Exercise 3

Reviews I read: Spiderman, Black Boy White School, Chomp

Requirements:
1) broad opening paragraph about the genre of the work
2) what works well or not well about the book - cite specific examples and why they do what they do
3) how this book compares to any sequels or prequels
4) general summary of the book
5) evaluate and comment on any themes/motifs in the book

Reading post 3/26/2012

Well here starts a new quarter and my new goals as well. I completed my first goal this week as I definitely enjoyed reading to my chinchilla. I didn't really think she was listening though. I'm reading the hunger games right now and she must be a team peeta because every time I said his name she would crawl all over the book. I don't know yet because i still have quite a bit to read, but i am definitely engaged by this book. Even though it started out a little slow, it is starting to pick up as the action increases.  I'm definitely procrastinating on goal number 2 though.

Note 1

Riding the "A" - May Swenson

In "Riding the 'A'," May Swenson depicts the ordinary bleakness of a subway train in a city; however, the common mechanics of the subway gliding along the rails arrouses the writer as if she was frolicking through a flowery meadow. In the openning lines of the poem, May Swenson depicts the dull pessimism of the train amplified by her "gray raincoat," and also noting that "the hollow of the car is gray." The gloomy dreariness of May Swenson's diction exudes a sense of hopeless desolation as if the world suddenly turned black and white. However, the middle of the poem brings a volte-face. At this point, Swenson switches from the dull, literal language into a flowery poetic verse. The steel frame of the train, usually an ordinary and orthodox object, "feels like the newest of knives slicing along a long black crusty loaf from West 4th to 168th." The easy-going subway glissades across the rails as if it were to "make love in a glide of slickness and friction." The embellished figurative language that Swenson uses depicts a contrasting image to the routine and vapid subway car. This complete divergence creates a notion that a simple ride on the train can change a dejected man into euphoric prince as the car floats across the abyss once known as the dull, gray rails.

Exercise 2

On the Effect of Heavier Things - good post

Weaknesses:
(4) The description of the neutral town and it's similar inhabitants is enough to leave a optimistic reader pessimistic.
Only a left sided claim - In this excerpt from Stardust, Neil Gaiman details the town of Wall in a matter of fact, gruff manner.  
(7) - Even as the the main character, Roberta, is grounded till September 8, 1972, she writes a "cruddy book of her cruddy life."

Hai.

The Mud Below - Exercise 1

The gentle formality and mellifluous flow of the straight-forward diction in Annie Proulx's The Mud Below exudes a Rodeo-like sensation underscoring the feeling of being a real cowboy. The bodies of the cowboys were “gleaming with sweat.” The riders sat confidently on their bulls, with their “butts cocked to one side.” The raw intensity of the description of the rodeo creates a foreboding chaos as bulls are about to be released.    The fanatical fervidness continues through the paragraph as the time came closer, "bringing the adrenaline roses up on his cheeks." The vibrant flow of blood throughout the rider, as if he was about to bungee jump off of the empire state building, furthers the sharp ferocity of the rodeo. 

Reading Goals

My reading goals for this quarter:
1) read to my chinchilla 3 times a week
2) read two non fiction books and one historical fiction book
3) read two books over spring break

Anthology Theme

For my project, I will be compiling literature dealing with life in the city, whether it be good or bad.

Possible poems:
1. Paradise: Prison by Zach Howard
2 Heart of Texas by Nighttime Daydreamer

Dart League King

The Dart League King, by Keith Lee Morris, follows team members of a small town dart league on the night of the league championship. 

The story is told in third person, alternating points of view between five different characters: Russell Harmon, the self-proclaimed dart league king and founder of the dart league in Garnet Lake, Idaho; Tristan Mackey, Russell’s teammate; Vince Thompson, Russell’s dealer and sometimes friend; Kelly Ashton, Russell’s ex-girlfriend; and Brice Habersham, Russell’s dart-league nemesis and the man Russell must beat to keep his title. Each of these people has a secret; some secrets are worse, in a larger-than-life sense, than others. Morris does a terrific job of giving each of these characters a voice, and making them surprising in a way that makes the story both refreshing and troubling.

I expected a small, quirky story about a small-team dart league, but there are bigger things at stake. I didn’t expect suspense, but several of these people’s lives literally hang in the balance through the course of the story, and not everyone will have a happy ending. In a lot of ways, this is a story about luck, both good and bad, and about how the smallest decisions or errors in judgment can change the course of fate forever. That’s what good literature is all about in the end, I believe, and Morris does a fine job of showing the reader the significance of each of these people, and how nothing is too small in the big picture to make us wonder out loud about the role of fate in our lives, about how we become who we are, about the thread by which we all may (or may not) be hanging.

I wish I could tell you more, but there are so many plot elements, large and small, that I wouldn’t want to give away, because really: everything means something in this book. I don’t think Morris wasted a word. I highly recommend it.

Stormbreaker

I just kinda stumbled upon this book at my house and ended up reading the whole thing this week and it was really good. 


A fourteen-year-old boy, Alex Rider, learns of the death of his uncle and adopted parent, Ian Rider, in a deadly car crash because he didn't wear a seatbelt. Alex is suspicious (because in spite of what the police told him after the crash, Ian Rider always wore his seatbelt), and decides to investigate. He finds that Ian Rider did not die in a car crash, and after events, reaches the head-quarters, where he discovers that his uncle was, in fact, a spy who had been killed before completing his mission. He had actually been training Alex (who already speaks German, Spanish, French, English, Japanese, and is a black-belt in karate) for a career in MI6.

Alan Blunt and his second-in-command, Mrs Jones, of MI6, ask Alex to pick up his uncle's assignment, investigating Herod Sayle, a Lebanese billionaire (Egyptian in the American version) who is giving free "Stormbreaker" computers to every school in Britain. This seems very suspicious, as the Stormbreakers must have cost a fortune. As an undercover agent, and equipped with an abundant amount of gadgets, Alex travels to Sayle's home in Cornwall, and, following the path drawn by his uncle, discovers a large computer manufacturing facility, where the Stormbreaker computers are being tainted with smallpox virus. The Prime Minister is going to release the virus, to which school children will be exposed. This is because the Prime-Minister bullied Sayle going back to school-days. Before he can communicate with MI6, Alex is caught. Sayle leaves Alex to die in a tank with a Portuguese Man o' War and heads off to the Science Museum in London, where the Prime Minister is to activate the Stormbreakers, unwittingly releasing the deadly virus.

Alex eludes Sayle's compound, parachutes out of a hijacked airplane, and smashes through the roof of the Science Museum. With a stolen gun, he fires eight bullets at the Stormbreakers and Sayle, hitting the Prime Minister in the hand and destroying the trigger that would have released the smallpox. After a debriefing by MI6, Alex gets into a taxi, intending to head home. The driver is Sayle, who had survived the attack and fled. He pushes Alex to the top of a building, intending to shoot him; Sayle, however, is himself shot from a helicopter by Yassen Gregorovich, a mysterious assassin who was earlier contracted to kill Ian Rider. Alex tells Yassen he will one day kill him, but Yassen shrugs the comment aside, telling him to go back to his normal life and to forget about being a spy.