Pushed

The most recent book I've been reading (besides Winnie the Pooh for my final paper) is another one that falls under the nonfiction category. I still have a hard time believing how many things I read that are nonfiction. I'm not entirely sure what subcategory of nonfiction this would fit under.

It's a pretty educational book that implements research and stories to explain the state of modern childbirth and maternity care in the U.S. Would that be educational? Is that a subcategory of nonfiction?

And The Winner Is...

My Evaluation Claim!-

Although it is important to analyze the literary elements in "The World Is Too Much With Us" in order to understand the underlying theme that is emphasized through this, if the breaking apart is taken too far, one might lose meaning instead of finding it.

That is the one that I had posted in this post, and I've slightly revised it to this:

It is important to analyze the literary elements in poetry, such as that of William Wordsworth's, in order to understand the theme at a deeper level; however, as the taking apart of a poem progresses, one may reach a point in which the essence is lost and in which one is "murdering to dissect."

Well there it is so far! Thank you guys for your input! It helped me to choose between the two that i was thinking of and it helped me narrow my claim.  I received feedback from my peers through the comments posted on my blog post, and I used one of my personal media websites (Tumblr), from which I received some great feedback too:

And also a literature blog follower!-

I also made some of my roommates personally offer feedback throughout the weekend:

Overall, I felt pretty good about sharing the process of writing my paper with others!

Fiction: Romance genre

I read A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks and I have to say, it was one of the few times when I thought the movie was better than the book. I was disappointed by Sparks's use of near-cliche stereotypes. Landon isn't just popular; in the book, he's the class president. He isn't working with Jamie on a play; he invites her to the school dance because he needs a date. Jamie doesn't just volunteer; she works in an orphanage. I can't tell you the last time I saw an orphanage in North Carolina, but okay.

What I liked about the movie was that you see Landon's transformation and realization of his potential without cringing. In the book, I couldn't stop cringing. It's full of high school drama and cliches. His foreshadowing makes the plot twists too obvious. Even the plot structure is strange. There is not much of a climax, and the book seems to go straight from rising action to falling action. Overall, it was a disappointment for me. The movie was a better, more modern adaptation with the basics of Sparks's story.

A Secretary in Bond's World

In the first chapter of Moonraker, entitled Secret Paper Work, we get a glimpse into the life of James Bond. His day to day affairs are often mundane. In fact the author writes "It was only two or three times a year that an assignment came along requiring his particular abilities. For the rest of the year he had the duties of an easy-going civil servant."

Thesis Victory!

Based on the feedback that I received from friends and classmates, I've decided to use my evaluation claim as my thesis. However, I want to switch the viewpoint. As I've been reading and getting feedback, I think it could more easily be argued that the book is actually the more complete source, rather than the lecture. The author makes it clear in the book that the lecture is actually the more manufactured source (or at least the beginning of it). He spent months preparing and rehearsing for this lecture. It is only in the book that we learn the only reason he gave the lecture was to feel validated, but that the entire time he was speaking he worried about throwing up from his recent chemo treatments. You would never know that from the speech, during which he is constantly cracking jokes. I want to make the argument in my thesis that the speech is in fact the more artificial of the two lectures, and that you only grasp the author's true meaning with the background story and authenticity of the book.

 

Realism vs. Fantasy

After buying the remaining Bond books needed to complete my collection I decided to go back and read the ones that I had missed and catch up to From Russia With Love. The first one I started with was Moonraker, the third book in the series. I had heard that this book was quite different from the film, but I didn't know it was going to be this different. It is almost an entirely different story. Sure some of the main characters have the same names, but everything else has changed. The settings and the plot are completely different. The plot of the novel is the investigation of a missile based national defense system. It is more realistic in tone. We learn about Bond's day to day life and what he does for hobbies. It is a hard-nosed spy thriller far more practical than its movie counterpart. The movie is all about space shuttles and guess what Bond actually gets to go into to space and shoot laser guns. Still even though the movie is fake beyond belief it is hard to choose which one I like best. It might help to put both into some historical context.

Thanks for the feedback!

So after getting some help from my lovely blog readers and other friends on facebook and by other archaic means like the phone, I think I've come up with my thesis for my paper for my English class.

But before that, I thought I'd share how this whole feedback process went.

I posted a blog post with all my thesis statements and then posted a link to it on facebook and asked my friends to offer their opinions.

And wouldn't you know it, a couple of my friends did comment on the blog. And then I got a few more comments from people in my English class. All of which were extremely helpful.

After reading through these and talking to my mom (always a good source for opinions) I decided to stick with the thesis that my sister wrote (Jessica above).

Unlike some children's books that are written specifically to teach, A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh stories are valuable to learners not because of their pristine grammar but because they encourage imagination and thus further cognitive development.

There seemed to be some consensus on moving away from the grammatical incorrectness (not a word) theme and sticking more to comparing Winnie the Pooh to books that are meant to specifically teach children.