Thursday, October 8, 2009

The Time Machine

For a scientist, future technology is the ultimate knowledge to have. The Time Traveller has been building a Time Machine for many years so that he could go into the future and obtain the knowledge of the future. H.G. Wells's The Time Machine fascinated me wit the Time Traveller's interesting journeys through the future.

The Time Traveller has just finished the Time Machine that he has worked very hard for a very long time to complete. The day after he has finished the invention, he decides to try to travel in time. At first he is afraid to go very far so he only travels a few minutes ahead of his present time. When he finds that travelling in time was not as bad as he had thought it would be, he travels decades into the future.

By the time he stops, the Time Traveller is now in the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One A.D. (802,701). Shortly after landing in this year, he is greeted by a group of small people. These people, called the Eloi, welcomed the Time Traveller with much interest in how he got to them. They were also interested in his clothes, matches, machine, and height. The Time Traveller observed the diet of the Eloi and their daily habits. They ate fruits and vegetables and were only seen in the day.

The next day the Time Traveller was going to his Time Machine, but when he got the the field where the Time Machine was left, his machine was not there. The field was empty. After many hours spent on looking for his invention, he became very tired and decided to search for his machine throughout the rest of the week. He thought that a week would be plenty time to observe the future and find new knowledge.

During this week, the Time Traveller encountered another group of small people. This group was called the Morlocks. The Morlocks, unlike the Eloi, were nocturnal and were carnivores. Their food was the Eloi. The Time Traveller had a lot of trouble with the Morlocks. They were constantly trying to eat him.

After many days of searching, the Time Traveller finally finds his Time Machine. The Morlocks had kept the machine hidden in a dark place so that they could try to capture the Time Traveller. He has to fight with them to make his escape with his invention. Instead of immediately going back to his present time, the Time Traveller decides to go even further ahead into the future.

A few decades after the year 802,701 A.D., he stops again and observes his surroundings without leaving his Time Machine. This far into the future, there is not much left of the Earth. The sun is growing bigger and is getting closer to Earth. He decides to keep travelling further. When he has observed more future dates, he decides to return to his present time.

Back in the present, the Time Traveller cannot wait to tell many people about his journeys. He wonders, though, if anyone will believe him.

I recommend The Time Machine to people who enjoy short science fictional books with a lot of adventure.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Angels in Pink-Kathleen's Story

Everyone needs some fun every once in a while. Kathleen thinks that she has too
much responsibility at home and doesn't have time for fun or time to volunteer as a
Pink Angel with her friends. Lurlene McDaniel's Angels in Pink (Kathleen's Story)
kept me on the edge of my seat with the constant action and different points of view
by the different characters.

Kathleen McKensie's home life is not the kind of life that anyone would want to
trade theirs for. Her mother, Mary Ellen, has multiple sclerosis (MS) and can
barely take care of herself. Kathleen got put as Mary Ellen's care taker at the age
of five and never has any time to do anything for herself. She has no time to act
like other girls her age do. When Kathleen's two best friends, Holly and Raina,
persuaded her to join a volunteer program at Parker-Sloan General Hospital as a Pink
Angel, Kathleen thought that this was going to be an awful summer and worried a lot
about the health of her mother who was left at home by herself. Later, Kathleen
finds out that this program is just what she needs to break out of her shell and
have a little fun.

Lurlene McDaniel moves from one of the main characters to the next in every
chapter. I like this style of writing because the book is not as boring with all of
the different events going on with each character. The drawback to this style is
the confusion that the reader gets from each chapter. The different chapters
confused me because they didn't seem to fit together until I read on a few more
chapters and the chapters before were all summed up. Lurlene's type of writing is
more serious and realistic than funny. There are a few funny parts in her stories,
but most of her story seems very realistic than comical. When i read Angels in
Pink, it seemed as if i was really in the hospital and at the characters houses
witnessing all of the action because the descriptions of the settings were very
elaborate.

Kathleen didn't like talking about her home life to other people besides Holly
and Raina. Most of the time, though, she didn't want to talk to them about her
situations at home, either. Mary Ellen was my least favorite character because she
was always so needy and complained way to much. She always wanted Kathleen to do
everything for her and Kathleen had to stop everything she was doing to make her
mother happy. If Kathleen came home a little later than planned from the hospital
or from running an errand, Mary Ellen would get very emotional. On Kathleen's first
day at the hospital, the orientation went a little longer than she thought it
would. When she walked in she saw that her mother had been crying. When she saw
Kathleen she said "I was scared. I - I thought something bad had happened to you."
Then she refused to eat unless Kathleen was right there eating beside her.

I recommend this book to people who like books that make the reader feel like
part of the story. Also Angels in Pink is a good book for people who have interests
in personal, realistic books.

The Host

Earth has been taken over by Souls. There are only a few humans remaining and
they cannot seem to find each other. Melanie has just been captured by the Seekers
to become a Soul but she is fighting to take her body back so she can save the rest
of the humans on Earth. Stephanie Meyer’s The Host interested me with the rough
adventures of Melanie and her Soul, Wanderer.

Before Melanie was captured, she had been hiding with her little brother,
Jamie. They had been in hiding for a total of two years. The Souls have taken over
Earth and the rest of Melanie and Jamie’s family. They think that they are the only
two humans left on Earth. One night on a raid for food, Mel finds that they are
wrong. Looking for food in an empty house, Melanie was scared by a figure that had
jumped out at her and held her down. She thought that this figure was a Seeker that
had found her and was going to take her to get a Soul put in her and then kill her.
The figure turned out to be Jared, another human survivor. After finding Jared,
Melanie and Jamie did not struggle as much for food and shelter. Jared seemed to be
a miracle worker. He gave Mel the hope to believe that more humans had survived.

After a few months with Jared, Melanie got the courage to leave Jamie with
Jared and try to find her cousin that she believed had also survived. Melanie
traveled many days to Chicago where she was then caught by a Seeker. Mel’s body had
a Soul inserted and her memories were supposed to be used to find other humans.
Every other human host had been used for this purpose. The difference with Melanie
was that she did not die during the operation. She was still alive and in her body
when the Soul, Wanderer, was controlling her. Melanie fought to keep her memories
hidden from Wanderer. The main memories that she blocked were those about Jared and
Jamie. A few weeks after the insertion of Wanderer, Melanie began talking to her.
After the first annoying conversations between them they became friends. Mel began
trusting Wanderer with her secrets and broke down the wall that blocked Wanderer
from seeing her memories. When Wanderer saw Jared and Jamie, she fell in love with
them and decided not to reveal them to her assigned Seeker but to go find them and
be with them.

Wanderer began her journey through the desert in her car but had to give up
the luxury because the desert became too rough. She also ran out of gas. The only
hope of finding Jared and Jamie was to follow the lines and landmarks that Melanie’s
crazy Uncle Jeb had given her many years ago. On this long adventure, Wanderer and
Melanie almost die of dehydration.

On the night that they had given up on finding their loved ones and almost
died, they are found by a familiar face from Melanie’s memories. This face belonged
to Uncle Jeb. They had finally found his hideout. When Jeb gets Wanderer into the
caves, she sees many more humans. Jared and Jamie had made it there also. The only
problem was that Melanie’s body now belonged to Wanderer and she is a Soul. Humans
do not trust Souls no matter who their hosts are. The only humans that trusted
Wanderer were Jeb and Jamie. They kept her safe because they had a theory that
Melanie was still alive and was sharing her body with Wanderer. Wanderer just hopes
that these two humans will be enough to keep her safe from the rest of the humans in
the caves and from the angry Seeker that refuses to give up searching for her.

I recommend The Host to people who enjoy long books with a lot of action and
adventure.

619 pages