Dominic+Larrew

December 6th, 2010. Because i have been very busy lately i did not go and find a new book to start. So I will be going into detail about some of my opinions on //Julius Caesar.// I think that Cassius is very manipulative and wants Caesar killed for his own reasons and is creating ideas and planting them in peoples heads to "help them along" in conspiring. Brutus seems to not want to kill anyone and he wouldn't have without Cassius's "help". I think that his murder is going to cause many more problems than it will prevent. I feel like Caesar should have read that mans message. To turn it down in the first place was not kind, but the mans urgency and his statements about it directly concerning Caesar should have been reason enough to at least give it a glance. Now Caesar is dead and i look forward to continuing the story to learn how it ends. :)

Hello, this is Dominic Larrew and I have recently finished re-reading a great book by Nancy Garden called //Annie on my Mind//. I was told about this book by a very close friend and decided to borrow it from her and read it. It's a book about the plight of gay teens and is set in New York in the 1890s. Liza is a girl who goes to a private school called Foster Academy. She is very smart and beautiful and is studying to get into MIT to become an architect. Her studies bring her to a lot of museums to look at examples of beautiful buildings of the past. On one of these trips to look at old architecture she ventures to the third floor for some quiet but instead finds a very beautiful girl singing in one of the rooms. She ends up talking to this girl and they have a great time hanging out and playing around in the museum. Liza gets Annies phone number and goes home. By the next day Liza can't stop thinking about Annie, and begins to consider that maybe she is in love. A lot of drama unfolds in the middle part of the book. Liza and Annie are friends that love to hang out like most teen friends, until everything gets much more complicated when they share a kiss while sitting together and looking out over the New York horizon. Things get awkward between them until they decide that they do want to be lovers. They begin to experiment and try to be more physical with each other, but this becomes complicated, for Liza does not quite feel ready and they are constantly afraid of being caught. A pair of teachers from Liza's school live together and will be leaving for spring break. Liza volunteers to feed the cats at their home. Liza has been inside the home a few times but never to the top floor where the bedrooms are located. She feels it is to much a personal place for her to be snooping around in. When the teachers, two very admirable characters, leave for their vacation, Liza takes up her duty feeding the cats. This situation ties into the dramatic relationship between Liza and Annie in probably the most important way; Liza and Annie now have a place where they can be who they are without worrying about the opinions of others. They begin to go to the house together to feed the cats and the two of them end up spending entire days together in this beautiful house, imagining what it could be live to someday live together and be a "couple". This home is where the two of them begin to be more physical with each other, because there is nobody to walk in and nothing to worry about. All is well and the relationship blossoms very nicely until one of the cats goes up to the top floor and Annie follows in an attempt to catch the cat so it may be fed. When Annie discovers that the teachers, who's house they have been in all this time, are gay themselves, it changes everything. Annie and Liza begin to feel even more comfortable and romantic, and begin to "use" the bed belonging to the teachers. It is at this very important moment, the moment that everything feels right for them, that everything comes crashing down. Another teacher from down the street comes and, thinking a thief is in the house, begins to knock at the door and yell for the "thief" to come down. Of course Liza has little time to find and put on her clothes. She manages to get into her jeans and button up a shirt before she must go answer the door, leaving Annie very afraid in the bedroom. The teacher at the door is named Miranda Baxter. Mrs. Baxter is a very religious woman and is my least favorite character in this book. She storms into the house and begins to make her way up the stairs. Liza tries her best to stop her but Mrs. Baxter refuses to listen. She finds Annie, cowering by the top of the stairs in nothing but a jacket, and begins to say how dirty, sinful, un-ethical, and un-natural it is to be gay and even tries to make Liza feel bad for the biggest thing in the life that she cannot control, her sexual orientation and love for Annie. This point in the book really makes me angry because nobody should be able to do what Baxter tried to do. People shouldn't be able to discriminate and alienate someone for simply being in love. Mrs. Baxter represents the discrimination that gays, teens especially, face every day. Whether that discrimination is born of religious belief, or just homophobia. The rest of this book is very exiting however i will not be going into any detail. If anyone would like to learn how it ends, gain a better understanding of gays, or just have a great book to read, i recommend this book. It is my opinion that //Annie on my Mind// is one of the most insightful and inspiring books that i have had the satisfaction of reading.