Summer Reading Post #4 Aug/13/14

As I was scrolling down the lists of books that I could chose to read this summer, I happened across a book titled Revolver, written by Marcus Sedgwick, and now that book has a home in my e-library on my phone. I know the saying is "Don't judge a book by it's cover", but that strategy didn't really work out all to bad for me this time. What caught my eye was actually just the cover and the title of the book itself, I clicked on it, read the description, and now I'm here. I haven't been disappointed with the book I read this summer, I actually kind of enjoyed it. If after finishing my book, there is a definitive connection between it and myself, I would have to say it's the book's feeling of responsibility that it puts on Sig after his father dies. Not that my dad is dead but being the biggest besides him in the family and also the oldest of my brothers, I feel like I could take that kind of responsibility if I was needed to. Revolver was a good read overall, but that's just my opinion. I would say anyone who likes either old westerns or books with a fair amount of action and also suspense would enjoy this one. But I think it would be boring to those people that always have to have something going on in the book because this one definitely has slow parts to it.

Summer Reading Post #3 Aug/13/14

The excerpt I have chosen from my book, Revolver, I took from the very first page in the first chapter and for good reason. It reads, "Sig looked across the cabin to where his father lay, waiting for him to speak, but his father said nothing, because he was dead. Einar Andersson lay on the table, his arms half raised above his head, his legs slightly bent at the knee, frozen in the position in which they’d found him; out on the lake, lying on the ice, with the dogs waiting patiently in harness." I chose this part of the book to get the reader hooked because when I read it I had to read it multiple times just to see if I was understanding what it said. How many books do you pick up and start reading and the third sentence in the book has the main character sitting across a table from his frozen dad? This particular section defiantly made me want to delve deeper into the book, I had to find out what happened to cause this scenario sprung on me so early on. I think it would do the same for any reader that picked up the book so I would say the author wrote a pretty good hook for the beginning of Revolver.

Summer Reading post #2 Jul/6/14

After reading for another 45 minutes after publishing my last post I have gotten to about 40% into the book. What seems to be the net main character, and the antagonist, has entered the book and his name is Wolff. Wolff has spent ten years looking for Einar and he showed up the day after he died. he makes it clear to Sig that he had an agreement with his father that was never completed. He also says that as Einar's heir this responsibility is now Sig's. Wolff, being the giant of a man that he is, is intimidating to Sig and Sig begins to asses his options, he can run, confront Wolff, or go get the Colt. It is obvious that Wolff's main desire is to finish his business with Einar, and now Sig, and Sig just wants it all to be over and he wants his father back. Already through the story we have received a lot of exposition on Einar and his previous wife and his relationship with Sig. The book sometimes jumps between flashback and present at the beginnings of chapters. So far the book is a man vs. man conflict, and so far the most prominent themes of the book have been death and what seems to be revenge.

Summer Reading Post #1 Jul/6/14

Having purchased my book, Revolver, online through the kindle store, I have read 20% of it at this point in the summer. As I was checking the list of Printz award winners and reading further descriptions of books that sounded interesting to me, I finally decided on this one. The book is moving fairly slowly because right now we have only met four characters, one of which is dead, and we have not been introduced to the main conflict yet. The main character, Sig, is a 14 or 15 year old boy living in Alaska during the gold mining era sometime in the 1800's. He and his older sister Anna and his Step mother Nadya, all live in a cabin six miles outside of town. So far we have only received narration on Anna and Nadya, and we have been with Sig as he lives out the days since his father, Einar, has died. The question has been asked, why did his father try to cross the lake on sled because he certainly knew better, and Sig has been starting to wonder. The way Sig talks about this makes the reader wonder whether his father was running from something or someone. This book so far has reminded me of another book I read this year called Abandon, by Blake Crouch. Both books are set in the same type of climate and town but in Abandon, we jump back and forth between present day and the past as many mysteries are being solved in both era's. Although the book hasn't gotten to any of the action yet, I think that it will very soon.  

Final blog Assesment

In my post in the beginning of the tri I was relating my book to the real world, a text-to-world connection. I chose this post because I think that I used good diction and multiple sentence structures when I was describing how our problems today relate to the morphed humans in Wayward. An example of when I was using good voice in the post is, “The unknown threat to the townspeople is actually the remnants of humanity, morphed and disfigured by increasingly unstable genes (Rice)”. I think that this phrase in particular showcases my voice and style as a writer because while trying to describe the book I used I used elevated diction and it made me sound like I was describing the plot to a movie and I like that.

 

In this post when I was describing a text-to-world connection between the real world and Wayward I made purposeful diction choices for most sentences but while I was writing, I didn’t really think about my sentences structures, I just used what sounded best while I was reading it. For example, I used a periodic sentence while describing the creatures, not because I decided to, but because it sounded best.  “Humans, now four legged, translucent, hunting predators, evolved into these twisted things as their gene pool became increasingly worse (Rice)”. The sentence wasn’t wrapped up nicely until I included the part after I had described the creatures. While using diction, I actually gave things a little more thought. “The unknown threat to the townspeople is actually the remnants of humanity, morphed and disfigured by increasingly unstable genes (Rice)”. In this sentence, I purposefully used elevated diction like ‘Remnants’ and ‘Disfigured’ because I wanted a clear image of the creatures I was describing, along with more detail.

What the work tells us about people related to nature

This book's main conflict comes from how humans deal with their enviroment. The human town is placed thousands of years in the future from present day. the only reason that there even is a town is because a scientist saw that based on human day, the human race would one day evolve in to the twisted creatures that surround the town. this is all how people relate to their enviroment because we eventually evolved into these things just based off of what we were doing to our enviroment. so because of how we lived, our surroundings shaped us into the pale, twisted monsters.

How characters deal with the main conflict.

In this book the main character, Ethan, has to investigate the activities of suspicious occupants in this secret, post-apocolyptic town. Ethan deals with being in the town well, by integrating into the sheriff's position and by protecting its people. Others however, deal with it in a more violent way, by removing their tracking chips and sneaking out at night undetected. When these secret meetings get someone killed is when we start to see a character diffrence. Insted of adapting well like Ethan, Kate (Another former FBI agent) starts indulging in these behaviors, maybe just to learn more about the town. If you were in this position, do you think you could keep your cool, or end up like kate?