Bag of Bones Blog 3

I'm still reading Bag of Bones and I'm up to chapter 15. Recently, Mike has discovered that their are ghosts in his house, and the 21 year old woman he met earlier, Mattie, is noticing them too. When Mike met Mattie and Kyra, he was unaware of their current troubles. However, after recieving a phone call from the multimillionare Max  Devore, Mattie's father-in-law, he soon realizes the mess he's in. Max and Mattie are in a custody battle over Kyra, and have been since the death of her husband and his son, Lance. Since Mattie has no money and lives in a trailer, and Mike has too much money to know what to even do with it, he decides to buy her a lawyer. As of now, Mike is not in a romantic relationship with Mattie...but he really wants to be. While this is occuring, Mike discovers that his wife may have been having in affair, but at this point he is still not sure...
I don't know how I'd react to all of the stuff Mike is facing at this point, but I don't think I'd be as calm as he is. He's hearing crying and shrieking women and children in his house, seeing things he shouldn't see, having dreams that seem like reality--all of this sounds like a pretty big sign to me to get out of that house and stay out. I guess fortunately for him, he's a writer, and he loves adventure. Still, I can't help  but wonder whether this is going to end up killing him! At one point in the story he actually communicates with whatever it is in the house, and asks, "Am I safe here? If yes, pound once, if no, pound twice." And whatever the thing is, pounds twice. Mike must be a pretty tough guy to be able to stay in that house.

Personality Test

I don't remember which code I got, but the career the test gave me was Counselor. This is sort of ironic because I've always wanted to be either a dentist or family physician, but in the past few weeks I've been starting to think about maybe a career in psychology. This test sort of helped me to realize that psychology might not be such a bad idea. Overall I think the test was pretty accurate because it said I was moderate on all the different levels, which I believe to be true.

Currently

Bag of Bones, Stephen King

This Week: 135 pages

Sentences of the Week:

1. "It was the voice of a man on the raw edge of panic, and hardly seemed like my own voice at all."

This is on page 41, during a nightmare that Mike is having and he can hear himself speaking in his dream. However, it sounds like someone else's voice to him because of how completely frightened he sounds. I like this sentence because it really demonstrates the sheer panic he feels when he experiences these nightmares.

2. You were just the first bird to sing into the silence, Ralph, that's all.

This is a thought Mike has to himself while talking to a man in town. Ralph has just asked him how he has been since his wife died, and recommended he go on vacation. I like this sentence because its kind of like a breakthrough for Mike, who realizes that its time to get away for a while.

3. "She didn't do it in any ostentatious Lady Bountiful  way, either, but unobtrusively and humbly, with her head lowered."

Mike is talking about how his wife used to visit the sick, help out at blood drives, and just volunteering a lot in Castle County. I like this sentence because its really easy to understand how highly Mike thought of his wife, and how great of a person his wife really was.

Bag of Bones Blog 2

Wow, so intense! This book just keeps getting better and better. From chapters four to ten Michael has decided to go to Sara Laughs, the old house by the lake, to see if he can better figure out the dreams he's having. To his surprise (and yet not quite a shock to him), all the pieces of his dream seem to be occuring in real life. A big part of this section was his meeting with a four-year-old girl and her 19 or 20 year old mother. He immediately falls in love with the little girl, Kyra, who calls herself "Kia." This is the name he and his wife were going to name their child if they ever had a little girl. The mother, Mattie, just so happens to be a fan of his books.
Mike has been hearing and feeling strange things in his house, such as a child crying and breezes surrounding his face. He leaves out a tape recorder in the middle of the night to see if he is just imagining these noises, but when he wakes up, he plays the tape and he can hear his dead wife's voice sadly saying, "Oh, Mike."
I am really glad I decided to read this book because for the past couple years I've kind of been bored with reading. I've been so used to having to read the books for school that I haven't actually wanted to read a book in my free time. However, this book is definitely one of those books that leaves you on edge, wanting to read more. Everything is somehow tying to something else in the book, and while its kind of confusing, its nonetheless enticing.
Although this is a story that could never happen in real life, it still leaves me wondering...

Bag of Bones Blog 1

So I started this book called Bag of Bones by Stephen King. I've always been interested in reading his novels, but I've never gotten around to it until now. The first three chapters have already had so much detail that I don't want to stop reading the book. The main character is Michael Noonan, a novelist in the 80's and 90's. In the first chapter, you learn that his wife, Johanna, has recently died due to a brain aneurysm. The odd thing about her death, according to Michael, is that she was discovered to be about 2 months pregnant in the autopsy. He found this odd because they had been trying for a baby for years, and this would typically be news that she should have been anxious to share with him... In the next couple chapters, no major plot points occur except for the fact that he has reoccuring nightmares of the Sara Laughs mansion that he and his wife used to live in sometimes.
So far I've felt kind of dragged into the story already. King uses alot of sensory detail and does a lot of work appealing to the emotions. Although this doesn't really tie in to anything happening in my life right now, I still kind of feel drawn to it because Michael talks about his wife's death alot and the emotions he faces in dealing with that. Because I've never experienced a loved one dying, I've always wondered and been nervous about how I'm going to respond to it when it eventually happens. In one instance, the main character Michael sees the book his wife was reading before she died and turns to the page where she stopped. He had still been in denial about his wife's death up to this point until the moment he realized that she would never know the next line of that book--that she would never read again. At this point, Michael totally breaks down, and this kind of scares me because I never want to experience that realization point when you have to accept the fact that someone is gone and will never come back. 
Although I've literally just started the book, I'm already dying to know what happens in the rest of these 529 pages.