Lucas Blogs About Books

Books can affect you in any number of ways. Sometimes they  introduce you to new ideas and make your world bigger. Sometimes they speak to something deep inside you and make you feel like someone else understands. Sometimes they just wrench your guts out and send a cascade of hot tears down your face and make you wish you hadn't started reading that chapter on the bus. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee HERE THERE BE SPOILERS! When'd I read it? This was an assigned reading book in 9th grade. I specifically remember it was around Thanksgiving, because that was the year I was in Illinois for my grandparents' 50th anniversary. What's it about? Oh like you don't know. In case you haven't attended a middle or high school in the United States, To Kill A Mockingbird recounts a few years in the life of Scout Finch, her older brother, Jem, and their neighbor, Dill, in Maycomb County, Alabama in the 1930s. In addition to spending their time speculating about/mock...

Shut up! I'm not crying, you're crying! Books can affect you in any number of ways. Sometimes they  introduce you to new ideas and make your world bigger. Sometimes they speak to something deep inside you and make you feel like someone else understands. Sometimes they just wrench your guts out and send a cascade of hot tears down your face and make you wish you hadn't started reading that chapter on the bus. East of Eden by John Steinbeck HERE THERE BE SPOILERS! When'd I read it?: This was an assigned reading book the summer before Advanced Lit & Comp in 11th grade. What's it about?: This is a big one. In the dedication Steinbeck says "Everything I have is in it, and it is not full." Part family history, part retelling of various stories from Bible,  East of Eden tells the stories of the (fictional) Trask family and the (real) Hamilton family (Steinbeck's mother's family). The Trasks seem doomed to relive biblical stories of brothe...