Writing II: Blog Post 6

I'm currently still reading "The Heart of Everything That Is", the story of the Sioux war against the US. I must say I'm very impressed with the sheer level of detail in this book. The amounts of first hand accounts, primary sources and direct quotes is astounding. I cannot even imagine the number of hours it must have taken to track this all down. Where would one even look to find quotes from Red Cloud? Seriously, this is the most impressive history book I've ever read. But anyways, this book is not only interesting but also wildly entertaining. One thing that you have to be conscious of when studying history is where the bias is located. In the case of this book, the sympathy of the writer's definitely lies with the Native Americans, particularly the Sioux. While both sides did awful things to one another in the war, such as mutilation, murder, rape and so on, It always seems more barbaric when the white men do it, and more "justified" when the Indians do it. Although this is understandable. While it is true that Indians killed settlers in gruesome ways, white settlers were invaders, backed by a government that kept no promises and allowed slaughter of Indians to go unchecked. Neither side had clean hands,  it was a total war, with no bystanders in the west. So yeah, it is horrible to read about the killing of children, Indian or white, but I suppose if you ever read this book it's important not to blame these deaths on those who fought, but on centuries on ignorance concerning Indians and other cultures under European influence. Either way, this book is only getting better the more I read, and right now the actual huge war is about to begin so if you'll excuse me I'm off to read.

Writing II: Blog Post 5

I finished "The Road" several days ago and I have to say I loved it. That might be a bad sign, considering it was a brutally dark and depressing book. But my own sociopathic tendencies aside, it really was a great book. It was the epitome of a gripping survival adventure and despite all the hardships and horror, the ending was somewhat hopeful. Either way, really epic story, and for once the movie of it actually followed the book (*cough *cough *hobbit *cough). Now I have started my new book, "The Heart of Everything That Is", which is a biography of a Native American Red Cloud, who led the Sioux and various other Indian people in the only winning war against the US. This book is actually really awesome, especially for a history work. If you have ever read a history textbook, you know how dry they can be, but this book is so in depth and well-flowing that it feels like a novel. Not to mention that it is just plain interesting. The authors, Bob Drury and Tom Clavin, do a great job of creating a scene, especially at the Indian gatherings and raids. It must have been incredibly difficult to track down all this information, and I can't imagine how long it took to verify everything in the book. The bibliography is about 10 pages long, so these guys must really love history. Aside from just being an interesting story, I find it fascinating since I am planning on majoring in history in college so this type of writing might be appealing to me, so getting an idea of how historians write is probably a good idea. One thing I have noticed in the book, and perhaps it helps to keep the reader entertained, is that although I am only on page 67, there have to have already been a dozen references to torture and graphic killings by the Sioux people. I understand that the Sioux people were warriors, and in Great Plains Indian culture torture killings were common (as stated in the book), but I feel like any book that needs to mention the removal of a man's reproductive organ and subsequent replacement in his mouth to cause suffocation more than twice may be pandering to the side of readers that love good old fashion violence and death. And lets be honest, almost everyone loves violence, human nature is naturally drawn to watching it. For real, I'd totally watch gladiator battles if we had them today, millions of people would. Anyways, so far my new book is also great, and I'm quite enjoying it.

Writing II: Blog Post 4

This week I finally finished "Plague Dogs" and I have to say, the last 50 pages made the book. There was a giant plot twist right at the end that completely changed how I read the book. It had really seemed that it was building up to a sad and brutal climax, and I was sure there was no chance of a happy ending, but let's just say I was shocked at what happened. I was disappointed at how long it took me to read this book, as I'm am usually a much more dedicated and speedy reader. I blame about 90% of it on Senioritis however. Anyways, overall I give "Plague Dogs" an 8.5/10. It was a compelling story with a deeper undertone that did not compromise the actual adventure, and the ending was satisfying and complete. The only lacking point of the book was the occasionally confusing dialogue, which sometimes made the reading hard to follow or slower. But that doesn't change the fact that this was an excellent book. Today I started my new book, "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. "The Road" is a book set in a desolate post-apocalyptic world and follows the struggles of a travelling father and son. In terms of powerful books, I know this one will be a winner, and I'm only 25 pages in. I did see the movie adaptation of the book, which I also found incredibly powerful and shocking. I would recommend the movie and surely the book as well, but only to those who can handle brutality and some horror. Both the book and the movie deal with the violent side of humanity. One interesting thing I have already noticed is that McCarthy does not use quotations for speech and doesn't always start a new paragraph when a character says something. It seems to make the whole novel flow better, while decreasing the importance of the father and son's words. Also I noticed that in both the movie and the book, neither the boy nor the man had names, they are referred to as the father and the son. So far I think "The Road" is acting as a narrator's stream of thought while following the struggle of two lone, "good" souls in the end of the world. The narrator seems aloof and distant, unconcerned and with no tone, simply relaying all that happens. I'm very excited to continue into this book, and hopefully I'll zoom right through it.

Writing II: Blog Post 3

I am still reading "The Plague Dogs" and I know that I need to finish it up soon because I usually don’t take this long to read a book. It has really been a busy couple of months for me and I’m getting pretty lazy to boot (currently writing this at 11:22 pm). But the book has gotten very good now, yet I do have one or two persisting issues. Firstly, I am bothered by the thick Scottish accents of various characters and one fox, which make reading very slow and hard. I understand the whole relevance and necessity of adding an accent but sometimes it’s just too hard to read. Also I find that because of this every character with an accent sounds exactly the same in my head, whereas I usually create accents or voices for each character. My other issue is that Rowf, the main dog in the book, seems to have had little to no character development or progress. The book is focused on the other dog, Snitter, but Rowf has had no change. He just seems to stay a big aggressive, dumb dog, kind of like my dog expect without the aggression. But at any rate, the plot of the book has picked up quite a bit, as the dogs are now actually being hunted. There is also an interesting case going on with a reporter, and I have discovered why the title is “The Plague Dogs”. Let’s just say someone discovered something about a deadly disease being used at the Research Facility the dogs escaped from. I also really enjoy the fox that travels with him, despite his annoying accent. He is just too funny, constantly making jokes and swearing and saying “Oi canny lad” and such. He’s just an enjoyable jerk. Along with this, Snitter is a very peculiar character and very interesting. The brain surgery he had while captive really affects his progression as a character. At first I kind of hated his random dialogue and odd gibberish but further into the story it makes a lot of sense, but there will be no spoilers on this because you should read this book. However, if you had to choose between this and “Watership Down”, also by Richard Adams, I would say choose the latter, it is much easier to follow and is more compelling, plus the language is much more inviting. Honestly though, you should check out one of these books.

Writing II: Blog Post 2

So far I haven't read very much more into "Plague Dogs". I have a busy past few days and only managed about 70 more pages of reading. I still enjoy the book very much, but finding time to read has been difficult. I am anxious to continue though, as the book's pace has increased and it is getting quite interesting. I don't want to go into too much detail because this is a book people should definitely read so I don't want to spoil anything. One warning I would give about this book, however, is its language. Adams is after all, a British writer, so his writing style tends to be more complex than that of most American writers. Also, this book was written in the 70's, so some language is also outdated. This does make the reading somewhat confusing, and several times I have to actually look up a word. One time I  had to look up the word "tod" because I had no clue it meant a fox, then had a pleasantly nostalgic memory of the Disney movie "The Fox and the Hound" from my childhood, where the fox was named Tod. By the way, really great Disney movie, you have to watch it, to some extent it is actually a lot like the part of "Plague Dogs" I am reading right now. Anyways, the language in this book can make the reading much slower and sometimes laborious, but it is worth slogging through the occasional J. R. R. Tolkien-esque multiple page description of a flower or something to get to the main point that this book is about some baller doggies. At any rate, this week I will actually have to take a brief break from "Plague Dogs" to read all the Paperclip submissions that we have collected in preparation for creating our magazine. We have even more submissions than last year I'm happy to say, and now comes the long process of reading the 100 odd pieces. I've found in past years that usually about 75% of submissions are either good and contain genuine effort in them. But of course there are always plenty of "I submitted some bullshit because it was either a class requirement or my teacher said I could extra credit so here's like three haiku's on a page, give me my 10 points". Luckily, though, a quick look at the work showed no haiku's, so I'm a little relieved. I always do enjoy reading the work sent to us, though, as it shows me how many talented and dedicated writers there are in ETHS, a very relieving feeling when you think about the intelligent things you hear in the hallways (i.e. "bro my DJing career is totally about to takeoff, I was doing mixes at the (insert fake club here)"). At any rate, "Plague Dogs" is still going to strong, but it's slow reading. For the next week or so, however, I get to enjoy the variety of poems and short stories written by the students of ETHS.

Writing II Blog Post 1

The book I am currently reading is called "The Plague Dogs" by Richard Adams, who also wrote two other books I have read, "Watership Down" and "Tales from Watership Down". The basic premise of this story is two dogs, Rowf and Snitter, escape from an animal testing facility and must try to find a new home. I have read about 120 pages of this book and I do enjoy it very much so far. My only complaint is that Snitter, the victim of some brain surgery experiment, talks way too much nonsense in the story that it is difficult to follow what he is trying to say. That aside though, this book combines two of my favorite styles of fiction, Adventure/Questing and animal personification. I always enjoy a good adventure novel but more importantly, my favorite type of fiction books (besides apocalypse stories) are ones that have animals as protagonists. Some of my favorite writers who have done this include Erin Hunter ("Warriors"), Jack London ("Into the Wild" and "Whitefang"), and Brian Jacques ("Redwall"). For whatever reason I think animals make better characters than people. Speaking of which I really ought to reread some of the "Warriors" books, I haven't read any in years and they were some awesome books about bad-ass cats fighting each other. Anyways so far this book is pretty good, but I'm expecting the pace to pick up soon because it has gotten somewhat slow. The weird thing about Adams as a writer is that he doesn't seem to have a consistent style from book to book. "Watership Down" was definitely his best work, with a smooth flow to his writing and good consistency between characters. In "Tales from Watership Down", written 20 years later as a string of short stories concerning the same characters from the first book, I was shocked at how different and inconsistent everything was. Characters behaved differently, talked differently, and the writing altogether seemed different and less thought out. I still enjoyed the stories but was a bit disappointed by the decline in effort. "the Plague Dogs" seems to be reasonable in terms of perceived effort, but it just doesn't seem like the same author wrote it. I'm not sure what the deal with Adams style is, but it's not too big of a deal, it just bothers me for some reason. Either way, so far this book has been a solid read. I always wanted to try writing one of these animal protagonist books just for fun, but it's actually much harder than it seems. The most difficult part I would say, and something Adams does incredibly well, is to explain the world from the point of view of the animal, and expressing how they might perceive things that are normal to humans, such as cars, weather, cities and so on. Despite the inconsistencies in his writing, I have enjoyed all the work of Adams and "The Plague Dogs" only reaffirms this.

Blog Post 6

The book I am currently reading is called "Jack London Stories". It is a collection of many of the works of Jack London, an author famous for his stories concerning the Yukon Gold Rush of the late 1800s. The first story I am reading is called "Into the Wild". It is one of his longer stories in the book. It is set in the point of view of a dog named Buck, who was abducted from his home in Santa Clara Valley, California and brought to the north to work as a sled dog. This story reminds me of "Watership Down", the book that I read about a month ago that personified rabbits. In this case, it is a dog that is personified. When I wrote a blog post about "Watership Down", I think I may have actually compared it to this story by mistake. I realized that Jack London has written two similar books. "Into the Wild" is about a pet dog that becomes a wolf, while the one I have read before, "White Fang" is about a wolf that becomes domesticated. I was confused when I first started reading this book because it seemed familiar, I had to check Wikipedia before I realized that I had read "White Fang" and this story was like its reversed image. That said, It should make this book even more fun to finish since I have an idea about where it is going. As I have said, books that personify animals, while considered perhaps immature to some, are in fact my favorite books to read as I like animals infinitely more than people. At any rate, so far "Into the Wild" is hugely enjoyable to read. Buck is personified like a normal, although extremely intelligent, dog. He isn't given thoughts in the human sense. That is to say, he doesn't speak or communicate or talk as human characters might. Rather, the narrator of the story describes his feelings and thoughts to the reader, although they are not necessarily understood by Buck himself. That really does seem confusing but trust me, it's cool. Right now I'm about half way through this first story, then there are dozens of other short stories and another long one in London's book. I have enjoyed other works by Jack London and am currently enjoying "Into the Wild", so I have high expectations for the rest of his stories to come.