Blog comments

Astorino's class: http://fictionsmyaddiction.blogspot.com/2013/06/sparknotes.html

Astorino's class: http://ilikebigbooksandicannotliee.blogspot.com/2013/06/readers-choice.html

Callaghan's class: http://readfreeorbloghard.blogspot.com/2013/06/poison-berry.html?showComment=1370956675740#c4802194851852631260

Don't Be Afraid to Read Out of Your Comfort Zone

Many readers tend to stay within one genre. They develop this comfort zone of reading for example only crime novels. But you shouldn't be hesistant to read other books.

I took Readers' Choice as way to read a lot of different types of books. For each assginment I tried to read something different. And I am glad that I chose to do this. By doing it, I was able to explore many different genres of books and found out that I enjoyed most of the books that I read.

Over the course of the year I read seven novels by various authors and one play by Shakespeare. The novels I read included: The Kite Runner, The Rainmaker, 11-22-63, Silverlinings Playbook, Sherlock Holmes, The All Americans, and currently Everyman. The genres for these books ranges widely from romance to courtroom drama to sports and historical nonfiction. I am glad that I got a chance to read all of these novels because I enjoyed most all of them.

One section of the class was to specifically read a book that was out of your comfort zone. When assigned this reading I did not even know what genre to choose seeing as to how I had pretty much been doing that all along. By then I had read books from about 5 different genres. But I soon found one genre that was definitely out of my comfort zone. This would be sports and historical nonfiction. So I chose to read The All Americans by Lars Anderson. And I am really glad that I chose to read it. I think that the book was very well written and had a great story. Seeing as to how the entire plot of the novel was based on real events that Anderson gathered over a few years, it really makes the story inspiring. If you are looking to read out of your comfort zone and do not usually read abou historical events like World War II, I would strongly suggest that you purchase a copy of The All Americans.

However I did not enjoy all of them. The novel that I did not enjoy was 11-22-63. While the first part of the book was good there were many things that could have been left out. King went into way too much detail about some aspects of the novel like the love interest and including so much detail on how the maincharacter tracked down Lee Harvey Oswald. But the worst part of the book was the ending. I will not give anything away but the ending of the book was so terrible it makes you angry you even read the book at all. I would strongly suggest that if you ar thinking about reading this book that you skip it.

So if you are thinking of what to read next, take a moment to contemplate if you have a comfort zone and what it would be. And then find a book that is not in it but sounds like one you would enjoy. You may like it and you may not, but atleast you tried something new.

Kindle Vs. The Real Thing

The big question that many readers are asking these days is "Is it better to read on a kindle or get the real book?" And this is not an easy question to answer seeing as both have good qualities.

As for me I enjoy reading on a kindle because it is small, light, and easy to bring around. When I read books on my own time I prefer to use it. I have a kindle fire, which is a very good product. It has a lit screen so you can read in the dark, but in sunlight it gets glares on its screen. The kindle book store has millions of books which you can buy and instantly download onto your kindle. Also when purchasing a book on a kindle, amazon gives you a discounted price from the listing price of the paper version. When looking at a book you can easily read a summary about its plot and see reviews and ratings on the book

written by other readers.

But as for reading a book for school I would rather read the paper version. The kindle fire does not have page numbers, but goes by percentages. While this does not matter when reading for leisure, it does matter when you read for school. Without page numbers it is hard to cite quotes and know to what point you should be reading to. When reading for school I also like having the actual book because when I need to look up passages I can remeber at about what spot the passage was and quickly flip through the pages to find it. But on a kindle you would need to go to the chapter (if you can remeber it) and swipe every page to find the it.

So overall both the kindle and the actual book have thier perks. If you are thinking of which one to use, I would consider for what reason you are reading. If it would be for leisure I would suggest a kindle. And if it would be for school or something you would need to flip back through the pages often, I would suggest making the trip to the bookstore and spending the few extra dollars on purchasing the real thing. 

Taking Readers' Choice

When I heard that my school was offering Readers' Choice as a new

class next year, I thought that it would  be a great class to take. The class was described as one in which the students could choose their own books to read and discuss them with the class. This appealed to me because I could read books that I would enjoy and not books like I had been assigned in the past. In school I consider most of the books we read to be somewhat boring. And since I read books on my own time, I thought that I would really enjoy taking this class.

Throughout the year we read a total of about 8 novels. With each novel we did various projects pertaining to aspects like its plot, characters, comparing it to its screen adaptation, and searching for an underlying meaning. The workload for this class was a bit more than I expected but it was not too much to handle. The only thing would be that the projects and assignments were not spaced out enough. As soon as you would finish a novel there would be about three assignments due one day after another. But I can see how it would be hard to space them out because they could only be completed once the book was finished and by the time we finished one book we had to move to the other to get through the cirriculum for the class.

Overall I think that a class like Readers' Choice is a good idea. It gives studetnst a chance to read books that they will actually enjoy. It may even show some students who thought they didn't enjoy reading that there are other more interesting books out there that they would enjoy reading. Not kinds like they are assigned and disliked.