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My expectations aren’t very high to be honest. I am though, based on the reviews I’ve read, that this book is well written and has a certain quality even if the book itself doesn’t suit me. I read that the book is more suited for children in the sense that it’s more fairy tale like, which I am looking forward to since I’m a big fan of these kinds of books, such as Narnia.

The author, Alex Bell, haven’t written a lot of books before this one, but her latest book from 2014 had many good reviews, so I'm hoping that "The Polar Bear Explorers' Club" will live up to that.

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First impressions:

“Ready player one” seems to be an interesting and pretty crazy book. The praise for this book is insane, and I really hope it lives up to its received reviews. My thoughts on the book is influenced by these critic acclaims, but I still have my own opinion. I think it will be a book in my taste, and that the genre is well knitted around my preferences. I am also unsure of the ending of the book, as it seems to be a book that is so full of cool featured themes and ideas. That I am just afraid that it will be a big mess of awesome things that just won’t find a good story that branches well with the themes. But that is just my first impression on the book.

The author is Ernest Cline. And other that he is a bestselling novelist (for the book “ready player one”), screenwriter (for the movie “Ready player one” soon to be released), father and full time geek. There isn’t too much to add. He doesn’t seem like an author, but rather like a genuinely chill guy. Hopefully this “chill” and sort of funny vibe transfers well into the book.

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Oscar Freudenthal 16NAA 11/1-18

Lord of the rings part 2, The two towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

I will read 10 to 15 pages per day

I am pratty sure that I will like this book, I already read the first one in the series and liked it very much. There have been films made of this series of books and I have watched them and they are to my liking. I have read the back and the first page, it is well written and a good story, I have high hopes.

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My expectations on the novel “All the light we cannot see” are kind of high even though I haven´t read anything from the author before. This is because I have heard and seen many good reviews of it and the cover is basically covered in good reviews and awards that it has won. This makes me hope that the book actually lives up to the reviews it has got and I think it will.

The novel was written in 2014 by American author Anthony Duerr but it takes place in France and Germany during World war 2 so it is a historical novel. I have read a few books of this type of genre before and I have really liked them so I hope that this book is as good.

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My expectations of “Everything beautiful is not ruined” aren’t that high because I never really find books that I like, but I do think that the title of the book seems interesting and I want to know what the book is about. The reviews of the book are positive and the people who had read the book admire her way of writing, so I am excited to see if I feel the same way about her.

The author of the book is Danielle Young-Ullman who is a playwright, author and a former actor. Her latest book (Everything beautiful is not ruined) is a finalist for the Governor General´s Literary Award so I really hope it´s worth reading. I haven’t read anything by her earlier so this will be interesting.

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a)    So far there is 3 main characters presented in the book. These are “Parzival” the protagonist, James Halliday the creator of The OASIS and Aech. Parzival is the protagonist and is obsessed by everything from the 1980’s. This mainly because of his quest to find a big treasure in the video game OASIS. Aech is another OASIS player that is currently searching for the treasure as well. He is also Parzivals best friend. James Halliday is the creator of OASIS and is since a few years back dead. He was a multibillionaire and has decided to give all of his fortune to an OASIS player that manages to find his treasure. So far no real names except James Halliday has been revealed. Aech and Parzival is only “in game names” of the OASIS players.

Parzival is a poor boy living in a trailer with his aunt and her husband. He is obsessed with James Halliday’s treasure and is researching everything about Halliday to give him an edge in the search for the treasure. Everything in Parzival’s life orbits around his quest for the treasure. He is known as a “gunter”, an OASIS player that is dedicated to find Halliday’s treasure. He doesn’t like the real world and escapes reality by playing antique videogames.  In the daytime he runs away from his trailer and hides in an abandoned van. He locks himself away and plays OASIS, an virtual reality game where you can do almost anything. Parzival only really has one friend “Aech” and is very antisocial, he doesn’t want to make new friends and sees himself as a lone wolf. Lone wolf or not, I think that in the continuation of the book he will see more and more players on his journey to the treasure. I think he will have to team up with some other players in order to manage the quest. I also think that he in the end will achieve the treasure.

b)    This book is in a weird way a bunch of genres since the game that is being played in the book is very different. There are over a billion worlds where magic is available in some, making it very fantasy inspired. Then there are worlds where plasma guns are the norm and these gives the book a sci-fi genre. But I think that in general the main genre is adventure and action. Another really good genre description is “nerdy” or “geeky” since the trivia possessed by the protagonist and James Halliday is vintage video games, comics, movies, tv-series and cartoons. I think that this is a book in my taste since it has the elements that I like in a book. The trivia part is something new for me, but it isn’t to hard to tag along in the deep discussions about old-school comics and video games.

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Ingrid, Seth, Jin, Melissa, Peace-Bob, Tavik, Harvey, Henry, Ally, Pat, Bonnie and mom (Margot-Sophia Lalonde. Ingrid, as in the main-character is a positive person and is described as a strong-willed girl. She is 17-years old and lives in Canada. Her dream is to become a singer, just like her mother ones were until she lost her beautiful voice during a show. Ingrid has a strong will to attempt a music-school in London but her mother disagrees, so to prove she is worthy and can handle difficult situations her mother puts her on a Peak Wilderness camp along with a drug addict, a gay boy who hopes the experience will allow him to feel closer to God and a princessy girl whose popular on Instagram.

The genres of the book are fiction, social issues and family life I think.

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a)

There are two main characters in my book. Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a French girl, born around 1928, who lives in Paris with her father. She becomes blind in the beginning of the book. The other main character is Werner who is a German boy, born around 1926, living in an orphanage in Zollverein near Essen. He is the character that I would like to focus on. He is as mentioned an orphan boy and he lives in the orphanage with his sister Jutta and many other children under the care of Frau Elena, who Werner seems to like.

One day he finds an old radio and he and Jutta turns it on and listens to some programs. They find a program that is about science, which they really enjoy. Werner becomes very interested in the radio and soon he knows how to repair and replace every single part in it, and not long after that, he gets to repair the neighbours’ radios.

Since the book jumps a bit back and forth in time, I know that Werner will work as an Engineer for Germany during the war since he is so talented in repairing things. I also think that he will meet Marie-Laure somehow, although I have no idea how.

b)

The genre of this book is historical fiction, since it is about the second world war and the characters have not existed in real life. I really like this genre and I have read some similar books before but I haven´t read that many so I wouldn´t call it my normal genre.

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a)    The story is set inside a post-apocalyptic future filled with energy crisis, and overpopulation. People live in compounds tightly squeezed together to fit. The majority of the population is dirt poor. And the government is responsible for giving free meals in exchange of food coupons given out once a day to the inhabitants. But there is an escape, a virtual reality game called “The OASIS” has become the new norm. Everyone uses the OASIS as a “second world”. Schools are entitled inside of the game. And working inside of the game is a valid option as well if you want to earn money or in game “credits”.

b)    The atmosphere in the real world is dull. More and more people has given up hope in humanity. Inside of the OASIS, the environment is flourishing. You can do almost whatever you want whenever you want. The OASIS consists mostly of gamers, so the common used language is slang or “gamer terms”. Shortenings and references are used heavily inside of the language.

I feel like a setting doesn’t make the mood of a story. It is all up to the characters and the telling of the story to determine the mood.

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a)

The story is set in a few different places. Marie-Laure lives in Paris in the beginning of the book but she later moves to a small town called Saint-Malo. Werner however lives in Zollverein in Germany but he also moves when he attends the National political institute of Education in Essen. The historical setting is obviously just before and during world war 2. This is very clear since the book is divided into parts and in the beginning of each part it says what year it is. The plot also circles around the war.

b)

The book starts of before the war, around 1934. During this time people in France are generally happy, although as time goes on and more news about a big future war circulate in France, people get more and more depressed. When Germany invades France, this gets even worse since many die, houses gets destroyed and food prices skyrocket. People flee from the big cities and try to seek shelter. In Germany however, people (including Werner) are very patriotic when the war breaks out, and they think that they are going to win easily. Both the geographical and historical setting does therefore affect the mood in this book. The war plays a big role in creating the mood in both Germany and France.

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1.     Since this is a second part in a book not many new characters have been introduced so I will talk about ones that were introduced in the previous part. I will start with the main character Frodo Baggins, he is a hobbit from a village called The Shire and it is a small and concealed from the rest of the races that inhabit middle earth. He was entrusted with a great mission because of his courage and over all positivity. The next character is another hobbit, Meriadoc Vinbock or just Merry as they refer to him in the book. Him and his friend Pippin joined Frodo in his quest. He is a very funny and upbeat hobbit. Merry is a very good character to talk about since he is not all that important to the story, he has very important parts but since the movies had a time limit to them some things he does in the book may be interesting. I will look forward to seeing the things Peter Jackson did not explore with the young hobbit.

2.     This story is the be all end all of the fantasy genre, all fantasy writers after this was published has read the lord of the rings and they often borrow heavily from it. I think Tolkien found the perfect way of making up a fantasy world, it has so many details but still it is not over the top. This is my typical type of genre and one of my favourite books I have read.

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1.     The story is set in a place called middle earth. Middle earth is a mystical land inhabited by Dwarfs, Elves, Wizards, giant spiders, Men and a lot more. In terms of historical setting it is currently at the end of the third age which is in their own way of counting the ages. In terms of our world it is probably the most alike a time similar with the renaissance, they have great wars with swords and armour, their long-distance weapons are bows and catapults. They have kingdoms with great castles and brave warriors. Their caste is also very alike, a king at the top, then his counsellors, then high ranking knights and at the bottom, farmers. And just like back then the women do not have many rights and are treated a lot like they were, unless there royalty of course.

2.     The mood is kind of what you would expect of a fantasy book like this one. It is heavily centred around courage, friendship and overcoming your limitations. Tolkien wrote it so well that you really feel like you know the characters, their goals and the way they evolve throughout the story is natural and fluent. The setting does improve the mood in a very good way, it is set in a time when the heroic stuff really fits. But the mood does differ very often, for entire chapters the mood can go from mellow, easy going fun to intense desperation and danger then to an epic fight between armies where the heroes defies all odds and come out on top. What baffles me is how well the author handles all these transitions without disrupting the flow of the story.

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The book is told from a 3rd person point of view but since there are two main characters they both take turns being the person talked about. Some chapters are also about other characters like Marie-Laure´s father and a German named Von Rumpel. I think it is a good thing that the book is written from this perspective while it would have been really confusing knowing which person was the narrator since the narrator changes every chapter.

The narrator is available to read the mind of the “main” character in that chapter but not the other characters´ minds. This can be somewhat confusing sometimes when you don´t understand which character is being narrated. I generally like that the narrator can read minds though, since Marie-Laure and Werner often are very alone and therefore they think about things instead of talking about them.

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Lord of the rings is written in the style known as third person omniscient. This means that there is an outside person telling the story, everyone is also referred to using he/she/it or by their names. The word omniscient means all-knowing, therefor you can hear all character’s thoughts. Thou it is implied that it is Frodo who is telling the story it still is third person. I like third person omniscient, I think it makes the story a lot easier to understand. The fact that you can hear everyone’s thoughts you get to know the non-main characters better than in first person. In this type of book I really think this view fits.

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The book is told out of an first-person perspective, with the main character “Parzival” doing all of the storytelling. I think this perspective suits the book perfectly since an third-person perspective would probably make the story confusing and hard to follow. I personally like both perspectives in a book, and it is very different from book to book which perspective better suits the book. The first person perspective in this book really gives an insight in the protagonists mind and thoughts, which is very important for the main objective of the book. It is filled with riddles and deeper thoughts about clues and descriptions. This makes the first-person perspective an obvious choice since the protagonists thoughts, reflections and knowledge really gets tested throughout the book. The book has started to involve feelings in the story and it is clear to feel what the protagonist is feeling about certain characters. You part with the protagonist as in who he (you) should trust and not. I feel empathy and similarities between myself and the protagonist which makes my siding with him much easier. I feel like I would have done the same as him in many of the decisions and actions he decides to take.

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So far, there’s been 5 characters that have introduced; Stella whom is the main character, Felix Stella’s adoptive father, Aunt Agatha whom is Felix sister, Shay who’s a boy in Stella’s age and is taking care of the wolves on the explorers’ clubs boat and Ethan who too is a boy in Stella’s age but from Ocean Squid Explorers’ club. I haven’t really read far enough to get to know many of the characters so I’m choosing to write about Stella.
Stella is an orphan and was found by her adoptive father Felix during one of his expeditions. She’s albino, at least that’s the picture I get since she is described as a white skinned girl with white hair. Stella seems to be quite a handful, very stubborn and curious. She wants to be become an explorer even though girls can’t become one.
Stella seems to be from a quite special nationality and she’s probably some lost royalty and the book will probably end with her finding her real family, but in the end she’ll still choose Felix.

The genres of the book are fantasy and adventure. It’s not really my typical genre, but at the same time it is. I like fantasy, but this particular book is a little bit too fairy-tale-ish for my taste. I also really like a good adventure book with a few unexpected twists and I don’t think this book will meet up to those expectations.

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a)     The story is primarily set in “the ice-lands” which I assume is either a northern part of Scandinavia, Iceland or the North Pole. The icing, almost unbearably, cold and the wide set icy and snowy landscape is a continued theme throughout the book so far. It could be set in Antarctica too, but since all of the characters so far have been said to have fair skin I assume the story is taking place somewhere on the northern part of the globe.

The historical setting is kind of hard to get a grip on but I’ve come to conclude that it might be taking place somewhere in 50’s – 60’s. Some parts of the places and objects in the book seem quite ancient. The ships they are traveling with for example are very 18th century-ish. Other things like everyone needing to bring moustache wax and beard oil make it feel like it’s taking place in the earlier 20th  century.
Stella, who is the main character, talks a lot about her clothes, skirts and petticoats especially. Petticoats was a quite common piece of clothing during the 50’s and other things like the cameras they use and the gramophone in Stella’s home states that it should be taking place in the mid 20th century. The genre of this book is fantasy so no one can’t really be sure of the age it is taking place in since it’s not based on actual happening or things that could happen in real life.

b) I haven’t really noticed a specific mood in this book. I’m not sure it’s because of the way the book is written or if it’s just my own experience. The book is quite straight forward and doesn’t really build up to anything, neither exciting or scary. I’m more than half way through the book and I’m only now starting to see a change in the mood of the book. Maybe the “straight forward” thing is to bring out the tense energy between Stella and the other kids on the expedition. Just like they just want to get the whole expedition over with, the author wants the reader to feel the same way. Now when the characters are opening up to each other, the mood is much less tense and almost warm in some way.

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I think that my previous entries have been pretty much accurate but as with all story’s the characters have grown. Sadly, because this is a second book in a trilogy, the characters are not finished growing. Meaning that they are not that different from their past self’s. But all and all I am happy with my previous entry’s. The more you read the more you see just how many details Tolkien puts in everything he writes about, that is something you do not think about when you watch the movies but when you have seen the movies and then read the books you see how much different they really are in that aspect. I am very happy with this book and I knew I would like it, that is why I picked it.

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Some things have changed since the start of the book, for both of the main characters. They are both teenagers now, Werner is 18 and Marie-Laure is 16. Werner has also started working with finding illegal radio signals for the Germans. This led him to find Marie-Laure while her uncle transmits signals to try to help the British and the Americans. When Werner discovers Marie-Laure and her uncle he doesn´t know how to act. He knows that he will become a hero if he walks in and arrest them but something is holding him from doing it.

Marie-Laure on the other hand doesn´t know of any of this. She hasn´t changed that much but she has become more afraid of the Germans since my last entries. This is because a German officer has been in her house trying to steal things.

All in all, I like my novel so far. It was a bit boring at some parts in the beginning when not much happened but the last 250 pages or so have been really good.

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The book is written in a third person point of view and I think it suits this book very well since there are several characters that are vital for the story. Stella and three other kids get split up from the rest of the explorers and it would be hard to get an insight in all four minds without a third person point of view. I do think that a first person point of view would suit this book really well too. Like I said, Stella and her group got split up from the rest, so I think it would be very interesting to read from both Stella’s and Felix´ (Stella’s adoptive father) point of view. Both are in different places and it would be nice to get an insight in both parts.

The book is taking place in a deserted, icy and cold landscape and the characters are probably scared. That feeling would really be enhanced when reading from a first person point of view since you basically are inside the characters head.

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The setting of this book is in modern time and is set mostly in Canada. You can tell the story is modern because the characters discuss problems with each other in a similar way that we do. Ingrid’s thoughts are easy to keep up with and doesn’t include complicated explanations.  My own mind attempts to be set in the same type of way sometimes, which makes the story relatable and interesting. The mood in this novel variates strongly because of Ingrid’s emotions. Every single chapter is sort of based in one feeling. An example of that is when Ingrid wants to leave the Peak Wilderness camp and cries for several days. At that time in the book, everything you can think about is how bad you feel for her and how badly you want to hug her and tell her everything is going to be fine. But then, the next chapter, everything is just fine and Ingrid starts to feel mature about her choice to stick in the group for several more days. So the mood in the novel really changes thru out the story. The chapters about the camp are governed by Ingrid and her feelings, and the chapters about her early life are governed by Ingrid’s mum, Margot-Sophia.

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Almost the whole story is told from the 1st persons perspective. Ingrid is telling the story from her point view which makes it much more personal I think. I also think that the story would be much more objective and dull if it was told from the 3rd persons perspective. So in my opinion, the author chose the right way to write in effort to preserve the feelings of the character Ingrid. But like I mentioned, the story isn’t completely told from the 1st persons view. Ingrid writes letters to her mother thru out the whole novel which are told from the 2nd point of view. Those letters described Ingrid’s feelings and emotions that she felt during her experience on the Peak Wilderness camp. I think that the story would be less vivid if the narrator would be someone from the outside.

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Before I started to read the novel, my expectations weren’t that high because I do not often find books that I like. I still don’t know if I would have picked this book myself but I must say that I am positively surprised about how it turned out. The reviews that I read before, about Danielle’s way of writing are exact. I do admire her way of introducing characters for us, the way she makes us feel and think is surprisingly suitable. It is absolutely a comfortable reading and a brilliant story by fact.

Ingrid’s dream to become a singer follows her thru out the whole novel. Not a day passes without her thinking about what to do after the camp is finished, and I admire her in that way. She is a girl who knows what she wants even thou her lack of confidence. Thru out the story, Ingrid changes a lot. She becomes present, confident and not afraid to speak out. She is an interesting character in that way and I think many people can relate to her in some way.