Post 5- Truth in a Memoir 

I would say a book has to be about 99% true in order to be considered non-fiction. It has to have all the facts right/true, the story line isn’t even bended a little, all true, otherwise it would be a lie and just some made up story considering it to be fiction instead. It’s okay though to change small detail, just not facts or storyline. For example a person in the story is wearing a red shirt, but you decide to change it to blue, just small unnecessary detail.

Half-truths are not okay, even if it’s a good story, you’d be lying to your readers, and it wouldn’t be a memoir anymore just a plain out fiction story that has some true facts to it.

David Shields is right, we do need lines between genres. It separates nonfiction and fiction, without it we wouldn’t know what the truth is or if it’s just a story.   

Final Exam

Blog Post- Final Exam

Book 4

Emma Simendinger

In “The Room” by Emma Donoghue, it’s the story a young boy and his Ma, living behind the walls of “Room.” Never coming out and revealing Ma’s real name, she was kidnapped at age 19 and forced to live in a small shed, till twenty-seven years old. Jack, Ma’s son is the narrator of the story, it all being seen through a five year old’s eyes. The innocence of Jack and thinking everything good about room, or for him even seeing Old Nick as being the good guy who cares for them, not as the guy who stole Ma. To Jack, the only things in room that are real is room itself and everything in room. So trees, toys, stores are all fake in his mind.  Although it being a fictional story, it’s a realistic story of something that could happen or in this case a similar story that actually has happened. In the nonfiction piece, a memoir by Jaycee Dugard, “A Stolen Life.” The real experience of, Jaycee at the age of 11 was taken, and survived for 18 years living in the backyard of her kidnappers home, living inside a tent. Where Jaycee became a mother to two daughters in her stolen years. “The Room” is a similar story in the fact both girls were held captive in backyards of the home of their kidnappers, both women being taken on their way to school/class, getting pregnant and raising the children in their small living spaces, and finally getting out many years later.

                

These two books were both very enjoyable books. Barely could ever set the book down. The book gave you emotions to experience while reading. Such very similar stories, one being real and the other just fiction, but they both send a message out of realistic events that could happen, an just a sad story being told. “A Stolen Life” actually being the first book to make me cry, after knowing the characters in the book and even feeling trapped yourself as a reader the way she is, and it’s just a surreal reading.  

Book 3 Listicle

Book 3 Listicle

5 Reasons Every Love Story is the Same.

Emma Simendinger

The book “What Happened to Goodbye” by author, Sarah Dessen writes yet another love story about a teenage girl, Mclean Sweet and her struggles of moving around a lot. Mclean’s parents becoming divorced and shutting down the family restaurant because of the “incident” where she loses the close relationship with her mom, and in the process of it all even loses herself, she even falls in love, and blah-blah-blah, like every romance story ever, it’s the exact same.

1.) She has a secret dark past

You always have that girl, that mysterious girl, which you just can’t seem to get through.

Mclean comes to a new school, is a gorgeous girl, people notice her, but the new attractive girl has a secret past standing in the way of any new friends. Her past life, with her parents, the family restaurant they owned, all of it gone, but why? “But in the real world, you couldn’t really just split a family down the middle, mom on one side, dad the other, with the child equally divided between. It was like when you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again. It was what you couldn't see, those tiniest of pieces, which were lost in the severing, and their absence kept everything from being complete.” (Dessen) The fact that we got some information into her past, but stops there leaving us to figure out the rest, along with every other character in the book.

2.) She hides her true identity

                Mr. Sweet’s job in the food industry and the constant moving from town to town, it’s a perfect setting to set up a new girl to be every time they move. Whether she has invented herself into being Liza, Eliza, or Beth, at her new school she ends up going by her real name Mclean. All her past fake names and people, was her cover up to what her life use to be and why she doesn’t want to be the old girl she once was.  “All those clean, fresh starts had made me forget what it was like, until now, to be messy and honest and out of control. To be real.” (Dessen) She liked all the fresh starts, the reinventing every time she had her “fresh start” but the real her came out.

3.) The boy next store

                There isn’t a love story without the charming boy, with the golden looks and personality that sweeps you away. It just wouldn’t be natural without it. Dave Wade the neighbor boy, instantly crushes on Mclean when they meet while running from the cops after a huge party was being busted. The outgoing person he is keeps going for Mclean trying to figure her out, and what girl is she really. The back and forth flirting, then at the very end finally they confess their feelings. “You asked me to go out with you. I know you probably changed your mind. But you should know, the answer was yes. It's always been yes when it comes to you.” (Dessen) Mclean at this point in the book, when she says this line, finally comes to realization what she wants and confesses.

4.) He’s figured out the girl

                After Dave chases the girl he wants, trying to figure out why she is so mysterious, he finally gets the answers he wants. Slowly being let into Mclean’s guarded life and her huge past secret, and the reason for her parents’ divorce. “Odd how it was so easy for a stranger to assume such familiarity. Especially when those who were supposed to know you best often didn't, not at all.” (Dessen) He automatically understood her and continued to figure her out.

5.) The cliché ending

                So after getting past all the conflicts, like the typical downfall that causes the two lovers to break apart but they always come back together and forgive each other for some stupid fight or mistake they made. But of course it’s not till the very ending of the book they actually have the big moment of the confessing their feelings. Then from there it’s a happily ever after…“Once you love something, you always love it in some way. You have to. It’s, like, a part of you for good.” (Dessen) The cliché fight break up, not lasting forever but being fixed at the end. Every love story ends that way! Every single one.

               

Post 4

Book Thief – Markus Zusak

Adaptation for the book, Book Thief has already been made into a film. In opinion does not make the most sense to me to have made it into a film. Where I am waiting to see the movie but I do know the book starts very out very slow.  It’s almost the first 100 pages it explains characters and her just fitting into her new life, there’s no action that that grabs you in awe! I can see that a lot would had to been changed in order to have made this film something actually worth watching, otherwise no one would want to see a slow movie about a girl learning to read and write half the film. An adaption that I would say would make the most sense is a live musical. The changing of the scenes would make the storyline a lot quicker, and how this book is very sad with her family dying and eventually Liesel herself, incorporating the right music could make the story a lot more effective. In order to make the play essential, key scenes that would need to be kept, Liesel’s brother dying, the very first time she steals a book in the cemetery, the moment at the beginning when she learns to trust Papa after a nightmare, the other times she steals the books like out of the fire,  Rudy Steiner and his Jesse Owen’s incident with pretending to be an black Olympic runner, Max Vandenburg Han’s Jewish friend hiding in their basement, Max writing a story for Liesel bringing their friendship closer together; “The Standover Man,” Max’s march to Dachau where the Jews go through Molching and Liesel for a quick time gets to see Max again, Frau Hermann gave Liesel a book to write in which is the most important because it’s Liesel writing the story, the bombing of Himmel and Liesel’s death. Where there are many key scenes that need to be kept to be effective, without them the book would lose a lot of its deep emotions and meaning, those scenes make the book. As said before the changing of the scenes to make the storyline quicker, or to start the book out quicker is what would need to be cut or changed from this plot. Cutting minor or small respective things that occur towards the beginning would help that. We know she struggles reading and writing but taking the first 100 and something pages to explain that is unnecessary so cutting that and shortening it for a Musical adaptation would be effective.  

Game Board

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NboPftCOn65AvaRcOzOgbvnThpFAzGVuixoqNE2DGhc/edit

11/22/63 by Steven King 

Be one of the only to travel back into time and change history forever… that is if you succeed! By playing the 11/22/63 board game. This game taking strategy on which paths to take while maneuvering throughout the board, will you make the right choices? Becoming the main character Jake Epping a school teacher, himself or his new identity of the past “George Amberson”, but using your mind to get to the end. Starting out in pantry of the diner where Jake first realizes this time traveling stuff isn’t at all a dream but for sure reality.

When his dying friend Al, has his last request for Jake, the request that would change history altogether, it wasn’t the request Jake was hoping for. To go back in time, on the day of November 22, 1963, and stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy. “We never know which lives we influence, or when or why. Not until the future eats the present anyway. We know when it’s too late.” Taking on the challenge given to him, he stops to change a few things on the way. Starting with his friend Harry, whose family was murdered by his father, Jake manages to save most of the family, only to learn it changes the future. Resulting in both Harry and Al having gone through tragic events, Al killing himself by overdosing on his painkillers. And the janitor Harry, actually being killed at Vietnam War. Or Sadie Dunhill the love of Jake’s life, who is brutally beaten by an ex-husband.  All due to the changing of events that Jake keeps making. Throughout the game, playing cards will be presented with scenarios from the book and when it’s your turn you are able to pick from two of the scenarios altering you throughout different paths of the game, resulting in different endings for each player by their choices in the card stack the player chooses.

What is a Book?

A book isn’t a place but more of an escape- an escape to a place. Where all things around us in reality fade out and disappear for a while. Where we are taken to a place, to a setting, a setting where we have the power to create that image. But then, we escape to that place, the place we have created and pictured in our heads. The one where we have gotten lost to. A good book, an amazing good read, a physical book, is like the game of Barbie’s I played as a little girl. The makeup of my own world, of where they lived, creating their own place, it was my imagination. The escape from reality, and the makeup of your own place and own images of how you want your escape to be, how you want it to go in your head.    

Q: To read with Kindles or actual books?

ES: The opinions differ, but in the end the book is the book either way. With Tom Piazza interviews Tom Piazza, arguing against it, I do agree. Something about reading a physical book is so much more intriguing. The way a new book smells, or going to the library and getting an old book and seeing the stains on some of the pages and just appreciating that book! I find myself getting lost in the book store for hours. But Victor LaValle also makes a point on who cares what it is you read on, sometimes for me reading on a Kindle is easier, the books come cheaper there, keeping track of them is easier, highlighting is also easier. The opinions will differ. But, as technology does continue, I want to see libraries continue too…

“I mean, if there’s no future for books, there’s no future” - Tom Piazza