Anomaly By: Tonya Kuper

I got a book for christmas. The first book I read during Christmas Break is a science fiction called Anomaly by Tonya Kuper. The book is a debut but I'm hoping its the first of many books written by Tonya Kuper because after all its a really good book. So basically the book is about this girl named Josie and on her seventeenth birthday she starts experiencing weird things. She notices that every time she imagines something happening, it happens. One day during lunch, Reid Wentworth rides up to the school on a motorcycle to apply as a a mew student but also to flip Josie's world upside down. Turns out Josie is an Oculi, an ancient species that can change reality with their thoughts. Not only does Josie find out that she's Oculi but she's also being hunted down by an evil Oculi organization that wants her dead called The Consortium. Reid is sent by the good Oculi called The Resistance to guide and protect Josie and prepare her upcoming battles.

The conflict in the story is person vs society and person vs self. The first conflict has to do with the fact that The Consortium is hunting down Josie and her family to kill them. Apparently Josie and her older brother were two of the most powerful Oculi anomalies ever but Josie's brother was killed a year ago and know The Consortium is after Josie. The second conflict being person vs self is Josie's fears which are taking an impact on her life and training. Since Josie found out that the reason her brother was killed was because of his powers and how he was using them dangerously, she's scared of becoming her brother, crazy and dead. Josie's fears are making her hesitate in using her power's full strength, making her vulnerable.
 

Throw Away By Heather Huffman

Throw Away is about the love story of two characters named Jessie Jones, a prostitute and Gabriel Adam, a cop. Although I'm only half way done I know that Jessie's and Gabriel's love will only cause complications. Jessie, who fell into the wrong hands when she was kicked out of foster care at 18 tries really hard to stay positive about her job. Then her boss gets into trouble with the "big dogs" and attracts the attention from the police so he makes Jessie and her roommate work along a dangerous street so that they can report back to him anything they find unusual. Then Jessie meets Gabriel (on her day off) and without knowing he's the cop investigating her bosses case she falls in love with him. Things start getting worse and worse because first Jessie can't date, second her boss is getting into a lot of debt and trouble and third Gabriel is drafted and has to go to Vietnam not knowing that Jessie is now pregnant (Jessie doesn't know either). So now Jessie is trying to solve things her own way, which I don't think its a great idea because the way she's handing things is by living with Spencer to become a spy for the police. It's not like he's touching her or anything but I'm really excited to learn what happens next. I think Spencer is going to get beat up or worse killed. 

Tough Questions Note and Notice: 
So when Jessie starts dating Gabriel they always get into an argument about Jessie quitting her job but its not that simple. Because Jessie is Spencer's "favorite employee" he has her on a leash, repeatedly saying that Jessie is his property and that she will never have a life of her own. Jessie knows that if she tries to quite her job she could put both Gabriel and herself into extreme danger although it could also mean living her life with Gabriel. Gabriel has offered to take Jessie to the small town he grew up in, where he is sure Spencer and his screw won't find them but Jessie is hesitant. Jessie has to ask herself if she is welling to live a hidden and fear filled life with Gabriel or ending Spencer so that other girls can live their lives at the cost of maybe even getting killed.    

Night By: Elie Wiesel

So the book I'm reading in my Lit Circle is called Night by Elie Wiesel and the story is about the author's life during the Holocaust. See the events in the story happen very quickly and at the beginning of the story Elie and his family are very religious Jews who live in a community that is full of others like them. Then they start hearing rumors about the concentration camps and how the German military (Nazis) are conquering places in a matter of months but, they never really believe the rumors because, after all, its not happening in their community. Until the day did come when they are being moved out of the ghettoes and taken to an unknown destination. When they got to there distention they realized that they had been tricked and had arrived in a crematorium camp and they were going to get separated. Elie and his father were separated from the women in their family and they were then lead into a concentration camp, they were lucky. During the time that Elie and his father were in the concentration camp they had to do hard labor and survived only on soup, bread and coffee. I'd say the real story began during the winter of 1944. It was the start of the end of the Nazis so things became ruff, there were executions, beatings and less food. The concentration camp they were in got shut down and they had to run for miles to a far away deserted town until the Nazis could find another camp to send the Jews too. During their journey most died because of the snow or because they were shot by Nazi soldiers. By the end of the story Elie has to struggle to take care of his father, who became very ill and even though Elie nows that his father won't make it, he keeps taking care of him until the last day. Fortunately, as the Jews watched, the Russians were able to invade the camp and defeat the Nazi soldiers but even then, when the Jews were free they didn't think of revenge, only of provision.

The genre of this book is historical non-fiction. Elie Wiesel is a real person who went through something that really happened. Night is somewhat of a autobiography because the story is about someone's life written by that same person.

Holocaust Upstander/Bystander

After reading so much about the up standers and bystanders during the Holocaust, I think I understand a little about why people chose to stand up or stand by. First I would like to talk about why people became bystanders and stood by while they saw these horrible things happening to their neighbors, colleagues and friends. I believe the main reason why they stood by is because of fear. They saw how badly the Jews were being treated, plus the threat of being killed if they stood against the Nazis. People had to think about their families and themselves before they thought about other people. They were afraid for their lives and for those of their loved ones. Another major reason why people stood by was because they felt it didn't concern them. During Literature Class we read a poem written by a priest who spent eight and a half years in a Nazi concentration camp. In his poem he talked about how the Nazis came for the Jews, communists and trade unionist but he never spoke for them because he was none of those things. Until the Nazis came for him, then because no one was left to stand up for him he was taken. See being a bystander means being a person who witness but is not directly affected by actions of perpetrators but because they stand by and don't do anything they help shape their society in major ways. What the poem taught me was that because people never stood up for others the Nazis didn't have people standing against them so they did as they pleased, which was a major point in the Nazi success. On the other hand being an up stander means standing up for what you believe in and doing against what the perpetrator is doing. During class we learned about both Jewish resistance and non-jewish resistance. I know that the Jews could only do little because they had the Nazis against them but they managed to stand up for the reason of have the state of mind that if they are going to die they might as well die fighting. Jews started armed revolts in the ghettoes and attacked German tanks and soldiers. They joined Soviet partisan units to harass German soldiers and did everything to preserve their religion and traditions. Non-Jewish people helped too. Many people refused to join the German military and sheltered Jews in their homes. In fact they tried to assassinate Hitler although they only killed a high ranking Nazi Officer.

Since I started learning about the Holocaust, I keep asking myself whether I would have been an up stander or bystander. Honesty, I feel like I would have been a bystander because I would have been afraid. I'm always worried about the well being of my family so I think I would have been a bystander.

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.