CatchingFireMonthlyReview

Okay so it's that time of month again, yes, it's time for the monthly review. Last month was The Hunger Games and this month is the second book to the trilogy, Catching Fire. A brief summary before I start answering questions. In this new attention grabbing story, Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, Katniss has to face new twists and turns. This story includes psychology, romance, action, and new plots into the story of The Hunger Games/ Catching Fire and later on Mocking Jay. Everything is just jumping at her, literally. More love problems along with survival and also new deaths amongst the players and tributes. By the way, I can't wait for the next and final book, it should be out around August or during Summer. Hmm.. I promise that if i read the next book then I'll review it on here just for whoever reads these reviews and find this book interesting. I'll be sure to remember that, i think. Okay so time for the answering of the questions set by Mr. Sutherland.

5. Find out about the author. How did they end up writing this particular book? Is the author's true life reflected in the book in any way(s)?
Suzanne Collins isn't just an author but also an American cartoon writer. She was a part of nickelodeon, little bear (a child's show), and Oswald (a cartoon about an octopus). And she was also the head writer for the Scholastic Entertainment's Clifford's Puppy Days (omg I use to love that show... until I grew up). So the main reason that got her to write the first book, The Hunger Games, was because she was inspired by the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. I have no idea how they inspired her but mehh she got inspired by them. Oh and also her father's career in the air force allowed her to better understand poverty, starvation, and the effects of war. Her father's career helps me understand more on how she got to the whole idea of The Hunger Games and Catching Fire. I wonder how she got the idea to turn all that into a book, wait not even a book more like a trilogy. Oh yeah the Mocking Jay is planned/ scheduled to come out on August 24,2010. Suzanne Collins was one great writer.
Is the author's true life reflected in the book in any way(s)? The answer is yes, because as I stated above, her father was a part of the air force so it allowed her to understand those things I listed above. And she must have been fascinated by Greek mythology because of the Theseus and the Minotaur. This doesn't have to do with anything that reflected her true life, but it is a part of her future. Lions Gate Entertainment has rights to distribute a film adaption to the entire world. Nina Jacobson of Color Force Production Company will be producing it. And Suzanne Collins will be adapting the novel for film herself.

6. If you've read other books by this same author, how does this one compare? (This doesn't necessarily mean you need to decide which one is better than the other, although you can.)
I have read two of her books, as you know, I read the other book by her last month. Same news all over again. The book that I read is none other than guess... like really, you should get this in like a millisecond, The Hunger Games (I mean like do I have to repeat it again?). There's more plot to Catching Fire, and more destruction in this second book. Even though there is a side note, I will pick which ever one I liked best. I pick both. Because they are both good in different ways. The Hunger Games introduced the action and began to build up the tension of the main/ whole story. Catching Fire kept the fire going with the action and new plots, and more twists and turns. So my final decision is... both. xD I wonder what the Mocking Jay will be like, if most of the main actions are already out... I wonder if she's out of ideas. Does she get writer's block like us regular writers? Oh wait, I'm getting off track, okay time to go back.

8. Pick a character that interested you and write about them in depth.
This time I will write about the antagonist... in other words Nancy Quach's/Tieu's favorite character in the entire book, Peeta! And Nancy if you are reading this I did not pick Peeta because of a certain reason, but because he dies in this book sorta (whoops a mini spoiler, actually that was a major spoiler) Warning! If you're planning on reading the book please forget what i just said about Peeta, thank you for your cooperation.
Okay so Peeta, just like in the first book, does really stupid things and is also still in deep love with Katniss. Throughout the entire first two books, Peeta has pretty much stayed the same. He hasn't changed physically nor mentally. While Katniss changed in many ways, Peeta stayed useless. I know this is mean but he is really useless but his heart and love stays strong for Katniss. Peeta will do anything for Katniss even though he can't do much. Katniss on the other hand wants to protect Peeta through the entire game.

This is just an extra little conclusion I wanted to include to this monthly review, I really enjoyed this book and I would recommend this book after people read the first book. Or it wouldn't make sense. Oh and just an ending spoiler for some readers who are lazy to read the actual book. Warning! (Oh hey look it's that warning sign again.) District twelve is wiped out. Wiped out as in no longer a part of history!!! Well that's the end of my monthly review for the book Catching Fire. Thank you for reading this review and good day to you all! ^^

CatchingFireLitCircleLetterThree

Okay so this is the final book section review for this book until the monthly review, so in this review I will type about the final end because I didn't read what my partners wrote so I have no idea on what they talked about. Okay so starting from a random chapter near the end, Katniss is worried about Prim and screams out her name a couple of times. She then hears a soft tone above her, in the trees, she thought that the gamemakers had Prim in the trees but when she clearly heard it. It wasn't Prim at all it was just a jabberjay. A jabberjay is just like a parrot, it mocks or repeats what it hears. According to Katniss, she never seen one nor heard one before and she thought that jabberjays no longer existed in the world of the hunger games. Katniss examines the jabberjay and how the mockingjay was made from mating. The mockingjay is a fused version of the jabberjay along with the mockingbird. Katniss just couldn't stand it and hit it in the throat with an arrow. She removed the arrow and threw the horrid thing into the forest because it was so horrid that she didn't even have an appetite for it. Okay that's enough of the mockingjay, jabberjays, and mockingbird talk, now it's time for the most powerful line in the entire book.
"...Don't," I whispered. But Gale is not one to keep secrets from me. "Katniss, there is no District Twelve." When I read this last and final line, i thought to myself, wait did they eliminate district twelve the home district of Katniss and Peeta? Just to make things more interesting did have to kill off the districts one by one. From that point of the ending of the book, I thought was the district crazy or was it just me? I mean like why would they put people in danger just for entertainment. Have they tried to play the games themselves before picking random people from random districts to participate in this horrible game? I bet not.

KungFuHipHop

For this week I shall do a movie review for a Chinese Movie besides of a Japanese one. To begin, the title is Kung Fu Hip Hop. The movie was released in 2008 with English subs to help translate the mandarin and Cantonese languages of this film. This film combines the ancient style kung fu with the modernized style of dancing, hip hop and disco dancing. This is a heart warming tale about two men who are bravely pursuing their dreams of becoming to Ultimate Dance King. And along with becoming the ultimate dance king, they are trying to capture the attention of the beautiful deejay. The two men who are pursuing their dreams in this movie is Jordan Chan and Nam Hyun Joon. And the beautiful deejay is Fan Bing Bing.
Jordan Chan played as a mechanic who begins to dance when he feels the rhythm of the music, in other words, he's a natural born dancer. One day he was selling items outside of the club that Hyun Joon and Fan Bing Bing were working at, and when he heard the music he began to dance really well. The security guards saw him dancing from a camera and said that he was really good and by mistake the screen in the club was switched to Jordan dancing. After many unfortunate events, Fan Bing Bing meets the mysterious man who dancing outside of the club. And later she helps Jordan to win a special dancing tournament/competition.
Nam Hyun Joon finds out that she helped them get into the finals, so he becomes jealous and asks her to stop helping him, but she doesn't stop because she began to have feelings for Jordan. So they practice and practice. Oh! Nam Hyun Joon is in a separate group from Jordan's. In the finals, Hyun Joon and Jordan are competing against each other. The ones giving the score are the audiences, they vote by how many fans cheer them on. When everybody finished dancing, Nam Hyun Joon's team won, but they won by playing dirty or his manager played dirty. His manager bribed the audience to vote for Hyun Joon's team. When he found out about this, he got extremely mad and gave up the main prize and asked for a redo or final final match. And from here on, I won't tell you what happens unless you read next week's blog post. In the next blog post, I will tell you the ending and also write about the actual actors and actresses.

Hmm... actually you know what since I need about 79 more words to this blog post. I shall talk about my day. I woke up, got ready for school and headed to school. Then at lunch after the unity week assembly, I went home to get my badminton stuff and headed towards school. Then after school, I changed my clothes and went to practice. We sprinted then worked on footwork, my legs gave in on the second round of footwork. But I took a deep breath and over came it. Oh yeah before we did footwork, we all did 100 sit ups and 50 push ups. Maybe that was why my legs gave in on the second footwork activity. After all the "warm ups", the captain taught me and three other girls on clearing while the others played games with each other. After the preparation to that, we worked on Clear, Drop, Drop, Clear. If we did one mistake, we would be punished. It was horrible. So after practice, I was dead tired but had to walk home, I'm lucky I live near the school. So when I got home, I ate, and showered. And here I am typing up this blog post before it's due at 11:59:59 PM. xD

CatchingFirePartOneAndTwo

Since Alameda's spring break was included to our reading assignment and Mr. Sutherland didn't assign homework except for finishing part one and two (which I already read before it was assigned!), so that was an easy assignment. So in this literature circle letter, I have to combine part one and two together in one blog post. Two parts, one blog post. Okay so on with the actual assignment.
We last left off when Katniss and Peeta won their first Hunger Games. Yay! Not. Because it's not over that fast. In this book, Catching Fire, Katniss and Peeta re-enter the games as returning players or the tributes and they run across another problem. It's not a life or death problem but more of a love problem. Peeta already thinks that Katniss's love for him is fake and part of a show. But will Peeta notice that the one Katniss loves is none other than Gale, her childhood friend. In short, Gale loves Katniss, Katniss loves Gale, and Peeta is madly in love with Katniss. And the key strategy for winning the games is Katniss and Peeta's "romance". Well for Peeta, it wasn't a strategy. Gale must have felt really heartbroken watching Katniss and Peeta lovey-dovey in the games. And for the Victory Tour stage, they'll have to become lovers once again. I wonder what Gale felt when he found out Katniss and Peeta had to be lovers again. And it was a death match again. Hmm... the one you love having a fake "romance" with a boy from your district and the girl you love might die in a game. I wonder what he felt (Sarcasm).
Later on Katniss meets two older women of the age of thirty five or so. They were wearing peacemaker outfits/ uniforms. Katniss examined the girl's face, and asked who they were. Her name was Twill and the other was Bonnie. Apparently they recognize her from the games and knew who she was. They escaped district eight to go to district thirteen. But district thirteen was blown to smithereens!! The wanted to flee from district eight because of an uprising that happened there. Bonnie had an injured leg during the time Katniss met them. Katniss later gave them food, because Katniss is nice like that. And they were out of food at the time.
The mockingjay is once again brought up into the story. Is the mockingjay some mystical birdor just an ordinary bird? It is on the cover of every book! I think that the mockingjay is the main point of the trilogy. Because well the mockingjay might help save someone from a horrible death, or it has some mystical power. Everytime Katniss enters the game she wears her one mockingjay pin as a memory of the people back home. I wonder how they'll add the mockingjay pin and the theme into the next book, when they keep eliminating districts!! (Whoops, that was a spoiler for the ending!! xPP)
Here are some questions for my fellow readers:
1) What does the mockingjay resemble in this story?
2) Everybody, why do you think they eliminated that district in the end?
3) Uhh... I can't think of anymore questions for this part!

Goals

In this week's blog post, I shall answer Mr. Sutherland's, my English teacher for my sophomore year, question. His question is "What are my current goals as a writer?" That is a very simple question to answer in about 300 words but since he extended the requirement now it's 500, so it won't be as simple as I thought. To start this off, I will remind you readers about my writing goals from the other quarters. That quarter or two quarters ago, I wrote that I wanted to write about... I'll just rephrase it "In my last statement of purpose, I included that i would write about my vacation during summer, badminton, and anime. So far i have completed part of my goal from the old statement." The goal is still the same, I guess, I need to write about my vacation a summer ago. I wonder if I can skip this goal, or never reach it. Right now, I'm thinking of not blogging about my vacation, because it might end up like Nathan Wong's vacation blog with fifteen (15) different parts and each about one of his days there. Here's Part One: http://wongyingjie.blogspot.com/2009/09/hongkong-part-1.html And here's Part Fifteen: http://wongyingjie.blogspot.com/2010/02/hong-kong-part-15.html. It'll be too late to start my vacation blog anyways, so if I'm lucky enough and get Sutherland for my Junior year, then I promise that I'll type/ blog about my adventures across the sea. Okay? Pinky swear. (Cough, if I remember about this promise and pinky swear and even this blog.)
To start with my official new goals that I will be typing about is to finish the Second Book of The Hunger Games. And type the Lit Letters for three parts and also the monthly review. For my regular blog posts, I might end up typing about new anime that are coming up and also new mangas. And in two months from now when I finish my Art 2 mural project, I'll tell you about my experience and also the progress of the painting. Even though I started by painting and getting the boundaries of the painting, the real challenge hasn't started yet. Which I'm worrying about because I have never painted anything like this before. I mean it's an animal and it's on the wall. This is a first for me. Oh well, can't wait to see what it comes out to be.
If I run out of topics to write about after these new goals are complete then I'll ask my colleages on what to write about or think of a random topic to write about like how I've been doing for the past three quarters of my time in this English class.
Hmm... I still need about fifty words after that paragraph, so I'll talk about how I want to improve on my writing skills. I think my writing skills has gotten really sloppy lately, because of my procrastination problem. In my opinion, my writing skills from last year was way better than this year because of the writing class I took, Creative Writing. I should get back to writing normally and skillfully like before, but I still have many things to improve on. I will not be satisfied with my writing until it improves alot! xD

TheHungerGamesMonthlyReview

The Hunger Games, written by Suzanne Collins, is the first book in its trilogy. This book is thrilling, adventure, blood and gore, romance, physical, survival, and also about psychology. The story starts in a town North of America in Panem. Panem is divided into 13 different districts. And each year each district randomly picks two people in the age range of 12 to 18, one boy and one girl, to represent them in a yearly game, The Hunger Games. The winner of the game is someone who can live at ease without worries of the future, but they'll have a horrible past. The main character is Katniss Everdeen, or some people know her as Catnip. Katniss is a 16-year-old girl who lives with her mother and younger sister, Prim (who was chosen for the games, but Katniss eventually volunteered and saves Prim from entering the games.) Katniss and her family lives in district 12, which used to be Appalachia, is a poor mining community called the Seam. Katniss provides food for her family by hunting in a forbidden area with her friend, Gale, an 18-year-old boy who also lives in the Seam, and with whom she has a small crush on. Along with Katniss, who volunteered for the games, a 16-year old boy (same age as Katniss), Peeta was chosen. This may be a spoiler for the romance part of the story but, as time passed Katniss grows fond of Peeta, and later discovers that Peeta has had a crush on her for some time. This leaves Katniss with a horrible dilemma because she also has feelings for her friend, Gale. So a love- triangle is created. Okay so now is the time to answer some questions.

Number one: What was the author's purpose(s) in writing this book, and how can you tell? How well was this purpose achieved?
The author's, Suzanne Collins', purpose is to teach young readers about hardships in life, and if not for technology, we would have a hard time living and surviving this so called messed up world. Throughout the whole story, Suzanne kept throwing hardships towards Katniss, to prove that the unexpected can come flying towards you without you knowing yourself. I can tell by reading the point, Suzanne clearly states the main purpose throughout the entire first book. There were surprises here and there, we couldn't predict what would happen next. It was amazing. The purpose of the book was clearly stated like what I said before, and it was greatly achieved. The author has amazing effects and description to scare young readers to depend on family and friends and also not to overuse technology. I'm not really sure what the author's real purpose was, but I think this was what she wanted to state. Or I think it was. Throughout the entire story, Suzanne stayed on the same topic of stay positive and it will reward you in a grateful way, which can be anything, death, the right to stay alive, another harsh life ahead. Anything can be thrown at you. Just stay positive and do what you should do in the future. This first book of the trilogy taught me many lessons and I hope that I would remember all of it.

Number four: How would you describe the author's style of writing? What's your opinion of the style?
I would describe the author's style of writing as something that's extremely detailed and also something that can blend psychology and romance together. My opinion of the style is that I enjoy this type of style because it shows great detail and also helps me have an imagery of the days and things that happen. It helps me have an image of all the blood and gore, and also the sweet moments of the love triangle between the love birds, Katniss and Peeta along with Gale. Different styles of writing help different people in both reading (understanding) and also imagery. Different people requires different styles of writing. Most people enjoy imagery but others just want to read it and understand. This book, The Hunger Games, helps with both because this style of writing is very brilliant, in my own opinions.

Number eight: Pick a character that interested you and write about them in depth.
For this question, I pick Katniss Everdeen, because she's the main character and also she's really interesting to write/type about. To start off, Katniss Everdeen is six-teen years old, older than me by a year, and her sister was picked for the Hunger Games. But she volunteered last minute to replace her sister, Prim, and entered that game. There she met many different people from different districts and it also includes Peeta who lives in her district. So Katniss entered the game, and did what ever was necessary to survival in this entertaining game for sponsors. The whole point of the game is to kill off everyone besides of you and also survive with sponsorships from people watching your fight. In this game, Katniss developes a new feeling towards a special someone during the games. But that's another story for another day. So Katniss got many sponsors from the romance that's building up as you keep reading the first book. And so her sponsors pitched in to buy her a little ten ounce or so of medical ointment for wounds, bee stings, and any other form of wound and hurt. That magical medical ointment was very expensive but very useful when it came to survival. Okay so later on, Katniss used the ointment and also her friend, Rue, used some medical leaves nearby to patch up her wounds from bee stings. And survived for that chapter of the book. Later Katniss finds a special someone and heals him. That's as far as I can spoil it? My opinion of Katniss is someone who cares a lot about friends even if they do end up hurting them or back stab them. Katniss is just too heartwarming and kind.

That's the end of my monthly review.

TheHungerGamesPartThree

Yes, I finally finished The Hunger Games a few days ago, I think. Long story short, the third part of the book is mainly about the end of the game and also the relationship between Katniss and Peeta, on and off screen. Since Nathan Wong's blog lit circle letter 3 explained the main point of the ending, romance. And I haven't read Nancy's or other Nathan's and I'm pretty sure Andrew is still working on it, I have no idea on what they're writting/ have written. So I'll just pick something else to talk about, maybe about the last moments of this game.
Katniss only had one arrow left, the one that killed Cato. Cato is the person from District One, i think, and Cato also stabbed Peeta on the leg. (Peeta depends on Katniss for survival during the hardest times of their challenge.) So Peeta unzipped his jacket, freeing Katniss, and she grabs her last arrow with her frozen fingers and grips it. She stares into the dim light, and figures out where her prey was from the sounds from his mouth. "Pity, not vengeance, sends my arrow flying into his skull." Best line ever. The cannon then fires in answer to Peeta's question on whether or not Katniss hit Cato or not. Both Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark won the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games. And if you read Nathan Wong's lit circle letter then you would know that Peeta got a robotic leg after the games. And if you haven't yet then, Peeta does get a robtotic leg.
Question time!
1: Do you think Peeta should have died near the end, leaving Katniss the only winner?
2: Did you think Cato was a strong opponent towards Katniss?
3: What really happened near the conclusion of the games?

The End.