How I Killed Pluto and Why it Has it Coming

The book I am reading for my project is called "How I Killed Pluto and Why it Had it coming" by Mike Brown and in this book there are 231 pages. I think that the topic of this book is about defining a planet and discussing how astronomy has changed throughout history. I think that this topic is important because throughout the book many things change in history and it affected people a lot. I learnt that to be an astronomer is a hard job but is a very important job as astronomers were the ones to discover that they are not the center of the universe but there are other planets and universes out there. One thing that confuses me is that there were/are many other planets before but then were forgotten and I don't understand why. What I really want to learn is what is the current definition of a planet as it seems throughout history the definition changed.

"THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER"

# Pages 167/223
Author: James Cross Giblin

Hello fellow blog readers! I have been reading the book called: "The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler". I am finished with roughly 2/3 of the book, and I am planning to finish by mid-next week, so that I can have time to do the actual book project. So far, I am very impressed with the content of the book, and I think it would have been a good selection even in my free time. Here are a series of questions to be answered:

Why is the topic of this book so important? Well, first we must be aware of the fact that Adolf Hitler is one of histories biggest characters. People need to find out how he became such a tyrant, and what lead him to make such murderous acts as he did. As well, the topic is important because it is of huge historical significance,

What did you learn about this topic? I already knew quite a bit about Hitlers life, but I have learned even more about him, mainly his early life as a poor man in the city of Linz, and Vienna. As well, I learned many historical details about troubling times, such as the first world war, and the international depression that even affected Germany. In all, I have learned truly found out more, and I have enriched my knowledge about this topic.

What did you not understand about the book? In terms of the actual book, all was very clear and maybe even at certain points overly-descriptive. The main question that is actually puzzling me is how Hitler, a son of a Austrian customs official, become the tyrant of the last century. I understand his route to what he became, but people will never know what happened in his mind and how he succeeded. It is one of histories greatest questions.

What questions do you still have about this topic? Well, as I previously mentioned, one of my main questions is how he became what he was. Another question is, though I have not read the whole book yet, but I know this, is did Hitler survive the war? Many theories suggest that he was not assassinated in his bunker by Soviet troops, but instead he escaped to south america. I am a bit skeptical about this theory, but I think that this may be mentioned later in the book, as this is a question that is un-solved. As well, I wonder why he came to hate Jews and Slavs, because they never endangered him in any way what so ever. At one point in the book, he starts hating these two groups of people. This is yet another un-solved question.

What would you like to learn about more? Well, I think that it is important to learn about who he was surrounded by. For example, in the book it is mentioned that Eva Braun, his future wife, was a worker at a restaurant, until she became Hitlers wife. I wish I could find out more about her, and people that he worked with everyday. As well, I wish to know what was in the minds of his followers. Where they brainwashed, or forced to be for him? We will never know, but this is one of the main questions I want to find out more about.

In general, this is a great book so far, and I recommend it to anyone with the will of reading.
NL   

TTYL

Hello everyone! This week I am reading a book called TTYL. There are three friends: Angela, Zoe, and Maddie. Angela is the one who loves makeup, falls for guys easily and picks good outfits. Zoe is the smart one, the one who gets good grades, and doesn't like makeup. Maddie is the rebellious kind, who will takes risks, and has a bit of a temper.

One day, Maddie gets angry at Angela and Zoe, and refuses to speak to them. They try to text her, but Maddie is a little bit of a drama queen and ignores them. When Zoes's 26-year-old teacher develops feelings for her and invites her to many events, she doesn't know how to say no. In the final event, Maddie agrees to help Zoe get out of it. They all become friends again, and everything is happy.

Thanks for reading.

Kristina

Chinese Cinderella

For my first book project this year I am reading Chinese Cinderella, which is a true story of the childhood of Yen Jun-Ling (Adeline Yen). Who was not wanted by the remainder of her family, after her mother had passed away several days following her birth. I have enjoyed reading all 205 pages of this moving book.

The moral of it is that persistence and determination will always be rewarded. Through her life's many hardships Adeline was still able to build a strong character, who never gives up. The moral in this novel is very important to me, because I feel as though if anyone lacks inspiration and is discouraged, in following their dreams they can read this story and realize that anything can be accomplished with hard work.

The only thing in this book that was on occasion hard to understand was the frequent use of Chinese symbols, it was quite confusing in the begging but as I go farther along in the story I started to understand them, what really helped with understanding those symbols though was the guide on the front page of the book, and that after every symbol that was used its meaning was put in parentheses following it.

After reading this novel I would really like to learn some if not most of the Chinese symbols because I found it so interesting to learn about them throughout this book. A question I had after reading the book was why is it that the spoken Chinese language has so little, if nothing, to do with the written one?

Wesley the Owl

Stacey O'Brien

Finished book

The topic of my book is an owl. As well as many other animals owls are also very important in our lives. This book teaches us new things about owls that Stacey discovered about Wesley. After reading this book, I have a pretty good idea what owls do, what they eat, and that it is quite hard living with and owl. Before Stacey adopted this owl, she though owls were just some other bird living in the woods. But then she grew up loving owls. She knew they were special in their own way. After reading the book, you could really see Stacey loves Wesley. I learned that owls are really smart and once they imprint on someone they don't leave them alone, or every leave them. Wesley imprinted on Stacey.

I was grossed out when Stacey explained all about her feeding Wesley mice. I was excited when Stacey said she could kind of understand Wesley's Chirps and Squeals. She knew what everyone mean. For Example, when Wesley wanted to get out of a room, he would make a certain squeal that Stacey would recognize and open the door for him. Wesley would also understand some words that Stacey said a lot. For example, when Wesley wanted to cuddle, Stacey would ask him "Do you want to cuddle?" and Wesley would took straight at her for yes, or if he didn't want to, he would look away. I find this really cool.

I wish Stacey had more time with Wesley before he died. I was so sad at the end of the story when he did pass away. He had a problem in his liver. I wish that Stacey had recognized that he had problems before, then maybe he could have lived longer. Its a really nice story of Wesley and Stacey.

HN

Apollo 13

Hi all,

The book that I have been reading for the last few weeks is Apollo 13, by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger. I have finally finished reading all of the 397 pages, which I finished yesterday evening.

Apollo 13 is about the 13th Apollo Mission - the third mission, which was to land on the moon. Some technical problems happened on the way to the moon, and the land in was aborted. The crew just had to get back to earth alive, with very limited resources, which were steadily decreasing each minute. 

The main topic of the book is space travel and exploration. To me, honestly, I don't believe that this is the most important mission that us as the human race, should be concentrating on. I think before we should go cavorting around the universe, the problems on earth should be resolved. It is good to gain knowledge, but to gain knowledge and using so many recourses and people to do that, I don't believe is necessary. On earth we are having problems with pollution and conserving our earth recourses. We are spending more money on space travel than our earth, and I am not convinced this is the best thing for us and our children and centuries decades beyond.

In this book I actually learned a lot about space travel and the actual procedure. It is a long grueling process to become an astronaut, and another long grueling process to train for a flight .You need to be prepared for anything, so the training is very strenuous and the crew needs to be prepared for everything. I also learned that when a mission goes to space, the ship has to be reinforced with surplus of everything – a lunar landing needs at least 3 full fuel tanks – even though you might not need it.

I found the whole idea of space exploration puzzling, and I was confused a few times about the machinery. The book uses a LOT of technical terms for parts of the spacecraft and the people in NASA and the operations and maneuvers they attempted. I sometimes had to go back a few pages to just make sure I knew what they were doing, or what they were attempting to do to save the mission.

I want to learn more about space exploration, and the other Apollo missions which were successful. I would love to find out how the mission was supposed to go, and how it would of worked. Since the book was quite scary considering the chance of failure, I would love to know if there was the same stress with all the other missions. Another question I have is about the past of the other two members of the mission – Jack Swigert and Fred Haise. We found out a lot about Jim Lovells past, but I don't know anything about the other crew member’s histories, and families and experiences which led up to the mission. I think it would help understanding their actions within the journey. 

Thank you for reading :)

The Life & Death of Adolf Hitler - Cosmo

Halla people!

This is another blog post involving the book, “The Life & Death of Adolf Hitler”, by James Cross Giblin, 226/226 pages into the book, and this time the topic for this blog assignment was actually a few questions, among them: Why is the topic of your book important, what did you learn about this topic, were there parts of the book you didn’t understand/what puzzled you, what questions do you have about this topic and what do you want to learn more about, or do you have any strong desires for further inquiry? I will answer all these questions paragraph by paragraph to come, so sit back, and enjoy.

First of all, the topic of this book is significant because Adolf Hitler was a man who impacted the 20th century enormously, by gaining support and actually performing some horrendous deeds, which followed his beliefs. Now his beliefs were negative, and according to them, there was a hierarchy of races, as I mentioned in one of my earlier blog posts, stretching from the Aryan appearance to the Jews and communists, and Hitler strongly encouraged the fact that they should be annihilated, for they were not worthy enough on Planet Earth. He showed the world what you can do with power and support, so brought awareness for having dictators in a country, to always have a wary eye, and taught us about equality and how racism shouldn’t exist in the world. In conclusion Hitler had great impact and really changed the world for those reasons above, and they provide at least a fair argument to why he was important and seriously influenced our way of thinking.

By spending some time to read this book I actually learned quite a lot about this topic, a life of Adolf Hitler. I was fascinated by his “moves” he made and all the actions that followed, from both the German empire and the allied forces, clearly against his mindset and ideas. With my eyebrows raised I read descriptions of Hitler's strategic movements,

like the flawless increase in the tension around borders in soldiers, and the casual

invasion of Austria and Czechoslovakia back then in the late 1930s and the early 1940s.   

Some things that puzzled me in the beginning of the book how Hitler ever gained support for his murderous deeds to the world, but this became clear to me as it was obvious how he did it. He had the natural talent of intriguing speech, which was very useful in his rise of power. He convinced people his beliefs were the best, etc., etc., etc., and how he could lead Germany to a position of absolute power... Another thing that puzzled me was that the allied forces struck when it was almost too late, but later the book provided an answer of them being to scared and everything. For the rest I understood the book pretty much clearly, and was fascinated too.

Here finally, a paragraph that will conclude my further questions and what I’d like to learn more about. So I have some further questions that I want to be answered, but I know aren’t really gonna be answered..., anyways, here they are: Why didn’t Hitler and Mussolini, (the italian dictator at the time directly join forces to be more stronger? Why did Hitler continue even though his determination was false hope, and he was aware of it? Many of these questions are just strategic battle planning, so let me just stop here. In general I just want to learn more about his life in more detail, which might seem a bit strange, but it is just so interesting to me, and I am sucked up in it now...

Thanks a million for the attention people, and see you later!

Cosmo :)