Cycling

I just finished the book It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini. In this book Craig a depressed teenager. Craig often refers to the cycling which is when he realizes all the things he has to do and how stressed he is. And in everything that is going on he realizes he just doesn't want to do anything. Craig can relate most of his depression to the stress and the cycling.

I understand what Craig is talking about with the cycling but not in the depressed way. Sometimes when I'm stressed out I think of all the things I have to do and I get even more stressed out and try to push everything away and just not do it. Sometimes just in my mind I think of something and than that leads to another and then my brain will take a pause and I'll just thing "How did my thoughts get there?" I never really know whats going on in my brain. This is defiantly different than what Craig is going through because I'm not getting so stressed out and confused that I just stare into space.

Whenever Craig talked about the cycling I felt bad for him. Going through that all the time must be tough. Going through that once a month is tough. But never getting anything done just adds to the stress. Every time he goes through the cycling and doesn't do anything it just adds more stress. Even when I go through my version of the cycling I never don't do something I just do it later. If I never did anything then I would maybe be in Craig's position which sounds kind of scary it would be hard to think of that. I don't want the cycling to happen all the time so this book motivated me to try a little harder and not do the cycling anymore.

Beginning and Middle: How Big is the Change

At the beginning of Its Kind of A funny Story by Ned Vizzini you learn about the background of Craig and why he's depressed. The beginning goes back and forth between current and before he was depressed. It was a little confusing but it made sense. I thought this was a great way to start the story because you know what is happening and you also know everything that has happened in his life that is relevant to the story. I thought that even though this part of the story dragged on I thought it was necessary.

In the middle of the story the story gets faster. Its not more interesting though. In the middle of the story Craig goes through some changes. I'm still reading the middle of the story so I don't know exactly how it goes but it written very well. It has good writing so I don't lose interest or get confused while reading it.

They are similar because they are both very well written. sometimes I hate books that are referencing something that is a very important part if the book but never saying what it is. Ned Vizzini never left anything out unlike other authors and I really enjoyed that about both parts of the story. These parts of the story were different because one was just saying what used to happen and one you get to see his thoughts in the present and not just in the past.

What would you do if you had powers?

*SPOILER ALERT*


I just read Vanished: Part one When lightning Strikes by Meg Cabot is a book about a girl who gets struck by lightning and gets psychic powers where she can now see where missing children are. She is tracked down by the cops and they begin thinking she has kidnapped these kids. It forces her to expose her powers. This of course causes the military to want her. She agrees because of her brother who has mental issues and was having a lot of trouble with the news cameras. After she finds out one of the children "she found" didn't want to be found she gets scared. She escapes the military base finds the kid and saves everybody and pretends her psychic powers went away.

How far would you go to make up for something you never thought would happen? Have you ever tried to do something you thought was right and accidentally ended up affected somebody's life in a horrible way. Jess did in When Lightning strikes by Meg Cabot and now all she wanted to do was to help. If i were in Jess' shoes i would not go as far as she would but i would try. I think Jess went a little to far trying to make up for it but on the other hand i would never really ruin somebodies life like that but if I was close to ruining somebody's life it would be hard to do what Jess did. She turned her life around to help him.

Jess changes a lot through out the story. For example at the beginning she was very selfish and wouldn't do anything for anyone. She was struck by lightning and boom everything changes. She is nicer and all she wants to do is help people because she can. If people are in trouble all she wants to do change so that she can help people. This differs from before in a very good obvious change.

Can you hold on?

Keep Holding on is a book about a girl in high school who has one friend, a single mother and some boy issues. I thought the most interesting part of the book is the rising action. After the introduction when you realize that not only is she having social issues that every single high school kid has, her mother is the main problem. Her mother blames her whole life on the girl. The girl even calls her mom mother because she feels uncomfortable with her. Her mother had a baby at eighteen and says the reason her whole life was screwed up because of her. In the rising action she struggles with her mom and she struggles with her boyfriend and her crush.

I think the most interesting part of the rising action was the part with her mother. This was also the part with her friend not knowing about it and her not wanting to because she is worried about how she would react. Her mom never has food for her she's getting too skinny. It isn't that her mom never gets her food its that she never gets her good food, for example, she gets her mcdonalds. She doesn't get her food for lunch she makes mustard and mayonnaise sandwiches. She doesn't want anyone to know her food issues with her mother. Another thing is that her mom doesn't get her any clothes. She is stuck with the same clothes the worn out baggy clothes also she doesn't do the laundry. She is stuck doing her own laundry. Her mother has a certain schedule for when she can shower and its never when she wants to. Her issues with her mother to me is what made this book different from other books with a girl with social issues.

On the other hand the thing that made it just like a book with a girl with social issues was her boy issues and popularity issues. She had one friend a secret boyfriend who wouldn't let her tell anybody about them and never went out in public with her and a crush on a boy who she was certain didn't like her at all. As the book goes on and she gets stood up by her boyfriend forgives him and continues being with him in secret you realize how desperate she is for some friends any kind of boyfriend even if it's not the boy she wants to be with. She gets stood up by him and then she figures out he has a girlfriend when his girlfriend catches them together. It is interesting to me that she didn't scream at him either it wasn't that he was cheating on her he was cheating with her and she acted like she knew all along. This of course lead to more bullying at school. But worse than other bullying they shot her with paintballs and her mother barely did anything about it. I loved this book and it was different and similar to other books i've read but in a perfect way. It had the perfect balance between the good and the bad and even if it had a perfect ending you know it wasn't actually perfect.