Excerpt from a baker's dozen
david matherne

i ain't no valedictorian. i'll give you that. but i'm certainly not the loser my step-father johnnie likes to think i am, either. mr. oh-so-famous local johnnie pipehead of "johnnie on the spot plumbing." (real clever name, huh? ) just because he only took the requisite twelve years to make it through school and graduate from his alma mater, and i took slightly longer, that doesn't make me a loser. so what if i took "the road less traveled by" and added a one-year, scenic detour to my journey-- to algebra, physical science, and . did i mention chemistry? let's just say i liked latin but latin didn't much care for me. just because i took thirteen years in all to get out of melancholy high with a diploma doesn't make me some loser. being nothing at all, now that would make me a loser.

based on the first paragraph of the passage, what inference can you make about the speaker?
a) the speaker is lazy and did not excel in high school.
b) the speaker respects his step-father and regrets disappointing him.
c) the speaker is intelligent and clever, but did not excel in high school.
d) the speaker thinks he is a loser because he did not excel in high school.

the hunger games, written by  suzanne collins, is fiction in the young adult genre, which is not my age group, but i found myself unable to put it down. its combination of nerve-racking tension, thrilling action, and engaging love story kept me up until the wee hours. i was surprised at how completely engrossing the plot was. like  brave new world, this story is set in a future where the government oppresses its people, but the book also borrows ideas from the greek myth of theseus and the minotaur.

divided into 12 districts, ruled by an oppressive government located at the  capitol. katniss everdeen, a 16-year-old girl from district 12, takes her younger sister’s place as one of 24 “tributes” selected every year to participate in the hunger games at the capitol.

while i found this book absolutely enthralling, i was surprised it was aimed at an audience of young adults. it seems extremely intense for anyone younger than 16 or 17. for example, there is a scene where one young tribute is slowly eaten alive by wolf-like creatures all night long, and katniss has to finally throw a weapon at him to end his misery. i found this a little too disturbing when i considered the age of the character.

the intensity of the action was something one would find in a more mature book, but the age of the characters and the simplicity of the prose were aimed at a much younger audience. in addition, this book was written in present tense, which i found annoying, but that’s more of a personal preference than a stylistic fault. it was also edited somewhat poorly, but that rarely distracted from the plot. for example, the author often spoke in sentence fragments to describe how katniss felt, which might have been an attempt to reflect on her thought process, but i found it disorienting to read a lot of really short sentences all together. it would have been better to vary the sentence length on occasion, but the story was still coherently.

overall,  the hunger games  was an excellent, enthralling read that i highly recommend. if it was more clearly marked for older teens, it would have been better, but it was a fantastic book with a wonderfully creative plot.

happy to .

pls mark as brainliest.

i believe the correct answer is a