Diego's Reading Blog

This article, written by Krista Ramsey, covers the story of 5 students from Lakota East who have released a 16-page package full of information about the use of guns in America. One of the most well-made lines in this article, in my opinion, is stated when Ramsey describes the project that the students had made. She says, " Under an eye-catching cover of a map of the U.S. formed by rounds of ammunition, they produced 16 pages of stories looking at everything from unanticipated results of restricting gun sales to the effects on the family of a shooter."   I liked this line because it was able to utilize diction well and be informative of the project at the same time. Ramsey used words such as "produced" or "eye-catching" instead of more casual words such as "made" or "interesting". The sentence structure was designed so that both what the project's appearance and subject matter could be thoroughly described. For instance, Ramsey wa...

Wow, that's one heck of a book title Anyways, The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian  is based off of the true story of an aspiring, Native American cartoonist. The character you follow is nicknamed Junior, and it is about his struggle of trying to be someone more than himself while at the same time, fighting the opposition of discrimination and the hardships of his life. It sounds like a serious story, but the narrator, Junior, tells it in a sarcastic, comical way that made me laugh several times. The setting of the story takes place in an Indian reservation. This is basically a community of poor Native American people. One of the drawing's made by Junior in the book. It compares his shortcomings as an Indian to the opposite qualities of a white person. When Junior decides to go to an all-white school instead of the school at the reservation, he is faced with all sorts of problems. He is the only Indian in the school and at first, he finds it hard to fit i...

After reading Grendel , I was more satisfied than I thought I would be. I expected the book to be boring and disgusting. After all, in the most general terms, you could just say it was just Grendel rambling on about how stupid he thinks everything is, and then proceeding to kill whatever he wants to kill for the heck of it. But upon further inspection, Grendel  was much more than that. After I thought about it and I decided that it wasn't about killing and other peoples' stupidity, it was about a lonely being trying to cope with his feelings. The book showed Grendel constantly around humans. Most of the time, he was observing them in their mead hall from someplace near. He started doing this when he was young, and as he grew older, as he began to realize just how lonely he is in the world, so he started doing it more. Later, he began to make fun of them because of their moronic values such as when villages invaded other villages for honor, or when they hold parties in the...

So. Since I need to read two more books in the span of two more weeks and I'm a slow reader, I decided to pick up a book that wasn't 500 pages long. Sorry, Bourne Identity , but I'll have to finish you in the second semester. So instead, I'm going to read Grendel . This book... I was reluctant to start this book because I've seen the movie of the story this book is a spin-off of. Let me tell you, Beowulf  is one gory movie. Grendel as depicted in the book. Trust me, you don't want to see him in Beowulf. He looks 10000% more disgusting. Grendel  is based off of the story Beowulf , except instead of the perspective of the "heroes", it is in the perspective of the "monster", Grendel. Grendel is... a monster. I don't know how else to describe him. He didn't really describe himself at the beginning of the book, so I'm going off of the cover. He seems to be a sort of human shaped beast. It is also stated that he is much larger th...

So in the next pages I've read into The Bourne Legacy  were more focused on the nameless man, who we later find out that his last name is Bourne. Anyways, to summarize what I read very briefly... - the nameless man beats up a bunch of fisherman on their ship because he got hit in the sun don't shine - he needs to get out of town because he beat up those fisherman real good  and he doesn't want their relatives and friends to come after him - he leaves Washburn (sad) and leaves toward Zurich, where the chip found in his body suggested he go to in order to find out about his past - while gathering supplies to head to Zurich he stops by a few towns, stealing money and clothes from a rich guy and creating a fake passport - he is still confused as to how he did that If you're curious as to where Zurich is, here's a map. Bourne came to Zurich from France. I left off on the man reaching a hotel in Zurich to find that he's actually been there before and the ho...

So in the past week I've only read into 25 pages into The Bourne Identity , this includes the first chapter and the beginning of the second chapter.  Chapter 1 is... intense. I can assume that it's in the perspective of this so called "Bourne Identity" or whoever this man calls himself. However, it's hard to tell because the chapter moves so quickly and the character you follow is unnamed. He is only given a "name" until later in the chapter, but I'll get to that later. Anyways, the chapter starts off like crazy, immediately throwing down quick events left and right. All of sudden somebody is thrown off of a ship and into the crashing waves, the next moment a man is chasing him down with a loaded gun. In a flash, this portion of the chapter is over and you are greeted by a scene on the gentle coast somewhere along the Mediterranean Sea. I liked this chapter very much because of how much the two settings contradicted each other. It made the two scenes...

So I finally got my hands on a new book at the local Half Price Books and my mom insisted since I was looking for a good mystery novel ('cause why not), then Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity  series is the series for me. So we got the whole series for around $20 and I got to reading. Sort of... Okay, I read the 3 page introduction. So I decided to do research on this Ludlum guy. Robert Ludlum was an old guy. He was born on May 25th, 1927 and died on March 12, 2001. Surely enough, his most notable work was the Bourne Trilogy and it was later carried on by Eric Van Lustbander in the form of The Bourne Legacy . Both of which, you might already know, were turned into movies, and I have not seen either of them. I also found out that most of Ludlum's books featured one man against a powerful adversary. This leads to my first impressions of the book and where I predict it may lead. Once I read the introduction and the summary on the back cover, I immediately thought of Jame...