MY second book is not as long as my first one so it didn’t take me too much time to finish reading. After the theme which is scientific fiction and adventure is revealed, the plot is not so surprising. The main character, professor Aronnax joins captain Nemo and his crew in the adventure under the great deapths of all the oceans around the world. They discover a toal different world under the sea,:treasures, giant animals, man-killer shark and so on. As the story goes on, the character’s emotions and characteristics is shown and develop. In the end, led by Master Ned Land, the three of them manage to escape from the submarine prison. By then, they have already travel 20,000 leagues under the sea, which is also the title of the book. The interesting thing about the book is some of Verne’s ideas about the not-yet-existing submarines at the time which were pointed in this book turned out to be prophetic, such as the high speed and secret conduct of today’s nuclear submarines. In my opinion, Jules Verne is definitely the best fiction writer of all time.

Nonetheless, most of the book’s fascination come from the plot itself so not very many literary devices are used. There are a lot of conversation in the book but sometimes the tone and language of the characters are awkward and a bit unreal. Perhaps French grammar and vocabulary don’t work the same way as in English. However, onomatopoeia is used effectively. For example, “Argg” for roaring, etc. The diction of this novel is also extremely high. I don’t know some of the words in the book so sometimes I had trouble following the story. Also the point of view the author chooses to tell the story is effective. Seeing a technological under a scientist’s eyes and his great enthusiasm for adventure is perfect to guide the reader to a fictional world. Overall, 20,000 leagues under the sea is a great book and I enjoy reading it.

For my sencond book, i picked Jules Verne famous and classic book. I have already read the story once about 3 years ago,a Vietnamese version but it didn’t lessen the fascination of the story. So far what I have read covers a story in latr 19th century about a mysterious and gigantic sea monster, thought by some to be a giant narwhal, is sighted by ships of several nations. Soon after that, an ocean liner is  damaged by the creature. The US government finally assembles an expedition to hunt down the infamous monster. Professor  Aronnax, a respected Frech biologist and also narrator of the story, is issued a last-minute invitation to join the expedition which he accepts. Canadian master harpoonist Ned Land and Aronnax’s faithful assistant Conseil are also brought on board. When they finally sighted the monster after 3 months patrolling pretty much every waters on earth, they tried to take it down by spears, cannon, harpoon but it was no used. The animal skin was impenetrable; the ship got tilted violently after contact with the animal which results in our main character, Aronnax, his assistant and Ned Land falling in to the sea. The ship captain didn’t seem to notice their disappearance but luckily they could hold on the animal the whole world was talking about. It turned out to be a submarine vessel.

While I was reading the story, it turned out to be quite boring at first. The very first time I read it I assumpted that it was just another cheap man-eating sea monster story.Luckily I stayed with it and the climax of the strory would come to destroy the idea about sea monter. the writer does not use a plenty of literary devices as my first book but there still are some. Dialogues are used a lot in this story; however, it sometimes could be awkward perhaps because the book was originally written in French. And the diction of the book is really high, luckily some of the words I have jsut learned in Sat Session (i.e. eccentric, apathy, etc) What I learn from the experience of reading the first 100 pages of the book is you have to read more than 60 pages of a book to determine if it is a good book or not. However, I really don’t want to go through that much pages before I can actually enjoy reading. I tend to like books with good hooks, humor and metaphors.

I have just finished the last page of this long book. It is definitely one of the longest book I’ve ever read. Anyways let’s get to work. There is a significant turning point in the story line. Instead of cointuing on the child custody case, the “evil” rich old man,Max devore committed suicide not forgetting to plan for his daughter-in-law and grandchild. Mattie. the yuong widow was feeling safe and secured after Devore died, she invited Mike and a couple more firends to her home party. As the rain started to pouring down, a stolen car full of gunmen drive by Mattie’s trailer and murdered her, smashing the left side of her head. LukilyMike and, three-year-old Kyra managed to escape. In the end Mike would be devoted to rasing Kyra and adopt her.

In this book, Stphen King really knows how to keep me interested all the way by using a whole lot of literacy devices. Metaphore is used a lot but it’s a little bit inapproriate for some people but humorous at the same time: “Murder is a worst kind of pornography.” Similies is also used effectively, combining with other devices (i.e. Hyperbole, personification, etc) “It was so quite that I could hear the house breathing.” The author uses hyperbole to keep the story entertaining and more interesting: ” Hot fingers touched my eyes and I almost screamed realizing it was sweat.” I guess that one is also similie too. Most of all, the title itself( bag of bones) is a smart similie that the writer uses a lot in the story as well. It refers to old people, specifiaclly Max Devore. He’s paralyzed, has breath oxygen every 5 minutes, even though his mind is still bright as the day light, he is a bag of bones, waiting for death to come. He is also the evil villain of the story, half way through the story, i just want to see him dead, then he actually died by drowning him self. At the end of the story I feel sorry for him.

Overall, it was a very good book, entertaining, thrilling. I really enjoy reading it.

In my opinion, I think Google pulling out China is not a good idea at all. I think it just an attempt to scare off the Chinese goverement a little bit by grabbing international attention on the dictatorship online of the Communist Party. But if Google actually shuts down its office in China, that’s just make Google’s board a bunch of  cowards. China is a huge profitable market, there is no reason to back off from such opportunity. Google has earned its credit for changing online experience significantly but in China, Google is not that dominant as we thought. It only holds 30% of the market while its rival search engine holds over 60%. And many Chinese wouldn’t really mind if Google decide to leave, the Chinese has their own pride, they always assume  that they are number one, they don’t want a Western company to dominate Chinese online market. A Chinese citizen commented on this:

“None of the people cares what foreign web services do in China, so Google should take the most profitable step here because nobody will ask Google to stay. China is independent and doesn’t need to rely on foreign web services, that’s why there are replacements for everything, renren, qq, youku, badoo, p2pstream.” (Jacky Lee, Hull)

So really Google didn’t affect China so much. Overall I think Google should stay in China, make the best out of China and fight the governemnt’s dictatorship. In the future, I’d love to see Google dominates China and successfully negotiate with the Chinese government to lift off the search result censoring.