Week 5 and 6

Write a blog post that considers what are the defining characteristics of your generation. Discuss a few specific works that in your opinion give "voice" to the outlooks and attitudes shared by your generation.

Literature has definitely come a long way, except I don’t really prefer this generation’s books and novels unless it’s something that’s truly a piece of work. Of course, that’s all based on opinions and personal preference, but I feel like the works now are a lot duller than decades ago. I guess ‘Simple is Best’ but for some things, it’s not necessary at all. I’m not saying that there are no good works now, they’re just very hard to find without flowing along the clichés of very popular subjects; such as vampires and werewolves. Those subjects are way overboard because of sudden popularity over the years in a short time.

Reading older works, however, I felt like it had more depth. Authors had intricate words, and a more ornate style of writing. Reading works from people like Poe, I love the way the words are put together, as well as the format. There’s a more cultural feel to older works too, especially the novel, The Great Gatsby. I know that the subject spectrum isn’t as large as it is now back then, but I just feel like it’s a better collection back then than now.

For this week's blog posting please write a 350-500 word review of the novel focusing not on whether you liked the book or not, or whether you thought it was good or bad, but rather on a description of the experience of reading the book and what you think are the most defining aspects of the novel.

Honestly, I was not expecting this book to be like this whatsoever.  At first, I thought that this novel was going to be something similar to something along the lines of a girl and her journey, something probably not so… alien. But that’s what I really liked about it. I would have never known that this novel was about a girl and her family trying to start life on a different alien planet. It immediately came to me as a slight sci-fi novel. It being an older book, I assumed it would be something describing the culture wherever it took place. Don’t get me wrong, it still had culture, but it was a made up culture, and I think that was a great point for the author to ‘wow’ readers. I highly doubt that there were many of that kind of novels back in that time. All in all, I found it very confusing, but I kinda enjoyed it even though I had a hard time grasping it. It personally just seemed a bit awkward to me because I didn’t expect it in the first place.

How the act of reading changes when the text is comprised of both words and pictures. Please give specific examples to support your observations.

Throughout all life stages, reading has always been a choice among avid bookworms. From children storybooks and fairy tales to young adult adventure to adult works of sci-fi and fiction. We are introduced to reading at a very young age, but I think one thing that really helps the young get into reading are the artworks and illustrations that are provided in earlier year texts. What is it about pictures in storybooks and novels that help a reader view the story differently?

It all depends on the reader and his or her preferences. It is understandable that a reader won’t like illustrations because it’s too much of a distraction, but that’s not certainly bad. I feel like illustrations and pictures in a novel or in a book really help with how the reader visualizes the different scenes and happenings, so it narrows it down to how the environment really looks, how the characters look all the way to the features on their faces to the clothes on their back. But not only that, it can definitely show what kind of culture takes place in that story.

Now, this isn’t a bad thing, but for me, reading a novel or a story without pictures, I start to develop my own idea of what the environment and the characters look like in the plot. But then as soon as a picture or illustration appears and I take a look at it, all my ideas of what the story is, is completely pushed out of my mind because of the picture that really represents the story itself. We might not all agree with the illustrations, but for people who read more non-illustrated works, it can be quite a frustration.

Good examples of how pictures and illustrations can have reading changes would be a children’s ABC’s book, and a young adult’s sci-fi novel. For children, an ABC’s book is one of the most important things in their life. Now, if all it had was text, and everything to describe A-Z without images or examples, how would thc children learn to know what started with A and what started with Z? How would they know that A is for that red fruit a teacher has on her desk, or how would they know that Z is for the striped four-legged creature at the zoo? Pictures play a big role in childhood. As for sci-fi, I’m sure it’s not hard for the young adult reader to develop their own imagery in their head, but the images in the novel could also help describe the intricate and ornate ideas of sci-fi novels.

I honestly think pictures and illustrations are important in a novel, but it’s also understandable that because of modern society, images are more suited for magazines and full color books, because novels are usually in black and white.

I think it’s all based on preference though.