Crazy Amy's Awesome Books!

 Title: Romeo And Juliet

Author: Shakespeare 

Ratings: 9/10 

My Thoughts on the plot: Romeo and Juliet is one of the most famous plays ever written. It explores the themes of romance and tragedy in such great ways.

At the beginning, Romeo Montague is a love sick 17 year old boy, suffering from unrequited love. He is full of sadness and and depression all of the time and his family and friends are worried about him. Romeo is a bit over reactive, as he thinks if he can never be with Rosaline, there is no point in living. He thinks there is no one better for him. But he realises just how childish he is being when he meets Juliet Capulet.

Juliet is at a young age of 13 at the start of the play. She is pressured by the idea of being married soon. Her father wants her to marry the noble County Paris, only knowing that if this happens, he will be every close to the high authority in Verona. He is not too pushy about it at first but with his mood swings he can get very agreesive. Juliet isn't really that bothered by marriage at the moment. She agrees that she will attend the family party to meet Paris, and decided whether or not to marry him.

The Capulet Party is the place where the two "Star Crossed Lovers" meet. Of course Romeo, being a Montague, is not welcome to the party. Himself, his cousin Benvolio and his best friend Mercutio decide to gate crash the party, in order to see Rosaline. While Romeo is looking for Rosaline, he spots Juliet across the room alone. Amazed by her beauty, he walks over to her, masked, and greets her. He talks to her in poem form and is further amazed when she replies in the same way. The two fall instantly in love.

Further on in the play, Romeo and Juliet agree to secretly marry. Nurse, Juliets loyal friend since she was born, is involved in the plan. She passes messages between the lovers. She does not care if she gets in trouble, she just wants Juliet to be happy. Romeo knows the only person he can trust to marry them is Friar Lawerence. He is as close to Romeo as the Nurse is to Juliet. He agrees to marry them, thinking it may bring an end to the feuding.

Things go disasterous only a few hours after Romeo and Juliet marry. A fight breaks out in the streets of Verona.  Juliet's agressive cousin Tybalt, who "Hates Hell, All Montagues" and Romeo with a passion, and Mercutio die in the fight. Romeo is banished from Verona, meaning he can no longer see Juliet. When Romeo and Juliet are seperated this way, it shows how much they really love each other.

Juliet is forced to marry Paris only two days later. She says she would rather die than marry him. Friar Lawerence helps Juliet in her time of need. He divises a plan for her. She must drink the vial created by the Friar. It will give her the look of death. When she has been moved to the family tomb Friar Lawerence and Romeo, who will find the plan out through letters from the friar, will open the tomb and she can go to live with Romeo in Mantua.

Things go desperatly wrong when Romeo fails to recieve the letters explaining the plan. Romeo thinks Juliet is really dead. After killing Paris, who was also at the tomb, Romeo drinks the poison and dies by Juliets side. Friar Lawerence arrives two minutes too late, to find Romeo and Paris dead beside the awaking Juliet. Friar Lawerence gets scared and runs away. Juliet is forced to stab herself when she realises her true love is dead.

The Capulets and the Monagues realise just how selfish they have been. They hate the fact that their feuding has leaded to their childrens deaths. The two families agree to make peace, even though there is still a hint of competitiveness between them.

My Favourite Characters: The Nurse is probably my favourite character in the play. Her bawdy humour is very entertaining and makes the play intresting. She loves Juliet wth all her heart, as if she were one of her own. Even though she knows she could get in alot of trouble for helping arrange the secret marriage, she helps anyway, because she wants Juliet to be happy.

Juliet is also one of my favourite characters. She has probably gone through the most drama in this play. She has to deal with the pressure of getting married, keep her love for Romeo a secret, go through with a marriage which could get her in alot of trouble, deal with her new husband being banished, trust the Friar and take the vial which he gave her and wake up to see three of her loved ones dead bodies around her.
And if you think about it, its alot for a 13 year old girl to go through.

The Ending: I think the ending of this play ended rather fast. Romeo and Juliet had just died and all we see at the end is the families realising what the feud has done. I would add another scene to the book about what happened between the two families.

 Conculsion: I really enjoyed this play, even though there were some parts in it i found quite boring or pointless. But then again they do tie the play together in the end.
I would of enjoyed it more if Shakespeare had put more detail into it. Such as the reason why the families were feuding or what happened to the Nurse and Friar in the end.

Book: A Place Called Here.

Author: Cecelia Ahern.

Number of pages: 484

Rating: 10/10

Summary: When Sandy Shortt was 10 years old, her classmate vanished. Ever since then, whenever anything - or anyone - went missing, she had to find it. When she grows up, she starts a missing persons agency.
Jack Ruttle spots Sandy's agency in an ad and thinks she will be able to help find his brother. But then Sandy disappears too. She discovers a new world, a world were all missing things go. Now Jack needs to find Sandy in order to find his brother. What will happen to Sandy in this strange place? And where has Jack's brother and Sandy's friend gone? Things end strangely but how?...

Front Cover: The front cover is pink with decorative vines and everyday objects around the lettering.

My thoughts: I think this book is very well written. It's somewhere in between reality and fantasy. It's very funny as well as a tiny bit sad at the end. I would recommend it to older readers and anyone who likes a bit of mystery and comedy.

Title: Twilight

Author: Stephanie Meyer

Cover: Black background with a pair of pale hands holding a red apple. The title is written in silver writing at the top.

Ratings: 10/10. I enjoyed this book tremendously! It has been made into a movie, my favourite movie too, and I knew I would love the book as much. It has so much detail. The story-line is brilliant and I would read it over and over. I highly recommend it to other teenage readers.

 Summary: Twilight is a fantasy/romance book about with a twist. Bella Swan has just moved from Arizona, one of the hottest places in America, to Forks, Washinton, one of the wettest and coldest. She has come to live with her dad while her mother and her new step dad go travelling. It is here in Forks that she falls unconditionally and irrevocably in love with Edward Cullen, a beautiful and mysterious boy.
When Edward saves Bella from being crushed in a car collision, with amazing speed and strength, Bella gets suspisous of his "powers", pale and ice-cold skin and beautiful changing eyes. She soon finds out that her lover is a vampire! But Edward and his family are not like others of their kind and definatley not like the myths Bella has heard.
The two are inseperable. In love in such a way that is only found in fairytales. But when Bella's life is in danger of being destroyed by James, an enemy vampire, their relationship is thrown into chaos. The Cullen family must stop James from killing Bella.

 My Thoughts: I really love the creativity in this book. Stephanie Meyer takes the usual myths and stories about vampires that everyone has heard of, gives them amazing twists and turns them into this amazing novel. It was a book that I really couldn't put down. I would read it all throught the night if I could. I will definatly be reading this book again!

Title:    A Girl Called Blue.

Author: Marita Conlon-McKenna

Number of Pages:  216

Rating: 9/10

Summary: Blue O Malley is alone in the world. She lives in Larch Hill, the big, greay orphanage run by the nuns. Wild and outspoken, Blue finds it hard to stick to the rules and strict routine of the home.
She dreams of a different life, but begins to wonder if she will ever find a family of her own. She suspects that the truth about her birth lies hidden in the locked files in Sister Regina's office. Blue is determined to find out about her mother and discover who she really is...

 Front Cover: The cover is brown with a picture of a young girl holding a book and a street of old houses. The title and the authors name is in bold, italic, white writing.

My Thoughts: I really enjoyed this book. It's one of those books that you can't wait to find out what will happen next. It's also very sad when Blue loses people close to her and finds out about her mother.

I would recommend this book to older readers as there is some difficult language in it.

This is my reflection on writing for "Crazy About Books!"
Enjoy!

 In School, you're writing all day for your other classes, but with your blog on the internet, it's something different. Your not getting a pain in your hand from writing so much, or messing up the page your using, and you don't need to worry about anyone seeing your messy handwriting. I also think it makes the teachers work easier, as they don't need struggle to read your essay due to messy handwriting.

Also a great thing about having your own blog is that you can decorate it to suit your style and mood. It reflects you. You choose your colours, your style of writing and your pictures, which also come in very handy when your finding it hard to describe your book. And can you create a link, which shows the reader another page of info to help them, on a piece of paper? I don't think so!

I often read the other blogs on this site and they are very interesting. I have learned about so many books, how good they are and what other people thought of them and the blogs have also led me to reading the books. They are enjoyable and exactly like they were described. I guess they were right when they said "Never judge a book by its cover!"

If I had to decide to do another blog next year, I would definatly say yes! It has been fun and has been a great experience with the internet. Although it is hard for some people to reach the site, it is so much better than writing pages and pages.

Blogging is definately a great thing to do in school!