The Pantanos

  I first found this book in my 8th-period art class, Design Thinking. Design Thinking (DT) is a human-based approach to innovation that aims to make creative ideas and business models by focusing on the needs of people. The book teaches you about various techniques and tips for doing design. DT can be used to develop new products, create new services, design new business models, and design social innovations. The book starts off with an analysis of the basics of DT, such as focusing on people from the start and finding lead users, or people that are the first to recognize an innovation trend. DTers are expected to be empathetic toward their product users. Their ideas should be visualized through creative and simple methods.  DT is split up into five phases: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Despite the clearly defined phases, DT is not a linear process. Rather, it is nonlinear, meaning that one can go back and forth along the steps, repeating previous phases as necessary

Here it is, the long awaited review of the first Mailboat book: Mailboat Ⅰ The End of the Pier. After first discovering this book in the recommended section of a Lake Geneva magazine, I took full interest in this suspense novel. Mailboat takes place in Geneva Lake, Wisconsin (also known as Lake Geneva, but Lake Geneva is one of the cities on the lake aside from Fontana and Williams Bay) a place that I have a lot of special memories tied to because a lot of my family lives there. Mailboat is about a girl named Bailey who works on the mailboat. But when delivering the mail one day, she misses the boat and lands in the water, only to find a dead body tied to the pier. Bailey along with police officials and the captain of the mailboat Tommy get tied up in the mystery as they try to figure out the identity of the body, and who the murderer was. Before reading you should know two things. The first is that each chapter is from the perspective of a different character. Because of this, it can

     I recently realized that multiple people were doing blog posts on Webtoons.So I thought I’d join in this trend. However, I have so many I’m reading that it would be too hard to pick just one. So today I present my top 5 Webtoons (in no particular order) that I recommend. Rooftops & Roommates by: Zaanart      Rooftops & Roommates was the first Webtoon that I discovered. I was scrolling instagram when I discovered the artist and this comic and decided to give it a try. I still love it today and recently the story has been getting pretty interesting. Rooftops & Roommates is about Jeb, who is actually a gargoyle attempting to stay in the human world to get an architecture major. Between studying for classes, magical mishaps, and fun collage things, Jeb goes on lots of mini adventures along with his roommate Tod. Each episode isn’t too long so it makes for a good series to easily catch up on and it updates twice a week. So if you're looking for a funny and magical comic

  I read this book a couple of summers ago and I was originally reading this book because I had watched the movie version and my friends told me the book was better. The movie was a really well done visual of the futuristic technologies of the book but lacked so many details that was in the book. I recommend reading the book but if you would like a visual representation, the movie does a fantastic job of that. This book is a fantasy kind of mystery fiction novel that brings you through the underground world full of fairies and trolls. Artemis Fowl is a 12 year old criminal mastermind who lives with his butler in Fowl manor. His family can be described as mafias that are holding secrets of this underground society. Artemis discoveres The Book of the People and plans to get gold from the leprechauns by kidnapping a fairy, Holly Short. She is a member of the LEP which stands for Lower Element Police. After threatening the LEP to get Holly back in trade of gold, the fairies decide to throw

Once again, I am here with a dystopian novel (after Animal Farm and 1984). After hearing about this book from some friends, I decided to try it. My first impression of this book was that it was quite depressing and gloomy. The first few parts were boring and extremely flowery, but I pushed through see why everyone liked it so much for myself. Guy Montag, a fireman who burns books, is the protagonist of the novel. Instead of putting out fires, Guy and his colleagues start them. People in Guy's society watch too much TV and listen to the radio instead of reading books and enjoying nature. One day, he meets a girl named Clarisse McClellan. She illustrates Guy's empty life through her questions and love of people. Guy then goes through a series of disturbing events. Mildred, his wife, first attempts suicide. When he is assigned to burn an elderly woman's hidden literature, the woman chooses to be burned alive along with her books. He then learns a few days later that Clarisse w

I was able to watch the movie a while ago and enjoyed it very much. So, I decided to read the book for this month's blog post. The Martian opens with the most iconic sentence I've seen: I'm pretty much fucked. The book's main character is Mark Watney, who is the resident botanist in NASA’s mission to Mars. While the crew was scheduled to spend a month on Mars, they were forced to leave the mission early due to a violent sandstorm causing damage to the transportation vehicle which the crew needed to return to their ship, Hermes. While evacuating, a stray antenna punctured Watney’s suit and cut into his side, causing him to pass out. Thinking he died, the rest of the crew returned to Earth. After regaining consciousness, Watney returned to the Mars base and began to make a survival plan until NASA would return to rescue him. Watney rations his meals and finds a way to grow food. As the botanist, he had some Earth soil with him. Mixing in his feces and the leftovers from h