Reading Post 5/7

This quarter I'll be able to finish two of my three goals.  Those being the one I already finished (finishing The Well of Ascension over break) and finishing all Mistborn books currently available before the end of the year. I finished The Hero of Ages this weekend so to finish the series I just need to read The Alloy of Law in two and a half weeks.  My last goal of reading 30 minutes per night has been my least completed goal throughout the quarter and this week didn't help to change that.  However this week I read about 300 pages for a total of about 1300 for the quarter so far.

Reading Post 4/30

This week in The Hero of Ages I read a little over 100 pages and am now on page 324.  I read my nightly goal of 30 minutes contradicting the pattern I've set so far this semester.  In total I'm over 900 pages for the semester.  My pace of reading is up to par for the class requirements but if I want to meet my goal of finishing the entire series before the passing of the year I'll need to more than double my pages per week.  I also found out that Brandon Sanderson is writing 3 mini-series out of Mistborn.  The first, the one I'm nearly finished with, is a medieval setting.  He has one book finished for the next series, which will be set in a steam punk setting.  Then the series will transfer to a sci-fi/fantasy genre set in space.  Also I learned that every book he's ever written is all set in the same universe just different planets.  The inter-galactic sub-series, I hypothesize, will connect all the worlds from his books and be some awesome finale which makes me want read all of his books.

Reading Log 4/23

My goal of reading 30 minutes each night is my most difficult goal it seems.  In total I've probably read the equivalent to reading a half hour per night but I never spread out the reading to meet this goal.  The Hero of Ages still has my attention thoroughly in its grasp.  This week I read roughly 100 pages and I'm on page 212 at the moment.  In total this quarter I've read about 800 pages.  My goal of finishing the rest of the Mistborn series seems within reach if I read more than the usual amount, I'd have to read 1000 pages by the end of the year.

Reading Post

Diving full tilt into The Hero of Ages.  I wasn't able to pick up the book until later into the week and quickly ripped through the first roughly 100 pages.  I'm thoroughly hooked on the series by Brandon Sanderson.  At the end of each book in the series so far I wonder what would be the next book's contents without fabricating nonsense to fill the pages.  Each time he's surprised me with concepts that mesh wholly into the series.  I didn't read 30 minutes per night but I meant the 100 page minimum this week.

Notes 2 & 3

The Trouble With Henry

In Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble With Henry a small town's peaceful life transforms into entropy when the restless corpse of Henry stirs up mayhem.  Stark contrast is seen as the distracted doctor blunders through the scene as comical upbeat music plays implying that death is no harsh and mournful occurrence but rather a lighter part of the cycle that occurs every day.  At first glance the bright and colorful fall landscape tells of more contrast between the vibrant leaves and the scythe of death.  However with a deeper look the leaves don't contrast death, but rather accentuate it, the leaves will soon shrivel up, fall to the earth, and be forgotten.  The autumn beauty of leaves advocates the shortness of life and abundance of it.

The Consent

BY HOWARD NEMEROV

Late in November, on a single night

Not even near to freezing, the ginkgo trees

That stand along the walk drop all their leaves

In one consent, and neither to rain nor to wind

But as though to time alone: the golden and green

Leaves litter the lawn today, that yesterday

Had spread aloft their fluttering fans of light.

What signal from the stars? What senses took it in?

What in those wooden motives so decided

To strike their leaves, to down their leaves,

Rebellion or surrender? and if this

Can happen thus, what race shall be exempt?

What use to learn the lessons taught by time.

If a star at any time may tell us: Now.

     Nemerov's detailed imagery appeals to all senses as he looks out into a "November night."  Watching as the "flattering fans of light" slump to the earth "neither to rain nor to wind" but to what?  What invisible menace struck down these once full of life pieces of nature.  If this genocide were to repeat, "what race shall be exempt?" he wonders.  The vivacity of the leaves being withered into nothing at the command of an astral being underlines that the end of life can be unexpectedly abrupt.

Reading Log spring break

I finished The Well of Ascension not before spring break like my goal but rather in the middle of it.  I didn't read 30 minutes per day but more read in large chunks at a time, mostly in car trips.  I liked The Well of Ascension a lot and look forward to reading Hero of Ages.  I may have enjoyed it more than I enjoyed the first book of the Mistborn series which isn't typical of most series'.  Brandon Sanderson is an awesome writer with a creative mind.

Since my last reading post I've read ~500 pages.

Exercise 3

http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/47
http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/a-darkling-plain-book-four-of-the-hungry-city-chronicles
http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/a-web-of-air

-Intro giving background information.
-Give reactions to the book
-Pass an overall judgment with points to back it up.

Reading Post 3/25

My first goal of finishing The Well of Ascension before spring break is distant but not out of reach.  I have one week to read ~480 pages, very possible assuming I'm not too busy.  Second goal of finishing the entire Misborn series before the end of the school year is also quite distant.  After finishing The Well of Ascension there are still two more books with ~700 pages each if not more.  My last goal of reading at least 30 minutes a night didn't go well.  Some nights I was more busy than others.  My total reading in The Well of Ascension this week are from 1-114.

Note 1

The birds, who, happily for their own peace of mind and personal comfort, were in blissful ignorance of the preparations which had been making to astonish them, on the first of September, hailed it no doubt, as one of the pleasantest mornings they had seen that season. Many a young partridge who strutted complacently among the stubble, with all the finicking coxcombry of youth, and many an older one who watched his levity out of his little round eye, with the contemptuous air of a bird of wisdom and experience, alike unconscious of their approaching doom, basked in the fresh morning air with lively and blithesome feelings, and a few hours afterwards were laid low upon the earth. But we grow affecting: let us proceed.

In plain common-place matter-of-fact, then, it was a fine morning — so fine that you would scarcely have believed that the few months of an English summer had yet flown by. Hedges, fields, and trees, hill and moorland, presented to the eye their ever-varying shades of deep rich green; scarce a leaf had fallen, scarce a sprinkle of yellow mingled with the hues of summer warned you that autumn had begun. The sky was cloudless, the sun shone out bright and warm; the songs of birds, and hum of myriads of summer insects, filled the air; and the cottage gardens, crowded with flowers of every rich and beautiful tint, sparkled, in the heavy dew, like beds of glittering jewels. Everything bore the stamp of summer, and none of its beautiful colours had yet faded from the dye.

In this excerpt from Charles Dickens' airy novel The Pickwick Papers, the inchoate stages of Fall prior to a hunting trip are molded into brimming words.  Though "everything bore the stamp of summer" still, little hints of fall began to poke through the "fine morning", notifying that "Autumn had begun."  The insouciant, docile language used by Dickens carries a simplistic tone hinting that summer will soon perish, to be replaced with the full brunt of Fall.  The writer observes the "scarce sprinkle of yellow mingled with the hues of summer" verifying the fact that it was "the first of September."  The plentiful account of personification portrays an imagery sopped vision of ambling through the felicity of the nascent Autumn.

Exercise 2

(7)  Not only is a bitterness tone expressed, but also pure anger with some words and even sentences being capitalized such as "...because her little sister will NOT shut up she will NOT shut up SHE WILL NOT SHUT UP and Roberta is about to BASH her little sister's HEAD IN IF SHE DOES NOT SHUT UP."

(4)  Finally, Barry also  consistently bashed the city without giving it a single positive feature with her saying, "Once upon a cruddy time on a cruddy street on the side of a cruddy hill in the cruddiest part of a crudded-out town in a cruddy state, country, world, solar system, universe" exudes a snobbish and ungrateful tone to the readers.

(5)  The " cruddy time on a crudddy street on the side of a cruddy hill in the cruddiest part of a crudded-out town in a cruddy state, country, world, solar system, universe."


Vivr Sonar Leer

Exercise

In this excerpt from Stardust, Neil Gaiman details the town of Wall in a matter of fact, gruff manner.  The town sits "on a high jut of granite amidst a small forest woodland."  The atmosphere surrounding "grey stone, with dark slate roofs and high chimneys" whispers of the subtle monotony that the quaint town has.  "Grey and tall and stocky as the granite outcrop their town was built upon" are the inhabitants described in an unvarnished plain-dealing diction.

Anthology Theme

 

I'm thinking of covering entropy as my Anthology topic.  Busy and chaotic schedules are something no one can escape.  It's a timeless aspect of life that through the eyes of a poetic thinker could be made into something very cool.  For artifacts I'm looking into a Celtic symbol meaning "ordered chaos" and aside from that the rest is up in the air.

Reading Goals

1. Finish The Well of Ascension before spring break
2. Finish entirety of  the Mistborn series by the end of the quarter (including the stand alone).
3. Read at least 30 minutes per night.

Reading Post 3/8

Being in between books but still trying to maintain the same pace of reading is a weird situation.  Although this situation will be coming to an end shortly, The Well of Ascension is no longer checked out, now my only obstacle is making the trip out to the main library, or waiting longer and having them ship it to the Aboite Branch.  This week my reading has been a purposeless collection of filler reading.  Wikipedia articles and a couple chapters of Artemis Fowl for the nostalgia, oh and after the vocab test I read the first chapter of World War Z.   That was pretty interesting and I'll come back to that later.

I'm echoing here but this is something I wonder about all the time, and that's the vast range of articles on wikipedia; the people who writes the articles, what possesses them to write them, are the experts on the subject or just internet dwellers who do their research, or perhaps those two things are synonymous.  Regardless I'm glad they do whatever they do, otherwise I wouldn't have the ability to read this article.  In a quick summary the article covers the war tactic of "dummy tanks", inflatable or wooden mock tanks used for a couple different reasons.  They can be decoys, say you send the decoys in one direction then flank from another, used for practice battle scenarios, or intimidation.  I'm left wondering how soldiers accompanying these fakes must feel.  I can't even begin to imagine how under normal circumstances a soldier must feel, but when you're surrounded by essentially blow up toys in hopes that the enemy will be too afraid to attack must be a completely different feeling.  I'm sure this is a thought that has been conceived and brought up many times, but under what circumstances had to occur for the plan to be instilled.  To me it seems like sending a lamb to a wolf only the lamb is wearing a bulky bear costume.  Of the articles I read this provoked the most thoughts.

I don't really have much to say about Artemis Fowl, it's a series I have and still do enjoy and read a bit of it to pass the time this week.  I'll skip ahead to my thoughts on World War Z.  The text book format while still being in first person perspective is an interesting way of retelling the series of events of a zombie apocalypse.  From what I read it appeared to be a promisingly entertaining book.  Perhaps it will be something I'll come back to after finishing the Mistborn series, we'll see how things unravel.

Reading Post - Perpetually Waiting

A fortnight, if not more is how long The Well of Ascension, next book in the Mistborn series, has been checked out.  Even when it does become available I will have to wait for them to ship it to the Aboite branch unless I want to make the trek out to the Main Library.  Regardless in the meantime I must find other means of reading.  Bored with my meager collection of books and not wanting to start a whole new book I find fulfillment from the random button on wikipedia.  From abusing the random button I've learned that the scope of articles covered on wikipepdia truly knows no end.  Article genres range from pleasantly interesting to morbidly obscure, it's a gamble as to what you'll get.

One favorite article that I stumbled onto was the tale of Hugh Glass.  Hugh is a man of legend, a man who conquered the wrath a nature, a man who makes Bear Grylls appear as a feeble boy scout.  A fur trader out with his cohorts adventuring in the wilderness of South Dakota when they get a bit too close to some cubs.  The mother attacks swiping the rifle out of Hugh's hands.  Glass slays the attacker with only a hunting knife.  However he suffered great wounds as well and was left unconscious.  His friends leave him for dead assuming he's long gone.  Glass awakens a bloody mess and has little more than his determination.  Glass proceeds to crawl 200 miles to find the men who left him to die.  The story is one I find myself reflecting over during my downtime from the world.  What must Glass have been thinking during such a trek lasting over six months of nonstop crawling?  A monument now stands where the mauling is guessed to have happened.  If I ever find myself traveling west of Illinois I think it'd be a cool trip to make to see the monument giving tribute to the impossible feats of Hugh Glass.

Submission 4

Circul

Wasting time on the internet is second only to one thing, wasting time on the internet with the aid of ambiance.  The accumulation of belligerent circles brawling for space in Circuli emanates an anthem of subtle entropy.  A system of balance through life and death is portrayed in that as one circle meets its death immediate rebirth follows.  The various shades of gray emphasize the somberness of the destruction of the short-lived bubbles.  They expand until bringing about the death of another circle, followed by them themselves meeting the same fate, like the internecine struggle of a bee stinging its prey.  A stark sense of confliction is present as the continuously chaotic combustion of the visuals is coupled with the graceful climate of the audio.

A sweeping entrancing effect is felt as the fluctuating sizes of circles clash in a perpetual battle creating a uniquely relaxing soundtrack, the kind of soundtrack that when coupled with rainymood could convert an insomniac into a narcoleptic.  In that the origins of the circles may be placed by the listener in any pattern there is a unique experience upon each time listening, a new symphony of soothing ambiance at one's own hand.  The combination of mesmerizing visuals linked with the docile sounds creates an elixir that mitigates all traces of tension.

Claims

1.  Vivir Sonar Leer - The radical range of color schemes, discombobulating object scale, unusual item combination, and drastic angling of geometric shapes combine to form a divine harmony in the middle of a flustering discord.

 Reading, Reflecting, and More Reading - A threatening soundtrack in the trailer to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close creates the Jumanji atmosphere of helpless terror.

2.  While listening to the rain I find myself forgetting what's afoot and moving forward.

Everybody could use a break from reality every now and then, and where is a better place to do it then on the beach? 

Reading Post - 2/23

Had another sick day this week, I was that level of sick where the warden will let me stay home from school yet not too much to the point that I can't enjoy the day off.  Wait, what's that, there's something wrong, a different sort of air about the room.  I play it off and immigrate into the nirvana that is cinnamon toast and The Price is Right.  My doubts of the upcoming apocalypse in December were shattered when one of the few constants of my life was brutally ripped out of my grasp.  The Price is Right wasn't on whilst I was ill.  With my world shaken I had to find an alternative to get my mind off the cataclysm.  Having finished Mistborn I had to look to another venue of joy, the internet.

As it was once said, "Life's like a website full of fan fictions, you never know what you'll get".  This being said because of the variety and desultory nature of what you'll find in fan fictions.  One constant of life that is quite adamant is that if something exists, there are fan fictions of it.  Often ranging from creative genius to deranged lunacy.  Reading the plot twists, climaxes and alternate endings conjured from the minds of total strangers is perpetually interesting entertainment.  My favorite genre of these writings are the twists on movies.  One of my personal favorites of this denomination is a rendition of the patriotic retelling of the 1980 Olympics, Miracle, in which the Russians actually won, not the underdog youngins of America.  This wasn't a favored find of the day because it was remarkably well written or because I would've preferred that outcome.  It's because this one stuck with me like a weird dream.  What possessed the writer to think of completely doing a 180 on what the entirety of the movie was about, and what possessed him to punch out these thoughts into a keyboard for all the internet to see?  Regardless I'm glad he did because it brought a Price is Right-deprived lad some entertainment and food for thought on a sick day.  Hopefully in the near future I'll be stopping by the library to pick up the next book in the Mistborn series and will be able to post on its contents.

Submission 3 - Music Lessons

Music is one part of life that truly does have an effect on everyone's life.  While it's something we all are surrounded by we all have different favorite songs, genres, artists, and perspectives.  This American Life takes a look at a couple of these perspectives on music.  Looking through the eyes of Durrell we see a man struggling to spread the joys he feels for music to the teens of south side Chicago.  Then on the other hand we have David Sedaris who is just trying to flee from the love his father has for music.

Durrell traveled the world playing his music at a professional level.  Later settling down in Chicago to teach what he loves to the teens of the area he was met with hardship.  His deep calming voices compliments the mood as he expresses his comical laments, "No kid is gonna be shy about blowing in a horn, no matter how bad they sound", an image we all can relate to.  We all can empathize a bit with Durrell thinking back to the days of playing the recorder for school.  Reflecting on those days, it does appear that regardless of the fact I had no actual ability to preform musically, I didn't hesitate to take any opportunity to slaughter all insouciant silence.  We were forced into the realm of music music much like the way David Sedaris was by his musically aspiring father.  Wishing his children to be the next big jazz group he forced "The Sedaris Trio" into different instruments, David receiving a guitar.  Loathing the lessons he received he had only desires to escape to nautical themed room, with his guitar condemned cozily in the closet.  David and Durrell are polar opposites in that Durrell is trying to teach his passions of music to youth while David is the youth.  David is more than apprehensive about playing his role music.  Trying to escape the wrath of his father's dreams, he put up an aegis of humor to abstain from the experiences.  The two people are on opposites sides of the war over music, however both are similar in that they are working at their own mountain of a challenge.  The two are united in the journey, while being separated by the goal.

Short List 3

Locations like this make me glad I live in Fort Wayne.  The height of the cliffs and lack of a guard rail ensure the imminent fate of crashing to the ominous waters below.  The dull year round warm climate is sub par when compared to the excitement of having blazing summers and arctic winters.  These two climates occasionally separated by only a couple of days.

Spacializer combines everyone's favorite things into one cool and simple site.  Color blobs meander aimlessly around the screen, each producing their own tone when the cursor is hovered over them.  The result is obscure ambiance.

Yep, those are nerf guns, the nerf maverick to be exact.  Not that I know that off the top of my head or anything.  Is this a school or workplace?  Either way where does one sign up to join the effort.  Homestead needs to venture into the world of foam warfare, statistics show nerf battles boost test scores.  No citation needed.

Circuli is an interesting link that allows you to create your own ambiance.  Circles you place down expand at a constant rate.  When one circle touches the center of another, it pops creating a sound based on how large the circle had grown.  When you place multiple in different patterns you get different patterns of sounds.   The product always unique.