Post 13

Hello and welcome to the last post of 2014. Thank God! These are really bothersome and always take some serious creativity and brainpower to make, so I hate having to use it on these. And finals are coming up, so I have to study for those too (my motto: Pain is temporary, GPA is forever). Anyways, back to the blog. So yeah, Post 13.

 For Post 13 I'm doing final thoughts on my book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. Overall it was a great story with several possible meanings that you could find. You could say the meaning was that no matter how much a human can suffer, they can still forgive. Or that you shouldn't crash planes into oceans. Or that running is a sport (I'm on the fence on this one). But overall, Unbroken shows that inside of us all there is a victor, victim, champion, prisoner, and a forgiver (at the end Louie forgives the Bird, the prison guard who beat and abused him). So the book sends several messages, but this one stands out the most.

 Well, that's it for this semester. Thanks for all the views, putting up with bad posts and delays, and having to read period. Thanks for reading, and Happy Holid

ays!

Post 12

Hello and welcome back to my blog! For my 12th post, I'm going to write a letter to the author of Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand. This will be kind of like Post 10, but it won't be making fun of anyone.

 Dear Mrs. Hillenbrand,

I really like what you did with the story of Louie Zamperini and the story you made it into. The book really took a good look at Louie's childhood and how his bad tendencies eventually helped him in life. Also, presenting the Bird's (the Bird is the Japanese prison guard who physically and psychologically abuses Louie while he is a POW) side of the story and his post-war experiences gives us a different angle on Louie's prison camp experience. And the added information on the plane that Louie flies, the B-24 bomber, adds perspective to the conditions he flew in. All in all, thanks for a great book.

 That's all for this week guys. Come back next week for Post 13, and happy (soon to be) Holidays!

Post 11

 For Post 11, I'm talking about my new book, Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. I started it around 6 days ago and just finished it, and it was great. I'm not going to spoil the book right now though. I'm doing that in the next paragraph.

 The main character is Louie Zamperini, the son of Italian immigrants to the United States. he grows up in Torrance, California, and is a total delinquent. He steals from people, beats other kids up, and smokes and drinks all throughout his childhood. This is during the Great Depression era, so he can get away with all of it. Eventually, his brother Peter gets him into running. Louie gets really into it and is soon the fastest runner in Southern California.

 He is soon accepted to USC on a track scholarship and sets several records there (he gets close to a 4 minute mile) and goes onto Olympic trials for the 1936 Berlin Olympics. He gets 5th place and starts training for the 1940 Olympics, but World War 2 soon starts and Louie has to join the military. I'm not going to spoil anything else... for now. Anyway, thanks for reading and see you guys next week.

Post 10

For my Post 10, I am going to  write a letter to the authors of Donnie Brasco, written by Richard Woodley and Joe Pistone. This contains spoilers, so stop reading in about 3 seconds. Besides that, I have a post coming next week that will be one of YOUR ideas, but I'll explain later. Now for that letter:


 Dear Authors,

It seems like only one of you did all the work. Joe Pistone was away from his family for 6 years and live a double life under a different name. He risked his life several times and was almost found out, which is basically death, several times. He met some of the most powerful Mafia bosses in the country, and exposed their schemes to the public. He also was brave enough to testify in court against most of these guys, and get most convicted. After that, he had to go into the Witness Protection Program for 3 years to keep the Mafia from killing him, until he could finally go by his real name without a Mafia hitman killing him. Richard Woodley co-authored a book. I hope to God that you aren't splitting the profits 50-50.

 So that was a 30-45 second vent about how dangerous it was for Joe Pistone while he was an undercover agent inside the Mafia for the FBI. I'm done with this book, so I need a new one. Please feel free to leave suggestions in the comments or tell me in class. Thanks for reading, and see you next week.

Post 9

For this post 9, I'm going to talk about Donnie Brasco again. Last week I went over the setting and summarized the book, so if at any point you have no clue what I'm talking about you can refer back to that post. This week I'm going to talk about real life relations to the book.


 One text to reality relation the book has is that the Mafia actually exist. They were powerful in America up until the mid-90's thanks to law enforcement taking them down. However in Italy, where the Mafia originated from, they are still very powerful in the 21st century and have even been known to carry out political assassinations there.


 Another text to reality relation the book has is the law enforcement aspects. Joe Pistone, the agent who infiltrated the Mafia in Donnie Brasco, is a real person. He started as a New York policeman, worked his way into the FBI, and took an assignment to infiltrate. The evidence he gathered and his testimonies in court helped to convict many Mafia bosses. He and his family had to go into hiding for many years to protect themselves from Mafia retribution, but he can now go public.

 You can comment if you want your ideas to be featured. Thanks for viewing and see you next week.

Post 8

I'm waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay behind on these, considering this is Post 8. I mean I'm only like 2 or 3 weeks late, but still, my time management is awful. For this week's post, I'm going to talk about my new book, Donnie Brasco by Richard Woodley. Anyway, I'm going to do a short description of the plot first.


 Basically, Joe Pistone, an FBI agent, is given the task of infiltrating the Mafia, who are very powerful in the 70's, when this story takes place. He takes the name Donnie Brasco as a cover. He thinks that he'll stay a little while, get some basic info, and leave. But instead the operation turns into a huge 6-year quest to take the Mafia down from the inside out. It sounds awesome.


 Because Donnie Brasco is a mob book, the settings are mainly in places where Mafia operations, such as racketeering and extortion are going. Throughout the book Joe Pistone, an undercover FBI agent who infiltrates the Mafia, travels on Mafia business around the country. Most of the story takes place in New York, the "headquarters" of the Mafia, but chapters also take place in Milwaukee, Miami, San Diego, and Las Angeles.


 That's all for now. If you have any feedback please leave a comment and I'll try to incorporate it into the next post. Thanks for reading!

Post 7

For Post 7, I'm talking about the Wolf of Wallstreet. This will have a lot of spoilers, but
it will mostly just be my thoughts on the book. Also, comment some ideas.

For starters, it's kind of hard to believe that this takes only 20 years ago. They still have corded phones, no computers and GOATS ARE PEOPLE TOO VOTE TO END GOAT SEGREGATION IN 2014 #GOAT LIBERATION. And that was Rahul. I don't know what happened there, but I thought it was cool.

Well that's shot, so this wraps up my post 7. If you read this, thanks, and see you all next week. By the way, vote for goat liberation #GoatLiberation2k14.

Post 6

 For this next post, I need some opinions. Like really. I'm almost all out of ideas for posts, so leave whatever thoughts you have in the comments. Without YOU, I won't be able to continue posting, so leave tons of comments.

 Besides that, I'm a week late on this post and I'm going to have to do number 7 over the weekend. Any, today I will talk about how The Wolf of Wallstreet  is relatable to today. One way that it is that in the story, the owner of the company Stratton-Oakmont, Jordan Belfort, does some really stupid things (like shooting at mailmen while high out of his mind) and is enabled by his money. Similarly today, we see famous people doing really stupid things, and they can get away with it because people have some kind of respect for their influence or wealth.

 Another way that The Wolf of Wallstreet is related to today is that it isn't that far back in time. The plot takes place from 1986 to 1998. Over this time period, we see new technology and business technological advances, kind of like what we see today. Also, this shows that the plot of the story is relatively recent, only being 28 years old at most.

Post 5

Post 5
Seth Gerus

 For this week's post, I will talk about the theme for The Wolf of Wallstreet. ( by the way I am running out of ideas so feel free to leave some in the comments.) There are several possible themes that you could find throughout the book, but I'm going with 2 to keep this short.

 The first theme that I found that is with great power comes great responsibility. It is extremely cliché, but it works with this book. Throughout the Wolf of Wallstreet, Jordan Belfort ( the main character who has tons of problems) does drugs, illegally launders money, cheats the stock system, and gets arrested like 6 times! ( He never gets charged though ... except for when he gets arrested by the FBI and goes to jail.)

 The second theme that I found is that drug use can destroy your life. Belfort's business, Stratton-Oakmont, is totally legal and does nothing wrong until his drug use starts up to ease the pain of a back injury. Throughout the book, you can see the drug use growing until it hits a point where he is arrested for assaulting his wife and crashing into 6 or 7 cars while driving home. This isn't fixed until near the end of the book, when Jordan goes into rehab.

All in all, I could probably find more themes for this book, but this is a very rushed post. I do recommend the book however. 

Post 4

For my fourth post, I am reading The Wolf of Wall Street. So far, it is a very interesting book. It is very highly acclaimed also, and has a movie adaptation. So you know it's good. ( I will try to put some humor into this post).

First off is the content of the book. It is about the life of Jordan Belfort, a man who basically made a money printing machine from the way he describes his investing firm, Stratton-Oakmont. However, it is a legitimate company, even though it's owner and workers do so much illegal stuff that they could go to jail for millions of years. I mean really, at one point the guy almost crashes his helicopter because he is flying under the influence, and then he gets really high and shoots at his mailman with a shotgun!

Also, the book is based off of stock trading. Or at least all of the crazy stuff you can do once you get rich off stock trading. The book never really explains how it works, so you are left with crazy business jargon that no one understands. However, this doesn't take up the majority of the book, so I don't really mind. Overall, it's a good book so far.

Post 3

Post 3 Independent Reading

By Seth Gerus

 

 

For my third post, I'm again talking about my book Inferno by Dan Brown. This post won't be a summary of what I've read, but more of a rating of the book. So far, I have some thoughts on it.

 

 First off, after the weird start, the book proceeds in normal fashion. Langdon escapes the bad guys, he meets new female sidekick, they find convenient clues left by bad guy, so on. But Brown usually makes this all interesting with history and cool action scenes. Not this time. Brown apparently was feeling lazy, so the chase involves way too much drama, confusing ideas, and just plain boring reading.

 

 And then there's the ending. Just when everything kind of seems resolved, it turns out that the protagonists are in the wrong temple in the wrong country, that their allies are their enemies, and that the bad guy's plot wasn't even to kill anyone! Overall, Inferno was more of a shameless money grab by Brown than an actually good novel of his that was confusing, long, and frankly, boring. But hey, I got post 3 done.





Post 2 Independent Reading

Post 2 Independent Reading

By Seth Gerus

 For my second post I'm talking about my independent reading book, Inferno  by Dan Brown. I chose this book because I had read other Dan Brown novels and they were very good reads. They referenced history, had action, and had some very surprising plot twists.

In the part I'm reading right now, the main character Robert Langdon, a symbologist and historian at Harvard, wakes up in a hospital in Florence, Italy. The doctors say that they are treating him for a gunshot wound that grazed his skull and gave him amnesia, nearly killing him. As they talk, a woman with a pistol enters the hospital, going to Langdon's room. As she enters, she guns down one of the doctors, and almost kills Langdon. With the assistance of another doctor, Sienna Brooks, Langdon is able to escape the killer.

 Up to this point, this book has been very interesting. Inferno does not start off in typical Dan Brown fashion, with the first part of the mystery usually being presented to the reader. The book instead places Langdon in an unfamiliar situation with no explanation. So far, I like the new style Brown is trying and I hope the book continues to be surprising.

How Michael Oher changes throughout The Blind Side

 The main character of The Blind Side, Michael Oher, rapidly develops over the course of the text. First, he goes from being an impoverished resident with no family of the Memphis ghetto to feeling "...like part of a family. In the other houses I didn't feel like part of the family" (Lewis 150). Michael expresses this feeling after being taken in by the Touhy family, who feel that it is the right thing to take him in after they see him wandering aimlessly around the town after he leaves his school.

 Another way Michael  develops over the text is his increase in intelligence. When he enters Briarcrest, the school he attends throughout the book, "... the grade point average the boy would bring with him to Briarcrest began with a zero: 0.6" (Lewis 53). By the time he graduates, he has a 2.56 GPA. This change happens  because the Touhy's provide Michael with a private tutor to help him understand what he is learning in school. This also happens as Michael learns how to learn in a classroom.

The final way Michael develops is  socially. Before attending being taken in by the Touhy's, Michael is afraid to talk with strangers and people he doesn't know very well. Being with the Touhy's and attending Briarcrest makes him better with other people and Michael soon becomes a very friendly person.