reading log

9/27/13     A Tale of Two Centuries by Rachel Harris      50 minutes
9/28/13     A Tale of Two Centuries by Rachel Harris      70 minutes

My Short Story Plot

       My short story follows a set of twins named Carina and Callie Machete. Carina, the narrator, is an all around sweet person but she is a little too loyal and trusting. Callie has a lot of problems with being a good kid and she is always over shadowed by her perfect twin. Callie had to go through a lot and Carina is really worried about her since she really cares about her sister. One day Carina catches Callie trying to hide a dead body but doesn't call the police because all she is worried about is that her sister gets back to normal. She doesn't tell Callie she saw but instead investigates why Callie would murder someone.
      As Carina is investigating she finds many things about herself that she had never known. Callie and Carina form a special bond as the next few weeks pass because Carina is trying to get to know her sister in order to find out why she is piling bodies up in the woods and burning them. Carina ends up finding out that Callie had been getting these letters from a anonymous person telling her that she had to kill all of these people unless she wanted her family to die. Callie had started to receive theses letters about two years ago when she was fourteen and they started her transition into the unstable girl she is now. Carina finally decides to tell Callie that she knows and together they find out who the senders are and finish all of the drama once in for all.

Reaction to the short stories

          All of the short stories that we read in class were extremely strange. I didn't really understand what any of them were about while reading them. The only time I really got what they were about was when we went over them in class. I am not sure if I am reading and annotating the stories wrong which is making me unable to understand the stories.
 I didn't really enjoy reading the short stories that we read for homework. I don't think I would enjoy reading any short stories because they just end and don't go on. The reason why I love to read is because it goes on and then is able to have sequels so that way it doesn't just abruptly end. I hope that I will find a short story in the book we are reading from that I actually like.

Forgive my Fins by Tera Lynn Childs

       This week I read Forgive my Fins by Tera Lynn Childs. I thought it was going to be a really idiotic book but it was the only one I had and I needed to do my independent reading. After reading the first couple pages of the book, I found myself getting into the book because in all honesty ever since I was little I have always loved the thoughts of mermaids being real. In the very first couple pages the author makes it obvious that Lily is a mermaid but she can't let anyone figure out seeing as how she is afraid they could somehow hurt her kingdom.
       The fact that she is a mermaid isn't  the only reason why I liked the book though; there was also a bit of a cliche love story going on. In all books you read you end up hearing how the girl realizes that the quintessential bad boy isn't so bad after all and they fall in love which is basically what happened in this book except for the fact that she accidentally bonds with him which is kind of like mermaid marriage. She obviously does not want to be bonded to him due to the fact that she thinks she is in love with a swimmer at her school who recently broke up with his girlfriend of 2 years. Lily has to go through a journey of trying to get her dad who is the mermaid king to separate them all the while Quince, the bad boy, is trying to get her to fall in love with him.


Reading Log
9/21/13   Forgive My Fins by Tera Lynn Childs      2 hours

Carina's Point of View

      I am really worried about Callie, my twin sister. She walked in to the house early this morning looking like she had just come out of a fight. When I asked her about it she just answered," I fell." I could tell she hadn't fallen though. She had fingernail marks all along her face. She was carrying a gun also. I guess I should probably just leave her to it since she is the one who decided to get into fighting and drugs but I can't help but worry abut my other half.
     "Carina! Carina!" my best friend is calling to me while shaking me. I guess I fell asleep in Math but I couldn't help it because I was up all night worried about Callie and trying to convince my parents that she was home since we promised we would always cover for each other even though she was the only one who needed covering for since my parents trusted me. I gathered my binders and got up when the class ended, leaving my thoughts in the classroom.

The Best Night of your (Pathetic) Life by Tara Altebrando

     When I was reading The Best Night of your (pathetic) Life by Tara Altebrando all I could think about was how horrible the formatting was. The font was really boring and gave me a headache just looking at it because of how smashed together it looked and I just wasn't able to concentrate. It took me forever just to move from page to page and the two hours I read over the week felt like they lasted forever and I always found myself trying to make up excuses to give myself on why I needed to stop reading.
      I thought it was going to just be a fun book but when the two hours ended I went straight to the back of the book to see how it ended and just stopped reading the book. I really disliked the book because it was really boring and way too serious for a book about a high school scavenger hunt for seniors, whose years were about to end. The main character seemed really full of herself too so when I was reading it, I just didn't see the point to any of what she was thinking.

Reading Log
The Best Night of your (Pathetic) Life by Tara Altebrando          2 hours     9/12/13

E- book

     I am usually pretty shy towards people so having my writing go into the e- book is making me really nervous. It makes me nervous because I can be scared to just talk to people I don't know so having to post my writing is going to be even more scary. I am also afraid that if I look back at it later on I am just going to look at it and think about how horribly written it is.
    I don't really know about what type of designs and additions I would like to add to my narrative. I am not that creative when it comes to anything like this so this is going to be a challenge for me. I feel like I might want to change the font to something less proper than Times New Roman. I am looking forward to seeing the e- book and seeing if it ends up coming out looking nice.

Does this dog have rabies?

Walking into the pet store, I immediately saw an animal that caught my eye. It was a fluffy, white havenese puppy that was asleep in its caged in area, ignoring the rest of the litter. As I walked closer to it I realized that it was foaming at the mouth and I quickly asked the store owner, "Does this puppy have rabies?"
"Not that I know of. Let me come check," she quickly replied while running over there.
"I really hope she doesn't because I am interested in buying her. She is too great of a dog to have to be put down!"
Finally getting there, she looks down at the puppy,"She seems to be foaming but it looks like it is just drool so she should be in the clear, but I will call out my boss who knows a lot about rabies and can tell you if the dog has it."
"Alright that sounds good and I am crossing my fingers."
An old, bald man walks out, clearly having been sleeping and slowly strolls over to the kennel area telling the worker to go work in the back, leaving me and him to inspect the puppy.
"Does she have rabies?" I quickly ask once he is in hearing range.
He gets his finger and wipes the foam at the puppy's mouth off and the inspects it while answering, "No, just a bad case of drool."
"Yay! I will take her then. How much does she cost?"
"She only costs $20 since we are trying to get rid of this litter due to a new one being expected to come in at any moment so you can just go pay in the back area and take your new puppy home."
I walk up to the cash register with my new puppy in my hand and quickly pay for her and then I leave hoping to never have to come back to that pet store since the owner didn't even seem to care if she might have rabies.

Reading Log

9/05/13   Literacy narrative    1 hour
9/04/13   Literacy narrative    half an hour
9/02/13   The Amanda Project by Amanda Valentino and Melissa Kantor     1 hour

What I am struggling in for my literacy narrative

        Working on my literacy narrative I struggled coming up with ideas for my topic and then expanding on it once I found it. It took me a while to find my topic to write my literacy narrative about. In class we made lists for different topics which matched with what a literacy narrative was about but even after reading through all of my lists I didn't have anything that I could successfully write about for more than a page and a half so I decided to make an idea web which is where I found my topic. After making the idea web I was able to choose my topic quite quickly and then the only thing I needed to work on was expanding on that. I once again found myself turning to an idea web in order to come up with ideas to expand on and was able to connect my one story with another which automatically added much more density to my paper and I seemed to have few problems on filling up the required pages after that.
        After writing my narrative and reading it I realized that I didn't include too much vivid detail and I was struggling on that front. I am still having trouble with finding where I can include this vivid detail and I hoping that I can figure it out. Whenever I try to write the vivid detail it always comes out looking too forced and out of place and messes up with the flow of the whole paper so I that is one thing that I am really going to have to work on revising in my paper.

"Write or Wrong Identity" literacy narrative

         Earlier this week I read a literacy narrative given the title, Write or Wrong Identity, it was well written but I personally did not like it. I felt like the narrative went a little to much into depth and would start on one story but quickly move to the next. It was well written and the transitions were particularly excellent but I could not handle all of the information that was jam packed into one narrative. I didn't understand why the author kept going on and didn't end it sooner so the whole time I was reading it I was just waiting for it to end.
         After finishing the narrative I was surprised that it had gone on so long to only made one point. The author could have made the point with just one of her stories and not gone through out almost her whole life. I guess I am making it sound like it was a horrible literacy narrative when I know that it must have been liked to be put in a book specifically to give you good examples of a literacy narrative but I just didn't appreciate the length and uninteresting facts of the narrative.

Burn for Burn by Jenny Han

       This past week I started reading Burn for Burn by Jenny Han. It is an interesting book about three girls who both have reasons for revenge. Lillia wants to get back at her best friend, Alex, for supposedly having a romance with her little sister who is only a freshman while he is a senior and the little sister had always thought of him as a big brother. Mary comes back to Jar Island after having been gone for years to get revenge on a boy she left for. She is back and she has lost weight and looks better than ever and wants revenge to the point where he doesn't have any friends. Kat wants revenge on Lillia's best friend because she is the reason why Kat has been an outcast for all of high school. Kat has reasons to hate all three of those people so she sets up an agreement between the three of them where they help each other get revenge.
       While I was reading I was very surprised at what came out of the shadows. The reason Mary came out is the worse out of all of them. She faced death for what the boy did and she has a reason for wanting revenge. Lillia is the only one of them who faces guilt through out almost the whole fiasco which is surprising since Kat sees her a some kind of evil witch. Kat has a few reasons for wanting revenge but not enough for revenge.


Burn for Burn        Jenny Han         2.2 hours