The Alchemist: first week in

I just began the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. It's an interesting story about a shepherd boy. I haven't gotten far--but it seems sorta interesting. It's unlike anything I've read before but that seems to be a trend I have been having--starting the unknown. The book is categorized under fantasy and I only started reading it for the genre requirement. I also only started reading it because of the cover. They say not to judge a book by it's cover but I did. Oh well, Ms. Bandman said it was a good book so I'll take her word for it. It takes place in Spain not America like most books I have read. I have a poetry share today so at least I'll be able to read on the couch again! Off to more reading....Allie

Looking for Alaska: finished after two days, I guess she wasn't that hard to find!

It had a beginning and an ending, that's all. NOT. Looking for Alaska was an amazing book. I loved it so much that it was hard to put down. So much so that at one point I couldn't not continue reading. The book was set up so that it was almost divided. There was a before and there was an after. The before was all the moments before a huge prank occurred. And the whole book: it didn't have chapters, it was like this huge sequence. 186 days before, 33 days before. It was so cool. And it was funny, and you really got to see the main character's quirks. One of my favorite quotes was when the main character, Miles (Pudge) speaks of Alaska: his dream girl,

"But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane".

He's so intense and the author does a great job writing as a teenager. I loved the whole book, and wanna know something funny? The back of the book said "Holden Caulfield lives on". That is so appropriate! If I had read this book a year ago, or even a few weeks ago I would never have been able to open my eyes to all the connections there are between the two books. Sickness! that's all I have to say. It was a book that I recommend to everyone I see now: that's how good it was.

My next book will be The Alchemist, I saw it on Ms. Bandman's shelf under one of the genre requirements I need so I picked it up. I read the blurb and it looked pretty good and asked a couple of people whether they liked it and they said they knew people who had read it and liked it so I took the plunge. So far I have read zero pages but I will! Who knows, it might just be a quick read like Looking for Alaska was.

Looking for Alaska: a new book for reading

I finished The Kite Runner on Sunday and I was so pleased with the ending. It really got to be a roller coaster ride towards the end. Your emotions will be up then down, then up, then down! You worried, then you felt happy, then you worried, and on and on. The ending was very simple but it was the kind of simple that you really like. Like the smell of rain on pavement, it's so simple but you can't help but love it. I started the book Looking for Alaska by John Green after a very annoying trip to the library. I love this book. I'm around 45 pages in and I just love the tone of the book. It's told in first person. I've read books in first person before, The Kite Runner was in first person but it wasn't anything like Looking for Alaska. For example, Miles talks about his parents leaving him at the boarding school and he says "At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid and it hurts, but then it's over and you're relieved" (7). I thought that was sort of funny, I've heard the saying but never in this context. Another one of his thoughts was "I knew I ought to cry, but I'd lived with my parents for sixteen years, and a trial separation seemed overdue" (7). He's leaving the nest, but he doesn't even want to cry about it or anything--he'd rather compare it to couple's failed marriage steps. This new book is told by a teenager, a real life teenage. He has just turned on a new leaf and just started a new school. As a reader, you go through his first experiences with him, his crushing on the pretty girl down the hall with him. The difference between this book and other books I've read is that this particular author really left this huge door open, a garage even, for the reader to enter and join the main character--Miles--in his journey. I've never actually been this excited about a book after just reading 45 pages: hopefully the ending doesn't disappoint :).

Kite Runner: coming to a close (HUGE SPOILERS!!)

So, when I left off Amir was right in the beginning of his life in America. Right now, I'm at a point where he has gotten married but he has a dilemma. His wife can't get pregnant! It's so sad, but they're both successful adults now, which I'm happy about. One day Amir got a phone call from his dad's old best friend asking him to come see him. Amir goes, and finds his dad's old best friend Rahin Khan terribly sick. He asks Amir for one dying wish to go and fetch Hassan's son. He tells Amir of the life when Hassan lived with him and about his son. He then tells Amir that he is Hassan's brother. Hassan is beyond freaking out and is so angry because he feels that his life was just a lie. After a quick temper tantrum, he comes back and he decides that he will go get Hassan's son Sohrab. He is living in the slums of an orphanage. Amir treks across Afghanistan with this man Farid. None of Afghanistan is the way he remembers it. It's so sad the visuals you see him describe. They remind me of slum dog millionaire with all the poverty and orphans. It just makes me so angry and sad. It makes you want to travel across the country at that moment and take fifty kids home with you. It really does. I am really hoping that I can finish this book by next week because it's at a dramatic moment right now and I really want to finish!

Kite Runner, only 60 pages farther but tons to talk about

So far, this book has exceeded my expectations. Right now, Amir and his father are in America. His father, Baba, has been working at a gas station since they got there. This same father was once one of the richest men in Kabul with a black mustang car and a huge house. Amir is going to school and living the California life except he can't escape his memories of Hassan. America is an open door of opportunities but it still isn't able to get rid of Amir's memories of Hassan. When Baba mentions Hassan, Amir feels like

"a pair steel hands closed around [his] windpipe at the sound of Hassan's name. [He] rolled down the window. waited for the steel hands to loosen their grip" (134).

That quote was so extremely visual for me and it made a huge metaphorical connection. Amir's grief after what happen makes him feel like there is steel hands trying to choke him. He can barely live with himself. Later in my reading, Amir actually is love-stricken by a girl. He is so incredibly nervous and scared to talk to her and he

"promised [him]self that [he] would talk to her before the summer was over, but schools reopened, the leaves reddened, yellowed, and fell, the rains of winter swept in and wakened Baba's joints, baby leaves sprouted once more, and [he] still hadn't had the heart, the dil, to even look her in the eye" (144).

This quote really jumped off the page for me because it can be true for anyone and it really allows you to relate to Amir. Everyone is scared to talk to someone they have a crush on--they're afraid of embarrassing themselves, not saying the right thing, and so many other things. This quote shows Amir's true nature and his relatable nature to everyone else in the world--it shows his true human nature. And I'm off to more reading...

Kite Runner 1st 100 Pages (Spoiler Alert!)

So far I'm around 100 pages into the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and I really like the book. Most books I read are very girl oriented and are not nearly as powerful as this book. It's a fictional recount of a boy's childhood in Afghanistan. It almost seems like it's nonfiction though because it is in first person and is immensely descriptive but since I found it in the fiction section of the library I guess not. This book is both intense and sad because you see the happiest moments of a rich Pashtun boy named Amir's life and also the saddest. He is a boy who just wants to be loved by his well-off father whom he calls Baba. One of the most traumatizing moments of any piece of literature I've ever read happened within the last couple of chapters. Amir had just won a kite running contest and his Hazara servant/best friend Hassan had just run to get his winning kite. Amir had waited for a long time for him but then grew impatient so he went looking for him. What he did find was Hassan getting beaten by a blue-eyed well off boy and his cronies. What got to be even worse was that this same blue-eyed boy, Assef, raped Hassan because he refused to give up the kite to Assef. What was most traumatizing was that Amir was there stooped behind a wall watching. He did nothing to help his best friend. This is partly because he grew up in a society where Hazaras are looked down upon and it's not socially acceptable for him to admit that Hassan is his best friend. So far in the book Amir always is looking for attention from his father. He constantly feels unloved and almost unwanted. At one point he actually thinks to himself that Baba blames him for his mother's death. His mother died in child birth and that feeling is so severe and for him to feel responsible for the death of his mother is unthinkable. Baba also always seems to treat Amir and Hassan equally and this bothers Amir because sometimes he just wants to be noticed over Hassan. So far this book is extremely interesting, sad, and it also invokes so many more emotions. It almost feels as if you know Amir personally and he's recounting the story to you over a cup of tea.

Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen

Another Sarah Dessen book I read this summer was Lock and Key. This book was just as easy as the other read but was also completely different. A similarity between this book and The Truth About Forever was that both main characters lost a parent. The main character in this book didn't have her mother die, her mother abandoned her. A mother is supposed to have unconditional love for her child so how could she leave her?! Ruby then moves into her sister's house. She's very against the idea at first and wants to run away but then ends up making friends with her neighbor Nate. They have a kindling romance and it's a kind of a character that when she finally lands the guy, you feel like your best friend just landed the guy of her dreams. This book also has a moment where Sarah Dessen includes characters from her other book, The Truth About Forever. It's very subtle and pretty insignificant but it's still a cool experience to see an author's book have a connection to another one of her books that aren't in the same series. It's sort of like a shout out to her fans that says "Hope you enjoyed that connection, thanks for reading all my books to notice!". Bottom line is that this book was really good and really addicting. It was simple yet great.