Delirium

     I recently finished reading Delirium by Lauren Oliver. The book is about a girl named Lena who lives in a society that has recognized love as a disease. 'It has been sixty-four years since the president and the consortium identified love as a disease, and forty-three since the scientists have perfected a cure.' page 1 first sentence. Along with love being a disease there are resisters, or as they call them Invalids, who refuse to believe what the society believes. They live on the outskirts, blocked out by an electrified fence to protect the society from the disease. What the society doesn't know is that some of the Invalids lead normal lives inside the society's walls communicating and transporting food to the wilds, including a boy named Alex who changes Lena's mind about the society.

     In the beginning of the story, Lena believes the society and is excited about getting her procedure, counting down the days till she will be cured. 'Many people are scared of the procedure. Some People even resist. But I'm not afraid. I can't wait. I would have done it tomorrow, if I could, but you have to be at least eighteen' page 1 paragraph 2. When I read this my impression of Lena was a clone of the society, like she never did anything bad or never got in trouble, just stayed perfectly in line. It also seemed in this part that the society was very opaque, only giving out a little information and everyone blindly agreeing with it, and thats why I think Lena found it so easy to believe, just following the rules and not stopping to think why there is a rule in the first place.

     Towards the end of the book Lena no longer believed in the society after she meets Alex. Alex explains to her all the different lies the society has been telling its people about love, the Invalids, the border line, and even about her mother who she thought killed herself driven mad with deliria. 'I've never gotten within five feet of the fence. We've been warned not to, had it drilled into us. They told us we would fry; told us it would make our hearts go haywire, kill us instantly. Now I reach out and lace my hand through the chain link, run my fingers over it. Dead and cold and harmless, the same kind of fence the city uses for playgrounds and schoolyards. In that second it really hits me how deep and complex the lies are' page 279. When I read this part of the story I could really feel a change in Lena because this is really the very beginning of when she sort of starts to become a rebel and really starts to understand the lies of the society. It also seems like the opaqueness of the society is gone now and Lena could see right through the society instead of the blindness and only being given a little bit of information. 

     I really think that part of the theme in this book is that the person you love could help you change your mind about something because it was really after Lena met Alex that she started to rebel against the society and see all the lies that were drilled into her brain.

Post # 2

   I read Yasmin's response to the future of us and she explained that the book was about these two kids that lived in the mid 90's that had no clue what computers were because they weren't invented yet and then they found themselves fifteen years later with their own Facebook accounts that showed what has been happening in theirs lives including where they lived. They didn't know what was going on and every time the main character clicked the refresh button her life changed completely. Since the main characters were the only ones to know about Facebook they knew the futures of their friends not even their friends knew. The description of the book that Yasmin summarized sounds so good that I think I want to read this book.
   Another response I read was by Romiya on every soul a star and it was about these three people Ally, Jack, and Bree and how different they were because Ally was moving to  the suburbs, Bree was moving to a campground,and Jack was going to science summer school. It also described how similar they are, how they were all searching for their place in the universe and how they met because of an upcoming eclipse. Even though they were all different they still became friends. Not everyone in a group of friends is the same because when they're all different they each have they're own personality which is important and if people are different in certain ways other friends in the group can help someone else in the group out if they're having a problem or they could bring something different to the group.

Make Lemonade

     Over the summer I read Make Lemonade by Virgina Euwer Wolff. The book is about a fourteen year old girl named Verna LaVaughn who has been looking for an after school job, when she finds one with a seventeen year old single mother of two named Jolly. Jolly has a two year old son named Jeremy, a one year old daughter named Jilly and a very dirty house. LaVaughn's job is to take care of the kids while Jolly works all night at the factory, until Jolly gets fired after her boss tried to rape her. Now there's a seventeen year old girl living in a poor town with two kids, no job, no money, and no time to look for a job. LaVaughn helps Jolly by babysitting for free while Jolly looks for a job and even signs her up for a moms program at High School after learning that she dropped out to take care of her kids. LaVaughn watches as Jolly slowly turns her life around.
     The beginning of the book was really depressing because of how they described the town and how it was really dirty, there were a lot of bad people wondering the streets, and how only a handful of students actually went to college to go on to get a job that actually payed decent money.Then in the end things seemed to get a lot better not in the town particularly but in the characters because they were actually doing something about their problems and to make their lives better. I think this book was about discovering your problems, finding a way to solve them and then actually going out and solving them.