Finally

Starting the class, I was already a pretty independent reader. I did depend on other people to recommend good challenging books. If I didn't have any recommendations, I would usually read Nicholas Sparks' books or something similar. During the week I wouldn't read much, but mostly save it as a Sunday activity curled up in bed. This semester I read books I normally would not have read. This class I think helped me go from simple young adult to more challenging adult books less awkwardly than I otherwise would have because I enjoy really unique books, but I also read a lot of really crappy books, I don't even know another way to say it. I never read with my phone with me because I get too distracted. I absolutely love talking to people about books and recommending books to other people. Besides changing what I read, I've also changed how much I read. Now I choose to read over watching tv or getting online. I'm looking forward to having more time to read now that band season is over. I'm also looking forward to exploring new genres of books that I wouldn't have been exposed to.

The Help

The chapters in this book are written from the perspective of either Skeeter, Aibileen, or Minnie. Aibileen and Minnie each write in the voice that they would have spoken in. Grammar is incorrect and accents are included, but it's actually much easier to follow and to read than I originally expected. I enjoy being able to hear their voices while reading. The southern accents included throughout the book remind me of my family and I've often caught myself laughing because they use some of the same sayings as my family.

I was reading this on my trip to Arizona and people on three of my four flights made comments about the book. Everyone had good things to say about it and I loved having something to talk about instead of awkwardly sitting next to a stranger.

The Help

This will be a post about The Help.

Curently

This week: 205
Last Week: 118

"But the bald spot in the back of her hair kind a throws things off."

"Today is a good day though. That girl just grins."

"She got this way a clearing her throat real delicate-like that get everybody's attention without they even knowing she made em do it."

The Help

Unfortunately, I saw this movie before reading the book. Usually I won't see a movie until I read the book, but my Dad offered and seeing a movie sounded nice. My dad read this book and said it was really good. I'm only a chapter in, but the style is actually really easy to follow. Mae Mobley has a caretaker named Aibileen and Mae Mobley's mom is Miss Leefolt.

House of Leaves

House of Leaves wasn't really a horror story like I expected. One person dies throughout the entire book and not much emphasis was really put on it. More than anything, relationships are explored. Karen and Navdison are in a long term relationship with two kids, but are not married. Johnny loves a woman named Thumper who doesn't feel the same way about him. Karen & Navy have a falling out when she moves the kids to New York to escape the house, but she faces her fears and returns to the house where Navy is lost within the hallway. Days go by and Karen even ventures into the hallway in hopes of finding him, with no luck. Near the end of the book, after all the haunting and adventures, all relationships are resolved. Because of this emphasis, I really think House of Leaves is more of a love story than a horror novel. Another reason I don't think it was really horrific was because all of the bad parts were broken up throughout the novel by smaller stories of Johnny and Lude's relationships.

Close-Reading Bingo

Disclaimer: I feel really bad for pointing out flaws so please don't be offended if I use yours.

1&2. "At first, the character introduces the reader to the point of the passage." --ariadna permelia
           Rule #3-- What is the point of the passage? 
           Rule #4--Don't include "the reader"

3. "The girl screams to her sister “I will kill if you touch this, Julie, and if you do I swear to go I will kill you, no mercy, no take-backs private property, this means you, Julie, you” which explains how the infuriated girl feels toward her sister." --emily 
          Rule #2-- Break it into two sentences or shorten the quotation.

4. "In Nicholson Baker's work The Mezzanine, he uses elegant and intricate diction to create a formal tone."--Maddie 
          Rule #6-- Avoid the verb "use"

Best Response: KG

House of Leaves

House of Leaves includes a lot of commentary on human nature. Johnny in particular seems to make a big deal out of nothing. Karen often complains about her boyfriend although she is unfaithful and rude quite frequently. Karen and Navidson also talk badly about each other on Hi-8s a lot. The characters are pretty cookie cutter for the most part, it's just their actions that throw you off. Navidson decieves his girlfriend and explores the hallway before any official explorations begin and again later in the book. Although Navidson and Karen do not always treat each other right, their relationship works out because they love each other. They have a very realistic relationship.

Practice Diction Analysis

In the first page of his novel Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger’s literal, blunt diction expresses Holden’s attitude towards his life and his surroundings. Holden describes his parents as “touchy as hell” and mentions his “lousy childhood.” The negative connotation of his words is straightforward, lending them to be easily trusted. Even when speaking of his brother, Holden says where D.B. lives “isn’t too far from this crumby place.” Though Holden is capable of positive emotions shown by his compassion for his brother, Holden has a negative outlook of his surroundings.  

House of Leaves

While Navidson is lost alone within the hallway, the stairway flips and turns and he becomes very disoriented. To mirror this, the text on the page grows and shrinks, changes places on the page, makes you flip the book around, often doesn't exist, and is very unorganized. Just reading the book and flipping the pages as quickly as you have to makes you as disoriented as Navidson must feel. It took me a minute to realize which side is the bottom and which is the top. It's this varied writing style is what interests me about the book.

Currently

First week of the quarter!

This week:118 pages
Last week:266 pages

On the other hand, the figurative language detailing simple but memorable scenes in Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami provide deep emotional connections to the character.-- E

Even more casually written is Jack Kerouac's On The Road, which incorporates a stream of consciousness that mirrors the complex workings of the narrators mind using words that are far less complicated. The flowing, jazzy language including the description of a break-up as a "miserably weary splitup" begs to be read aloud because its sounds are so pleasing to the ear.  --Charliebucket

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey is written with crude diction that protrays the aurthors critical struggles and a repetitive flow that allows the reader to understant his thinking.--Phyllis

Style Mapping

1984 by George Orwell uses straightforward and exact diction, colloquial formality, and dull sound to create a harsh feeling for the reader, much like how Winston feels the chill of the bright cold day and the enormous eyes of the face watching him.  Homer's The Odyssey poetic connotation, elegant and scholarly formality, and melodious sound. In House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, literal, thudding, choppy, vulgar language allows readers a glimpse into Johnny's recently changed mind.

Quarterly

I haven't really surprised myself this quarter as far as what I read is concerned. I've basically always read what I had available to me and I've never stuck to one particular genre. House of Leaves has been the most challenging and I feel like it took me a long time to get in to it. I love the story, but absolutely hate the book. It's just a bunch of crap. There are references that don't exist, footnotes with footnotes, and the layout is unnecessary. Though I do hate it, I respect it. It clearly took a lot of thought and creativity and I'm really enjoying the challenge. It's a piece of art. I mostly read during fifth period and at night right before I go to bed. During yearbook, I've often found myself being a loner in the "patio room" reading. I really don't mind though, it's really nice to be able to hear the craziness but not actually be a  part of it. I also cuddle up with my puppies in this big blue chair in the sun room in my house a lot to read. I think my dogs probably enjoy being read to... haha. I usually don't have my cell phone on and I try not to talk to other people while I'm reading because if I get sidetracked, it takes me a while to get back to where I was reading with the same concentration I had before. I want to find more books that make me think though. I think I need to stop reading books because I relate to the characters. It's neat to be able to live vicariously through a character. I'll never be a crazy drug/sex addict, but it's cool to imagine what they think.

So the hallway in Navidson's house changes. The staircase took the explorers six days to reach the bottom and it only took Navidson five minutes. It basically says that each person has their own thoughts about the space before they venture into it. The explorers were searching for the bottom which is why it took them so long to reach the bottom, Navidson knew there was a bottom and had the goal of getting to the bottom. To relate this to the readers, it's like when you're a child and the year between each Christmas seems like a lifetime, though as you get older, the last Christmas always seems like just yesterday. It's also like visiting a place you used to frequent as a child and realizing it is actually much smaller than you recall. In this instance, you have grown, the space has not gotten smaller, but you don't notice the change in yourself. The more I thought about this, the more I started wishing I could feel others' interpretations of things and places. Clearly it's impossible, talking about it can't even clearly describe what you feel about a thing or place, but everyone has their own. I used to wonder as a child how other people viewed colors. Maybe my pink was blue to someone else. What if other people saw shades that I couldn't see? Is it not possible that we all see different colors and we just know the colors we see? Maybe what I see as black you see as my teal, but you've learned it to be your black. That's not something you can talk about though... how do you describe the color black? It's dark, it's the opposite of white, but what if adjectives are just relative? You'll never really know. The book is like this, it has more questions than answers.

Currently.

Pages this week:something just a bit above 100.... not really sure exactly since I don't have my bookmark

Pages last week:100 pages exactly

1. He could be funny for a while solid day without ever once being stupid, and one time during lunch he made me laugh so hard a noodle came out my nose.
 -A Girl Named Zippy
I think that is the ultimate definition of love.

2. "Be like a duck. Remain calm on the surface and paddle like hell underneath." -Rules for My Unborn Son
Because it's great advice.

3."Sleep's been stalking me for too long to remember." -House of Leaves
Because it's too true.

House of Leaves (again)

After the explorers have departed, the family in the house begins to hear a strange knocking-- three short knocks, followed by three long knocks, followed by another three short knocks. This is the S.O.S. signal. The explorers began randomly knocking and the house has translated their calls of distress. The whole book is starting to get creepy like this. Parts of Johnny's story are getting hard to decipher if he's having an attack or if these things are actually happening. Overall though, I'm really enjoying this book. It's different and it's challenging.

House of Leaves

I stopped reading this book for a bit because it's such a slow read. Not to say it isn't interesting and enjoyable, I just couldn't find the time or patience to read 100 pages of this per week. I've just begun the most interesting part of the book so far. Navidson has hired men to explore the dark side of his house and Johnny, the narrator, is experiencing attacks that are similar to anxiety or panic attacks. The book never said this, but it's pretty clear that Johnny was messed up from a young age, moving from foster family to foster family although his mother was still alive. Because of this void, I think he looks for women to feel a sense of worth. Honestly though, parts of this book are incredibly inappropriate and I pray no one is looking at my book over my shoulder while I read them.

Currently

Pages this week:100
Pages last week:172

1. He could be funny for a while solid day without ever once being stupid, and one time during lunch he made me laugh so hard a noodle came out my nose.

2. I knew from Marcus Welby, M.D., that this could and did sometimes happen, that bad news was followed by more and more bad news, until finally the doctor was telling you that you had to give up coffee, which I knew for a fact would have killed my dad.

3. King could only gasp for air. He never had a good day, as far as oxygen went.

4. Ha ha on the smokers.

5. Well, how about this: he once got locked in a basement by evil Petey Scroggs in the middle of January and survived on snow and little frozen mice. When I'm cold at night he sleep right on my face. Of that whole litter of kittens he came out of he's the only one left. One of his brothers didn't even have a butthole!

All from A Girl Named Zippy. Number five is just funny by itself, but I find myself standing up for my puppy that I found on the side of the road all the time. She's half blind in one eye and completely blind in the other and the worst dog we've ever had, but she's just so stinkin' cute! Although admittedly, maybe a little ugly. Just google search brussels griffon and find the ugliest one-- that's what she looks like.

Zippy has a friend named Dana who quickly appears in and leaves her life. Throughout my life, I've had a lot of friends like that. Dana moved in to the newest house from California and interested Zippy. When I lived in Dallas, many families would go in and out of the private school based on financial ability and disability. When you're young, it's not easy to understand why your friends have to leave and why they never say goodbye. The way Zippy reacts is very similar to how I used to react as well.

While reading A Girl Named Zippy, Zippy says, "My own mother prated about almost nothing but my dad. Week after week, year after year, for twenty-seven years she prayed that God would touch his heart and cause him to become a hardworking, nondrinking, churchgoing kind of man." Reading this, I thought of how marriage has changed since the 70s when this was written. Zippy's parents never fought and never mentioned divorce even though neither of them were exactly the type of person that the other wanted. Maybe because it was a small town and there weren't many options when it was time to marry, but Zippy's parents endured while current couples divorce, even if children are involved. The whole book is like that; it says small things about the time period without saying it right out.