Write On! Teen Writing Conference, Summer Reading, and School

I'm sorry for the long break on here. It's been a long time since I had the chance to write! Here is an update about what's been going on lately.

First of all, my origional plan to write a full length review of every book I read this summer is very unlikely to happen. While I will try to post as many of them as I can, I won't be able to post everything. The main reason for this is that I have a job editing a book that a friend of my father's is writing, and that will be taking up some time this summer.

I will still be doing as much reading as possible, but writing out the reviews here can't be my priority at the moment. I will still try to post on here two or three times a week, with book reviews, movie reviews, and updates about what I've been doing.

I will have a new tab at the top of my blog where I will list each book that I read this summer, and then I will link either to it's book review (if I have one written), or to it's Amazon page.

I will be pretty busy for the next few weeks, but I'll try to keep up with the blog as much as possible. I am going to a writing conference in my area which is geared for teens on Sunday. For local readers here is the website: http://www.writeonconference.com/. I am really looking forward to this event, since I haven't really gotten into the writing scene around here, though I know it is pretty substantial. We will also have some relatives from out of town staying with us for a few days later in the week.

In July, we will be taking a few trips to southern Washington, and to Oregon, one for a vacation in Seaside, and one for a John Mayer concert. I'll definitely write a post about that. I also have dance classes starting back up again once we get back. I am hoping to write a little more about dance soon.

And, of course, there is school. I am still not done with school, but I am hoping to do be done in a few weeks. That is the main reason I may be a bit scarce on here in the coming weeks. I am hoping to do as much school as possible so that I can be done for the year!

So, there you go. Expect some book reviews, and make sure to check the Summer Reading 2013 page to see what I've been up to and how many books I've written. My goal is to have the most in the county, in our library's teen summer reading program!

Summer, and Some Blog Changes

Summer is coming, and that means that some things are going to change a little around here. First of all, there should be more posts going up, since technically I will have less school to do, and so more time to do other things. Whether or not this will actually translate into more blog posts still remains to be seen.

Our local library has a terrific summer reading program for teens that I enjoy participating in every year. It is an online program where you submit short (3+ sentence) reviews of books and magazines. Each of your reviews is another entry for various prizes, with a grand prize for the person who reads the most books, as well as something for the runner up. Last year, two homeschool friends of mine came in first and second spots, which is totally awesome. Homeschoolers rule! This year, they have both said they are not going for the number one spot again, which should leave some room for me, I hope. I don't have as much time usually as they must have (they both came in at close to 170 books), but with them out of the way, I certainty have a fighting chance. :)

Anyway, that is one thing that might get in the way of me doing a lot of blogging, since I should be busy reading and writing short reviews. I do hope to write a full length review of EVERY book I read this summer for summer reading (which, by the way, goes from June 15 to August 31). What this means is that there will hopefully be a LOT of book reviews up here, but possibly not a whole lot else.

I think that I will be suspending Homeschool Fridays for the summer, and they will be coming back in September, when the new school year begins. I still plan to write about homeschooling, but just not as regularly.

Here is what you can expect this summer: A review of every book I read, published the day I finish the book (or possibly the next day). This means that posting may not be as regular, but there should still be lots of posts. Also, posts might be a little shorter then usual. Each one will also include what number book it is. I will also try to post little "reviews" every few weeks, just to talk about where I am in school, my plans for next year, and what kinds of activates my family has been doing.

There will also be a new page in the top banner going up in a few days, in which I will list every book I read this summer, and link to it's amazon page. This brings me nicely into the next thing I need to talk about, amazon.

I recently became an amazon affiliate, which means that if you click through to amazon from a blog post of mine, and then you buy something within the next 24 hours, I earn 4% of the sale. That number will go up the more sales are made. I don't expect to get rich of this site, and this is more of an experiment then anything. I am curious to see if I have enough readers to actually make any money.

These summer plans are going to go into affect as of today. Even though summer reading does not start for 10 days, and so the books I am currently reading do not count toward my total, I am going to stop all other regular posts and just post book reviews, as soon as I finish the book.

If you have any questions about anything I wrote here, please let me know in the comments!

Erebos - Ursula Poznanski

The book I am reviewing today is Erebos by Ursula Poznanski. I'm sorry if the link is a little odd. I recently joined the Amazon affiliate program (where I get a small cut if you buy something after clicking through from one of my posts), and I'm still getting the hang of it. While I usually do not give plot outlines of the books I review, this one is going to be an exception. Don't worry, there should not be any major spoilers, nothing more then you would find in the Amazon description. However, as usual, if you particularly hate spoilers, you should proceed with caution. 

This book is about a boy named Nick, who receives a copy of "Erebos," the video game that has been making the rounds at his school. He begins playing, and discovers a terrifying new world, governed by many strict rules. As time goes on, it becomes clear that the game is watching them. It begins manipulating their lives out side of the game, and eventually, things get dangerous.

Now, let's move on to the characters. I think the characters are the weak link here. Many of them were pretty one sided, with a few exceptions. While this is obviously not a great thing, I do not really count this as a big mark against the book.

Next, we are going to talk about the writing. I am not sure if it's really fair to say too much about this, since the copy I read was in English, not the original German. I know that a lot can be lost in translation, so I am not going to consider this part very strongly in my final rating. I would say that the writing was quite good, though it could have been better. What I am especially impressed by is the way she balances the two worlds of the game, and real life. Even without really being a gamer, I loved the parts in Erebos as much, or better, then I liked the real life sections. At some point about a third of the way through, I hardly noticed the difference between one and the other, which is terrific, because that was the same blurriness that Nick, the main character was beginning to experience.

Last is the plot. I LOVED IT. This is by far what is selling this book, as it rightly should. The story starts strong, and gets stronger. The ending is surprising, and satisfying. This book has action, and suspense, and a little romance (though this part was not very well developed, and did not make a lot of sense to me). It is scifi, fantasy (in that Erebos is a fantasy role playing game), and in the end, a bit of mainstream geek fiction. This book is something that I am sure all the gamers out there would love, but I did too. I am not a gamer, but I love scifi, nerdy stuff , and just the book in general. There is something that gets you creepily addicted to it, and when you get pulled away, you fell like you were just playing the game yourself and will lose a level if you don't get back in immediately!

The reason I did a little plot outline at the top of this post is to get you engaged. I really want people to read this book, and I am hoping that that will help. Read this book! It is fantastic! I don't think it has as much attention as it deserves, and I am doing what I can to resolve that.

Just so you know, when I rated this book on Shelfari, I gave it a full five stars. For reference, the only other books I have rated that highly are Paper Towns, East of Eden , and The Fault in Our Stars.

Eleanor and Park - Rainbow Rowell

Today I am reviewing Eleanor & Park, by Rainbow Rowell. I first read this book because it was recommended by John Green, who is an author that I really like and admire. This post, unlike some that I write, it spoiler free. There is almost no discussion of the actual events in the story. I will not be providing a plot summary, but the post will not really focus on the plot very much. If you are interested in learning more about the book, or even buying it, click on the title above to go to its amazon.com page.

As usual, I will begin this post by discussing the characters. I thought that the characters in this book were really well done. Since it takes place in the late 1980's, I can't really relate to the times, but the other parts of being a teenager felt very fresh and real. One thing that I really liked is that not only were the main characters well written, but the others were too. Often minor characters feel less fleshed out and real, but that was not the case with this book.

The writing was good. It was a fast read, and I enjoyed the writing. The one criticism I have on this topic is that the POV (point of view) switched back and forth between Eleanor and Park a lot, which is a useful (from a story telling prospective) but over used (from a reading prospective) story telling method. 

And last is the plot. I really enjoyed it, mostly because I felt like there were many levels of plot there, and they all felt important. There is the main story line between the two title characters, and then they each have at least one of two plot lines of their own: with peers, siblings, parents, ect. I also liked how real the plot felt. Many books involving teen romance do not feel real, but this one did. I felt like this could happen to me all the way through.

Over all, I really enjoyed this book, and I highly recommend it. While it is a romance in many ways (though certainly not a traditional teen romance novel), you might very well still like it even if you usually don't like romance.



*This post contains affiliate links. 

BEA, Blogging, and a Teen Writing Conference!

I'm sorry it's been a bit quite on here lately. I have some fun review posts that I'm working on right now, but today I thought I'd just ramble a bit. Over the next few weeks, look for posts reviewing Eleanor and Park (Rainbow Rowell), Messenger (Lois Lowry), Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury), and Star Trek: Into Darkness, the new Star Trek movie, which I saw yesterday. I'm also working on a post about the Great Gatsby movie.

In the mean time, here is a random list of things I've been doing and thinking about recently.

1. A new dream of mine is to attend Book Expo America someday. While I would love to go to all three days as an "industry professional," just going the one day it is open to the public would be absolutely AMAZING! I would be happy to pay the $49 for a ticket, but I would still need to get to New York City somehow... Someday, this is something I really want to do!

2. I am going to a teen writing conference in a few weeks that is being held locally. I am super excited for the speakers, all the break out sessions to choose from, and advice from actual writers working in the field. It will be awesome to spend a whole day with other teenagers who are as excited about writing as I am!

3. I wanted to talk a little bit about how I blog, and why sometimes there isn't much going on here. I rarely write posts the day they go live, though this one is an exception. As soon as I finish writing it, I will publish it. Usually, I will write up a few posts at a time, and then schedule them to be posted later. With blogger, it does it all for me, and they go live without me doing anything. When I get particularly busy, if I miss one day of writing blog post, that means three or four posts don't get written and scheduled. Then, often a week or so goes by before I really realize how long it has been. It's not the best method of blogging, and I don't like it all the time, but it makes it easier to blog when I am so busy. Hopefully this summer I will have more time to blog once I have less school to do.

That's it for today. I hope to have at least two new posts up next week.

Homeschool Fridays: Classes

This is another rerun from my old blog.

Our homeschool group usually has several classes which are open to the families each school year. Soon, I hope to do more in depth posts about each of the classes, or subjects that have been offered, but here is an overview. Once I have written those posts, I will link to them from here.

First of all, it is important to note that we are NOT a co-op. We have never had one, and most likely never will. That is not to say that we don't like, or approve of homeschool co-ops, but our group has never been part of one.

Classes have generally come about in one of two ways. Often a parent or group of parents decides there is a need for a class in a certain subject area (such as Biology, or Literature), and they then go find a teacher who they can hire relatively cheaply, or find a good textbook that they would like to teach a group from. This usually only happens for the high school and upper middle school aged kids. These types classes can also by more like study groups led by a parent, like the AP European History which was offered last year by a mom who wanted her twin daughters to take the test, and wanted some people for them to study with. So, she cam up with a text and syllabus, and offered it for free to other parents. The kids would then meet once a week for discussion and activities.

The other way is when a parent has a skill or training in a certain area (such as archery, painting, or basketball), and decides to give a class on that subject area. I have gone to wonderful archery classes, print making classes, and stained glass classes which came about in this way.

Though the second type of class is of course always taught by a parent, the first type has a few more options. We have had middle school science classes taught by students from Western Washington University ( a university in our town),  and we have done online classes taught be teachers in other states. I participated in a British Lit class taught that way. I hope to do a full post on that class very soon, so I won't say any more about it now.


I think that is a pretty good representation of the different classes that have been taught in our homeschool group. Questions? Comments? I would love to answer them!

A Special Book and Some Special Quotes

On my 13th birthday, my mother made me the bet birthday gift I have ever, and perhaps will ever, receive. She asked the most important women in my life to write a letter to me, and then she made them all into a beautiful book. I have letters from my grandmothers, my aunts, my old nanny, and some of mothers in our homeschool group who we are very close to.

The book starts out with a beautiful letter from my mother, and then each subsequent page (it is made in a scrapbook style) has a letter from someone else, as well as a short quote on the bottom. I love each page because they are all so unique and reflect so much about the women who wrote them. One of our homeschool friends is an artist, and so she decided to make a page for me out of paper, and ink, and cloth instead of words. It is beautiful, and reflects so much about the woman who made it for me.

Since I turned 15 recently, I had pulled out the book again, and read through it. I wanted to share some of the famous quotes that my mother included that really resonated with me this time I read them.

Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough.

                        - Oprah Winfrey

A person who graduated yesterday and stopped studying today is uneducated tomorrow.

                     - Origin unknown

I am only one, but I am still one. I cannot do everything, but I can still do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do.

                        - Helen Keller

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

                          - Eleanor Roosevelt





That's it for today. Hopefully, I'll have reviews of the new Great Gatsby movie, and Eleanor and Park sometime in the next week.