The Pact by Jodi Picoult

I have been reading.  A lot.  However, I have not been consistent with blogging.  My apologies.
My favorite book of recent is called The Pact by Jodi Picoult.  I devoured this book in a matter of days.  The main premise of the story is two families whose children, Emily and Christopher, have grown up intertwined.  The Gold and Hart families are more than neighbors, they are best friends.  When both sets of parents get phone calls to head to the local hospital, they are devastated to find that Emily is dead and Chris is covered in her blood.  While Chris claims that Emily committed suicide, the evidence eventually points to him since he was the only other person present at the time.  Chris is arrested and going to trial for the deliberate murder of Emily Gold.   The book goes back and forth between present day and flashbacks of different time periods in the kids' lives, including memories of them growing up and glimpses of events from the night of Emily's death.

There are so many things that made this book a page-turner.  First, the reader really didn't know if it was a suicide or a murder.  Details were cleverly revealed throughout the book to let us know if Chris is innocent or guilty.  The intrigue and suspense had me staying up late to read long after my kids were in bed and waking up early to figure out how things ended.

Secondly, Picoult does an excellent job of creating believable characters and relationships.  The way Emily and Chris are described made me feel like they were genuinely two teenagers in love.  I was heartbroken for Chris and their families.  A good writer can do that - make a reader feel connected and empathetic for the characters in her story.

I've always loved Jodi Picoult books and usually say she is my favorite author when asked.   I've had numerous students try some of her books and like them as well.  If you like contemporary, realistic fiction with controversial plots, she is a good author to check out.  On another note, when I was searching for the book cover image, I found a link showing that this book was made into a TV movie.  I may have to search Netflix for it!

Mrs. Palmer's Summer Reading

I read A LOT this summer.  I blogged very little.  I'm going to organize this posts by category to cover some of my favorite books from the summer!

Best YA Novel:  The Siren by Kiera Cass
I love this author - she wrote The Selection series, which I raced through last school year.  Kahlen is the protagonist in this mystical tale of a woman who became a servant of the ocean.  She surrendered 100 years of her life to serving the ocean by singing as a siren every time the ocean needed humans to feed it.   This YA novel had great characterization and description.  The conflict was also something many of us could relate to; Kahlen fell in love with someone she couldn't be with.  The main premise of this book sounds a bit cheesy.  Honestly, I didn't think I would like it at all and only read it because I respect the author so much.   She surprised me though, and I would definitely recommend The Siren to all my female students.

Best Mystery Novel:  Most Wanted by Lisa Scottoline
Who doesn't love a good mystery?  This one intrigued me because I have three small children at home and they are my world.  The main plot in this novel surrounds a couple who couldn't get pregnant on their own.  They had to resort to using a sperm donor and the wife Christine becomes pregnant.  Shortly after they celebrate her pregnancy, Christine sees a news clip about a man who was arrested for murder.  The man looked exactly like their donor.  Christine and Marcus panic, as they fear their unborn child will be genetically prone to being violent.  Christine takes matters into her own hands and basically becomes a detective to help prove the innocence of their donor.  She risks her life, turns from teacher to investigator, and really does help solve the crime.  Read to find out what happens in the end!

Best Book for Boys:  Don't Get Caught by Kurt Dinan
So I'll start off by saying this book was written by one of our very own Mason High School English teachers, Mr. Dinan.  He rocks tenth grade CP English, so some of you may have the pleasure of sitting in his class at this time next year.  I'm pretty sure most MHS teachers purchased a copy of his book when it came out in spring 2015, mostly because we knew him.  But his book is phenomenal!  Mr. Dinan is one of the funniest people I  know and his humor comes right out in his writer's voice in Don't Get Caught.  This book is about a group of high school misfits who band together to create legendary pranks after they are framed for a prank they didn't commit by a notorious group at their school called The Chaos Club.  Well-developed characters, humor, and little mentions of teachers' names and details from MHS make this a great read.

Best Autobiography: My Fight/Your Fight by Ronda Rousey
This seems like an odd choice for me.  I'm not a wrestling/martial arts kind of person.  But I was inspired to read this because Ronda Rousey had a condition called CAS (Childhood Apraxia of Speech) which my youngest son has.  Rousey didn't speak until she was six, and my own son is three and nonverbal.  I wanted to read about how this condition impacted her.  Shockingly, she only talked about apraxia for about a chapter.  Most of the book was about her intense determination to be successful and "the best" in whatever she does.  What drive this woman has!  I was so impressed by her never-give-up attitude.  I hope my son is the same way.

There you have it!  Some of my favorite read from this summer.  I'm looking forward to reading about what you read this summer.

The Lego Movie and Fahrenheit 451: More Alike than You Think

To me, this quote means to dare to be different.  I think Juan Ramon Jimenez is talking about how in a society with a lot of rules, the people who make a difference are the people who are not afraid to think outside the box, to dare to be different, to make a brave choice.

A recent example I found that relates to this quote is "The Lego Movie."  In "The Lego Movie," everyone sings the same song ("Everything is Awesome", watches the same show (Where are my pants?) and does whatever Lord Business expects them to do.

There are actually several examples of people who dare to be different.  These include all the master builders, Cloud Cuckooland, and even Emmett.

Bloggers of the Week

I'd love for everyone to check out Clara's awesome blog post about Looking for Alaska by John Green.  She writes with such great voice and really uses punctuation in a way to help us hear her voice.  

Another great blog post comes to us from Garrett Jackson where he blogs about Cesar Milan and his amazing work with dogs!  He includes a lot of great details from his book as well as his thoughts.  

Please choose one of these blog posts to analyze today in class!

Cincinnati: Home Sweet Home

Mosquitoland is a book about a girl.  A girl named Mim who is on a journey.  A real traveling journey, but also an emotional one.  Mim picks up her life living with her dad and step mom and sets off to Cleveland, where she's learned her mom is sick.  Mim travels via bus (several busses), meets some friends, and grows as a person.  One of my favorite lines from the whole book (so far) was when she and her two friends reach Cincinnati.  Here's the part from the book:

"Walt looks up and points through the windshield.  The entire city of Cincinnati is spread before us in breathtaking panorama.  I take in this new clearness of the day with my good eye, in absolute awe of the sudden and wonderful metamorphosis.  It's a landscape worthy of documentation" (Arnold 194).

I mean, I've lived in Cincinnati for 34 years and I love it.  But I would never describe it so majestically as Arnold did.  But really, if you haven't been to downtown Cincinnati recently, it's pretty amazing.  Here are a few pics from the Smale Riverfront Park a few weeks ago with my kids.  It's spectacular.

The Banks by the Reds stadium.  Another win.  We really do have a cool city, and I love how Arnold described it as a metamporphosis.  Because it wasn't always so nice.  It realy has developed.  Changed.  Grew.

Right now, I'm 60% through the book and Mim and her friends are catching a Reds game.  (They even bought their tickets from a scalper).  I'm curious about a few things in this book.  Here are my questions:

• Will Mim make it to Cleveland to see her mom?
• Will her mom still be alive?
• Will her friends that she's met along the way stay in her life?
• If David Arnold described Cincinnati so majestically, how will he describe Cleveland?

Hopefully I'll have some answers in my next post!  So far, this is a good YA book. It's also one that I think would appeal to both male and female readers.  Happy reading!

Three Weeks with My Brother by Nicholas Sparks

If you've never read anything by Nicholas Sparks, I will summarize his works in a few words.  Cheesy.  Romantic.  Sappy.  Predictable.  I think you get the drift.   And that's not always bad.  I love reading these books when I want to read something romantic or that doesn't make me think too hard.  The story lines are simple and easy to follow; that's not necessarily a flaw.

So when his memoir, Three Weeks with my Brother, popped up on my recommended reading list, I thought, "Why not?"  I was shocked how much I loved this book.  It basically told two interwoven stories.  The first was about his three-week trip around the world with his brother, Micah, the only other living relative in his childhood family.  The second story was about his childhood, growing up with Micah, his sister, Dana, and their parents, as well as his current family, wife Cat and five children.  The chapters typically alternated and it was very easy to pick right up where you left off when switching stories.

The story line of his trip around the world was interesting.  He and Micah traveled all around the world seeing sights I can only dream of.  They met some extraordinary people and reflected on their own lives, relationships, careers, children, etc.  But the part that I really connected with was his childhood story and the story of his own family.

I felt like Nicholas Sparks and I have a lot in common, and I will reflect by looking at some specific quotes from his memoir.

Quote #1: “Never forget that anticipation is an important part of life. Work's important, family's important, but without excitement, you have nothing. You're cheating yourself if you refuse to enjoy what's coming.” 

Micah said this to Nicholas when Nicholas was worried about leaving his family for so long and not being able to relax and enjoy life.  My husband frequently says the same thing to me, though not quite so eloquently.  I have so many different things on my plate: work, raising a family, a child with some special speech needs, a crazy dog, keeping up with the work of owning a home.  Sometimes I get overwhelmed by all these things and don't plan things for myself.  Something I probably need to do more often.

Quote #2: “You’re choosing to let life control you, instead of the other way around. That’s the big secret. You choose the kind of life you want to live.” 

I just love this quote.  I think it's important for myself, my students, and my own children.  Sometimes life is tough.  Sometimes we are faced with situations we wouldn't choose or don't want.  Sometimes we have to make decisions we don't want to make.  But our attitude and our actions speak volumes.  If you don't like a situation, it is up to you to improve it.  No one else is going to do it for you.  This applies to my own life right now; my third child is 2 and still not talking.   There are a lot of different suggestions from medical personnel and speech therapists to explain his silence.  But I'm not sitting idly.  I'm teaching him sign language, taking him to speech, and trying to help him find his voice.  Sitting around and waiting for him to talk is not my plan.  I'm taking action.  Just like Nicholas Sparks did.  (By the way, he also had a son who struggled with speech - just another connection).

So should you read this book?  I say yes, especially if you've read some of his other works!

Spring Break Reading Machine

I did not go anywhere for spring break.  :(

But, I am managing to get in a ton of reading!  I just devoured a book called Margot by Jillian Cantor, which I'm going to write about today.  Normally, historical fiction is not my preferred genre.  But I've read several other books by Cantor recently and really enjoy her writing.  So much so, that I downloaded Margot to my Kindle without even reading the book description.

Here's a short synopsis: Margot is Margot Frank, the sister of the beloved Anne Frank (The Diary of Anne Frank in case you didn't know).  The book imagines that she didn't actually die in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during the Holocaust, but instead escaped, was helped by a nun and an old friend of her mother's, and ends up living in Philadelphia, PA as an adult.  She lives in secret though, changing her name to Margie Franklin and keeping her past hidden from everyone she comes in contact with.  She disguises herself as a Gentile and finds an office secretary job.  Eventually though, her sister's diary is published and then is made into a movie.  After that, the demons of the Holocaust experience return with a vengeance to haunt her.

I really, really liked this book, despite it being historical fiction.  Like I mentioned earlier, the writing was great.  Here is an example of a line I really enjoyed: "You have to love someone to yell at them so intensely; you have to care so unbelievably much that your anger explodes and burns across the sky like the Soviet's Sputnik I've read so much about" (Cantor location 721).  I love the simile and the repetition at the beginning of each phrase.  Plain 'ol good writing!

The one qualm I had with this book was that Margot Frank did die in the concentration camp.  She died of Typhus.  Pretending that she didn't die and lived this new life in America bothered me a little bit.  You can't change the past.  I know Cantor was just imagining what her life might have been like, but I still can't get past the moral feeling that it was just a little wrong.  Imagine how her father might feel reading this book?  He was the only one in their family who survived the Holocaust and I think reading something like this might just bring back the pain even more.  Something to think about for sure.