Reading Blog Post 8 - Happy With My New Book

I have now started reading the book Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. So far it's pretty good! It's so much better than my previous book and so far it's doing a good job of keeping me engaged! What I know about Park is a bit fuzzy right now. But what I do know is that he is very smart, in all honors classes and is also very paranoid and overthinks a lot of things. He seems to be stressed quite often and I hope Eleanor helps change that. What I know about Eleanor is also a bit fuzzy. She just moved to this new school and is in all honor classes, but she's failed at them at her old school, even though her mother persists. She seems to be hopeless, but free spirited. She moved to this place because of a reason that I don't know of. In the book it states that Eleanor's stepfather had kicked her out of the house. I don't know why and I don't know where she had been living before that, but I know that he is a bad man and I think he abuses all of his family members in one way or another. She only had a cardboard box full of things her mother had brought from the old house.

I think that what the future holds for this book is not good. Though the mood of this book right now is kind of laid back, I have a feeling it will become tense and things will start to take a downward plunge and something tells me it will have to do with Eleanor's step father. But that will not be for a while, so for now I am enjoying the book. So far what has happened is that Eleanor and Park ride the same bus and Eleanor has to sit with him because there are no open seats. he is incredibly embarrassed because she wears horrendous outfits and new people are always the laughing stock of the school. I think Park is starting to become fascinated with her, but doesn't want to see it for himself and is kind of in denial. His thoughts about her keep coming into the book. He will say something nice about her and then make it negative because he doesn't want to like her.

Reading Blog Post 7 - Finally!

I have recently stopped reading the book Confession of a Murder Suspect by James Patterson. I just really didn't enjoy the book. It felt just a bit below my reading level and the book itself had no suspense or build up, or at least not what I had read in the book. This book was supposed to be a mystery and a thriller at that, but it just came off as a boring book about a girl trying to solve her parents murder, but she never actually found anything. I was more than halfway through the book when I stopped reading it, a good 150 pages. All in all I would like to tell the author to just put a little more heart into the book and make it more interesting and thrilling. If I had to rate this book I'd probably give it a 4 out of 10 just because it didn't have that much of a story line and left me confused about where the book was going. It was not engaging, but I guess if you're not into reading then you could read it for a nice relaxing read, but it's just not going to keep you engaged, in my opinion.

Now I'm going to start reading a book called Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. I was drawn to this book first because of it's cover, which is not the best route to go, but it just looked so simple minded and good. The book is supposedly about two sixteen year olds falling in love. My description doesn't do the book any justice though. I really like how the characters are described in the description on the back cover though, "Eleanor...Red hair, wrong clothes. Standing behind him until he turns his head. Lying beside him until he wakes up. Making everyone else seem drabber and flatter and never good enough... Eleanor." and ,"Park... He knows she'll love a song before he plays it for her. He laughs at her jokes before she ever gets to the punch line. There's a place on his chest, just below his throat that makes her want to keep promises...Park." I've heard a lot of good things about this book and once I saw the last copy at the bookstore sitting there i just had to pick it up! I'm excited about the book and will shortly tell you what I think of it!

Reading Blog Post 6 - Literally So Boring

First of all I would like to say that I enjoy the perspective of the book. It brings the reader in closer to the character telling the stroy, Tandy. She says things like "So what do you think so far, reader?" and "Okay, so how am I doing so far?" I feel that this stance lets the reader know that the character is interested in what we think, as readers, and automatically makes me place her as an organized, involved, determined person. She is determined to make the readers feel welcomed, she is organized, I believe, because she is checking in on us before she moves on so she can tell us step by step what happened. She is also involved because she is trying to tell a story, she is being her own detective on her own parents murder case and wants to share it.

Character Prompt: Second of all I would like to say that in this book, Confessions of a Murder Suspect by James Patteson, we've met four new characters. We have met Mrs. Hauser, a widow who is loving to Tandy; Morris Sampson who wrote a horrid book about Tandy's mother and was sued and hated by the Angel family up to this day ( Mr. Sampson is so rude, even when Tandy's parents have just died he still is rude and makes fun of her loss) We also have Nate Crosby, a director who pretends to be friendly but is in fact putting on an act; and lastly we have Dr. Florence Keyes who is the family psychologist. Mrs. Hauser gives a not so helpful clue to Tandy while she is investigating, but is glad to help. Mr. Sampson is a horrible creature and probably did not kill the Angel's parents only because he cold care less about them. Nate Crosby seems like he is trying to help, offering them whatever they need and tries to recall some odd things happening the night of the murder, but cannot. And then we have Dr. Keyes, who is just trying to get the family back in order, just like their parents would have wanted, but maybe goes a little too far, considering their parents have just been killed and Tandy rushes her out of their home rudely only minutes after coming in.

Reading Blog Post 5 - Progress, but Eh

I am still making progress on Confessions of a Murder Suspect by James Patterson. I haven't made a whole ton of progress since my last post so I am going to talk about a certain character in my book and what I want to know more about them. The character I am choosing for this blogging prompt is Tandy. Tandy is vigorously trying to find out who her parents murderer is. She is all science and mostly thinks logically, she's the only one in her family of five who does not play a musical instrument and is not gifted in an area of art, which is almost the complete opposite of my character so I think a conversation with Tandy would look something like me just trying to get to know her and her thinking of all of the things possible that she can talk about. I imagine her very very scatter brained and I feel like she's sort of crazy.

I feel like Tandy is really clever, she knows what she's talking about and that makes me like her more as a reader. It's like I am her best friend and she's the cool kid because she really really does know her stuff. She's so timid and I also feel like she's a bit energetic, energetic in the way where she can't stop moving. So that's what Tandy looks like to me, which is quite interesting.

Reading Blog Post 4 - Summary So Far

 First of all i'm going to go over a brief summary of my book so far. My book is Confessions of a Murder Suspect by James Patterson So far in this book all that has happened is that Tandy's, the main chairacter, parents died while everyone was asleep. She doesn't know who did it and there is no sign of break in. So far I have noticed that their family is unlike any other. i'm not sure how they are so different, but they are. All of Tandy's siblings, including herself, are geniuses and her oldest brother is a pro football player. I know that he is super duper fast, like he can go around the block in five seconds fast and that just seems very suspicious to me!

I want to keep reading this book and I can tell it wll probably get good soon, but it hasn't so far and i've told myself that every blog post i've made. I think I may stop reading it. The truth of the matter is that it is very uneventful and the author doesn't seem very interested in his work. It also seems to be a little immature for my taste, but I will allow myself to read a bit more to just see if maybe it will get better at all!

Reading Blog Post 3 - Lagging Along

I have continued reading the novel, Confessions of a Murder Suspect By James Patterson. This book has not really gotten good yet, but I am reading on because a lot of people that i've talked to says it gets better. I don't really like it because it has just kept leaving cliffhangers that are unresolved and nothing with conflict has happened since the first page. Nothing is evolving at all and it's getting boring, but I can kind of tell that something will happen soon. There are a lot of characters to introduce so that's all that has happened really. So I guess characterization is good!

Character Prompt: Since my last post, I have gotten to know some of the characters better by the author showing me stories from the past, creating characterization. With Tandy's parents dead she is realizing that she cannot let anybody get away with the murder and is trying to solve it on her own a bit. This is a partially hard task considering she is one of the prime suspects in her parents murder. They didn't scream, there was no sound, there was no break in. With this in mind Tandy's task becomes even more challenging.

Reading Blog Post 2 - Hope For the Book

I have started reading more of the book Confessions of a Murder Suspect by James Patterson and this week it has not gotten any better really, but i do have hope for it! The author is just taking a while to introduce everything, which is actually well written, but just not interesting. This is why I think the book will get better; this and the fact that James Patterson, i've heard, is a wonderful author. There are numberous characters and it is fun getting to know each and every one of them. They all seem so different, but also they all seem to have a big secret. I don't know what this is yet, but there is a lot of foreshadowing.

So far in the chapters that I have read this week, I have noticed that intertwined into the chapters there are mini chapters that have confessions about Tandy's parent's murder. So far these have not told me much of anything, but that her brother has lots of anger for his parents. A quote from the book supports this. "He latched on to the trophy, like Matty should hand it over. 'Remember, you owe everything to us,' he went on. 'Your speed, your strength, your endurance. Your career. Your money.' That did not go over well with Matty. To say the least. 'I didn't ask for what you gave me,' he said through clenched teeth. He slammed his fist on the dining room table and I jumped as a crack appeared, sure his fist was going to get  sliced to ribbons. Matty was so angry I don't think he even wou;d have noticed. 'You created each and every one of us to live out one of your freakish childhood fantasies!" You see, Matty had just won the Heisman trophy and this quote from the text makes me think that his parents are some sort of weird people programming their kids. Or not that, but something like it.

They have a robot in their home that they created to look and talk like a human and it almost looks real. So could it be that the robot (Robert) could just be a prototype to their children? Also Tandy says in one of the confessions that she came home screaming that her parents had killed her sister. Could they have done that? Could they have been mad that their first child was not perfect? Tandy did say on page 16, "Our parents wanted us to be perfect." Could the murder of their parents had been for revenge on what they had done to their children? I will have to read on.