Hole in My Life Book Review

Hole in My Life was written by Jack Gantos in 2002. This book tells of his teenage years, right after graduating from high school. He managed to get caught up in a drug running scheme. We hear about the joyful days spent sailing a ship full of hash, and also about the gruesome nights spent in solitary confinement in prison. This story focuses largely on the life experience that Gantos gained during these times. The main character is named Jack, and he is 20 years old. The story takes place in California among other places, in the 1970’s. Jack is confronted by a man offering him a large sum of money if Jack only helps him smuggle marijuana into the U.S. jack accepts, and soon gets entangled in the glories and perks of drug running. Eventually, karma catches up, and everyone involved in the operation gets arrested, and thrown in jail.
The theme of the story is that there are laws and rules for a reason, and abiding by those laws is usually the best choice. In this book (and in his life), Gantos did not follow these rules, and was punished. The mood of Hole in My Life is very energetic. Jack is discovering a whole new world. This is his first time on his own, and he travels, writes, and has fun.
I enjoyed reading this book a lot. I liked how the author developed jack so well that I actually felt as if I knew him. I felt invested in the conclusion of the story; I was sad when Jack got caught, I was nervous while he was in jail, and I was ecstatic when he got out. This one of the many aspects of Gantos’s writing that makes it so enjoyable to read.

Third Quarter Outside Reading Book Review

Serena by Ron Rash. Harper Collins, 2008. Genre: Fiction

Serena is the fourth novel written by Ron Rash. The newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton move to the mountains of North Carolina. There they have a logging company, and George also has a son that he had with a local girl. Serena quickly proves that she is worthy of the respect of every man in the camp. Serena learns that she is incapable of bearing a child, and so she tries to kill the baby that Pemberton had with the local girl. Pemberton tries to protect the baby without Serena knowing, but she finds out. This causes a rift in their relationship, adding tension to the plot.
“Together this lord and lady of the woodlands ruthlessly kill or vanquish all who fall out of favor.” (Book Jacket) This quote sums up the general idea of most of the story. Pemberton and Serena, surviving in the mountain wilderness, making their permanent marks on the lives of everyone the come into contact with.
As you can guess, the conflict of the story is the fact that Serena wishes to kill Pemberton’s son, and he has to try to protect his son, while at the same time appeasing his wife. Apart from the well-developed conflict, the setting was described with great detail. Rash uses uncommon adjectives to describe some things, but it always leaves you with a clear mental image of the scene that he wished you to see. The time period, 1929, is also portrayed very effectively. The characters all wear the type of clothes that would be worn in the in the 1920’s, and the dialect also sounds as if Rash actually traveled back in time and studied the dialect and diction of the era.
It may seem odd, but the writing style of many authors annoys me a great deal. At first I thought that Ron Rash was going to be another one of those authors that I can’t stand reading. Well, it turns out that my assumption was far from accurate. I am not sure whether it is the balance between contemplative thought and hectic commotion, but something just kept me interested in the story, even in the slowest, simplest parts of the story. I would gladly read another one of Ron Rash’s stories, and I very well may do just that next quarter.

Sunrise Over Fallujah Book Review

Walter Dean Meyers has a gift for portraying the atrocities of war, but also for shedding light upon the thoughts of the soldiers. I recently read his new book Sunrise Over Fallujah, which is the sequel to Fallen Angels. The story follows the young Robin Perry, an African American eighteen year old as he survives his tour of duty in Iraq. Robin is the nephew of Richie Perry, the protagonist of Fallen Angels. The story takes place in Iraq at the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom back in 2003.
Robin signs up for the Army after graduating from high school, much to the dismay of his parents. He gets assigned to a CA (Civil Affairs) unit, and his squad’s main goal is to basically show the civilians in Iraq that the Americans do not just want to kill them all, but we want to help. Throughout the story he becomes close friends with another African American soldier in his squad named Jonesy, who is a “blues guy”. This relationship plays a major role in the story, as it helps to accentuate the theme of the story which is that people are typically good, and are willing to risk their lives in order to protect others. There are several possible conflicts of the story, but that one that was most obvious to me was the internal conflict of Robin. He wants to believe that he is helping the people in Iraq like everyone is saying he is, but Robin has a difficult time believing that after witnessing American troops kill many Iraqi civilians with misplaced shots and airstrikes. Robin battles with this from the beginning of the book until the end.
As I read more and more of the story, I realized that it was oddly similar to Fallen Angels in many different ways. In Sunrise Over Fallujah, many of the soldiers are African American, just like in Fallen Angels. Also, Jonesy is very much like Pee Wee from Fallen Angels. The plot was also very much the same. During both books there was moderate action, with some chapters being intense, while others were laid back, and at the end of each book there was one battle scene in which a main character was either injured or killed.
After contemplating it, I don’t think that I would recommend this book to someone who is looking for a thrilling war story, but maybe to someone who is just looking to learn a little bit about the conflict in Iraq. Sunrise Over Fallujah seems to be written in a more simplistic style, with very few words that confused me, and a story line with relatively no twists. If I were to recommend it to someone, it would be someone in seventh grade or below.

Fallen Angels Outside Reading Book Review

The Outside Reading Book that I selected is titled Fallen Angels. The book was written by Walter Dean Myers. The story takes place in the year 1967, and is about a black seventeen year-old from Harlem, named Richie Perry, who joins the United States Army. Richie is soon sent off to fight in Vietnam, where he meets and becomes friends with another soldier named Harold “Peewee” Gates. Apart from Peewee and Richie, the main characters are Monaco, an Italian, Lobel, a Jew, Johnson, an unusually strong black soldier, Sergeant Simpson, an intelligent and brave leader, and Captain Stewart, a greedy and selfish commander. Richie struggles with the difficulties of war, and, although he is only seventeen, he is quickly forced to transition to manhood.

Fallen Angels is told in first person point of view through the eyes of the protagonist, Richie Perry. Throughout the story, Myers effectively utilizes literary devices such as foreshadowing, imagery, and symbolism. An example of foreshadowing in the story was when Richie’s medical file was incorrectly processed, and although he acquired a knee injury playing basketball, he is still forced to be part of the combat. This hints that many things in the war may turn out to be much different than he originally expected. One example of imagery was on page 40, when it says, “There was a shard of metal protruding from Jenkins’ chest. The blood gurgled out of the wound it made and sprayed along the concave metallic surface. He tried to bring his hand to it, to touch it. A medic had reached him and pushed his hand away. Jenkins’ face was white and twisted as he struggled to look down at his wound. There were bubbles on his wound as he struggled for a final breath, and then that, too, stopped.” One example of symbolism is the dog tags that were lost in the fire when the bodies of the dead soldiers were burned. Those dog tags symbolized the lives of the soldiers, and how they were lost, almost without any meaning.