In “The Journey to the Center of the Earth” Julies Vernes, depicts a story of a young man who through chance discovers a secret message from a long dead scientist about how to get to the center of the earth. Though he is convinced that it is madness his uncle who is a geologist forces him to come with him to attempt it. The rest of the story is about their journey and the problems which arise on the way.

Though this book is very famous, I found it to be somewhat dull and uninteresting with very little character development, and an overall not very exciting plot. Furthermore, I did not feel like the authors voice was very engaging. Because of all these reasons I do not feel like I should choose this book for the book to write a essay on at the end of the year.

In the book The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss, creates a story of life progression of an ambitious, ill fortuned young child. His parents are murdered one night by a mysterious evil character who is later revealed as a “Chandrain” what educated people thought of as an evil storybook myth. After being impoverished he manages to make his way to a city in which after selling all of his possessions is able to go to the fabled university to his further his hope of finding out who the Chandrain were. This books major themes are of perseverance and hope and the lack of fulfillment for life even after achieving great success.

In Theodore Boone’s book, The Street Lawyer, Boone creates a realistic fiction book describing the story of a rich white lawyer named Micheal Brock working in Washington DC as he comes to see the impoverished homeless people in a new light. Boone creates a vivid image of how Micheal begins to accept and understand the difficulty of being homeless, before eventually dedicating his own life to helping them at great personal cost.

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This book is told from two main perspectives, both of whom are Chinese scientists. One scientist is brought up during the Chinese cultural revolution and witnesses her father who is a scientist get killed during a demonstration. After this, silently angry at the world for everything that has been done to her, she eventually gets taken into a Chinese scientific research base where it eventually becomes apparent that this base’s purpose is to communicate with aliens which they eventually come in contact with. And because of her anger at the world she calls the aliens to come to rule and make it a better place. Some features of the book that I liked is that it has impressive character development along a interesting plot, but still contains lots of differing perspectives throughout the story creating deeper levels of complexity and more realistic, in that way, interaction between characters.

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In this sequel to the book Dune, Frank Herbert continues the story of Paul after he had become emperor. In it Paul struggles with morals about the great power which had been given to him. Having a gift of foresight and thereby seeing the imperfectness of any society that he could create, he eventually submits to his ethics and sense of moral duty and sacrifices himself to keep control of his kingdom and prevent the far reaching effects of the violent religious movement that based their faith in him as a god.

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Throughout this book the author, Erich Remarque, describes the experience of a young soldier named Paul Bäumer in World War 1. He, using a first person perspective, describes all the losses of a solider from this time period, how all they knew was war and because of that, how much was taken away from them. The themes that Remarque creates over the course of the book include the importance of contentment and the need for companionship.

If I had to write the end of year essay right now on one of books I choose, I would do it on “Dune”. I would choose “Dune” because it, using a fictional story, presents a story with many large scale metaphors to the real world and provides many different interesting, competing perspectives on the same plot. Specifically throughout the book, which takes place in a futuristic society where each “great house” (the galaxy is split up among these) is on the verge of collapse, many times each of the characters have fear. However the author does a good job giving different perspectives from each of the characters on how they deal with and what actions they take off of the fear. Analyzing how each of these various characters with their respective perspectives are portrayed by the author can give insight into the authors deeper meaning and themes of his book. In addition, the great houses and their interactions in the book can metaphorically represent a fear the author has of what might happen if the world continues to become more and more divided and conflicted than it was before.

Pages read: 194/296

All Quiet on the Western Front is a war novel, published in 1958, taking place in world war 1. It is written in a first person perspective with the protagonist, Paul Bäumer being a very young german soldier. The protagonist throughout the story experiences much sorrow and continually reflects on the impact the war has had on him and the others of his generation. The book has several different setting each of which provide a new perspective to the protagonist, and therefore the reader, on the war. The author starts the book by describing the Paul’s situation; he was not on the front but was near it preparing to go to the front when the need arises. At this time in the book the author describes what Paul considers the standard life of soldier, but also reveals constant flashbacks providing the reader with further insight on Paul’s situation. These flashbacks continue throughout the story and mainly highlight the contrast between how his life used to be and how it is now because of the war. Eventually Paul is called to front and the author describes in great detail a charge by the enemy(France) and the counter attack by the germans. Throughout these bloody depictions the author emphasizes the emotional impact this has had on Pauls life and Pauls understanding of horrors and reality of war as opposed to the patriotic descriptions given by his teachers and others. The author constantly uses metaphors to compare the constant hardening of Pauls emotions to becoming as animals, fighting for the sake of survival with no rationalization or reflection. Thus when Paul finally leaves the front and gets leave to go home on military leave he is unable to face what had happened, and unable to feel at home with everything that has so far happened to him.

Pages read: 330

This is a science fiction story about a Chinese scientist who is reacting to an event that happened about 40 years ago. As the protagonist starts understanding more and more the event gradually is revealed to the reader. It eventually becomes clear that aliens were contacted secretly by a scientist who after witnessing her father killed in demonstration during the Chinese cultural revolution, remains bitter towards the world. After that character received information that the civilization she contacted was looking for a new place to live and if signaled again would likely be able to determine the location of earth and invade she again messages the aliens asking them to invade the planet feeling that humanity was in such a bad state that the total overruling of aliens over humans would be overall beneficial to the world. However, the premise of the aliens wanting to leave their home world is because the world in which they live on has three suns and creates a real life situation of the Three Body Problem.

Last semester I completed 3 books for the english independent reading. Out of these I liked Dune the most, because I liked the plot, the character development over the course of the book and the pace at which the writer wrote. In contrast to the other book that I liked where it seemed a bit long winded and not very focused, including some seemingly irrelevant details. However, that book was more directly part of a series, so I might appreciate all the details more if I finished reading the rest of the book. The other book I read, I thought was very bad, because the way the writer wrote was not descriptive and was very disconnected throughout the flow of the overall story. In addition the plot was not very interesting, and there was very little character development.