The Pact; A Love Story (...HOW CUTE)

Okay, so on Friday I was hanging out with some friends and we were talking about how much we love reading (no joke…) this inspired me to read on Saturday. Pretty much all day…so I finished reading The Pact, and it was AMAZING. No surprise there, but still. I don’t want to ruin the ending, because I know how many Jodi Picoult fans there are among us, so I’ll just talk about the middle! A thing I really liked about this book was that it was made up of a combination of flashbacks and the present day (which was actually 2004 or something, but that’s irrelevant). In the present day, Chris was being tried for the murder of Emily, and the flashbacks started off when the kids were very young, slowly until they caught up to the present day, and you found out the truth. I think Picoult chose to do this to show how close Chris & Emily really were. One of the things about their relationship was that when they were being intimate, Emily felt awkward because Chris was like a brother to her. This is something I had wondered about, because I feel like if you grew up so close to someone it would be weird to be in love with them. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone though, because it was super good. It also kind of reminded me of Mary’s Song (Oh My My My) by T-Swift, in case anyone was wondering…

The Pact

I’ve just started The Pact by Jodi Picoult, and (no surprise), I love it! Except for Picture Perfect, which I was never really able to get into, I’ve absolutely loved every single one of her books that I’ve read. They always provide several stories to keep the reader entertained, and often give an insight into a culture or setting I wouldn’t normally experience, which makes me think about how much she must research and get into the mood when she rights her books. For example, in Plain Truth I learned all about the Amish culture, and in Vanishing Acts I learned what it was like to be in jail. I haven’t really seen this yet in The Pact, but I have a feeling I will! Another thing I’ve noticed so far (I’m only about 50 pages in) is that the whole boo is in third person omniscient. Usually her stories switch from character to character among chapters, telling the story from different perspectives. This book does jump around a lot though, from different time periods. It starts off with two couples, the Golds and the Hartes, going out to dinner, and it’s clear that they’re very good friends. Later that night, both couples wake up to a call from the local police telling them that their child has been in an accident. Emily Gold and Chris Harte had been neighbors, best friends, and a couple since their parents could remember. When their parents reach the hospital, the Golds are devastated to learn that Emily has died, from a gunshot wound to the head. Chris is in critical condition, but makes it. Since the two were alone together that night, it is assumed to be a homicide, but Chris claims that it was a double suicide gone wrong. In between all of the commotion, Picoult flashes back to random excerpts from the kids’ childhood, to show how close they were. The thing I found to be really interesting in this book was the lawyer Chris’s parents hire for him, Jordan McAfee. I’m not a hundred percent sure but I feel like he was one of the lawyers in Salem Falls? I think this is interesting that Picoult might have had a character cross over from another book!

Tales of Beedle the Bard

I just read The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a set of short stories that was written by none other than Beedle the Bard, translated by Hermione Granger and compiled by none other than J.K. Rowling. Yes, the real J.K. Rowling. This wasn’t one of those stupid knock off Harry Potter companion books, this was the real thing. And it was good! The book was, as mentioned earlier, a translation of the famous bedtime stories, “The Wizard and the Hopping Pot,” “The Fountain of Fair Fortune,” “The Warlock’s Hairy Heart,” “babbitty Rabbitty and Her Cackling Stump,” and of course, the story that set the tone for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; “The Tale of the Three Brothers.” I don’t want to ruin these for any of my fellow Harry Potter fanatics, but I must say that I recommend this collection to anyone who loves Harry and company, and misses them very much. My favorite of the stories was “The Fountain of Fair Fortune.” It is about a fountain that gives anyone who bathes in it good luck for the rest of their life. It is similar to Felix Felicis, the liquid luck potion that Harry makes in Book 6, but it’s for life. In the story, there are three witches and a knight who are traveling together to reach the fountain. They decide to work together in this feat, even though they know that ultimately, only one of them will get to bathe in the fountain. Each one of them gets a chance to use their personal strengths during their voyage, and by the time they reach the fountain, they have come to accept their lives, and don’t even need the magic potion anymore! This goes to show that sometimes things that seem amazing at first aren’t really anything special. All of these stories have morals similar in theory to those of our Muggle bedtime stories, minus the magic of course! The thing that I liked the most, by far, about this book was the commentary by Albus Dumbledore. I loved Dumbledore. I cried when he died. It was so good to have him back again!

Outside Reading

I just read The Carlyles and You Just Can't Get Enough, which are written by Annabelle Vestry, but are spin-offs of the Gossip Girl series created by Cecily Von Zeisegar. They were both fast easy reads, but were entertaining all the same. I picked them out because I used to read the Gossip Girl series, and I enjoyed them, and I absolutely love the Gossip Girl TV show. It was interesting reading these books for many reasons. The books are about a set of triplets who move to New York City, and go to the same school that the characters from the earlier books went to. Although the only character that is a continuation from the earlier series is Gossip Girl herself, when you’re reading The Carlyles books, you feel like you are reading a normal Gossip Girl book.
The Carlyle triplets, Avery, Owen, and Baby, move to New York from Nantucket, and in a way, they are taking the place of Blair and Serena and all their friends from the Gossip Girl series.
Owen is the oldest, and he settles in pretty quickly. He makes fast friends with Rhys Sterling through swim team, until he learns Rhys’ girlfriend of three years, Kelsey, is actually the girl that he had fallen in love with the previous summer. This complicates things immensely. Kelsey breaks up with Rhys when she finds out Owen is back in town, but Owen & Kelsey’s attempts at a secret relationship fail miserably. Instead, Owen decides to pretend date Jack Laurent, one of Avery & Baby’s classmates at Constance Billiard (Blair & Serena’s old school).
Avery doesn’t click so well in the city, and makes an enemy of Jack Laurent on the first day. Her desperate attempts to host parties, and become the most popular girl in school eventually land her the position of ‘SLOB’, which is basically class social president. By blackmailing Jack, she works her way up the social standings, but has yet to find the boy of her dreams.
Baby, the youngest Carlyle, is probably having the most fun in the city. She manages to get herself kicked out of Constance Billiard within the first week, and then has her mom get her back in when she realizes it probably wasn’t such a good idea. Despite the fact that she just broke up with her Nantucket boyfriend, she finds a whole new group of friends that she ends up having a blast with, and manages to steal Jack’s boyfriend, JP.
Overall, I really like the series as light, fun reading and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the Gossip Girl show and books.

All Quiet on the Western Front

I’m still reading All Quiet on the Western Front, and although I haven’t had much time to read it, I am really enjoying what I have read so far. Baumer, the main character has described some of the setting, and I’m starting to understand the situation. In one of the scenes, one of Baumer’s good friends, Kemmerich is in the hospital, after being shot in the leg. Baumer and his friends Tjuden, Muller, Kropp and Leer go and pay him a visit. When they are there they realize that Kemmerich has had his leg amputated, but he is on so much morphine that he doesn’t realize it. Muller notices Kemmerich’s nice shiny boots under the bed, and is tempted to take them, knowing that Kemmerich will never find a use for them. This situation brings light back onto the fact of how valuable some things can be in times of war. Another situation that stood out to me was when Baumer and his friends were talking about one of their old schoolteachers, Kantorek. Kantorek had talked to the boys about how everyone had their time in war, and for some people it came earlier than for others, and how every mans contribution to the war would be different, but equal. Reading this, my mind immediately flashed back to a scene from The Five People You Meet in Heaven, when the Captain is telling Eddie basically the exact same thing. It’s interesting that there is such a strong parallel, because The Five People You Meet in Heaven is literally the last book I read, and I usually don’t read books about war, so finding something a similarity is odd. I am interested to keep reading and find out what happens to Kemmerich, and what happens to Baumer and his friends.

Outside Reading

So I have yet to find my copy of The Catcher in the Rye, but during my search for the book, I came across another book that seems very interesting. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque caught my eye because of the words BANNED BOOK printed on the binding. I'm not sure how the book found its way into my room, but in all the intrigue I picked it up and read the back. Claimed to be the greatest war novel of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front is the story of a young twenty year old man named Paul Baumer, and his experiences in World War 1. I have only read about ten pages, but I can already tell there will not be a dull moment in this book. It starts off in first person point of view, describing the camp where the soldiers have settled at for the night, filling up on beans and other food. It seems to be a good point in the war for the Germans, because Paul describes the surplus of food and cigarettes in their possession, and how rare this is. He goes on to depict an exchange of chewing tobacco for cigarettes, which reminded me of something my seventh and eighth grade social studies teacher once told us about. I remember her describing the barter systems during the war, and how valuable things like cigarettes were to people for whom they were hard to obtain. It made me realize how much we take some things for granted that are commonplace in our society, (obviously not cigarettes for me personally), and we don’t realize that these are not of abundance in other parts of the world.

Ethics paper annotation

Should there be more laws defending animal rights and addressing animal cruelty or should the government only focus on human rights?


Gruen, Lori. "The Moral Status of Animals." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2003. 7 Dec 2008 .

Lori Gruen is a staff writer for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Her entry in the Encyclopedia is fairly non-biased, because it addresses several different perspectives on the issue of animal rights and the reasons behind them, citing at least 40 sources. The SEP has been around since 1995, and comes from Stanford University, which is a very well known and esteemed institution. It's written for anyone interested in the philosophical views on various subjects. This article is far more in-depth than most of my other sources, and it explains both the absolutist and utilitarian positions, which is unlike most others. Instead of being one-sided, it questions the morality of animal cruelty, and discuss how the utilitarian point of view is not necessarily a vegetarian one.


Cummins, Ronnie. "Let Them Eat Feces." In Motion Magazine 21 OCT 1997 7 Dec 2008 .

Ronnie Cummins is the National Director of The Pure Food Campaign, which is a non-profit organization that focuses on ensuring safe and clean food production and consumption in the country. Her article was published in In Motion Magazine, which is read by many people involved in Human Rights and ethical issues, and contains essays on various popular issues, such as Healthcare, Education Rights, and Affirmative Action. This is a lot more one-sided than the SEP essay. It talks about how in an effort to cut costs, farm animals are being fed their own feces, which ultimately leads to contamination of meat. Farms are aiming to weaken laws against this kind of thing, which means animals will continue to be fed their own feces, something that is completely unethical.