Book of the Month: My Sister's Keeper

My Sister's Keeper is a story about family, life, and death. Step inside Anna's world, where she has gone her whole life having surgery after surgery in order to keep her sister, Kate, alive.  Kate has leukemia, and Anna is the bone marrow match for Kate.  Anna was conceived to keep her sister alive.  Now that Anna is thirteen, she has had plenty of transplants to say enough is enough.  Anna has hired a lawyer to testify against her parents so she will never have to have another surgery, transplant, or transfusion again. Thoughout the book you will follow the trial and even read back in time to understand more about Kate and her disease. Told through the eyes of many characters, My Sister's Keeper will keep you on the edge of your seat full of many twists and turns.  It is a story about how we learn who we are and what our purpose in life is.  My Sister's Keeper will leave you in tears and mixed emotions.

If you finish My Sister's Keeper and want more, there is a movie based on the book as well.  There is a fair warning: the movie has been drastically changed. Personally I was very upset after I watched the end of the movie. So, if you choose to watch the book and see the movie one after another, don't say that I didn't warn you.

The Midlife Crisis

Orange is usually one of the colors that represents the season autumn.  This color can seem bold and exciting, but there is a whole other side to this one color.  It can represent the progression of adolescence to adulthood, or the famous “midlife crisis” in “The Masque of the Red Death” by the author Edgar Allen Poe.  Orange is one of the seven colors used for different rooms in Prince Prospero’s castle.  Each room represented the seven stages of man.  When the sun rose throughout the day, the orange room was full of light and showed the readers of the story that this room was a representation of the middle of human life.  In “The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allen Poe writes to the readers that the color orange represents the midlife crisis. 

            The color orange is a symbol of re-evaluation of a person’s life.  The middle of the human life, or ages 21- 50, is usually referred to as the midlife crisis.  A midlife crisis is when adults will look back and evaluate what they have done with their life.  Some people will want to change their career, grieve about their children leaving home, or re-evaluate their marriage.  During these years of your life, many people have gone to college, started a family, or may have done something totally outrageous because some people think that they have wasted parts of their life not doing things they wish they did when they were younger.  The ebony clock in “The Masque of the Red Death” represents death.  When people are middle aged, they are not near death yet, but they do sometimes psych themselves into a temporary psychological depression or mental turmoil.  Even the fear of aging can persuade people to make themselves look younger with the miracles of medicine and health to help them.  This condition is always treatable, but it has to take a lot of sense to know that a person happy the way he or she is.

The color orange, or midlife crisis, has not really effected me yet.  I hope that during that time of my life, I will be happy where I am and I will not reget the choices I made that I know would effect me the rest of my life.  The color orange is like the “middle of the road” stage of life and you should feel confident and happy about the decisions you had made when you were younger.  This color is impotant to the story because it was one of the middle rooms.  The rooms were set up right to left, or east to west.  When the sun rose everyday the rooms and the light would shift just like life would.  So the sunlight would be in the orange room near the middle of the day, just to represt the middle of our lives.  The color orange can be tricky when it comes to what is best for us.

Facts About O. Henry!

1) William Sydney Porter, or more commonly know as O. Henry, was born on September 11, 1862.
2) He lived in North Carolina during his childhood years.
3) His aunt did her best to give him a decent education. During that time he became very interested in reading and drawing.
4) His uncle owned a pharmacy and when he became older, O. Henry became a licenced pharmacist.
5) When O. Henry turned twenty, he moved to a sheep ranch in Texas.
6) Porter's pen name came about after the constant calling of the family cat. he would always call, "Oh, Henry!"
7) In 1895 O. Henry became a columnist for the Huston Daily Post.
8) O. Henry was accused of embezzling funds from First National Bank, the only place where he ever had a job.
9) In 1898, he was sentenced guilty from stealing from the bank and spent five years in Ohio prison.
10) O. Henry died from alcoholism on  June 5, 1910. He faced many challenges and wrote many short stories during his lifetime.

All facts found from: http://www.lsjunction.com/people/porter.htm
Picture from: http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=o.+henry&form=QBIL&qs=n&sk=&sc=8-8#focal=c385192838d43a1dabf2daeeff0a798a&furl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.esperanto.org%2FOndo%2FO_henry.jpg

Edgar Allan Poe

                                                      http://poestories.com/view.php?photo=42bfacea44500

Answers About Edgar Allen Poe

1) Edgar Allen Poe was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston Massachusetts.  He died on October 7, 1849.  The reason of his death was unknown, although, there are many theories about why he died.
2) Poe's parents died when he was only three years old, so he moved in with a foster family in Richmond. His foster mother died as well and his foster father was consumed with debt.
3) Some theories of Poe death was that he died from alcoholism, murder, suicide, or disease. Some say that he was found on the street unconscious and was taken to Washington College Hospital and died there.
4) Poe said that his "home" state was Virgina.
5) Baltimore was one of the places where he spent most of his life and the city is his finalresting place.
6) In the year of 1831, Poe was dismissed at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
7) Poe married his thirteen year old cousin, Virginia, in the year 1836.
8) I think that the marriage is uncivilized. In our modern world, it would have been against the law to marry someone as young as Virginia. An act like that would seem to give someone a bad reputation. I find it quite sickening to marry someone within your family. As an average person I would say, "Ew!"
9) In 1845, "The Raven" was published.
10) The "Tale-Tell Heart" and " The Black Cat" was written in 1843.

I am very familiar with Edgar Allen Poe's work. In middle school, we read some of his short stories and I have read some of his work on my own as well. I love reading his poems because it is so fascinating to read all the eerie scenarios this man has created. Edgar Allen Poe is one of the scariest storytellers I will ever know. He lived in Baltimore for a time in his life and it exciting to know that a mastermind writer had lived so close to Bel Air. I would love to visit the Poe house and his grave. May the spirit of Edgar Allen Poe live on!