Reading

The books I read this semester are In Defense of Food, Nation, LOTF, Hard Love, The Escape, Hills like White Elephants, 5 People You Meet in Heaven, and Listening is an Act of Love in order from hardest to easiest. I wish I had more time to read more, but I am glad I read this list of books. I think if I hadn't read some of these books, I wouldn't have looked at reading the way I do now.
I know that just from reading summer reading, I have learned a lot as a reader. I learned how to keep track of the story better, that you have to think deep and in between the lines of the writing (not just think exactly what it says), and read more passionately. But, along the way, I also have noticed that I do have some strengths and weaknesses with it. I might be good at comprehending what the book says, but have a harder time understanding what the book might be trying to say in between the lines. I also love reading books, but I don't like annotating as much. I know it is good for you, and helps you understand better, but I just believe that it takes too much time to do.
Next semester, I hope to read more books than this semester, because I know I can. I think just the adjustment with high school, and all the homework overwhelmed me at first, and I wasn't as prepared as I thought I would be. Now that I know what its like, I will try to be as good a student as I can.


Reading times and working times:
Sunday- 30 minutes
Monday- 35 minutes
Tuesday- 20 minutes
Wednesday- 20 minutes
Thursday- 40 minutes

Reading Focus

Simon, even though he dies, has a lot of significance to the book before end even after he died. As we have talked about in class, he is like a "Jesus" figure. He says a lot of deep things that no one else knows. He knows his path, and how it is going down. He may not of made it to the end of the book, but he will be in the atmosphere for the rest of it.
The odd thing about Simon was in chapter 9, when the boys started to horseshoe around him, and start talking about him as an it. Also the boys that were hurting him were addressed as its too. I didn't fully get this until we talked about it, but the way we said it, they were de-personifying. They were acting to the equivalent of animals. Also, when we found out that Simon was the beast. I was so surprised that it was him, but now that I think about it, it does really all fit together. Simon always sneaks around in the woods at night, and the time the litluns saw it was lurking around the woods. It also connects to Simon being the Jesus because he was for there being a beast. Even though he knew all along that he himself was the beast. In one quote, Golding didn't write directly that it was Simon, but gave you many hints and clues to show that it was him. He wrote, "The circle became a horseshoe. A thing was crawling out of the forest. It came darkly, uncertainly. The shrill screaming that rose before the beast was like pain. The beast stumbled into the horseshoe. Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! The blue-white scar was constant, the noise unendurable. Simon was crying out something about a dead man on a hill"  (152). It talks about how Simon came out of the hill, and went into the horseshoe. He doesn't write Simon, but the beast. As they kill him, and he it sent off to sea, he is still in the midst of everyone. After this killing, the island was never the same.

Simon

My focus for the book is the character Simon. He is a very static character, being that he always says the most passionate things. As we have talked in class about, he is known as the same as Jesus, because he always the most "maxim" worthy things. For example, one thing he said always stays with me ever since I read it. The quote says, "The thing is--fear can't hurt you any more than a dream" (82). I think this is an amazing quote that he says, because it speaks perfectly about him and the book, but you can also plug it into real life.
Simon still has his troubles in the book though. He still has to deal with all the troubles of Ralph bullying him, and also his trouble with his seizures. One main place was when he was in a way having a hallucination with the Lord of the Flies. It is directly talking to him, but it is already dead, and a pig! He is feeling one of his seizures come on, and goes into this trance. Simon also knows many things that everyone else doesn't. He knows that people will be rescued one day from the island, but he doesn't say that EVERYONE will be rescued. This must mean that either 1) some people are going to die, or 2) that some people will be left behind. I can't wait to start reading the final chapters, and finding out how everything comes together!

Reading

This week I mainly focused on reading for Lord of The Flies, because I was a little behind.

Monday: 20 minutes
Tuesday: 45 minutes
Wednesday: 30 minutes
Thursday: 35 minutes
Friday: 20 minutes