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.

Week 3: The Difference Between Words and Pictures

What do pictures add to a text?

What does text lose when there are gone?

There are pros and cons to having stories illustrated into comics. A story composed of just words is no less interesting than one acomanyed by pictures. With just words, the reader has to use their imagination to fill in the gaps the author leaves out, details that normally don't matter so much typically about the characters apperence or small details in the setting. Other details are flushed out such as backgrounds and plot while these more visual descriptions are expected to be flushed out with the readers thoughts and imagination.

Comics almost do the complete opposite. They strip a story down to the barest of words, only for dialogue and brief moments of visual information. The rest is the man words transformeded into pictures replacing sentences with panels of the comic.

Reading Tintin it was interesting to see how easily it could be transformed into a written novel in some ways and in others would fail miserably. The characterization we as readers get as soon as we see TIntin is on you might not realize at first. Tintin is the most normal looking of the many cast members with no real exagerations made to his character. At the same time how would you describe his apperence in words? A young man with strawberry blond hair and beady eyes? Thinking with that description in mind would you have come close to how he actually looks in the comics? Probably not. The stylization of the pictures adds a certin character that would normally be left out of a novel.

The first Tintin graphic novels can be a bit wordy, using an excessive amount of words for some dialogue or inner monologue. This changes as the artist and writer figures out how to visualize these thoughts thrust saving space on the page and giving panels a more open feeling. Over all the later Tintin books tend to be better in the long run as Hergé gets better himself. Still over all, Tintin's visualizations with its characters really make it hard for me to thing that it would have the same effect as a novel as it would as a comic.Sometimes there's just no substitute for images and the same goes for the other way around. I think your preference for a series can come from if you've read the novel first or the comic or in these days seen the movie first. The lovely part about media is that it has these multiple art forms to show you a story and in the end it doesn't really matter how you see or read it.

Week 2: Literary work and The Great Gatsby

Literary work in the simplest terms is the art of written work. Literature actually means, ‘Things made from letters’.

Going a bit more in detail, literary work is imaginative or creative writing expressed in letters of the alphabet. That's a rather broad definition for a broad subject.

The UK makes defining literary work a bit easier as they have made it a part of copyright law since at least 1710. This copyright law defines literary work as ‘any work, other than a dramatic or musical work, which is written, spoken or sung’.

Many things can be classified as literary work even essays and poems as they are in fact ‘things made from letters’. Philosophical, historical, journalistic, and scientific writings are usually thought as literature as well.

With such a broad definition it seems like almost anything can be classified as a literary work of some kind or another. Even some comics could be considered as such as they use words for dialogue in most cases.

Now what does this have to do with he book, "The Great Gatsby"?

The Great Gatsby was a book written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925. The book revolves around the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and infatuation with Daisy Buchanan in the made-up town of West Egg on Long Island in the summer of 1922. It focuses on the relationships of the residents including Jay and Daisy told from the mouth of an outsider Nick Carraway. The book also helps provide a look into life during the Roaring Twenties giving glimpses of the evolution of jazz music, flapper culture, and bootlegging during prohibition.

Many would call the book a literary classic not to mention one of the greatest works of American literature for these looks into the past. But looking at the book its self does this make it literary work?

Yes, yes it does.

Assumptions about Oz and Hunger Games

To be honest, I know I have more assumptions about Hunger Games than the Wizard of Oz.

Before this class I was familiar with both of these series having researched but not read ether of them. Though I knew that the movie and book for Wizard of Oz were different from one another I thought the book would still have components that would be reflected in the film. In ways I was right at wrong in those assumptions. The movie gives you at most a looking glass view of Oz changing many characters just a bit to fit the slightly different plot. I didn't know of the threats that the Witch sent after Dorothy or some of the other small details left out in the movie.

I still have a bunch assumptions about Hunger Games and I really do not plan on fixing any of them. I assume I will not like the series due to several of its key components during the plot aka its child killing and using this for the amusement of others. I did not like this in the movie Battle Royal and I like it even less now. I'm sure there are some points that I would like but I just do not care. The movie over all is a better way for me to watch the series but that still means I have to watch the killing's instead of just reading about them.

I love reading. I read when ever I get the chance and when I get a good book. The Wizard of Oz is everything I like it a book; Characters that I can grow to love, a fantasy like setting and a villain that makes my skin crawl. Hunger Games on the other hand is mostly what I don't. As I have said here and in the previous journal, I do not like when children killing one another is made in to a sport for speculators to get their kicks and giggles out of. It makes me sick despite the facts I've heard other very good things about the series. For that reason I just can't get into it. The movies I might be willing to give more of a chance as I've heard that they are even better than the books but still that means I have to put the effort into going to see even the movie and I could care less to do even that.

Week One: Hunger Games ≈ Wizard of Oz

Are the two series similar? Hard to believe that the possibility even exists that the two have anything in common. Both have different plots, one focusing on a girl trying to get home to Kansas and the other about a young lady trying not to be killed in a competition.

To be honest, I do not like Hunger Games, the book or the series. While I find the movie actually decent, I couldn’t get through the book. My main issue is the killing of children for the entertainment of others. I don’t like it and can’t really stand to read it.

Despite my aggravation towards the series, I have to admit the hints of similarities between the two exist. It came as a surprise to me to find them at all. Its just not something you would normally compare.

The very first is the sudden thrust into a completely different world that they are unfamiliar with. A world seemingly much better than the one they have known all their life. Both Dorothy and Katniss grew up in areas of poverty, without the comfort of most of the luxuries we have today. It was very dark and bleak visually shown in both movies. Even in the book the Wizard of Oz the color beyond grays is mentioned when Dorothy arrives in Oz. then suddenly they have gain access to the new place filled with color and wonder. And in both cases the wonder hides dark intentions.

As you might have guessed, both girls are trying to survive in this new world they have arrived in. It is unfamiliar to them, strange and mysterious and danger lurks around every corner. They don’t know if a step in the wrong direction will cost or help them. Despite the level of the actual danger differs between both movies, from a single person with an army to a group of individuals, the ladies move through the story surviving against the odds to reach their goal. They have to gain allies and with their help ultimately defeat the enemy. They ability to adapt to the situation ensures their eventual survival.

While these similarities are in the broadest of subjects both play such a key importance that it’s interesting to think of what these two very different characters have in common. If similarities can be found between these two, I wonder what other movies could be compared to one another.