Final Blog Post of the Semester

          One thing that I have liked this semester has been our outside reading. I actually liked all three of my books and reading them made me want to read more literary fiction because before I really hadn’t read much of it. I did like how I had to think while reading them, but not so much that it took me forever to get through them. I am most excited for next semester’s outside reading because it will revolve around a topic I enjoy, but still be similar quality to this semester’s books. Another thing I liked about this semester has been some of the things we read in class. I liked starting off with the short stories. I thought a few of them were really interesting. I also liked Hamlet. I thought some parts were a little confusing, but I do feel like I understood it a lot better than when I last read it.

         Next semester, I hope to really improve my essay writing. I feel like that is one of the things I am not very strong with. I think a main part of that is I have some trouble relating things back to the work as a whole. I think I will need more practice with this next semester.

Hamlet

    I think that Hamlet started off acting insane, but slowly he has begun to lose his sanity. I think that his act of insanity might have started to make him actually believe that he has gone insane. He has had to act this way around almost everyone, so now he is starting to believe it himself. I do believe that he does still have some hold on his sanity though. An example of this would be when he has a brief conversation with Horatio before the play. When he is speaking to him it seems as though his insanity act was off and he was thinking clearly.
    I don't think Hamlet has done anything yet because I don't think he thinks that the timing has been right. When he had the opportunity to kill the king, I think that he thought it would have defeated the purpose. The king was praying and asking for forgiveness for killing his brother. Hamlet thought that since he was doing this, then he would go to heaven when he killed him. If he was supposed to get revenge, then sending him to heaven really wouldn't be total revenge. Instead, he wants to kill him when he is doing something sinful. So, when he dies he won't go to heaven and Hamlet will feel like he has actually gotten revenge.

Thesis Statements

    I think that why people are so afraid of writing thesis statements is because there is no set formula for writing them. For other classes that I have to write essays in, there tends to be more of a set structure. For example, last year I got pretty good at writing thesis statements for my history class because there was a basic, set formula for writing them. All I had to do was introduce the topic and identify my main points. For English essays, I think it is a little more difficult. You have to show more analysis which is something that I really have to work on. More specifically connecting things back to the work as a whole.
    Another reason why I think people have trouble with thesis statements is because we have had to kind of change our view of how we write them. When I was first taught to write a thesis statement, they weren't called thesis statements and all I did was basically outline my main points of the paper I was writing. I think when people are having trouble writing one, they tend to go back to that basic structure. I feel like I will be able to get better at writing thesis statements with more practice.

Digitalized Textbooks

      I like the idea of textbooks being digitalized. In the article, it mentions that in the long run having digitalized versions of books would be cheaper. So, all of the money not being spent on our textbooks could go to other things for our school. Another reason why I feel like this is a good thing is that it would be a lot easier to keep track of. If you have all of your textbooks on one e-reader or computer, then the only way to lose them would be to actually lose your e-reader. One negative would be the navigation of the textbooks. For the first part of the school year last year, I had an online textbook for a class. Overall, I didn’t like it because navigating it was really difficult and a lot more time consuming than navigating through an actual textbook.

                Thinking about digitalizing textbooks makes me think about how e-readers are starting to become more popular. I think there are a lot of great things about e-readers; buying books on them is a lot easier and cheaper than actually going out to a bookstore and getting them. I just worry that with them becoming more popular, actual books are going to become less popular. In the future if e-readers are the main thing people are reading from, what will happen with actual books? I prefer reading actual books to reading on an e-reader, but I just worry about the future of books.

Hills Like White Elephants

   The point of view in “Hills Like White Elephants” caused the story to become very confusing to me. It felt as if I were just listening into a part of someone else’s conversation. It provided no backstory or emotion from the character. The only time that I could tell any type of emotion was when the girl became angry with the man and told him to stop talking. This all caused me to not be able to relate to the characters and their emotions. Relating to characters is important to me because that causes me to become more attached to them and actually care about what happens to them. In this case, I felt no type of attachment to them when I first read this. Instead, all I felt was confusion.

    I was unsure about what the characters were discussing, when I first read the story. This was caused by the point of view. Now that I look back and know what they were discussing, I understand some of the clues the author put into their conversation. I had never read anything, other than plays, written with no type of insight to characters emotions, so when I first read this story I was confused. To be able to better understand stories with this type of point of view, I will have to read similar stories to make myself more familiar.

The Destructors

                When I read The Destructors, I had no idea how I felt about it. I knew I felt bad for Mr. Thomas because I didn’t really see him do anything wrong to the gang of boys, but I didn’t know how I felt about the other characters. At first I couldn’t believe that these children would do something like this; one of them was nine years old. Then in class, I was able to realize that they didn’t really know anything other than violence because of events like the London Blitz. This fact made me start to feel bad for them. I was raised to treat people the way I wanted them to treat me, but obviously these boys weren’t. They wanted to destroy this old man’s house for basically no reason at all. When we were in our groups we kind of discussed this matter a little more. We came to the conclusion that the boys weren’t evil. For example they tried to make Mr. Thomas comfortable when they locked him into the bathroom. They just weren’t completely innocent since they had been exposed to that much violence. An example of this was that they actually locked him into the bathroom just to finish destroying his house.

                One thing that I didn’t like at all was the end. I felt like I didn’t get a complete resolution like I would have preferred. I felt like the ending with the cab driver laughing was completely unpredictable, and when I read it I was confused. Overall, the story wasn’t bad and it did make me think about how I could possibly have been if I were in the boy’s situation.

The Most Dangerous Game v. The Child Tiger

   Out of the two stories we have read for class so far, my favorite was “The Most Dangerous Game”. I first read it freshmen year and I didn’t really like it, but after reading it a second time my opinion on it has really changed. Compared to “The Child Tiger”, I thought it was really interesting the entire time. In my opinion, it had a really good balance of dialogue and other details. I really like dialogue in a story, so that was one reason why I didn’t like “The Child Tiger” as much. I liked the second half of “The Child Tiger” much more than I did the first half. I thought the first half was paced a bit slower and I could predict something bad was going to happen, but in the second half the pacing sped up and it really drew me in. Another reason why I liked “The Most Dangerous Game” more was because of the main character. I liked Rainsford a lot more than I liked the main character in “The Child Tiger”. I was constantly rooting for him, but I didn’t feel that connection in the other story. Overall, I thought both stories were good, but I preferred “The Most Dangerous Game” because of its pacing and characters.

Summer Reading

   One book I read this for summer reading was Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Overall, I thought it was an okay book. There were things that I liked, but there were many things that I did not like. One thing that I liked was the main character, Blue. I thought she was very interesting and I always found myself rooting for her. One thing I didn’t like were the other characters; Blue was the only one I actually liked. The bluebloods were all very unlikable. After Hannah’s death they all turned against Blue for no reason at all. I especially didn’t like Jade. She told Blue that she didn’t like Hannah and the other bluebloods. After Hannah’s death, she told Blue the exact opposite; she loved Hannah and didn’t like Blue. Another character I disliked was Blue’s father, Gareth. Throughout the entire book, he gave me a bad impression. Then, at the end I hated what he did to Blue. Another thing I didn’t like about the book was how it was written. I didn’t like the author’s use of parenthesis. I felt that it was overdone and much of the information was useless to the plot. If she wrote another book, I’m not sure if I would read it due to how she wrote this one. Overall, the book wasn’t bad. It had a good plot and a character that I really liked, but it also had a few things that I wasn’t a fan of.