Linnea’s Blogs

During April, I’ve finished several novels, five in total, but if I had to choose a favourite, I’d pick We’ll Always Have Summer, the final book in The Summer I Turned Pretty series. Written by Jenny Han, this book is, in my opinion, the perfect concluding novel of any series I’ve read so far. You may be asking yourself: “Why such a bold statement, Linnea?” Good news for you, I have some quotes (and some reasoning :)) to prove my “bold statement”, but first, let me provide you with some background information for those of you who may not have read or even heard about this immaculate romance (if you would like a little overview of the first two novels in this series, click here to read a mini-overview written by yours truly!) The main character, Isabel “Belly” Conklin, her mum has a friend named Susannah who has two sons, Conrad and Jeremiah. Belly is madly in love with both of them (kind of a love triangle situation, don’t you think?), but she doesn’t know who likes her more: Jeremiah or Conrad. This novel tells about how she tackles this dilemma head-on she might end up solving this problem with the help of her friend Taylor. If you asked me to pick a character I would like to be besties with, I would choose Belly because of how helpful she is. Her helpfulness is most notable on pages one and two when she’s helping Taylor study for their college finals. Taylor asks Belly to quiz her, and she answers, “‘Define anima versus animus.’” Taylor doesn’t know, so she asks for a hint. Belly replies, “‘Umm … think Latin,’” which stresses Taylor out for a second, because she didn’t take any Latin courses, therefore causing her to believe that there may be questions about Latin words and roots on her finals. Belly responds, “‘No, I was just trying to give you a hint. Because in Latin boys’ names end in –us and girls’ names end in –a, and anima is feminine archetype and animus is is masculine archetype. Get it?’” Despite Belly’s helpfulness, Taylor still doesn’t understand, probably because she’s obsessed with texting. Helpfulness is a quality I look for in a good friend because I, like other people, can get confused sometimes, and it’s nice to always have a friend to help you out should you get confused. My favourite line is located on page two hundred eighty-six, “Your life could go in one of two directions. Do or die.” This line teaches a valuable lesson, which invites you to think about how your decisions make an impact not just on the people around you, but also on the world as well.

This week, I made another hat to test my memory (I only had the first three steps memorised :(; I have some work to do!) As a result, I may need to work on the hat a wee bit more next week. I also started learning how to make the fox; I have made my first prototype! Next week, I plan to make more fox prototypes in order to make sure I have it down!

This week, I have memorised how to make the fox faster than I’d anticipated! Because of this, I have made four fox prototypes so far, which I feel is enough for now. As a result, I’ve made the decision to choose another origami project, a fish, which I will start on next Friday. This week was fandabidozie; I had no setbacks! 🙂

My favourite room is my bedroom. I like my bedroom because I can customise it to fit my personality. For example, my parents showed me and my sister two wallpapers and asked us to choose which one we liked best. To their surprise, we weren’t fighting over one wallpaper; we both had an opinion. I chose the option that had different types of flowers, and each was a different shade of pink. My bed is another feature that sets my bedroom apart, but my blankets are what makes it unique. My favourite blanket is named Bunny Blanket, and it’s pink with a bunny eating a carrot on it, and the background composes of the sun and a couple of clouds. I also cherish my blankets because they’re SO soft and they keep me super warm at night. Another distinguishable feature located in my bedroom is my double dressers, one in my closet and one out near my bed. I like this because I have too many clothes :P, and having two dressers provides me with enough space to store them.

Pictures!

Currently, I’m reading The Summer I Turned Pretty trilogy by Jenny Han. I like it so much that I cruised through the first novel, The Summer I Turned Pretty, in just two days! As of right now, I’m about one-hundred pages through the second novel, It’s Not Summer Without You. In The Summer I Turned Pretty, Isabel “Belly” Conklin visits her mother’s friend Susannah’s beach house in Cousins Beach, Massachusetts, where she falls in and out of love with several boys, including Susannah’s two sons, Conrad and Jeremiah, and another boy named Cam. Towards the end of the novel, Belly learns that Susannah has breast cancer and she was growing weaker and weaker every day. This brings us to the beginning of the second novel in the series, It’s Not Summer Without You. In the ninety-eight pages I’ve read so far in It’s Not Summer Without You, Belly attends Susannah’s funeral, and Conrad has gone missing.

This past week, I chose my two origami crafts to learn, memorise, and perfect: a hat and a fox. This week, I was able to accomplish the memorisation of the hat, and I used this website to help me get started. This week was excellent; I had no struggles! I memorised how to create the hat faster than I thought, so therefore, I concluded that there was no need for me to continue practising the hat on Saturday, which gave me a homework-free weekend (yay!). If I continue my work at this rate, I may need to pick a third origami craft, so I’m not just sitting there staring off into space for the last one or two weeks. Next week, I will be starting on the fox.

There are so many people in this world I could choose to have dinner with, so I have narrowed it down to these chosen few: Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, and Matt Damon. I invited Beyoncé because I wanted how to ask her how she became “The Queen of Pop&B”, and I also want to ask her about her three children: Blue Ivy and fraternal twins Rumi (girl) and Sir (boy). I invited Billie Eilish because I want to know how she felt and reacted when Ryan Gosling’s song “I’m Just Ken” overtook her “What Was I Made For?” at the 2024 Grammys (I’m totally with you on this one, Billie!). I invited Matt Damon because I want to learn about his experience playing the roll of Mark Watney in the sci-fi movie, The Martian*.

*The Martain was also made into a novel by Andy Weir, also titled The Martian, which I read and wrote a book review on.

In March, I started Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer; I am on page 150. Jon Krakauer tells of his adventure as a client and journalist on the Adventure Consultants Guided Expedition in the spring of 1996. Krakauer goes into great detail, chronicling not only his expedition but provides mini anecdotes on the other simultaneous Everest expeditions and past Everest expeditions (for example, Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa Tenzing Norgay’s 1953 summit of Everest; the first of its kind.) My favorite character was Jon himself because he is kind. There’s a quote on page 148 to support this idea on page 148, “…snapped a few photos of Doug posing with a flag the Kent schoolkids had asked him to carry up the peak…” In this line, Jon does what one would call “an act of kindness”, which is why he is kind. My favorite line can be found on page 25, “None of the climbs I’d done in the past, moreover, had taken me to even moderately high altitude. Truth be told, I’d never been higher than 17,200 feet—not even as high as Everest Base Camp.” I liked this line because Krakauer acknowledges how big of a challenge climbing Everest will be compared to some of the other climbs he’s done. This acknowledgment also tells me he’s also in the process of mentally and physically preparing himself for this endeavor.

I think an interior designer would be the perfect job for me. I want to be an interior designer because you can be creative. What I mean by this is that as an interior designer, you can make your own decisions about what furniture and/or accessories go in your client’s living space, whatever it may be: a house, a mansion, an apartment, a condo, etc., and no one else can influence them. As an interior designer, I want to own my own business and hire my employees; me and my employer may have different ideas as to what makes a “good” employee. I also feel that work-wise, being an interior designer is less stressful, especially when you own your own business, because you can decide how much work want to do, and hand what you don’t want to do to your employees and have them do the work.

In February, I read The Martian by Andy Weir. This sci-fi novel tells of astronaut and botanist Mark Watney and his attempts to survive on Mars in the wake of the Ares III crew’s departure following a catastrophic dust storm. I chose to read this book because I had watched the movie that’s based off this novel several times, and my mom was also encouraging me to read it. And I have to tell you, it’s an amazing novel; it’s a perfect visual representation of this work of sci-fi. Mark’s my favorite character because I enjoyed his excellent sense of humor and his descriptiveness. On page 2, he describes how the pre-mission process works, and describes a little bit about how Hermes operates, “We got to Earth orbit the normal way, through an ordinary ship to Hermes. All the Ares missions use Hermes to get to and from Mars. It’s really big and costs a lot so NASA built only one.

Once we got to Hermes, four additional unmanned missions brought fuel and supplies while we prepared for our trip. Once everything was a go, we set out for Mars. But not very fast. Gone are the days of heavy chemical fuel burns and trans-Mars injection orbits.Hermes is powered by fuel ion engines. They throw argon out the back of the ship really fast to get a tiny amount of acceleration. The thing is, it doesn’t take much reactant mass, so a little argon (and a nuclear reactor to power things) let us accelerate constantly the whole way there. You’d be amazed at how fast you can get going with a tiny acceleration over a long time.

I could regale you with tales of how we had great fun on the trip, but I won’t. I don’t feel like relieving it right now. Suffice it to say we got to Mars 124 days later without strangling each other.

From there, we took the MDV (Mars descent vehicle) to the surface. The MDV is basically a big can with some light thrusters and parachutes attached. Its sole purpose is to get six humans from Mars orbit to the surface without killing any of them.” I think a reason for Mark’s descriptiveness is because he is writing in a log, and also because some regular person may read them, and he doesn’t want them to be confused. My favorite line can be found on the last page, page 369, “This is the happiest day of my life.” I liked this sentence because it represents Mark’s joyous mood because he is finally going home after a year and a half of hanging around the red planet.