review: books... "The Summer I Turned Pretty" by Jenny Han

rating: 4 out of 5

rave: it's a good summer read. captures perfectly the essence of summer and fun under the sun.

bottom line: ehhhh.... i say.... read it.

synop: Belly's life revolves around the summers she spends in Cousins beach. The other 10 months of school is just a count-down until the next summer.

Every year every since the dawn of time, she spends her summers in the beach house with her mother's best friend whose children are her best friends too: Jeremiah and Conrad.

Belly has had a crush on Conrad ever since she was little, but will he ever see her as a girl, and not a playmate?

This summer, things will change. The boys will see her for who she is: not as her older brother's sister, but as a girl.

Rant: i think that this was a ehhh read... i'm really right down the middle: i mean, the beginning & middle were very well-writtten, but i did not like the end.

when i first read the synop, i thought that it would be another shallow teen romance, but i gotta say that it wasn't: there was depth to the novel.

and i think that what set it apart from those other books is that there is change in it:

Jeremiah's father is getting estranged from the family (divorce?),
the guys see her as a girl (!),
her brother is going off to college (!),
and she has a summer fling, which sort of got me mad b/c of how.... i don't know.

on top of that, Conrad was a total ass this summer: he would get drunk all the time, he stayed locked up in his room 99% of the vacation, he also had a summer fling with another girl (not that Belly didn't do the same thing, but hey...) i mean, it would have been fine if he didn't end up w. her.

thing is, i don't think that he deserved Belly's love.

even though he had a good reason to act like an ass, i still felt that it was unacceptable. Jeremiah was going through the same thing, and he wasn't an ass to Belly the entire summer. Maybe it was b/c of different personalities, ways of seeing the world, or watev, but i don't find that as a valid excuse.

Belly had pined her entire life for Conrad, and he was an ass that summer. a total ass. he alienated himself from the rest of the family, and he didn't deserve her.

especially since Jeremiah loves her. the cute younger brother who has always been there for her. but apparently, she doens't feel the same way.

maybe Han is trying to show that you fall in love with who you may, and he may not be perfect, but you're in love with him anyway, but i felt that Jeremiah deserved better than Belly's rejection for a guy that didn't show any interest and on top of that was out-right ignoring her.

Open House

So. Today we had open house, and I was one of the tourguides. A lot of my friends were there. What we did was just take a group of interested parents/future-NCPers and show them what we have to offer.

a lot of the parents wandered off during the tour, which disapointed me. a lot of them didn't ask questions, which is exactly what I would have done, except i now realize how much you can get from asking questions. so, it was a bit awkward the entire time... it was just a lot of fact-rattling, but thing is, i really do feel proud of being a northsider.

i would love to do this next year!!

i remember this one azn mother bringing in her 7 year old sons to see the school--talk about wow! it's like getting into standford or ivy league!

but getting into hs in chicago IS like getting into college--applications, grades, reccomendations, tests, entrance exams, registration, rejected credits...

but now that CPS does not enforce the desegregation law as of the next school year (2010-2011), the school will FOR SURE be ruled by asians--30% of it ALREADY IS azn--the same as whites.

i know that this is racist, but i KNOW that a lot of the minority students did not meet academic standards, but they were admitted because of the de-segregation law.

walking around in NS hallways, you know for sure that this is a predominately white/asian hs. you see few and rare african american students.

even on the faculty, you only see a few african american teachers. (but there are also few latino teachers, and a few handfull of asn teachers, so it's not directed towards racism i guess)

the regimine is VERY rigorous here @ NS, but nothing we can't handle.

all classes are honors or AP (except P.E., health, sex ed, & driver's ed)

all-honors sounds SO intimidating, but it isn't. honors is VERY easy.

by junior year, ALL students are expected to take on @ least ONE AP class (**this is only what i feel, not what was expressed by the faculty**)--i say this b/c sophomore year, you can choose wether to take AP or Honors US History, but junior year, you can choose an AP science, AP social science, AP english course--EVERYONE has a chance to get an AP class of their strength.

and by senior year, you HAVE to take all AP classes (**once again, it is what I feel, not as expressed by faculty) since you have SO many oppertunities in every subject to go AP.