I don't know why but I love this.

Columbine- Dave Cullen ch 1-9

So far Columbine is one of the best nonfiction books I have read. I thought maybe it would be sort of tiring since we have all heard 'all the details' of the infamous Columbine High school shootings; not the case! He starts out by characterizing one of the coaches at the high school and describing an inspiring speech he had made just days before the shootings. He gives more back ground information, and details things you didn't hear on the news. His style of writing is maybe not what people want to believe, mainly because it's extremely disturbing. What he finds is that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were actually not bullied, at least not to the extent that would send someone over the edge. Eric was pretty popular with the ladies, and had lots of friends. Dylan, although quiet, had friends too. He even went with a large group in a limo to prom only days before the shootings.

Reading this book gives me chills, and it makes me wonder what really made them do this. No one can ever really know. They were obviously sick kids, in more than one use of the word. But they seemed so normal. They had jobs, and went to parties, and had friends. It's really a shame. However, the book hasn't gone into the day of the killings yet, at least not in detail, which I'm sure it will. This book is really good, it isn't just all about facts and statistics, its about their lives, and life in Colorado, where they lived. It's like an inside look at the life of killers. I'm excited to finish it, its hard to take a break from reading it because it's really interesting!

P.S...I'm reading this book on my nook colour and it's cool...but I gotta say I like the real thing better!

M.I.A - 20 Dollars (with lyrics)

MIA

Such a good artist, and a super interesting person. '20 dollar' seems just like a cool unique songs, but the lyrics are really interesting and say a lot about what she has seen and been through.

Palo Alto- James Franco; American History

Now on to another story and a different character in Palo Alto. This character is a boy named Jeremy who is in the tenth grade. Although the story revolves around an incident in his United States history class, that is not really what the story is about. In the beginning of the story his U.S. class is doing a skit where each student represented a state during the civil war. Jeremy is one of the southern states and is not on the 'good side' as he puts it. The students are supposed to pretend they are in the civil war time and they're supposed to give reasons to support their view on slavery. Jeremy, being one of the southern states, argues his points as a southerner would during that time. This angers some kids in the class and Jeremy gets a little too it, he ends up saying a racist slur. Jeremy at the time, was just trying to impress a girl by being funny, because the class seemed to know he was only joking; even his teacher was not mad.
The next day Jeremy is confronted by a boy named Lewis and his friends in the locker room. Lewis was the only black kid in their U.S. class. Lewis seemed to pay no mind to Jeremy in class the day before. However Lewis and his friends, who were also black, were not happy. They basically beat the heck out of him and leave him in the locker room.

I found this story really interesting. Racial tension is everywhere, and when you mix that with immature teenagers, it is not surprising things got out of hand. I know this sounds like a story that might have a lesson, or moral point to it; maybe it does to an extent. However, I kinda feel like this story is more about adolescents in some way. Like immaturity and emotions just got the best of everyone. I'm sure situations like this happen in a lot of history classes because of the subject matter.

Note the title 'American History". I sort of think this story might represent how even though our history is behind us, there is still racial tension, just like there is in our history books.

Palo Alto- James Franco; Halloween

Yea, James Franco wrote a book. If you don't know who he is, he's an actor whose been in a lot of movies: 'Spiderman', 'Pineapple express', 'Milk' etc. He's also up for a Golden Globe for '127 hours'. It's a compilation of stories told from the perspective of teenagers living in Palo Alto, CA. So far it's pretty good. The first story 'Halloween' is about a boy named Ryan who kills someone while drunk driving on his way to his girlfriends house. This isn't much of a spoiler because the story starts out 'Ten years ago, my sophomore year in high school, I killed a woman on Halloween.'  This is an older Ryan telling the story, looking back on his troubled youth. The ironic thing is that Ryan and his friends attend a party where Ryan ends up cheating on his girlfriend, he leaves the party drunk and drives to his girlfriends house because he thinks she's cheating on him and he's angry about it. He never told anybody about what happened.

This story is kind of just disturbing because everything leading up to is just stuff that happens to teenagers and in their lives, and then he just ends up killing someone. Maybe it speaks to the irresponsible side in all of us. Before I got this book I read the review online, and one of the reviews said that it lacks general characterization. This story defiantly does lack characterization, but I think maybe Franco did that on purpose, because Ryan, the character in the story, probably represents a lot of teenage boys combined, and possibly even James Fracno himself, who grew up in Palo Alto.