Reading Log#1

Personal Response#1
Title: The life and times of Gracie Faltrain
Author: Cath Crowley
Type: Novel
Date finished: 12th January 2009
Personal Response:
This novel is about a teenage girl, Gracie Faltrain who tries to keep in track of her soccer games, school work, exams and her personal life. But as she focuses on her soccer tournament, she loses her interest in school work making it difficult for her to pass her exams, and as she concentrates more on her personal life she starts to lose her focus on her soccer skills. In the end she gets everything sorted out by falling for her soccer team captain, Martin, passing her exams and taking part in the soccer tournament.

While I was reading this novel, I learnt that you can accomplish your goals if you just set your mind towards them. By doing this there are certain subjects that are needed to be balanced to complete your goals. For example in the novel, Gracie had to extend her timetable so that her soccer training and school work had approximately the same amount of time, so she could still focus on her soccer tournament without getting pulled out from her lack of concentration in her school work.

I found this novel very interesting and enjoyable to read because it had other characters opinion on how to resolve problems. For example when Gracie lost her concentration in her games, she was thinking of the guy she liked who was watching her from the crowd. Him watching her made Gracie nervous and fumble over the ball releasing the ball to the opposing team. After the match, her team could not take anymore of her selfishness on the field (not passing the ball to her team), so they wrote their feelings in the novel accusing Gracie of being selfish and thinking that she is the star of the team.