Week 11 prompt response: I have to admit I'm a little against eBooks and audiobooks, but only for myself! I don't find them appealing but if that is how someone else chooses to take in their books, that's fine by me. At least they're reading in some way. The reason I prefer paper books is because of the appeal factors: I don't have to stare at a screen, I can read at my own pace, I can dog-ear pages, I can mark passages. I also prefer the aesthetic appeal of paper books. I like looking at different editions and covers. I like discovering the different layouts and the choices made when publishing. If people don't mind losing the appeal factors of tactile books, then it's okay if they read eBooks or listen to audio books. Being able to change the font or color of the text seems to detract from the author's vision. They worked hard (probably in conjunction with their publisher) to lay out the book in a certain way so that a certain meaning or feeling is...
Posts
Historical Fiction Annotation: Author: Geraldine Brooks Title: March Genre: Historical fiction Publication date: 2005 Number of pages: 280 Geographical setting: Southern United States and Massachusetts Time period: During the civil war 1860s with flashback to earlier times (1840s or so) Plot summary: This book is sort of an alternative take on Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. It follows the father of the March family when he went to help with the war effort by serving as chaplain to the troops. The book opens on the Battle of Ball's Bluff and from there it follows Mr. March around the southern U.S. After the battle, March is assigned to a plantation owned by Ethan Canning who is harvesting cotton with newly freed slaves who work for wages. March is there to help Canning but ends up helping in other ways by teaching the freed people their "letters" and other subjects like geography which they were previously forbidden to learn...
Book Club Experience: For my book club experience, I attended a club meeting at the library where I work. It is a club that meets regularly (once a month) to discuss a predetermined book. One of my coworkers from the reference department (I’m in circulation) organizes the club meetings and chooses the book. Extra copies of the book are obtained through interlibrary loan so that club participants do not need to purchase the book, which is one great thing about having the club meet at the library. I did tell the club members that I was observing their meeting for a class assignment just so that everyone knew why I was there and why I was not actively participating. Some of the members recognized me from the library anyway, so I felt it was easier to tell them. The book they were discussing was Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World by Matthew Goodman. It is a nonfiction book about the two Victorian era female journalists ...
Special Topics Paper Summary: For my special topics paper, I decided to focus on the horror genre. I wanted to highlight what was important about the genre as well as what makes horror its own genre separate from others. In the first part of my paper, I talk about the appeal and the characteristics of horror like the setting (classic settings like haunted houses or dark woods) the pacing (usually quick with abrupt turns), the characters (loners, evil people, normal people in crazy situations), the style (how authors will use different fonts and book setups to further immerse readers), and story lines (horror usually follows the evil on the surface but also the deeper questions about human nature tackled within horror). The second part of my paper focuses on the history of horror from the early tracings of the genre (early legends and classic works like Beowulf ) to the modern day zombie and post-apocalyptical aspects. I talk about classic authors like Mary Shelley and Edgar Allen P...