So, I decided this journal is pointless. I just ramble on and on about my life (which is not very interesting). So, now I'm going to do weekly Book Reviews. This week, I'm doing Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book.

This book knocked my socks off. Wanna know why? Because it was superbly written, had an amazing plot and a satisfying ending. As James Herbert, a best-selling horror novelist says, 'Neil Gaiman is a literary genius.'

The Graveyard Book opens with a baby boy being stalked by a killer, and through sheer luck, evading him. The baby wanders along and winds up in a graveyard where he meets up with a dead couple, Mr. and Mistress Owens, who decide to take him in. They name him Nobody, but he's fondly known as Bod.

Bod grows up in the graveyard with his parents, learning the tricks of the dead. He can slide through walls and become invisible to the human eye. What Bod wants most, though, is revenge. Revenge on the man who killed his parents when he was just a child.

The Graveyard Book is a masterfully constructed book. The reader is struck by the clarity of the imagery and drawn in by the way the narrator occasionally leaps out and addresses the audience directly as 'you'.

Overall, it is an engaging read and a fresh take on what is essentially a coming-of-age story. So you should go and buy it. Now. Seriously guys, I LOVED this book.

So, I'm going to talk about NaNo because I need to vent and because I need advice. I'm having issues with length on this particular novel. You know how the last one I wrote was around 97k? Well, this one feels like I'm about a fifth of the way through. It's 38k long already. That means I'm going to wind up with a 170k long novel -- probably more. No offence to this idea, but I don't think I love it enough to continue for THAT long. I mean, I have a short attention span. I have to write things fast or I'll give up. With the last novel, which I'm calling Cinderella for lack of a better name, I wrote for three months and finished the entire thing. This feels like it's going to take at least a year.

I'm annoyed because there are other ideas popping around in my mind and I want to work on them, but I don't think I should write more than one story at a time. I just get confused between characters etc. especially because Cinderella's in the first person, it's very easy to get my character's voice stuck in my head and then write her voice over other characters. Le sigh. Writing can get so complicated sometimes.

Oh, I just realised, I should probably tell everyone what I'm writing about so this journal will make sense for the next few months -- expect to see a lot of rants, some of which will make no sense. My story this year has its roots in Greek myths and apples. I know, weird, but whatever. Here's a summary:

When slightly poor, pimply Paris gets a scholarship to one of New York's biggest private schools her life is turned upside down. The girls at her new school are all living the jetset life and to fit in Paris is going to have to change herself entirely. However, unlike the rich girls at her school Paris' father doesn't have a bottomless wallet and the teenager soon finds that she can't keep up with the outings every night, or the trendy wardrobe.

To keep up with her new 'friends' Paris resorts to pawning off her possessions, however, she got more than she bargained for when she entered the dusty, innocuous looking pawn shop...She found the Goddess of Chaos, Eris, who coaxed her into buying the Golden Apple of Discord.

Now, Paris is caught up in a Goddess' fifty year old revenge plot. This -- Ancient Greek Gods and Goddesses barging into her room every so often -- is not what she needs right now. Not when she's trying to survive high school with all of its hard work, cliques and a boy she'd give anything to have fall in love with her.

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Lol, I just read over that and it doesn't explain half of the story at all. I need to work on my summary writing skills, haha, for example, no one would guess from the summary that Paris is an IVF kid...It complicates things quite a bit. It also says nothing about the secondary characters. Which is kind of strange. Have I mentioned that all of the characters in this novel are evil? Yes, I have people issues, I know.

Anyway, I was intending to write more about my first night at Woolies and more Work Experience stuff, but I think this entry is long enough already, so I'm just going to go.

It was from this site that has a competition to win a 10 000 dollar scholarship, I'm not entering that, I just thought that their essays would be interesting to write. So here's the first one, written for this topic: Many experts believe that voter turnout continues to decline because people have lost faith in their political leaders. Do you agree or disagree? and Why?

It’s not all the leaders’ fault

Voters these days are very politically savvy; they don’t buy easily into schemes of forwarding the nation's happiness. They are not instilled with a flood of emotion at every new idyllic proposal. Instead they look on, surly and apathetic wondering if they should even bother to turn up to the voting booth this year.

Often have I felt that the political arena is not well received by its audience, that if people displayed half the amount of zest they do for their sports for their politics then the world would be a very different place, but who is to blame for this universal apathy?

In my opinion, it is not the fault of today’s political leaders but rather the fallen idols of yesterday. Political figures like Stalin and Hitler leading their troop like voters into misery of the acutest kind. Since the times of the Russian Revolution and the writing of texts such as Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 people have lost faith in the political system. Instead of being something to help bring justice and equality to the people, the political system is to be viewed with suspicion.

This culture of having no trust in the political system is only galvanised when today’s leaders reinforce the messages of the past. Leaders like George Bush who have lied to their nation on important matters of security are reinforcing the general public’s belief that the system is there to deceive them to achieve its own ends. What’s the point in voting, say the masses, when they’re just going to say what I want to hear and not deliver?  

Other than this tendency towards deceit, the political arena has never been so interesting and engaging. These days we have a global world in which high levels of diplomacy constantly have to be practiced by political leaders. We have an upcoming election in which the two most likely people to become Leader of the Free world are a woman and a black man. History will be made before our very eyes and I hope that we can shake off the sleepy dust that is apathy and open them to witness it.

It’s not that we’ve lost faith in our politicians, we’ve lost faith in their predecessors and now we won’t even give political leaders a chance.  I suggest that politicians start to Bring Truth back in much the same way that Justin Timberlake brought sexyback. In a way that the voters will find interesting, believable and understandable.

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Just thought I'd share that piece of opinionated writing, hope you enjoyed.