Final Post

Well, this is my last post for my CAL class.  This post is suppose to be a time to reflect on the assignment.  I have to say that I did enjoy reading the book that I chose.  It did give me time to relax in a way that I usually dont choose to do so.  However, as I know that only my instructor and my sister are reading this, I, at times, felt a little silly blogging about it.  I think I wouldve rather turned in a paper about it or had the entire class following my blog.  I dont know that I'll stick to the reading component much after this class but I like to think that I will.  It did remind me how enjoyable reading can be if I just take the time to find something that interests me instead of giving up due to the millions of overwhelming choices to choose a book from.  Reading log for this week:  8:30-9:00, TWF

Chs. 42-The End!

So I was almost at the end of the book so I decided to read early this week.  My reading log is 11/28 from 12:40-1:40 and from 8:30-9:10.  The author focuses only on the river journey now because he has "caught up" to the present time in his retelling of Abbie and Doss's story.  After the hurricane passes by them, they pick back up their journey to the end of the river.  Amazingly, he is able to pass by all the people that are looking for them and make it to the end of the river.  She collapses at the end and passes away.  He finds out that she had planned the trip to help him be thankful for the present time and to find the beauty in it all.  After everything that has happened the father and Doss are able to become very close friends.  Doss is also able to check off the last thing on her list, swimming with the dolphins.  He spreads her ashes over the river while flying in a plane.  He sees that her ashes float down to where the river meets the ocean and the dolphins are swimming.
I really enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it.  It makes you realize the things in life that are important and at least for me, it made me ask of myself what I would do in her or his situation.

Chs 31-41

This was a good section of the book.  They did not make much progress, in fact none at all, on the journey down the river.  The man who had helped them escape the four men turned out to be an ex-priest who flew a plane as a crop duster.  they are still at his house, using a small neighboring cabin he owns.  Abby has been able to cross out more things on her list.  Specifically, riding a carousel and doing a loopty loop in his plane.  The part of the story that was the most interesting to me this time was the portion that described her fight with cancer.  At one point, she gives him the okay to have a girlfriend.  His reply was that he already had a girlfriend.  It was so moving and I thought about myself and my husband and how we would do that for each other.  I wonder how difficult it must be for people experiencing this everyday.  A woman whose husband was at the hospital for treatment became friends with Doss.  Unfortunately she decided to invite him to be intimate with her.  He amazingly declined and went for a run for basically the whole night.  He even went to Abby to tell her what had happened even though she was asleep.  Unfortunately for Doss, when he returned to his room and showered, he found the woman in his bed, naked.  Just seconds after that Abby's father walked in and assumed the worst.  I'm so curious now as to when or if he will tell Abby what did and did not happen.  I hope that the father finds out and understands at some point the perspective of Doss.  I hope that even though they basically cant stand each other that they are able to come to an understanding for Abby's sake.  Well, I'm almost through with it so hopefully I'll get to the end before the end of the semester.

Chs 22-30

So the book picks back up on the early time in their marriage.  Abby decided to take a trip with Doss and took him all over the world to look at the art that he had only been able to see in his books.  He discovered through this trip that she understood him and knew exactly what he needed.  It also picks back up on their trip down the river.  It is also revealed that she initially had breast cancer which spread to other parts of her body and that she has been battling this for over 4 years.
 The biggest events of the river trip for this section are that Doss sees a press conference of her father claiming that Doss has kidnapped her.  Now, he realizes even more how dangerous it is for them to be on the river.  Also, after coming to a boat landing that has a small building with showers and food, they wash up and clean their clothes.  As they are sleeping those same three mean men show up and Doss quickly figures out that they are there to take advantage of Abby.  After hitting Doss in the head and ripping off Abby's clothes, the assailants figure out that she is sick and has no breasts.  They decide that doesn't matter but thankfully Abby and Doss are saved by some mysterious man who eventually takes them in his plane to his home.  Abby and the man nurse Doss back to health as he floats in and out of consciousness due to the blow to his head.
I was so angry that after everything Abby went through that she might have to also have to deal with being raped as well and so close to her death.  I felt so helpless for both her and Doss.  I am so glad that they found some relief for a while and am curious to find out who the man is and if they are able to return to their trip down the river.

Reading Log:  11/20/2011, 1:10-2:45

Chs 16-22

Reading log:
11/8, 11:50-12:20
11/09, 12:00-12:45
11/12, 2:00-2:15

I was able to read chapters 16-22 for this week.  The authors uses this section to develop the understanding behind the characters more.  He picks up with them dating now, against her parents wishes.  He actually asks Abby's father if he can marry her and he immediately says no.  while Doss and Abby discuss what to do next, she comes up with the idea to get married right then and they proceed to do so!  I was a bit surprised but then again should have expected it based upon Abby's character.  Their story of the trip down the river also gets a bit more interesting with the people that they meet and their ability to get the supplies they need since their's were stolen.  I am really enjoying this book and enjoy the chapters that discuss how they meet and their earlier life.  I know in the back of my mind though that she is really sick and will most likely die at the end of the book but I still want to finish it to find out more about their earlier life and what Doss does after Abby passes.

Chs 7-15

I'm still reading Where the River Ends.  I was able to read for an hour on Thursday at school from 9:30-10:30 and then again for a little today from 1:20-2:00.  For the portion of the chapters that occur in Charleston after they first met, she thanks him by inviting him to a party at her parent's house.  They manage to slip out of the party and spend the night strolling through Charleston.  He then paints a portrait of her and she has the idea for him to paint a portrait of her nanny, who was brutally scared while fleeing to a refugee camp before she came to the US.  He manages do to a tremendous job on the painting and it moves Abby so much that she kisses him.  He is able to use that portrait to graduate from college.

For the chapters that occur on the river, the biggest event that happened was that as he was watching the fire while Abby slept one night, he felt they were being watched.  He managed to grab her medicine, the shot gun, and her and wade across the river to the other side.  Not long after, two men riffled through their campsite and either stole or burned everything there.  All that was left was the canoe.  the next day, he remembered there was a nudist colony not too much further down the river.  After they made it to that part of the river, he managed to strip down and blend in with the nudist colony in order to steal some more clothes for them and some soap.  After they bathed in the river and the rain Abby said they had checked off three of the ten items on her list of things to do.

I did not realize it until she said they had done three of the items that they didn't really say what the ten items were that she wanted to do.  Even though so much had happened to them since the start of the journey down the river and with her sickness all she wanted was a bit of normalcy in her life.  That's what she was seeking with the list.  Somehow she has managed to complete three things so I'm now more curious what the rest of the list is and if she'll be able to do all of it before the end of the trip and what I'm predicting is the end of her life.

Continuation from last week

Well, my laptop crashed last night so I had to wait until this morning to be able to post.  Anyway, I read yesterday from 7-830 and just read more of the book from last week.  I am really liking it a lot.  The story continued with the couple making arrangements for gear for the river.  It talked about how the husband went to her doctor's house in the middle of the night to get extra medicine.  The doctor turned away so that he could steal the key to the medicine cabinet since he couldnt give him that much medicine.  The started down the river but didnt get far because the river was very shallow at the beginning so he had to pull the canoes most of the way.  It also talked about how the couple first met.  He saved her from being attacked.  She is a socialite and daughter of the then govener and now senator.  He was poor and at school on an art scholarship.  He went to a party she had because he had saved her and they really started to connect.  She seems to be very different from most of the socialites in Charleston.

I really like this book.  I really like how the author goes from the end of their story to the beginning.  The back and forth helps to keep it interesting.  However, he did spend about half of a chapter describing the river and its twists and turns.  That did not have to be so detailed.  I think I'm going to finish this book for my reading assignment.

Where the River Ends

Reading Time:  Thursday, 9:00-11:15

So my wonderful sister, who always has a book in her hand, recommended this book by Charles Martin called Where the River Ends.  She warned me that I would be crying by the end and so far I think I will be.  So far, it begins with the husband, waiting outside their Charleston, SC home for a phone call.  He finally gets the call that his wife will not be accepted into the trial program for treatment.  He goes inside to tell her and she tells him that she wants to complete her list of the top ten things she wanted to do this year.  What she wants to do most is to travel down the river, a long and hard journey.  After he agrees and they start toward the river and to get supplies the book goes back in time to before they met each other.  I really like this because I really got interested in the characters by the intense beginning and then to be able to go back and really learn who they are and how they met is a great idea.  I think its a great motivation tool!  Leaving out some of the details because there are so very many, right now I am to the part in the book where he is at school on a scholarship to be an artist and she is the daughter of a senator.  He has just saved her from a violent attacker and just realized who she is.  She still does not know who saved her but is admiring his paintings from outside his workshop.  Hopefully this week when I read I'll get to find out how she finds out he saved her and how they had a relationship even though they are so different from each other.

Edgar Allan Poe

Reading Time:  Wednesday, 9:30-11:15

So this week I was able to substitute for a Language Arts middle school teacher.  I noticed that she had a rather large library of books that students could borrow in her room so I looked through them to see what she had available.  I noticed a book of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe and since I've never had the opportunity to read anything by him I decided to read it during one of my breaks.

The first story I read was The Purloined Letter.  The book described it as a mystery and I love mysteries so I decided to read it first.  I really liked it.  It begins by a law officer coming to ask for help from a detective in solving the crime of a stolen letter.  I liked it a lot because the entire time it was talking about how the answer was right in front of everyone's face and so I kept trying to figure it out.  As I was reading I just kept thinking, "Just tell me already!"  Finally, the detective is able to figure it out and explains it to the reader.  One thing that I really found interesting was that the author chose not to use full names for his characters but to instead call them Mr. D____ or Capt. R____.  I wonder why he did this?

The second story I read was much more weird.  I read The Tell-Tale Heart.  At first the title made no sense but by the end of the story it completely did.  It is a story about a man who decides that this friendly old man must die because he thinks he has an evil eye.  He carefully waits for the right time to carry out the act.  But then he decides to dismember and hide the body under the floorboards of the house!  Gross!  I basically checked out of the book at that point but only had a few pages left so read on.  Finally, as the police come to question him about the old man he begins to feel guilty by hearing the heart beat of the old man and so it it the tell-tale heart that finally makes him confess to the murder.

I like Edgar Allan Poe I will definitely read more of his work but I think I'll research what each is about before I read it!

A Secret Affair

Okay so for this class I am taking I am suppose to read for about 90 minutes a week and then discuss it on my new blog.  Not so much for this week!  I was looking for a book to read since my library of books is nonexistent and happen to be given a book by a teacher that I was substituting for.  She said that the teachers in her school always have books that they pass around and to give it to someone else that I knew whenever I was finished.  So I began reading tonight much later than I anticipated but still looking forward to reading something besides textbooks.  After the first few chapters though I just can not read any more of this book.  It started out simple enough with foreign war correspondents reporting on the war in Bosnia in the 90s.  It depicted some of the real political aspects of the war and how it affected civilians so I was actually interested in that part.  However, it quickly turned into something that I have no desire to read.  It developed into a story about a women who is committing adultery on her husband with one of the correspondents.  It also had at least a swear word about every page or two.  I just could not bear to continue reading it so I guess I will have to begin my search again tomorrow for a better book.  This time I think I will find one myself instead of trusting someone else's recommendation.  Although it was a very kind gesture I am definitely passing the book on to someone else now!

First Post!

Okay so I've just created my very first blog and am about to start reading.  Not sure of the choice of books but I guess I'll just have to see how it develops!