Letter to the Author

Dear David Benioff,

I really enjoyed reading this book. It also kept me interested and made me wonder what would happen next which made me want to keep reading. Making this story set during World War II made it even more interesting. It put the stakes a lot higher for the main characters because they couldve easily died at any moment, which they almost did several times. The only question i have is, why would the colonel just randomly choose Lev and Kolya to go find the eggs? What was special about them or what did he see in them that made him think that they could bring back the dozen eggs he needed? This book was very good and i have already recommend it to several people to read. Keep writing great books like this one.

Sincerely,
Daniel Zmood

City of Thieves Review

Overall, i thought this book was an amazing book that always kept me interested and made me want to keep reading. I would easily give it a 10 out of 10 and highly recommend this book. During the Nazis' siege of Leningrad, Lev has been arrested for looting a German corpse and is thrown into the same jail cell as Kolya, who has been arrested for being a deserter. Instead of being shot and killed, Lev and Kolya are given a second chance by a Soviet colonel. They can save their own lives if they can secure a dozen eggs that will be used for the colonel's daughter's wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and with all of the citzens dying and starving, Lev and Kolya will have to set out through Leningrad and even behind enemy lines to find these rare dozen eggs. Anyone would enjoy this book, especially if World War II interests you because this is during this event and refers to lots of weapons and all kinds of other things from this war. Again, i highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a great book to read.

Next Book

Since i have finished my book, City of Thieves, i am now looking for a new book to read. I'd like to read a fantasy or realistic fiction book because those are my favorite genres. A book i am thinking about reading next is The 25th Hour. This book is by the same author of City of Thieves, David Benioff which i like because i really like his writing style and the books he writes. The 25th Hour is about a guy named Monty Brogan who has always wanted to become a fireman but instead finds himself about to start a 7 year jail term for drug dealing. He has only 24 hours left of freedom in which he spends it partying with his friends but also contemplating on the decisions he has made and on his uncertain future. I can see this book relating to some parts in City of Thieves like going to jail but given a second chance. Overall, this book seems interesting and like something that i want to read.

City of Thieves Kolya Description

Throughout the story, the author describes both of the main characters in depth, but i think that he describes Kolya the best. A quote that describes one of the main characters, Kolya, is, "Cannibals and Nazis didn't make Kolya nervous, but the threat of embarrassment did - the possibility that a stranger might laugh at the lines he'd written." I think this would be one of the best quotes in the whole book to describe Kolya. What this quote says about him is that he isn't intimidated by people who others would think are scary. What he is scared of is being embarrassed by the public. You dont find this out until later in the book but Kolya is plans to write a book after the war is over and he is pretty much writing out the lines in his head. He recites these lines to Lev, but just to be safe he makes up a fake author who has written the non-existent book The Courtyard Hound. Kolya plans to publish this book and make it real so he is basically listening to Lev's feedback without being judged. He did all of this so he wouldnt be embarrassed while handling Nazis and cannibals without fear.

Final Blogging Assessment in English 1B

It turns out that I was right on my previous prediction. The giant, bearded man did not have any eggs to sell to Lev and Kolya. Instead, he and his wife tried to kill them! This quote describes that these strange people were actually cannibals, "Maybe for half a second I thought it was pig, maybe my brain tried to convince my eyes that they weren't looking at what they were looking at: a flayed thigh that could only be a woman's thigh, a child's rib cage, a severed arm with the hand's ring finger missing." At this point Lev and Kolya find out that this man and his wife lure people into their apartment, only to be killed and later eaten. With Lev's knife and Kolya's extreme fighting skills, they manage to escape these cannibals and go after their next rumor, a farmer with a giant chicken coop that produces lots of eggs. When they finally reach this place and see it is real, they find the farmer dead, rotting in a corner, and his grandson sitting in the middle with only one chicken left under his coat. The boy trades the chicken for money and small rations of food and Lev and Kolya go seek warm shelter to try to keep the chicken alive.

I predict that this chicken will die before it lays all the eggs that they need, as the odds are against them. Another possibility is, what if this chicken is really a rooster and doesn't lay any eggs? I guess this could be good and bad because they wouldn't get any closer to their goal of 12 eggs, but they could eat it to give them some more energy to keep them going on their quest.



Citizens of Leningrad collecting water from a street gutter
to take home and drink
 

The picture shown here might give you a better understanding of why some people turned into cannibals. The only food in the whole city was tiny rations of bread and they usually ate snow or dirt when there was no bread. This made some people so desperate that they looked at other humans as food just to keep themselves alive.


 



The Author David Benioff

The author of The City of Thieves is David Benioff. On top of being a book author, he is also a screenwriter. He wrote his first novel, The 25th Hour, while working as a high school English teacher and he soon adapted it into a screenplay. He is currently the head writer and show runner for the popular HBO series Game of Thrones. David Benioff was born on September 25, 1970 and on September 30, 2006 he married actress Amanda Peet in New York City and they now have two daughters, Frances and Molly. He is the youngest of three children and was born with the last name Friedman, his father's last name, but in his late thirties he changed it to Benioff which was his mother's maiden name. I thought it was interesting that his family is of German Jewish and Russian Jewish descent and in the book I am reading by him, the two main characters are Russian. One of them, Lev, is also Jewish and both of them are fighting against the German Nazis.

The Best Things About my Book

The best thing about my book is that the action never stops. Unlike some books, I actually enjoy reading this book. The main characters continue their journey for the eggs and since its in the middle of a seige, there is trouble around every corner. The stakes are even higher for Lev, one of the main characters, since he is jewish and the german nazis are the ones who are attacking their city. I also like that since they are in Russia, there are a lot of russian references which I can actually understand which makes the book more interesting for me to read. One last thing I really enjoy about my book is that there are new characters everywhere Lev and Kolya go who contribute and make a big impact in the story in such a short time before they either leave or die.

City of Thieves More Future Predictions

It turns out that I was right on my previous prediction. The giant, bearded man did not have any eggs to sell to Lev and Kolya. Instead, he and his wife tried to kill them! This quote describes that these strange people were actually cannibals, "Maybe for half a second I thought it was pig, maybe my brain tried to convince my eyes that they weren't looking at what they were looking at: a flayed thigh that could only be a woman's thigh, a child's rib cage, a severed arm with the hand's ring finger missing." At this point Lev and Kolya find out that this man and his wife lure people into their apartment, only to be killed and later eaten. With Lev's knife and Kolya's extreme fighting skills, they manage to escape these cannibals and go after their next rumor, a farmer with a giant chicken coop that produces lots of eggs. When they finally reach this place, they find the farmer dead, rotting in a corner, and his grandson sitting in the middle with only one chicken left under his coat. The boy trades the chicken for money and small rations of food and Lev and Kolya go seek warm shelter to try to keep the chicken alive.

I predict that this chicken will die before it lays all the eggs that they need, as the odds are against them. Another possibility is, what if this chicken is really a rooster and doesn't lay any eggs? I guess this could be good and bad because they wouldn't get any closer to their goal of 12 eggs, but they could eat it to give them some more energy to keep them going on their quest.

Krista Ramsey Introduction Activity

For this activity, I read Krista Ramsey's column called, "Locking into the Magic of Legos." This column is about how Legos benefit kids in many different ways. Just from building a new Lego set, kids learn many different things such as trial-and-error, good work ethnic, and they just get the space and silence they need without even realizing it. 

My favorite line in this text was, "Legos are things a child can never have enough of. Wise parents not only understand this, but support their child's Lego habit, sometimes to the tune of hundreds or thousands of dollars over the course of a childhood." This helps the reader picture just how much money can be spent on Legos in one childhood. It also lets them know that the parents are supporting their child with their Legos so the money is well spent. There is also a connection between the two sentences. The first sentence says that a child can never have enough Legos and the second sentence talks about how much money the parents will spend buying their children Legos. They would spend a lot of money on Legos because their child can never have enough of them so they keep buying more.

Ramsey's writing style is journalistic. A line to support this is, ""The Lego Movie" may be a surprise blockbuster hit with adults, but children need no reminder why they've loved this Danish-made toy line for more than 65 years."

Three questions I would ask Ramsey are:

• How do you get your ideas on what to write for your columns?
• What made you want to start writing these columns?
• What type of education did you have that made you want to go into writing?
  

City of Thieves Future Predictions

So far in my book the characters have already been in a bit of trouble. One has been caught for looting, while the other one has been caught for being a deserter. Miraculously, instead of being shot and killed, the colonel has sent them out on a quest to find 12 eggs. They need to find these eggs so the colonel's daughter can have a wedding cake for her wedding. This is not an easy task as eggs are rare and very expensive. Eventually the main characters, Lev and Kolya, end up at a black market where a tall, black-bearded, buff gentleman says he will sell them a dozen eggs. He seems like a very shady fellow because he beckons Lev and Kolya into a dark building where he will sell them the eggs and this is where I left off. I predict that this strange man will not have the eggs he says he has, mainly for two reasons. The first reason is that he seems a little too excited to get Lev and Kolya into the run down building. Even when Lev is hesitating and asking why he has to sell the eggs inside, the man keeps insisting and making up excuses to get them inside. The second reason is that I feel like it is too early in the book and too easy for them to just grab the 12 eggs without overcoming any obstacles and just go home and live on.

City of Thieves Setting

I have just started reading a new book, City of Thieves, and so far it is very interesting and suspenseful. The book is set in a city in Russia called Leningrad (now know as St. Petersburg) during World War II. In this setting, the city is surrounded by the Germans, who cut off all of their food and supplies, leaving them starving. An example of the city's conditions is, "The shutters themselves had been torn down for firewood in November. There was no more scrap wood in Leningrad. Every wood sign, the slats of the park benches, the floorboards of shattered buildings - all gone and burning in someone's stove. The pigeons were missing, too, caught and stewed in melted ice from the Neva." This shows just how desperate they are. Everyone is scavenging for anything they can use to keep themselves warm. The citizens are even catching pigeons to eat since there is nothing else that they can snack on.

Final Blog Reflections

One blog post that stood out to me was the summer reading book blog. This blog was very well detailed and gave you a glimpse of the book without revealing the end. The book itself showed the many struggles of living in that time and how you were lucky just to be alive. The blog emphasizes these struggles and many other obstacles that were in the character's way but not how and if they overcame these, to not give away the ending. This blog also shows strong textual analysis. It has many different examples of what they had to go through and possibilities that could happen that stretches the the amount of danger they are in, making people who are reading the blog even more interested and worried about the characters.

For the next trimester, I have new and different goals for reading. One of my goals for reading is to read more often and more for fun rather than looking at it as work. Another goal for the next trimester I have set for myself is to read more difficult books that I still enjoy and so I can write lengthier blogs about the book that interests people reading my blog. I also have a new goal for writing next trimester. My goal for writing is to incorporate more figurative language into my pieces. This will make my writing better and make my stories more interesting to read. An area of improvement I want to work towards for reading is being able to translate difficult texts like Romeo and Juliet more easily. An area of improvement for me in writing is that I can try to write more using quotes from the text and use that to make my evidence stronger.

Characterization

A main character in the book is named Jenni. I would describe Jenni as faithful and determined. Jenni is faithful because even though she is in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, she has faith that her stepson Jason is still alive and goes to try to save him from an infected campground. The fact that she does this also shows her determination. Jenni is also determined because as she is slaughtering zombies, even some who she previously knew, she still has a reason in her to keep going and not to give up.

Another main character in the book is Katie. From the start, you can tell that Katie is an outstanding friend. As soon as Jenni tells her that they need to go save Jason, Katie agrees to risk her life and help Jenni without any hesitation. Katie also has Jenni's back at all times. She has saved her from many near death zombie encounters several times.