soy pequeño , deportivo y famosos en mi escuela . soy guapo . Me encanta comer y jugar al béisbol , no me paso el tiempo en juegos. me gusta leer libros cuando estoy aburrido .
If you haven't had the pleasurable opportunity to read Maniac Magee by Jerry Spenelli grab a copy from you local library as soon as possible. Allow me to introduce a style of writing that engages you into a story of a young boy trying to figure out where he belongs in this world of “equality” and understanding the community we live in. Jerry Spenelli is a fantastic storyteller, and write for his audience of adolescents. He has won over eight awards for his amazing books and creative way of telling realistic stories covering taboo topics of society, for example racism, sexism, and homelessness. In his writing he also includes humorous content to keep his audience excited to read on.
Hola, me llamo Hayley Williams.Tengo veinticinco años. Mi cumpleaños es el veintisiete diciembre. Me encanta cantar y bailar. Estoy en una banda, Paramore. Me gusta viajar y ir de compras. Me gusta comer helado.
¿Qué te gusta?
Reviewer: Nicholas LePera
“From his bedroom window Mikhail Zinoviev could see that the barn door was open. It was swaying backwards and forwards into the wind and snow was swirling into the barn”, the vivid description and imagery of Child 44. The novel was written by Tom Rob Smith, and the book is outstanding, considering it is his first. The mere thought of future books written by such a talented person is intriguing. Child 44 is followed by two others, The Secret Speech, and Agent 6. His first book, Child 44, was so well received that it is expected to receive a film adaptation. Get ready to see it hit the big screen! This book is not for the faint-of-heart. The harsh Russian winter is as unforgiving as its people. Murder, rape, and alcoholism has its members and you may not take kindly to sexual themes.
The thriller Child 44 takes place in the midst of post World War II in Soviet Russia. From reading history books, I went into this book knowing Stalin was a mad-man responsible for the deaths of millions of his own people. He was responsible for the harsh and villainous tactics used by the secret police. Extortion, murder, torture, and more. This knowledge gave me a fear when reading that something unexpected could happen to my favourite characters due to the type of world they live in. During such an eventful point in time is why this story flourishes. The time and place of all events created by Tom Rob Smith accurately correlate with the methods of the secret police and the propaganda used by the State to coerce people to following a maniac’s goal. Agents huddled around the radiator of their GAZ automobile struggling to stay warm as they progress towards a farm they plan to raid has a militaristic feel to it that made me feel the brotherly feel among the crowd but also the connection to the dark deeds these men have done. From Moscow, to Rostov, circumstances change, not all fear is the same and characters fit the living environment they are in through their dialogue to their actions.
In the boots of lead character, Leo Demidov is an MGB agent, also known as the secret police, which is responsible for carrying out Stalin’s orders. As the reader is introduced to Leo, they will find out his past is not exactly as obvious as one might hope. His job was to blame crimes upon people who had done nothing. Falsely placing claims and torturing confessions are the specialty of men such as Leo. The victims, taken from their rooms in the night, all traces of them gone. Nobody bats an eyelash, for if they do, they may be next. These are historical events that tie in with Tom Rob Smith’s main character, Leo who has put all of his faith in the state and lives to serve loyally. His loyalty stretches back as far to the time of being a soldier in the Red Army, it would only make sense for Leo to join the Ministry of State Security One day events begin to take place which make their way to Leo’s attention causing him to challenge his belief in the state. He is married to a teacher named Raisa, though the marriage isn’t exactly working out. Though he cannot realize why, state deception has cast his mind away from his eyes so he cannot realize what he is doing. Smith ties in the feeling of the harsh Russian environment through immersing the reader in its weather, but also in its appearance as a Communist nation ruled by fear. You will breathe and feel every city block, every farm, and path traveled by Leo. From the streets of the Lubyanka to the slums of Rostov-on-don, Smith provides the reader a complete Russian geographic. As more and more events spawn onto the drawing table, Leo becomes baffled. Everything he has been taught and has believed is being disproved in a matter of days. I felt attached, as if I had been in his shoes and I was there for the battle to make a decision on what to do next. Struggling to figure out the truth, he begins to investigate these mysterious murders. We as readers are brought along in the journey, ever present yet ever distant to the story we are enveloped by.
The people he originally arrested had no correlation to these events. Leo knows this for a fact, but is hesitant to disobey the all-knowing state. Each murdered child he has come across has had the same exact autopsy report on how they were killed, surely this was no coincidence. Amongst the chaos, the protagonist is tested by the state. His rivals have given him a test, denounce his wife as a spy. For days Leo debates on the possibilities. Is his lover a spy for the West? He finds himself on the streets with his wife, Raisa, banished from Moscow.
Having been demoted for failing to denounce his wife, the couple finds themselves on their own and Leo at a disadvantage in solving the mystery at large, the murderer. He must conduct his operations in secret and find a way to bring the madman responsible to justice. The reader may attempt to read this book and infer possible outcomes and scenarios by judging the book in comparison to other shows and books, but each one shall fail.
Within the pages of this book are vast amounts of mysteries and details making it impossible for you to draw conclusions but yet remain entertained. With countless history books, texts, and documentaries, Smith created the most historically accurate fiction of all time.
Searching for answers to his question, Leo will meet new people. What fate will he face in the harsh and barren cold of such an unforgiving land? Leo must redeem himself, for his wife, Raisa. Living a life of lies only makes it harder to search for the truth.
Book: Child 44 Author: Tom Rob Smith Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Date Published: 2008 Pages: 400 Genre: Thriller Language: English
To understand the book Little Brother, one must first understand Cory Doctorow. Doctorow is a member of a group of minds who are of the opinion that all digital media should be shareable. He is against copyrighting, and most of his works are viewable for free online under creative commons licensing. Doctorow believes the creators of the media should have the copyright, and that said media should be free to be used as the creator pleases. These ideas come out strongly in Little Brother.
Little Brother is the story of Marcus, a teenager/gamer/self-made genius. He and his group of friends start out innocent enough, skipping school to play a game. But when a bomb goes off in San Francisco, their homeland, they become captured by Homeland Security. From there, the story becomes a technology driven war of attrition between Marcus’s fellow teens and the government. It is a compelling and terrifying look at what could happen as the United States government goes to extremes to neutralize an internal threat.
This novel is thrilling, full of the choking thought of having your worst enemy be the group you are supposed to trust. There are many points in the early stages of the novel that make you feel the setting well. You are constantly put into situations where it feels like you, not the character, lose people or feel hopelessly lost yourself. The setting, when it isn’t on the internet or main characters’ houses, can give off a very real, close feeling. You also are given enough insight into the characters to start to feel for them, especially during the early parts of the narrative. The most realistic feeling in I felt during this narrative was a growing, infectious paranoia. I truly began to fear the walls themselves, wondering what kind of people my government’s employees really were. Which departments I could trust? Which would readily take me away to control the people around me? The story does a remarkable job turning those we have learned to trust so deeply into the bad guy.
The “trust nobody” feeling of Little Brother is what kept me into it. Cory Doctorow’s writing is at first appealing and witty, but falls short and becomes repetitive uncomfortably quickly. His style feels like an attempt at comedy, and his language is so lighthearted that I almost lose track of the serious tone that the characters situation calls for. The laughs fall too short to actually call this book a comedy. Some people refer to Doctorow’s writing as glorified blogging. The masses are correct. The novel’s focus is lacking. Doctorow fills space that could be used to write a compact, concise story with descriptions of concepts and terms that he uses in the book. This may be an attempt at pushing into the first person point of view as fully as possible, as Marcus is the kind of kid who loves to teach himself as much as he can get his hands on, but it comes off as a drag on the reader. The book is constantly sidetracked by descriptions of random things Marcus knows that range from a paragraph to, several occassions, a full page.
The language posed another issue to me. It felt like Doctorow was trying too hard to play the part of a hot headed young teen. The sound of the book felt unnatural. It felt like someone who was trying to play the character of a teenager, but a forced, stereotypical teenager. For most of the book, I wanted Marcus to stop talking, and for a third person narrator to take over. You could never get behind Marcus on an emotional level. He had four modes: Doctorow fueled blog-like rants on minor things; angry, brooding, authority hating; perverted, unrealistic teenager; and whiny, scared, forced into the spotlight mode. None of these felt like a real human. It is difficult to read a first person novel when you can’t support the protagonist.
Little Brother isn’t a bad book, it just fell short on the expectations that I went into it with. There are plenty of readers who will enjoy it. Anyone who is entertained by the popular young adult novels such as the Hunger Games series and Divergent will be able to find a familiar style of writing and plot structure. Little Brother is also a good entry point for the young to introduce themselves into the cyberpunk and dystopian genres. It is the inflatable kiddie pool of cyberpunk. Any young readers interested in some light, reality grounded science fiction should take some time to read Little Brother.
Little Brother
Cory Doctorow
Self Published via Creative Commons
Published 2007
139 pages
Young Adult Cyberpunk, Light Scifi, Thriller
