Week 6: Voice of our Generation

Our generation has seen changes that can't even be imagined by our parents or grandparents. The developments in technology have advanced so rapidly even our generation has trouble keeping up with the change with new products seemingly coming out weekly.

We are the generation that shifted into this new age where computers have replaced books and newspapers, where communication between countries can travel instantly, where its no longer hard to find out what's going on in other parts of the world. We are a generation focused on technology and social media. The Internet provides us with endless amounts of entertainment and information. With this, we grow up multitasking and also growing bored easily. Another curse of our generation is we have been desensitized from all the things we see in society or even on television. Growing up watching reruns of law and order or CSI can do that to a child’s mind. And also cause nightmares.

One of the biggest influences on our generation continues to be a big part of many lives. Harry Potter has crossed generations with its books, films, and other media but it's very close to our generation because we are the first ones who grew up with it. We have been there every step of the way, the books continued to come out as we grew up with the characters. We grew as they did. They are the ones who lead us into adulthood.

To be honest, I grew up with fantasy books focusing in other world rather than our own because I wanted to escape into them. I watched cartoons based on superheroes and magic. The TV shows that were realistic tended to be crime shows where they almost always caught the bad guy. I want to say that reflects a part of our generation that dreams and imagine of impossible things and gains these perspectives through the variety of different mediums at our grasps. But I know everyone doesn’t share this view. As said previously, with all the information at our fingertips its hard to narrow the list down to anything.

Week 5: The experience reading 'Girl in Landscape'

 Whether I liked the book 'Girl in Landscape' by Jonathan Lethem is irrelevant but I will say I did not with the writing being dull to read for the most part.

There, that's all that needed to be said on my opinion.

Getting to my experience on the book is a bit more hit and miss. I couldn't read the book in one sitting as I found myself reading pages over again to see what I might have skimmed over the first time. As a relatively fast reader I'm guilty of reading probably at minimum every other word in a story often skipping sentences in my haste. In this story its impossible to do so because skipping a sentence makes the next feel odd to read. It doesn't flow with the book like it should result in me having to reread it all over again, this time slower. It's an exhausting process and I just couldn't urge myself to finish the book in one go.

It was probably this constant need to repeatedly go to the library to pick up the book again that made the already slow pace drag out longer. The seemingly careless, throwaway dialogue at the beginning doesn't help as it provided the backgrounds of the characters and the world at a tooth pulling pace. To be honest when I read the back cover, knowing full well at the end the mother was going to die, I was expecting it to be much sooner. Instead it takes two chapters. Two very long chapters.

The rest of the book goes about along the same pace. There are parts where I'm generally interested in what’s going on Pella being sensibly girl at only 13. And then there are times where she seems almost freakishly mature. It’s rather off-putting how easily she can handle things becoming another thing I have to read back a few paragraphs just to make sure I read her actions right and that’s what she was really doing.

Nothing really caught my attention besides the idea of accumulation they talk about through out the book. The need to change to adapt to the environment is a very weird then but in the book it feels like something more. It was one of the few things that kept me going thought the book to see how this 13 year old and the people around her react to this new place and people.