Sunday, December 16, 2007

White Night: Reading Section 6

Post A
(289-347)

overindulgence (295)- indulging excessively
entropy (323)- thermodynamic system, energy not available for work, a closed system.

An emerging theme that is appearing is the theme of persistence. Harry is constantly trying to find new finding the one responsible for the murders.

Post B

This is by far the most climactic part of the book. All the rising action leads up to this section; this is the part I love in books. Well I won’t get into it that much because I feel like there are other things to talk about. I wanted to talk about how I feel about fantasy books and how this book has made me change my mind about it. Before I didn’t like fantasy books because I didn’t like the idea of unicorns and fairies and flying pigs. I thought all the books in that genre were the same plot and always was resolved in the same way. This book is way different from what I thought a fantasy book was stereotypically like. Sure it has vampires and all, but clearly this has a different plot and not everything is a happy fairy tale ending. It had action, a little slow, but as the action began to rise the less and less boring the book became. Because of this book I’ll open my reading genre’s to fantasy now and maybe a new genre every once in a while, because you never will know how good fantasy or some other genre will be unless you’ve read one. Jim Butcher is one of many authors I’m sure that can do this to a reader; the ability to change one’s opinion on things because of his writing skills. I will continue to read books and be more open about new books that seem different to me because maybe I’ll like the book.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

White Night: Reading Section 5

Post A
(231-288)

"Elaine Lilian Mallory. And the image came to life. Elaine's face bowed forward, her hair falling around it, not quite hiding the expression of bone-deep weariness and despair." (253) Gives an amazing descriptive feeling to me as a reader, helping me by giving me a picture of what is happening.

An emerging theme from this section is pain. How it feels to lose some body, not entirely physical pain but more emotional pain.

Post B

Dear Mr. Harry Dresden

Although you are just a fictional character in this book, I love your human ways and also your incredible wizard-like powers. You are a very interesting character and well frankly I need to read more books with you in it. Your mysterious life and yet very dangerous excites me and I need to see more. Still there are some questions I’d like to ask you. What is it that drives you to help these people and solve mysteries and crimes like you do? Also, do you ever look for compensation after helping out people because it seems like you like to keep your name quiet? And, do you ever get scared doing this kind of work? These are just questions I’d like to know if you weren’t fictional. I’m looking forward to reading more of the Dresden Files series and also looking forward to the one that has yet to be published. Your human characteristics are very alike to mine, I like how I’ve made a connection to you it just propels me to want to read more about you. Any info that you’d like to tell me if you decided to write back would be great too. Also I’ve found to have many connections with Elaine. In one of my postings I talked about a significant quote she had said in the book that described real human emotion. It’s very cool to know that even fictional characters like you can have so many human characteristics; it never seizes to amaze me.

Farewell,

Andrew

Monday, December 3, 2007

White Night: Reading Section 4

Post A
(174-231)

Incongruously (210)- inconsistent
Fluted (225)- harmonious, clear.

"She spoke, and her voice came out rogue and quavering. 'I told her I would protect her.'" (207) This is Elaine getting very emotional after she swore protection on Anna and she let her die. It gives Elaine a lot of character in this book, it's also an important event in this section.

Post B

I think that quote that I’ve shown above is extremely significant. It’s not only significant in the book but it’s significant in real life. It shows us that we are all human and sometimes things happen that are out of our control. Yet sometimes we tend to blame ourselves for the sequences of events that occur. It is a very human trait of people it is not a science fiction novel trait. Not only is Jim Butcher trying to make an understanding between the readers and the main characters, he’s trying to portray real humans to make his story connect with us. He has been very successful because this is not the first time he has done it so far in this book. He’s done it multiple times and I think when you gain a connection between the reader and the main characters, that’s when you know you have a good book that people will want to read. That is clearly why I think I’m beginning to like this book; I hope to see more connections like this later on to further my interest in Jim Butcher’s writing techniques. Again, I’m going to give you my feelings about this chapter and not just the significance of that quote. I think the climax is about to happen all the rising action is leading up to the climactic point. The background information is just about done and its all about what’s happening now. Clearly the story is getting more and more mysterious and I don’t really know what to expect. Hopefully the climax isn’t cheesy.