Close Reading Bingo

Four Common Weaknesses

Weakness: 1. Avoid "he says" quote introductions.

• "His strange admiration is expressed with metaphors like "the free-standing kind: a pair of integral signs swooping upward" and "a temporary, steeper escalator of daylight" which help make a mental picture of the escalators as well as give an appreciation for the escalators." My Everyday Sticky Waffle 

Weakness: 2. Don't use a long quotations the subject of a sentence.

• "'On sunny days like this one, a temporary, steeper escalator of daylight, formed by intersections of the lobby's towering volumes of marble and glass, met the real escalators just above their middle point, spreading into a needly area of shine where it fell against their brushed-steel side-pannels, and adding long glossy highlights to each of the black rubber handrails" By using such imagery and specific details, one is able to clearly paint a picture of the lobby in their minds." TheyCallMeFreshMoney

Weakness: 6. Avoid  the verbs "uses" and "shows".

•  "His use of connotation suggests a picturesque vision of his apperance while walking through the lobby."  T-Rex

Weakness: 8. Punctuation goes inside quotation marks.

• "Baker describes his surroundings as "towering volumes of marble and glass" and "long glossy highlights to each of the black rubber handrails"." To Kill a Mockingjay

Best Diction Analysis

• "In the excpert from the Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker uses an intricate, buisness-like language which helps describe an everyday morning at the office. The connotative figurtive language assists the refined wording by adding descriptive variety throughout the prompt. With the use of his realistic descriptions, the promt was easily visualized. "Towering volumes of marble and glass" is what he saw as the lobby, which creates a clear, yet abstract vision. Writing with a language that is not quite fancy but is elevated, Baker also seems to have connotataion mixed in making his writing clinical, and elaborate." Peanut Butter Without the Jelly

Practice Diction Analysis

Nicholson Baker's formal and straight forward language conveys a lifeless, cold depiction of the escalator's centered in the lobby of his work place. Baker describes his surroundings as "towering volumes of marble and glass" and "long glossy highlights to each of the black rubber handrails". This gives the impression of a fancy an intimidating lobby. Also, the matter of fact way Baker describes the lobby makes the reader sense that this is somewhere to not be impressed with, its an everyday occurrence.

Right Now. . .

In honor of the past three rainy days, lets hope its sunny this weekend.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Nightlight by The Harvard Lampoon

Pages This Week: 173

Pages All Together: 1271

1. "The characters speak in colloquial language, using words such as "silly," "darling chicken-flower," and "wop." The language is humble, but it is suggestive of the culture and personality of the characters." - Keep It Classy
2. "Adair's passage is more of a in-your-face type of writing. She says things like "She was in ready position, but frozen like a deer in headlights, sniper rifle silent, and useless, in her hands." To me, that just seems more of a "Hey! Here it is!!!" type of writing." - Twilight
3. "In Neil Gaiman's Stardust, the rocky terrain and harmonious forest create a high sense of tranquility as one observes the town of Wall." - The Blog of Epic Proportions
4. "Picturesque and somewhat blunt all at once, Dostoevsky describes a man walking down a street in a sensuous, tangible string of words that sets an automatic environment for the scene at hand." - Look Up... (Now!)
5. "He talks about the sheeps grazing on the out skirts which is sweet and calming" - J-Momma

My two favorite are Keep it Classy and Look Up... (Now!). I love "The language is humble. . " I've never really heard language described like that before. I also like "... tangible string of words" the Look Up Now uses, I just love the word tangible.

 

Nightlight

I've started Nightlight by Harvard Lampoon. Its a parody of the Twilight Saga books and its super hilarious and stupid so far. Now I really love the Twilight Saga a lot, and I don't mind if people make extremely hilarious jokes about it, but I hate it when people rag on it for no reason when they haven't even read the books and all they've seen is just five minutes of one of the movies. However, this book stars Belle Goose an extremely socially awkward seventeen year-old who moves to her dads house in Switchblade, Oregon. Shes very "in to herself" and think all the guys at school like her and super spacey and dense. She soon meets Edwart Mullen a nerd who has no interest in girls. Immediately Belle thinks Edwart is something supernatural and also thinks that Edwart is really into her but he really is showing no interest. Soon after a couple of days at the new school Belle notices strange things about Edwart Mullen like he shielded her for a snow ball and didn't eat his tator tots at lunch so of course there is no other explanation he has to be a vampire.

Now the some of the jokes in this book are super humorous like when Belle receives a u-haul truck from her dad and is absolutely ecstatic, this of course is making fun of how excited Bella was when she got the oldest red pick-up truck imaginable from her dad in the real Twilight. Also, there are a lot of extremely random little things that Belle always bursts out and does, this is poking fun at the real Bella's personality and taking it to the extreme and its very funny. Now this is a super fast book to read, its only a hundred and fifty-four pages long, so if you love or hate Twilight and want some stupid random books you should totally read this book.

Never Let Me Go: The End

Tommy and Kathy want to get deferrals to live together with no donations for a couple of year by themselves. They go and find Madame to see if the rumors are true and to see if they can receive these deferrals. They both meet with her and find that none of this is true they can't have a few years off together and they have to go back to giving donations and being a carer. While they were there talking with her they discovered much more about what their lives truly were and they meant to the public around them. These true facts about their lives didn't help either Tommy or Kathy and soon Tommy had to give his fourth donation (which is usually their last before they complete/die). Tommy wants Kathy to quit being his carer because he doesn't want her to see him like that. so she does as he asks and just months after Tommy's fourth donation she finds out that he had died. The book ends with Kathy now ended being a carer and started giving her donations holding on to her memoirs of Hailsham, Ruth, and Tommy and moving on with her life.

Part Three

Now Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy had a falling out close to the end of their stay at the cottages. Kathy is the first to move on to go to training to become a carer. A carer is what everyone has to do, they pretty much help the people giving donations recover form their surgeries and their kinda like a friend and mentor towards them during that time. So part three starts seven years after the cottages Kathy is still a carer and Ruth and Tommy have started giving their donations. There isn't a certain amount of time you have to be a carer for, they can start giving donations whenever their ready and that's usually fairly soon because it gets depressing watching the people they befriend die only after a couple of donations. Kath sees that her time as a carer is probably coming to an end so she does what she been wanting to do for awhile and becomes Ruth's carer (note they haven't spoken to each other since the cottages). Kath and Ruth hit it off again not really thinking about their fall out sever years ago. They plan a trip and decided that they should invite Tommy to come with them. Tommy is in a hospital not to far from their destination. Tommy came and on their trip Ruth admitted something to Kath and Tommy that day. She told them that she was sorry that she had kept Kath and Tommy apart from each other all those years starting at Hailsham. Originally Kath din't do anything with this information she went on with being Ruth's carer. But after Ruth's second donation she was slowing dying and ask for Kath to become Tommy's carer.

The Graduate Bus Scene

I am obsessed with this scene for The Graduate that I originally saw in 500 Days of Summer. I absolutely love this song by Simon and Garfunkel that I don't think is in The Graduate movie and only in 500 Days of Summer but I haven't seen the full Graduate movie before (and I probably should). But I do know that the woman was getting married and in the middle of the ceremony the man on the right bursts in and they run away together on this bus. You would assume they would be joyous and happy that they are now together but their not and i love that, its so unexpected. And how sad their faces are just staring blankly forward not even truly realising one another. Love it.

Style Mapping

I compared three passages, two from the packet, and one book of my own. This is what I conjured up:

Cormac McCarthy's diction in Blood Meridian creates a common, harmonious sound to the passage. I fell like it could be a poem almost with it slow, music like qualities. Neil Gaiman's word choice in the passage from Stardust conveys an elevated, and straightforward read, with a very common sound that is not musical nor harsh. It seemed very exact when describing the details in the passage. Kazuo Ishiguro's diction in Never Let Me Go I would say is fancy, that might be because they talk using some British terms, but I would say its more elevated. The writing also has a sweet sound to it, and is split between denotative and connotative.

Quarterly

I've been reading a bulk of my books like randomly one week night or on a Sunday afternoon like for four hours straight, which is not particularly a good thing because if that doesn't happen one week then I have to catch up when I don't have time. So I think my goal for the next nine weeks would be to spread out my readings to almost every night and so I never have to catch up. Umm, I read mostly in my room with my ipod playing my reading playlist, I usually can't read in the car or anywhere with noisy, I get too distracted and want to stare out the window. So I hope I successfully accomplish my goal for the rest of the semester and hopefully everyone else does too.

Possibles

Two veterans at the Cottages is Chrissie and Rodney have become closes with Kath, Ruth, and Tommy. They are a couple just like Ruth and Tommy are a couple. Kathy liked both of them in the beginning of their stay at the cottages but she is starting to dislike them more and more. Were are starting to discover more of who these people are who went to Hailsham and other schools like that. You could say their kind of clones of people except that's not how they said it, its like they're modeled off of certain people. They were "created" for their vital organs which are called donations. Once their old enough and they'll give two to four (depending on what organs they have to give) donations then they'll die. The people that they were based off of they call possibles. There is always talks and rumors that they've seen possibles of friends or anyone they know but no ones every taken any of it too seriously. Well one day when Chrissie and Rodney were on a trip visiting a friend they saw what they thought to maybe be Ruth's possible in an office window. They told Ruth of her and planned a trip to see if they could find her again.

The Cottages

I've gotten to part two of Never Let Me Go, the three main characters are now all sixteen and leaving Hailsham for the cottages. The cottages is a farm where they now live, there are many different places like these where people from Hailsham (or any other place like Hailsham) go to at the age of sixteen. This is the first time in their whole lives that they have been beyond the gates of Hailsham. They learned that some of the things that they were taught in Hailsham do not apply very well to the real world. Once they get to the cottages they aren't the first ones there, there are also veterans (those are people who have already been there for a couple of years). Another person there is Mr. Keefer hes kind of the landlord of the cottages and Kath trys to be firendly to him by doing all the things she learned in Hailsham but hes not very firendly and she stops trying so hard. This is also the first time their talking to anyone new, I'm excited for them to see the real world but wouldn't that be awful if you never left the bondaries of house for the first sixteen years of your life. For most of us that would of been just last your that you saw the would for the first time, I just coundn't imageine.

Right Now . . .

Movie still from 500 Days of Summer



Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Pages This Week: 100

Pages All Together: 1098

Quarter Quotes:

1. "But I've spent time with someone fading toward death - held his hand, inhaled the scent of living flesh as it rots away. An old folks' home must smell the same, and no air freshener could disguise that odor. It chokes you, gags you, but you have to pretend that you're doing just fine, not trembling with fear because the end is close. You can feel death hovering, waiting for his very last breath his final shudder; anticipating taking him away." - Impulse
2. "Freedom is a doubled-edge ideal, because true freedom comes without the protection of laws that also enslave us by defining us - female, male; Christian, Islamic; good, evil. All at the at the whim of a frail minority." - Impulse 
3. "The past is just something that's over." - A Single Man

I love the third quote a lot because the past is over with and you can't change anything about it, as they say in Meet the Robinson's "Keep movie forward".

Innocence to Reality

One reason I loved the movie Never Let Me Go is the way they depicted these kids childhoods being corrupted by the reality of what their lives really are. I think we can all find a time in our past where we finally realize that life isn't just play and imagination and real stuff can actually happen you. This moment happen for Kathy in Never Let Me Go, the moment before and the moment after her and Tommy started talking at the pond. Her and Tommy would always talk about the weird incidents that would happen with them and the guardians. Kathy had and incident once with Madame. Kathy was in her dorm listening to a song on tape, she thought the song was about a mother and child and how the mother wanted to protect the child so much. She didn't think anyone was around so she was embarrassingly holding a pillow and swaying back and forth while she sang to the song. Then she was jolted out of her singing when she heard sobbing and she turned around and saw Madame standing in the doorway crying staring at Kathy. Kathy immediately thought she was in trouble but all Madame did was walk away and didn't say a word still sobbing. Kathy had no idea why she was crying and didn't get her in trouble. She talked about it with Tommy a few years later, Tommy may thought she was crying because the children at Hailsham couldn''t have children and Madame may have thought it was so tragic that she could never have children. But Kathy thought that couldn't be true because that's the story she mad up in her head about what the story meant. This story and many others were odd things that the guardians did to make her and Tommy speculate. When Kathy and Tommy started asking questions about their life at Hailsham is the turning point in Kathy's life. Where transition from child to a young adult.

The Early Years

Never Let Me Go is divided up into three parts. The first part is Kathy looking back on her, Tommy's, and Ruth's young lives at Hailsham. The way Kathy talks to the reader its almost like she assumes you know whats going on and whats happening with these things called donations and Kathy calls herself a carer and of course she doesn't explain any of this stuff to you yet, I'm assuming she'll explain all of it later on in the book. So part one consist of many little short memoirs Kathy has about Hailsham and the people there. Many of her stories seem completely random and use for nothing but some of them straighten out and actually go along with one another. One thing I think most of these stories are doing is helping the reader figure out who these children are and what Hailsham is and is doing to these children, just as the main characters had to figure it out. Since i have already seen the movie I know what is coming but I'm excited to see if the movie and the book actually follow each other or if one will be completely different from the other.

Maru: The Cutest Cat Ever

This video makes me want a cat so badly (and I'm not even a cat person!). Apparently, this cat is very popular in Japan and on Youtube, but its just so adorable. I just felt like I should share its cuteness with all of you. Enjoy.