Recap: Aleksander’s Great War is one split down the middle of two factions: the Clankers and the Darwinists. The Clankers depend on mechanics and steam power, man-made machines with legs that mimic animals and firepower that rivals the creative weaponry and biotechnology of their rivals (Each boasting theirs is more advanced). The Darwinists are inspired by Charles Darwin and his Theory of Evolution. In Leviathan, the mystery of DNA --brought forward a few decades for the sake of plot--has been discovered and manipulated to create crossbreeds of animals and huge, living dirigibles as part of their military power.
The Leviathan is one of these airships--one of the biggest--in which a young girl, Deryn Sharp, manages to serve aboard after an accident during her practical entrance exams leaves her stranded among its crew. She’s looked forward to this day for as long as she can remember, but being a girl hasn’t made it easy. Women aren’t allowed to join the military, but Deryn’s brother; already an airshipman helped her study and perfect her disguise as Dylan, the boy. Their ruse has worked so far, but Deryn is in for more than she ever could have expected. Before the Leviathan can return Deryn, Alek’s parents, on the other side are killed and war declarations start cropping up across Eastern Europe, summoning the huge airship to a highly secretive mission that involves a thylacine, a zookeeper, talking lizards, and a batch of eggs which noone seems to have any clue about.
So now that i have had more time to research and hings like that, i have some opinions. First of all, this book, although it is a childrens book, I recommend it to anyone of any age to give it a chance, the details of war machines and mythical monsters giving people a break from technology. Scott Westerfield’s writing transforms the reader's brain into a sponge. Once I started reading, I couldn't stop until I finished. The story just hooked onto my brain and drew me in. Anyways here's the rest of my review or more like a summary hoped you liked/hated it. Oh and if you want to read it I have the book if you would like to borrow it.
I have a major problem with writers block. Every time I write, I get stuck. Throughout my entire life it has just been there, appearing every time without fail. It’s like a disease that affects everyone and there are no medicinal treatments for it. Whether it is free write, essays, or research papers, I always get stuck. I think that I get stuck while writing most of the time because I over think. Whenever I start writing, I obsess over things like how the paragraph should be structured. Minute things like what the perfect sentence starter would be or the best word for this sentence should be. There isn’t really any kind of strategy to writers block. All I do is sit there until an idea pops into my head. I know that this is bad since you waste time and time is everything. Everyone has their own strategy or whatever they may call it and this is mine. I’ve noticed that whenever I get stuck while writing, there’s always some factor in it. I basically need complete silence to concentrate on what’s at hand. My mind tends to drift off and I end up sitting there daydreaming. On second thought, I get stuck because every time I write, I just write. I don’t plan it out extensively or anything. Once I start writing, I just go with the flow until I run into a dead end. So my main problem is that I don’t think enough about what I’m writing about, deciding whether or not I have enough to write something. I’ve had writers block enough to know that it will never go away and that anyone, whoever they are will get writers block. You could be the best writer in the universe but you would need something to write about.
At the beginning of the year, Mr. Sutherland was lecturing everyone about how he had a new idea which was to blog. He said that we would write a blog every Friday and that would be like a weekly assignment. When I heard this, I was like oh my god! Thank you!! I had so many ideas on what to blog about. Subjects that included games, movies, technology, and worldwide issues were all of interest to me. As the school year progressed on though, I started having doubts about it. I’ve noticed that almost everyone else has the absolute opposite feelings than me. They love blogging and you could say they are hooked. When we first started writing blogs, I thought my ideas were awesome! Over time the ideas just seemed stupid and really uninteresting to me. I don’t really have a main source for all my blog post ideas. Future blogs might come from anything, like a scrap of paper, to the back of a cookie box. Occasionally, things like Newsweek end up stuck in my mind and I decide to write about them. I tend to stick to more factual topics. What I’m basically trying to say is that I like to write about things that have a major effect on people lives which are discussed by the majority of the population. Nothing really “inspires” me to write. Most of the time, I just write to finish the assignment. I don’t recall anytime when something inspired me to write. Everything I write is just ideas on a piece of paper that has been expanded to create a story, nothing more. Maybe that’s my problem. Nothing inspires me to write so I have nothing to write…interesting. After answering this question, I think I’ll wait and see if something will inspire me, or if I will stay as I am.
I have to think about this one. I mean I can’t really say that I like having a blog. Ever since we made them, I keep forgetting to write one every week and it affected my grade so much. So we are not off to a very good start. Well, aside from dropping my grade down to a D blogs are pretty ok. They can get annoying since ninety nine percent of the time I don’t have anything to write about. I end up sitting there watching the screen for an hour.Well, there are some good aspects for having a blog. Almost every week we get to go to the lab to just work on them. In there I can catch up on homework if I need to and then blog. Weighing in the good and bad, I’d say that having a blog isn’t good but it’s also not bad. Before I started blogging, I used to write without thinking. For instance, I would write about something that I would find interesting. Then we started to blog and Mr. Sutherland told us that it would be best if we let anyone read them. I believe that I understand why he wanted us to blog and let the world view our writings. If we had just written in class on a piece of paper, there would be a finite amount of opinions. But blogging on the internet, where billions of people can get access to them, gives us an infinite bank of opinions. Mr. Sutherland may or may have not have thought about this, but getting feedback from people outside of our classroom is beneficial. We get information from people we don’t know about their preferences, not just limited to the few in our class. Perhaps this is why we were assigned to blog, to voice our opinions, our interests to the world. This is what blogging has started to do for me. It is opening my mind to millions of different possibilities. It is teaching me to expand my mind, to absorb not only what I think, but the ideas of the world.
“Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.”-Stephen Hawking
I don't really know what I would want to get out of working with peer just yet. I have some ideas about what I might get from group work. Like people just helping each other out with writers block when we get stuck. I'd also like it if the groups could give each other ideas. I think I would be pretty good at reading other peoples drafts and telling them what needs more work and what's good. I wouldn't recommend the option of finding books for other people since it would be difficult to know what they would prefer. I'm also pretty good at editing and proofing. Ok so know I know exactly what my choice is. I would rather work with my friends or people that I know versus working with people I know less. It's because I'm more comfortable working with them and it's easier for me to talk to them rather than someone else. Also if people are thinking about the same ideas as me, we might end up writing about the same things. For the guidelines, I have a vague idea what Mr. Sutherland is trying to get at. Like maybe people should choose the same or different books. I think it is very important that everyone in that group should give help. I've been in groups where some people just sit there and do nothing.
