Iwan's book review

Title: Spud

Author: John van de Ruit

Publisher: Penguin books

Place & year of publication: South Africa 2005

Number of pages: 389

Where I found the book: It’s my book

Plot

Johnny Milton aka spud is a normal fourteen-year-old boy who has been selected for a scholarship at a very expensive private school in South Africa. Where he meets his roommates/best buddies (Rambo, Mad dog, Henry, Simon Boggo, and Vern) for the rest of his school life. Together these seven teen-age boys form the crazy seven.

So together the Crazy seven endure life’s hardships in school and the party when they are over. Together they all survive the first year of high school but their high school career has only just begun.

Christian perspective

This book is not written from a christian perspective. But definitely contains some christian values and believes for example, the school they go to is a christian school and on campus there is a chapel which they attend every sunday and wednesday. But that does not mean they do everything in a Christ like way. They are fourteen-year-old boys and they get into a lot of mischief.

My thoughts

The book was a very good. It was full of action and humor and I would definitely recommend it to boys that like humor and adventure in a book.

Iwan's book report

Title: Caught by the sea

Author: Gary Paulsen

Publisher: Dell Laurel-leaf

Place & year of publication: September 2004

Where I found it: CHS library

Number of pages: 103 pg.

Summery

After Gary Paulsen retires from the army he decides to head out to sea.  While reading he takes you along on his maiden voyage. He also proves that ignorance can be a real bliss and dangerous.  His inspiration to go sailing and to buy a sailboat came when a Hollywood star invited him and a few writers to his cabin by the lake. One morning going for a walk he meets a man who offers to take him sailing on the lake.  He enjoyed it so much he decided to buy his own sailboat.

Finding a sailboat wasn’t as easy as he thought. Some looked brilliant from the outside, but inside the wood was rotten right trough. So he tells of the many boats he had good, bad and beloved and how they brought him trough many storms.

Gary takes you on his journey on the Pacific Ocean.  Sailing under the stars, fighting monster waves, sailing in tropical lagoons where dolphin’s leap by his side. Gary Paulsen takes readers on his lifelong learning curve, because you don’t learn to sail overnight and readers will see why his passion has lasted unto this day.

Christian perspective

There isn’t really much that the character does wrong from an Christian perspective. Gary didn’t say he was a Christian and but trough his writing you can see Christian characteristics like patience. In this book there is no battle between good and evil, but some of the businessmen did cheat him by trying to sell him old and rotten boats at extremely high prices.

My thoughts

I don’t really like biographies but this one wasn’t too bad.  It was an action and adventure packed book and I would recommend this to someone who likes adventure books and is forced to read a biography. 

Iwan's book report

Title:Percy Jackson and the Olympians:The lightning thief

Author:Rick Roirdan

Publisher:Disney Hyperion

Place& year of publication: 2005 United States

Numberof pages: 398

Where youfound the book: School Library

Summery

Percy Jackson is a 6^thgrader in Yancy Acadamy for troubled children. He was kicked out of school and told he is actually the son of a sea godPoseidon. His father, Poseidon is accused of stealing Zeus’s lightning bolt. All these events lead to Percy’s quest. He set out on his quest with his two friends Annabeth (daughter of Athena)and Grover (a Styr).

His quest was toretrieve the lightning bolt from Hades. Along the way he meets unpleasantmonsters, like Medusa he also learn more about himself and who he really is. He has a series of dreams about a monster in the Abyss (the deepest hole inthe earth).These dreams help predict what the future will bring.

When he reaches Hadesit appears that he didn’t steal the bolt but that someone had stolenhis helm of darkness too.If he wasn’t the thief then who was ? Who would wanta war between the gods, was it maybe the monster Percy had dreamt about thatwould rise out of the abyss or maybe a close friend, no one would know until thebook ends.

Christian perspective

This book was notwritten from a Christian perspective but the characters in the book hadChristian qualities like perseverance, hope, and courage, they cared and lookedout for each other through hard times. Tough the book was nothing nearChristian some characters dealt wisely with their rage and conflict for examplePercy felt like he could kill his stepfather Gabe but he dealt with it wisely bynot showing how mad he was and he respected his stepfather by doing that eventough he was wrong.

My thoughts

I really liked thisbook and would recommend it to any one that likes action ,adventure and fantasyall in one book I learned a lot about Greek mythology.

Paragraph assignment

To have the hope of surviving is the most important component of surviving alone in the wilderness. When you lose hope in life you give up the same with surviving when you lose hope you give up and eventually die. Without hope Brian started to give up. He had built an bow and arrow ,he had made an spear ,he had enough food and he knew how to fish but with out hope they where useless to him.

animal farm

Title: animal farm

Author: George Orwell

Publisher: penguin books

Place and year of publication: Irland 1951

Number of pages: 122

Where you found it: at my house

Plot

The story begins where the oldest pig on the farm, Old Major has a dream. He then calls a meeting to tell all the animals about it.The name of the farm was: Manor Farm. He said he had a dream about a rebellion were the animals would take over and all humans will be expelled from the farm. Three days after the meeting  he died and was buried under a tree in the orchard. The animals rebelled and  expelled Mr. Jones (the farmer) and his men from the farm and changed the name to “Animal Farm”. After the pigs took charge, the smartest two Snowball and Napoleon becomes the leaders, but they hate each other. As the farm starts to prosper, the pigs became even more selfish taking larger ration than the others animals. Snowball still wanted everybody to be equal. Not long after that Napoleon used his trained fierce dogs to expel Snowball from the farm and with this a couple of communistic themes appear for example:

•  Totalitarianism
•  They used  intelligence and education as tools of oppression
•  Propaganda
•  Violence and terror as means of control

Napoleon and the other pigs are corrupted by the absolute power they hold over the farm. Eventually the animal laws were replaced by their favorite slogan: All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”,and “Four legs good, two legs better!”as the pigs become more human.

The book was rejected by 4 publishers before it was published on 17 August 1945 in England the reason for this was that it reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era before World War II. Orwell was a strong critic of Stalinism.

Christian Perspective

This book is written from a political perspective in the form of a fable.

The characters in the book didn’t act in a Christian way, but in a communistic way.

The writer couldn’t change the way the characters acted, because it would change the meaning of the book and he wanted to expose communism for what it was.

I don’t agree with communism and it is far from Christianity.

What I think of the book and to whom I would recommend it.

I think animal farm is a brilliant book. And a perfect explanation of communism.

This book is directly aimed at Russia and countries like  China. I like the book, because it shows that communism starts with small things that becomes bigger and more noticeable with time.

I would recommend this book to any one that likes politics and the way communism and other government structures work.

alex rider: scorpia rising

Information about the book

Title: Scorpia rising

Author: Anthony Horowitz

Publisher: Walker Books

Place and year of publication: first published in 2011 in London

Number of pages: 431

Where I found it: I bought it at a bookshop

Plot:

Part one of this book gives a introduction on the activities and characters of the Scorpia operation. When Zeljan Kurst arrived in London, MI6 became very suspicious and followed him to the British Museum. At the museum the MI6 operation failed and Scorpia agents assassinated all the MI6-agents. Despite high alert throughout the whole city to find the Scorpia agent he escapes with a brilliant disguise.

Part two takes up the majority of the book. Here the reader gets introduced to Alex and MI6 as well as the conflict with Scorpia and their agents. Meanwhile Alex Rider is trying to live a normal live again, but once a spy, always a spy. This means he will never have his old live back. At school his class comes under attack by a sniper. Alex follows the sniper to an old a house where he managed to disable the getaway helicopter. To his dismay the sniper and his accomplice were already gone. With all their agents killed MI6 recruits him again.

Scorpia helped Julius escape from prison to kill Alex, as a distraction to Alex. Scorpia tries to bring disgrace to England, steal and return the Elgin Marbles to Greece. It seems to be the end of Alex’s career and life....

One bullet

and

one life

the end is near, and this is where it starts.

Christian perspective

No, this book does not reflect a Christian perspective. Because it is about revenge agianst Alex and the MI6

Julius Grief is a character from the second book of the Alex Rider series. He was created in a lab by his “father” Hugo Grief hoe wanted to duplicates of the worlds most wealthy men‘s sons. Fortunately Alex stopped him and Hugo was killed in the proses. Now Julius would do any thing to get revenge.

Julius should forgive Alex and forget about it, and go on with his live. Or listen to his prison psychiatrist that could have helped him with his problem with Alex and help him continue with his live. He chose neither and escaped from his prison and tried to kill Alex but got killed him self.

What did I think about the book and who should read it:

This book and the rest of the Alex Rider series is brilliant and I would recommend it to any one who likes action packed books. I would also recommend to start by reading the first book in the series an work trough them sequentially.