Book Review: Swallowing Stones

Swallowing Stones, a book written by Joyce McDonald, is a very suspenseful story. The day starts off normal with two different lives on the line that are about to change in a couple of seconds. The day of the accident happens to be a track star’s 17th birthday, know, as Michael Makenzie. He is celebrating his birthday day with a very close friend of his which later turns into his biggest cover for the trouble he is about to get himself into. One of Michael’s birthday presents was a Winchester Rifle.

After Michael and Joe received the rifle, they took it to the woods and decided to fire a bullet into the sky not realizing, until later, that he just murdered someone and ruined the lives of two family members. Another big character which happens to be the daughter of the victim who was shot and murdered by Michael who goes by the name of Charlie lives her whole life after that moment in grief.

As the story progresses, Michael starts to dig himself into a deeper and deeper hole trying to get out of the situation of him committing involuntary manslaughter and Jenna starts to get these strange panic attacks around her boyfriend and starts to see this stranger who is Michael in her dreams randomly and has no clue why.

The book starts to make you feel anxious of what is going to happen next chapter as you read through the 25 chapters. This is a book that you will not want to put down after you read the prologue or even the first page of the first chapter.

Texas Eco-region: Piney Woods

The eco-region I had to study was the Piney Woods which is located in the northern eastern part of Texas. Here are some pictures of the Piney Woods so you’ll get an idea of what I’m talking about. –
Piney Woods (LOCATION) Piney Woods (NATURE)
Piney woods has a humid subtropical climate zone. So annual rainfall is fairly uniformly distributed throughout the year, and humidity and temperatures are typically high. If you ever visit the Piney Woods eco-region, which I recommend doing because it’s a beautiful place as it seems, you should expect a lot of wild life animals all over the place. Here is some examples: White-tailed Deer, Bobcats, Gray Foxes, Eagles (along with a bunch of other kinds of birds), Cottonmouths (Moccasins), etc. As for the vegetation you’ll see lots of herbaceous vegetation and obviously see lots and lots of trees, you can probably already tell just by reading the name. Just to be more specific here are some examples of some vegetation you’ll most likely spot: Oaks, Elms, Hickories, Pecan, Black Walnut, Tupelo, Sweetgum, and others. Also, shortleaf, longleaf, and loblolly pine are the three native species of southern yellow pine that occupy these commercially important forests. When researching all of this information I found interesting fact that I wanted to share. Fact:
Large scale settlements came to the Pineywoods as a result of the timber boom of the mid- to late 1800s.

Science: Astronomy

I like to study Astronomy because I love to see what’s out in space. Space is so big and I feel like there are a lot of interesting things out there soaring from galaxies to stars or planets. Heck, maybe we might find another life source somewhere out there as we continue to research. I think that’s pretty cool.

I Wonder Why…

Why do we dream? Well, most experts believe we dream to assist the body with rest/sleep,repair and rejuvenation. Others believe that we dream for psychological reasons like to reexamine day’s events, to reduce and relieve stress, and provide an outlet for pent-up emotions. Carl Jung, a famed psychologist, believed that even our most fanciful are methods, or ways, of compensation for events that occur in our waking lives. Another reason why we may dream is so we can tackle everyday problems or obstacles in our waking lives to. For example, say you’re having trouble deciding to build either a house or a shop and having trouble deciding what it should look like, you could have a dream and design it in your dream and then when you wake up, you basically have a blueprint in your head and won’t trouble have trouble deciding anymore.