Sunday, July 6, 2014

Entry Four Summer Reading Assignment

Since I have finished my book early, I am doing my final post tonight. I chose this book because I found the title to be interesting. I still wonder why Janne Teller chose to title her book Nothing. Also, I read the back of the book and it has a summary of the book. It has anxiety and depression throughout it as well, and I struggle with both of those myself so I thought this book would be rather easy to connect to. Now that I have finished it, I will admit that I could connect to it very easily. Pierre discusses his struggles with depression and I knew exactly how he was feeling so that helped a lot. I feel that if I couldn't connect to him this book wouldn't be nearly as wonderful as it was. I would recommend this book to anybody that is withing the 6th-10th grade since the characters in it are around that age. Also, I would recommend it to people that have struggled with depression and or anxiety since some characters struggle with that as well and it says how much they had changed and recovered from it. I also think that girls would enjoy this book a lot more than a guy would since the narrator is a female and you will understand her daily female struggles.

Entry Three Summer Reading Assignment

The book I have chose for my Summer reading assignment is Nothing by Janne Teller. I am so happy that I have finally finished this book! I am so excited! It was an amazing book! I would recommend it to anybody, it's so amazing. A very hooking quote that I found within this book was, "If you live to be either, you'll hace slept thirty years away, gone to school and sat with homework for nine, and worked for almost fourteen. Since you've already spent more than six years being little kids and playing, and you're going to be spending at least twelve cleaning house, cooking food, and looking after your own kids, it means you've got nine years at most to live." Pierre Anthon is telling a group of kids about this, as you can tell, he has a very pessimistic attitude. This is hooking to me because I like to see how the persons attitude will change from this over time and I believe that it is to other people as well because my best friend feels that same way about that too! Although there are multiple 'hooking quotes' in the book, this is by far the most intriguing.

Entry Two Summer Reading Assignment

In my previous blog entry I discussed the main characters throughout this book, in this blog post I will be discussing the desires and goals within each character. I will first begin with talking about Sofie. Sofie is the most "insane" character. She is basically a dare-devil. She is not afraid to do anything. Her main 'desire or goal' is to out do everyone else playing the game that they're playing. Pierre Anthon's desire is to prove to everyone that it is okay to be different and that you shouldn't let the 'norm' control your life and how your life. I believe that is a great thing to live by! Agnes is the narrator, her desire is to fit in with everyone else.

The theme that I am beginning to see throughout my book is dissatisfaction. Pierre Anthon is the main reason for this. Everything in the world is dissatisfaction to him, such as, he believes that humans are one step away from monkeys and that they are unintelligent. Pierre is a very dark and gloomy person and can find the bad within every situation and is sure that others feel that too.

My book has a very typical structure to it. It's told by a 7th grade girl from her point of view of the 'game' her friends are playing. She includes dialogue, lots of visual/descriptive words and explains the story by chapters and big events.

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Entry One Summer Reading Assignment

For my summer reading assignment I am choosing to read Nothing by Janne Teller. I am just about half way done with this book, so far it's extremely interesting. There are many characters that have been introduced in my book so far, however...there are only about three main characters. These characters include Pierre Anthon, Agnes, and Sofie. Pierre is what the others consider, different. He wears hipster glasses, skinny jeans, and band t-shirts. Agnes is the narrator throughout the story, she doesn't really describe herself very much. She's very insecure and tends to compare herself to everyone else around her. She is a lot like a typical girl in middle school today. The last, but not least, Sofie; she is the most messed up character, she ends up chopping off someones finger to 'sacrifice' something to the mound. She also loses her virginity to a guy she doesn't even care about.

The setting of this book is in Denmark. It's in a small rural town where everybody knows each other, so when someone new moves in..the whole town hears about it.

The conflict throughout this book is that Pierre Anthon is not like the other kids. He's different so everyone feels the need to tease and bully him throughout the story. But, the kids turn it around into daring each other to do things. These dares turn to the extreme very quickly, for an example, a boy cut off his index finger just becaue of a dare.

I predict that someone will end up severely hurting themselves, or even killing themselves because of one of these dares. I can relate this to today because when you play 'truth or dare' qwith your friends, if you don't do the dare, they'll tease and ridicule you about it so I can understand why these kids are doing these dares.