"Toughness"- Introduction

I have recently begun reading a book called Toughness, the book is written by an ESPN basketball analysist named Jay Bilas. This book shows and explains different elements of toughness, not just within sports but also within life. Jay Bilas shares with us many stories both personal and from interviews with players and coaches that show the elements with toughness.

Throughout the story, I will be using the listed elements and relate them to my life (and sports) in which I will share to you through my blog.

I am very intrigued to begin reading the book Toughness. I had received the book from a friend who said it was full of great life lessons and an overall good read. I am not one to read books about life lessons and such but this book just seemed interesting to me and seemed as if it was a book I could make many connections to. I am very excited to start blogging about this book and to start reading it, I`m sure you all will also be very intrigued with this book too.

Let`s begin.

Blogging Reflection

Erik Johnson

Mrs. Palmer

Honors English

5 November 2013

Friday, September 6, 2013 Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

I am just beginning to read the book called Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by John Foer. In this non-fictional book, the author John is on a mission to research and study people with advanced memorization skills. This book also shows the reader many memorization tactics/ practices that people use to enhance their mind capacity to remember things (haven`t gotten to these parts yet, they are in the summary). Overall I hope that this book is a good read and also helps me/ teaches me ways to enhance my memorization skills in the future.

 

Sunday, September 29, 2013; Heat: Character Analysis

About the Character

In the book Heat by Mike Lupica, it is a story of a young boy from Bronx, New York. This young boy`s name is Michael Arroyo, he is a 12 year old baseball player who is great at what he does (playing baseball), Michael is from Cuba and has a brother named Carlos. Michael`s dad died and has no real parents to care for him and his brother, but Michael overall is a nice, young, smart kid and is very well known and nice to the people throughout the Bronx community. Since Michael has great athleticism and skills in the game of baseball, he is the best player on his team and one day wishes to make it to the Little League World Series, but with his skills at his age it creates a large conflict that lasts long throughout the story.

Characters Relation to Story

Michael created the conflict of this selection, Michael and his team made it to the Little League World Series and some of the coaches could not figure out the age of Michael because of his great skills in the game of baseball as he throws 85 miles per hour. Since the coaches could not figure out the age of Michael, they mad him present his birth certificate, but since Michael`s parents were both dead he would not be able to get his birth certificate from Cuba. This would then make him ineligible to compete and finish the tournament.

 

 

QUALITY OF MY WRITING

            During the first trimester at Mason High School as a freshman we started a blog. In the act of blogging I have made much advancement in my blogs. The quality of my blogs since day one has been greatly progressing (which is shown in my two blogs above). My quality has increased because the length of my blogs has been longer than my earlier posts, my grammar has strengthened, and as I began to read more and more the more I felt comfortable about blogging so the longer and more structured my blogs have become. I am able to support these states I have mad based on the two blog posts above. As shown there has been an increase in length of my blog from the later date to the most recent date. Also shown is the amount of knowledge I have of the book and how I interpreted it into my blog has shown an increase from the later to the most recent date of my blogging  (Shown by highlighter). In conclusion we are able to tell that my skills of blogging have greatly increased over time.

MY EXPERIENCE

            While blogging, I experienced many struggles and one of them was finding time to create a quality blog with sports and other activities I had going on outside of school. I was able to overcome these struggles by setting a specific time for blogging each week and working efficiently when we had blogging time in class to get my work finished. I also had much strength while blogging. One strength that I had is that I have a lot of knowledge of my books because I read a lot during this trimester which helped me produce quality blogs. Even though I read a lot, I was not able to reach my overall reading goal and in the process of my reading I don’t remember ever using the Goodreads website to track my reading progress. But in conclusion I have improved greatly as a reader because I used to never want to read before this trimester, while sometimes now I greatly enjoy reading a good book.

Heat: Predictions and Questions

Prediction/ Predictions
Some predictions I have made about the story Heat, is the prediction that Michael will achieve his goals of what we would like to do with his life in baseball but then a conflict will pop-up causing him to post-pone one of dreams in the game of baseball.  Another possible prediction that I have made is that there will still be a conflict addressed with achieving one of his goals but it will be easily avoided or solved and Michael will be able to achieve his baseball goal.

Question/ Questions
I only have question that I want to ask after reading some of this story is:

• Why does Michael not have his birth certificate, and how does the death of his father determine whether he has his birth certificate or not?

Heat: Character Analysis

About the Character
In the book Heat by Mike Lupica, it is a story of a young boy from Bronx, New York. This young boy`s name is Michael Arroyo, he is a 12 year old baseball player who is great at what he does (playing baseball), Michael is from Cuba and has a brother named Carlos. Michael`s dad died and has no real parents to care for him and his brother, but Michael overall is a nice, young, smart kid and is very well known and nice to the people throughout the Bronx community. Since Michael has great athleticism and skills in the game of baseball, he is the best player on his team and one day wishes to make it to the Little League World Series, but with his skills at his age it creates a large conflict that lasts long throughout the story.

Characters Relation to Story
Michael created the conflict of this selection, Michael and his team made it to the Little League World Series and some of the coaches could not figure out the age of Michael because of his great skills in the game of baseball as he throws 85 miles per hour. Since the coaches could not figure out the age of Michael, they mad him present his birth certificate, but since Michael`s parents were both dead he would not be able to get his birth certificate from Cuba. This would then make him ineligible to compete and finish the tournament.

Update On My Book

I have recently just ended the reading of my book Moonwalking with Einstein. I have stopped my reading of this book because I was starting to lose interest and became bored with the reading. The reason I became bored is because there was really no main story to follow along with or that I could follow along with. So then I began reading the book called Heat by Mike Lupica.

In the book Heat by Mike Lupica it is about a young boy named Michael Arroyo who has a significantly good throwing arm for pitching in the game of baseball as he brings his baseball team to the Little League World Series. Michael from the summaries I read also seems to be facing many struggles in his real life aside from baseball. Heat seems like a really great book and I hope to read on and find out more about Michael and his journey in the story.

My Book Recommendation

I recommend reading the book called The Hunger Games, written by Suzanne Collins and is the first book of a trilogy. As a reader of The Hunger Games I believe it was one of the best books that I have ever read, it is an action packed and an excitement filled novel. The book is well written and full of details that help you understand and paint a picture of the events in your mind. The Hunger Games is book about a girl named Katniss from the poorest district (District 13). Katniss`s sister was picked to be a part of the games, but Katniss would not let that happen so she then volunteered to be a part of the games. To find out about what happens next, you should read the wonderful book called The Hunger Games.

Theme and Summary of "Moonwalking with Einstein"

Theme
In the book that I am currently reading which is called, "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Josh Foer, there are many main themes that can be pin-pointed in the selection. Two of the main themes shown and described in the story are the themes of "learning the ways of the mind and improving mind skills and intelligence". This theme is shown straight from the start of the book till the end. It is shown in the following quote under the summary section.

Summary
You can tell the theme of "learning the ways of the mind and improving mind skills and intelligence" is the main theme of the selection because in the first section of the story says, "At that moment, according to legend, the art of memory was born." This quote from the book helps set up for the rest of the story and helping you predict that the story is about memory or having to do with the intelligence of the mind.   This quote can help us conclude that the main idea of this selection is memory and intelligence, in which the whole entire story is based upon.

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

I am just beginning to read the book called Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by John Foer. In this non-fictional book, the author John is on a mission to research and study people with advanced memorization skills. This book also shows the reader many memorization tactics/ practices that people use to enhance their mind capacity to remember things (haven`t gotten to these parts yet, they are in the summary). Overall I hope that this book is a good read and also helps me/ teaches me ways to enhance my memorization skills in the future. 

The book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs Of a Boy Soldier written by Ishmael Beah was a book about survival and hope of a young boy at war. Survival is also a main theme or idea of this selection. Survival is able to be determined in the text as the main theme because the selection says, "One of the unsettling things about my journey, mentally, physically, and emotionally, was that I wasn`t sure when or where it was going to end. I didn`t know what I was going to do with my life. I felt that I was starting over and over again. I was always on the move, always going somewhere. While we walked, I sometimes lagged behind, thinking about these things. To survive each passing day was my goal in life." (page 69 of the book). This clearly states that the idea or main goal of the author is survival. Therefore, we can conclude that survival is one of, or is the main theme of the book  A Long Way Gone: Memoirs Of a Boy Soldier.

The article that I have found about this book is a small summary of what happens in the book and throughout his journeys. The article chosen also has some experiences and Ishmael`s after war life and his life in America at this current day in age.

Ishmael Article