My Vote...

I have to say that I think everyone did a good job on their presentations. It made me want to read all the books, which makes this voting thing harder. I will say that I am down to two books that I think will be good books to read for the next English 110 class and those books are “My Most Excellent Year” by Steve Kluger and “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy. Both groups gave really good presentations and kept my attention the most throughout their speeches. Why I like The Road was because it seemed like a giant mystery. The kind of book that you would want to keep turning the pages because there’s so much going on but you don’t know what is actually happening. I like the fact that the group made it seem that this book is so unnerving, with the whole cannibalism thing, and yet you know if you are going to read it you’re not going to put it down. Apart from The Road, the group that presented My Most Excellent Year made me think of another book called “The Year of Secret Assignments” by Jaclyn Moriarty. Why it reminded me of that book was because when they said that My Most Excellent Year had a lot of notes and e-mails and journal entries that you would read throughout the book to get to know the characters better, The Year of Secret Assignments also did that same thing. Of course I haven’t read My Most Excellent Year but I do know that My Year of Secret Assignments was completely written in that format, and that it actually made the reading a lot more fun but yet still kept to a plot line. I also like the fact that My Most Excellent Year had so many modern day cultural aspects in it, like one of the characters being gay, another being deaf, one who lost a parent, and so on. I agree that it would be a book that would have so much to talk about and that everyone would enjoy.

So I guess from this my vote goes to…..My Most Excellent Year! But The Road would definitely be a close second.

In The Shadow of No Towers

Before I say anything about this book I first have to say that I never read a graphic novel. I did read the Sunday comics growing up but I never bought a book that was a “graphic novel” so I can’t really put down graphic novels because this was the first one I’ve ever read. Now, about this book, I’m fifty-fifty when it comes to liking it and hating it. At first I was put off by it because it was so confusing and hard to really get into. I didn’t like how each panel went from one emotion to another emotion to another thought to another fact, it just made me confused as to the point that Spiegelman was trying to get at. But after really looking at the panels again I realized that during that time that is how it was, that emotions where everywhere and there wasn’t a lot of answers to anything. That and the way that you had to look at the pictures just to try to understand it all was the main reason behind why I liked this novel. Granted I probably wouldn’t recommend this to anyone but as a first time look at a graphic novel for me I don’t think it was a terrible choice. I will say (and a lot of people probably might not agree with me) but I really liked the second half of this novel. With all the historical comics. Especially the “Little Nemo in Slumberland” and “The Glorious Fourth of July,” I liked them mostly just because they made me laugh, and the Little Nemo one just reminded me of the movie. All in all, my review of this graphic novel is fifty-fifty.

Fight Club

First off I have to say that I have never seen Fight Club before this class. For some reason I never really wanted to see this movie. I think it was mostly because I was never really a fan of Brad Pitt (other than the “Ocean’s” movies, but that was mostly because George Clooney and Matt Damon were in them), so I would usually shy away from any movie that had him in it. I know not a good way to really judge a movie but that’s what I did. It actually wasn’t until I talked to my really good friend (who loves this movie) that I started getting interested in it. He would describe to what the movie was like and just keep repeating, “You really need to see it.” When I found out that we were going to watch it in class, I was a little excited. After seeing the movie, I can officially say that I really really like it. Also, for someone who hasn’t read the book either, I thought that the movie was very well written. You were able to really get into the characters and the stories behind them. There wasn’t really a character in that movie that didn’t have some kind of key role in the movie. After talking in class about how people didn’t want to play this movie after the 9/11 attacks, it makes sense to me because of just that overall threat to peoples’ lives and to America. But when you really think about it, most “thriller/crime/action” movies have that sense of threat to someone or to some place. But I do understand that it is hard to see anything bad happening (even if it’s fictional or not) because you don’t want to really see someone get hurt.

Nonrequired Reading

Prompt: Sufjan Stevens writes about his acquisition of literacy at a grocery store. What are the hidden meanings and metaphors of his education process? How does this relate to the concept of nonrequired reading?

What I believe are Sufjan Stevens hidden meanings and metaphors of his education process, is that everyone can learn something by looking at the things around them. He talked about how his third grade teacher Mrs. Lubbers assigned him “a simple task: spend your free time at the pharmacy, the video store, or the grocery store, scanning aisles, browsing cereal boxes, examining coupons, prodding price tags and recipes for nouns, verbs, adjectives…” (p. XV The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007 (in the introduction)). He would then go to the “local k” when his dad would get paid to perform his task at hand. By going to the store he found that everything had words and different meanings all over the place. It wasn’t just a simple book that you were required to sit down and have to read, no it was just simple phrases or sentences that you can pretty much just take your time to read and understand. This type of learning was what I would kind of do when I was younger. I remember sitting at the counter with my box of Captain Crunch Berries box and my bowl cereal and just looking at the box and reading all the little jokes or games that were on the back of the box. How this relates to the concept of nonrequired reading is that something that is nonrequired (to me) seems like your just reading something for the fun of it. It doesn’t mean that those things aren’t short stories or novels; it just means that you’re not forced to read it. By reading for fun you are able to expand your vocabulary and also your creative mind, which I believe is what Sufjan Stevens is trying to get across.