Running the Risk by Lesley Choyce

       I have recently began to read the book Running the Risk by Lesley Choyce. So far I am really enjoying this book. It is about this teenager, Sean, who was in the middle of an armed robbery at a burger shop in a suburban town. I like this book because the chapters are fairly short and because I feel like if I wrote a book like this, this book sounds like how my version would sound. In this post I want to zoom in on the main  character and narrator, Sean.

       Sean is a very interesting character to me. He is interesting to me because he has a couple different sides to his personality. One side is the side that is laid back when an armed robber comes into a burger shop in the middle of the night. I feel like this side of him is the one who wants to rebel against his parents and live on edge, but can't quite make it there. He also has the side to him who is kind of clueless about what to say to a girl. I mean, he knows what to say, but in his head, he always seems to be wondering if whatever he said was the right thing to say. These two sides of Sean kind of contradict each other. They do this because the first side I mentioned is the side that wants to break out of the little suburban town, and maybe try some different more edgy things, and the other side is making more relationships or attachments to the small suburban town. 

      I think that the author, Lesley Choyce, purposely put the different sides of Sean in the story. I think this because if the main character has a few different sides then the story becomes more complex. If the story is more complex then the reader will spend time analyzing the book, which usually makes it more interesting and more intriguing to read.

Bad Boy by Walter Dean Myers

        The book Bad Boy is a memoir written by Walter Dean Myers. I'm not very far into the book yet, but I already have a feel of what its about. It's all about Walter Dean Myers's life growing up in Harlem. I also think it's about some of the challenges he faced being "quick tempered" as the book described him, and all of what it was like for him in his teenage years.

        Something that I found interesting about this book is that based on what I've heard of Walter Dean Myers story, he didn't have it so good. He was growing up in Harlem with a poor family and he was faced with a lot of racial issues. I found this interesting because most of everything I've read so far in the book is really positive. If I grew up the way he did, I don't think that I would have such a positive attitude when I am telling the story of it all. Maybe he is being so positive because when he was younger he tried to look for the good in everything. for example in the book he said "What I loved most about Harlem, though, was the music." This is not a negative statement about how he faced racial issues, or about how his family had trouble getting by, it's about his good memories. Maybe another reason why he is saying positive things is because it's the beginning of the book and he doesn't want to just drop a bunch of heavy stuff right on your lap when you first start the book.

        There could be many possible reasons for why he chose to have such a positive attitude when he is telling the story of his partially rough life, but I have to read further into the book to figure out why. I am interested to hear the stories of his childhood, maybe some of the negative things to really see what he thinks of it as an adult author.

Non-fiction Post for January- Steve Jobs The Man Who Thought Different

This book is a biography about Steve Jobs written by Karen Blumenthal. In this biography Blumenthal discusses Steve Job's life and his road to his incredibly successful company Apple. The main idea of this book is to inform the readers of Steve Jobs' life. In the beginning of the book Blumenthal tells us where Steve Jobs lived as a kid, how he was adopted, and where he went to school. Further into the book she talks about the friends Jobs made in his teens and twenties. His friends were very tech savvy just like him. Then, Blumenthal goes on to talk about his college years and how he dropped out of school. Later in the book Blumenthal goes into the years that Jobs invented the Apple computer and how his career took flight.

I think the author wants us to think about how much Steve Jobs has had a big impact on the world. The author makes us think about this by explaining all of the times that Jobs invented things and how successful they were. I think the author also wants us to know that even though Steve is a very successful man, he is not the easiest man to work with. In the book she says, "He sometimes cried when things didn't go his way and regularly took credit for the ideas of others." In this sentence Blumenthal highlighted the problems that Jobs had in the business world. She put that sentence in for a reason, and that reason was to point out that he was difficult, and make us think that even the most successful of people have their flaws.

Something I take away from this book is the knowledge of Steve Jobs. I also take away the lesson that you don't just become a billionaire, you have to work your way up to it. I also learned that some of the people who are successful don't always have the best personality all the time, they're only human. My thinking has been changed because before I read this book I just thought of Steve Jobs as the guy who invented my iPhone, but now I look at him as a man who had a goal to do something great in his life, and he accomplished it.

Steve Jobs The Man Who Thought Different post#2

        The book Steve Jobs The Man Who Thought Different is a biography by Karen Blumenthal. This biography is about how Steve Jobs started off and how he ended up in his career with the very successful company Apple.

        In this book, Blumenthal discusses how Steve Jobs had friends who shared a mutual interest in technology. His friends were Steve Wozniak and Bill Fernandez. They were also described as deeply interested in electronics just like Steve Jobs. Wozniak was about four years older than Steve and Bill. He knew much more about electronics so Steve thought of him as a mentor figure. Blumenthal said that they all had a great bond over electronics.

        I have not gotten far enough into the book to know exactly how the relationship between these three friends end up, but I think I have an idea. Even though Blumenthal says that they have this great bond in the beginning, I don't think that it is going to last much longer. Wozniak and Fernandez are described as very smart, but for some reason I think that Jobs is going to grow them out. I could be completely wrong, and they could actually have credit for all of the Apple companies success. I could also be right though. It was mentioned that Steve Jobs is a very difficult man to work with.If he doesn't get his way then he throws a fit. Eventually if Fernandez and Wozniak are continuously working with him then they are bound to run into some disagreements. I am just guessing that Jobs working behavior might push away Wozniak and Fernandez at some point. After all it was Steve Jobs who ended up with the billionaire company.

Steve Jobs- Pros and Cons

      The book Steve Jobs The Man Who Thought Different is a biography about Steve Jobs, the inventor of Apple. This book tells the readers the ups and downs of Steve Jobs' life. I have just recently started reading this book, but so far I'm really enjoying it. It's interesting for me to learn about the guy who invented the amazing products that I use on a daily basis. In the beginning of the book the author Karen Blumenthal talks about the way Steve Jobs works well in the business world of electronics and how he does not.

      Steve Jobs is a pretty stubborn man. When his ideas are not considered and he doesn't get the way he wants he will start to cry. I'm no business women, but I have to say that is a pretty immature move. In the book Blumenthal discusses Steve's early years in school. He was no angel then either. Steve would be the trouble maker who never followed any given instructions. I wonder why Steve never wanted to follow directions. I guess that the title of this book really works, he didn't only think different but he did everything differently as well.He rebelled against the societal rules of school and of the business world. I think that the author included these bad details about Steve Jobs to tell the readers that even the most successful of people have their flaws.

      Blumenthal doesn't only discuss Steve Jobs' flaws, but she also discusses the positive things about Steve Jobs. First of all, he is an amazing inventor. Since he was a young boy he has always been ahead intellectually. In fact, he skipped a grade during elementary school. When Steve was younger he developed an interest in building. His father (who he was adopted by) always showed him how to take things apart and put them back together. Many of these thing were car parts, but as Steve grew older he became more interested in electronic building. Since Steve was so intellectually advanced he was very good at the difficult work of developing electronics. I think that the author talked a lot about Steve Jobs success to really emphasize on the fact that he made this really great effect on our society.

      So, after reading a small amount of this book, I already know that Steve Jobs, a very successful man, has his own pros and cons. He is not good at following instructions, but his outcome of doing things his way has brought us many devices that make daily life just a little bit easier. If I had to choose the way that the whole world looks at Steve Jobs, I would make them look up to him as an amazing visionary of our times. Even if he is a little bit misbehaved, I mean who isn't.

Non-fiction: Ashlyn Blocker, The Girl Who Feels No Pain

This article is about how this girl Ashlyn Blocker feels no pain. In the article the author, Justin Heckert, Explains Ashlyn's home life. He tells us that Ashlyn is a normal girl, who goes to a normal school, and lives in a normal house but there is something different about her, she literally can not feel pain.

The author wants me to know that Ashlyn has a very rare disease. He also wants me to know that a disease that sounds like your some kind of super hero, can actually be very harmful. He does this by saying how rare her disease is and how she can't feel a punch in the face, and how she can't feel boiling water, and how she could walk on hot rocks like it is grass. To show how harmful this disease can actually be, he gave examples about how even though she cannot feel the pain it is still damaging her body. Heckert told us about how when Ashlyn was little her parents had to keep an eye out just in case Ashlyn touched something hot or sharp. If Ashlyn got a burn she wouldn't feel it, but she would still be exposed to infection. Ashlyn parents also had to watch her when she was sleeping because she could grind her teeth or bite her tongue off and not even realize it.

I think that the author wants me to feel empathetic towards Ashlyn. I think he wants me to feel this way because Ashlyn's situation is so interesting that if I really put myself in her position it would make the story more intriguing. I also think that the author wants me to feel like her situation is really foreign. I mean I know that it is a rare disease, but I think Heckert is trying to make it sound even more out of this world to make his readers want to know more.

I found Ashlyn's story really intriguing. I think that I mainly found it intriguing because I personally like to hear about crazy diseases like this. I also think that the way the author wrote this article made me even more interested in it. I think that more authors should use the same kind of tactics Heckert used to write his article in an interesting way, but maybe those tactics could be used on an article where someone is raising awareness about an issue because it will intrigue the readers more so that they can do something to help solve the issue.

With Their Eyes- Whose perspective is missing?

This book "With Their Eyes" is about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The book is made up of many memoirs about the 9/11 attack in the view of Stuyvesant students and faculty. The perspective missing in this book are the perspectives of all the people who helped "put out the fire". When I say the people who helped put out the fire I mean all the people who helped with the recovery after the attack.

I think it's great to have the perspective of the faculty and students at Stuyvesant since they were so close and really experienced the attack, but I think this book should have also tapped into the experience of the people helping "put out the fire" after the attacks. This would have been a good perspective to show in the book because it would educate the readers more about what really happened to the community after, instead of just hearing the actual events of the attack and how high schoolers felt about it.

I think that the author, Annie Thoms didn't include the perspective of the people cleaning up after the attack because she wanted to really focus on how the community was effected during the attack and how it changed them. Personally, I think that it would have been good to include the other perspective because it would really dig deeper into how the community had a hard time rebuilding after the 9/11 attacks.