Book Four Reflection- Beastly by Alex Flinn

Dear Aiden,
The change I have seen in you is amazing. When I first heard that I was going to be tutoring a boy-beast I wasn’t sure what to expect. Although they said your appearance would be horrific what truly scared me was your attitude; you viewed life as something to throw away, something that was given not earned, and you were lost in your own selfishness. But as I continued to tutor you I saw you evolve. When you began to plant roses and construct your green-house you found life by caring for those of others, when in a conversation you said to me, “I help them, you know. When I see one that’s turning brown but it doesn’t fall off, I help it. The thorns don’t bother me too much. I heal up.”(p.124) I saw a turning point in your life, you stopped caring so much about your well-being and started to consider those of not only other humans, but also living things. I have to say when I first started tutoring you, no matter how much I got paid, I was unsure whether I would continue. You were lazy and just sat around sulking all day, no interest to absorb the knowledge I had to offer you. I remember I told you that, “I was hired as a tutor, and lately all that means is that I receive an enormous amount of money to stay here and catch up on my reading.”(p.124) Yet I’m glad I decided to stay. I know that looks were always a big deal to you in your past, you told me that you always had it easy because everyone thought you were beautiful and you took advantage of those people, yet when your looks were taken away I believe they made you a better person. The most dramatic change in you, I have to say, is when you invited Lindy to stay with us. At first you tried to force her into spending time with you, and that obviously didn’t work because it made you look more like a monster, but then as you got to know the young lady you became the perfect gentleman. I remember while I was tutoring both you and Lindy you let her answer the questions because you stopped making things all about you and you thought to yourself, “Having read the poem twenty times, I thought I knew what it meant. But now I held back. I realized I wanted to let her be smart.”(p.191) That was only the beginning, as Lindy continued her stay with us I realized that you would never be the same stuck up boy that you once were, you were transitioning into an intelligent young man. It was hard to see you falling in love with Lindy (figuratively not literally because I was blind) because you were holding back because of the way you thought she felt about you. When we went to stay in your fathers cabin out in the middle of no-where surrounded by snow you let your guard down. You stopped locking the door like you used to before because you were scared of Lindy leaving and you began understanding that there must be trust in order for someone to love you back. I think that the point at which you truly transitioned from the young sinister boy Kyle to the caring young man Adrian was when you asked the witch who cast your spell to allow me to see and Magda your maid to go home to her family. Through all of your selflessness you were able to give Lindy the love that you deserved and have it returned to you. Now that you broke the curse although you may be attractive once again you have become so much more, you even gave me my sight back. Thank you, Aiden, for becoming who you are today.
Kind Regards,
Will.

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Reasons why Jace is the most endearing yet annoying character

In the Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare she follows the story of Clary Fray who is a young girl who discovers the magic world her mother has been hiding her from. As the readers follow Clary they get to meet a character that they won’t forget; Jace Wayland. Jace is a character that readers want to forget but don’t have the ability to, here are five reasons why Jace is unforgettable.

1. He is uber annoying.

Throughout the whole book he spends his time hiding his emotions and pretending he doesn’t care about anyone. When he comes to Clary’s room and Simon is already in there he pretends as though he doesn’t care about Cary at all. Throughout the book he also makes vain comments about his appearance to hide how he really feels.

2. He’s extremely heroic.

When Clary finds Jace she learns about shadowhunters and their fight against demons, throughout the book Jace saves Clary endlessly. Not only does Jace save Clary but also the people Clary cares the most about including her best friend Simon and her almost-father Luke. Doing all of this while remaining humble.

3. His language.

Because in the book the shadow hunters are isolated from humans, or mundanes as they would call them, they speak in a more formal dialect. One which Jace pulls off very well. When Jace speaks to Clary it’s almost as if he is speaking down to a child trying to dumb down his elevated vocabulary, “I use tools that are magical. And just to be able to do that, I have to undergo rigorous training. The rune tattoos on my skin protect me too. If you tried to use one of the seraph blades, for instance, it’d probably burn your skin, maybe kill you.”(p.101)

4-  His brokenness.

Throughout the book Jace slowly revealed parts of his past that have scarred him. In the book the readers learn that his father snapped his bird’s neck in front of him and was also murdered in front of him. All of this is seen through Clary’s perspective which makes it much more heartbreaking. On page 463 it described how Jace’s father looked at him through Clary’s eyes, “A spasm of fury twisting his features, Valentine looked at his son. She would never forget that look-it made her feel a sudden wild longing for her mother. Because no matter how angry her mother had been with her, Jocelyn had never looked at her like that.”

5- You can never figure him out.

Jace is known to be temperamental. When things don’t go his way he just ignores everything and acts as if he doesn’t care, while really later in the story you learn that he cares a lot. He is broken yet he is the strongest person in the story, he is hard to talk to yet he always listens. He’s very truthful yet he ignores his feelings, he is just a whirlwind of contradictions.

Blog #5

•         How true does a book have to be in your mind to be considered non-fiction?   Why?

 

I think that for a book to be considered non-fiction 99% of the facts have to be true. As Seth Greenland said if the things within a memoir aren't true then the book is not really a memoir. I think that it's important for non-fiction books to follow this guidelines because people may relate to the stories and see the struggles that people in memoirs have overcome, but if these things were made up it makes that relationship with the reader fake and may disappoint the reader into not being able to relate.

•         Are half-truths okay if it’s still a good story? Does it matter if Frey or other memoirists bent the truth to tell their stories?

I don't think that half truths are ok, if you're going to write a memoir stick to the guidelines. If not then write a fiction books. Authors like Frey that make up facts within their books and call them a memoir really take away from other memoirs credibility and may damage the genre for the rest of the authors who wrote authentic, factual memoirs. Of course I think that writers should have a little flexibility with conversations they can't remember word for word, but if they're big events that they make up that's when I don't think it's ok.

•         Is David Shields right?  Do we need lines between genres—do we need to label something fiction or non-fiction?  Why does it matter?

 

I think we do need to label things fiction and non-fiction, I agree with Aimee Bender when she said that it's exciting what people are able to do with the mixing of genres but if the authors do this I think they need to let their readers know. My main problem with blurring the lines of genres is that the readers lose a sense of trust with their authors, because they don't know whether to think that the events are true events or if they are just figments of imagination. I think it is very important for the author to be faithful to his readers and say, 'hey guys in this piece I wrote it is a story of fiction and non-fiction' instead of lying to them saying it is all non-fiction like Frey did. I know I would have a lot more respect for an author and would want to support them more if they were honest to me instead of lying, this should allow authors to play with the genre lines while still remaining faithful to their readers.

Book post #4

1. For the perks of being a wallflower I would cast actors that aren't famous yet because I think that this is a story that needs to be told with fresh faces. When people already know the actors they have an already constructed idea of what they think the actors are going to be like, meanwhile they don't get the true sense of the characters in the story.
2. I believe that the best adaptation for the book would be a movie, the book is short enough that it would be perfect for a movie yet it is not long enough to be able to work for a t.v series.
3. For the soundtrack I think it would be important to include songs that are alternative and not extremely well known, because throughout the book the main character Charlie was always appreciating under-rated artists and movies.
4. I think a unique thing that would be vital to capture is the point of view, it is told from Charlie's perspective therefore if it is made into a movie it would be wrong to tell it from the third person instead of first person.
5. I think an important thing to consider would be to make sure that the story is not overdone, in the sense of the tough events that Charlie goes through, it is important to display the events but in such a way that is sensitive to the viewers and demonstrates the plot effectively.

Book Project 1: Fan Experience

If I Stay fans everywhere are looking for another way to connect to the book and the characters, and here is your chance! Tickets to Shooting Star’s concert will be going on sale for a worldwide tour starting September 16th, if you fell in love with Adam Wilde in If I Stay- Just wait until you see him in concert and a chance to meet him afterward and swoon just like Mia did in If I Stay. “It wasn’t that Adam was such a popular guy….But he was cool. Cool in that he played in a band with people who went to the college in town. Cool in that he had his own rockery style, produced from thrift shops and garage sales, not from Urban Outfitters knockoffs.” P(33)

The concert will begin in the hometown of the characters-Oregon-and will travel around 15 states hitting New York, Cincinnati, Florida, Texas and many more. In the book the main character, Mia’s, life is centered around her boyfriend Adam Wilde. When his band starts getting big Mia begins to see a separate part of his life begin, one that she is part of when she attends his concerts and sees him perform the songs he wrote himself. Though the whole book is centered around music the author makes a specific point to connect Mia and Adam through their different music styles-classical and rock. In the book while Mia is on her deathbed Adam says to her, “Please Mia. Don’t make me write a song.” Illustrating what he had earlier stated in the book that he writes songs when something horrible has happened in his life or about things that make him sad. If fans of the book are have the ability to attend this concert they will be exposed to the side of Adam that was only alive in the book of fiction, now it will be converted into a tangible experience for the fans.

For people who aren’t fans of the book:

This concert will be made available to everyone not just fans of the book! Since there's already a big fan base of the book because of the movie that has just been released, others who have heard about it will be curious. With the popularity of alternative bands, such as one direction, and social media marketing it will be easy to sell tickets for the show and branch out to other groups of people apart from the readers. For fanatics of the book- or maybe later on the band- meet and greet passes will be made available for fans, as this was a big part of the book, it was a time to connect to the fans after the show, “When Adam finished his set, I was as panting and sweating as he was. I didn’t go backstage to greet him before everyone else for to him. I waited for him to go to the floor of the club. to meet his public like he did at the end of every show.”(P.98)it will help the people who read the book stay connected to the events that occurred throughout the novel.

The tickets will be customized to look like fans would imagine them, before the tour begins the marketing crew could have a competition for fans to design the tickets, as another way to keep them involved and get others to hear about the concerts, and the actual venues chosen would resemble those in the book, local clubs where there is a comfortable environment for fans. And for the shows to remain intimate, like the book, and not overwhelm fans the amount of people in each venue will be restricted to 300 opposed to 1000.

Example of what the tickets could look like:


(Fan made concert tickets)

What is a book?

It's easy in this day and age to be able to discard obsolete things such as typewriters, flip-phones, and other things of that matter, but the question that is arising, one that worries me, is are books going to become obsolete?

When I was about eight my obsession with books began, binge reading all of the books in the unfortunate events series, or in my older years the romantic series, became the norm for me. I would sit at a bench during lunch or recess with my nose stuck between the pages inhaling the too-familiar scent of my favorite books. As other kids played tag or gossiped I never felt alone, I had friends but I would much rather indulge in the lives of Junie B. Jones or Bella Swan (which I'm not proud of). So my childhood was a whirlwind of different lives coming together in the mind of a pre-adolescent to form her own opinion of the world. How do you tell someone like that that books don't matter? Sure kids in the future may be able to flip through their kindles and keep up with various characters and stories at once, but they would never get the satisfaction of marking their favorite pages and being able to pick up that old book and re-read the sentences that changed their life, and flip through the worn out pages as their hands guide the all familiar route to their favorite passages.

Joe Meno once said that the message is more vital than the medium it is shown through, and with this I agree. But if we only looked at the vital things in life, what pleasure would we get? Let’s say books were handbags, sure we could carry our purses in plastic bags but there is no pleasure in that and it is not appealing. The same goes with a book, anyone could type words on a computer and call it a book but I believe what essentially makes a book, a book, is the packaging that goes with it. What makes a book, a book, is the book cover artist working for months to ensure that when someone passes by this story no one can miss it. What makes a book is making sure that the book is the perfect length for the story and that the pages are distributed evenly to make the reading flow better. What makes a book is an eight year old girl lugging around her worn out copy of Twilight because she feels as it is a part of her, another limb. Sure with e-books we can get what is vital, but we can’t get the life of the “book”.

Why I read

 I started reading when I was young but not by choice, it was because my mother believed that 25 pages a day would help me enjoy books and open myself up to the world of books. Starting to read was slow and almost painful but when I got the hang of it, it became my favorite hobby. Although it can be disheartening to read poor quality books, there are so many well written books that it is worth reading various "bad books" to find the one book that allows me to forget all of them. I'm glad my mom introduced me to the world of books when I was young because it allowed me to find myself through books, and allow my reading style to develop more thoroughly.

I began at entry level books and worked my way up to the complex books that my mother would read. Not only is it a way to connect to others that experience the same thing as I do, it is also a way to learn more about myself as I question events that happen within the plots and get attached to characters. I believe that there are books for everyone out there and books can be healing and can promote more elevated thinking, I have learnt more vocabulary from reading than I have from any English class in school. I like to think that reading gives people time away from stressful situations to connect with another world. I read because I enjoy it and feel that I learn a lot from reading.