Book Review

The fantasy genre is a wild card in the book world, the themes and plots of each can vary from far in the future of our world or a complete other medieval world.  This variation makes it difficult to judge after reading only about ten of them I can only really begin to skim the surface.   The structure of these books always consists of something extraordinary coming to be, then a hero rises and through some marvel of science or magic or something along the lines prevails either widely or barely making it through.   In examples that I read, such as Glasslands the series that associates itself with that book are Halo books and they have humanity far in the future, 2552 to be exact, we have perfected Trans-Light travel and have colonized other worlds and were finally becoming peaceful after an insurrection, another sentient empire made up of many aliens had made contact with us and made it clear.  We were to be exterminated like vermin.  We had a military that was no match for superior “Covenant” technology, everything they had was better, but they were adaptive not innovative or inventive like us, we had a group of 75 genetically and chemically engineered super soldiers, called Spartans, which at first were no better than other humans until they captured armor from the aliens and we innovated it to fit our needs.  Now having Nuclear Fusion meant there was almost unlimited energy for Starships and for Spartans armor which came complete with energy shielding just like the Covenant’s only ours could withstand more and recharge faster.  We had a means to drive away the alien threat, but they discovered something important, we had been trying not to lead them to our planets to save them but they found our military stronghold, Reach, The Spartan team was sent in divided to fight in Space and on the ground, the Captain of the Spartans Vessel had to destroy a navigation database that had the coordinates of Sol, the name of our home star Earth, so the Master Chief who headed the Spartans took that mission and sent the rest to fight on the ground, they destroyed the data but at a huge cost, the overwhelming numbers of covenant killed of the rest of his Space operation team, and worse still the Covenant was “Glassing” or burning the planet with Plasma weapons, The Captain of Pillar of Autumn had to pull out and bail on the failing battle fast, which meant leaving Spartans to die on the ground.  Being the only surviving Spartan, Master Chief had to continue on with is mission, as the Autumn jumped out system, they had done so randomly to go away from human colonies, found something, Called “Halo” this weapon of destruction even more deadly than anything we could ever think of had killed the ones who fostered our survival, The Forerunners, who sacrificed themselves using Halo to destroy the Flood.  This disease feeds only on sentient life and could not be allowed to spread soothe chief destroyed Halo with the flood on it, after it had infected and killed everyone on it but him, the Halo saga continues with The Master Chief Spartan 117 or John, going back to Earth for a bit of rest that he didn’t want.  He got his wish, on a random Trans light jump the Covenant found earth but thankfully only in light numbers because they were surprised they found it.  The Chief fights them back with the help of his Artificial Intelligence named Cortana who was smarter than anything ever, and some marines, the covenant jumped out system but not before the chief boarded a ship and they followed them through the wormhole and found another Halo after fighting through a large amount of the covenant he was hit with a high powered airstrike which knocked him unconscious and flung him into the water where he was picked up by a “Gravemind” or brain of the Flood.  The Gravemind sent him and a Covenant Suicide soldier to places where they might find something of use for him, the chief was sent right to the Covenant Flagship above Halo and the Arbiter to the human one, ironic right?.  This book was written by Karen Traviss and was superb, Sci Fi fans will enjoy it very much so.

Top Five

top five

What is a book?

A book is something with words on pages and generally has to be good storyline and plot, most are bad but a few are very good, that is a book

Blog post 7

In my mind in order for a book to be considered non fiction it must be 1600% true if any word is not true it should go under fiction.  Non fiction means its true do not deviate from the facts it might make a good fictional stroy but not a true one, those who get non fiction books want truth.  It does matter about half truths, lies are terrible things and should not be used, if they want to write a good stroy take it to another genre.  Shelds is wrong we need those lines so they fall into a place in book stores and for critics to be more specailized, all books may be different but they share some things, we need to keeep it that way

Readicide

Literary fiction in my opinion less worthy than Genre fiction, Genre fiction is by far the best.  It's enjoyable, easy to get addicted to and has the same morals as the "Classics". If schools made a shift to these books that we enjoy then maybe more literary adults could be forged as kids.  In my opinion Commercial fiction is by far the best compared to literary fiction because commercial fiction has more freedom to make a good plotline and good story that I can immerse myself in completely.  While I think that they should change to better books, I would have to say that if they keep making us take notes and tests then by all means ruin the books I don't want to read rather than possibly ruin a potentially great book with that.  While readicide is bad please keep ruining the boring books for me.  Literary fiction is really no longer relevant to us as 21st century kids, no job i will ever apply to will chack to make sure I "read" Macbeth, they just want to see that i have the degree and finished school and my qualifications, if I have any, they might check to make sure I know how to read.

Black Hawk down trailer

book to movie

Black Hawk Down: The movie adaptation was only slightly different from the book , the only parts that really had to be cut out were all the different points of views that the book reads.  There weren't enough minutes in the movie to show that.  Another thing that was cut out was the Malaysian drivers fleeing form the Rangers instead of picking up those who were uninjured foricing them to run the whole way back to base.
Parts I believe are essenstial are when the two Delta Snipers rope down to defend Durants Crash site and both die there but hold off a huge crowd.  This saves Durants life and makes the D-Boys heros.
Another scene that is nescessary is obviosly the main part of the mission which is securing the prisoners.
and lastly the next is when Stebbins gets hit with the rpg and hurts his foot which is ironic considering he was just hit with a rocket.
Two parts I would cut would have to be all the things that happened during the night and all the radio conversations which would get boring.

The real Hunger Games Book 1 Porject

There should be real hunger games sort of like a game show maybe not to the death but similar maybe to a KO but still very fun to watch. Well this comes from the hunger games part of the hunger games, ironic yes but a great part and much of the climax is involved.  This could broaden the audience to those who don’t take book advice and younger kids to want to read them, make shirts for each person involved and give them roles make a Katniss and a Peeta and a Rue and Clove.  This makes the characters come alive more and make you want to read to see what the character is really like in the book.  It would feature challenges like survivor where candidates are faced off and can make alliances and so on.  There could be a place like traders world called the Hob, there could be bakeries named for Peeta and hunting stuff/archery for Katniss.

                The way the show would work is people would volunteer to try to be certain characters and then would be selected as tributes; they would then enter a whole path similar to the one in the book.  They could be left somewhere to have to survive while completing the challenges if they lose they are eliminated or “killed” announced by a cannon shot in the distance and since not all candidates will be together seeing this at night a projection of those lost will be put in the sky at night.  There could also be the feasts like at the end of the games where they lure you in and let you kill each other. There could also be the victory tour like at the end for the winner and there would obviously have been supplies in the cornucopia for those daring enough to get them.  They would start near each other and would be able to fight to the supplies or run off to the area around them in an unknown area.  There would be something similar to the force field around the arena so they couldn’t just leave and there would be things to drive them together and make them battle it out.  

                `They could have the author Suzianne Collins choose who plays what character sort of like a real life movie.  There could be many other ways to get money as well such as district clothing and like a badge to say you’re from there and you are randomly placed in a district based on who you are and whether or not you’d be a career or not.  They could have a restaurant where they divide you by districts and such and each place is themed, that would be quite fun.  They could make bumper stickers and license plates with districts on them as well.   

Why I Read

I read because I can imagine the characters, the way the look their habits and actions other than what the author says are mine.  I imagine the setting, how it looks, the smells, way it feels, all mine, all in my head, it’s something that nobody can change, nobody else can have.  I read because it is whatever the author made it and what I make it, it’s not like a movie where everything is decided for you and you don't need to think at all this is flowing smooth and I can take it anywhere, they don’t stop you from reading a book while on a plane, but they stop almost anything else.  I can best of all stop it simply by closing it, no remote, no power cord and no battery life, its ink and paper and it holds our world within them.