the christmas box

This week for outside I read The Christmas Box, by Richard Paul Evans. My mom read this book and she told me I should read it too. I haven't gotten very far into it yet, but so far it is about a man and his wife and their life. The author wrote this about his own life. He moved to California when he was 14 because his dad lost his job. Soon after college he met his wife Keri. 15 months after the wedding their daughter Jenna was born. The family was having money troubles and were crammed in a small one bedroom apartment. They were having troubles even paying the bills. One day they saw an ad in the paper about a old lady with a big house looking for a live-in family to do her yard work and some housekeeping. They would get large living quarters so they decided to look into it. They go and meet her and everything goes well. They come to an agreement about what is expected and the living conditions. So far this book isn't too exciting, but I haven't gotten too far so I think soon something will happen with a Christmas Box. The last quote is "very good. It will be nice to have someone in the house for the holidays." I think this foreshadows something will happen over the holidays, along with the title that will involve a Christmas Box that will provide some big change for the family.

sand dollar summer

Over break I also read Sand Dollar Summer, by Kimberly K. Jones. This book is for a low reading level, but I needed a new book because I finished the other one. This book is about a 12 year old girl named Lise who is just becoming satisfied with everything in her life and then her mom gets in a car accident. She gets injured and can't walk for a while. This affects Lise a lot because her mom wants to go back to Maine where she grew up for the summer. Lise had been looking forward to summer with her friends. She can see her mom is very unhappy because of the accident, but lucky to be alive. At first she is scared of the ocean, and not happy to be there, but after time goes on she learns a lot of things about the past she never knew before. This summer turns out to be very life changing for her. There is a quote on the cover of the book that says " Don't ever doubt that a mere second can change your life forever." This relates to what Lise is going through because she was finally settled and comfortable with her life, and then her mom got in the accident. This changed everything for her, just by that one moment. This quote really is expressing to people not to take what they have for granted. In just one moment everything can change and never be the same again.

breaking dawn

Over break I started Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer and finished the whole thing. I thought some of the choices Bella made were interesting. Although they turn out bad at times in the end everything works out and Edward and Bella can live the life they dreamed of together. The choice she made to keep the baby even though it was killing her seemed very dangerous, but the Cullens figure out a way to conquer it and for Bella to survive. However, the only was she is able to survive is to turn into a vampire. Bella also decides, after Jacob forces it upon her, to keep seeing Charlie and just not completely fill him in on all the details that he doesn't need to know. This seems to work out fine. One thing I found very interesting about this book was the point of view change. It starts out with Bella telling the story and whats going on with her, describing her feelings, and then it switches to Jacob. He describes whats going on in the pack and what he sees of Bella. Then in the end it switches back to Bella telling. I thouhgt this was a very interesting thing becuase for the first time in the series the reader sees multiple viewpoints and the author has never done this in any of the other books. It makes me wonder why she decided to now in the final book. Over all the book was very good and I'm sad to be done with the whole series.

the kite runner #4

For outside reading I continued with The Kite Runner. This week while I was reading i realized I have been calling Amir, Khaled, which is the authors name in real life. The story is based on his life and Amir is his character. Amir goes to the mans house to find Sohrab and realizes it was a boy who was very mean to him as a kid and who also tormented Hassan. The man brings Sohrab in and orders him to dance. Then he makes the gaurds leave the room and makes them promise not to come in no matter what they hear, and they of course obey. Then the man says him and Amir will fight to the death. Only one of them will remain alive after, and that's who will take Sohrab. He pulls out his brass knuckles and starts beating Amir. Sohrab realizes there is no way Amir will win so he pulls out his sling shot and shoots the mans eye out. Then they can make their escape. Amir searches for the orphanage for Sohrab and realizes it never existed. He calls his wife back in America and they agree to adopt him. They face many complications with getting the adoption to go through. Amir had promised Sohrab he wouldn't have to go back to an orphanage, but that might be the only way to adopt him if he stays for a year. Sohrab is very upset at this news, but they both go to sleep. A few hours later Amir wakes up to someone on the phone telling him the adoption will go through and Sohrab can return to America with them. He goes to find him to tell him the news and finds him laying on the bathroom floor with blood all over. He brings him right to the hospital. When Sohrab wakes up he tells Amir he should've just left him there to die, even after the news that he will be able to return to America with him. Once he is healed they go home to the U.S. Amir does all he can to re-gain Sohrab's trust, but he remains silent. Even a year after returning home Sohrab still won't talk or do anything, he is still disapointed that Amir was going to send him away, his one request was to never go back to an orphanage. One day at a picnic there are kites for sale and Amir gets them for Sohrab. They fly them and for the first time Sohrab looks like he's enjoying himself. This is how the novel ends, although everything is not fixed, it's getting better. Amir realizes all of his mistakes and tries to become a better person and Sohrab is making progress in his new home.

the kite runner #3

This week for outside reading i continued with The Kite Runner. Khaled starts his trip to find Sohrab. An old friend of Rahim Khan, Farid, will drive him. They stop overnight and stay at Farid's brothers house. They have little money but still give him a nice meal. Khaled notices the children staring at him and he thinks they want his watch, but later he realizes it is his food they wanted because they did not get any. Khaled tells them why he is going and the Farid starts being nice to him because he understands now. They arrive and he sees the city has changed a lot since he had last been there. Khaled makes the mistake of staring at the Taliban and an old beggar runs up and tells him not to do that. He gives the beggar some money and keeps talking to him. He finds out the man had been a professor at the same college as him mom and they knew eachother. Khaled likes talking to him because his father doesn't like to talk about it. They soon go to the orphanage to find Sohrab but he is gone. Some officers take a few children every month and the man who runs the orphanage can't do anything about it. They leave and decide they will keep looking until they find him. Later that day they go to a soccer game where Khaled always went when he was younger. The officers bring in two people and stone them to death. Khaled makes a call to meet with a main officer to find out about Sohrab and to try and get him back.

the kite runner #2

This week for outside reading I continued to read The Kite Runner. Rahim Khan starts telling Khaled all about what happened with Hassan. Rahim Khan had gone to find Hassan because he was lonely and for many other reasons. Hassan is very sad when he learns Baba has died. At first Hassan didn't want to leave his new home but eventually he agreed that he would. He and his pregnant wife went back to the house with Rahim Khan. They would not move in, they insisted on living in the shack in the backyard and they would do all the work for Rahim Khan. Hassans wife gave birth to a stillborn baby girl and they burried her in the backyard. They were devestated. Then his wife, Farzana becomes pregnant again. One day an old lady shows up starving and dirty. They soon learn it is Hassans mother. They nurse her back to health and she moves in to an empty bedroom. Farzana has a son and him and his mother become very close. She lived until he was four and then she didn't wake up one morning. Hassan taught his son how to fight kites just as he had when he was a kid, but kite tournaments are soon banned too. A few years later Hazaras are massacred in Mazar-i-Sharif. It hits Khaled all he has done. All the times he didn't stand up for Ali and Hassan. Khaled asks if Hassan is still in the house and Rahim Khan gives him a letter from him. There's also a picture. He finishes reading and then asks how Hassan is. Rahim Khan goes on to tell him about some officers that went to the house and thought it was too big for Hazaras even though Hassan said he was just looking after it. They say they will move in and Hassan protests, so they take him to the street, order him to kneel, and shoot him in the head. Farzana runs out screaming and they shoot her too. Rahim Khan wants Khaled to go find Hassan's son, Sohrab, and bring him back to him. Khaled says he can't, it's Rahim Khan's dying wish. Khaled still won't. Then Rahim Khan tells him Ali isn't Hassan's father. He realizes Baba was and they were half brothers. Khaled gets very mad that no one told him the truth. He storms out of the apartment. He realizes all the signs he should have a long time ago. He also realizes he needs to go find Sohrab to make things better after all the bad he has done.

the kite runner

This week for outside reading I skipped the Twilight series and continued with The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, that I started a while ago and then quit in the middle. Things in Afghanistan are continuing to get worse. Hassan faces a lot of trouble because he is a Hazara. One day after Khaled wins a kite tournament and Hassan runs and gets the winning kite, Khaled sees some other boys torturing Hassan in an alley. He just stands there and watches because he knows if he tries to help he will get hurt too so he runs home. Although he never tells Hassan, he always seems to know. This causes a lot of tension between them. It eventually gets bad enough that Hassan and Ali move out. This is very hard on Baba, but Khaled is secretly relieved. Baba and Khaled go to America to start a new life. Rahim Khan stays to look over the house. In America Khaled gets married and becomes a writer. Baba is very sick and ends up dying. Rahim Khan is very sick. He calls Khaled to Pakistan and says "there is a way to be good again." Khaled thinks about all the people close to him and all that he has done wrong and decides to go. He gets there and finds Rahim Khan is dying. He tells him that he not only wanted to see him before he dies, but also he has to tell him something important. He says that all the years he had lived in their house he wasn't alone, Hassan was with him. He had thought about writing and telling Khaled that, but he wasn't sure if he would want to know. He asks if he was wrong and the truth would be no, a lie would be yes, so Khaled just says "I don't know." Then Rahim Khan says he is going to ask Khaled to do something for him, but first he will tell him something about Hassan.