The Wesnaclama Blog

Hello, Clara here. This past month, I read Five Feet Apart, written by Rachael Lippincott. Five Feet Apart follows the relationship of two cystic fibrosis patients who fall in love but have to remain separated. Due to cystic fibrosis leaving their lungs severely compromised, all patients must stay at least 6 feet away from each other to prevent contracting each other's bacterial infections and dying . The two of them approach their condition and how it affects their life in very different ways. Stella Grant follows every rule put in place for her in order to maximize her chance of her survival, and she even designs a phone app to keep her schedule and medications organized. Will Newman, on the other hand, views his death as inevitable, and wants to live his life like a normal teenager. Despite their contrasting personalities and initial hostility towards each other, they slowly fall in love. As they get closer, the rule of staying 6 feet apart becomes harder and harder to follow....

Sup! It’s Nate here with the final post of the year! It’s strange to think that school has gone by so fast. While in quarantine, I’ve been going back through the Harry Potter series that I first read as a kid. And it’s been great. But why is it so great? Spoilers throughout, if you’re one of the 5 people who haven’t read Harry Potter I’m not gonna do a detailed summary for this one since the series is so popular, but here’s the gist: Harry lives with his aunt, uncle, and cousin (who aren’t so nice) because his parents are dead. Then, he finds out he’s a wizard and his parents were murdered by Vold--I mean You-Know-Who--, the most powerful Dark wizard, but who was defeated (not killed; sort of taken out of his body i guess) when he tried to kill Harry. Harry goes to Hogwarts (a magical school) and makes friends with Ron and Hermione. Hogwarts’ headmaster is Dumbledore, who will be important later. With the power of plot armor, he foils a few of Voldemort’s attempts to come back to ...

~Emma Murawski           Recently I finished reading Anthem by Ayn Rand. Anthem was written in 1937 and touches upon a somewhat touchy subject especially during the time the book was written: society and its flaws. Anthem is a fictional book told from the perspective of a man by the name Equality 7-2521 who talks about the flaws in his society where everyone is part of the whole. You can’t look different, be smarter than your peers, or even think a thought other than what you are taught. You can’t have or give someone a name other than what they are given and you refer to yourself as we and others as they. In a world where there are no lightbulbs or cars and basically no chance to fall in love other than one night in the town designated for mating, if you break any of these laws, you will be punished. However, Equality 7-2521 is different. They grew up hating school because it was too easy and grew very tall and slim. Ever since a young age, teachers would mock ...

Hello all! It's me, Wes, writing to you from the friendly confines of my bedroom, again. I would first like to say that recently I've been diving into some Sherlock Holmes, specifically A Study In Scarlett . See, I could write a blog post about it (it is an absolute classic), but that would be a bit boring in my opinion. Rather, I want to write a post about 2020 (that was inspired by Emily's recent blog post). Every month in 2020 so far has seen the occurrence of bad event/s. Normally, bad events happen and we move on, however, 2020 has seen a string of might I say horrible events happen back to back. This, unsurprisingly, has been made into a meme by people which has added to the aura of sucky-ness, so I want to take a look into every month so far and point out some notable sucky things that have happened. Grab some popcorn cause this is going to be a long post. January Jan. 3rd - The world sees tensions between two nuclear-capable countries (the US and Iran) reach ...

Hi guys, this is Clara. During quarantine, I decided to go back to the classics and read Emma by Jane Austen. Emma focuses on a rich young woman (Emma) who has no interest in finding love for herself but loves to conjure love matches for her friends. Though Emma is clever, she often miscalculates situations, which causes herself and the people close to her strife and confusion throughout the novel. After she has success with matchmaking her governess and a widower named Mr. Weston at the beginning of the book, she befriends a girl with unknown parentage named Harriet Smith, and sets her eyes on a match between Harriet and Mr. Elton, the village vicar. Emma makes sure nothing gets in the way of this planned couple, and even convinces Harriet to refuse a marriage proposal from Mr. Martin, a farmer that Harriet knows well. As the novel progresses and Emma continues to meddle in other people’s personal lives, she begins to realize how wrong she was about certain people’s true intentions, ...

Emma Murawski           Hello! Recently, I finished a book called The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Written in 1984, its Mexican-American author immerses the reader in a world far different than their own.           The House on Mango Street does not necessarily have a set plot or storyline, and this makes this book so notable. Instead, Cisneros totally submerges the reader into the life of a young Chicana (Mexican-American) girl named Esperanza living in a packed Latino neighborhood in Chicago. Esperanza, telling the story from her point of view, explains almost every single aspect of her life on Mango Street in immense detail. The book is divided up into many chapters that vary from half of a page-long to many more. Each chapter delves into a different aspect of Esperanza’s life. She talks so much about what seem to be random features of Mango Street, yet they all make sense in the end and help the reader engage themselve...

I am sincerely flattered that you wrote about me (am I famous now?). As you've noticed, I'm making this a letter to you as opposed to a comment, as Jack suggested. But anyways, back to business. I must concede that my grammar is not too best, and in the future, I will make attempts to improve that. With that aside, I have no intention to refute your refute of my refute. I don't want this to become "A Review of Your Reviews of My Review of Your Reviews of My Review of Your Reviews" (I hope I got the wording right). I also have no intention of writing an entire essay, because you really aren't worth the time, no matter how fun. So I just want to say, good job on your last post, I really enjoyed it. (Now to see if I can milk this into a comment that will count) You can call out the hypocrisy in this post; I'm well aware that it is present, so perhaps there is a subconscious part of me that does want you to respond, so respond... or don't. Best wishes ...

Hello all! I hope that you are all doing well and making it through this quarantine I'm Wes and today I'll be reviewing The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde  by Robert Louis Stevenson. As opposed to simply giving a summary and my opinion, I want to dive into the moral debate that is brought up in his novella, so I'll spare the plot so you guys can read the book yourself. Unfortunately in order to discuss the moral question posed the big plot twist will be spoiled, so I guess I lied to you. Huh. Anyways, onto the "review"! --- Some background: Throughout the story, we see two characters, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We find out that Dr. Jekyll is an upstanding member of society and Mr. Hyde is the type of person to literally run over a child and not look back (it happened). In the end, we find out that Jekyll and Hyde were the same person all along. Jekyll, who was a scientist, had created a formula that could transform him into a different person. While...

Sup! It's Nate here, and in this post I'll be talking about why I like the fantasy genre so much. Fantasy books make up a large portion of my reading, and from classics like The Hobbit  to newer books such as Akata Witch , I have thoroughly enjoyed most of them. Before I get into why they are good, I should probably define what fantasy books are. Fantasy is a type of fiction that includes magic or other supernatural phenomena--essentially a plot that can't take place in the real world. This is a pretty big appeal for me of fantasy--their plots are different from daily life, which makes them unique and interesting. It's always exciting when reading a new fantasy book to see what direction the writer chose to take their story. The many, many possibilities for a plot, much more than there would be with a more realistic setting, makes fantasy unpredictable and engaging. Another reason I like fantasy is the chance to read about a well-designed world and characters. The s...

Hello all! I'm Wes and today we are going to talk about the Hunger Games, both the movie and the book. Nate, without any sort of inter-group coordination, posted a blog earlier about the Hunger Games which ended up being quite serendipitous. Because of that, I won't be diving into the background and general information about The Hunger Games and its movie counterpart .  In this review, I won't be talking about every single that is different between the two. The movie is long, so I will just be highlighting a few differences that I noticed. Throughout the process of making the film, some things are almost impossible to keep true to, so I will be giving some leeway when it comes to that. I also might completely forget what I just said and go on a tangent about how the grass was colored differently (you get the point). *spoilers, duh* --- The movie starts off with text and an interview with the then Gamemaker. This works as a quick way to introduce the context of ...

The Call of the Wild, written by Jack London, is a novel that truly astounded me. Published in the year 1903, this classic tale of companionship and love (in a sense) has made such an impact on literature. It has also managed to get itself banned in 1929 in Yugoslavia and Italy for Jack London openly having socialist views. The book was also burned in 1933 by Nazi’s for a “similar reason”. However, The Call of the Wild is the epitome of the classic saying “a dog is man’s best friend”. The Call of The Wild is about a man named John Thornton and his dog Buck. The story mainly focuses on Buck as the main character, and the narrator walks us through what is going on in his life. The story is set during the Gold Rush when many of dogs were needed to help carry supplies and mush. Buck happens to fall into the hands of Thornton after being abused and neglected in the past. Thornton comes across him when Buck and his old owners are trying to travel across a river, but he refuses. Due to...

Hey guys, this is Clara and for this months’ blog post I will review the book Dear John by Nicholas Sparks, a book in the romance genre. I’ve never read a romance novel before, and after a friend recommended this book, I decided to give romance novels a try and read Dear John.               Dear John follows the story of John Tyree, a lonely young man who enlists in the U.S Army so he can have a purpose in life. While he is on leave from duty, he meets Savannah Lynn Curtis, and immediately is attracted to her. They begin dating, and eventually fall in love. However, while everything is going well in their relationship, the tragedy of 911 occurs. Because of this event, John has to decide between his loyalty to his country or his love for Savannah, and either go back into active duty or stay with Savannah. He decides to go back into active duty, and the rest of the book focuses on how their long-distance rela...

Sup! Nate here and today I will be reviewing the Hunger Games series. Yeah, I never read this series until a couple months ago. But I finally got around to it, so let's jump right into the review! Summary (spoilers afoot!) The Hunger Games series is a trilogy by Suzanne Collins that is set in a dystopian future. America has been destroyed by war, and Panem is its successor as a nation. The Capitol of Panem rigidly controls its 12 districts ever since they tried to rebel, and as payment, two children are chosen from each district to participate in the annual Hunger Games--a fight to the death that is turned into entertainment. Katniss Everdeen from District 12 volunteers as tribute to protect her sister from having to participate, and a boy named Peeta who she only met once before is chosen with her. The two go to the Capitol and manage to both win the Games with some quick thinking to outwit the Capitol (that's a vast oversimplification, read the book if you want to kno...

This past month, I’ve read a few books, all of them being disappointing, unfortunately. I wasn’t exactly sure why I disliked them, I just knew that there was something about each of them that left me unmoved and bored. However, after some retrospection, I found the sources of my dissatisfaction with one of the books, which was called Shouting at the Rain.              Shouting at the Rain follows a girl named Delsie, and her life on Cape Cod. She lives with her grandmother, and has no recollection of either of her parents, as they left her when she was young. Delsie not knowing who her parents are becomes a main theme in the story and remains as one of Delsie’s biggest focuses in her life. What seems to be the main conflict of the book besides Delsie’s parentage is her summer best friend dumping her for a new friend named Tressa. For the majority of the book, Delsie tries to deal with one of her only friend...