Hole in my Life - Jack Gantos pg. 1-34

This book is hooking me just like Go Ask Alice. It is so raw and intense and I have barely cracked it open! For some reason, I love dark books about drugs and stuff like that. Sappy love books don't reel me in, books like this do. Not that this is what I'm personally into, I just love reading about it. I guess sometimes if you don't experience these things yourself, it makes it even more interesting when you read about it. Especially because this book actually happened, and Jack Gantos wrote and published it after his jail time. Its the scary truth about the real world. Sometimes bad things happen to people with the best intentions. Its just somewhere, something went terribly wrong. I think its sad because some people really don't deserve things that happen to them. They go into something with the best intentions, and it just goes wrong and gets them into trouble. Just like in the last book I read, the main character does not seem like a bad person whatsoever. Which makes these books even more interesting, because they may not necessarily deserve what is happening to them. I think it makes this kind of book even more addicting because it pulls your emotions so many different ways. Sometimes you just don't know what to think or believe, which plays with your mind a little bit. It is insane how words on a page have that type of impact on a person reading it .....

Anyway, on with the book. It started right off into explaining the picture on the front, which was his mug shot. He talked about his diet, why he dressed/looked the way he did, and went right on to tell how horrible prison life really was. He also talked about how frightful it was, because anyone could do anything at anytime. He watched people stab others, and saw things he never wanted to see. After some jail talk, he went back to talk about his childhood. He wasn't raised around the kind of violence he saw in jail. His father could pick out people like it was his job. Somehow, he knew the criminals from the good people, and told Jack all about it. He told him who to trust and who to watch out for, and always talked about who had been in prison. When his father talked about this, Jack never dreamed of going to prison. When he was in high school, he felt like he had it all. A car, a fake ID, and wasn't living at home. After his dad took a job out of town, he and his family decided it was best for him to drop out of school and go straight into the work field. He got a job at a hotel doing electrical stuff, and the hotel gave him a free room to live in. He was constantly drinking and hanging out with older men, which made him grow up extremely fast. Finally, he got over this fade and started thinking of school again. He got a different job stocking food at a supermarket and stayed with a family close to his new school. After awhile, he got back into drinking and came home drunk almost every night which frustrated the family. Eventually, he was kicked out of their home. He ended up in a motel called The Kings Court, and got a room there. He began trying to write, coming up with ideas but never being able to make it into a story. He had thousands of beginnings, but no endings. He got back into school, and things were going decent for him. One day, a bunch of prisoners came into his school and talked about prison life, and how much they wanted those kids to stay out of it. They encouraged them to be good and to not mess up and end up like them, and Jack thought they were crazy. At this time, he had no idea that his life would relate more to those prisoners than he wished for.

This book is extremely good. I cannot wait to get farther into it and see how his life pans out.

P.S. -

Sorry for slacking lately on blogs :/ This week I am going to post as much as possible!