#2 Scrawl

I like this book because it let's you into the mind of a bully. A lot of books that are written like this are from the perspective of the victim, so it gives the reader a different side of the story. In scrawl, a bully is forced to write in a journal about his life, and in doing so, he gradually let's his councillor into his mind. He comes from a poor house and has to survive high school somehow, so he bullies people. He slowly becomes a better person. I like this book because it's written like how a teenager would write it And it becomes more believable. It's like Perks of being a Wallflower But let's you into the mind of someone else. While talking about the characters own experiences, the author also talks about experiences most teens face, like peer pressure or being blamed for something you didn't do. It's relatable to teens. The reason it wasn't #1 is because there are many stories like it, books about a troubled teen. It doesn't have a lot of originality in it. But it's still a good book that I'd recommend to people.

#3 Blackwatch

This is the second book in the series, but you didn't have to read the first to understand this one. I haven't read the first book, but this one still made sense. Of course the beginning was confusing, but I understood it as I read. It was a very fast paced book, And I like that because I get bored when something drags on. It had a lot of  I didn't put this as #1 because it had a very dark theme. It is preference, But I don't really like reading creepy books all the time. I like reading creepy books around Halloween, but not near the summer. I liked it more than Between the Lines and Da Vinci Code because with them it didn't seem like the authors we're trying. Jenna Burtenshaw at least tried. She's Also good at describing what was happening. She didn't just say it, she made you feel like you we're there. That's why she got a higher ranking.

#4 Between the Lines

I put Between the Lines as 4 because even though it wasn't exactly the same as Jodi Picoult's usual books, it revolved around the same theme: love. I've read a few of her books, mostly cause I was bored, and they didn't entertain me, mostly because they all had the same plot: a girl is depressed or forced into something, and moves somewhere new, where she meets a guy who has his own problems, gets over her problems with his help, and eventually realizes she's in love with him. This book is a bit different in the tone, it's lighter, because Jodi Picoult wrote it with her daughter. Despite that, it's still kind of the same, the main character suffers from abandonment and uses the help of a guy  that she'll eventually fall in love with to get over her problems. I gets boring reading the same things over and over again. Another thing about this book is Jodi Picoult emphasizes too much on how much of a loser the girl is and how much the boy wants to escape. The story is kind of cute, But it's meant for people who like love stories and happy endings, not realists who don't. Also, something's don't add up in the story, like how Oliver doesn't know the simplest of things, yet knows a fire extinguisher. It's a story you could read to kids, if they had patience. I wouldn't recommend it to many people, because it's mainly fluff. It has some serious themes in it, But mostly it's fluff. I don't really like it cause I like books that revolve around things that make you think. This book is a good one for a bad day,  but it won't really captivate someone like me. So my rating was mainly on preference, but I can say that most people would agree with me that it isn't a serious piece of writing. Maybe people would like Jodi Picoult's books more if they weren't the same book with different names.

#5 Da Vinci Code

The reason I put Da Vinci Code as number five is because it is utter crap. Now normally I don't say that because of the effort put in by the author to make a book good, but Dan Brown obviously didn't put that in. He has no sources, the characters we're all lifeless, and he based most of it on religion, not actual facts. Most of the book was dumified cause apparently the topic is too complicated for us. He leads the reader through every single clue to an obvious conclusion that I guessed from the beginning . Maybe this book got famous because people felt like they know information about a top secret organization, or they felt like they solved something big, but I don't know why anybody would read a book that would have made a historian cry because of all the false facts. This book was probably meant to be a novel to read over the weekend and not really put thought into, but throughout the book, the feeling I got from it was repetitive and condescending. We shouldn't even call it a book, it's just a place where Dan Brown tells us about how much he knows about old art history. Well, he should do more research because most, if not all, of his facts are wrong. Him not adding a bibliography at the ending kind of hints at the fact that everything he wrote was BS. He's not good at writing either. Maybe if he had been I wouldn't be so rude to him, but he's not. Most of his chapters end in cliffhangers, to the point where you kind of expect them. And all the dumbifying made the book seem stupid and lifeless. I looked at some of his other books, well the discriptions, And they all have the same plot.  Not to mention the characters. They were so oblivious that it was funny. They shouldn't be experts at everything, and it's not coincidental if the main character is an expert at everything needed to solve the case. If I, a fifteen year old high school student, know more than all the adult characters in this book, who are all experts at apparently everything, that's not good. So, all in all Da Vinci Code is not a book I would recommend. It's lifeless, boring, and dumbed down. To the people who called it 'action packed' and 'a must read thriller', you need to read some actual books. Maybe they were the same people who reviewed Twilight.

April book rankings

These are the rankings for the books I read this month:

1. Insignia

2. Scrawl

3. Blackwatch

4. Between the lines

5. Da Vinci Code

I'll be writing why I had these rankings in the next few posts.

Ted Talk with Will Richardson: Response

In this Ted Talk, Will Richardson talks about how schools are stopping the independence of classes, and making them all uniform. This stops students from learning as well. Instead of being a place for students to grow learning what they want, school is being turned into a test prep. Because of this, school becomes not only uninteresting, but it also stops the individual growth of students.
I agree, classes should be used to let students learn what they actually want and will use in life, instead of being the same exact thing that everyone else learns. Lets say a student wants to be an English teacher, how will calculus help him/her? Or if a student wants to be a Doctor, how will learning French help him/her if he/she is going to stay in America all his/her life?
My point is that schools should try to make students want to learn the subject, they shouldn't all be boring and the same. Or else kids just memorize the information for the test, and then forget it. Classes that involve the student, and that are interesting, make kids learn better. Plus, not all kids learn the same. What good would giving kids the information via the same method be if they all learn differently?

April Book List

For April, The books I'll be reading are:

Scrawl by Mark Shulman
Blackwatch by Jenna Burtenshaw
Insignia by S.J. Kincaid
Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Between the lines by Jodi Picoult


I'll be reading these during the week and then I'll post my rankings and why.