog about, I didn’t really like going off the writing prompts because I felt restricted into only writing about one certain topic. I overcame this by explaining what was going on in my book. In other words I included a brief summary of what I read. Then I made predictions and included my opinion and thoughts on the book. Although I did not meet my goal I am still proud of what I have learned and read this trimester. I gained a lot of knowledge and learned a lot of lessons just about life in general from reading these books. I also have expanded my vocabulary and common sense. I now understand what is it like to have no one you can trust; like the character Tobias from the Divergent series. I also made some strong connections with the character Tris from Divergent. So a vast majority of my learning has come from the Divergent series. I highly recommend reading this series if you haven’t already. My experiences while reading these books have taken me on an emotional roller-coaster. The books are very action packed and unexpected. There are many cliff hangers and a lot of imagery and diction; as well as figurative language. So overall, I think I have improved a lot in my reading skills and writing skills.

Unwrapping Allegiant

 

As a follow up on last week’s predictions for this book I have recently "unwrapped" new secrets and some tragic event does occur so my prediction was correct. Although I do think that something even bigger will occur. The new discovery is that the Bureau gave Jeanine Matthews the serums! So they helped her kill the Abnegation. Why? I don't know, I suppose they do whatever is best to heal the genetically damaged people. They will stop at nothing to do so, and kill as many people as they want. Tobias recently discovers that he is a GD and this informer Nita who works at the Bureau explains how the government has treated GD's so badly and that we have had wars before people were GD. So the question to ask is, why waste time fixing the GD? The tragic event that occurred was a plan to steal death serums in order to get revenge on the Bureau. Nita however told Tobias that they were going to steal the memory serum. A series of explosions occur and Uriah gets hurt. He still remains unconscious. Later on Tris and everyone teams up with some Nita and her inside people in the Bureau as well as some people from this place called the fringe. The fringe is a poverty blown place outside the city. What I question is why the government doesn’t just help the people and give them food and shelter instead of trying to fix their stupid genes. Also, why are they hiding the history of our world from everyone? There are so many secrets to unravel still and I ponder on what is going to come next. I like the use of the author’s words that get to you emotionally. She uses great diction and figurative language and has a mass amount of imagery. I admire her writing greatly and enjoy her books.

Predictions for Allegiant

So far in my book the Allegiant group has escaped the city and ventured beyond the city walls to come to find some very interesting information. People from a place called the Bureau of Genetic Welfare. It was established because scientist tried to alter people’s genes to make the "bad genes" go away; this only caused more problems and created genetically damaged people. To create pure people they set up the faction system in Chicago as well as in many other cities. The Divergent are actually the pure genetic people. So Tris and Tobias are pure! Caleb and Tris find out that they're mother was an outsider who was put into the factions to solve the problem of people killing the Divergent. When the group of people that left the city find all this out they are astonished on how little they know. They don’t know what America is or what airplanes even are!! All of this fascinated me and made me excited to read on.

I predict that Tris and the others will live outside the fence and try to come up with a plan to fix the now disorientated city of Chicago. I also sense that more problems will also occur. From listening to my peers it seems as the book has an unexpected tragic ending so I’m fearful to find that out. I love these series and I really hope I’m satisfied with the ending! For now I will continue to read on and discover new things about Tris and her family. This book reminds me of the book “The Maze Runner” By James Dashner. People have their memories erased and live in an enclosed place like the factions; people have certain jobs and are separated. Scientist study and observe them to shape society in order to prevent war so both of the books have the same type of theme.

Blizzard Bag

I currently started reading the third book of the Divergent series called "Allegiant." It starts off with chaos as people find out that they were sent there for a greater purpose of helping the outside during wartime. A factionless lady; Tobias' mother takes over and says that no one is allowed to leave the city and all factions will be destroyed. Tris is sent off as a prisoner since she helped Marcus behind Tobias' back but, she is soon freed because she can lie while under this thing called the truth serum. As the townspeople have many different opinions and some are not loyal to Evelyn (Tobias's mother) a group is created called the Allegiant. They soon find Tris and ask her to join them to escape the city and do what they were sent here to do. I look forward to reading their journey outside of the cities gates.


In Romeo and Juliet I am really enjoying the twists and drama. I like how Romeo has first fallen in love with a nun named Rosaline and mopes because she will not love him back or marry him. I was not expecting that and I found it very interesting. I also enjoyed how Juliet claims that she does not want to be married and then at the party she meets Romeo and they kiss passionately. I look forward to see how they make their love work and how their families handle it. I am concerned about how Tyblat would handle the news because once he found out that their were Montague's at the party he wanted to kill Romeo! he seems very violent and ruthless, so I think he will try to keep them apart.

  I recently just finished the second book of the Divergent series called "Insurgent" by Veronica Roth. The last book left off on a huge cliff hanger so I was really eager to finish this book. Tris learns that her Divergence is more important than ever. It guides her along a rough and dangerous path as the world she once knew starts to crumble and fall into pieces. She learns to trust her boyfriend Tobias which is hard for her because many people have betreyed her including her own brother. "He chose faction over blood," thats what Tris says. This tears her into pieces; it reminds me of "The Hunger Games" because they are both books about dystopian socities, war, and love.

I would characterize Tris as stubborn, strong and very intelligent. Her divergence allows her mind to think in different ways for example she had an apitude for three different factions and that is almost unheard of. So she uses her open mind or in other words "divergence" to solve problems like saving all the divergent kids she can from the wretched symulations that an evil manipulative Erudite woman named Jeanine operated on innocent citizens. The book ended in a very chaotic cliff hanger. I am looking forward to reading the last book.

Divergent By Veronica Roth

I am currently halfway through the book Divergent by Veronica Roth. Beatrice a 16 year old girl is faced with the decision of leaving her family for her own good or staying with them and living an Abnegation lifestyle. Society is divided up into five factions. the Duantless (the brave), Abnegation(the selfless), Amity (the kind & peaceful), Erudite (the knowledgeable), and Candor (the honest). She realizes that she is not selfless enough to be Abnegation. Beatrices test results are inconclusive though. She could either be Abnegation, Duantless, or Erudite. Beatrice chooses Duantless. As she goes through initiation she learns about her strength and how she can use being divergent to her advantage. She finds herself mixed up in a romance with a faction transfer who also came from Abnegation. The line I find most significant in this book so far is, "I think we've made a mistake," he says softly. "We've all started to put down the virtues of the other factions in the process of bolstering our own. I don't want to do that . I want to be brave, and selfless and smart, and kind, and honest,'' (Roth 405). I find this quote very significant because it shows how the main characters which are Tris and Tobias are going to change society or so go against it. I predict that they will fight against the government and start a revolution towards change for the better. I think that people will become all of the qualities that Tobias wants to be and Tris who is a Divergent will use that to her advantage in the revolution.