Final Post

Okay! This is my final post on this blog. As listed I read about 30 hours, but I probably read a LOT more than that but I just estimated my time cause I just didn't really keep track of time and I read A LOT. The books that I read during the past 3 months are...
1. The Secret Life of Bees
2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower
3. Flowers in the Attic
4. Cindy Ella
5. Let it Snow
6. The Year my Sister Got Lucky
7. Matters of Faith
8. Love, Meg
9. Klepto: A Novel
10. 3 Willows
11. Girl at Sea
12. Michael Phelps book
13. Gender Blender
14. Hannah Grace
So I read a lot more than 30 hours...probably about 50-65 total!!! As you can see I already read a lot. I don't have to be told to read as an assignment, I just read anyways!!! Cause I really enjoy reading it is just kinda relaxing. I read all the time right before I go to bed, cause it just relaxs me and helps me go to bed easier.
I actually really did not mind this project at all. I would recommend it for future classes. I think it helped me think about what I read as I would tell about it on my blog!!!

Spring Break

So over spring break, I read quite a bit, seeing that I had some very long car rides. I read a book about Michael Phelps, which was very intresting. I am a big fan of his and could really careless about his drug thing...but w/e. And then I read this book called Hannah Grace, which was AMAZING. I don't feel like elaborating on them right now...so I won't... But I read a lot...especially on saturday, we drove 750 miles that day!!! So i finished about 1.5 books!!! It was great! I hope you all had a GREAT spring break, cause I sure did. I went to St. Louis went up the arch, sunbathed in texas at this huge house with a pool in the back, got my picture taken with some pretty sweet mexicans, and just had fun relaxing!!! It was a GREAT time!!!
Time Read: 8 hours
Total Time REad: 41 hours!!

Blogging during Spring break

So, i hope you will read this soon. So over spring break, I will be on vacation all week. I will be leaving school right after 6th block on Friday (sorry Mr. Strusz, I AM going to be missing your class...)so I better not have an assignment 7th block...that would be real nice because i will not have to do any homework while I am on vaca (vacation...if you didn't get that, my sister didn't know what that meant) I will be gone from Friday, March 13 after 6th block until Sunday, March 22 at night. Seeing that I will be gone, I will not have anytime to blog and will probably not have access to a computer...well I may, but I may just not feel like blogging while I'm in Texas. Did I forget to mention that? O yeah!! while all you people are sitting here in the coldness of Wisconsin I will be on my way to Dallas, Texas. On the way down we are going to be going to the Abe Lincoln Museum (I don't want to go), the Arch, and the museum in Oklahoma City with the chairs from the building that blew up. I would really like you to consider to move the date for the LAST blogging assignment to a little bit later date, even just until Tuesday or Wednesday, because then I would have enough time to blog and not have to worry about failing my LAST one. I am sure this is the case for many other people going on vacation too. So, please Just Listen (hey! that's a book!) to my request so that I won't get a failing grade!!!
Thank you!!
Have a nice spring break!
Hannah

Girl at Sea

Clio is about to have the best summer of her lifetime working with at an art store with the man of her dreams. But then her mom sends her off to Italy to visit her father, who she does not like. She ends up being on this boat with her father and his girlfriend on this secret mission trying to find this stone. She is trapped on the boat with Elsa, and Andrew. ONe day they get left on the boat by themselves and they go off to town. Elsa and Andrew run away somewhere together so Clio decides to swim back. She swims through a swarm of jellyfish and gets stung many many times. CLio eventually finds out what is going on and what they are looking for. THey are looking to find this ancient stone that was sunk with this one ship, The Sea Butterfly. Clio's dad is about to go scuba diving to find it when his diving partner almost has a heart attack. Clio ends up going with him and she finds the stone. Everyone is off the boat except for Clio and Andrew when some boat predators come aboard to try to save the boat. They get off safely and and have the stone. IT turns out that this was Clio's dad's girlfriend's plan all along, the boat predators were hired. Clio's dad's girlfriend was arrested and CLio was given the money for finding it.
I thought this was an AMAZING book!! I would reccomend it to anyone!! There was a few more twist and turns on their with relationships, but I didn't want to bore you with that, so...yeah. This book was really great!! I would give it 5 stars.
Time Read: 4 hours
TOtal Time Read: 33 hours

3 willows

This book is by one of my favorite authors, Ann Brashares. She wrote the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants books, which were eventually turned into movies. The movies were not that great, but I still enjoyed them. This book has the same kind of idea, just not with traveling pants. 3 friends are separted for the summer and it tells the story about what happened to them during the summer. Some of the girls from the sisterhood pants books are actually brought up to. There are basically all of these connections in the book between this new sisterhood and the old sisterhood. I thought it was really good. Not as good as her other books, but it was decent. The girls make new friends and then conflicts arise as always between friends.
Time Read: 3 hours 15 minutes
Total Time Read: 29 hours

Klepto: a novel

This book was very intresting. It was about this girl named Julie P. who made it into this elite private arts school in New York. She met this other girl named Julie M. who Julie P. thinks is the coolest person on earth. They become good friends and then Julie M. teaches Julie P. something, how to get away with stealing while in the store/dressing room. They wear baggy clothes and then they put on the jeans underneath the pants they are wearing or they just roll up the shirts and hide them in the big bag. They also cut all of the tags off of the clothes so no one would notice. They keep on doing this for awhile, but then...Julie P. started feeling really guilty for everything she had taken. She kept trying not to steal stuff, but that was not possible, she was addicted to it. What finally made her stop was when she, Julie M, and another friend got caught shoplifting at Macy's. Julie P. started seeing a therapist about how to stop doing this addiction to shoplifting that she had. She told her mom and promised never to do it again. She really kept this promise and by the end of the book she had stopped her addiction. I thought this book was weird, but kind of intresting at the same time. Let's just put it this way, it wasn't good enough for me to read the book again. The Twilight books, Harry Potter books, and select single novels are good enough to read again. But not this one.
Time read: 2 hours 45 minutes
Total time read: 25 hours 45 minutes

Love, Meg

This book was about a girl named Meg who moved around a lot with her so called "sister" Lucie. Lucie is the only family she has...or so she thinks she knows. She had just moved to Hollywood and was finally settling in when she finds out that Lucie is actually her mother and that she has a grandmother and uncle in New York. Meg goes to New York to visit her family and to find her father. She makes great friends in New York. She even gets a to die for boyfriend. She finds her father, but doesn't tell him right away that it is her. Later on she tells him and she has no knowledge of her or her mother. She ends up going back to Hollywood by her sister/mother and her boyfriend comes out there for college. It was a very good book. It could have been better, but I thought it was good.
Time Read: 3 hours
Total Time Read: 23 hours

Matters of Faith

In this book the Tobias family is the main point of story. They have 2 kids Marshall-who is in college, and Meghan-who is 12 and is extremely allergic to any kind of peanuts or peanut butter. Marshall is bringing a girlfriend, Ada, home from college over spring break. When the family first meets Ada they think she is a nice girl, but then Marshall mom is getting suspicious of her. They don't think she is telling them the whole truth. Ada is actually part of some religious cult that does not believe in having medical treatment. They believe that the power of prayer will make everything better without any medical intervention. Ada, Marshall, and Meghan go out on a boat the next morning. They take Meghan to a stand and give her a chocolate chip cookie that has a tiny bit of crushed peanut butter cookie on the top. Meghan starts to hyperventilate and not being able to breathe. Ada tells him he has to keep on praying harder and then they finally call the ambulance. Meghan was dead for a few minutes. But the ambulance comes and revives her. She was barely alive.
Meghan is in a coma for many days and months at the hospital. While this is occuring Marshall and Ada are arrested for child abuse and resisting the officers. Mrs. Tobias comes and bails Marshall out, but tells him not to go near Ada. He then bails Ada out and they run away. They go to his long lost grandmother's house. Ada eventually leaves and the police never find her. Marshall turns himself in and he spends time in prison and in a mental institute. Meghan eventually woke up from her coma and had a lot of hard physical therapy to go through.
I liked some parts of this book, but other parts, I just thought were weird. I thought the book was really good but I wasn't sure about all the cults on everything. It was intresting to see about the different religions we have and how thankful I am that we have a very merciful God who blesses us and says that we can go to the hospital and have treatment done when needed.
Time Read: 3 hours 45 minutes
Total Time Read: 20 hours

The Year My Sister Got Lucky

This book was really good. It was about these 2 sisters who live in NYC and are big dancers. The sisters are best friends. They confide to each other about everything. Dance is their life. They go to dance, then school, then dance again. Dance is basically all they do. The older sister going to go to Julliard. All of a sudden they are moving to this little hicktown in the middle of nowhere. The older sister takes it well. She is excited to have a new beginning, but the younger sister not so well. The older sister begins to ignore her younger sister and they fall apart. This story basically kind of had a fairy tale ending. The sisters remember that they can be friends and sisters. This book was also really good. I enjoyed a lot. It meant a lot to me because I also have sisters. It showed me that through easy and tough times you can get through them with your sisters/family. They will always love you no matter what...even if you are sometimes mean to them.
Time Read: 3 hours 25 minutes
Total Time Read - 16 hours 15 minutes

Let it Snow

In the past 3 days I read this new book, called Let It Snow. It is by 3 different authors and the 3 stories are all connected and they are love stories, so of course I love them. It all starts out when these people are on a train in a snowstrom and it stalls and they can't get it to go again. This where the 3 different stories branch out, but they are all basically related. I won't bore you with the stories...cause seeing that you (Mr. Strusz) don't like Hallmark movies, you probably would get bored hearing this also.
I thought that it was a really good story. But I am all for love stories and just love reading/hearing people's stories. This book was probably the best one I have read so far.
Hours Read: 2 hours 25 minutes
Total hours read: 12 hours 50 mintues

The rest of Cindy Ella

The end of this book was really good. She ended up talking to her cyber buddy named Brklynboy all the time and she likes him. The guy that ends up not going to prom is Adam Silver, the most popular guy at the school. Cindy has ALWAYS had a major crush on him. She gets a tutor and the guy that is her tutor, Noah, ended up being Noah's tutor last year. She ends up babysitting the night of prom and finds out that BrklynBoy was actually Adam Silver...and he was in love with her also. He comes over to her house and they go on a date the night of prom, just not to prom. They end up having a great time on their date and then he asks her out and she says yes. Monday morning at school, no one has any idea they were a couple until they both got to school and he met her by her locker and kissed her. It was a great book. I loved how sweet is was and how she got her fairytale ending!!!

Cindy Ella

I have been really busy lately with work, the play (I'm student producer again!), and homework and just not having the time to read. So I was on the computer the other day and decided to reserve some books for me to read at the library. Wednesday I went and picked them up. The book I chose to read is Cindy Ella. You (Mr. Strusz) are probably going to think that this book is pretty girly. It is, but I think it is pretty good! It is about this girl named Cindy Ella who goes to a big private school in LA and prom frenzy has arrived. She is getting sick and tired of all everyone talks about is prom this and prom that. She is just basically sick of hearing who is getting a Jaden dress and who isn't, who's got the best shoes, best date, etc... So she writes a letter to the editor of their school newspaper about how it isn't all about prom. The letter gets printed in the newspaper. She basically is disowned by her 2 popular stepsisters. They are all about prom and now they are really mad at her. She then writes another letter and that one gets printed also. Her sisters are even more angry at her now than they were before. That is how far I got today when I was reading in study hall. I am excited to go to prom this year, I am excited to go shopping with my friends for my dress and everything else!!!! I may not get so into it, but what kind of girl doesn't like/want to go to prom at least once in her lifetime? It will hopefully be a fun experience.

Time Read: 1 hour 30 minutes
Total Time Read: 10 hours 25 minutes

End of the book

Seeing that yesterday and early today I had nothing to do but read cause it was so cold out that is what I did. I read the last 250 pages of this book and watched 6 episodes of my favorite TV show, Grey's Anatomy (season 2). The end of the book just made me mad at their mother. Their mother used to love them a lot and she didn't like going a day without them. But now she has a new boyfriend and has money that her parents give her. She seems to not want to be with her children who are locked in the attic. She goes days without going and seeing them. Meanwhile, Chris and Cathy are becoming more adventurous. They go outside and sit on the roof at night while no one is watching and during dinner parties Chris goes out into the hall. They start hating their mother because she is very mean to them. Chris goes out into their mother's room and steals money so they can plan for their escape. Meanwhile, Cory, their little brother starts getting sick, and I mean real sick. Their mom comes up and says that he has died of pneumonia and that she went and buried him under a false name. This makes them real upset. Chris goes out one more time the night before their escape to rob their mother once more but when they get into her room everything was gone, all her expensive jewelry, all her money everything. While Chris was down their he found out some intresting stuff...He found out that their mother married a man named Bart and left. He also found out that their grandfather died 9 months ago. They should have been out of their 9 months ago, but their mother didn't love them enough to do that. Their mother inherited all the money and Cory did not die of pneunomia, he died from arsenic poisioning. Their own mother killed her son and did not even care.
The next morning, they got up early and left the attic never to come back again. They made their way to the train station and say grandmother peeking through the attic window. But they were free! They would never see the inside of that terrible attic and that terrible attic again!!!
I liked this book a lot. The way the kids were treated just kinda upset me a bit.

Time Read: 2 hours
Total Time read: 8 hours 55 minutes

Flowers in the Attic

I began reading this book a few days ago. I am now about 150 pages in. It is about Chris, Carrie, Cory, and Cathy. Their father dies and they have no money left. The mom writes letters to her EXTREMELY rich mother and father and asks if they can stay with them. She hasn't talked to them in years because she was disowned and written out of the will. They go and live with her parents in hope that she will get written back in the will before her father dies. Meanwhile, her kids must stay locked up in an upper room at all times. Their grandmother enforces some strict rules upon them that they must follow. Their mother keeps telling them they will leave as soon as their grandfather dies and she is written as the person who receives her father's estate. But the children are starting to doubt that they will ever get out of the attic. They have been their for 5 months at this point in the book. The only people they have seen are their siblings (who stay with them in the upper room) and their mother, and their extremely mean grandmother who brings them food for the whole day once a day. I am really enjoying this book!!! :)

Time read: 2 hours
Total time read: 6 hours and 55 minutes

2nd half of book!

The 2ND half of the book...I did not like at all. It just got kind of weird and not something I normally like to read. Charlie got really depressed and just started writing letters with a lot of weird stuff in it to his so called "friend." I liked the 1st half, but not the 2nd half. The book showed me how some kids lives are so hard in high school and they go through so much. I just realized how blessed I am that God has given me a life with not so many big difficulties (death, hard spots, illnesses...etc.) I really wouldn't read this book again, or reccommend it to someone else, cause I just really didn't think that it was that good.

Time read: 45 minutes
Total time read: 4 hours 55 minutes

New Book

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
I started reading the book on Thursday after semester tests. It is about this boy named Charlie who is just starting high school. He is writing to letters to "a friend" whom we do not know. It just tells the stories of what he goes through in high school, his friends and what he deals with in life.

Time Read: 1 hour
Total time read: 4 hours 10 minutes

The end of the book...

Lily asks May if she knew a lady named Deborah (Lily's mom). May said she stayed in the beehouse one summer. Zach gets arrested while he is downtown with Lily, all sisters know, but May. May finds out about Zach and goes for a walk. She does not come back for a while so the sisters go look for her. All the sisters find her dead in the river. She drowned herself. Zach is released, he didn't commit crime. Zach and Lily are in love and promise to marry someday. June finally decides to marry Neil. Lily and August have a talk. This is what she finds out. 1) August knew her mother since she was young. 2) Her mother stayed at the beehouse. 3)Her mother did leave her. 4)Her mom came back home to take Lily to beehouse with her. 5) Lily was an unwanted pregnancy. 6)She only married b/c she was pregnant.
T-Ray shows up at the sisters house and wants to take Lily back home. Lily doesn't want to go. Lily asks if she killed her mother, T-Ray tells her the truth and says yes, it was an accident. Lily stays with the sisters and Rosaleen at the beehouse.

Time read (chapter 8 - 13): 1 hour 15 minutes
Total Time read: 3 hours and 10 minutes

So blogging every chapter is getting annoying...so I think I will just do every 3 - 4chapters. I finished The Secret Life of Bees last night. So soon I will be posting what happened in the last chapters of the book...as soon as I have time after semester tests...

Chapter 7

Characters:
Zach Taylor - August's colored godson who works with the honey.

Zach Taylor comes home from vacation and back to work. He and Lily become instant friends. They talk about their future. Zach wants to be a lawyer and Lily a writer.
Neil and June keep on bickering. Neil really wants to marry her, but June still refuses. He is getting impatient and doesn't want to wait any longer.
Zach and Lily go and get some bee stuff from all over the county
Rosaleen moves into May's room. May is scared to be alone.
Lily thinks August has figured out who she is.
Zach gives Lily a notebook to begin her writing career.

Time read: 15 minutes
Total time read: 1 hour 55 minutes

Chapter 6

Characters:
Neil - Man who is "sweet" on June. June is also "sweet" on him, as he is to her, but she won't marry him for some reason.
Daughters of Mary - religious group that meets at the sisters' house ever Sunday.

Neil comes and helps fix the sisters' truck. He again asks June to marry him and she says no again...
Daughters of Mary come for their "church" service in the sisters' living room. August tells a story about a slave named Obadiah. Near the end of the service Lily fainted. She was pampered all night by the sisters.

Time Read: 10 minutes
Total time Read: 1 hour 40 minutes

Chapter 5

No new characters.

Lily begins to work in the beehouse. She enjoys it a lot.
June has a talk with August about how they both know that Lily is lying. Lily overhears them as they are talking. August just decided to give it time before confronting her. They will find out why she is here when Lily feels its right to tell them.
August tells Lily the story of her sister, May. She (May) gets upset easily and always sings, "Oh, Susannah" to try and get rid of her madness. She has been like that ever since her twin sister April died.
While Rosaleen and Lily are lying on their cots they start arguing. Rosaleen is jealous of Lily talking to August all the time. They get into a fight over it because Lily still thinks August might know stuff about her mother.
Rosaleen reluctantly agrees and they both try to get some sleep in the heat of the summer.

Time Read:15 minutes
Total time read: 1 hour 30 minutes

Chapter 4

Characters:
August Boatwright - Main sister in the bees business, one of the sisters Lily and Rosaleen stay with.
June Boatwright - one of the sisters that Lily and Rosaleen stay with.
May Boatwright - one of the sisters Lily and Rosaleen stay with.

Lily and Rosaleen make their way to August Boatwright's house. She (Lily) tells the sisters (August, June, May) a fake story. How her mother died when she was little (well, that part was true), and how her father just died in a tractor accident. She says they have no place to stay. August allows them to stay in the bee house. They can both work for a place to sleep and food to eat.
August shows Lily how to use the honey/bee equipment. She seems suspicious of Lily's story.

Time Read: 15 minutes
Total time read: 1 hour 15 minutes