Reaching the End of Assignment [Analysis]

Yeah, it was a satisfactory one. I don’t mean my homework.  I mean Holes by Sachar, instead. It is our teacher’s (how are you Mr. Siever?) assignment to decide how well is my homework. I have done my best, despite being in Antalya for a math training camp. Actually Holes has more than satisfactory, if one considers the style of writing, structure and main message of the book. (It is my real opinion; I don’t want to praise the book only for oral mark.)

Author uses mostly all possibilities of literature to enhance the expression, from the beginning to the end. For instance, irony plays a great role throughout Holes.

"Welcome to Camp Green Lake," said the driver. Stanley looked out the dirty window. He couldn't see a lake. And hardly anything was green. (3th chapter)

On the other hand, Sachar wonders readers by wondering our main character Stanley.

The last thing he(Stanley) wanted to do after killing himself all day on the lake was to get in a fight with a boy called the Caveman. He was glad X-Ray and Armpit had come to his rescue. (…) Stanley looked around to see that Armpit and Squid were talking to him. (…) The Lump wasn't the Caveman. He was. (9th chapter)

            He connects past with present to build a plenty of coincidence and fill the holes.

          “I want you to do one more thing for me."(Madame Zeroni) "Anything," said Elya. "I want you to carry me up the mountain. I want to drink from the stream, and I want you to sing the song to me." (7th chapter)

            The great-great-grandson of Elya Yelnats carried the great-great-great-grandson of Madame Zeroni up the mountain. (50^th chapter)

Author uses some funny words and phrases which make characterizations stronger. These were one of most enjoyable parts for me.

It was all because of his(Stanley’s) no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather! (3rd chapter)

(…)"Stanley Yelnats" was spelled the same frontward and backward. So they kept naming their sons Stanley. (3rd chapter) 

"My name is easy to remember," said Mr. Pendanski as he shook hands with Stanley just outside the tent. "Three easy words: pen, dance, key." (5th chapter)

            And at the final scene, Louis Sachar completes the song. By this way, he describes how destiny of Stanley's family concludes. The predominant message of the book is clear for reader:

            If only, if only, the moon speaks no reply;

Reflecting the sun and all that's gone by.

Be strong my weary wolf, turn around boldly.

Fly high, my baby bird,

My angel, my only. (50th chapter)

Summing all of them up, I recommend everyone to read the book or at least watch the movie of it (Oh, I forgot to write an entry about the movie. Hmm, it doesn’t matter. If you want to learn more about the movie, just take a look to this link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0311289/. I think, the movie is a good one, too.)

Finally, we reach the end. But don't be upset, my dear reader. I want to carry on writing about my experiences during reading new books. See you later on another reading adventure… (nearly 500 words)

Letter to Zero [Character Analysis]

            Dear Zero,

            I read the book Holes which tells your story in Camp Green Lake. I also heard the good news about your life after Camp Green Lake that you found your mother at last, you got rid of living homeless and you are building yourself a new life. Camp Green Lake isn’t a remedy for most of its dwellers. However, fortunately for you and Stanley together with loyalty built a new character yourselves by digging holes. I name it “destiny”.

You have a pure heart and you act to others with justice, according to what they deserve to be acted. Members of Group D except Stanley don't deserve to be spoken with, so you didn’t say what you feel. In my opinion, your silence indicates that you use your energy to think and comprehend rather than speak with others. I admire your ability.

            It is miserable that some of human beings believe what they want to believe in. For instance, in contrary to what Mr. Pendanski and others believe in, you are brilliant at maths and you can memorize directly what you try to learn. People in Camp Green Lake couldn’t understand your profound thoughts. I hope with all my heart that you will have a good friends like you, because in society people respect a loyal person with a great talent to maths. 

            Yours sincerely,

            A considerate and understanding friend

            Note: I have attached your photo with Stanley to the letter.

You and Stanley, hand in hand

           

The Word “Delirious”

            When I was reading 29^th chapter, I noticed the word “delirious”. It inspired me Turkish word “deli” which means crazy. Then I found out that also “delirious” means crazy. I think it is a really interesting coincidence which probably doesn't occur due to a borrowing from a language to another one. Anyway, I generally like to relate words with similar pronunciation and writing. What especially gave me pleasure to relate the pronunciation of “delirious” and “deliriyoruz” which means “We are getting crazy.” .

            The noun “deal” can be given as another example to similar pronunciations of two different words. One can relate it with the Turkish word “değil” which means in English “not”. I have experienced also a funny conversation about it before a couple of days.

One of my friends said that they played Monopoly Deal. I didn’t know the difference between a normal Monopoly and Monopoly Deal. So I asked her:

“What is actually different by Monopoly Deal?”

She said: “It is actually not same as the normal one. There is a big different between them, even. As I said, one can infer that also from its name: Monopoly Değil (Which means in Turkish “It is not Monopoly.”)”  

This joke was a good one. (207 words)

Some Unknown Words - 2 [Analysis]

Word	Guess Meaning	Dictionary Meaning	Picture
delirious (29th chapter)	crazy	having uncontrolled excitement; ecstatic
ledge (36th chapter)	a kind of bench	A shelf, ridge, or reef, of rocks
odor (38th chapter)	smell	Any smell, whether fragrant or offensive; scent; perfume	(foot odor)
rattle (48th chapter)	tail of rattlesnakes	loosely connected horny sections at the end of a rattlesnake's tail
refuge (21st chapter)	no guess	A place providing safety, protection or shelter
tedious (50th chapter)	annoying, boring	Boring, monotonous, time consuming, wearisome

One Paper From Mr. Sir's Diary of Never-to-be-forgotten Events [Personal Connection]

 Pendanski drew it for me

         That was one of my worst days in this desperate place. As usual, I was filling Group D’s canteens. It was midday and the sun's rays were preventing me from filling them as fast as possible and returning to my tent early as possible for a rest.

 I approached to Caveman’s hole. It looked like that he found something. These naughty boys! I noticed that someone had stolen my sack of sunflower seeds and they were sending it each other to eat my seeds. I thought that it was X-Ray’s plan as always, because of the fact that other guys always serve this arrogant boy and Stanley is not smart enough to overcome that. I tried to make him confess that it was X-Ray’s plan, but he didn’t.

It was Caveman’s fault so he had to speak with the warden about it. So I took him to Walker's office. I could understand that she was focused on the stupid stuff that X-Ray found when he was digging. When I explained her situation, she looked me as if she was concerning with what I was talking about, despite X-Ray needing a good punishment. How could he dare to steal my sack? I know how, he is too silly to be aware of others desires.

Walker's frightening hands with nail polish

      
While I was explaining to her that it was absolutely the others fault, she painted her nails with her nail polish with rattlesnake venom. She reached over Stanley and touched his face with her nails. My heart was beating. Then, in a flash,   I felt a terrible pain on my right cheeks and lost my power to stand. All I can remember about what happened before I opened my eyes in a tent is that my hands were shaking. It was as if a rattlesnake bit me.

It was Stanley’s and fault and I am going to punish him for lying to me. I want to see his facial expression when I don’t fill his canteen. On the other hand, it happened because Walker is spoilt and arrogant. I am disgusted with her and her meaningless desires.

I won’t forget that ever and I will punish her, too. (367 words)

Deepest Holes on the World that Nobody Can Dig with a Shovel

  Human’s ambition let him change world’s geography. People search everything on ground’s surface and even beneath the ground which can be used to earn money or can serve other desires of them. It is heard a lot about soil taken from a mountain with enormous machines to build up a synthetic island and holes which are higher than lots of mountains in the contrary direction to acquire high-valuable metals like gold.

          

Mirny Diamond Mine of Siberia 

               When I was reading 5th and 6th chapters, I tried to imagine how deep can be dug, even with machines and to reach different desires I have explained above. Subsequently I made a small research and found out some frightening and amazing ones. 

I meant this kind of machines :)     

           This hole is in the ocean. The picture doesn’t illisturate it’s depth, but one can clearly comprehend that it should be enormously deep.

Great Blue Hole – Beliz

This one is like a black hole. It absorbs water at dam in order to balance water flows to the dam and water that pours through the dam.

Glory Hole in Monticello Dam California

Whether it’s the Great Blue Hole of Belize, Mirny Diamond Mine of Siberia or the Burning Gates of Turkmenistan, all of these attract a lot of tourists and adventure seekers every year just to experience the ultimate souvenir of nature. (239 words)

On the History of the Number “Zero"

Muhammad ibn Ahmed al-Khwarizmi 

            I would like to share with you some of my historic knowledge about the nickname of a main character Hector Zeroni. The idea of donating a symbol for nonexistence found by Indians and then this idea was used by Muslim scholars by building the fundamentals of modern mathematics in 10th century. In 976 AD Persian mathematician  Muhammad ibn Ahmed al-Khwarizm, in his "Keys of Science", remarked that if, in a calculation, no number appears in the place of tens, then a little circle should be used "to keep the rows". This circle the Arabs called صفر sifr, "empty". That was the earliest mention of the name Sifr that eventually became zero. 
                Furthermore, the numbers that we use today were borrowed from Arabic numbers and they are too similar, as you can see at the picture. If you cannot observe the similarity, just rotate the Arabic numbers ninety degrees counterclockwise!

There is another interesting detail about “zero”. Arabic writing of zero consists of only a simple dot which mathematically doesn’t have a dimension like other substances like a line, a plane or a cube, even the world we live in it (it is 3-dimensional). Hence zero written as a dot presents actually nonexistence. (204 words)

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_(number)

Palindromes and Semordnilaps

         
          Palindrome is a word or number that can be read the same way in either direction. On the other hand, semordnilap is a name coined for a word or phrase that spells a different word or phrase backwards. Moreover, "semordnilap" is itself "palindromes" spelled backwards. The most obvious example of a semordinalp is the word “saw”.

I have a special attention and interest to palindromes, because palindromic words play a big role in my life. As an obvious example, my name “Efe” is a palindromic word. One of interesting details about the story in Holes is the palindromic relation between Stanley’s name and surname.

Stanley's father was also named Stanley Yelnats. Stanley's father's full name was Stanley Yelnats III. Our Stanley is Stanley Yelnats IV. Everyone in his family had always liked the fact that "Stanley Yelnats" was spelled the same frontward and backward. So they kept naming their sons Stanley. Stanley was an only child, as was every other Stanley Yelnats before him. (3rd chapter)
            A year later their child was born. Sarah(Elya’s wife) named him Stanley because she noticed that "Stanley" was “Yelnats" spelled backward. (7th chapter)

            After I read this chapters, I made a research in internet about palindromes and I have found out some interesting words:

            The longest palindromic word in the Oxford English Dictionary is the tattarrattat, coined by James Joyce for a knock on the door. The Guinness Book of Records gives the title to detartrated, the preterit and past participle of detartrate, a chemical term meaning to remove tartrates. According to Guinness World Records the Finnish word saippuakivikauppias (soapstone vendor), a 19 letter word, is claimed to be the world's longest palindromic word in everyday use.

            There are also some funny palindromic words:

·                                  Anahanahana is a place in Madagascar.

      Ekala Lake is a lake in Montana, United States.

      Malayalam is an Indian language.

 In English, two palindromic novels have been published: Satire: Veritas by David Stephens, and Dr Awkward & Olson in Oslo by Lawrence Levine. (340 words)

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palindrome,                               http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_palindromic_places

Some Unknown Words from First Chapters [Analysis]

            I am reading the pdf version of the book. Due to this fact, I don’t know whether some of words from my new vocabulary are given at the bottom of some pages of other version. 

Word	Guess Meaning	Dictionary Meaning	Picture
tease (3rd chapter)	to annoy someone by mentioning one’s failures	to provoke or disturb by annoying remarks and other annoyances (verb)
despicable (6th chapter)	inferior	fit or deserving to be despised; contemptible; mean; vile; worthless (adjective)
pile ( 5th chapter)	accumulation of some substance	a mass formed in layers; as, a pile of shot (noun)
wheelbarrow (15th chapter)	a means for transporting soil or this kind of stuffs	a small, one-wheeled (rarely two-wheeled) cart with handles at one end for transporting small loads (noun)
buzzard (4th chapter)	rotten, decomposed	in North America, a general term for scavenging birds such as the American black vulture, also called American black buzzard (Coragyps atratus), and the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) (noun)

First Impressions about Holes - 1

             After I read first three chapters of Holes by Sachar, I have convinced that desperate and unfortunate days are going to begin for Stanley Yelnats. The use of contrast at the end of third chapter and the general atmosphere of the book let me predict that he will be possibly bitten by a scorpion or a rattlesnake. Especially this part from 3^rd chapter excites me and gives me courage to don’t leave reading:  

            "Welcome to Camp Green Lake," said the driver. Stanley               looked out the dirty window. He couldn't see a lake. And hardly anything was green. (3rd chapter)        

Stanley's physic and the curse that captured him reminds the main character Patrick Smash of the comedy film Thunderpants and his misfortune. Patrick was born with two stomachs, and hence the uncontrollable 'talent' to produce ungodly farts (I don't rather to watch this film today, but it was a good one for a small kid.). This soon drives his own dad away and makes his social life hell. Okey, the same story doesn't work for Stanley. But similar to Patrick, Stanley has no friends in his school and his schoolmates mock him because of his physical attributes. After some miserable days Patrick manage to solve his problem and his disadvantage turns to an advantage. I predict that the curse of Stanley's no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather(what kind of adjective is that?!) concludes an advantage with a similar plot to Thunderpants. We will see that...


              Before I tap the send button on the page and send my first entry about Holes (and also first entry after prologue), I would like to share with you some questions I am curious about and that I want to be answered:

    What are the details of story of Stanley’s no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather ?

        Why is Stanley arrested, even though he claims that he is innocent?

        Why do dwellers of Camp Green Lake have to dig holes?

        Who is Warden actually?

        How did the project of Stanley’s father led Stanley’s arrest? 

   (225 words)

Instead of a Prologue for My Blog

     After some attempts to write and then giving up, I think I have now enough courage to begin to write down something as my first entry (and hopefully not last one) to my blog. There is a famous Turkish adage for such circumstances: “The beginning is the half of way to the completing.”

     First of all, I have to admit that I thought that It would have been clearly possible to change my blog’s name when I was deciding font type and other main features of the blog. But I was wrong, so it seems that I am going to use this boring one “My Reading Blog” for a long time (what about creating a new blog? Why not, maybe if it gives me pleasure to carry on writing such a blog…). By the way, I prefer to be humble and try my best to create an entertaining blog rather than to a blog with an appealing name but without satisfactory content.

     Maybe a question about the blog’s aim and the cause that let me begin to write a blog occurs in mind of the reader. As all of my other friends in my class do, it is something that students must always do: Homework…  However, the idea of owning an individual blog doesn't mean to me some tedious couple of days. Moreover, my homework book “Holes” written by Louis Sachar about which I will discuss here gives me a considerable courage to carry on this work. Because this one has attracted my interest and it deserves to be written some feedbacks and analysis about it.

(This enormous black hole is not concerning my book "Holes": On the other hand it is absolutely breath-taking, isn't it?)

(266 words)