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This is a very unorthodox blog post, but I'm in a bit of a "silly" mood right now, and I might as well end the year on a fun note.  Also, comments are a very under looked part of the whole blog post cycle (we weren't mandated to write 4 a month for no reason), and I felt a post needed to be made to compile some of the better comments I've read this year. Hope you enjoy! 5th Place- Samuel Alejandro Troconis Barreto  This is a great example of how blog comments should be. Samuel started off by expressing his shock after reading this review, a great way to let others know how a blog post left you feeling. Samuel then goes on to express how the author of this post (James) took the readers through a journey, first by saying he'd gone through a rollercoaster of emotions, but then doubling down on that claim, and elaborating how the blog post highlighted the more sensitive and emotional start in the beginning of the story, to how it turned into a murder mystery. Thes...

       As this school year is coming to a close, I'm going to be doing something that I don't normally do. Besides my first blog post, all of my posts have been book reviews. To finish the year off  properly, I am going to rate all of the books that I have reviewed during the school year:     In sixth and last place is The Marlow Murder Club  by Robert Thorogood. Out of all the books I read, this was the most disinteresting and the most predictable. I vividly remember while beginning to read the book expecting a deep and pensive mystery to take hand. But I was thoroughly disappointed with the amount of plot holes and random "correlations" that were the keys to the mystery. As I was reading this book I believe all I could think of was "blueh bleb esdjafjsaf" as it was also pretty boring!     In fifth place is How It Feels to Float  by Helena Fox. When I read this book, I didn't hate it but I didn't love it. To be honest it was a litt...

            Alright, I think it is time that I finally attempt the blog post I’ve been thinking about doing since first semester. In this blog I will be discussing the lyrical meaning behind a few of Noah Kahan’s songs. At first I didn’t think I knew enough to actually come up with good analysis, but I think I am now finally ready to do my favorite of his songs some justice. For this analysis I will be looking at Young Blood, Come Over, and All My Love. Just because I think all of their meanings are fairly interesting. I hope you all will enjoy this blog! Young Blood: Possibly my favorite Noah Kahan song. This song is a part of his album Busyhead, so I am doing it first so that the rest of this blog can be dedicated to unpacking Stick Season. I think the title alone gives away the major point of this song. ‘Young Blood’ typically serves as a reference to a young inexperienced person. I believe the song attempts to address the young person and give ...

As some of you may have noticed, I have recently been writing many of my blogs on books by Andy Weir ( The Martian and Project Hail Mary ). This is another one of those blogs. Andy Weir’s space books are to this day some of the best books that I have read, and Artemis is the most recent book that I read from Weir and this blog will be a review of Artemis (with no spoilers). Artemis is set in the near future on the first Moon base, and follows the adventures of Jasmine Bashara. Jasmine officially works as a porter, delivering goods to the people of the residents of the base, but also works as a small-time smuggler. Although she has both her smuggling business and her normal job, Jasmine often is short on money. This leads Jasmine to be quick to accept a role in a large-scale smuggling job. The job revolves around harvesting a rare metal called zirconium. Jasmine is approached by a businessman who promises her a large amount of money if she is able to sabotage a competitor's harv...

               As the school year has begun to come to an end, it has gotten more and more busy. With more classwork and the lack of free reading days, it has gotten harder for me to read long books. Therefore I decided to read a book I had gotten from a friend a few years ago, ようこそ地球さん [Welcome Mr./Mrs. Earth], written by Shinichi Hoshi known for his thousands of short short science fiction stories. His short stories are about various topics such as about clever salesman, aliens coming to Earth, and finding new species, but all have some sort of twist to it, entertaining readers from start to finish. He also adds these drawings once in a while which are interesting to look at. I am not sure why he titled the book as Welcome Mr./Mrs. Earth as this isn't a title of any of the stories nor really relevant (unless it has to do with a lot of the short stories being about space). In this post, I want to share some of the stories I enjoyed reading a...

No Brainer is the 18th book in the Diary of the Wimpy Kid Series, and in my opinion, one of the worst yet. This book mainly focuses on Greg Heffley's school experience, and while a lot of the books may do that, almost all the scenes in this book take place in the school. Essentially, Greg's School had some of its worst testing scores yet, leading to massive budget cuts for them. This has led to the school taking some drastic measures to stay in business, such as renting out half of their classrooms to local businesses, while also cutting out all classes that weren't covering any curriculum that was part of the state testing. In addition, Greg's School started letting businesses advertise in any free area across the school, such as on lockers, on the floor, and in urinals, and school lunches also lost a lot of their quality, as the only thing the School was consistently serving nowadays were chocolate-covered tofu dogs. These changes however can only keep the school runn...

     Today Tonight Tomorrow  by Rachel Lynn Solomon is a fiction book starting with the high school rivalry between a boy named Neil and a girl named Rowan. The two teenagers have had a brutal competition between them since the start of high school, and at the start of the book it's the end of senior year and all Rowans wants to do is beat her long-willed enemy one more time. The last thing she wants to beat him in being is the Valedictorian, although she finds out early into the day that Neil has beaten her. After she is eternally crushed by her loss, there is one more thing that she thinks she has a strong chance of winning. The Senior Howl is a city-wide scavenger hunt where people can be tagged out of play. Because the whole grade knows that Neil and Rowan always win, they want the two to be taken out. Because of this, the two have to team up to be able to survive in the game. This scavenger hunt goes on, and with their quirky chemistry and brains, it gives for a...

  In this blog I will be analyzing two of Wes Anderson’s films. For those who are unfamiliar with Wes Anderson, he is a well known film writer, producer, and director, and is famous for his colorful, intense, and unorthodox style. If you have seen Fantastic Mr. Fox, probably his most mainstream movie, you have watched a Wes Anderson film. I will be analyzing in this post, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and his most recent film, Asteroid City. This blog will contain spoilers and may also be… kinda long. SO buckle up! The Grand Budapest Hotel The Grand Budapest Hotel has a layering of different storylines, but the main one is about a young adult, Zero, in the 1930s. Zero becomes a lobby boy for, of course, the Grand Budapest Hotel. The major storyline is Zero’s relationship to the great M. Gustave, the Hotel Concierge. Gustave is a strange fellow, having relationships with many of the hotel’s rich elderly guests. The plot expands when one of these guests is murdered. Gustave is then acc...

  No spoilers are included in this review Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir is a science fiction novel about the end of the world, and the only way to stop the inevitable doom. The book starts when the main character, Ryland Grace, wakes up from a coma with two dead people at his side, having no idea where he is and what he needs to do. He slowly remembers what his role is. He is in a solar system far away from ours. He is there to try to solve a crisis going on on Earth, global cooling. This is destroying crops and causing global problems. As time moves on, he starts to remember more and more about who he is and what he is doing in a solar system far away from ours. Back on Earth the global cooling is being caused by microbes that are stretching in a line from the sun to Venus. There are so many of the microbes that they are taking a significant amount of energy away from the Sun to make the Earth get colder. Ryland is going to the other solar system because scientists believe that ...

Warning: Necessary Football Knowledge Level may be high     During spring break, I had been reading The Mixer  by Michael Cox, which discussed the developments of tactics in the Premier League. Each chapter talked about different changes in the league - from major rule changes to new formations to game changing players - since it was founded in 1992.  Sounds familiar? Well I actually decided to read this book after reading Muhammad Iftikhar's post from a few weeks ago. If you don't know, the Premier League is England's football league (and no not American) which is considered to be the world's best. Chapter 18, "Inverted Wingers", talked about the end of a seven year quadropoly during the eventful 2009/10 season - with a shocking decline in Liverpool, an intense title race, and Tottenham Hotspur's fight for the 4th Champions League spot. Contributing to this was the rise of Gareth Bale - a left back who went from hardly getting minutes to becoming the most...

          Most of February was quite frigid, and as the IFC season was approaching, I was looking for a way to increase my game IQ when the weather wasn't suitable outside. That's how I found the Mixer, by Michael Cox. The Mixers breaks down and analyses premier league tacts, and aspects of soccer pre-2018, and I thought that this would be a good way for me to improve my game.         In The Mixer, each chapter is orientated around one aspect of soccer or style of play, and every chapter is almost narrated as a story. For example, there was a chapter talking about Antonio Conte and how he'd revolutionized an aging Chelsea team by introducing a defensive back three, which would be a part of a very fluid 3-4-3 formation. Conte signed many players with high versatility who could fill gaps in this formation that other teams struggled with, and this was a big reason why he was the only manager to thrive with a defensive back three. Howev...

      I Am Princess X by Cherie Priest is a book I first read in 7th grade. And although it was a quick read, with small chunks of it being a graphic novel, there were deep ideas that were interesting enough for me to want to delve into at the time. Because I Am Princess X  is a book I own, one day recently I decided to pick it up again to see if I still liked the book as much.      I Am Princess X  is a book about a girl who as a child became best friends with a girl named Libby, together they created a character with a story, Princess X. Together with the main character, May's, skills of writing and Libby's skills of drawing could create the persona they wanted. Tragically, a few years before the main part of the book takes place, Libby and her mom die in a car crash which causes May to stop writing about Princess X entirely. Soon after, May moved away and many years passed by. The start of the present time part of the book begins with May...