PreziProject

Reading Wishlist

          1.Rereading The Warriors series
          2.Rereading the second series in The Warriors
          3.Rereading The Omen of the Stars series
          4.Pendragon series
          5. The Fall of Five
          6.Fifth book in I am #4 series (to be named)
          7. Independent book in Inheritance cycle (to be announced)
          8.The Blood of Olympus
          9.Lord of the Rings

Blog Post Book 3

                When someone mentions science fiction, most people think of something along the lines of Star Wars, Star Trek, or Lord of the Rings. Not like Inheritance or any of its three sister books would be among those great giants, but in my opinion, it would be up there. The thing with the Inheritance Cycle is that it bears a striking resemblance to that of a combination of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. What, with the elves, dwarves, and dragons from LOTR and the ancient order destroyed from Star Wars along with the ability to use a special force(magic is used and pun intended) to do almost anything at will. The list continues.

                The author, Christopher Paolini has the right approach. He took the most decorated stories ever and combined them to make a hybrid. Though it is not as easy as you might think, he had to make a perfect combination of them, he had to choose which detail of which story might fit the best. Paolini decided that he wanted to have dwarves and elves instead of wookies and ewok’s. He decided to have an old order instead of a grouping of wizards. He decided to have an evil king instead of an empire that was very powerful with no really specific leader.

                The characters in Inheritance are for the most part, fully formed. When Eragon (the character the story is centered around) said to Angela, “Mooneater? What a strange name. How did you come by it?” he is expressing confusion about some of Angela’s past, which in the series as a whole, is a complete mystery. Angela is among a few characters who are flat, and have no background whatsoever. There is one example, however, of a character going through a massive change. As thought by Nasuada, the leader of the varden, “In the short while since the Varden and the Surdans had launched their attack against the Empire, Nasuada had watched Orrin grow ever more serious, his original enthusiasm and eccentricities vanishing beneath a grim exterior.”

                The writing style is only partially identifiable when Paolini has parts where the character that is in first person in that chapter has a thought and that thought is in italics. An example of this would be on page 285 when Eragon and the elf, Arya, are captured and gagged. He thinks, “Why hasn’t she escaped already? He wondered. Then: What happened? His thoughts felt thick and slow, as if he were drunk with exhaustion.” This perfectly models Paolini’s style of writing when his characters think in 3^rd person. There is not any other identifying factors that might separate his writing from another author. This means that if you read a piece of his work that had no title, you would not immediately tell just by the style that you are reading one of Paolini’s works.

                The theme of big and long stories is not usually apparent. This series spans over 2000 pages and is so big that there could be an infinite amount of stories that could branch out of it. That means that if you ask for the theme of this book, I would ask, “What part of the story are you talking about?”. The variety in themes in this book really makes it a good work for young adults who might need to learn a lesson or two.

                All in all I would give this book a DO on the DOINK rating system. (DO means do read, OINK means it was not that good, DOINK means it was absolutely terrible and I almost ripped it in half except I’m not strong enough to rip a book that thick in half) On a serious note, this book was a legit good read.

Blog Post 9

          Something odd about the book Inheritance is the relationship between the witch Angela and the werecat Solembum. Only in the final book of the series did the author (Christopher Paolini) make the origin of Angela and her companion Solembum of any issue. This happened specifically when the Varden were capturing Dras-Leona and they were deadlocked with the High Priest. When she was about to finish him off, she whispered into his ear who she was and he reacted nothing short of pure terror. This gets both me and other readers really wondering where she came from because to make someone who is that powerful scream and "ship their pants" must be extremely powerful in and of themself. Something else that could have been an honorable mention was twice in the book there were instances in which Solembum or Angela would get hurt, and the other would be the one who would wince in pain. This would make me think that the author is trying to hint that they are connected in some way. Whether or not the author will try to make another book that contains an explanation about their origin within a book about the events after Inheritance remains a mystery. Paolini has thankfully hinted that he will make another book or spin off series that will tie up some of the many loose ends that he left. Him leaving those many loose ends, is not a major problem. The whole series was somewhere around 2500 pages long and no book was shorter than 500 pages, and in the final book, which was 800 pages on its own, he took 75+ pages making the conclusion chapters and still did not get it all.

Blog Post 8

   

       In my opinion, the general concept would be the only thing that has to be the same as the real-life event that is spotlighted in the book for the book to be considered non-fiction. This is because the message that the author is trying to give you from the experience is the one thing that gives the story personality. A consistent personality is how people catagorize stories and books they have read.

          Half truths are okay so long that the reader knows that the story is half true, or does not know and cannot know in any way, shape, or form. This is because, if the reader knows only half of the story might be true, they could be reading it with a hating demeanor. If they read it not knowing whether or not all events in the story are not true, they might be thinking something along the lines of, "Holy crap, this really happened???" while also considering the odds that an event of the sort would occur.

          No, I do not thing David Shields is right in this instance because if someone who is reading a book and does not know that it is the genre that they absolutely hate could end up wasting their time and money on a book that they would simply not enjoy. While some discrimination against books solely because of their genre (book racism) should not happen, preference is a right and responsibility to all readers and they should be assisted by genres in finding their perfect book.

Blog Post #7

http://youtu.be/etm0W92GGKk <---------- za trailer

Blog Post #6

               Yes, I believe readicide is a problem in EVERY school. This is because all schools and teachers ruin any book they have their class read and force everyone to do assignments that ask you to think about things in the book that you would normally not even consider and just pass on as if it was just a normal sentence. I do think that genre fiction is “worthy” because it is more likely to be interesting to most people in the class than some literary book that appeals to an eighty year-old librarian who is from the 1930’s and has a completely different taste than people of THIS generation have. So yes, I do believe that genre fiction is “worthy”, I also believe that it is even more worthy than some of these “classics” that people actually consider good, because they are not, they are long, boring, complicated books that suck the very life out of the reader.

                No school should teach literary fiction as a class book because, it combines an incredibly boring book with “activities” that are also incredibly boring and nearly purposeless themselves. Not only do you have to do these at your own pace, you have to do them for long, drawn out periods of time that could last even for months which is triple the amount of time that actually reading the book would take. This almost always leaves you absolutely despising the book.

                Most literary fiction books tend to be plotted into the past, and involve events that a good fraction of people already know how they end, not accomplishing the whole purpose of a story which is to either educate or to entertain, mostly the latter than the former.  Any chance anyone would get to switch out a literary fiction book for a genre fiction book should jump for it. To a point. I’m not asking for literary fiction books to go extinct, I’m asking that the truly good books get the credit that they deserve.