Ender's Game

So the book I'm reading is called Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. At first I thought that Ender's Game was dragging and that because the book was so long that there would be a lot of spaces where the book was really boring. In reality Ender's Game is full of battles, insight and there wasn't ever a place in the book where I wanted to stop reading. So the book is in the genre of futuristic fiction, which really helps the reader understand whats going on in the beginning. So the book is about how there are these aliens called buggers and since they had attacked Earth in the past, the government made up I.F which basically teaches children to becomes soldiers. The thing is that they need to find a commander for fleets heading towards the bugger's world within about twelve years. Because the I.F. need to find a commander for the upcoming Third Invasion every child around the world is inserted a chip in the back of their neck when they are born. This chip is to help the I.F. find the right children for battle school and Ender is one of them. The chip is taken off and Ender is proven battle school material so Ender has to leave his family, to train. Ender doesn't know that he is the one chosen by the I.F. to become commander of the Third Invasion but what he does know is that the teachers of I.F are doing everything they can to make hime the best and really he is.

So the plot, I'd say, starts when Ender is transfered to Commander School several years early, but ready non the less. At Commander School he meet Mazer Rackham the only person who has ever gotten even a little close to understanding the buggers. Mazer is there to teach Ender every thing he knows and he does. Mazer inrolls Ender in a simulator game in which he tries to beat buggers but then Mazer replaces the computer and starts to battle Ender and his team. Ender is given the last test while all the most emportant people from the I.F. are watching. This test is the hardest Ender has ever taken, it seems impossible at first but Ender is able to pass. It all seems great and now Ender feels like he is truly going to be able to be commander, but then Mazer tells him that since Ender started playing agaimst him, Ender has really been in real life missions, only commanding from a computer. This leads to Ender finding out that everything that happened from the moment he stepped into Battle School, all his choices and battles were influenced and planned out because as the teachers said "was for our best". This is the conflict and what Ender needed to do was gain control over his own self before it was to late, for the battle over the buggers was over but the battle over Ender was not. 

Counting By 7s By: Holly Goldberg Sloan

So right know the book I'm reading is called Counting By 7s and at first I was like "this book is boring and slow" but then the parents died all the sudden and then I was like "Omg what will Willow do? Is she going to be thrown into foster care where she will be treated unfairly and then this book is going to end up being one of those book." Anyway right now the book is about this girl named Willow Chance, thats a complete genius but her principle thinks that she's really just a cheater which got me really mad, so if we as students pass every test at a new school and show that we already understand the topic we get in as much trouble as not doing your homework, because thats what happened to Willow and now she has to go to therapy. Now Willow's problem isn't even that she has to meet with a councilor that doesn't even like his job but that her whole world has been chewed and spit out into the opposite of a descent life. So towards the end of what I have already read Willow's parents die in a car accident on their way to this appointment the mom had because she had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. This makes me wonder, what if the parents hadn't died. Would this book have turned out to be the story of a girl that had to deal with her mother's caner( by the way they weren't even intending to tell Willow until the mom was cancer free) instead of the story of a girl that has to deal with her depression over her parents dyeing. I think the theme of this book is going to be the classic,"Things always turn out for the better even when it seems your life is emotionally over."

The genre of Counting By 7s is realistic fiction. There isn't any magic or anything like that but it also talks about things that do happen, so I know that it's realistic fiction. The book is about a fictional character (Willow), going through something that often happens in real life. Its not historical fiction because although loosing your parents does happen, the story isn't about a specific person but more of an excample of someting that does happen.

Worker's Rights Article and Poem

In the article called Coca Cola Accused of Using Death Squad to Target Union Leader I learned that in Colombia there is a paramilitary group called AUC. This group targets unionist and labor leaders which helps Coca Cola factories get rid of them in their factories. See the Coca Cola factories organize raids in which the AUC comes in and murders, tortures and kidnaps and worker that has any association with union. According to the article a lawsuit was filed by the U.S District Court in Florida which accused the company, it's Colombian subsidiary and business affiliates of using the AUC to do these things to its workers. In my opinion I think that the lawsuit should have been field earlier. It can't be possible for no one in authority to have field a lawsuit count have known. Although I don't want to appear ungrateful because after all the lawsuit was filed and things are being taken care of but what I do want to say is that I think other companies should see this as an example. For those companies that think they can get away with things like what happened with the Coca Cola company I want them to know that this is what happens when companies like this do things like treating workers unfairly or not paying their worker's enough or not at all.  What surprised me is that Coca Cola would actually go as far as killing their own workers but not just that but they actually think that killing their workers would always be a secret.

http://colombiajournal.org/colombia73.htm


In the poem titled Simon Weil: The Year of Factory Work (1934-1935) it talks about a worker that tells how she views her job as slavery and how she works in order to eat yet she only gets enough so that she'll eat in oder to work. She talks about how she wonders whether or not god can see her and the other workers because if he could then why would he let them live like slaves. In the poem she repeatedly says "To work in order to eat, to eat in order to work." but what she eats is cabbage, bread and wine which is considered a poor people's food, well except the wine but the poem takes place in France. In the poem the narrator also says "Surely God comes to the clumsy and inefficient, to welders in dark spectacles, and unskilled.", which has to do with her wondering whether or not God is there. Reading the poem is way different from the article. The poem's narrator talks about an actual worker and the way working at a sweat shop while the article is a report talking about the companies doings and talks about the bigger picture not about what the workers are feeling. The difference helped me understand more about the worker's feelings and how they view the way they are living, I mean when someone reads the article they think "well why don't the workers just quit" but its so muck more than just quitting. If the workers were to quit they wouldn't have any money so they think little is better than nothing and anyway if they were to quit new people would always come to replace them because there is always someone that needs the money and that is desperate enough to except the job.