New Books?

As summer break nears (7-8 weeks)... YAY, I can’t help but get excited off all the things that I’m going to get to do! As it being my last “normal” summer before I have to start packing for college, I can honestly say that I am going to do a bunch of things before I don’t have the opportunity to do anymore. But the one thing that I’m really excited about it finally being able to sit down and finally finish all the books that I’ve either wanted to start but couldn’t because I was too busy or did start but couldn’t finish. That probably sounds really nerdy but, it’s something that I love to do more than anything because it’s just creating a movie in your head

                Just a few books that I really am excited to read is The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult, City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare, which if you recall I was supposed to read that over winder break and never got a chance to because I was so busy working or reading other books for school. That’s another thing I’m excited about is that I can finally just sit down and enjoy a book without having to do a big long assignment for it. Nothing stresses me out more than having to read a book and trying to pin point exact details which would be perfect for a writing assignment.

                Are there any books that anyone would recommend? I could use some recommendations because I never really know what book would be a good fit for me. I also really like it when someone reads a book and then tells me to read it because then I feel like if I need any clarification on a certain part, I can go to them and ask them so I’m not left stranded trying to figure out what the author means by this certain part. So once again, recommendations will be taken welcomingly. I’ll try and keep a list and when I get time to read them, I’ll try and write a blog post over it.

Bye for now lovely people!

How I Met Your Mother part 2

Now that I’ve already talked about the good parts in How I Met Your Mother, I can finally go into a rant about all the parts that I didn’t like about it.

                Well one thing that I really didn’t like was that it didn’t show the mother until the very, very, very end. I thought it would have been cool to see how Ted and the mother grew up before she got sick but instead it just showed all the interactions Ted had with all of his friends. Don’t get me wrong here, I loved that part too because it made me realize that true friends are always going to be there for you no matter what happens in your life, but I thought it probably would have been a little nicer to talk more about the interactions with Ted and the mother.

                Another thing that I didn’t like, which is more based just on the story line rather than the actual outcome of the show, was how Barney and Robin got divorced after 3 years of being married. I thought by seeing Barney finally choose to settle down, he was finally changing and being a normal person rather than the crazy person we all watched him be. But when they got divorced, it kind of showed me that maybe he wasn’t ready to be normal and grow up, which I was kind of sad about.

                Going off of that point, I would like to address the part that gave me the most mixed feelings and that was the very end of the show when Ted came to Robin with the blue French horn. I may have already talked about this in my last post but this is just a part that sticks in my head so clearly because I never thought it was going to happen. I thought instead everyone was going to live happily ever after and nothing bad was going to happen and they were all just going to grow old and grey together but instead everything changed and it made you question everything the characters ever said in the show. The part that really got to me was when Robin was just about to get married and Ted realized that he had to let her go so she could be happy with Barney, but you still see times where you know that he isn’t over her and it makes you wonder why they never got together in the first place.

                As you can probably see, I still need time to think this all though and try and make sense out of everything that happened in the best show imaginable. If I think of anything, I’ll be sure to post about it. Oh and one more thing, I’m sorry to all of those who read this without watching the ending and seeing all the spoils!!!

How I Met Your Mother (part 1)

                You know that feeling you get when you finish a book series or TV show series? That feeling of “I’m not sure what to do with my life now” (only if you were very attached to that series of course). But no matter how attached you were to that book or TV show, you still feel a little sad when it ends because throughout the series, you are living the journey with the characters and you can kind of get how they are feeling, without going through the horrific or traumatic experiences they are. Over spring break, I had this feeling when I finished my newly found favorite TV show, How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM). I started it sometime over Christmas break and I was officially hooked after the first 3 episodes.

                HIMYM is a great show not only because of the hilarious jokes, sappy love stories or any of that fun stuff, but because I think it is very relatable. It showed how friends come and go no matter how hard you try and keep them in your life. It also shows how much can happen when you stop worrying about everything and just let it happen. In the show, the more the characters tried to force things, the more it would end up impacting them in the long run.

                I very much liked all the episodes especially the ones with the sappy lovey scenes, like the very first one when Ted steals the blue French horn for Robin. During that part, it sent a more powerful message to me than just a random guy going in a stealing something to confess his love for the girl of his dreams, he did it because he knew it would make her smile and all throughout the show, that’s all he wanted was to see her smile and laugh. He could have told her something nice or told her a joke or something but instead, he listened to what would really make her happy and what she really wanted and went above and beyond with it.

                All throughout the show, there are many times of Ted trying to win over Robin’s heart because deep down, he knows that they were meant to be together. SPOILER ALERT!?!?!? Noooo, just kidding, I’ll just say that even in the very last episode, AFTER Ted met the love of his life, he still does everything to be with Robin and not going to lie here but the only part that I like out of the last 3 episodes was that it ended just the way it started and I thought that was really cool because it showed that no matter what happens between friends true feelings about them never chance and you still will always have time to go back and get the one you love.

                Now that I have touched on all the good parts in the end of the show, I’ll get to the parts that I didn’t like very much….. IN THE NEXT ONE! So, fair warning, if you haven’t seen it and don’t want to know what happens, DON’T READ IT UNTIL YOU WATCH IT! Bye for now! J

Into the Jungle

                When I finally finished Into the Jungle, I was overjoyed because as much as I love learning about new things science related, I couldn’t stand to read more and more about scientific facts and how evolution was brought to be. Don’t get me wrong, it was very interesting, but it just got really old after a while because it told about 9 different scientists and their different contributions to how evolution was first discovered.

                Some parts that I did like, was when it told the story of how the different scientist grew to love the topic. In some way, shape or form, each guy/girl didn’t want to be what they were either told they were going to be by their parent, or what they thought they were going to do in the beginning. But each one would take a different route and discover that they wanted to do something different and they didn’t let anything come in their way of what they wanted to do and how they wanted to contribute to the development of evolution.

                As I read, ive always been a little if-y on the idea of evolution because I was raised in a home when were we went to church and believed in a higher being, but the more I read, the more I started to question it. Now im not saying i have suddenly changed my way of thinking in that there is no beyond with a higher being than ourselves, but it does make me wonder, what really is out there and what is really true. These kinds of questions really puzzle me because there really is now way of ever knowing and that’s what always makes me think for hours on end. I really wish there was a way to really find out what there is to know because I believe it would make everything a lot easier to think about and comprehend rather than one person believing on one things and another believing in another and neither of them knowing what is actually true or not.

                Sorry, I kind of went on a little rant. It happens sometimes, its fine. I would recommend you read this book if science does interest you and if you really want to know who were the crazy people who first thought of this idea that would challenge everybodys way of thinking. After that, if you are a person who believes in God and want to know how Darwin was able to still keep his religion while doing all this research, I would suggest you read “Finding Darwin’s God”. I think that’s going to be one book that I read when I don’t have a thousand other books to read because I would like to know how Darwin was able to still be religious while making all these scientific discoveries.

Connecting Music and Books

I haven’t watched any good movies or read any more of my books yet this week because I’ve been so busy, so can I talk about music because even throughout all the stuff I’ve had to do this week, I’ve found a little time in there for music which seems to help me un-stress and take a breath. It’s one of the only things that I can always count on to make me calm because no matter what mood you’re in, it is always there. Another good thing about it is there are different types of music that you can listen to, which helps relieve your other feelings.

                Music is also good at bringing back memories. For example, there was this one book that I read one time Looking for Alaska which I talked about in another blog post as being my favorite book ever, and it still is, but anyway, after reading that whole book, cover to cover, I heard a song called Play it Again by Luke Bryan which reminded me of the story and the way to two main characters interacted. In the song, during the chorus, it explains a girl listening to the radio, waiting for her favorite song to come back on and when it finally comes on, she grabs the first boy she sees to dance with her. The guy thinks the girl is pretty and wanted to dance with her anyway and when she asks him to dance, he is reluctant that he doesn’t have to ask her. This reminds me of Looking for Alaska, because the same relationship between the two main characters exists and it just makes the book much better to read because you want to know how the two are going to strengthen their relationship.

                I really like songs and books like that can connect because it helps liven up both things. I think that the music really brings a new musical aspect to the book which helps bring it to life and when you find a book that match the music, it helps give the music a kind of story line and make it more connectable.

Blackfish

                Over the past couple weeks, in my Language Arts class, we have been talking about animals rights and just rights in general and comparing the two and that got me thinking about all the different rights that we have compared to the different rights that animals have.

                Before we had a discussion, we watched a film called Blackfish which showed all the SeaWorld orcas and how the behaved and cooperated with the other whales and the trainers. At the beginning of the film, I had the idea that orcas are very harmless animals as long as you don’t upset with them. Then after they showed the first death that was caused by one of the whales, my perspective change. It didn’t change however to say that it was the orcas fault, I thought it was more of the owners at SeaWorld for putting these large animals in captivity for so long. It would be like us living in a bath tub the rest of our lives and, I don’t know about you guys but I would think that would be the worst thing ever. These large animals should not be put in this relatively speaking, small tank for show. They should be put back out in the wild so they can grow up in the environment they are supposed to be in.

                Later, after watching and discussing the film, we read an article that outlined whether animals should have rights or if they were just things that we have to live with on Earth. In this article, there was one sentence that stood out above all others, which made me actually really mad because it just was very unthoughtful and, quite frankly, stupid, in my opinion. This sentence said something about the comparison between mentally disabled people and “normal” people was the same as animals and humans. This just upset me so much, because earlier in the article, this same person had said that animals deserve no rights because they aren’t able to think the same way as us. Now looking at the first sentence again, you can see how upsetting (I hope) this actually is. It’s pretty much saying at mentally disabled people aren’t allowed to have the same rights as “normal” person because they aren’t able to think about things as others are. That just isn’t fair at all because, it’s not like they can help it, just like animals aren’t able to help be what they are. And just because they are different doesn’t mean that we have full right to do whatever we want with them just because they can’t tell us to stop.

                What I’m trying to get at is that animals don’t have the same expectations, but they should have the same rights because we are all trying to live our lives on this Earth together and the second one starts taking advantage of another group, the second they become the superior power and then that just leads to them thinking they can get away with anything because they got away with the first thing. So in my opinion, if we could all just live equally and in our own environments without taking some and putting them into captivity, we would have a better outcome in the balanced ecosystem.

Taken 3

                Switching from books to movies in this blog post because I saw the third movie in my favorite movie series I guess you could call it. The movie was Taken 3 and I thought the movie was beyond phenomenal! To be honest, I was a little concerned because when I saw the second one, I didn’t like it that much because it was almost exactly like the first one so I thought the third one was going to be just like the others. But when it started I could tell it was going to be good and different from the first.

                In the first two movies, you could see the relationship between the father and daughter and I think the reason I liked the third one so much is that even after tragedy struck in their family when the mother is killed, they don’t let that get in the way of their father-daughter relationship. I feel like if most families hear that a father is the only suspect for killing his ex-wife, most people would believe it because there’s no other proof to counter it. And hearing this could easily tear any family apart in seconds. However, with the strong bond the father and daughter had, she knew that she had to trust her father because one he was the only one there left for her and two it was the type of personality he had and it just allowed her to trust him better.

                I also just really like the fact that it wasn’t like the other movies. In the first two movies, Bryan’s (the father) family members were actually being kidnapped and taken somewhere that Bryan has to try and track and find. But in the last one, someone was taken but Bryan didn’t have to try to actually find them because they were left in the apartment dead. That kind of changed the atmosphere of the movie because he wasn’t trying to find his family, he was trying to protect what was left and you could just tell while you were watching it that he had a different mindset in this one than in the other ones. It made you engage in the movie a little more I think since they had it in this format rather than in the other way they have done it. I think if they would have had it be another movie where someone was kidnapped in the family and then found in the end all happy and peaceful again, it would have been boring because it wouldn’t have any differences in them which would not have been fun to watch.

                If you haven’t watched Taken 3 yet, I would highly suggest you do because it is such a great movie and I don’t think you would be disappointed in it!