I'm re-doing my "topic" blog today because apparently I have to actually research things and stuff which I didn't do for my topic. So I'm trying again with a different topic. I tried to write about the town my book, Along for the Ride is based in, Colby, North Carolina, but it turns out it's not a real place. As you can imagine, it's really annoying realizing that. So I guess it's plan B now(the really really long plan). I'm going to be comparing two major parts of my book. Punk Rock music vs. classical music. this book is called If I Stay. So basically this girl gets into a car crash with her family( her parents die) but her ghost or something is still there while she's at the hospital( i havent gotten very far so theres no ral specifics I'm going to give). Her whole family and boyfreind are really into punk rock but she loves classical music( she plays the cello). So I will compare Yo-Yo Ma ( Adam and Mia's first date) to some of the "coolest, toughest, hottest, rocker girls" her mom talks about when she is trying to find a halloween costume.

Yo-Yo Ma is, of course, famous for being a cellistand composer. He was born 1955 and has won many grammies for his works. I found it suprising he was actually born in Paris despite the name. His mom was a singer and dad a violinist and musical proffesor. This is kind of like the main character in my book, Mia. She is a cellist who also came from a musical family. Her dad had his own band and his mom was, even then, a huge groupie type rocker chick. He started at 4 rather than Mia though who started in third grade. They had both tried other instruments before knowing they loved the cello. Mia has auditioned for Julliard, the school Ma went to. Ma now has two children and lives in Massachucets. Here's his picture ( sorry, i couldn't find out a way to put a video...).

Mia's mom looks up to people like Debbie Harry, Kathleen Hanna, Patti Smith, Joan Jett, Courtney Love(" in her demented destructionist way"), Lucinda Williams(" even though she's counrty she's tough as nails"), Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth(" pushing fifty and still has it"), "that Cat Power woman", and Joan Armatrading. It would take FOREVER to talk about all of these so I'm going to focus on Debbie Harry. Debbie is older, born in 1945 and was lead singer of the band "Blondie". She's also very famous, her band was HUGE. She, as well, did solo singing along with songwriting and acting. Her and Yo-Yo both write their peices. She was adopted which is pretty cool but neither of her parents were as musical(at least their jobs). The name before adoption was Angela Trimble. Before singing she worked at BBC's radio office,as a dancer, and was a playboy bunny. She made Blondie with her boyfreind, th4e guitarist just like Adam in my book) and named it after what guys would call her when passing in driving. She was called the 12th greatest woman of rock and roll by VH1's 100 Greatest Women of Rock & Roll and the 18th sexiest artist of all time by VH1's 100 Sexiest Artists. Heres a picture of her:

I think both of these people are pretty cool and definetly creative. Both of them I can connect to Mia and her mom, Adam, and her dad.

sites i used:( i didnt use any opinions from them)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo-Yo_Ma

http://www.yo-yoma.com/yo-yo-ma-biography( his official website)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debbie_Harry

"Along for the Ride is classic Sarah Dessen, which means, of course, that it’s awesome"-Jocelyn

"can't wait to read this one...I like to save Sarah Dessen books for a long vacation so I can luxuriate in her words"-Walker Grossman

"Reading Sarah Dessen is like walking into an air-conditioned store after a hot, humid day in the sun. Reading Sarah Dessen is also like drinking an ice-cold smoothie after a long, harsh marathon. And finally, reading Sarah Dessen is like eating comfort food: you always know what you're going to get, a tasty, satisfying treat."- Thomas

"I'm afraid I didn't like this one as much as the others. It's because well... it feels a little like I'm reading the same story. Tons of others have mentioned it, but she seems to be sticking to a very strict formula. Which I wouldn't mind too much if the characters didn't seem so similar. They all are so reserved and issue driven. One of the reasons I think that it didn't work so magically in this one was because Eli (the love interest)doesn't get explored enough. He's dealing with some truly heavy stuff and we do see glimpses of vunerability but it's not enough."- Cara

"Sarah Dessen repeats the same plot again and again:
1. ONE SUMMER,
2. AN OLDER TEENAGE GIRL WHO IS REPRESSED IN SOME WAY -- family secrets, personal secrets, others' expectations, her own cynicism or need for control
3. MEETS A WACKY GROUP OF PEOPLE -- long-distant family, a rock band, coworkers, a new group of friends
4. INCLUDING ONE UNUSUAL BOY -- usually artistic in some way
5. SHE DOES SOMETHING UNCHARACTERISTIC OF HER THAT STARTS OR DEEPENS HER RELATIONSHIP WITH THEM -- like confess a secret, or kiss the boy, or take on a job -- something that exposes her for a moment
6. AND THINGS GO ALONG SWIMMINGLY FOR A WHILE as she gets to know the boy and has her original assumptions about the people challenged and develops new skills through her association with them
7. But then, about 1/3 to 1/4 of the way from the end, SOMETHING HAPPENS TO SCREW THINGS UP, usually causing the girl's retreating for some reason into her original repressions/assumptions
8. A CONFRONTATION INVOLVING/REGARDING THE CAUSE OF THE GIRL'S REPRESSION OCCURS.
9. GIRL REUNITES WITH BOY; HAPPINESS INTO FORESEEABLE FUTURE. "-Cheryl

Out of a 1-5 rating scale, 0% of people gave her a 1 and 43% gave the book a 5, giving it an average 4.17 rating. As you can see the reveiws on this book are pretty varied but all the ones I've seen have one thing in common... EVERYONE LOVES THIS BOOK! Even the bad reveiws I have listed there about her repeating her stories( which I actually saw a lot of) ended with "I still loved it". Dessen might be repetitive but she definetly has a loyal fan group who really love her work. Her book Along for the Ride (that I hopefully will finish tonight) is pretty good though. It's not great I'll admit but for someone who likes to read I might recomend it, actually I probably wouldn't but i can see why someone would. The thing is, I really can't seem to get into a book anymore as I explained in my third post (the long one) so it;s not that it;s a bad book at all it's just me not being able to appreciate it.

The cites i used for this blog were...

http://teenbookreview.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/review-along-for-the-ride-by-sarah-dessen/
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5664985-along-for-the-ride

http://www.amazon.com/Along-Ride-Sarah-Dessen/dp/0670011940

I'm adding to the second blog(the pink one) by saying more about my source. The source was Aimee Benders official website that I got from her book. It must be pretty legit but I'm guessing it's probably biased towards her. There wasn't really any opinions that I took from it though. I used those facts like awards she had won and then used my own opinions. The only thing I could have missed by going to that site was maybe negative awards she got but I'm not really sure they have those for books.

So I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do for this blog, apparently we're supposed to write about a topic while writing about the book which doesn't seem too complicated but I
really dont get it. So I might do this wrong(which is really bad saying its already late...). Anyways, the book I just finished reading was Midnight Sun, which is Twilight from Edwards perspective( if you havent read the original, it's from Bella's side). I'm guessing I can write my topic about the Twilight saga in general and Stefanie Meyers, and if I wasn't supposed to do that I'll probably be pretty mad saying that this is the second time having to write this because my computer just randomly shut down without a warning( and no, it wasn't because it was out of battery). Wow, I just realized I'm using a lot of parenthesis(which by the way I do a lot, it makes my english teachers really mad but I can't seem to stop). And now I really need to start writing about my topic because this is getting really long. Ok, at first, I thought the Twilight series sounded so stupid and I refused to read them( this was at the time around 6th grade I think that everyone was freaking out about them). I refused to read them because for some reason I
hate when people make a big deal about movies and books and stuff(which is why I never saw Avatar or wore ankle socks-that probably sounds really ugly but at my old school everyone would wear them- or topsiders when everyone else did...by the way this is what my seventh grade science teacher called rebelling for the sake of rebelling-she wasnt refering to this she was refering to me hating walking at the pace of other people which is something else kind of weird about me). It was only in spite of my mom(she hates everything witchcrafty and stuff) and a lot of convincing from my freinds I read it. And once I did( this is going to sound really freaky/nerdy/creepy) it seriously changed my whole world. not literally, but still. It was the best book I had ever read, and I used to read a lot so that's pretty big. You're probably wondering why I read so much (Actually, you probably aren't but im going to tell you anyways), when I was younger I had some serious OCD problems and one was I had to read everynight for like 2 hours before I went to bed(which seriously messed with my sleeping). I probably shouldn't tell you the other things because they get even creepier and you'll think I'm physco but there was a phase where I would have to do a sudoku everynight before bed( and I
hated sudoku so it was miserable) and one phase(also before bed) I would have to constantly build puzzles. I was a pretty weird kid( they would call it quirky but that was just a nice way of saying I'm a freak). So back to the book, I guess it actually did change my life in a way because after that I could never read before bed because I knew no book could amount to the four I had read in the last week(it was probably more than a week but still, I read them freakily fast). Even if I tried, no other book could grab my attention so I got out of the habit of reading which according to my parents was bad but they really didn't get how AMAZING Twilight was. I went on to read all the books 2 more times and then I heard about this one. It had never come out because someone put it on the internet before Stefanie Meyers was finished and she got really mad and didn't finish it but it's still online so I read it there. It was even better than the Twilights, which I NEVER thought could happen. So by now, everyone who's reading this probably thinks I'm one of those pathetic girls who all they think about is team Edward or team Jacob(by the way I'm Edward based only on the books but Jacob based on the movie), which
I'm not but I still am pretty obsessed with those books, which I know makes me a dork,but still. So Stefanie has two more books, The Host and the Short Second Life of Bre Tanner which both I
want to read but apparently The Host is like really gruelsome and stuff which I really can't deal with(anything remotely scary I absolutely hate). I still haven't gotten back into the habit of
reading so I haven't been able to read the Bre Tanner book or re-read the saga but I do want
to. That's kind of why I took Reading for Pleasure but I wanted to read other books because I didn't want to be that girl reading Twilight(and I know i did read Midnight Sun but it was online so not many people really knew what I was reading). So I'm sure I'll someday get around to reading for fun again but until then I can't wait until I read The Short Second Life of Bre Tanner.

The book i just finished, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, was written by Aimee Bender. Even without having an assignment to look up the author I probably would have because I love her name...and i love people with cool names. I know this sounds really suck-up-y but it's true, I'm seriously like google's number one user, I'm on it all the time.

Aimee Bender is a teacher of creative writing at USC as well as head to a class in surrealist writing at UCLA and has been help at a non profit theater workshop helping mentally ill and at-risk individuals write, direct and act in their own theater productions. She lives in Los Angeles where the book i read was based. In addition to many short fiction stories, she has written four books, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998) which was a NY Times Notable Book, An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000) which was an L.A. Times pick of the year, Willful Creatures (2005) which was nominated by The Believer as one of the best books of the year, and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2010) which won the SCIBA award for best fiction this year. She has also two Pushcart prizes, and was nominated for the TipTree award in 2005, and the Shirley Jackson short story award in 2010. Her short stories have been published in many places in over sixteen languages as well as been heard on PRI. She has said people ho influence her writing are Oscar Wilde, Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, and Anne Sexton.

( I found most of this information from Aimee's Website www.flammableskirt.com)

Well, this is my first blog post for interim terms 'reading for the fun of it' and I really don't know what to write about. I've been staring at this blank page and the book on my lap about 10 minutes now trying to think of some interesting topic having to so with a girl who can taste the feelings of people through food. Sure its an interesting idea and a pretty good booktoo, but trying to write a great article about how this relates to me or something I enjoy is really hard work. I know we are allowed to write soley about the book, (which by the way is The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender) but I think i would feel bad if I did that...and I'm pretty sure it would affect my grade in some way.

I guess I have to write something though and that's all I can think of doing. So here it goes ( I really hope I don't get graded badly). The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is, as I said before, a book about a nine year old girl who discovers she can taste the feelings of her mother as she eats the lemon cake made by her. Even though her newfound gift attracts the attention of her deatached brothers bestfreind and her secret crush, George, it's hard for her to bear. She knows the only person who she can talk to about it is George and even he doesn't understand her pain, he see's it only as a gift. She has to deal with it all alone, everynight when eating her moms roast beef or baked chicken she can feel the sorrow and bitter lonliness, but whenever she asks her mom states she's fine.

By the time she's 12, as she's taking a bite into dinner she was overcome with sadness as she realizes her mom is having an affair. However, little Rose can't do anything about it after promising it would never happen again after an incident when she through herself on the ground screaming after tasting her moms apple pie FILLED with her lonliness, she was sent to the hospital, her mom thinking she had gone mad. She didnt talk about her 'gift' anymore but it still hurt her. Now she's seventeen (which is ironic because the reason I had wanted to read this was it was in seventeen magazine) and i have just started part two about her brother Joseph (the first part was about food). i havent read anything past that but it's a pretty good book so far!