10/30/08 a Future with a question mark

As I began to read the opening pages of Neuromancer, it slightly reminded me of the great opener of Kindred. In fact while reading this book I find myself constantly comparing it to Kindred. So far I have found it extremely difficult to read Neuromancer. I love sci-fi and I loved the matrix trilogy, but for some reason I do not find the book as interesting as I would have hoped for. I do like some parts of the plot, or the parts that make sense to me, like the betrayl of friendship that goes on and the technolgy that they use in the "future" or "matrix". I believe that I may have been expecting to much from this novel, even though I have only finshed a quarter of the book, I do not know if the story has more twists and turns left in it, hopefully. While reading the book, I found several references to the matrix, i originally thought this book might have been published sometime after the release of the first movie, but I was shocked to learn that the book was first published in 1984. I believe the reason that I could not connect with the book is because of the mysterious background of the setting, and where that setting could possibly be. I compare it to "finding your footing" you can not find your footing if you do not know where you are.

10/23/08 Kindred Round 2

For the first time in my life I have finished a book that made "think outside the box" and consider anything a possibility. As odd as it sounds and as odd it is for you to read this, I felt somewhat of a connection between Dana and myself. I could literally put myself in her shoes during each and every moment in the story. There were of course times at which I wish she would have been more aggressive, mainly because that's what I would have done if I were in her shoes. To be honest, before I read this novel I thought that my knowledge of slavery and how slaves were treated was accurate, when I remember my high school history classes I remember vivid pictures of slaves that were beaten and whipped but soon after those classes ended I forgot about the hardship that these people were forced to endure, some for most of there lives. Kindred made me wonder about my own family history, it made me wonder how many times my great great grandfather was beaten and whipped for having a baby with a white female. Throughout my time reading Kindred I found myself connecting ties within my own life to that of Dana's. In the end I give my credit to Octavia Butler, for providing me and others in the class with a strong picture, and an even stronger story that I am sure none of us will ever forget.

10/16/08 Kindred

I have to say that the newest novel that I am reading titled Kindred is by far the best book that I have ever read. That may not mean a lot to you but for me this is a big deal. I love Kindred, I love the sci-fi aspect of it and I love the descriptions that the narrator provides us with. From every detailed beating to how Dana "teleports" into the past, are all well thought out. I love the conflicts and the struggles that Dana, Rufus and Kevin all endure during the story. For me the book reminds me of a movie that I could watch all day. The book is written in a more personal textual style, Octavia Butler writes in a complex yet simple style that makes reading the novel very easy and smooth, like drinking a Pina colada on a hot summer day, its a thirst quencher for entertainment. I cannot wait to finish the story. I can honestly say that I have never connected with a book in this way, when I read the text I actually get lost in the words and my imagination kicks in and I picture everything thats happening almost like its a TV series that's unfolding before my eyes. I believe that I am drawn in because of the harsh theme, which is basically the reality of slavery in the past and this story has brought forth details of the time period in the past that I had not known.

Past, Present and the Future

Since the beginning of time or first grade for me, I have never found myself to be a great writer or even a decent writer and I believe that is because the points that I try to get across are sometimes misinterpreted into being something else. I can remember as far back as the first grade when our entire class took a trip down to the school library and we were asked to all pick out your favorite reading material. Some students in the class chose “Where’s Waldo” while most other chose the book and series titled “Clifford the big red dog”. I choose to pick up the “ESPN” magazine and the only reason why I choose it was because I was interested in the mini player cards that came with the magazine. Every once in a while I would read some of the articles if they pertained to my favorite player, but I believe that this set the path for me and the choices that I would make in the future regarding the subject of English and eventually would come into play when it involved my writing skills.
After my slight interest in reading magazines while younger, my interests for magazines doubled when I entered high school. During high school I took a total of 4 very different English classes, two of which were with the same teacher, this same teacher is the only person to ever tell me that I have the potential to become whatever kind of writer I want to become. My teacher saw something in my early screenplays that seemed to amaze him and in turn he pushed me to become better and better. For many people reading and writing is extremely difficult to do. I am no different than anyone else, I believe that with the help of my teacher he pushed me in the right direction and showed me an entirely new doorway which I had the choice to step through it or not. My biggest fault is the fact that I try to take the first shortcut that I can find just to finish first; I will be the first to admit that I am lazy to a certain degree. Randy Moss the wide reciever from the New England Patriots had one of my favorite quotes of all time, Randy said “I play and I block when I want to” that is basically how I feel when it comes to writing. Before I took this class, I only read magazines and the magazines that I did read were Money, Hot Rod Magazine and Popular Science. This put a temporary damper on my writing skills and did not help increase my reading skills. Before this course I was in the Text-self stage. For most sentences in all of my papers I used the word “I”. That was one of my biggest problems when writing papers in high school.
Now at the moment I believe that my writing skills are at their highest point that they have ever been at. With all of the English classes that I have taken, none have ever required as much reading and writing as English 333 has. I know that my writing still needs a lot of improvements but this class is teaching me a lot about myself as a writer and I find it interesting how my procrastinating and basically laziness effects my writing, examples can be found in several blog posts most notably in the blog post for 9/11 which was a very short blog regarding Pulp Fiction. In the post I did a horrible job describing what was going on in the story and I did not follow the guidelines for our blogs. I know that I should be in the stage of Text-Other Texts but I do not believe that I am 100% there just yet. The word “I” still makes a strong appearance in my current work and shows up in almost every sentence in this blog.
When it comes to answering common questions that arise in the world, I believe that I am improving on my writing skills but I do plan on putting forth as much effort and dedication as possible. I do want to be at the stage of Text-World by the end of the semester. I believe that I will be able to decipher a story to the best of my ability and apply what I have learned and plan to learn to better suit myself for my future and to provide something interesting to read. If you read the very first blog post that I have written for the course, the comments are what I base my future off of. I believe that is an example for Text-World.

10-2-08 Maus

This week I have finished the novel Maus by Art Spiegelman. Before I even read the first page I questioned what exactly could this book be about. The first thing that stood out to me was the Nazi symbol on the top of the book that is engulfed by a mouse. After reading the story I quickly realized how awful and how dramatic the Holocaust truley was. I never knew all of the details that came along with the story of the Holocaust and how something of this magnitutde could have been accepted, it's borderline barbaric. I found most of the pictures in the book to be very inlightning, but I have to mention the hangings on pg 83 because even tho you see mice being hanged, the reader can still picture an actual human being put into that same position and I myself can see how someone could see that image replayed into their head over and over. In the end I am glad that I read the book and understood what was going on in the dialouge and the backstory. I found the end of the book ironic because Vladek burns his sons mother's diaries and his son called him a murderer, in a sense Vladek did what the Germans did to the jews.