Exercise #3

1) Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
2) Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler
3) The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Requirements:
1) Use of quotations makes the review strong; it shows that a lot of thought has gone into the review. (The Fault in Our Stars uses this well.)
2) Don't use suggestions, as in "I think that...." or "This book would be better if...."  I don't like suggestions, I like assertiveness in reviews.
3) Talk about the author's use of words and diction in his/her writing. Be sure not to make the whole review a summary of the book.

Columbine

It seems that at some point in our lives, we've heard the story of Columbine. Or, the school shooting that happened in 1999. The school shooting that ended 15 lives and injured 8 people. The book Columbine revisits these tragic time and takes a depth into the lives of the gunmen. The author describes the boys as one of those 'boys next door' ordeal. At least one of the boys do. The media stereotypes the boys as emo and that have no friends. The book Columbine goes into the lives of the gumen to fiigure out what drive them to insanity.

Note 1

Mr. Button's eyes followed her pointing finger, and this is what he

saw. Wrapped in a voluminous white blanket, and partly crammed into
one of the cribs, there sat an old man apparently about seventy years
of age. His sparse hair was almost white, and from his chin dripped a
long smoke-colored beard, which waved absurdly back and forth, fanned
by the breeze coming in at the window. He looked up at Mr. Button with
dim, faded eyes in which lurked a puzzled question.

In this passage from F. Scott Fitzgerald's peculiar novel The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Mr. Button is meeting his newborn for the first time, but is frightened with shocking skepticism about the child. The case with the child is unheard of because the description of a newborn exceeds into the characteristics of a 70 year old man, practically forcing Mr. Button to reject and push away this "infant." F. Scott Fitzgerald's heightened and ridiculous diction of the old man ignores the disheartened sentimentality of the newborn child, leaving the child drowning with incredulous questioning and judgmental rejection. "Wrapped in a voluminous white blanket," writes Fitzgerald, "...there sat an old man apparently about seventy years of age," as if age is a factor of defining a human rather than personality. The narrator describes the newborn's appearance as "sparse hair  almost white" along with innocent "faded eyes." Age, in fact, seems to be the most important feature of a person in this passage: "...and from his chin dripped along smoke-colored beard, which waved absurdly back and forth, fanned by the breeze coming in at the window."Fitzgerald's dispassionate description suggests the sorrowful, uneasy feeling of age in this world, a dramatic, impartial element that is found in everyday life.

Exercise 2

Best, most authoritative credible response:
Reading, Reflecting, and More Reading


Common Mistakes that are easy to fix:

(4) She informs the reader that she lives “in the cruddiest part of a crudded-out town in a cruddy state.”

(3) The diction in "Cruddy" is abrupt. It has a type of simple-slang. Lynda uses lyrical words and is poetic.

(2) "Who can't even CONCENTRATE TO WRITE this because her little sister will NOT shut up," announces the narrator illustrating the harsh reality to her life.

Exercise 1

In this excerpt from Annie Proulx's "The Mud Below," Proulx illustrates the adrenaline rushing, uneasy nostalgic life that Diamond Felts has become a part of. He "kept his butt cocked to one side, his feet up on the shut rails so that the bull couldn't grind his leg, brad him up, so that if it  thrashed he could get over the to in hurry." Diamond Felts "slapped his face forcefully, bringing the adrenaline roses up on his cheeks, glanced down at his pullers and said, "I guess." Proulx gives the character traits that are quite different than how most people would act in these situations, making the character a restrained meekness and calm. Diamond Felts "took the end, made his warp, brought the rope around the back of his hand and over the palm a second time, wove it between his third and fourth fingers, pounded the rosined glove fingers down over it and into his palm." The way the words are written make the relaxed, laid back character seem as if he doesn't care about the outcome of the rodeo, and he only wants to go back to Wyoming, where his home is.

Reading Goals

1. Read 200 pages a week.
2. Read at least 5 short stories to my little sister a week.
3. Take 30 minutes out of my day to read.
4. Listen to an audio book.

The Virgin Suicides

The story of the Lisbon sisters was a tragedy from the beginning. Living in a household where parents checked what the daughters were wearing every time they were outside, a dad who was a teacher at the girls' school, and a psychotic mother (to say the least), the Lisbon sisters seemed almost perfectly set up for disaster. The author writes the book in a way that he doesn't exactly focus on the daughters suicides, but rather talks about their lives. He is the author who writes a paragraph to describe the color pink, as if making the object part of the list of characters. He writes in extreme detail, so that at the end of the book reader's feel like they have witnessed everything first hand. For a person like me, some parts of the book dragged on, but then there were other times where I couldn't put the book down. There was no way story of the Lisbon sister's would turn out okay, but the story behind the girls will never die.

Anthology

I'm planning to focus my anthology work this semester around the general theme of growing up. The concept is so simple, yet it's something people have contrasting feelings about. We, as humans, want to grow up quickly when we're children, but want to grow young when we are older.

I have a few ideas that I want to include in my anthology, but there are still ideas undiscovered. I want to include something about the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button because of the interesting twist in the story. I also want to mention the song called 100 Years by Five For Fighting. The song tells the typical life of an aging adult, and how life passes by so quickly. I think that these ideas will help my anthology express the idea of growing old.