I'm Eating an Apple

  One of my all time favorite novels is One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams Garcia. The story follows sisters Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern in the summer of 1968 as they visit their estranged mother in Oakland, California. Throughout the novel the girls have to deal with racism and learn about the Black Panther movement. I was never taught about the Black Panther party in school, so not only was the book enjoyable, but it was educational too. The novel makes for a quick read and I would highly recommend it. This book was different for Garcia. While she often wrote books about characters that were black, she hadn’t written one yet that dealt so much with racism. In an interview, she explained, “It’s [racism] not how people live. Not to say racism doesn’t exist, but it’s not this moment to moment consciousness. I like to include the domestic, intimate things about race and identity that never really make it into books or media—you mainly get big or dramatic events of racism, violence

11/22/63 by Stephen King is my first experience with Stephen King. I was recommended this book by one of my friends back at my old school. Although the length of the novel is quite long, the book kept making me want to read more and more. The plot revolves around a high school teacher named Jake. One day Jake goes to his favorite diner and the owner, Al, walks to the back and mystically turns into a much older and sicker self. Al then gives the rundown of how in the back of this restaurant there is a portal to 1958, explaining how he suddenly got way older and sicker. Al's goal with the time portal thingy is to go back and stop the assassination of JFK on 11/22/63. Because of Al's condition, he can not continue and trusts Jake to stop the assassination for him. The rest of the novel follows Jake and his travels through the 50s and 60s and his determination to stop the JFK assassination.      With my first novel into Stephen King, I'm not disappointed. The plot is very uniqu

  This month, I read The Red-Headed League, a Sherlock Holmes short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The story starts with a man named Mr. Jabez Wilson telling Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr. Watson about the strange events that recently happened to him. Mr. Wilson saw an announcement in the newspaper for a position in the Red-Headed-League, a society formed by a rich red-headed man to help support other red-headed people. Mr. Wilson, who is also red headed, applied for the position and got a job  copying the Encyclopedia Britannica. He was very pleased with the work and the extra money he was making until one day without warning, the office of the red-headed league closed and a bewildered Mr. Wilson came to seek advice from Sherlock Holmes about what possibly could have happened. The rest of the story is about how Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson solved the mystery. I really enjoyed this story. I have enjoyed reading other Sherlock Holmes stories in the past and I thought this one

The Catcher in the Rye is a type of book that I’ve heard about all the time. I had known that it was a well-known classic, however, I never actually knew what the book was about. At least for something like Moby Dick, I knew there was a whale in it somewhere. However, after all those years of wondering what the Catcher was and why it was in the Rye, I finally picked it up from my local library. The book was published in 1951, written by J. D. Salinger. The summary of the book is very straightforward: Holden Caulfield, a troubled boy, was kicked out of Pencey Preparatory School and wanders around New York. That is basically it. But what else happens? Well, nothing really. You see, The Catcher in the Rye is a strange story. Not in the sense where strange things happen, but nothing strange happens. Holden is literally going to New York and wandering about, phoning up a past girlfriend because he feels like it, then saying that he’s going to move to the West because he feels like it, and t

Dear reader, I Have Lost My Way by Gayle Forman is one of the best books I have ever read.  If you remember my last post, I discussed a good example of constant perspective switching. This book does it even better. Even with one sentence, the reader can always tell who the book has switched to, with no indication. Each character’s voice is apparent in the way they think, their phrasing, word choice, use of italics, everything. Some perspective switches only last one sentence before it changes again, and yet, for that one sentence, it is obvious who is thinking. It’s also nice from a visual aspect: three centered dashes indicate a change, and they are thin enough so as not to draw attention and break the flow of reading. The book also switches between first and third person. Simply put, the actions that take place in the present are told in limited third person with frequent switches, while flashbacks, memories, and other character backstories are told in first person with few switches