Post #6

Post #6: Why A Clockwork Orange shouldn't be considered a classic 

 By, Alex Testerman

1. Plot Line: The plot line of A Clockwork orange is that a 15 year old boy who is part of a violent gang in future England cause havoc on the streets as the rape and beat innocent people. But one faithful day when the gang was attacking a woman, Alex, the main character, was left behind. He was later arrested and found that the woman had died from his injuries and that Alex would be in prison for 14 years. The story transitions between his violent younger years, him in prison and being mentally experimented on to where any form of violence would make him awfully sick, and his years after prison in a downward spiral of suicidal thoughts and trying to live a normal life. The plot gets so confusing throughout with the plot lines changing and the period of time never being explained so the reader is confused. The novel is very scattered and has a lot of unnecessary twist and turns that make it even harder to figure out what is happening.

2. Vocabulary: This book is narrated by Alex, and he has a, with a lack of a better word “Different” way of speaking. Not only does he use different words from the England side of English instead of American English, they also use a made up language to talk to one another in this slang. At times it is impossible to figure out what Alex is trying to say and it really pulled me out of the book on numerous occasions. It at times can be charming because it is a twist on the way the story is told rather than it being explained but there are too many unexplained words and phrases that really lost me at parts especially with the dialogue.

3. Alex himself: Alex has a growing period where he goes from being a violent and sick kid to a strange adult because of prison and brainwashing. Alex is such a hard character to like and or dislike because you dislike him as a villain at the beginning because of all his and his gangs random acts of violence to watching him rot in his own crazy mind and not feeling bad for him what so ever. He is just hard to relate to because I’m not a murderous criminal. There are also no other characters from other books that I know of that I can relate him to. He is kind of like The Joker from Batman at the beginning of the novel with his sick and twisted acts and cunning personality but at the end he is this strange reclusive man who has nothing. The only thing I can really give Alex is that he is a very original character as he develops.

4. The Movie: Now the movie on the other hand is outstanding. This was made to be into a movie with all the characters and scenes that you have trouble picturing in your mind while you read the book but with the movie the whole book started to make so much more sense. The acting for a 1960’s film is wonderful and it really has that dark presence throughout the whole film with little elements of comic relief throughout. In my own personal opinion, I would say that the movie should be considered a classic and the book be something attached to the film as an extra for huge fans of the movie or those who would like to see how confused you can get while reading. Skip the book and watch the movie is what I think personally.

Post 5: My thoughts

          In my mind I think that a nonfiction piece of writing needs to be as truthful as you can make it, when I say this I mean that you shouldn't lie knowing that you are lying but there are some things we don’t know for certain, so we have to fill in the gap. There is a large difference between filling in gaps because you don’t know, and lying. When you lie, you know what you are doing and you are disgracing the name of nonfiction by knowing what you are doing is wrong but still acting like it is true with the case of James Frye “Bending the truth”. As Seth Greenland stated “You shouldn't lie… That the Greenland rule, don’t lie.” And he is saying this in response to when, in his novel A Million Little Pieces that he had a stint in prison for 6 months but in reality he only stayed a could hours and this really shows that a lie or stretching of the truth once discovered ruins the immersion of the book and pulls the reader out. Ultimately I think that you can fill in gaps for information that you don’t know or stretch the truth, but only if you state somewhere in your piece that this is 100% true or you didn't know all the information and had to fill in gaps. Aimee Bender stated that “It’s all about playing with from” when talking about how nonfiction is changing and she also says “Which is exciting for all writers.” So this shows to me at least that maybe people will grow accustom to stretching of the truth and that is what will be called nonfiction; But for right now I think that nonfiction should be as close to true as humanly possible and lying about events to add drama should stay with fiction pieces. 

Post 3: Book 1 Project

Alex Testerman, Big Book Blog, Post 3

Book 1 Project:

            My idea for extending the fans ability to interact with the novel would create a scavenger hunt board game, which the scavenger hunt is like the one created by Amy to her husband and main character Nick.

            This idea stems from the scavenger hunt that Amy creates for Nick every year for their wedding anniversary which sends Nick across New York following the clues that lead him to other clues. This idea of the scavenger hunt from Amy is used later in the book for a different reason but it would spoil the novel. Nick can never find out the clues every year that he tries “It is a do-it-yourself era: health care, real estate, police investigation. Go online and figure it out for yourself because everyone’s overworked and understaffed.” This is what said by Amy defending her husbands’ inability to solve the puzzle instead of thinking that “he doesn’t love her as much”.For the reader this scavenger hunt would come with a collectors additions of the novel which comes with the novel and a set of clues that have cryptic descriptions of the places and events that happen throughout the book. These clues and scavenger hunt would be set up as a game between other fans/readers of the where there will be a place, quote, or event and you have to guess what happens during that crucial event in the book, who says a certain quote, or what the place listed on and once you get an answer correct, you move a space on the game board and get closer to the final square which will read “AMY!”  Meaning the goal is to find Amy first at the end of the board. The quote from Amy saying “My mother had always told her kids: if you're about to do something, and you want to know if it's a bad idea, imagine seeing it printed in the paper for all the world to see.” This is when she is creating the second Scavenger hunt later in the novel and she doesn’t know if she wants to send it to Nick which ends up being a very critical point in the novel. Also said by Amy, “The worst feeling: when you just have to wait and prepare yourself for the lie.” Which is when Nick would tell Amy a list of different things while he thinks she doesn’t know he is lying but she obviously does, another crucial point which all can be used as the clues.

            I think this idea will work because it allows the readers who want more to not only re-live important moments from the book but also have new clues to look and think about which get these fans to double take an opinion on a character or the novel itself. Also and interactive board game where you go over the plot twists and deep quotes spoken but Nick and Amy throughout the novel. This idea allows/ encourages people who are already fans of the book to stay connected the book itself and with the author is the ability to put the readers into certain situations with the clues and answer a scenario the way they would think which can give them ideas about the novel or even some new takes on things that the fans haven’t noticed before when reading the piece. Also this game adds competition among fans to prove who is the bigger fan of Gone Girl which can cause others who do not do well in the game is to buy their own copies and becoming bigger fans of the series and spreading the game and book around to others, making the book more and more popular.

Post 2: What is a book?

Big Book Blog by, Alex Testerman

 

What is a book?

A book is a world. It is an entire planet of all new ideas and people in the palm of your hand, each page unleashing something new into your mind that can ultimately change how you perceive things in your day to day life. Having the paper world in your hand adds extra excitement to the novel before you even open to the first page, the mystery of the novel and the only knowledge you have is the cover that you can look at over and over again to try and see how it incorporates to the novels story.

 

As stated by Tom Piazza in his self-interview when asked about ebooks he says “They are strictly vehicles; you pick them us to step through them into some consensus reality.” And I couldn’t agree more. An ebook doesn’t have the same tender feel and physical touch a book has. A book shows how much work an author put into it because you can see its size and really see all that they put into it. With the ebook you get a soulless machine that doesn’t give you the picture of all the hard work the author puts into their novels. 

A book can be a physical thing in your hands where you can feel the paper between your fingers or bright text lit upon a ebook screen, either way it is still a story that an author put time and effort into to get it out to readers like us. Even though I said before that I prefer paper books rather than ebooks, a novel that is on an ebook is still the same story that you would read in a paper book, just electronic. I fear eventually that paper books will not be made anymore and ebooks will be the supplier for books, but you have to go with the times and adapt with the ever changing society.

 

  

Post 1: Why I read

Big Book Blog by Alex Testerman

This is The Big Book Blog and we read a large array of books and discuss them to all and the deeper meanings of all of them. Now, why I read is to see a different situations that I would probably not be able to get involved in in my life, a new reality. Reading allows your mind to think of different things and can also teach you important life lessons that will stick with you throughout your life. Reading also lets you escape to a new world that you may not be able to think of in your own imagination, places that have never been seen and new people to see. That is why I read and why I will always read until I can no longer.