April 11th, 2011

Dear everybody,

This week I have finished reading the book Jaws by Peter Benchley. This book is about a great white shark that terrorizes the Long Island community of Amity, where it attacks and devoures anybody brave enough to set foot in the water. The small town's police chief, Martin Brody, is determined to kill the fish, stop the attacks, and return peace and life to the town of Amity. All the while, he fighting pressure from the town's mayor, Larry Vaughan, who needs to receive income from his realistate company to pay back a personal debt to his "partners," who are thought to be heavily involved with the mob in New York. So together with an experienced fisherman named Quint and an icthyologist named Matt Hooper, Brody attempts to go out to sea and risk his own life in order to stop the killings on the beach and save the town of Amity from diminishing into a ghost town.

The characters in this story a VERY realistic. First off, they all cuss like crazy. Whether you like it or not, in reality, a lot of people cuss on a regular basis. And a lot of people drop the f-bomb, which Brody does A LOT. Also, the characters in the story each have very different mindsets. For instance, Quint's life obviously revolves around fishing while Ellen, Brody's wife, constantly tries to reconnect with her past rich, luxorious lifestyle that she lived back in the city. This makes the characters even more realistic.

The best book that I have read this year would have to be Bleachers by John Grisham. Bleachers was incredible because although the book didn't particularly have a lot of action except for an exceptionally realistic football game broadcast in the middle, it portrayed football in a really unique way, like how it affects someone's life as a whole. It also brings into detail how the main character, Neely Crenshaw, went from being one of the top quarterback prospects in college football to a regular person because of obtaining an injury, and how an injury like this could impact someone's life, let alone a football career. This really made an impact on me while reading it. Either way, the book was amazing and I really enjoyed it.

Currently, I have read 28 books. I am now starting The Godfather by Mario Puzo.