Book Response: love among the walnuts

Have you ever wished that you had a perfect life with no problems? I have and I bet you have also. There are so many issues in our world that it is impossible to not encounter atleast a few of them. No matter how rich, powerful, or smart you are, no matter how well protected you are there is always conflict in your life. Some problems hurt you mentally, and some hurt you physically, but each can be just as powerful.

Sandy had what he thought of as a perfect life, he lived in a huge mansion with his family and their friends. He didn't go to school, he was taught at home, because his family did not want other children to pollute his mind. He could do almost whatever he wanted to. In our world this would not be considered a perfect life, it would be terrible to be cooped up all day. But in his family this was definately the perfect life, out of harms way.

The thing is, no matter how hard you have worked to make your life secure, some asshole always comes along and manages to mess it up. That's just what humans do. People are jealous greedy creatures who are never content with what they have. And they are willing to hurt, and even kill to get more.

Sandy's evil uncles, Bart and Berny plot to kill him and his family, and nearly succeed, everyone but Sandy, and his childhood teacher are sent into comas by a poisened cake. This cruel action by his uncles shocks Sandy greatly and the first problem in his life opens up a whole new category of emotions including hate, sadness, disbelief, and rage. Sandy is forced to bring his sleeping family to a nut house nearby. And with the help of Sandy's new friend Sunny, and all the mental patients, are able to survive, and awaken Sandy's family.

No one wants to have big problems in their lives, but if you think hard about it, you need them. Without problems there would be no motivation in life. Problems push you to try and learn more. When Sandy meets Sunny, he realizes just how isolated and lonely he was all his life. His whole life had been boring, he had never felt sad, or mad, or love, or excitement.
When Sandy's uncles tried to kill him, his life opened up, he finally faced the outside world, and discovered what it meant to live.

Big issues and problems seem to hurt and disrupt our lives, and they do, but they also keep them exciting and interesting. Problems give us motivation, and solving them makes us feel jubilant. We have all wished for perfect lives at some point. But the truth is, that would be boring. Anyway, there is no such thing as a perfect life.

Book Response

In Treasure Island, the main character is Jim Hawkins, he and his mother are running a small inn when they come across a murderous band of pirates who will do anything to get their hands on a certain treasure map. This treasure map just so happens to be in Jim Hawkins hands.

A major issue in this book is trust, in several parts of the book Jim is forced to trust his companions, sometimes with his life. Some of his companions are honest, and good people. Some are lying theive's who will betray him, over and over again. When Jim sets sail to Treasure Island with a several other people, a captain, and a crew, he gets to talking with the cook, Long John Silver. Jim trusts Silver because he feels that Silver is the only one who he can relate to and who understands him, if Jim tried talking to other crew members, they would not understand.

I have a lot of friends, but only a few who I can actually have a deep conversation with. There are only a few of them that I would actually feel safe telling them what I'm really thinking about, and what is really in my heart. You can almost tell from a person's behavior, and their personality if they can actually dig deep enough, and understand you. Sometimes you will tell someone something, and they will make a big mess out of the whole thing.

Jim confided in Silver because he thought Silver seemed like a really sincere, nice person. What Jim didn't know was that the whole person that he thought Silver was, was fake, made up. Silver actually created an alternate personality, for when he was talking to Jim. If Jim had known Silver's true personality and past, he would have killed him on the spot. This is why trust is a very tricky thing, if you trust the wrong person, things can go very wrong.

Once I pulled a prank on my third grade teacher, and later that day told a classmate about it. Unfortunately for me that kid was a big snitch and told on me. I was pretty pissed that I had so easily trusted him with such a secret, and I paid the price with two detentions. When you trust someone with information about you they can use it against you, and hurt you.

Jim trusts Silver a lot, and by chance Jim over hears Silver and the crew talking about about mutiny, and killing everyone on the ship, including himself. Jim is terrified, and alarmed that he had trusted someone who now wants to kill him. He also wonders how he could not see through Silver's devilish alternate personality.

Trust is a tricky concept to deal with, you have to be able to calculate how much to give to who, and who to give it to. Because if you trust the wrong person, then it can come back at you and stab you in the back. Just like how Silver betrayed Jim, When Jim thought that Silver was the one person he could trust and talk to.

The Mystery of The Dog in The Night-time

       Christopher is an extremely mathematically gifted fifteen year old boy, but he is quite socially handicapped. He takes everything that people say really literally. At first you think that the book is just a mystery novel about the journey Chris goes on to discover who killed Wellington, his neighbors dog. But once the story really starts you discover, that there's a little more to the book than that.
(WARNING:there may be some minor spoilers ahead)
        There's another important part of the story. Chris's mother is dead. Or so he thinks. One day while investigating the mystery in his fathers room, he finds a box. He opens the box. In the box there are letters, to him. From his mother. Chris was just playing a game, until this happened, this made it real. It turned out that his father had hid them, and that his mother was alive.
       This really makes me think about how parents try to protect their kids from the outside world, not wanting them to be exposed to it, and how sometimes they over-do it, really over-do it. Chris's dad was just trying to protect him from the truth, which he thought would be too hard for Chris to take, but telling someone their mother is dead is a bit too much. I think this is really about how Chris's dad took a chance, by making a big decision for Chris. But people should never make decisions that big on their own, when it affects other people so much.
       

Pure Evil

In my book, there is a character, Kalona who is portrayed to be pure evil. All the other characters don't want to mess around with him because he is so dangerous. He doesn't seem to care about anybody, and I think that is what makes him so dangerous. If you don't care about anyone, then you have nothing to be afraid of, because you won't ever have to risk hurting somebody that you love.

I find it hard to believe that it is possible for  anyone, in a book, or actually alive to have no feeling or remorse, or good inside them. How can you possibly never feel bad for somebody? I think it is absolutely impossible. I think that Kalona only seems to have no good inside of him because the situations he has been in haven't had the means to cause him remorse, or to feel badly about any of his actions.

I think that if he were in a situation where he actually had a connection to a person and/or what they were going through, and what they were feeling, then he might show his supposedly non-existant good side. This is what makes Kalona so powerful, there is no way to black mail him, or negogiate, because there is nothing that anyone can hold against him. If someone can find a way to connect to him, to get inside of him, and therefore be able to destroy him from the inside out. Then he could be defeated.

Old Man's War

Right now I am reading Old Man's War. This book has several compelling aspects to me. One it is a sci-fi book, and two I like how it sort of has a flip side on war. I find it very interesting that all of the soldiers in the army that fights the other intelligent species are Old Men. Although at first glance they wouldn't look that way. They have all had their mind and concience transplanted from their old wrinkly real bodies, into genetically in mproved and stronger slightly green bodies. Another thing I have been thinking thinking about in my book lately is, what is it saying about justice in our world?

Well, a major theme in the plot of the story is that John, and some of his friends are noticing that some of the aliens that they are destroying aren't evil at all, that they stand no chance against them. The soldiers are starting to feel bad because they know that some of the battles that they are going out to fight, are just wrong. I think this says something about justice. Sometimes there just is no justice, sometimes you just don't get justice, and the other team wins. Just like that. I think that this is definatley a big downside to how the world works.

 I think the idea that you can be powerless to stop something bad that's going on is scary. It must be scary to know that you are less powerful then your enemies, and that they can do whatever they want, and get away with it. This element in the world is more common in Old Man's War than in our world though, because in the book, there is no real government. Atleast that has the real power to serve Justice.

Hard Things in OLD MAN'S WAR

There are a lot of complicated issues going on in Old Man's War. Basically there is a intergallactic or something like that recruiting system that recruits seventy five year olds from earth, for an army that protects the colonies from intelligent alien enemies if they decide to attack. I find myself thinking about a lot of strange things that are going on this book. Like the fact that the recruits for the army are seventy five years old! that's just a little strange to me. With the help of the mini lesson on "hard things" in our stories, I have been able to begin to look at these things as not meaningless aspects of the story. But these elements in the story are purposefully put in to talk about something, put a point out there for the reader to reach out and grab onto.

I have often heard people talking about current wars as "young men fighting the old man's war" or "the poor fighting the rich's war". I think that what these people mean is, the people who are actually in power to get a war started are the old and the rich, the wise and the wealthy, and that these people can't actually fight in their war, they can just get it started. In this book though, even though it isn't very clear, I think it is just the opposite. The old men and women are fighting the war. Does this mean that the young people of their time are the people in power, and that the old people are now the slaves of the young? I'm not sure, it's really unclear at this point but I also think this could be representational for the old political powers finally stepping up the home plate and taking responsibility.

I also found it very interesting how all the characters in the book, men, women, gay, straight, they all veiw eachother as equals. They talk about their sexuality so casually with eachother, and they make a point of it, you as a reader will notice and stop, and be like you know what. This is important. Right now in the story everything is mostly peaceful, and I wonder if this is the reason the author made such a point of making it clear that these people view each other as equals. I predict that later in the story as the battle training, boot camp, and what ever lays ahead nears, they sexualities, and genders will start to rival or argue, face off. I think this because it seems to me that the peacefulness between the different people makes peace in this world, and when they become prejudiced against eachother, things will go bad. I don't have much proof to support this prediction, but it's what this text is saying to me. Maybe this is saying something about why our world isn't so peaceful.

This book takes an enteresting turn on how it expresses issues, and how they are presented makes me think certain things. I think it is interesting how now just by looking at the title of the book every time I pick it up to read it, I automatically think about indivduality and peace, and the way wars are created and fought.

Stuart Little: The struggles of Stuart

I have this one annotation that really got me going on this idea. Stuart sets off early in the morning to avoid traffic, and I was just thinking, What does he care about the traffic, he's freaking two inches tall!

Stuart was born from a human mother, but as of this moment, he still looks very much like a mouse, and has grown much taller than two inches. I can't help but wonder if he is at all self consience about his physical appearence. In the early stages of the story Stuart was just beginning to adjust to the way of life he had to lead, to live comfortably. And the things that he had to adjust to. Such as having to climb great heights just to brush his teeth, and having to pound a mallet just to get the water running. Every day activities for us were a huge work out for him. Therefore, as he puts it, his abs were like iron bands.

I think that Stuart wanted to prove to himself, and to everyone around him, that he was great, in his own way. He wanted to be as similar to everyone else as possible. One time while trying to prove to Snow bell how strong his stomach muscles were, he had a serious accident which involved him being squashed in a tight spot for many hours. Another time when he was trying to prove himself, he put himself in a very dangerous position with out thinking about it, he volunteered to be lowered into the drain to find his mothers ring. He did succeed, to the relief of his family, except for George who was very jealous. It must be hard to have a body like a mouse, but still think like a human, your mental and physical cababilities sort of, contradict each other.

I also think that Stuart has a hard time remembering his differences from other people. He doesn't seem to sense danger, and think ahead of time before doing something that for him could turn into a fatal accident. He assumes his mother sees him slip into the fridge to get some cheese, but she doesn't. And he almost freezes to death because he assumed. he doesn't think ahead before grabbing onto the ring of the shades, he doesn't foresee that he could be visiously yanked off the ground by it.

Stuart does learn from his mistakes, and towards the end of the book I notice it's almost like a fairy tale. I compare the story to a fairy tale because the whole second half there are almost no problems, no obstacles, at all. It is like a dream, I got so bored at times, that I just wanted to put my head down and go to sleep. But one drawback about Stuart learning from his mistakes is his personality seems to change. He warps more and more into a sophisticated, cocky douche, in my opinion, There are several instances where he whips out a smart remark at some poor person, probably just because it makes him feel impowered, and big. I also find it interesting how not only does Stuart try to make himself seem powerful. But he tries to make his lifestyle as similar to his fellow normal sized people.

I think Stuart would have a better life if he just went and lived in the woods and became an explorer, then he wouldn't feel pressured to be so similar to everyone else. If anyone has any suggestions for stuff I should add to this post please comment.