Why I Read

I read books because it’s a great way to pass time on car rides. Whenever I’m going to my grandparents or going to visit my uncle in Florida, I always bring a book. On a long car ride I could read up to 2 books. Once you get into a book, it’s really hard to put it down. One of my favorite series to read on a long car ride is the Percy Jackson Series. It’s full of action and suspense which makes it hard to put down. I also read books because they are fun. You get to meet fictional people and see everything that they are thinking. Whenever I read books, like the Percy Jackson Series, I feel like I’m inside the book and am interacting with the characters.

World War Z

In this book, World War Z by Max Brooks, the human race must fight back against the flesh eating zombies to regain their homelands. World War Z is an oral history from the survivors of the zombie apocalypse. The survivors talk about the fright of seeing zombies running after you trying to kill you and the impact it had on people’s mental and physical abilities. The survivors also talk about how they were able to band together to fight back from the edge of extinction.

Since the book World War Z is an oral history of the zombie apocalypse, it has great voice integrated into it. Throughout the whole book you get every angle of the story. You get stories from people living in China, USA, Great Britain and even Antarctica. This allows you to grasp an even deeper understanding of what people had to go through to survive. One of my favorite quotes that explains these hardships is “We lost a hell lot more than just people when we abandoned them to the dead.” This is a great quote because it showed that people have guilt for not trying to save others from the un-dead.  World War Z is one of the best examples of a book that use voice. If I had to make on critic of the book it would be that the interviewer was anonymous. You were never told who the interviewer was and what his job was. He could have been some random guy of the streets who wanted to know about the zombie apocalypse. World War Z would have been an even better book if you were able to know the identity of the interviewer because it would allow you to connect with another character in the book.

Another upside to reading World War Z is you were always on your toes. You never knew when a zombie was going to burst through the door and kill everyone.  I compared World War Z to a firework because you are always waiting for it to explode but you never know when it’s going to happen. One of the most intense parts of the books is when an aircraft pilot crashes her plane over a white zone, a zone where a significant amount of zombies are located at. While the rest of crew dies, she is able to escape. She has no food and a minimum amount of ammo for her gun. She has to survive in an area where there are millions of zombies until someone can rescue her. Without scenes like this, World War Z would be a very bland book.  If I was to critic one part of the story, it would be that they should use less weapon system names. In the book they used names like SAW and JSOW which got very confusing.

There are many overarching themes to World War Z but the most important is the idea of the human race banding together to fight off the zombie plague. During the course of the book, people begin to help each other and give each other resources. At the beginning of the book, it was every-man-for-themselves.  Another theme that was important to the book is to never give up under any circumstances. Even though the zombies were always around trying to kill you, you never give up. One of the best quotes to explain this is “She told me to be careful. I crouched; I jumped, and cracked my ankle on a submerged rock.” Even though she got injured, she never gave up and kept running.

This book was one of the best books I ever read. Since it was an oral history of the war, you got to see all of the angles of the war. You also got to connect with hundreds of different characters. Out of 10 stars I would give World War Z a 9 and a half stars. If you like books like The Zombie Survival Guide and TV shows like The Walking Dead you should read World War Z. Also if you like horror and suspense, World War Z would be a book for you.

Book 2 Trailer

Book Talk

Truth in Memoir

I think that a non-fiction book has to be somewhat true. The whole point of a non-fiction book is to be a true story but if you stretch the truth a little it wouldn’t hurt. The most that you should be able to lie in a non-fiction is 5% of the whole book. I think that 5% of a book is not significant and it won’t change the outcome. On the other hand, you shouldn’t be able to lie about big details like killing someone or marrying a fake person. Those details can change the book in a big way.

 I don’t think that half true books are good because you are changing half of what actually happened. If you are making a half true book then it shouldn’t be called a non-fiction book. I think that what Mortenson did was ok because he only change how many schools he built. On the other hand what Frey did is not acceptable. He changed his involvement in the death of two high schooler’s and his rehab from drugs. His book should have been a fiction story not a non-fiction.

I don’t agree with David Shields because as a reader I need a group of books that are similar in style. I hate when I sit down to read a book and realize it’s a historical fiction and I wanted to read a fantasy. Without those guild lines, people wouldn’t be able to find books that they have interests in easily. They would have to sit down and read the first ten pages which can take a long time. It would be very inconvenient to sit down and read a book just to find out you don’t like it.

Adapting The Da Vinci Code

If you try and adapt The Da Vinci Code into a movie, you will run into many problems. You will have to keep the heart-pounding action while having the suspense that makes the book so great. One of the scenes that you must keep in order to make the movie great is the killing of Jacques Sauniere. In this scene a mystery man is inside of the Louvre Museum in Paris trying to find Jacques. Little do people know that Jacques is one of the last protectors of a very important secret. Jacques is shot by the mystery man and is left to die. He has no escape and nobody to tell his secret. So he decides to leave a series of clues so that his secret is not lost forever. This is an important scene because its the beggining of the book and it sets the stage for the rest of the book. If the beginning is bad then people will assume that the whole book is going to be bad. This is also the beginning of the main storyline. In this scene Jacques leaves clues for Sophie and Robert so they can keep his secret safe. Another scene you would have to have in the movie is when Robert and Sophie try to escape the Louvre Museum.  This is important because this is the beginning of Sophie and Robert's friensdship. They have to work together to unlock the secret behind the the clues and escape the Louvre. The reason thst they have to escape the Louvre is Robert is the prime suspect of the mureder of Jacques. Sophie is a cryptologist with the french polica and believe Robert is innocent. The last scene that the must put into the movie is when they find out the Theabing is the Teacher. Throughout the book Teabing had been helping Robert and Sophie search for the Grail. Nobody whould have thought that Teabing would betray Robert and Sophie like that. It was completely unexpected.

Two things that you could cut from the movie are the two minor characters, Remy and the Bishop. You wouldnt need Remy because all he does is help Teabing get around and eventually gets murdered. In the book he helps Silas escape from Robert and Sophie but eventually Silas and Remy both get murdered. You wouldnt need the Bishop because he doesnt do anything until the end of the book. All he does it murder Remy and take orders from the Teacher (Teabing).

Locked in Room

Locked inside
 

When you think of the book Room, what do you think of? Jack? Old Nick? The first thing most people think of is the Room. Now there’s a way for fans of the book to experience life in a small, cramped room. Now in this limited time camp, you can be locked in a room, identical to the one in the book, for 3 days. You would be provided food and water while you are in Room. You will be able to experience the pain and anguish that the characters had to live through for 7 years. You can also go and visit the hospital where Jack and Ma were kept once they escaped. While at the hospital, you can see where Jack and Ma slept and where they ate. This is a great way to connct with the events and characters in the book. By visiting these areas, you can get a sense of the danger Jack and Ma were in throughout the whole book.

            Origin of the idea

In the book Room by Emma Donoghue, a woman is kidnapped and held in a shed that had been modified to be a prison cell. The walls are unbreakable. The door has a four digit code that only Old Nick, the person that kidnapped her, knows. Even the skylight is made out a material that couldn’t be broke even with a bomb. The woman gets raped by Old Nick almost every night. She later finds out that she is pregnant. Old Nick dosen’t want to risk her running away, so they have the baby in the room. She names the baby boy Jack. Every Sunday, Jack and Ma can ask for a treat called the Sundaytreat. Old Nick provides them with food, but if they want something like candy, they have to ask for it on Sunday. They only get one treat per week. For example, when Jack turned five they asked for five candles for their Sunday treat.  Jack said “You should ask for candles for Sundaytreat” (Page 21). Some mornings when Jack wakes up, Ma stays in bed all day. Jack calls this being “away”. Ma  does this when things are getting stressful in Room. Could you imagine being locked in a Room with a five year old and not knowing how you are going to survive the next day? People think their day’s are stressful! As the weeks keep on going, Jack starts to get more curious about Room. He starts asking questions about how they got there and who Old Nick is. Ma has to answer these questions but some of them she doesn’t have an answer for. After a while Ma gets tired of answering questions about the Outside and decides to try and escape. Their plan is simple, pretend Jack is dead and wrap him up in the carpet so Old Nick dosen’t see he is really alive. Jack has some reservations about this. He says “ Let’s do this tommorow” (page 91). He was worried that Old Nick would find out he is faking and would hurt him and Ma. As the car slowed down, Jack made a run for it. He unwrapped himself and jumped out of the truck. Old Nick saw him and started to run after him. Jack saw a man walking his dog and immedualy ran to him. If it wasn’t for that man, Old Nick would have caught him and took him back to Room. When the police finally found the room, they got Ma and took them to the Police Station. After the police station they went to a hospital, where they got treatment for their cuts and emotional abuse. As the day’s continue, Jack learns the hardships of being in the outside world. He dosen’t understand what boundries are so he does some crazy things.When Jack and his grandma are shopping, Jack recognizes a book he had in Room. He puts it in his backpack and walks out of the store. The alarms go off and they take the book out of his backpack. He gets upset because he thinks the book was his. After a while in the hospital, Jack and Ma get their own apartment with assisted living because they aren’t ready to live by themselves just yet. The book ends on a good note when Jack and Ma get their apartment and start living a normal life.

The Connection

I think this a great idea because it allows people who haven’t gone throught this, which hopefully is no one, to see what its like to be trapped in a room. When I read this book I could imagine this happening, but I couldn’t imagine what it wold be like for me. It also lets people get a better understnading of the suroundings Jack and Ma were in. You can actually see the cork tile floors. You can actually see the indestructible skylight. You can actually see the door with the four didgit code. Without this experience, you wouldn’t be able to have a full undestanding of what it was like. Also by adding the hospital to the mix, you can see where Jack and Ma got help for their physical and mental problems.

 My ideas for Room