Mary's+reading+journal

The reading journal #1: The address of the website, which I often visit, named http://www.renren.com/home. I show up on this website nearly everyday, because it becomes to my only way to connect with my classmates in China. It includes my classmates from the elementary school, junior high and senior high school. Everybody, who has signed up on this website, can post their photos, writing and even everyday mood on it. We also can make the comments with each other. For example, I am studying in Canada. With this website, I am still able to get familiar with my old friends' life and have something to talk with them. I really like this website, because it makes no distance with my friends from my country and I still can make new friends with them.

The reading journal #2: For the story ‘Twins’, I understand the meaning of the story, but I have one part that I do not understand: ‘Who is Gib Porter and why did the woman’s father hire him ？ ’ The woman just mentioned about a woman who is the character in the story. They just said that Gib Porter was the hero of the writer, but they did not tell us what the relationship was between the woman father and Gib Porter. The killer in the paragraph is the woman who is the killed man’s wife. We can see the proof from the sentences: ‘ she had thrown his gun, from which she had removed the ammunition the night before they started their trip, when she realized what he was planning, into the French River on her way to Parry Sound.’ So from this sentence, we can know that the woman had known the man’s plan, and the gun that the man used would not work because the ammunition was gone. Another plot was that the woman said: “ It is not going to work.’ After her words, the woman was alive. And in the last part of the story, I know the woman had found another woman who fell in love with his husband. So she knew everything, she would not let herself to be killed by her husband. ‘She had removed the ammunition the night before they started their trip.’ This sentences made me confused, if they ammunition had been moved how could the woman killed the man. Did she have another gun? How many guns did she throw? I like the ‘twins’ very much because it really made me be interested in the story. I always have to find who is the killer in the paragraph. If I want to find the answer, I need to finish to read it. I think it is the mystery or detective story. I like this genre of the story, because I need to find the answer of the mystery, I will not lose patient to read. For example, the first part of the story told us that the man got the gun and wanted to kill the woman, but at the last part of the story the woman was alive and did everything that the man has planned. When I read to the first part, I thought the killer was the man, so when I read to the par that the woman was alive I got really interested in finding the real answer. It is a good type of good for me to finish reading. When we are reading, it will not be boring.

The reading journal #4: Personally, reading the stories about murder in school can be done in the school, because those kinds of mystery books always are able to train the logic of our brain. Those kinds of story also can teach students not to do those bad things to others, because you will not get the good result in the end. The impact for our real life because of those kinds of books must be happened. For example, the book, named ‘Twins’, teaches us that we need to be careful in our life. The wife and the husband did not tell the truth to each other. The reason is that the world has two sides; you need to distinguish them by yourself. The friends treat you with their heart or not. If somebody is tricking you, can you notice that and protect yourself from the hurt. In the imaginary story like twins, those kinds of books can make my life abundant. When I have some free time, I can read those kinds of books and it is a essential opportunity for us to train our brain logically. If we want to know the answer of the mystery books, we should keep reading. It will be a good way for us to improve the reading skills.

Reading journal #5: In our group, we chose to describe a story about an invisible magic paperclip, which caused troubles to Hamilton. The genre of our story will be the fantasy story. Because the paperclip is invisible and magical, the subgenre may be the suspense. We are going to present the creative story to be a film. The first convention of the fantasy story is that ‘Fantasy writing’ must be imaginative grounded in both truth and life experience. The second convention is that we can know more about ourselves from the fantasy story. Thirdly, the cliffhanger must be included. I am going to be one of the actors in the film. My role is the actor, so I intend to act this fantasy and suspense story more natural and common. For the first convention, I have 18 years life experience that may help me to feel about the life of the main character whose name is Linda' imaginative life. The main characters lost their father, so they want to find their missing father. From the life, I really know that the father is very important in our life, so I know their feeling. Personally, I can perform their eager of finding their missing father. I love my father very much, I intend to use my own feeling about my father to perform their feeling of their father. The second convention is about knowing about us. During the performance, I think I will really get to know clearly that the father is very important to us and if we meet the trouble we should try our best to solve the problems. In my opinion, acting the story is a good way to learn about the life and us. The third convention is about the cliffhanger, which is the core part in every fantasy story. I am the actor, so I think my role is to act as hard as possible to use my facial expression, body language and vocal to show the details about the story, which is the way that I can let other people know what the story is about. If my action about the story is successful, the audiences may be interested in the story.

Reading journal #6: The website: (1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCAPrV7cQsQ (Part of Harry Potter)

(2) http://video.baidu.com/s?f=1001&id=122086&url=http%3A//movie.tv189.com/v/200368.htm&word=%B9%FE%C0%FB%B2%A8%CC%D8%D3%EB%C3%DC%CA%D2&fr=mi_mov (Whole part of Harry Potter)//

// My role in the group is the main actor about the fantasy and suspense story. I chose Harry Potter, because it was a wonderful film about our genre and the actors in the film acted really well. After I see the film about the character Harry Potter, I think I need to care more about the conversation between the actors. Most of the conflicts and solution of the problems will be implied from the conversation. During the conversation, the facial expression and the body language should also be considered carefully. From the film of Harry Potter, I can feel the characters feelings just from the actors’ facial expression. Though we make the film by ourselves, which means we cannot make the film with the technological production, we are going to try our best to make the film looks better.//

//Reading journal #7:// To be honest, I really do not like job for acting the script in the group at first. Because my characteristic is not very outgoing and I will be shy when I face to the camera or a lot of people. But I prefer to work in a group, because more people can make the work more effective and we also can make a lot of friends through the group work. After I have acted with my group mates. I think l like my role now. Because I really enjoyed working with a lot people and we had more fun than working by ourselves. Though acting is the most challenging part to me, my group mates are really patient and they teach me how to act it better. So I want to say thanks to them. Not only creating the script needs the divergent thinking, but also the acting required the divergent performance. We really need to feel the feeling from the main character. And we also need the experiences from our real life to make our performance real. Although we are not the real main character, we also can use our feeling to act the main character divergently. For Macbeth I want to be the writer to writer something just like the newspaper writing, because I can improve my writing skills from the practice. Reading journal #8: Part one: The two root words inside of ‘infinitesimal’ are ‘infinite’ and ‘simal’. Infinite means that there is no start or end, it is endless. Simal is a word that I have never seen it before, but it looks similar to ‘small’. I imagine that it might have this meaning. So after knowing this two root words, I think ‘infinitesimal’ means that there is so small, so we cannot measure where is the beginning or the end. The suffix of ‘likeness’ is ‘ness’. Three words, which include the ‘ness’, are illness, happiness and kindness. The words, ended with ‘ness’, are noun. I guess the synonyms of the void are ‘mystery’ and ‘abyss’. Though I do not know the meaning of abyss and void, I think the ‘mystery’ and ‘abyss’ are in the same place just like void in the different sentence. So void may have the similar meaning with mystery. I think ‘unfastened’ has the similar meaning with open. It means open. But ‘un’ means no, I think unfastened means it does not close. Part two: Poetry I sat in the library, drunk a cup of hot chocolate, wind bellowing from the unfastened, made me feel infinitesimal cold, influenced by the so quiet atmosphere, I stared at the fiction books on the book selves, imaging its void, likeness, image of a mystery story in my mind.

Reading Journal #9: Paragraph1: There are a lot of similarities and differences between Boo Radley and the man in Tom Waits' What's He Building Down There.// Initially, both of them talk about the mystery stories. We do not know them a lot and they are doing the things that make all of us want guess. And they have no friend and relatives. However, Boo Radley usually does not go out side and he needs your curiosity to find him out and he will eat you. The man in the song just hides something secretly. In my opinion, he will not hurt the people. Continuously, there are always some people who want to find out what they are doing for sure because of their strange behavior makes people have the curiosity about them. But Boo Radley’s goal is that he wants to eat the species when he sees them and he has the monster outlook which makes people so scared. The man in the song just wants to find a secret place for himself. Dill’s fascination is just like the man in the song. Both of them behave strangely, so Boo Radley’s behavior draw dill and others people’s attention. Because it is a mystery, so approaching him can be a brave adventure and makes people feel scared. Similarly, the man in the song, because of his strange behavior, the narrator wants to find out what he is hiding and know more about his mystery life. The people who want to find out his secret does not know what he is doing, so they do not know if it is dangerous or not. That is all because of people’s curiosity. I guess the man is building the secret garden for himself. He can enjoy himself in the garden and get rid of the boring life without friends and relatives. There is nobody who can interrupt him. Boo Radley looks like the real normal person in our life, so his out looking will not scare anyone.

Paragraph2: The worst trouble, which I have got with a teacher in the school, was that I had been blamed by the teacher, because I did not finish my duty for clear in the floor in the classroom and I went outside to buy the food. My reason for the unfinished job was that there were a lot of students staying in the classroom that made me unable to do my cleaning job in the room. At that time, I was so hungry because of study for the whole day. So I went outside to buy the food with my friends and thinking about to do the work after I came back. The teacher thought I had gone, so she was really angry about it. My parents told me to build up my responsibilities in the future life, because I need to finish my work first even though there is some other problems. Comparing the experience with Scout's, my problem was just because of myself. I did not finish my own work, but Scout’s problem was from the misunderstanding of the teacher. I made the mistake, but Scout did not. Scout got the worse trouble than me, because the misunderstanding from the teacher is more difficult to be solved. I can easily deal with my behavior to get rid of the trouble, because my problem is not from the misunderstanding.

Reading Journal #10: Personally, my behavior and life are very different from Burris Ewell, because I have never said a bad word to my teacher and I think my family can support me not only for study but also for my life. However, I had a classmate in the my elementary school, whose life had some connections with Burris's life. Initially, they both belong to the students who always skip the courses. The poor boy, who had got a kind of rare disease, had some difficulties with his legs' movement. Because of his illness, his parents spent all their money treating for him. In the end, his family got very poor as Burris's family and his disease still did not recover. So the boy always reckoned that everybody looked down upon on him and nobody wanted to play with him. He had no mood to study in the school, so he always skipped the school deliberately, which behavior was just like Burris did in his school. But I think what Burris did was on purpose and he had no reason. And the behavior of my classmate was that he wanted to escape the teasing from others. For another similarity with my classmate and Burris, I thought that both of them had said the illicit words to the teacher, which would make the teacher got into mortification. As I remembered, when we had a lesson outside of the class room, our teacher wanted to tell something to the boy. Before the teacher opened her mouth, the boy said:" Are you thinking that I can do nothing?" And after that sentence, he also said some very bad word to the teacher and went away. Our teacher, who was a new teacher in our school, did her first teaching in the school. She did not know what to do and what happened, so she cried loudly. Thirdly, the similarity is from my other classmates who made the teacher calm down and there also some students helped the teacher to persuade the boy, which was just like what the students did after Burris leaving without a word. In my opinion, my classmate can be forgiven because he had some psychology problems, but Burris should be blamed because he did something that was not respectful to the teacher without any reasons.

Reading Journal #11:

1.) a.) To be honest, I really do not like my uncle in my real life. At first, my family and my uncle’s family got together very well, but I knew that was all because of my grandparents. After the death of my grandparents, my uncle had been changed just like another person. He closed all the doors for the house, which my grandparents had lived there for all of their life. And he did not connect with my parents after that time. However, everyone, who changed a lot, must have his reasons. In my opinion, my uncle may not want to do that from the bottom of his heart, but his wife forced him to do that. Maybe they really need more money in their life, because my family’s living condition is better than them. He thought that we do not need those houses or money, so he just took everything. After he did that he maybe regret about that. That was why he had never connected with us after he did those things. I knew that he had no choice. He needed to live with his wife for all of his life, so he had to follow the requirement from his wife to make sure the integrity of my family. Everyone has their own life, it is difficult to comment other people’s life. I think I can understand a little bit of my uncle now.

2.) Osama Bin Laden, who made a lot of horrific attacks all over the world, which is why I think he is the pure evil. Initially, we can clearly see from the article that different genes would make the people’s behavior differently. However, the environmental force can affect people’s normal behavior. For example, the government of the USA which did not treat Afghanistan well or maybe we can say that the government of the USA was cruel to the people of Afghanistan. Because of the force from the other country, Bin Laden may just want to protect himself and his country. He just turned off this normal reaction and changed his personality into a cruel person. He made the big bang in America, which caused a lot people, who was from all over the world, died at that moment. Secondly, the article said that the early education could affect the people’s recognition and behavior. So I think that the early education of Bin Laden did not really pay attention to the students’ psychology treatment. So Bin Laden just did not know how to react correctly for the unfair treatment, which was from the other country. He just used his thought to make the revenge to the American, so he had not ever learned how to solve those problem peacefully. In general, those two specific reasons can make Bin Laden’s behavior changed into a cruel person.

Reading Journal #12: The quotes from chapter 8/10 are written in my Boo's page. Personally, their evil comes from their thoughts. If somebody really does not like the black people, they will hate them forever. Whatever the black people did, they always think they did it wrong. So I think that the root of this is because they do not believe them and they do not think those people have any value in the world. On the contrary, those people, who love black people very much, will totally disagree with the people above. They are going to do everything that is opposite those people’s ideas. It is just because their thoughts form their heart. To be honest, I do not think that this kind of darkness can be found in me. I think I always respect everyone around me and treat everyone as the same way. I think I am kind and easy to get along with, so those kind of evil is not in me.