By Maeonne Phillips

    “Go Ask Alice” is a book composed of real life journal entries written by a teen drug user. Certain names, dates, places, and events were changed in the making of the book, and the author remains anonymous.

    The book is meant to inform readers on the dangers of addiction and the consequences of drug use.

    The horrors begin when the 15 year old narrator takes a drugged drink during a party and ends up loving the experience. From then on she begins trying all kinds of different drugs and before she knows it she is addicted.

    The drug use puts her in bad habits and, throughout the book, she becomes a struggling on and off user. Her life is thrown in different directions, and her bad experiences haunt her to want to end her addiction.

    From what I read, it was pretty obvious the book takes place in the 1960s. The narrator talks about her use of records, letters and visits to malt shops after school along with her 50s and 60s slang.

    The book truly demonstrates the horrors of drug use and the struggle to refrain from use once you start, when only one experience can get a person hooked for life.

    “After you’ve had it, there isn’t even life without drugs,” is the most influential quote of the book because with so many teens being exposed to drugs in high school, they need someone to tell them they will get hooked, and there is no “I’ll only do it once.”

    Teens rarely ever listen to adults and health classes; both give barely any effect other than dragged on awareness and scolding. The true horrors of the journal entries will put a reader in the first person perspective of the narrator, leaving one with a fearful impression of drugs.

     “Bill pulled me down, and my head rested in his lap as I watched the pattern change to swirling colors, great fields of reds, blues and yellows. I tried to share the beauty with the others, but my words came out soggy, wet and dripping or tasting of color,” the narrator describes during her first use of drugs by accident.

    She is blinded by beauty and has no idea of what terrors were to follow.

    The writer’s use of vivid colors, shapes and feelings provide an unbelievable and realistic picture for the reader who feels they are taking their own trip as the narrator takes hers. It is really a well written and effective diary.

    I think the book really had an effect on me because the narrator’s life really went downhill, and it was terrifying how highly effective just one mistake at a party led to such disaster, especially since she was the same age I am now. Her story is kind of unforgettable.  

    I think this book provides the perfect scare for all teens in this generation along with the high exposure of drugs that comes with high school.

     The novel is a great read, and I would definitely recommend it: I could not stop reading from the second I started.

Following their first album, “I Love You,” released in 2013, a California-based band, The Neighbourhood, debuted their sophomore album, “Wiped Out!” on Oct. 30 and has proven to long-time listeners, such as myself, they are willing to continue experimenting with different genres and sounds.

“I Love You” is a combination of the two EPs, “Thank You” and “I’m Sorry,” which were created in 2012 along with various songs not affiliated with either one of the EPs. Each individual song possessed an alternative, very soft rock sound while giving off an extremely relaxing feeling.

After that, the band completed two other projects. One being a three-song EP, “The Love Collection,” which stuck with the initial alternative sound along with introducing an unexplainable calmness in their music I have heard in other music from artists originating on the west coast.

The second project is a mixtape, “#000000 & #FFFFFF,” which possesses a completely different sound compared to their other work. Underground rappers from California are featured along with mainly hip-hop beats and various raps from lead singer Jesse Rutherford.

I can hear each individual style they have ever used in “Wiped Out!” along with the emphasis on beachy sounds and the introduction of upbeat music, which walks a fine line between the alternative and pop genres. On almost every track, you can hear waves crashing or seagulls squawking in the background. There are also longer guitar instrumentals from guitarists Zach Abels and Jeremy Freedman audible.

Personally, I believe the various challenges in musical style is what sets this album apart from the rest and why I enjoy it so much. Each track, from the acoustic sounds in “Baby Came Home 2 / Valentine” to the heavy bass in the intro of “Ferrari,” is organized almost perfectly as a song flows smoothly into the next one.

Lyrically, Rutherford has stayed the same in regards to writing lyrics all listeners can connect to at some level in their lives; however, he has also added depth in a few of their songs that really make me sit and think about the message he is trying to convey.

Rarely will I stumble across an album by a band I really like and enjoy every single song, but I find myself able to connect every track to something I am currently going through or have gone through at some point of my life.

From the lyrics, “We need to fly ourselves before someone else tells us how,” in the track “Prey” to “I don’t want to let you down, so promise you won’t let me drown,” in title track “Wiped Out!” I can find a piece of me hidden in the words, and I love that.

Overall, “Wiped Out!” still possesses the same relaxing and chill vibe I have heard and fell in love with throughout their career, but the new more quickly paced beats I really enjoy as well. Rutherford and the rest of the band have continued to prove they are able to experiment well with almost any type of music, and I cannot wait to hear what they will try next on their next album or project.

You can listen to the album here.

By Mya Cannon

I Wrote This For You is a story written by an anonymous author who goes by pleasefindthis. The book is a collection of 186 different short poems divided into four different groups: sun, moon, stars and rain.

The book’s description gives you a preview of how emotional it will be.  The description starts out with, “I need you to understand something. I wrote this for you. I wrote this for you and only you.” This line creates not only mystery and suspense, but it also creates a feeling of sympathy for the author from the reader.

The author relates all of the poems he or she has written in I Wrote This For You back to the one person they want to read this book and calls this person “you,”

The author says in the description, “Everyone else who reads it, doesn’t get it. They may think they get it, but they don’t.” I think this shows the personal meaning behind the book and how each poem can mean something different to each person that reads them.

Each poem seems to tell a short story of heartbreak and regret. A poem from the book is called “The Skeletons In The Sea” is an example of this. 

“Truth is the last thing I can take because it’s the last thing you took,” the author writes.

One of the main feelings I get from this poem is sorrow because what I think it means is someone lied to the author right before they left him or her.

All of the poems in I Wrote This For You have very deep meanings to them even though most of the poems are only one or two sentences with the occasional poem that is a couple of paragraphs long.

My favorite poem from I Wrote This For You is called “The Children Of Time” and a line from this is, “Sunday knows she’s the end. But she closes her eyes, and she pretends with all the strength in her tiny heart that really, she’s the dawn.”

I believe this line shows that even when you know something probably will not end up going right in a situation you should still have hope because you really do not know for sure how something will turn out in the end.

Over all I think that I Wrote This For You is a really great book and I would highly recommend it.