AND IM FREEE...FREEE FALLLING!

That's about the most accurate description for how I feel right now. I am completly pysched. Pumped up and all hype that this workload is now officially off my shoulders. Sadly I still have a lot of other work in other classes to complete but that's beyond the point. I'm here right now to finish up the massive France treasure hunt that Professor Langdon was taking me on.

To say I wasn't satisified with the ending of the book would be a lie. In all honesty, I would say that overall this was my favorite book out of the five that I read. Yes, it did have a more complex storyline and involved historical things in France that were tough to understand but the journey that Langdon and Sophie went on was really interesting. In a way it kind of reminded me of this Nicholas Cage movie, National Treasure.

The book ends with no assuring conclusion but in the end, Langdon and Sophie end up safe, Sophie actually returns to her family in Scotland. During the reunion with her family she finds out that she is indeed apart of the bloodline related to Jesus and Mary Magdalane. But that's not how the book ends. All happy with a nice sweet ending. No, they had to tease you with the ending with Langdon. So the last few pages talk about how Robert Langdon, back in Paris, deciphers the full entire poem which leads him to a small pyramid built in the ground of the Louvre where as it suggests, he is sure that the grail lies there.

Sadly, that's it though. Brown left the door wide open for anything to really happen and although he did suggest that the grail would be in there, we never found out for sure that it was. Being an intrigued and curious teenager as I am, I looked to see if Dan Brown was writing a sequel to this book and little did I know that he already did and published it. The sequel to The Da Vinci Code is known as Angels and Demons which I guess covers a whole new situation but still involves the main protagonist, Professor Robert Langdon. I guess I'm going to have to read that now. Even though the project is over, it just feels incomplete unless I finish the story.

A huge thanks goes out to anyone who followed my blog this entire time. I truly appreciate what a warrior you are.

The Treasure Hunt of All Treasure Hunts

Being that this is the last book of this tremendous journey that I have ventured on for the past weeks, I feel like it is the perfect way to cap things off. I mean of course I'm not done yet but, from what I've read so far, the book is not only interesting and engaging, but it has an actual feasible plot that takes the type of mystery thriller path genre.

Although it is a thriller, I find it nothing like the books that I read from Vince Flynn. Dan Brown to me is a much more sophisticated writer with much more fleshed out and elaborate plot lines. By every means of the word, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is a real page-turner. From page one to page two-hundred I've been on the edge of my seat the entire time.

In The Da Vinci Code, the protagonist of the story is a professor by the name of Robert Langdon. Langdon is called in to France, more specifically the Louvre, to examine a crime scene. But this crime scene is like none other. The victmin, a man named Jacques Sauniere was the museums curator who was murdered by a man looking for the location of the Holy Grail. In Sauniere's last moments he arranged an encrypted puzzle with the blood for the gun-wound and his body so that the information that he obtained could be passed on to someone else.

Langdon believes that he is called in to help solve this puzzle/symbol but they main reason the police called him in is because they believe he is the one who perpetrated this act.

It's killing me right now to have to put down the book to type this response but I thought now would be a better time than later to do so. I'm going to get back to reading so that I can finish up my last post for you guys tomorrow. See you then!

DĀ VÏŃČĮ ÇØDĒ

For my last and final book of this project I chose to read The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. I have heard a lot of good things about this book from not only the internet and news outlets but also my parents who have both read this book. They said that it is actually one of their all time favorite books and that the movie that came out with it as well afterwards was pretty good too. They distinctly said though that the book was ten times better than the movie. Personally, I find that hard to believe, but I guess I will just have to find out!

Humans are Just Pigs

George Orwell is truly a fantastic writer. Although the book and the reading wasn't all the most enjoyable, I can appreciate what Orwell created and how magnificent it is as a piece of literature. So for those of you who haven't read Animal Farm, seen the movie, or remember the exact details of the Russian Revolution from History Class, I will sum up in the end what ended up happening on the "Animal" Farm.

After some chaos, and minor setbacks in the farm from outside forces, the farm seems to be functioning the same for years and years. The only change over the course of time is that as the farm ages and time passes by, the animals on the farm evolve more and more into people. Not just personifying the animals by allowing them to talk and operate their own farm, but the animals actually began to look like human beings. Now instead of walking around on all four legs the animals are walking more upright. Thats not the only thing that highlights this change from animal to human, but the fact that they now wear clothing was quite the obvious hint at this evolution of the animals.

By turning the animals back into people I felt like Orwell was trying to show that these animals are no better than the human that was in power beforehand. It's the same cycle that keeps happening and happening almost like the Chinese Dynastic Cycle how it is on repeat.

Orwell also managed to insert some really satirical irony in the end of the book where a message was inscribed on the side of the barn. The message read as follows, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." These very contradictory statement is the very one that the Russian government abided by for the years to follow. By publishing this novella full of his political opinions, Orwell is trying to show in a simplistic way just how corrupt Russia is.

I Didn't Know Pigs Could Be So Mean

So far my reading experience hasn't been too enjoyable because of all of the excess work that I need to do in order to understand what is going on in the book. Normally when reading a book I read it through from cover to cover and that's all I look at to understand the book. Instead, for this book I have to read along with what was going on in Russia at the time simotaneously while I am reading Animal Farm. It just about doubles the amount of time that it takes to read because I have to double comprehend what I'm learning.

So far what I have gathered from reading Orwell's novella is that, he is trying to illustrate a dystopian, backwards, not properly functioning society to symbolize what was going on in Russia at the time. The book starts with the change of the Farmer being the one who has the power on the farm to the animals who have the power. Hence the tittle of the book "Animal Farm." This seems all great and fine intially because it seems like the animals have it figured out and they display the community type of feel for eachother, but this all soon changes.

The immediate changes that I can see in the first layer of the plot is that conflicts began to arise between Snowball and Napoleon. They seemed very competitive and acted in a way that made them look like they wanted the sole possesion of the power.

It then escalates rather quickly when, while at a farm meeting, Napoleon ques a whistle for the dogs that he was training to chase Snowball off the farm. The only reason he had this done was because he didn't agree with the plan that Snowball proposed.

All in all, I feel like Animal Farm is the most interesting way that I have seen someone express their political views. It's also a pretty good story. I'm looking forward to what happens next!

Cow Goes Moo

Aside from classical music, theres nothing really "classic" that I like. I really struggled to come up with a book that is classified as a classic yet one that also captivates my attention. I decided this time that I would ask a friend of mine that is a former Gifted student what he would reccommend I read. My friend suggested that I read Animal Farm by George Orwell. I laughed it off immediately thinking that he's probably joking, reffering me to some picture book about Old MacDonald and his farm. He was actually serious though. I've legitametly never heard of such a book until yesterday. I guess from what I've looked up so far it is a movie as well.

So far what I've learned about Animal Farm is that the entire book is basically an allegory of the Russian Revolution around the time of Stalin. It sounds like an interesting concept of an author who inserted his political views in the form of an allegory about pigs and cows at a farm. Aside from the basic knowledge that I have about Russia I'm really going into this one blind. Wish me luck!

The Point Has Tipped

I can now officially say I am more than halfway done this project. It was fun while the fun lasted Mr. Gladwell but we now must go our seperate ways. I really enjoyed reading, The Tipping Point, because it was a different style and way of reading than I am typically used to. The tough thing about reading a book such as The Tipping Point is that your brain has to work almost twice as hard to process the non-linear information that the author is throwing at you. Don't get me wrong, Malcom Gladwell is a fantastic author and he spaces out his ideas and elaborates them out to the perfect amount. With that being said I still feel like the rules and laws that he throws at you he then jolts you back and forth from topic to topic trying to relate it to the point he is making.

To be honest I'd say I was lost/confused while reading maybe once, probably twice. The thing is, if you just happen to glaze over a certain page or two and don't thoroughly break down and analyze what you're reading, you won't retain much. Gladwell also does go through his ideas rather quickly so if you miss one thing you might get lost in the connection he is trying to make.

There was though one interesting lesson that I learned from Gladwell that I had to show to my parents because it relates to me being a teenager. In Chapter 7, Gladwell conducted another case study and then discussed and analyzed the relationship between cigarette use amongst teenagers in the US and suicide rate amongst adolescent males in Micronesia.

For someone that hasn't been paying attention and then came across that last sentence they probably believe that this Gladwell guy is a pyschopath. Those two topics don't seem to correlate in any manner what so ever but somehow Malcom Gladwell makes it all make sense. That's the one thing that I do enjoy about Gladwell. His inexplicit way of taking two things that the typical human would think of as random and in some way, shape, or form, drawing a line between the two of them in how they relate.