Who IS John Green?

I'm sure that if I throw out the name John Green you immediately think of the scrawny writer with glasses that has created iconic stories. And I admit that I thought that too, because I never thought to go deeper into the pages of the book to see who exactly wrote this and what their meaning was for each and every word choice. In my definition of that, it included a quick Google search of "John Green" and pages beyond pages of information came flying out towards me. By that point I almost decided to chance prompts because that much reading and investigating didn't seem that appealing towards me but I pulled through for this blog post! This is what I found out...

John Green is wildly known for being an award winning author for book such as The Fault in Our Stars or Paper Towns. But before that he was born in in Indianapolis, Indiana and moved constantly from Michigan to Alabama and then Florida. In college Green had a double major in English and in Religion Studies. After college he intended to become a priest, but his career direction quickly changed after working in a hospital with ill children (where he later got the inspiration to write the Fault in our Stars). For a couple of years he then went on to write for newspaper columns and also as an editor.

The first book that Green published was Looking for Alaska, which was awarded and even thought of becoming a movie but John turned it down because of the deep connection that he wrote that book to his childhood. His second book that was published was An Abundance of Katherine's (which by the way is on my reading list!). His next book that he wrote is definitely one of my FAVORITE books of all time and is also being made into a movie very soon which is Paper Towns. Greens most famous book by far is The Fault in Our Stars which has sold over a million copies and was made into a movie, and its easy to see why. His writing just brings out emotions in people as the topic and characters touch the audiences heart (which maybe ill talk about in a future blog post *hint* *hint*). Personally I was first in line for one of the premiers and brought a tissue box that came in handy.

Some of you may or may not know what John Green is up to besides writing, but ill let you know that he is famous for more than bringing Ansel Elgort onto the big screen (thank you John for blessing us with his beautiful face). John Green and his Brother Hank are famous for a YouTube channel called VlogBrothers. Their channel reaches over 2.5 million subscribers and was originally created over a bet. Yep, that's right Hank and John had a bet that they would go one year without using text-based communication . Their way of communication with each other was though daily video blogs, or "vlogs" as they called them. They posted this on YouTube and quickly had a vast amount of followers viewing their daily vlogs. The two brothers are also the creators of VidCon, where all the You Tubers come together in a very big meet & greet. Besides VlogBrothers John is also very active on YouTube with his series called crash course history where he gives a lesson visually appealing to audiences in fun ways. One of these ill put a link to below, which is actually very interesting and helpful!

After all of my digging up into who John Green really is I've
found that this author is much more than the words that I have read on the pages.




Crash Course History WWII: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q78COTwT7nE

His Website: http://johngreenbooks.com/

 

 

Timeline:

Theme: Censorship causes diminished individual thought.

 

 

The Hearth and the Salamander:

1. Montag meets Clarisse McClellan, a seventeen year of girl who challenges the way things are in society.
2. Montag and his fellow firemen go to a woman's house who is suspected of hiding books, in order to burn them. While they are there Montag discovers hundreds of books that the woman had kept hidden, and steals one of them for himself. The woman chooses to die in the fire with her books, which confuses Montag.
3. Montag begins to question the book burning that is going on in his society and becomes more interested in reading and knowledge, contrary to Beatty’s and Mildred’s wishes.

• “And for the first time I realized that man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And I’d never even thought that thought before,” (Bradbury 49). -Montag to Mildred

The Sieve and the Sand:

1. Montag becomes obsessed with the idea of books and plans to meet a man named Faber, a person he had previously met at a park.
2. When Montag talks to Faber, and learns the history of books and the real truth behind government censorship. Faber and Montag formulate a plan in which they plant books in houses of firemen to spark suspect in them.

• “I’m not thinking. I’m just doing like I’m told, like always...I don’t want to change sides and just be told what to do” (Bradbury 88). -Montag to Faber

3. Mildred hosts a party with her friends and her parlor “family”. Montag becomes upset when he sees this and brings out a book to read to them, despite the original plan they had.
4. Montag goes back to work where Beatty confronts him about what he has been doing. Montag acts like nothing is wrong and they leave when they are called to burn a house.  

Burning Bright:

1. Montag is forced to burn his own house.
2. Montag kills Beatty, then runs away. While on the run, he almost gets run over by a group of thrill-seeking teens driving a beetle.
3. After walking farther, Montag comes across a group of people who, just like him, have explored the ideas inside books.

• “We read the books and burnt them, afraid they’d be found” (Bradbury 142). -Granger to Montag

4. The city is completely destroyed by bombs. Montag and Granger lead the development of a new society that is built upon meaningful ideas and books rather than emptiness.

This theme is important to our understanding of the story because…

We see the influence that books had on Montag and the decisions he would make throughout the novel.

This theme connects to our modern-day society because…

Books have shaped prominent ideas in our world today, and have allowed people to develop individuality and meaningful thoughts.

Live Original

To be honest I don't think I would've ever picked up this book if I saw it laying down on a bookshelf in Barnes & Nobles. I don't think I would've given it the light of day because I was judging the book by its cover (pun intended). I can literally see you guys giving me a strange look like," Um, Emily why are you talking about this book that you would've never read..."  Trust me! Hang on I'll get to that just another backstory.

It was a normal Wednesday night, or so I thought. Okay maybe not as dramatic as that at all but it was a Wednesday night and I was watching as my phone continued to blow up from a Group Me chat (you guys know what it's like) except this one was different. Not only were there 80+ people on that group chat, but they were all obsessing over this one girl and the book that she wrote. "Okay this is enough" I thought and went over to my  phone and opened the dozens of messages that awaited me. Message after message these girls from my bible study kept on raving on what a good book this was while at the same time obsessing at how they wanted to meet her so bad (which I can relate to thank you very much). Who is this girl? Her name is Sadie Robertson and some may know her for starring in a TV show called Duck Dynasty or Dancing with the Stars. I trusted the judgment of the girls in the GM and decided to go and get the book on my Kindle. And oh boy am I so glad I did. 

Can I go ahead and say she is one of my new role models? Yes, the answer is yes. Sadie wrote this book when she was 16, and even after being famous and in the public eye, she has remained completely normal and grounded to her beliefs. This is a non fiction book, which I NEVER read and I actually loved it. She has the ability to just teach lessons page after page. Some of these I've never even thought of and it's made me so much more aware and thoughtful of a person after reading this book.

" You cannot control what other people say or do or how they act. You can only control how you act in response to them"(Page 59).

This is a part of the book that I highlighted while reading because I just felt like it was a strong message. I mean growing up I've always heard the "golden rule", but I've never really thought about applying it into my life. This is just a great message for high school kids because we tend to get absorbed into those kind of things. This is just one of the many lessons that she talks about in the book which is just so perfect to hear about because trust me, it is not boring! I never found it as work when I've read this and I enjoyed myself for every word.

Just so you know so it doesn't come as a shocker she does bring religion a lot into this book, which I actually loved because I tend to forget a lot about that during the school day or during class and I'll just start reading and it makes me feel so much better. Just the fact that Sadie added little Bible verses in the chapters made me so happy as I highlighted every time I saw one. This is definitely a book that can change someone's views on life, and I recommend it. You might be a little apprehensive at first, but trust me you won't be able to put it down.

Blog Post is a Mystery???

I sincerely cannot help myself when ever I start a new book- I have to finish it. Especially when its a really REALLY good book. I, like many, am guilty of finishing a book the day that I start it. Its bad; I mean I've read a 300 page book in a day just because I became so obsessed with it. I hate to say this but that is exactly what happened this Winter break when I drove to Cleveland. What is this book you might ask? Its called The Confessions of the Paris Mysteries, and I'm obsessed with it. I know I can practically hear you guys saying," Wow Emily, another mystery book. What a plot twist." But the thing is I seriously love love love mysteries so I tend to lean towards those when I walk in the book store. Okay, Enough of my rambling on with the post.

This book is about, you guessed it, a Paris mystery. The story focuses on a 16 year old girl named Tandy. Her and her siblings had just gotten temporarily moved to Paris after her parents had been murdered. Her parents being murdered weren't the only crime that Tandy has had to solve; she just had to prove that her brother didn't murder his girlfriend, and also has solved a serial killer killing off private school girls. In this particular book, it also includes a bit of romance as the reader gets more insight of what exactly happened to her lost love James. Intrigued yet? That's all I'm going to give you on the plot line, I don't want to spoil it for you. But if you want to know more about her other stories that lead to this, you can read the other books before this, which I completely recommend because I had no idea about those books before I started to read it.

If you enjoy mystery, suspense, and multiple different mysteries in one book, then let me tell you this book is for you. 

Personally after reading this book I felt like there were giant empty holes while reading the plot line and I had no idea why. It wasn't that the author was being careless and not paying attention to the plot line, it was that I picked up the book that was right in the middle of the series! I plan on reading the other books in the series next because they will definitely fill in the plot line and clear my confusion on what happened in their past. 

An important update I must add is that I've read the book before the Paris Mysteries, and I DEFINETLY recommend that as well. But please don't read it in the same order as I have because I still have not read them in order and I still haven't read the first one that started it all. Whoever is reading this drop everything that you are going and go read this book, I can't stress enough on how good this was.


FOR MORE INFO: http://www.jamespatterson.com/books_confessionsThree.php#.VPe5XtE5Dug