Tahir, S. (n.d.). An ember in the ashes: A novel.

pages 100 - End

List of named characters: 

• Laia
• Elias Veturius
• Helene Aquilla
• Kerin Verturia
• Commandant
• Falconius Barrius
• Marcus Farrar
• Cook
• Sana
• Farris Candelan
• Ennis Madelus
• Tristas Equitius
• Leander Vissan
• Demetrius Galarius
• Auger Cain
• Keenan
• Darin
• Spiro Tuluman
• Grandfather Quin Veturius
• Zak Farrar
• Izzi
• Mazen

 Tahir, S. (n.d.). An ember in the ashes: A novel.

pgs 1-60

Which character's storyline is the best? 

Argument:I will argue that of the two different story-lines, Elias' is more interesting and better told than Laia's (so far). 

Claim 1: Elias' timeline has better writing
Evidence: The scene where Elias (and reader) meet the leader of the Martials/Masks, the description of the courtyard and how "it was so quiet that you could hear a teardrop fall"
Warrant: Betting writing draws people in and more effectively illustrates the narrative

Claim 2: Elias has (thus far) been characterized better and more thoroughly than Laia. 
Evidence: Because the opening chapters for Elias has dealt mostly within his castle walls, and mundane duties, the reader has had more time inside of Elias' head because of her secure location and not needing to run and scramble around the city like Laia. 
Warrant: Better/More characterization give readers more insight into the characters views, world, and emotions, therefore creating a stronger attachment with the reader

Claim 3: While Laia has unanswered questions in her storyline, Elias' unanswered questions more obviously follow the traditional Hero's Journey--dealing with fate, and a promise of adventure. 
Evidence: Elias is high-born and already a part of a secretive and elite order, whereas Laia is still searching for the Resistance and has no evidence of how to join them or even what to do once she finds them. 
Evidence: Elias has his prophecy told by the Augers and they mention his epic journey that he is soon to venture forth on, as well as his famous destiny that he will soon fulfill. 
Warrant: Characters who are engaged in adventure connected to conventional fantasy tropes are more easily empathized with and give the reader greater interest in their future.

Counterclaim: You are just keen to Elias because of his gender and more easily relate to male characters.
Rebuttal: I actually read the text assuming that both Elias and Laia were female, already a fan of Elias despite realizing his gender at the undressing scene around pg. 40 or so.

Green, J. (n.d.). The Fault in our Stars.

If you were a teacher, would you want to share this work with your students?

                                          Why or why not?

     Absolutely! In fact, I've already convinced two of my intern-students to read it, and have been having a conversation with two other ones about John Greene's body of work (They have read Paper Towns, I haven't yet). I'm always worried that I get too excited about a certain book or author, then end up recommending it to the wrong person, or recommend it to a struggling reader--which in turn on bothers them and isolates them more from the reading world. This is yet another reason why it's so important to know your students. While I think that this is definitely a work to share with students--it's made for them--I would just make sure, perhaps with my teacher overriding powers (if a book pass didn't work) that they right students get the right text. And while I think that nearly every type of person can get something from, and learn to appreciate this book, with adolescents, it may not be the right book at the right time. With young readers and struggling readers, you only have so many shots in their (reading) zone of proximal development to nourish the seeds of reading.
     I would definitely not teach this text as a stand-alone text; it would serve most certainly as a companion-text. I'm teaching R&J later in Internship B, so hopefully I can get a Book club set up and throw this one in there for the smarties and book-worms. 

Green, J. (n.d.). The Fault in our Stars.

What is my favorite part of this book (and why I ultimately recommend it to everyone)?

So my answer to this first hit me when actually Augustus, the male love interest of the main character (who is 17) casually makes a reference to Waiting For Godot in passing conversational. The main character is incredibly well made and well written (so are the majority of youths in this novel--a stark contrast to the adults...but that's for another time, let's focus on Hazel). Hazel has ideas that are bigger than her and she actively thinks about them. Hazel has premature wisdom.  Her mind rarely succumbs to futility.  She ponders the metaphysical, as well as why scrambled eggs have been relegated to breakfast.  Frequently, her monologue includes hyperaware things that we should all stop and consider, like:    
 -"Funerals, I had decided, are for the living."    
 - "suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not in any way affect the taste of chocolate" (in response to          the sentiment Without pain, how could we know joy?)    
 - "I was thinking about the word handle and all the unholdable things that get handled."
Funny enough, the first connection I made from this is the dialogue and back and forth that wakes part on Gilmore Girls, the television show. I was turned off by how unrealistically quick, witty, and well educated this supposedly average high school girl was. Perhaps, I only allow it within text. Hmm
Well. I'm almost done and ready to cry--i've been preparing this whole book.
This is an amazingly well told tale of many relatable human emotions and feelings.

Huxley, A. (1946). Brave new world. New York: Harper & Bros.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
So, i'm quite upset because I left my book in my CT's room over the weekend and I had carefully highlighted and made notes in the margins of things to discuss, so i'm going off script. 

What kind of person do you feel the author is? What makes you feel this way?
     I know it's a very popular (and boring) method of teaching literature to teach first through a biographical lens by explaining the life and times of the text's author before jumping into a book--this is great for shakespeare is you want to bore students to death before they even start reading. This can be useful for certain historical pieces, adapting the theory of New Historical Criticism, though i suppose it's still all about how you teach it. I digress, I have honestly never researched Huxley before, nor do I know anything about his life despite his best works. just speculating here, but I would assume that perhaps in his late 1800s/early 1900s lifespan that he was perhaps negatively influenced by some sort of technological aspect. The Model T automobile obviously played a role in Brave New World. While I'm unsure if it was negative, experiencing a medical or scientific mishap, or he was simply just fascination at the changing of the times after the industrial revolution and the automation that came with it, he definitely felt some type of way. 
     I might also speculate about his love life, because why not? the character of Lenina Crowe is intriguingly unorthodox: she defies her culture’s conventions by dating one man exclusively, is drawn to Bernard, and is violently enthralled with John. Lenina is unable to share Bernard’s troubles or to understand John's value system. Lenina exclusively relates through sex alone. Another similar female character (John's mother i believe), Linda also is seen as morally tainted because of promiscuity. While this can easily be read with a feminist lens, putting Huxley in the fedora-friend-zone group, perhaps Huxley was simply painting the mentality of his time period-the religions and customs that oppressed women in the early 1900s. 
     I would also venture to assume that Huxley was a well-read scholar. All of this not based on the incredibly complex and, i'm assuming purposefully choppy narration and dialogue that help to mimic the characters' disconnectedness and feeling of neutrality, but specifically the detail of John very heavy-handedly being known for his ability to recite Shakespeare quotes by heart. This supposedly demonstrating that the western philosophies of that era are what equate to correct and just living according the Huxley. Perhaps he was just finding a way to make known all the Shakespeare he had memorized over the years himself--typical English guys.

Huxley, A. (1946). Brave new world. New York: Harper & Bros.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley:

What do you feel is the most important word, phrase, passage, or paragraph in this work? Explain why it is important. 

     So, it may not be the most important, but this week I want to share some of my favorite little quotes and shocking lines. "He put away the soma bottle, and taking our a packer of sex-hormone chewing-gum, stuffed a plug into his cheek and walked slowly away towards the hangers, ruminating." So I can't remember, nor clearly tell what this novel's full take on sexuality is. I'm inclined to think that because it is such and open and rampant part of Huxley's society that, along with the class separation and everything else, Huxley is attempting to paint promiscuity in a negative light. This is disheartening to me as I feel the opposite. I feel that modern society has most definitely evolved to include a large amount of material in this text, but perhaps not all of it is bad. Obviously the government's usage of sex is troublesome--the orgies to maintain control and blindness, but whether Huxley was truly anti-sex is tbd. 
     It would interesting having this conversation with the right, mature class. The great thing when teaching topics that tend to divide the class is that as a teacher, you never really have to fully weigh down on a specific side--you can let the students battle it out after prodding them. It would definitely be difficult to teach this text without spending a fair amount of time on the issue of sex/society's pleasure. But I assume that you can teach this entirely with a Marxist lens or something of the like, but at the risk of overteaching I would still want to introduce the different lens and interpretations; Brave New World is just so dense and able to be unpacked from so many different angles.
     The sex-hormone chewing-gum slays me. While it's not marketed or called the same thing, we definitely sell similar products nowadays. Caffeine chewing gum, "Horny Goat Weed", whatever else you can find at the nearest convenience store. It would be fun to focus on the little details of their society, like these products and drugs, and start off having the class find and compare them to things in their own life. I like the idea of ending the process by having students create their own dystopian product, with a short ad campaign or poster to present to the class.

Huxley, A. (1946). Brave new world. New York: Harper & Bros.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley:

This week i've made it about 25% into this classic, though I did have the chance to read it in high school.

If i were a teacher, would i share this would my students and how?

     I feel like this is the big question on my cohort's mind this week. Well, the short answer is yes, I would share this book with my students. I don't the censorship of texts, especially famous one that have been proven time and time again to have substantial value through a variety of different lenses. This one in particular does raise some interesting questions, and it does have it's fair share of what some would deem inappropriate material. Even Dr. Styslinger edited herself when reading out loud to our graduate level class. Perhaps there is a happy medium where the major themes and important messages can be taught without incorrectly analyzing the antiquated racist or explicit lines? Is that going against my views regarding censorship? Should this book simply be made available to students, or be required readings? These are the important questions to ask yourself when considering Huxley. 

     The thing that most parents, and people find problematic is it's decision to topple sexual matters. Yes, Huxley acknowledges sex. Yes, he writes in condom belt. Yes, there are talks of orgies. The book is ultimately a dystopian novel where a totalitarian government does their best to eliminate free will and choice by drugging the population with Soma, pleasure, and conditioned behavioral responses. When choosing whether or not to teach it--that's important to acknowledge. This isn't a manifesto on how to get young kids to deviate from their parents chosen path and get pregnant.

     Brave New World is a ingeniously crafted science fiction critique about our ways of life. While the novel contains a majority of warnings for readers, I believe that there are a lot of interesting grey areas that students could really find some value in having discussions over. One that would probably be a best suited for the most mature of classes is the discussion about how Huxley's universe doesn't shame or hide sexuality, while by and large, ours does. In the second or third chapter there is mention of the old ways in which most adolescents didn't sexually experiment until roughly twenty years of age, where new Central London starts them out of the womb acknowledging that stimulus. 

     I can't wait to consider this as a classroom text after my first year of teaching.

Rating: Classic/5

I found it online!: http://www.huxley.net/bnw/one.html

Stephenson, N. (1992). Snow crash. New York: Bantam Books.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson:

This week i've sadly only made it about 35% (150 pgs or so) into this Dystopian 90s Sci-Fi epic.

"One of Time magazine's 100 all-time best English-language novels. Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparisons writer so original he redefines the way we look at the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller dystopian epic of the information age. In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he's a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that's striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous...you'll recognize it immediately." -some guy

How did this work make me feel?

      So, I'm not going to lie to you guys, for some reason despite having a lower Lexile score than my most recently reviewed book, this story is harder to get into than the others. I believe this is due in part to a large amount of high-context dialogue between the multiple main characters and the extremely large alien future that it attempts to create for the reader. Eventually, this pays off, as the plot and characters progress and the world building can slow down as the story picks up. 

      It's kind of funny, because this book was written in 1992, it spends an ornate amount of time explaining the intricacies of how the internet works, which is humorous to a modern reader. This small fact could actually drive younger readers away, as they may grow bored or become lost in the antiquated details.

What was my favorite part of this text?     

     Ok, so the opening chapter(s?) are pretty insane. It's written very much like a hollywood blockbuster in that they immediately throw you in the middle of an intense, high-action chase scene, then panning out to explain the context. This book appears in my mind's eye much like a YA version of the movie Blade Runner (though sadly no Han Solo).

Overall Reader's Digest Version:

      So, i'm not done with the book yet and I'm honestly really excited to keep reading. From what the internet tells me, it pairs very well with Ready Player One (my past review), which was the main reason I chose to follow it with this choice. 

-There is a super badass female lead who is essentially a vigilante super hacker/crimefighter and it's kind of great having her act as more than a love interest for the main male, Hiro (whose last name is actually Protagonist if you needed some subtlety). 

x/5. 

Cline, E. (2011). Ready player one. New York: Crown.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline:

This week i've completed this YA Sci-Fi Novel.

-Are there any parts of this work that were confusing to me?

      I chose to answer this question first because, while I connected with this incredibly fun story on many levels, i do have one major critique which makes Ready Player One extremely alienating. The novel is dystopian sci-fi tale about a young, hyper-intelligent, male protagonist who lives 95% of his life within an advanced virtual reality version of a video-game internet. Everything takes places in VR: school, work, games, exercise. The fact that he is of school-age will be relatable, but the main reason why I found this so gripping will be lost on the actual intended audience. 

      While the setting is futuristic, the plot revolves around a contest involving 1980s references. I, being born in 1991 and having a hobby of devouring pop culture understood that majority of the jokes and 80s plot allusions. I feel like anyone in high school or middle school right now will completely miss every single Highlander and Atari reference...which is about 1/3 of the main storyline. So while this was not confusing for me, it has the possibility to fall very flat with a number of readers.

-Overall, what kind of feeling did i have after/during reading this work?
      As I mentioned in the above question, this book dealt a lot with nostalgia of childhood and the idea of escape through virtual entertainment and pop culture. While the writing wasn't nobel prize-worthy, it hit all the buttons that it was trying to hit. I felt the excitement of young love as i vicariously experienced the nervous admiration of a teenage girl through the protagonist's POV. This, i would imagine would be more present through the eyes of younger readers.

What was my favorite part of this text?     
      The best part of this book (without giving too much away) had to have been the dark and truly dystopian twist it takes halfway through, when it switches from essentially a video-game LiveJournal into a espionage prison thriller. Honestly, i loved almost every ingredient in this adventure. It was some of the most fun i've had reading since the first time i finished Ender's Game. 

Overall Reader's Digest Version:
Absolutely LOVED it. I would recommend it to any gamer regardless of age. Because of the POV, it would resonates much better with males, but I personally know women who have enjoyed it too.
Themes: Identity, Appearance, Competition, Friendship, "Home"

4/5. 

Deuker, C. (2007). Gym candy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Gym Candy by Carl Deuker:

This week i've read the first 100 pages

-Did any characters remind me of someone I know? Explain?

Well, the main character is the definition of a football jock. His entire life is the sport of football, the narrative talks about his home life and his football life. His school life in the book = his football life. There is little description of working hard on an english essay or math equation-I mean, i get why that might repel some readers, but i'm left wanting some more immersion into his academic life.
     I've met many people like this in my life, especially throughout grade school-kids who thought that they were going to grow up to be the next best thing. A lot of these athletes even came from similar backgrounds as Micky-parents that were big stars in high school or college.

-Overall, what kind of feeling did i have after/during reading this work?
Well, honestly the writing was so simple and large that i couple read a page in a couple of seconds, skimming was doable as well. Because the magic was in the plot and the personal connections that readers make to the main characters, i never worried about higher analysis of rhetorical devices or anything like that. As I was reading i felt like i was watching a less dramatic version of the TV Show Friday Night Lights that focused on one particular character instead of many. I will also admit that even though my experience with adolescent sports was limited, i was still very nostalgic as i moved through the pages; it make me remember earlier times even though i had never taken the field at a varsity football game. 

If i were a teacher, would i share this would my students and how?

Yes, i would share this piece in a heartbeat. I wouldn't teach from it, but i would absolutely recommend it on individual bases to students. I very much like the idea of beginning each class with a recommendation of the day. I also would not hesitate to pair it with canonical texts being taught in the classroom. As long as the themes or connections are there, i would allow nearly any relevant YA pairing.

Overall Reader's Digest Version:
Into it. Easy page turner. Would auto-recommend for any sports-minded male. Themes: Father/Son, Being the Best, Making Friends, Sports, Lying, Cheating, Conflicting with adults, larger moral chocies