Insurgent

            From my last blog post, I haven't read as far as I would have liked to, but I did read some more interesting stuff about Jeanine/Erudite's motives and the society. From the reading, I found out that along with Tris, Tobias, and Uriah, Marcus (Tobias's abusive father) is also divergent. Also Jack Kang (leader of Candor) wants to negotiate with one of Jeanine's representatives. Tris, Tobias, and a few of their friends think it would be a good idea to follow and spy on them. But before the meeting, a fight between Tobias and Marcus breaks out. People had been making fun of Tobias and calling him a coward since he was trying to run away from his father, and that he didn't stand up to his father, Marcus. So in front of everybody in the cafeteria, Tobias beats up his father and whips him with his belt. Tris wonders why Tobias did what he did and she remembers that Tobias's mom, Evelyn, told him to prove himself to Dauntless and become a leader, so that Dauntless will join forces with the factionless and rebel against Erudite. Afterward everyone gets in their position to spy on the meeting. Max, another leader from Dauntless was Jeanine's representative. He told Jack that Erudite will keep him and his faction unharmed if: 1) They return Eric, unharmed. 2)Let them search the compounds for Divergents and 3) Tell them everyone who wasn't injected with the simulation serum. Lynn, one of Tris's friends, shoots Max. Tris realizes that Jeanine must be close by because she knows that Jeanine was telling Max what to say through an earpiece. Tris runs toward a glass building and she was right. She sees Jeanine and Peter, who is a Dauntless traitor, fleeing. Tris is about to chase after them but hears a scream. She runs to see what happens and sees that Shauna, Lynn's sister had been shot. They went back to Candor headquarters and while Shauna was getting treated, Tobias was angry with Tris because she is always putting herself in dangerous situations. He tells her that if she does it again, they can not stay together. Angry and shocked, she goes and talks to Tori. She asks Tori if she found anything interesting while being a spy. Tori admits that she was trying to get close to Jeanine so that she could kill her. (She wants to do that because her brother was killed for being a divergent). 

           Insurgent has been reminding me about our current novel that we are reading in class, Fahrenheit 451. They are both about future societies where the government is trying to control the peoples' minds and lives. It makes me really fearful about what might happen in our future society if the government gets too greedy with power. From Fahrenheit 451, people were basically given an opinion, just so that they wouldn't form their own. The government brainwashed them with forbidding books and other laws, while in Insurgent, Erudite is almost brainwashing people too with all their simulations and serums. 

Insurgent

Insurgent

              Soon after reading Divergent, I started  the second book in the trilogy, Insurgent. I am about half way through with the book.

              This book picks up right where Divergent left off. It begins with Tris, Tobias, Caleb (Tris's brother), Marcus (Tobias's dad) and Peter (one of the Dauntless initiates, whom Tris hates), running away to the Amity headquarters. There, Tris sees a lot of Abnegation members, and old neighbors, like her friend Susan. Since Amity is all about peace, the leaders decide that if Tris and the others want to stay in their faction, there can be no violence between anyone. But they weren't able to keep peace for long, because Peter tried to steal the hard drive that had information about the attack simulation that happened in Divergent. Tris and Peter get into a fight, which violated the agreement between them and Amity. Tris is taken away and given some sort of peace serum which puts her in a better mood. Soon after, Tris sees Erudite cars with Dauntless traitors coming to Amity to find Tris, Tobias, and the others. All the Abnegation disguise themselves as Amity but Tobias gets caught. Tris, Tobias, Susan, and Caleb escape through the cornfields, but they don't know what happened to Peter, Marcus or the rest of Abnegation. They get on a train, but find out they aren't the only passengers. The train is filled with the factionless. The factionless are about to kill them until Tobias tells him that his name is Tobias Eaton. They take them to a woman named Evelyn, who turns out to be Tobias's mother. Tobias is not on good terms with his mother because she left him with his father, Marcus, who abused him in his childhood. Evelyn is the leader of the factionless and we find out that the factionless are twice the size of Dauntless. Evelyn wants to create a government without factions. 

           The morning after, Evelyn reveals to Tris that her father (who died in the attack simulation and so did her mother) used to be an Erudite and used to be good friends with Jeanine Matthews (creator of the attack serum and leader of Erudite). Then, Tris and Tobias go to the Candor Headquarters to see what's going on there. As soon as they come, they are arrested. They will only be interrogated after going under the truth serum ( Candor are the ones who value honesty). Tris meets her old friend, Christina from Dauntless initiation and she tells her how there are Dauntless living safe in Candor. Christina was also dating Will, who Tris killed during the attack on Abnegation. But neither Christina nor Tobias knows that Tris was responsible for his death. Under the truth serum, Tobias spills all his family secrets and admits that he wanted to leave Dauntless and become factionless but stayed after he met Tris. He also reveals to everyone that he is Divergent.After Tris is injected with the serum, she admits that she is also Divergent and that she killed Will in front of everyone, including Christina and Tobias. Afterward, Uriah, Lynn, and Marlene (who were  Dauntless born initiates) make a plan with Tris to go to the Hancock Building to spy on Erudite. But when they arrive, Dauntless traitors and some Erudite came and stormed the whole building, filling the air with some sort of gas and shooting people with a disc (we later find out that it is a new simulation that Jeanine created). They did this because they were looking for more Divergents. Since Tris is divergent she was immune to the simulation and so was her friend Uriah, because he is also divergent. They split up-Tris disguises herself to look like a Dauntless traitor so that she can find the Divergents and help them leave. But as she was helping one of the Divergents escape, she is caught by her ruthless, trainor who was a leader in Dauntless initiation, Eric. Eric gathers all the divergents (there is about 4 or 5 of them) and reveals that he can only take back 2. The rest of them will be killed. Right then, Tris stabs Eric and he is severely hurt. Loyal Dauntless members fight the Dauntless traitors and the traitors run away. Afterward, Jack Kang (leader of Candor) and the rest of the faction debate on what should be done. Tris wants Candor to join with them to fight the traitors and Erudite but Jack wants to set up a meeting with Jeanine Matthews to negotiate. Later, Tris sees Tori, the woman who did her aptitude test, and Zeke, Uriah's brother. They thought that Zeke and Tori were traitors but they were actually spies. And that's about all I've read so far.

              

Divergent

Divergent

             Over the past two weeks, I have finished the book Divergent, by Veronica Roth, which had a really interesting and cool plot. The book is about a girl named Beatrice, who lives in a future society. The society is split into five factions: Erudite, who are known for their knowledge, Amity, who represent peace, Candor, who are always honest, Abnegation, who are always selfless, and Dauntless, who are brave. But recently, two factions, Erudite and Abnegation, are starting to have conflict between eachother. The reason is that Abnegation has always run the government but now Erudite wants to have control of it. So Erudite started attacking Abnegation by making false rumors and claims to make Abnegation look bad to all the other factions. However, everyone knows where they belong and what they are going to do, except for Beatrice. She was born in Abnegation but she never felt that she really belonged there. Since she is 16, her, her brother and all other teenagers who are 16 get to take the aptitude test, which tells them what faction they best fit into. No matter what the results say, they will get the chance to choose the faction they want to live in on Choosing Day.

            Beatrice had really strange results though. The aptitude test showed that she doesn't fit into just one faction; she fits into several. This means that she is divergent. The problem with this is that divergents, in this society, are extremely dangerous, because their minds work in different ways, and once the leaders find out, they are usually killed. From the test, Beatrice found out that she fits into Erudite, Abnegation and Dauntless. So she's really not sure what to pick in the Choosing Ceremony. While they're at the ceremony, she sees every 16 year old choose what faction they want to live in. Some leave their families behind and some stay with them. Her brother chooses Erudite, which shocks her and her parents, and Beatrice eventually chooses Dauntless. Right after the ceremony, she feels how the Dauntless are truly brave and sometimes crazy, when she and the new initiates had to jump on and off of a moving train and jump from a high story building onto a net to get into the dauntless compounds. In the compounds, she meets Four, who will be the trainer for her and the other initiates. She also makes some close friends and some enemies. Soon after joining Dauntless, Beatrice finds herself changing a lot. She changes her name to Tris, gets several tattoos, and becomes a lot more confident and impulsive. Throughout initiation, Tris and the other new members have to train to fight and face their worst fears. Because Tris is divergent, she is able to manipulate the simulation when facing her fears, making her a lot faster at getting through it then everyone else. Four discovers that Tris is divergent and she finds out that he is also divergent, but he hasn’t been caught by anyone. After initiation is over, the new members see their rankings and Tris is happy to find out that she got ranked first, meaning that she will get a good job in the future. But on that same day, every dauntless member was injected with a serum (made by Erudite) which made them basically like sleepwalkers. The serum controlled them and made them go to the Abnegation faction to kill the citizens. This was Erudite’s plan to overthrow Abnegation so they could run the government. But both Four (Tobias is his real name) and Tris are both immune to the serum because they are divergents. They shut down the program and the Dauntless members wake up. Now they are factionless. They don’t have any home, faction, or family.

             I really liked this book because of its action, suspense and romance. I saw the movie and I think I like the book better because it had more detail and a lot of parts were cut out in the movie. I like Roth’s style of writing because she doesn’t use too much of a high vocabulary and it is an easy read. I am very excited to read the second book, Insurgent.

Reflection

                 Over the last week, I finished Looking for Alaska, which had a pretty surprising ending. Chip and Pudge thought that Alaska had possibly killed herself because she seemed pretty upset about something when she left the night she died. But after they investigated, they figured out that Alaska hadn't killed herself. She was really upset because she forgot about the anniversary of her mother's death and didn't want to disappoint her again. But as she drove off campus, she crashed because she was heavily intoxicated with alcohol. After they figure this out, Pudge and Chip feel less responsible for the death of Alaska and they decide to move on. In honor of Alaska, they pull off one of her original pranks.

         

            Through out this semester, I did not reach my goal of reading 3 books. I only read two books, The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska. Also I did not reach my goal of blogging 6 posts. I have completed only 5 posts. For reading, I just didn't have time to complete several books. And for the blogging, there were times when I just forgot about it and there were times when I remembered but procrastinated and thought I would do it later. So for next semester, I do want to complete 6 or more blog posts and read at least 3 books. I will make more time for independent reading and I will make sure to blog every other week.

Looking for Alaska

Looking for Alaska

                For the past weeks, I have been reading Looking for Alaska. I have about one-third of the book left and the climax has just taken place. A lot has happened between this post and my last blog-post in the book. A quick summary of what I've read so far is: After Pudge was thrown into the lake (and almost died), he and his new friends(Chip, Takumi, and Alaska) want to get revenge on the students who did that to him. They threw Pudge into the lake because they thought that Chip was responsible for 2 former students of Culver Creek being expelled. But he wasn't. Alaska was the one responsible but no one knows that except for Pudge, Chip and Takumi. As they plan a prank involving blue hair-dye being put in the hair of the students they want to get revenge on, another girl is introduced, named Lara, who Alaska wants Pudge and  to date. Even though throughout the story, Pudge and Lara grow closer, Pudge only really likes Alaska. And as all 5 friends spend more and more time together, they learn a lot about eachother, and their families. Chip and Alaska didn't have a typical family and because of that, they struggle. So, they both resort to drinking alcohol or smoking, and soon Pudge(the main character) starts smoking and drinking too. A couple days later, Pudge, Chip and Alaska were hanging out together and they all got drunk. The next morning, Chip and Pudge found out the Alaska had been drunk-driving and she was found dead.

             The genre of this book is realistic fiction. And although this was written by John Greene, whose novel, The Fault in Our Stars is one of my favorites, I do not like Looking for Alaska as much for some reason. I think the plot is pretty good and it has some humor to it, but I don't like it as much as I thought I would.

Looking for Alaska

Looking for Alaska

            Recently I have begun reading Looking for Alaska. I chose to read this book because it is by John Greene, who wrote The Fault in Our Stars, which I really liked. I haven't gotten very far in the book; I've just read, so far, that the main character, Miles, otherwise known as "Pudge," goes off to a boarding school. He meets his roomate, Chip, Takumi, and finally Alaska, who is very clever, pretty and always making trouble. Pudge has a very rough start at the boarding school, because he was basically kidnapped, duct-taped and then thrown into a lake by some other students. This happened to him because of some conflict between the students and Pudge's room mate, Chip.     

               That's about all I've read so far but here's a link to a quick summary on Amazon:  

http://www.amazon.com/Looking-Alaska-John-Green/dp/0142402516

The Fault in Our Stars

           This week I finished The Fault in our Stars, and it is probably one of my favorite books. The author, John Greene, surprised me when Augustus Water's cancer had come back. (Sorry if I spoiled it for anyone but pretty much everyone has already read the book except for me). Anyways I had expected Hazel to be the one to die because Greene mainly talked about her cancer and how it was getting worse. But when he brought Augustus's cancer back and when Augustus died, I thought it was very interesting (and sad) and a good plot twist. I rated this book 5 stars probably because of the main character, Hazel. She is very smart, funny and witty throughout the book. And when Augustus's cancer came back, her humor put everyone in a better mood, especially Augustus. She is very kind and confident, and she speaks whatever is in her mind. After Augustus's death, she became even more grateful for everything and everybody that she has. Even while going through cancer, she kept a positive attitude and I think she is a great role model.