CPR Blog #2 Book #3

Anne Frank: the biography by Melissa Muller was a book that really made me think a lot about the world we live in, about humanity, and the sufferings people have to go through. I have always been really interested in World War II because of the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a very devastating and horrible event in the world history. It is extremely sad for me to think of the many horrible tortures and atrocities mainly Jews had to go through in the concentration camps. They were required to work while being almost starved because the food wasn't enough. They were put in very crowded areas where a lot of them would get sick because of the unhygienic spaces. They were humiliated and put down. They were robbed from all of their belongings and all of their valuables. The families were separated and some were never able to see each other again. Something that I found extremely sad in this book, was how Anne Frank, and her sister, died a few weeks before the British troop arrived at their concentration camp to liberate them. I thought it was such a miracle how her father, Otto Frank, was able to survive. On a letter he wrote to his mother he said, "On the 26th, the SS took us outside to murder us, but they were ordered away before they could do so--we were saved by a miracle." I do believe that he was saved by a miracle because had it not been for the Russian soldiers who came, he would have been dead by now. This book was really good at telling Anne Frank's complete biography. It also said a lot of information about her at the concentration camps, which is something that you don't read in her diary because when she was taken to a concentration camp she stopped writing in her diary because she didn't have it. It also includes information about her family, friends, and what happened after her dad was liberated. I really learned a lot of information about Anne Frank that I didn't know from just reading her diary.

A quote that really struck me from the book was, "No executions took place in the hopelessly overcrowded camp, but ten of thousands died anyway. Weakened by hunger and thirst, they died slow, agonizing deaths from infectious diseases--dysentery, diphtheria, tuberculosis, and typhus. Describing after the war the part of the part of the camp where Anne and Margot had been held, a British army captain, Andrew Peters, wrote of the horrendous conditions, of six hundred people crowded into barracks for sixty, of corpses  human excrement, and filth strewn everywhere. The prisoners, in rags crawling with lice, had been beaten down to the level of animals." It is just horrible to think that human beings where able to do these such horrible things to other human beings. This book made me see how bad a person can be but also how good someone can be, like Miep Gies. She was a friend of the Frank family, and she risked her life in order to keep the Frank family safe. In her note in the book she says, "To my great and abiding sorrow, I was not able to save Anne's life. But I was able to help her live two years longer. In those two years she wrote the diary that gives hope to people all over the world and calls for understanding and tolerance....Through her diary Anne really does live on. She stands for the triumph of the spirit over evil and death." 

CPR Blog #1 Book #3

I decided to read Anne Frank: the biography by Melissa Muller because of my interest in World War II and the Holocaust. Since I was in middle school, I have been very interested in the Holocaust because of how it was such a horrible event that happened. When I was in 8th grade, I read The Diary of Anne Frank and when my mom saw this book at a store she was at, she decided to buy it for me because she knew how interested I would be in reading it. I hadn't had a chance to read it until now.

Anne Frank: the biography by Melissa Muller talks about Anne Frank's early life, her life hiding and her life in concentration camps. It also includes images of her family and notes from people that met her.

CPR Blog #2 Book #2

The Lovely Bones was a book that I really enjoyed reading from beginning to end. The author did a really good job of being able to tell the story of a fourteen year old girl, Susie Salmon, who was murdered. She told the story in a way that made me want to keep reading and kept me glued to the book. The story was told from Susie's perspective but since she was in heaven she was able to act like a god and be able to describe people's feelings and emotions and be able to describe their actions. She wasn't only able to tell her story but also add to it by including how her death affected the people in her life whom she was closest to and whom she loved. By Susie being in heaven watching over the Earth, she was able to express her feelings as well as being able to let the reader know about what the other people in the book were thinking and feeling. I liked how the book was easy to read and had a lot of flashbacks to memories that Susie kept in her heart. 

This book made me think a lot of about life and death about how life can be taken away from you in the least expected way. In the book, Susie was raped and murdered on her way back from school and wasn't able to get back home that day, and that is just how life is. None of us really know when we will die or how and this book really says a lot about the connection between the living and the dead and how the dead can talk to us and surround us. This is mostly shown by Ruth and how she was able to sense death around her. After reading this book, it made me appreciate my family a lot more because they are here with me and they are not gone. In the book, it shows how it took a long time for the Salmon family to get over Susie's death and be able to just keep her in their memories. Until the end of the book, they were all able to be back together and act as a family again without Susie. In the book Susie says, "I was beginning to wonder if this had been what I'd been waiting for, for my family to come home, not to me anymore but to one another with me gone." (316) This book also emphasizes the importance of letting go and moving on, which was very important for Susie's family to do in order to act as a family again and be happy. It was not about forgetting Susie but about being able to put Susie in their memories, like Susie said in the book, where she was meant to be.

I quote from the book that I thought was very interesting was in page 212 when Susie says, "I had rescued the moment by using my camera and in that way had found a way to stop time and hold it. No one could take that image away from me because I owned it." I thought this quote was really interesting because of how it said the importance of a picture and how it captures a specific moment in time that will be lost except for that picture. In this book, I felt like time and memories were really important. Time because of how it mentions how time progressed and how things changed and got better as more time passed after Susie's death, and also how Holiday and Grandma Lynn's time comes when they get really old and die. I felt like memories were really important in this book because it is basically all Susie's family had left after she was gone and that is how she always remembered them by thinking back to memories she had shared with all of them. With this said, I feel like a picture is important because it captures a specific moment in time and is able to "stop time and hold it" as well as bring back memories. Like how the first picture Susie took of her mother in the morning that brought back the memory of her taking that picture of seeing her mom as someone else. 

Another quote that really stood out to me was in page 320 when Susie says, "These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections--sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent--that had happened after I was gone." I really liked this quote because in the book, Susie had to learn to let go and be able to understand that she was gone and that everyone that she cared about on Earth was beginning to move on and live their lives without her in it. Susie's parents were able to comprehend that she was never coming back home, that she was gone. 

A character that really caught my attention was Mr.Harvey, not just because he was Susie's murderer but because of the way he was. He was able to pretend as if nothing ever happened after he killed someone. He was able to trick the police and come up with lies that everyone, except usually the victim's family, believed. He had set alarms for when to do things that most people did so that it looked like he was normal and he had a chair where he could sit and look out to the school and the children. He was smart and was tricky in hiding all the evidence that could link him to Susie's death, and once they found it, he was already gone and free. One quote that really stood out to me that Susie said was, " What I think was hardest for me to realize was that he had tried each time to stop himself. He had killed animals, taking lesser lives to keep from killing a child." I thought it was kind of sad how lonely he was and how he had to keep killing in order for him to feel okay, and like Susie said, he tried to stop himself but he couldn't. 

I have already started recommending this book to some of my friends and I think I would recommend this book mostly to girls because they could really relate to some of the things Susie talks about. 

CPR Blog #1 Book #2

The book I chose is The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. I have been wanting to read this book since 9th grade but haven't had the opportunity to read it until now. My friend read it when she was in 9th grade and told me that she recommended the book because it was really interesting so then I was going to read it but kept forgetting to get the book from the library. When I saw it on Rachel's book shelf in her room, I kept wanting to ask her if I could borrow it but I kept forgetting and when I remembered we had to read a CPR book this month I automatically thought of The Lovely Bones. 

The lovely Bones is a very well-known book and even won the "Book of the Year" award. What really caught my attention was when I was reading the back cover of the book because it says that the book starts off with this sentence, "My name was Salmon, like the fish, first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." That just caught my attention because of how she was murdered when she was 14 and how it seems like the book will be from the perspective of Susie's spirit, so a ghost. I want to read this book to find out more about Susie and how she was murdered and who murdered her. 

CPR Blog #2

I think what it means for a book to be a classic is that it has been around for quite a long time and it's still read and liked by each new generation and has a great story and style of writing. It is also powerful with its words. I think that the book, Great Expectations is a classic because it has been around for quite a long time and it is still liked and it  has a strong powerful story about the growth of the narrator, an orphan called Pip, and a great style of writing. It is even considered by many to be Charles Dickens's finest novel. Throughout the book there are many powerful words and phrases and descriptions of what is going on in the story. There are also very unique characters that have a major part in the story.

As I started Reading Great Expectations, I was having a little bit of trouble reading through it because I am not used to that writing style and this book was written a long time ago. This book really thought me to think about my expectations for myself and seeing if they are reachable or just way over my head. It also thought me to always stay humble and never forget about the people who have loved me the most because they should always be an important part of my life.

Great Expectations talks about an orphan boy, who when invited to play at Miss Havisham's mansion,and sees what it is like to be rich and educated, he has great expectations for becoming a gentleman to become good enough for Estella, Miss Havisham's adopted child. This makes him separate a little from his family and even his best friend, Joe, his brother in law because he is ashamed that they are "common" and not like Miss Havisham and Estella. Pip really hopes that Miss Havisham will give him a gentleman's fortune but is very disappointed when she offers to help with the papers to officially make Pip Joe's apprentice. This teaches us that with great expectations come great disappointments. As the story progresses, we notice as Pip starts losing his innocence due to his increasing hope and dream of becoming a wealthy gentleman and becoming good enough for Estella. As he becomes working with Joe, he wishes to visit Miss Havisham and see Estella and be around her.

Although it seems as if it is not possible for Pip to become a gentleman anymore since he is currently working with Joe, Pip still keeps dreaming and he is overjoyed when a lawyer tells Joe that Pip will soon inherit a large fortune and his education as a gentleman will soon begin in London, but the person who is giving Pip this wants to remain secret so Pip assumes it must have been Miss Havisham. As he leaves for London, he starts to feel a little bad for having behaved poorly towards the people who actually cared about him.  He keeps dreaming that Miss Havisham is his benefactor and that she wants him to marry Estella.  

Later on Pip finds out that his benefactor was a convict who unlike Pip, worked hard in Australia and earned a huge fortune. He is disappointed again as he finds out Miss Havisham wasn't his benefactor and that he isn't going to marry Estella. Towards the end of the book we start to notice how as Pip becomes older and more mature he starts to change and realize that maybe that his great expectations for himself and his life might not have been the best for him because he had became distant with the people who had loved him, and had also treated them poorly because he thought he was better than them. As he changes, he decides to help his friend Herbert and also tries to help his benefactor, the convict to escape and takes care of him. I think if Miss Havisham would have been Pip's benefactor, Pip wouldn't have changed, because he wouldn't have became of the reality and what kind of person he had become. He would have also still keep dreaming of marrying Estella and just worrying about himself and being a gentleman. When, I began reading the book I didn't really understand why the author had put the story of what happened with Pip and the convict if he was just going to leave but when I finished reading the book I noticed why he put it there and it was kind of like a loop because the convict shows up towards the end of the book and changes Pip's life. I think a big theme for this book is ambition, because of how Pip changes because he wants to become a gentleman to impress Estella.

I think two of the most captivating characters were Pip and the convict. Pip because he was the main character and as he tells the story, when notice how he grows from a little boy who was scared of a convict and being arrested for giving him food, to a gentleman who was willing to help the convict until the end. The convict was, I would say, one of the most important characters in the book, and even though he is not always mentioned throughout the book, he has always been there because he was Pip's benefactor. He was in the beginning of the book and then at the end of the book. I would recommend this book to anyone because, as Alejandra said, everyone should read Great Expectations at one point in their lives.

"I took the opportunity of being alone in the courtyard to look at my coarse hands and my common bots. My opinion of those accessories was not favorable  They had never troubled me before, but they troubled me now, as vulgar appendages...I wished Joe had been rather more genteelly brought up, and then I should have been so too." I thought this was an important quote for the book because it shows the first time Pip brings up the idea of what if he was more like a gentleman. It shows how he becomes aware of how "common" he is and those things began to bother him.

Sound Blog #7

1. “Evander and I had a dog named Lassie ... ”
Link:  http://storycorps.org/listen/bernard-holyfield-and-charles-barlow/

This was one of the best stories I heard from all the sound blogs because it was very interesting, it had the rule of empathy, and it kept you thinking about it even after it was done. This story was a really good story because it was not just a story about a dog being shot, Bernard starts by describing his dog so that we are drawn to like Lassie and so that when he is shot, we also feel that sadness that Bernard and his brother felt. 

Bernard also adds to the story by mentioning how the sheriff was like their hero, but he was the one who shot their dog. He says how his brother and him would play cops and robbers so for them the cops were like the heroes so it was more shocking for them to see that their "hero" was the one who shot Lassie. Bernard also mentions how the skin color was important in this story. Lassie didn't do anything wrong but because the man that bothered Lassie was white and because the kids were black, the white sheriff shot Lassie without questioning the white man's word, he just believed him and shot Lassie. This story kept you listening from the beginning until the end. 

2. “As he's walking away, I'm like, 'Hey, you forgot something...'”
Link: http://storycorps.org/listen/julio-diaz/

This was another story that I thought was really good because it just so unique and not the kind of story you hear about all the time. This story is good because it flows together, and it is very powerful. It expresses emotions in the listener. After you are done listening to the story you are left with lots of emotions and feelings, emotional engagement, like amazed, shocked and happy to know there are still nice people in this world, like Julio, the guy saying the story, who do nice things for people who aren't nice to them, because as Julio said, "you should be nice to everybody." 

I also liked how he added some humor to the story. It includes the rule of empathy and makes you laugh and go wow and aww. It also teaches us about the experience Julio went through when he got robbed, and he has a very interesting story because it is not like any other story of someone being robbed. It has a defined main character, which is Julio and is a very nice person, and also specific details to make it a really good story.

3. “I called his name into the phone over and over...”
Link: http://storycorps.org/listen/beverly-eckert/

This another story that I thought was really good because of the person who is telling the story's voice because with her voice and as it breaks when as she remembers that last conversation she had with her husband, it makes us feel what she is feeling. It is even hard to understand a little because she is almost crying and that adds to the sadness in the story. It makes the listener want to cry too.

 I think this story is very powerful because of how it makes you feel as you listen to it. It makes you feel that sadness Beverly must have felt after she realized she had lost her husband and that he would not come back. It also leaves you thinking on what you would have done if you were in her shoes or if you lost someone you really love and have been with for a really long time. I also like how it starts off by having Beverly describe her husband and how he was a good huger. I also noticed how she never mentioned this happened in September 11th but the way she tells the story you know for sure that it was during September 11th. I really like the ending and how Beverly says that she lives life for both of them now and that she knows he would be proud of her.

Sound Blog #6

“At my house, only one person got the mail, and that was my mother. ”

Link: http://storycorps.org/listen/nathan-hoskins-and-sally-evans/ 

1. 5 questions
What grade were you in when you met your friend who was also gay?
What did he give you? How did he give it you?
Who got the mail at your house?
What did your mom do when she saw the letter?
What did you do after the whole shotgun experience?

2. 6 Details
-Valentine's card
-Sent letter in the mail
-Mom waiting for him with the letter
-Loaded shotgun
-The tree
-Many years later, mom did not apologized and even laughed 

3. Feelings
confused, mad, fear

I picked this story because it was really shocking. Nathan starts out by saying how in 6th grade he had met a friend who was not interested in girls. Then he said that one day his friend told him he had a Valentine's day card for him so Nathan asked for it but his friend said it was so special he sent it in the mail. I think it is interesting how after that Nathan says, "He didn't know he had done a very terrible thing." That phrase makes listeners want to continue hearing to the story to find out why that was so terrible. Then Nathan says that the only person that got the mail at his house was his mother. At first the listener has questions like why it was so bad that his mom got the mail so we want to keep listening in order to find out. Then he says that on the bus he was thinking of how he was going to get that letter but when he got off the bus, his mom was already waiting for him on the steps with an envelope and he knew it was it because of how it had hearts and everything, I like how he describes that especial envelope by saying how it looked like and what it had on it.

Then he says that his mom asked her to read it and he did everything he could to convince his mom that he didn't know about the letter, that he didn't even ask for it. Then we get to what seems like the climax of the story because the mom goes into the house and grabs a shotgun and loads it in front of him and then told him to hold it. This causes the listener to ask lots of questions like what's going to happen? what is she going to do? The listener also thinks that the mom might shoot him even though we know he is going to live because he is telling the story but it really brings up the rule of empathy.

After that, his mom put him in the back of the car and she drove out to the country. I think it's interesting how he goes back and says what he means by country, which for him is "No man's land." The mom stopped at the side of the road, and he is still holding the shotgun. Then, she stood him up against a tree. Then she grabbed the shotgun and put it up to his head and said these very strong words, "This is the tree that I take my son to and blew his head off if he ever decide to be a faggot." This is really shocking because the mom was willing to kill his son if she ever found out he was gay, she was extremely against her son being gay that she would prefer to see him dead. I like how after that there is a little pause so that the listener can take that in and then he continues. Nathan says that from that point he did whatever it took to not be gay and confesses that he was a great liar for many years. Then there is another pause and he brings us to 2 years ago, and he asked his mom if she remembered and she just laughed and she couldn't say that what she did was wrong. After many years, the mom still thought that what she had told her son back when he was in 6th grade was the right thing. Because of that, Nathan was always trying very hard to please others as a child but as an adult he realized he should be who he is suppose to be.

“She died on an incident that I sent her on. ”

Link: http://storycorps.org/listen/max-voelz/

1. 5 questions
When did you deploy? Where were you?
What did your wife do?
What happened the day you sent her on that mission?
What were her wounds like? What would you do while she was in that coma?
How did you figure out she was dead? What did you do after you knew she was dead?

2. 6 Details
-He sent his wife on that mission
-His voice as he talks about her
-Her wounds
-She was in a coma
-She died in his arms
-Letter from the government saying "Mrs. Voelz"

3. Feelings
sad, empathy, sympathy, compassion, disappointed, mad

 Max starts off by saying that they deployed in 2003, and he says where they were. He basically sets up the time and place for the story and we know that this is going to be a story that has to do with the military or army because of the word "deployed." Then he says that "she" ripped bombs apart just like he did back in Iraq. He says that they never talked about being scared or the possibility of either of them dying. Then Max says,"But she died on an incident that I sent her on." Even though the listener knows what will happen because he just told us, we still want to keep listening because we want to know who is "she" and how she died exactly.

Then he goes into talking about that night he sent her on the mission and how he tried to communicate with her to tell her to be careful but she had already left. Then he doesn't keep talking about what happened to her, like how it went on the mission he goes into describing her wounds. He does a good job at painting a picture in the listener's head of how she might have looked like. He says she had severe wounds, one of her legs was blown off, and she was in a coma when he got to the hospital. We notice how Max's voice starts to crack as he tells us that he talked to her the whole time she was in there. At about a minute into the story, we find out that "she" was his wife because he says, "I mean, what are you gonna tell your wife who's dying? That you love her and you don't want her to die." At this point he is almost crying and then there is quite a long pause and then he says that he knew she was dead because when he held her hand it felt different. The way his voice changes, and the way he says how he was there with his wife at the hospital talking to her all the time as she was in a coma, makes you want to cry because it is really sad especially for Max.

He then says that he called her parents and told them that she died in his arms, this makes the story even more sad. Then, he goes into talking more about her and saying how he doesn't want people to think that what happened to her was because she was bad at her job or because she was a girl, because for him she wasn't and she was very brave. He then says that he is an army widower and that there are not many of them out there. I thought the end was really sad and made you kind of disappointed at the high-ranking government official for what he wrote on that condolence letter. It said, "Mrs. Voelz, we're sorry for the loss of your husband." That's why at the end Max says, "It just makes it seem like nobody knows we exist." This ending really leaves you thinking about how he must have felt after he lost his wife and then receiving a letter that instead of saying they were sorry for his wife's loss, it was directed for his wife saying they were sorry for his loss, it showed how much they really cared.