Free To Be Me~Francesca Battistelli

The Solution

Finally getting back to my vocabulary... This one is actually funny in a way, because there is a toddler using words much to big for her to have learned :) and I'm pretty sure I misused many words.

The mother looked at her daughter with askance, not sure how the child should be punished.

"Please, mother, attenuate my punishment, be benign. Do not cavil me because I am a charlatan person. It was just a white lie..."

"Daughter, we must decimate your lying for it is already becoming a habit. There must be a foible, something that will make you forgo lying. Yet for some reason you seem fraught with them..." She inured her jaw, trying to think of some solution, and then her face became luminous.

"I have come up with a solution," she told her toddler. "From now on your words must be obsequious to the truth." She was not obtuse with this command, but remained firm. Her foot oscillated while she waited for her daughter''s response.

"I am penitent, mother. I agree with you peremptory rule, it is not something one can rebuff... but it seems something is missing from it..." the child seemed confused.

"Well," her mother thought carefully, trying to think of a way to enforce this rule. "I will reconnoiter with your teachers about your bad habit, and if, when I speak with them every so often, I find you have not made a shambles of this but continue to tell the truth, you will be rewarded with sporadic prizes."

Bible Blurb

Luke 24:1-6a

¹On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. ²They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, ³but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. ⁴While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. ⁵In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? ⁶He is not here; he has risen!

Happy Easter, everybody!

Can't Keep A Good Man Down- Newsong

Dandelion Fire

I have an internship at my town's library, so I go every other school day to help out the children's librarian. When I was there yesterday I saw that she had a copy of Dandelion Fire on her desk... I told her about reading the first one, and realizing when I got to the end of the book that it was not the end of the story; more books were to be written and published. Well, I was a bit impatient waiting for the next one to come out soI could borrow it from the library. I told her how excited I was about finally getting to read it. She proceded to ask me if I wanted her to just check it out for me right then... I was so excited! So last night, when I finnaly got to start reading right before bed, I read the first 80 some pages and then forced myself to shut the book and get some shut eye... it was hard, but I succeded, and I cannot wait to finish the rest!

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Alright, this post is VERY long. I read Frankenstein in school this semester, and instead of writing an entirely new review of the book, I decided just to copy paste parts of my final review (ok, most of it :) ) of it onto my blog. Have fun reading!

...There were elements that I liked and disliked, but overall I was not impressed; I prefer the good old days when books actually made me happy, and when they had happy endings. Life has enough depressing features; I prefer to not be reminded of them in the literature that I read. Shelly’s novel was rather sad and disheartening, but I was expecting that. I had heard many things about the novel, and was familiar with many allusions to it, but none of that was enough to prepare me for the novel that Mary Shelly wrote. Frankenstein is a daunting piece of literature that surpassed my original assumptions, has important morals painted into it, and would be recommended with careful discretion.

If I had to pick one word to describe the book it would be 'intimidating', the main reason being that the language is so profuse and pompous it is hard to concentrate on what exactly is going on. Shelly used such large words that it took me out of the story to figure out how to say them and what they meant. If I were to rewrite her novel, I would reduce the amount of academically challenging words. It is not that I disliked the storyline, or I hated all the characters, I just could not grow to love them as would have been possible if the story had been written at a level closer to my own.... As a whole, I did not like the style of writing, but the story line and message were very interesting.

...One of the author’s goals was to make the reader feel sorry and sympathy for the creature, despite its labels of ‘monster’ and ‘murderer’. Shelly was very creative in how she did this; she let the monster close the story with words of regret, accusations, remorse, and apology. She does not give the last words to Waldon, one of the books many protagonists, as one may have expected. Rather than letting Walton stir up emotions against the monster, the creature, the alleged antagonist, gets to plead for the reader’s favor and acceptance once more.

Another goal of the story, or rather the moral, is that some things are just supposed to be left alone, and we incompetent humans will just show how foolish and ignorant we are by trying to seem smart. Shelly makes this very clear. Victor looses his family, his friends, his fortune, and his life over his ‘creation gone wrong’. The only good thing that comes out of it is that Waldon heeds Victor’s warnings and does not force his men into discovering the pass to the Arctic.

This story was not anything like what I had been expecting. The vocabulary was much more extensive than I had anticipated, resulting in a much harder read. Also I was not expecting it to be written as a frame story or as an explorer’s letters to his sister. I had also expected that Victor was an innocent character, and that his creation was a horrible, ruthless villain. Now, after reading the novel, I do not think so. Rather, I would argue that the monster was more of the victim; he had no choice in being created, he had to learn to fend for himself and to live without any outside help. If any child in our world was treated the way Victor treated his creation, it would be considered inhumane, and abusive. The real monster in the story is Victor. For some reason he thinks that it is within his rights to manipulate life and create it on his own. Then he abandons his creation in a very irresponsible way, and later wonders why all these horrible things are happening to him. Victor was the true monster, and because of how he treated his creation it behaved in a very similar matter- taking the matter of life into his own hands. The saying ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’ accurately comes to mind.

I honestly did not know much about the story before we read it for school. I had thought it was about some old crazy scientist that sewed up a bunch of corpses together in a revengeful fashion to create a monster, and that this monster could only moan and it eventually became malicious, killing many people in the town and even his creator. Obviously, most of my assumptions were incorrect and half truths and that lead me to have a very interesting reading experience...

In recommending any book to people around me I try to be very careful. I would not recommend this story to my younger siblings because I think it would be too much for them; the plot and the writing style. On the other hand, I would have no problem recommending the book to an eager reader who does not mind reading very meticulously and who would be able to comprehend what goes on. I would recommend Mary Shelly’s novel to only a prepared reader who is up for a challenge.

The plot was intriguing, the writing style was different and compelling, the story took a few expected turns, and a few that were not expected. As a whole I did not mind it as much as I had originally thought I would. But my opinion on school books remains the same: I passionately hope that someday I will not have to search for books on my own to find some with happy endings.

Some news

I was listening to the raidio and I heard about this 69 year-old German woman who was in 3 different car accidnets in less than an hour. She was leaving the supermarket and accidentaly ran into three cars... then she stepped on the accelerator and crashed into a house. Then the ambulance came to take her to the hospital. Guess what happened? On the way to the hospital it got hit by a truck. Thank goodness no one was seriously hurt.

(read the story here)

I also heard about theses Easter sand sculputes in Ohio... the pictures are amazing! They used over 200 tons of sand... The website is here. Sorry I couldn't get any of the pictures here (they are so cool! You can see them by clicking on the website, they have them up on the front page) but I couldn't figure out how....

The Prince and the Pauper

*Mark Twain's real name was Samuel Clemens
*His novel was first published in 1882- 127 years ago
*He dedicates the book to his 'good mannered and agreeable children Susie and Clara Clemens'
*He quotes Shakespeare's the Merchant of Venice at the beginning of the book. This quote has to do with Mercy- something Edward VI learns
*The language was a little hard to get used to at times (lots of 'thee's and 'thou's) but the eloquence was altogether likable.
*My favorite character was Miles Hendon, I like the way he acted, thought, and the privilage the King gives him. Although he is not a main character, it is easy to say that the story could not go on with out him.

There were once two boys who were born at the same time and looked uncommonly alike, but they were born into completely different families. One was born a prince, and the other a pauper. By chance they meet one day, and end up living each other's lives. After a wild chain of events, and very interesting characters, will they realize that their own family and sstatus is what they prefer?

Much of the time that I read I was laughing, or at least smiling, at all of the close calls, near escapes, and problems that came up out of nowhere for each boy during their 260 page adventure. One thing I found funny was how the boys continually told the truth about who they were, but no one believed them.

I really enjoyed Mark Twain's classic. All I really knew about it was from the Micky Mouse version I had watched when I was younger, if you watch parts of it on youtube you will understand that I did not know what to expect. I am glad to report that I was happily surprised.

Now in closing, I leave you with a quote from the character Edward VI:

"The world is made wrong; kings shuld go to school to their onw laws at times, and so learn mercy."