Exaggeration – a statement or a way of saying something that makes something seem better than it really is. (överdriva någonting)

Exceed – to go beyond an official or legal limit. (överskrider någonting)

Modest – shy about showing your body or attracting sexual interest. (blygsam)

Authority – the power you have because of your position or because people respect your knowledge. (att ha pondus och vara respekterad)

Degrade – to treat someone without respect. (behandla någon respektlöst)

Oppressed – a group of people who are oppressed are treated unfairly and prevented from having the same rights as other people have. (en grupp av människor blir hindrade från att ha samma rättighter som andra har)

Coherent – If a piece of writing is coherent, it’s easy to understand. (sammanhängande)

Interpretation – an attempt to explain the reason to an event, a result or someone’s actions.  (ett forsök att förklara ett resultat eller någons handling)

Implicit – criticism that is suggested or understood without being stated directly. (obetingad)

Titillate – if a picture or a story titillate someone, it makes them feel sexually excited. (upphetsar)

Today I got saved by a white man. He saved my life and I owe him. He´s the first good white man I´ve met. With his long beard and hair he looks like a savage, or a wild animal. He speaks odd, too bad because I wanted to know what he was doing here on this domed island. He might be it himself. The wrinkles in his face reveal a hard past.  Perhaps, he is around 40 years old. When I look in his eyes, I see decency. I´m going to trust these good eyes and be his companion.

1.       Knead – to press a mix of flour and water with your hands while baking.

2.       Parch – if sun parches land, plants get´s real dry.

3.       Overcast – when it´s dark with clouds.

4.       Gale – very strong wind.

5.       Sleet – snow and rain which falls when it´s very cold.

6.       Groyne – a low wall built out in to the sea to prevent the water from removing sand and stones from the shore.

7.       Crest – the highest point of a wave before it falls.

8.       Scree – an area of small, loose and broken rocks on the side of a mountain.

9.       Corrie – a deep bowl shaped area on a mountain.

10.   Bow tie – A piece of clothing that man sometimes wears when they dress up instead of a tie.

11.   Detract – to make something less good than it really is.

12.   Loath – to be unwilling to do something.

13.   Muffled – muffled sounds or voices cannot be heard clearly, for example can they come from behind a door or a wall.

14.   Kip – a short period of sleep.

15.   Pillar – a tall upright post used as a support for the roof.

16.   Self-pity - the feeling of being sorry for yourself.

17.   Skint – having no many for a short period of time.

18.   Succinct – clearly expressed in a few words.

19.   Efface yourself – behave in a way that does not make people notice you.

20.   Consort – Doing something together with someone.

Now when I´ve finished the book am I going to analyze the plot and writing. I think the writing was youthful and adjusted to young readers. She used slang and weren’t scared to apply swearwords.  That made the book more realistic and truthful. If she hadn´t used those things the book had been a disaster. Only because almost all characters were youth and we use that kind of language, so it´s good to be a fearless author sometimes.

I didn´t have any problems understanding the plot. The Author had written in an easy way and I understood nearly everything. I have to say that I under rested this book, the story was very interesting to read about and I learned not to judge a book after its form and size. I will now on take on thin, fat, wide and small books. So do not judge after the look or size, it´s inside that count. :)

I have now completed the book and it was nothing like I had thought! From the beginning, my expectations weren’t any high. I can say that I was just a little wrong… Because the book was actually good! It wasn´t the best book I´ve read but absolutely not the worst either.

I think what made this book good was that it was a believable story. I could see myself in the main character; we are both teenagers with similar thoughts and problems. The author could really write about teenagers without making it sound artificial. I can really see myself reading another book of this author in the future. It was the plot, the characters and the mystic in the book that kept me interested and curious about what are going to happened next. Another good thing about this book were that it wasn´t predictable, you never knew how the book were going to turn out. I will definitely recommend this book to my friends!

The main character is a sixteen year old guy who lives in North Falls- a small town were rumors spread fast. His name is Darren Flynn. He is a good athlete, a swimmer, and swims for the school team. When he turned sixteen, he put on weight and began to get attention for his looks. He got the good body of a swimmer and is a natural sexy guy; this makes Darren popular.

I got the feeling that Darren isn´t comfortable with the attention that he acquires, I don´t think that he likes to stick out. Even if he is popular, he don´t have any close friends just because Darren stick to himself rather than hang out with others. You can follow him through the book, the more you read and when the problems get worse, how he shut off reality and doesn´t speak to anyone.

Darren is a thinker, he ponder a lot about his life and future, his family and friends. Even if Darren thinks a lot, he never comes to a conclusion, instead, he always find new questions. This makes me feel sorry for him, that he never gets the chance to solve a problem because it always comes new ones. I get frustrated when he doesn’t speak to someone or ask anyone for help. I guess he is scared to open up to someone and show his emotions. His father taught him long ago that boys don´t cry, that you don´t tell your teacher when someone is mean to you. You hit back, you don´t go away and cry. How simple is that?

I have now read half of the book and the story is now climbing up to the top. I think that every book or movie is build like a curve. Like when you look at statistic for how a (konjuktur) is build up. It goes up to the peak and then down to the bottom.

Okay, what´s have happened from the last comment?

Mr. Tracy has given Darren a very high grade in English but fails some of the other guys in Darren’s swim team. This pisses the swimmers off and they get support from several other students at school that also think that Mr. Tracy is unfair. Darren doesn’t say much, he won’t to get involved. The anger that the student’s carrying makes them feel that they have to take revenge of Mr. Tracy. A rumor starts. A rumor about that Mr. Tracy is gay and pedophile. Darren’s friends load down gay porn from internet and put it in an envelope.  They shoved it beneath the Principals door. Inside it was twelve pictures and a note saying:

Mr. Tracy has made me sick to liv

I am soashamed having to see this

I am not in yr school. I am 11 years old

I would like kill myself

I’m so curios about what are going to happened next! I really don’t think that what they did were the absolutely most excellent thing to do. The consequences can be really big, not just for them but also for Mr. Tracy. When Mr. Tracy finds out about the gay rumor I think that he are going to suspect Darren for telling about their little “car trip”. This might give Darren some hell of a problem and that is just what I think are going to happen. But I can’t figure out what sorts of problem so I guess I’ll have to continue to read.

It´s Sunday night and I´ve just read a few chapters in Sexy. And guess what? The big THING happened! Or did it..?

Darren was on his swim practice in school, when his ride home went home early. The wetter was bad, it had just started to snow and the wind was hard. Darren still decided to walk the quit long way home. When he stood alone by his locker in the school corridor, his English teacher, Mr. Tracy, appears.  He offered Darren a lift home, an offer he polite turned down. But after a second look out of the window, Darren changed his mind. At first, Darren felt uncomfortable. How could Mr. Tracy know in which direction Darren lived? Why was he fussing with the dashboard? Why did he say that if Darren´s “long legs” were cramped he could adjust the seat? Why did he drive so slowly? It didn´t seem to be normal. And the weirdest thing of all; why did he say, full of emotions that Darren shouldn’t call him Mr. Tracy but Lowell, his first name. It was then Darren remembered that Mr. Tracy most often were at the swim meetings and took pictures…

I´ve didn’t expect this to happen. One thing was I right about, that his look would have something to do with the big thing. But I didn’t expect that a teacher would try to “hit” on him. Because that´s what I think Mr. Tracy was trying to do. Also, I don´t think this will be the end of the story, that it won’t happen anything else. I think that Mr. Tracy will do other things to Darren, but what? That´s a question I can´t answer right now.

We have now started to work with an elective book; I selected to read Sexy by Joyce Carol Oates. Our first task was to write about our first emotions that we got when we read the first chapter.  The first chapter is always the most imported one. It´s the one thing that decides wider you keep reading this book or not, or with witch attitude that you keep on reading.

The first impression I got when I first open Sexy was that it was printed in kind of big letters with not much text on each page. My experiences tell me that not many really good books look like this, and I think that that reduced my expectations a bit. And the first chapter didn´t put them up either.

The first chapter was all about introducing the reader to the main character. His name is Darren Flynn. I got the feeling that something bad are going to happen to him. Actually I don´t know why, perhaps it´s the way the author is describing him. She describes him in third person, like he doesn´t exists. It feels like a dark book full of secrets, you just have to give it a chance. That´s why I never quit reading a book after one or two chapters, some books are just slow before they get exiting or just “start”.

But back to Sexy. The first chapter was just almost about Darren’s look. That makes me feel that the way he looks, or that he is sexy, are going to be a thing that´s repeats in the book, a thing that are going to be very important in the story. That all the “bad” (that I think are going to happened) starts with that Darren goes from nobody to a good looking guy that get´s everyone’s attention, both girls in his age and older women on the street.

Okay, time to summarize. My emotions I got when I read the first chapter was both negative and positive. The negative was that I thought that the book was going to be kind of slow in the beginning. The positive ones were instead that I got the feeling that the book is going to get better after a while. So listen to my advice, don’t give up on a book after the first chapter, just keep on going and you will feel that you have to read until the end ;)

Hi Everybody! This will be my English blog where you are going to follow me and my English work! I hope you will enjoy it =)