FINALLY!!! :D

Yes the emoticon is extremely necessary! This is my last currently post that I will ever make for this class. I have yet to decide if I will continue my blog after this class and have spent a long time thinking about it. When I first started this class I WAS NOT a committed reader. I only read my school books half the time and I never read for leisure. I would only read when it was required and I would only read in places that were noisy so I never got into the works whatsoever. During this semester I did all sorts of reading from Tina Fey’s Bossypants to Stephen King’s The Gunslinger. It was quite to my surprise that any book I picked up I enjoyed for, and for the most part it was extremely easy to fill my weekly quota. In a few cases I finished my reading for a whole week in one sitting. I actually read an entire book in one setting this semester which is something that I have never done in my entire life (not counting story books). Most of the time I found myself reading whenever I got a break from other homework, practice, and work. I discovered that while I was reading I did not have the urge to check facebook or send a few text messages. I would be so into my reading that sometimes I would look at the clock and notice that hours had pasts that just felt like minutes. I talked to my parents about my most recent readings be Stephen King, because they were interested in reading it too, which I think is pretty cool.

The Gunslinger takes the Final Bow :D

Well this is officially my last blog posts. I feel like I never have any time to blog, but when I find the time its really fun! I am somewhat upset that after this it will be over. Right now I am in the process of reading The Gunslinger by Stephen King. I ended up starting this series by randomly picking up the second book The Drawing of the Three, which is a very creepy but awesome book. I liked it so much that I have decided that I am going to read the whole series, and I put the next few books on my Christmas List! I sure hope Santa delivers! While reading the first book I learned more about the characters in the second book, especially the gunslinger. (No kidding right?) I also learned about some of the characters that came up in the second book that I had no clue who they were and what there part played. So through all of this jumble I have learned that you should always read a series in order otherwise you don't get the whole story. Blogger Dalton over and out!

Currently from 11/4/11

*Mr. Hill I realized that my currently post did not save from last week so this is it*

Sentences of the Week:

1. "Dizzying constellations, cold fire in every primary hue."
- The Gunslinger, Stephen King

2. "Lend me your wings, bird. I'll spread them and fly on the thermals."
- The Gunslinger, Stephen King

3. "It had been four days, and they had gone by in a blinking haze. He ate. He slept. He had sex with Allie."
- The Gunslinger, Stephen King

This week was mostly about nice dreamy pictures. I especially like the first one because I can imagine a star in each of the primary colors and its just beautiful.

Close Reading Bingo

1. "This lower diction gives the reader the idea that the author is trying to reach out to the everyday person."
From Chillin In The Nyle. He uses "the reader" and breaks rule number four.

2. "Comparing the black handrails, "like the radians of black luster," shows the way he is able to control his writing."
From Back of the Napkin blog. He uses the word "shows" and breaks rule number 6.

3. "Baker describes the escalators themselves that rise to his office, “They were the free-standing kind: a pair of integral sins swooping upward between the two floors they served without struts or piers to bear any intermediate weight.” 
From The Lost Message of Words He uses a long quotation and breaks rule number two.

4. "It also seems manipulating and compulsive like there is a hidden problem within the character that is expressed through sharp abrasive language."
From Apples to Apples He switches to past tense and breaks rule number seven.

Best Example
From InsideOut

The highly descriptive and scholarly diction, the almost philosophical and appreciative tone inserted into Nicholson Baker's connotation, and the harmonious flow ringing throughout the first page of his novel, instill dreamy, practically romantic admiration for the mezzanine Baker speaks of, as this first page is read. Define Mezzanine: [mez-uh-neen, mez-uh-neen] the lowest balcony or forward part of such a balcony in a theater, or in this case, an office building (perhaps, I have not read this book). Baker elaborates on the mezzanine, the centerpiece of his novel, with a subtle passion, as he begins his journey to his office. He observes a "needly area of shine . . . [fall] against their brushed-steel side-panels" and the "long gloss highlights" waver on the black rubber handrails-- and he is amazed.  He adores these simple flecks of beauty that he comes across in his office building (?) and he watches them with fanciful amusement, absorbing each simple elegance with the a happy heart.

Currently

This week I read 102 pages of Stephen King's The Drawing of the Three.

Style Mapping Top 3 Winners:

1. "It pays no heed to the way that words sound together and has extraordinarily little figurative language. There was not a single word I had to look up or ask about, not even the Spanish parts and I took French."

From Less Than Three. This is the winner I think she uses great wit when she talks about how unfigurative the language is

2. "The language used in Tina Fey's Bossy pants on page 37, was very juvinalian. It was vulgar, common and blunt."

From That Peruvian Chick. I can relate to this because I have read the book also and it is pretty hilarious

3. "Suzzane Collins wrote The Hunger Games. In this book she is highly straightforward with her words. She does not beat around the bush. She is scholarly , archaic and sometimes senuous with her work."

From Skittles Train. I just like that she said beat around the bush.

Style Mapping

In the excerpt from Stardust the words contains a very straight-forward description of a town named Wall that has a very primitive feel with huts instead of houses and tracks instead of roads. The language is very common and familiar with words like building, tree, and house. The diction is neither very musical nor very harsh. It is somewhere in the middle. Contrasting from this the excerpt from Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian the diction is very high and I don't think I know what all the words mean such as swale and sprent. The words flow sort of like it’s a poem but the words are very harsh such as gnashing, thunderclap and bitter. The excerpt from Stephen King's The Drawing of the Three uses very low and vulgar words to describe a man’s despicable predicament. The words are very picturesque I can even imagine what King describes. The excerpt uses both harsh and musical words for a nice mix that makes it flow.

Quarterly

So far this semester I have read a total of about 4 books which i probably the most I have read in a long time! I have found a new author that I really enjoy and I think next semester I am going to challenge myself to complete his series, The Dark Tower. I started on the second book so I still need to go back and read the first one before I move on to the rest. I haven't had a lot of time to read recently so I have only been trying to read minimums so I am going to try and read extra next semester.

Absolute Madness

In my book The Drawing of the Three, Stephen King there are like five different story plots going on at the same time and it is really confusing. Eddie is trying to find drugs while the “Lady of Shadows” is being controlled by the gunslinger. Eddie wants to kill him cause he won’t let him buy drugs, and some random new character wants to become a doctor but he keeps having weird dreams about it so he gets discouraged. I am so confused, but I don’t want to put the book down because it is really interesting to me. This is sort of like my life right now. This week is choreography week for show choir and the week of regionals for marching band so I am balancing two very complex things with my homework and my job and it is very depleting. I haven’t really had a lot of time for blogs because of all this stuff!

Currently.

I am reading The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King.

Pages This week: 160

The Drawing of the Three

This past week I started reading the drawing of the three by Stephen king. It is about a man, the gunslinger, who finds himself in a rather odd situation where he is able to see into a persons mind through a doorway. This ability makes me think of my own life in a way because sometimes I feel like I'm looking into my own life from the outside. I think this feeling is good though because I am able to just take a chill pill and step back and take a look at the bigger picture and analyze what I'm doing right and what I could be doing better at.

Sentences of the Month

1. "Gay people don't actually try to convert people. That's Jehovah's Witnesses you're thinking of." Bossypants, Tina Fey
2."When I arrived in jPod the next morning, I found that my keypad's keys had been rearranged in the following configuration:

1234D67890

QWFRTYUIP

A5SHOLEKJG

ZXCVBNM

 

3. "I shot my own future. In the stomach."

I hate jehovahs witnesses ive done that to someones keyboard and I shot my future in the stomach (not really)

Claims of the Day!

1. In Fighting Gravity’s final Performance on America’s Got Talent, the voiceless and light dancers use graceful, upbeat, and a unique technique that expresses a new and an explosive futuristic type of dance.

2. Homesteads winter guard performance, Breakbeats Pulse of the Underground, uses bright energetic performance, aggressive clean movement, intensive strong upbeat dance, and confident clean posture to woo the audience watching.

3.

Close Reading of Team iLuminate (Dance)

http://www.nbc.com/americas-got-talent/video/team_iluminate_performs/1344780

Observe:

Movement:
 -Legs:  jerky, elegant
 -Arms: distinct

Choreography: strange and unusual, but still breath-taking

Use of Space: rapidly changing, clever, roaming

Technique: clean, precise, alert

 CLAIM: Team iLuminate’s performance on NBC’s Americas Got Talent the groups [jerky but elegant movements, strange and breath-taking choreography, and rapid roaming use of space]

Infer:

Aggressive

Explosive

Forceful

Romantic

Ghoulish

Intense

CLAIM: express [a sense of aggressive romance and intense ghoulishness.]

Currently

Pages this week: 150
Pages this semester: 598

Sentences of the Week:

"It's weird, but every time I visit the Drudge Report website, I'm the fifty-millionth person to visit it, so there must be a software error on their part, because how could they possibly have more than one fifty-millionth visitor?"

- JPod, Douglas Coupland

"Kill the wabbit."

-JPod, Douglas Coupland

"When I arrived in jPod the next morning, I found that my keypad's keys had been rearranged in the following configuration:

1234D67890

QWFRTYUIP

A5SHOLEKJG

ZXCVBNM

- JPod, Douglass Coupland

This book is hilarious I think I laughed out loud in class durring SSR time at all of these. The first one mostly because this is interjected randomly in the middle of a story and this has happened to me before too!

Saturday Night Live

Today in Tina Fey’s Bossypants I learned a few interesting facts about the writers at Saturday Night Live. Apparently a few of the guy writers don’t have time to walk to the restroom which Fey makes a joke that the bathroom is about as far away as you are from this book, which I think is pretty funny. Instead of using the restroom they just pee in cups and leave them sitting around there office. Tina says she found one on the bookcase of her boss’s office when she was pulling out an old script for him to look at then promptly collected all the cups and threw them away. I think that kind of habit is disgusting! Especially leaving multiple cups sit around those fumes get in the air and could probably make you very very sick! In the book it says that Tina once saw a whole JAR of pee on one of the sets with the lid sealed and everything. If I walked onto a set and saw that I would probably lose my breakfast, and I don’t even eat breakfast that’s how gross it is! I’m upset that im almost finished with this book because it has been sooo funny!

Animal Farm

This weekend I read all of Animal Farm in one day! This is the first time I have ever completed a whole chapter book in one day, I believe. The book is basically a satire of the Russian Revolution. The animals of Manor Farm take over and start their own, and gradually things get twisted and corrupted until they are back where they started in square one. The book was really interesting I thought. Every time I tried to set it down I found myself wanting to find out what happened next because it seemed like every other page there was a huge plot change. This book really makes me think what would have happened to America if this is what actually happened. Everything would be so much different I don’t even know if I would’ve been born! It’s very scary to think what if I never existed. Over and out.

Currently

Books This Week: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, Charles Yu.
Pages This Week: 100

Pages This Semester: 233

Sentences of the Week:

All quotes are from How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, Charles Yu;

1. "It's your story, numbnuts."

2. "She is The Woman My Mother Should Have Been."

3. "I shot my own future. In the stomach."

This week most of what I read included lots of paradoxes so I was very confused most of the time. I find it interesting that in this book he talks to himself in the future, which is what the first sentence is. That is what I think makes this book so interesting.

Today in How to Live in a Science Fictional Universe I read about New Angeles/ Lost Tokyo -2, which is the capital city of the universe. The book talks about how it is like New York and Los Angeles combined including everything in between and also half of Tokyo. This reminded me of a book series I read when I was younger called Pendragon by D.J. Machale. It is about a boy time traveler that travels to different worlds and saves them from the evil doer. Is doer even a word? I’m not really sure but if it isn’t now it is. So in Pendragon he visits all these different places and the description from my book just really brought back memories of it so I decided to pick up one of the books and read out of it and they are surprisingly similar! In Tina Fey I read about her tips to stay beautiful which I found out aren’t really tips but more like jokes. The jokes reminded me of some of the things me mom says which she means for a good cause but end up just being a really funny joke that makes everyone laugh!

Friday!

Fridays are my favorite days especially this friday because it was the first home football game! I love football games because I am in the band and I love performing! And the game was great good job Homestad Football Team! WOO! I took the personality test and it says I am an extravert, which I partially agree with. I think that I can be an introvert sometimes and an extrovert at other times, but it just depends.

Currently

Bossypants, Tina Fey
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

Pages This Week: 133
Pages This Semester: 133

Sentences of the Week:

1. "Gay people don't actually try to convert people. That's Jehovah's Witnesses you're thinking of." Bossypants, Tina Fey

2. "I have a thing for my operating system." How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, Charles Yu

3. "Everyone is jittery, and when the pilot makes the unfortunate choice of testing the PA system by saying, 'Bravo, bravo,' you can almost hear people's b-holes tighten." Bossypants, Tina Fey

This week for me was all about laughs. I hate Jehovah's Witnesses that come to my house and try to get me to be a part of their crazy little world where God chooses who goes to heaven and only so many people can make. It makes me so angry because it goes against everything that I believe in as a Christian, so that really made me laugh.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, Charles Yu

For my next book I chose Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. It is a novel about a guy who spends his life in TM-31 Recreational Time Travel Device. He fixes time machines. The timeline of the book is very confusing because he isn’t really inside of time, he is outside of it. His father invented the time machine but nobody knows where he is. The main character reminds me of myself because he spends most of his time at a computer, although his computer is probably a lot more complex than mine, a computer is a computer.

His computer has an AI system built into it and the AI is a woman. I find this amusing because he talks about her like she is real and sometimes I mistake her for a real person. There is a section where he talks about his whole life is full of boxes. This made me think of my life and how I put everything into boxes of importance in my head. It also made me think of band because we make boxes in marching band so often. So far I am enjoying the book and I hope that doesn’t change.

Getting a Job

Today I read about Tina’s experience of getting a job which brought back some not so fond memories of mine. In the book she explains in detail four of her job interview. I just got my first job in March as a crew member at McDonalds, but I did not come across this job easily at all. I started look for a job when I was about  sixteen I remember my dad sitting me down and giving me that talk about growing up… boring. And I spent my Saturdays for about five weeks just apply for a job anywhere that would allow me. I probably filled out close to fifty applications! And I didn’t receive one phone call back. I share this frustration with Tina during this time in her life. And just like me when she finally got the job she was super excited! I am pretty sure I only have my job right now because of my friend Sarah Ridenour who introduced me to the manager. But after hiring me it took them two weeks to schedule my training and I went in three times when they told me to go in but nobody was there who could train me. Long story short, fast food chains aren’t very responsible.

Bossypants, Tina Fey.

For my first book I chose to read Tina Fey’s Bossypants. It is a story about her life as a female comedian in a male dominated world, and it is very humorous. When I first started reading I was very reluctant because I hadn’t read on my own for a long time and to say I wasn’t looking forward to it would be an understatement. But my mood changed after the first paragraph because it was hilarious! So every time I have time I pick up the book. I can’t keep my hands off it!

Today I read about Tina’s father Don. Don reminds me of my father a lot. First of all their names start with the same letter. And they both have very stern faces. In the book Tina says that her dad is “never late for anything,” my dad is the same way. Sometimes we will arrive places fifteen to twenty minutes earlier than we are supposed to and I always get frustrated. He could scare anyone, because he is so tall. Nobody messes with him. His facial expressions are just so frightening.

So far the book has been great and I cannot wait to find out more about Tina’s life, mostly because it is hilarious!

First Blog EVER!

So I'm pretty new to blogging considering ive NEVER done it before. Idk I think that makes me pretty new. You can use your own judgement. Right now I am reading Tina Fey's Bossypants and so far it is pretty freaking hilarious definitely a must read!