Flowers for Algernon- 50 to go

Now THIS is a good book. It was about a retarded man (book's words not mine) named Charlie Gordon. He undergoes a surgery to make him intelligent, and the book is written from the perspective of  reading his progress reports throughout the time the surgery is affecting him.

The book had a very interesting writing style, at the beginning of the book, when Charlie is still stupid, the writing is filled with so many spelling and grammar errors that it is almost illegible.

After the surgery there is a noticeable difference in the writing, the errors become fewer and less severe gradually, until the writing is of excellent quality. This shows more than anything how Charlie is becoming more and more intelligent.

I found this gradual change in quality very impressive, an author not as experienced or talented as this one would likely have written the whole thing perfectly, or went from horrible to perfect in the course of a single page, as if the surgery made Charlie a genius instantly, which is far from the truth.

The gradual change shows incredible skill by the author, and it is something that even I, an aspiring author myself, would have never thought to do.

The book itself made me think about the people who I consider to be slackers because they act stupidly often. Seeing how Charlie so desperately wanted to become smart makes me think that maybe those people aren't slackers, maybe that's the best they can do.

Thinking about this makes me think about the people who get good grades and so I consider them hardworking, even if they get these grades effortlessly. These grades don't mean they work hard, they just mean that they were born with a high level of intelligence. In some cases they may work hard, I can't make a generalized statement about this, but it seriously made me think about how I view other people.

To those people who I thought were slackers, I can tolerate them better now that I think they are just not that smart, which sounds strange, but knowing that they are doing their best makes me accept them more.

The converse applies to the people I thought were hard workers, now I view them with a more fair perspective and see that many of them are actually slackers, which makes their grades not reflect as well on them as they did before.

This book was a true classic, I loved it.

Fantastic Voyage-51 to go

The first book on the list that I read, one down, 51 to go!

I actually read this book called "Fantastic Voyage" without even noticing that it was on the list, and I was surprised to find it on the list after finishing it

I enjoyed the book, though it seemed to lack much back-story.

The book was of the sci-fi genre, and took place on a futuristic Earth, there were, to my mild disappointment hover cars, exceptionally precise robots, really fast jet planes, all the regular cliches of sci-fi, but oh well, the author of this book, Issac Asimov, basically pioneered Sci-Fi (along with  Ray Bradbury) so I suppose he created these things that other authors made into cliches

Cliches aside, this version of Earth had what seemed to be two large nations us and them, no real names were given, but it was established that we disliked them and they disliked us and we had been at a stalemate in the war for a long time, so the cliches continue, but without even the satisfaction of having names to put to the sides... this made me grit my teeth a little, but I read on

Now there is this scientist named Benes who supposedly has defected from the Other side and is coming to us with knowledge that will make us win the war

the Other side is obviously angry about this, and worried that Our side will win the war with this knowledge so they try to assassinate Benes

the attempt ultimately fails, but it creates a blood clot in Benes' brain that regular surgery can't remove and that will eventually kill him

So in desperation Our side gets laser, a few crew members and a submarine and miniaturizes them to be injected into Benes' bloodstream to remove the clot themselves

The story is all about their voyage through his body, which turns out to be much longer than planned, and it is also about a race against the 60 minute time limit before they de-miniaturize and kill Benes regardless of the success of the surgery

I won't say more about the story, some of you may not have read it yet and I despise spoilers


Now overall I liked the book, but would I recommend it? I'm going to restrain judgement here, if you like sci-fi and need a book to read this one isn't bad, but if you are a non sci-fi person looking for your first sci-fi book to give a shot, this is not the book for you

I don't consider this one a classic, but others do, and the opinion of one reader is outweighed by the opinions of many.

anyways the book was a good read, nothing special, but it was good enough to be worth my time

until next time folks!

Purpose

well most of you people who find this are most likely people my mom gave the URL to and therefore you must have an idea of what this whole blog is about

However, since this is on the internet and there is the possibility that someone else could stumble across this I might as well give said person a way to figure out what this is all about

To keep things short and sweet, I have a list of over 50 "classic" must-read books that I have been given to read by my mom to read for homeschool

Now in order to show my mom that I have read the books she is having me create this here blog so that I can blog about the books I have read

I'll be talking about many aspects of the book, if I liked it, what it was about, if I'd recommend it or not, etc...

You may see your favorite book up here be praised, or the exact opposite, I am an individual person and whether I like a book or not is my opinion.  Please refrain from comments along the lines of "You like/dislike this book? Are you out of your mind!?!?" without giving specific points to try to change my mind.  I will personally delete any and every troll entry (this also applies to people who were invited here who do know me, but I think that you will not be as rude as that seeing as you know me and I know you.)

If you have suggestions to add to the list of books (which I will eventually post here... eventually) I will consider them, but I cannot guarantee that they will be read, seeing as the list is sizable already.

thank you for your patience, and support, lets move on to the first real blog post shall we?