M.E.A.T. Blog

The Westing Game, by Ellen Raskin, is a short mystery novel that focuses on solving the riddle of millionaire Samuel Westing’s death. My dad had been recommending this book to me for several years, but I had never actually tried it. At the beginning of the school year, I put it in my PE locker to use as a “backup book” in case I ever forgot to bring a book to read on Fridays, thinking I would never actually read it. However, I did forget a book one day and read The Westing Game during those 45 minutes. I became so entangled with the plot that I continued to read it after school had ended.  The Westing Game  revolves around Samuel Westing’s will and the 16 heirs who try to interpret it. After all the heirs gather to hear Mr. Westing’s will, they are placed into groups and given several clues in the form of random words to help them unravel the mystery of his death. The heir(s) who solve the mystery will receive $200,000,000 in inheritance--Samuel Westing’s entire fortune....

** Spoiler Warning** Hey guys, Some time ago, I read the book Animal Farm , written by George Orwell. One of many of his political books, Animal Farm offers a humorous view of communism, written during World War II, representing communists as pigs on a farm, taking over the other animals through a long and gradual process I started reading this book because I saw it was small, and I didn’t think it would be very hard. I was partly right, but what ended up hooking me was Orwell’s way of incorporating comedy into a complicated and risky political argument. The story starts off with a somewhat confusing scene, in which a meeting between animals takes place. Some pigs have decided that they are tired of their ruler, the farm owner, so they plan to overthrow him. Funnily enough, they manage to push him off the property, and take over. At first, the animals are very happy, but not long after, some animals become power hungry, and want to have control over...

Chryses prayed to the god Apollo, “Hear me, Silverbow! Thou who dost bestride Chryse and holy Cilla, thou who art the mighty lord of Tenedos, O Smintheus! If I have ever built a temple to thy pleasure, if I have ever burnt thee fat slices of bulls or goats, bestow upon me this boon: may the Danaans pay for my tears under thy shafts!” In the midst of the Trojan War, he prayed for his daughter, taken as prize by the Achaeans, and the downfall of Agamemnon, their king who denied Chryses’ pleas to return her. Apollo, having heard the desperate cries of his follower, rained his unerring arrows down on the Achaeans in a rage. It was the animals that fell first, dogs and mules dropping dead. Soon, there were countless piles of men. The arrows descended for nine days, and on the tenth, Agamemnon grudgingly made an agreement; he gave up Chryses’ daughter to put an end to Apollo’s wrath. But the king was full of greed, demanding prince Achilles’ ‘prize’ for himself, as his own was gone. Achille...