2nd Trimester Blog Reflection

One thing that I have learned this trimester is that I can be a great writer I really try. I learned a lot about myself and me as a writer. I have definitely grown as a more analytical writer this trimester thanks to the weekly blog posts.

One thing that definitely helped me to find some of the books that I read during this trimester is Goodreads. This site was a great help for me to look at some of the books that other people find interesting and their thoughts and ratings of the book. When I had some free time, I would go on Goodreads and look at some of the books that people rated as a 4 or a 5. And these are some of the books that I had enjoyed most throughout the trimester.

Some strengths that I had with blogging include summarizing, reviewing, and evaluating a given text. I was able to read a certain text and come up with my own summary of the text. I was also able pick out some important lines or pieces of text from a book and talk about it and also talk about how that line or piece of text relates back to the book as a whole. From one of my blog posts called Most Important Line from Chapter: Love. I created this blog post when I was reading the book Incantation by Alice Hoffman. I was able to pick out a line from one chapter and relate back to the chapter as a whole and the book as a whole as well.

One thing that I struggled with through this experience is being able to connect the text to anything else. I found it difficult to make connections with the text. I was able to make the connections while I was reading but I found it difficult to put my connections into words. I overcame or worked through this struggle by jotting down notes when I made a connection with the text. I would later use these notes to create a well-rounded blog post.

            The quality of my writing has definitely improved over the course of the trimester. My first blog post was the summer reading assignment blog post. I had the read the book Have a Nice Day by Julie Halpern. In this blog post, I mostly just summarize the book and I don’t take a closer look at the smaller details in the book. Towards the end of the trimester, I posted a post called Maximum Ride-School’s Out Forever Book Review. In this post, I talk about the summary of the book, the type of audience for this book, what I would rate the book and the writing styles that the author used when writing the book. I feel like I have definitely provided more information of the book and my thoughts about the book as well compared to the blog post at the beginning of the trimester.

            I really enjoyed blogging and independently reading this trimester. This opportunity allowed me to read a lot more than I would have without having to do the blog posts. I am definitely looking forward to reading a lot more and blogging next trimester for the English 1B class.

The Kite Runner

I started reading a new book called The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I had first heard this book from a friend, who really enjoyed to plot of the story and how well the book was written overall. This book takes place in Afghanistan.
When people first hear the country name, Afghanistan. They usually think of a place where there are many wars. They also have that stereotypical mind set that if they cross the borders of Afghanistan that they might get killed and might not return back again. I wanted to read this book because, I know it would be much more different than the usual stereotypes.

According to the New York Times Book Review, "This powerful first novel tells a story of fierce cruelty and fierce yet redeeming love. Both transform the life of Amir, Khaled Hosseini's privileged young narrator, who comes of age during the last peaceful days of the monarchy, just before his country's revolution and its invasion by Russian forces. But political events, even as dramatic as the ones that are presented in The Kite Runner, are only a part of this story. In the Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini gives us a vivid  and engaging story that remind us how long his people have been struggling to triumph over the forces of violence-forces that continue to threaten them even today."

I really look forward to reading this book!

Nevermore by James Patterson Vocabulary

I am still in the process of reading the book, Nevermore by James Patterson. I want to dedicate this post to carefully examine the type of vocabulary that is used in this book so far. James Patterson used a great variety of vocabulary to enhance the writing and his style of writing as well. Reading this book, has definitely allowed me to recognized the different types of sentence structures that I can apply to improve my own writing as well.

For example, "The news anchor peered out at me with grave accusation. Yep, felt like a Monday." Words such as, "peered" and "accusation" definitely bring a different perspective to the story. Not only does the author use a great variety of vocabulary but he also incorporates some figurative language. He is comparing the news anchor staring out from the T.V which, makes him realize that it definitely feels like a Monday morning.

Another example, "When the image was crystal clear and the monotonous beeping had ceased, he cocked his head, listening to the talking head deliver the morning doom with unbeatable pep." The author uses words such as "monotonous". I also noticed how the author uses one word to describe something that he could have written in two or more words. How shows the readers a tip that "less is more".