The Five People You Meet in Heaven (SPOILER)

First of all, this has some stuff that is essential to the plot, so if you plan to read The Five People You Meet in Heaven in the future, I would advise against reading this particular blog. You’ll regret it, it’ll ruin the story. But anyhow, this weekend, I was driving back from Georgia, so I had plenty of time to finish The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Overall, I really liked the book, but either I just wasn’t as focused on the second half, or it wasn’t as interesting. The whole last part was somewhat a blur to me, and I didn’t really feel as though the ending was wrapped up. I will almost definitely go back and read it again though, because I think it will get better with more reads.
Going back to where I left of with my last post, after the Blue Man moves on to wherever people go after heaven, Eddie meets The Captain. The Captain was Eddie’s mentor during his time at war, and he had a big impact on Eddie’s life. There is a flashback to the time when Eddie and four other soldiers, including the Captain were held captives by an enemy army. They were forced to work in a coal mine under very poor conditions, and one of the men died. This had a huge impact on Eddie, and it was the catalyst in his and the Captain’s plans to escape. Finally one day, they escaped and set fire to the mine, but just as they were about to leave, Eddie thought he saw a little person in the mine and went back to save it, putting himself in grave danger. Now, the Captain reveals to Eddie that he was the one who shot Eddie in the leg, because he knew that if he didn’t Eddie would run into the fire and die. The Captain’s story teaches Eddie about sacrifice, and how it was better for him to be sent home from the war with an injured leg than to have died in that fire.
The third person Eddie meets is a woman named Ruby, who was actually the person that Ruby’s Pier, the place Eddie had worked most of his life, was named after. Although they had never met, Ruby explains to Eddie that when her husband Emile was dying in the hospital, he had shared a room with Eddie’s father, and learned about their family through him. Ruby talks to Eddie about how he needs to forgive his father for the things he did in his life, and explains to him the reasoning for his father’s actions.
The fourth person Eddie meets is his (ex)wife Marguerite. I think that for Eddie this was the ‘best part’ about heaven, because when people talked about Eddie, the first thing they thought of was how much he loved his wife. His visit with Marguerite is short, but it is clear that she was sent as one of his five people to show Eddie the meaning of love, and how much it can affect a person.
The fifth person that Eddie encounters in heaven is a little girl, who he doesn’t think he has ever met before. I should probably have mentioned in my first post that when Eddie died saving the little girl, as he slipped away into heaven he felt a little girls hands in his, guiding him. Obviously, I didn’t realize how crucial this was to the plot or I would have mentioned it. So anyway, a young oriental girl approaches Eddie and relates to him the story of how their lives are linked to each other. It turns out that the little girl, (who I thought was going to be the girl he saved at Ruby Pier) was actually the girl he thought he saw in the coal mine when it was on fire, and she was the one who had brought him to heaven. This was a very good twist at the end, because I hate really predictable books. Minus the last few pages, I enjoyed the book and I plan to read Tuesdays With Morrie in the near future, because I really like Albom’s style and characterization in particular.

OR Blog

This past week I have been unable to find my copy of The Catcher in the Rye so I have switched over to The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom. I chose this book because I saw it sitting in my parents’ room and I was looking for something to read on my plane ride over break. The book starts out telling the story of an old man named Eddie, who works at an amusement park that when described reminded me of Navy Pier in Chicago. Since the book is about Eddie’s time spent in heaven, his death comes very early on. While trying to save a young girl, Eddie is hit by a free falling roller coaster car that detached from the ride. Eddie wakes up in heaven, completely unaware of his surroundings. In between sections of the book, flashbacks from various birthdays of Eddie’s are illustrated. A man from his past approaches him and begins to explain to him how heaven works. According to the Blue Man, whenever somebody dies, 5 people from their past come talk to them about their life and what its significance was. These people could be close family members or random strangers that they never even spoke with. The Blue Man was Eddie’s first person, and he explained to him how when Eddie was about eight years old, he darted in front of his car, and the Blue Man had to swerve and ended up getting killed by a semi truck. In my opinion, Albom chose to have the Blue Man be Eddie’s first person to show that although you may not realize it, everything you do affects other people and can have a big impact on their life.

The Catcher in the Rye, Blog 2

So far, I am really enjoying The Catcher in the Rye. It’s a nice change from some of the other books I have read recently, because it moves very fast and doesn’t give you random unnecessary details (The Odyssey…). I like this because while J.D. Salinger doesn’t feed you detail after detail, the ones he does include are very good imagery and stick with you throughout the book. Another thing I really enjoy about this book is the characterization that starts at the beginning of the book. In only 40 pages, I already feel like I know the main character as well as some of the supporting characters very well. I like this because the more you know of a character at the beginning of a book, the better you can watch them change and develop throughout the novel. A thing that’s weird for me though is the fact that the book is in first person, and it is from a teenage boy’s perspective. The last few books I have read have either been in third person (All the Pretty Horses), or first person from either an older person’s perspective (various Jodi Picoult novels), or first person from a teenage girl’s point of view (Twilight). This is interesting for me because I am getting a perspective that I usually wouldn’t get from a situation like the one the main character is in.

Q2 Outside Reading

For this quarter's outside reading book, I have chosen to read The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger. I chose this book because several people have told me that it's one of their favorites, so I figured I would give it a shot. I've only read about 10 or 15 pages so far, but I think i will really like it, and I am excited to get into the book.

Blog 7

This week and weekend I have been reading a lot about both SPS and OTEC, which are two of the several alternative energy plans I have had to read about for debate. I figured since I have been reading so much about these two in particular, I might as well blog about them. I have read through the majority of each file, each of which are about 100 and something pages, with cards (articles) by various authors. SPS, which stands for Solar Powered Satellites, is a plan that I had to argue in favor of this past weekend. The plan is that the US Federal Government, through NASA, will put SPS Systems into space. Some impacts that we have researched that will supposedly occur if the plan is not implemented include extinction, and trade wars, which will lead to global war and eventually nuclear war. Another plan I have read a lot about is OTEC, or Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion. This is the affirmative that I usually run, so I have learned a lot about it. The idea is that the USFG will put in these giant machines into the water that will convert the energy formed by the different water temperatures in the ocean, and turn it into useable energy. Not only will it be a very good alternative source of energy, but OTEC will also prevent extinction that would have been a result of the overfishing that is occurring in the oceans currently, and the stripping of the biodiversity of the fish, and it will also teach us a lot about space colonization. Between the two alternative energy plans, I prefer OTEC, because it has more positive side effects, and to me juts seems like a better idea overall.

Blog 6

This weekend I read the book Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult, and I absolutely loved it! The book is about a woman named Delia Hopkins who works as a search-and-rescuer in New Hampshire with her bloodhound Greta. She has a daughter named Sophie and they live with her dad Anthony, and Delia is about to get married to her fiancé Eric when one day her life is turned upside down. She finds out that her dad, Anthony Hopkins is actually not Anthony Hopkins- her dad kidnapped her from her mother when she was about for years old. Anthony is called to trial in Arizona even though the kidnapping occurred twenty-eight years ago, and most of the book takes place during the trial and the days leading up to it. The thing that I love about a lot of Jodi Picoult’s books is that the point of view switches back and forth between characters. This makes it a lot more interesting to read than if the story is being told from just one person’s point of view, because you can understand how all the different characters are feeling, and understand their point of view. It is especially interesting in this book, because for a good portion of the book Anthony is in jail and so you get a glimpse of what his life is like there, while at the same time the reader knows what’s going on with Delia, Eric, their good friend Fitz, and Delia’s mom Elise. As I mentioned in my second blog, which was about Breaking Dawn, I really like when authors use this technique. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Vanishing Acts, and I definitely will keep reading Jodi Picoult’s books.

Blog 5

I recently finished reading Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer. Along with the other Twilight books, it is definitely one of the best books I’ve ever read. I really like the story as well as the writing. The very clear writing makes the plot easy to follow, and makes the book go by really fast. Since my last post about Breaking Dawn, a lot happened in the book. (Spoiler…) At the beginning of the book, Bella and Edward got married and then they went on their honeymoon. At this point Bella is still a human. Bella ends up getting pregnant with a half human-half vampire baby, and the whole Cullen family is worried that this baby will cause the death of Bella. Fortunately, Edward manages to save Bella right as she is on the brink of death, and turns her into a vampire. The middle part of the book is all about their child, Renesmee growing up. She is not your average human baby, or your average vampire baby, which ends up making the Volturi- kind of like the vampire government- very worried about whether this baby could be dangerous. The Cullens decide to get a bunch of their friends together to be witnesses to show Renesmee is not harmful. This was probably my favorite part of the book because each character was described so intricately that you could easily imagine each scene in your mind. Finally, the Volturi come and there is a confrontation between the two groups in the forest. After a lot of debate, Alice (Edward’s sister) comes to the rescue with another half vampire-half human baby to prove that they are not dangerous. This probably doesn’t sound very interesting because it is about vampires and is just not something that is easy to relate to, but once you start reading any of the Twilight books, you can’t put them down until the last word is read. Together these books amount to at least 2500 pages and these are probably some of the best 2500 pages I’ve read. Along with the 4000 pages of Harry Potter of course!