Final Review

Book Review

Faryaal Zindani

Water for Elephants

By: Sarah Gruen

Angle 1:    

                Water for Elephants is a novel about a young man named Jacob on a quest to find where he belongs in life. He reaches a circus, where he finds a beautiful women named, Marlena married to a man named August. The story is about the struggles the two go through to be together and how true love will never give up.

                Jacob Jankowski is a guy who went to an Ivy League school to become a veterinarian. The day of his exams he finds out his parents have died in a car crash. From then on he left his exams and came into the circus business where he met a girl named Marlena married to August, the manager of the circus. He starts to fall in love with Marlena and an elephant named Rosie. The two will do anything to be together and to save the animals including Rosie.

                The characters of the book; Jacob, Marlena, August, and Rosie all seemed to have something unique about them. Jacob will do anything he sets his mind to. Marlena is strong and has been through a lot in her life making her stand up for herself in any sort of situation. August can be the most charming person when everything is going right but he can be the most vicious, harmful and dangerous person when people don’t do things his way. An example of what happens when August gets the slightest bit angry is ““Did you catch the bull?” She’s back in the menagerie,” I say. “Good,” he says. He rips the bull hook from my hand. “I’m going to teach her a lesson,” he says without stopping. “But August! Wait! She was good! She came back on her own accord. Besides, you can’t do anything now. The show is still going!” After a long while he speaks. “Good. The band will drown out the noise.””(Gruen, 171) This example shows how cruel August can be at times when he’s off the show. Rosie is an elephant that has no idea how to be in a circus until she is spoken in German. Then she can do all kinds of tricks and stunts.

                The best scene in this novel is when August suspects Marlena and Jacob are together when at that point in the book they weren’t even together. I would say it was the climax of the book because the stage of the scene was so overly dramatic that it soon became serious. In this scene Marlena is trying to calm August down because he is so furious at Marlena and Jacob. ““Marlena steps right up to him. “ Auggie?” He looks at her. His nose twitches. Then he shoves her so violently she crashes back onto the overturned platters and food. He takes one long step forward, leans down, and tries to rip the necklace from her throat. The clasp holds, so he ends up dragging her by the neck as she screams.” (Gruen, 246). This quote explains how much anger August can put out on someone, even his own wife for something she hasn’t even done. The scene kept me on the edge of my seat because it was so surprising to see all of the anger a person can hold.

                The theme of the book in my opinion is never losing hope or you won’t be where you want to be in life. Meaning Jacob didn’t leave the circus no matter how badly he was treated, he stayed to be with Marlena and save the animals till he could no longer do it. I enjoyed the writing style it gave a lot of detail on what the scene is like. It made me feel like I was in Jacobs place going through what he went through. The novel in my opinion was okay. I liked it because of the writing style and the characters were well described. But I didn’t like how the book didn’t concentrate much on Rosie like the movie did. The book concentrated more on the love between Jacob and Marlena. I would critique this book on how well they portrayed the life in the circus, how well they described the characters and the animals, and what the main focus of the book was or should’ve been. Some strengths and weaknesses of the novel were; strengths, well written, made you feel like you were actually in the book. The book cover I believed was interesting, of a curtain and a man going through it. They didn’t over exaggerate the cover too much and they made it seem like an interesting book because people don’t know what is behind the cover. Weaknesses are they didn’t concentrate on Rosie as much as they did in the movie which made the book go a little slower and not as interesting.

I would give these book three out of five stars because in my opinion I enjoyed the movie a lot more than the book because of how well they portrayed Rosie and the conditions of the circus back in the olden days. I still thought the book was good because of all the details given to make you feel like you were actually in the book. I definitely had higher expectations for the book but not everything is what it seems to be like.

Top Five Book Presentation

Blog Post # 7

Faryaal Zindani

Blog Post #7

May 24th

                     

How true does a book have to be in your mind to be considered non-fiction?   Why?

A non-fiction book in my mind has to be mostly true at least 90% because if the other doesn’t exaggerate a little bit on some parts then people wouldn’t want to read it as much or just loose interest. I think the author shouldn’t lie about big events that happen in their book that will affect the entire book like James Fray did in A Million Little Pieces; he took the main events in his life and made it into something that wasn’t exactly true, which impacted the book greatly. There should be a certain extent/amount of what authors can write about of their life to become a memoir.

Are half-truths okay if it’s still a good story? Does it matter if Frey or Mortenson bent the truth to tell their stories?

I don’t think half-truths are okay even if it’s still a great story because those types of authors like Frey or Mortenson make the readers believe that their whole book is true until people actually go and research and see that it’s not which becomes disappointing to some of the readers. Frey and Mortenson had great books until we found some of it wasn’t true. If authors write books that are overly exaggerated from the truth like in Frey’s book, then they should write on the book that it was based off a true story. That way Frey wouldn’t get blamed about not having the book entirely non-fiction.

Is David Shields right?  Do we need lines between genres—do we need to label something fiction or non-fiction?  Why does it matter?

 I think David Shields is wrong. It’s important to have lines between genres because people should know when a book is true and when it is not. Lines between genres is important because some people just want to read non-fiction because they might think that it is more interesting and some people just enjoy fiction. If there was no way to tell whether a book was true in the past about let’s say the holocaust, then how would the people of today know what it was like?

Blog Post # 6

Faryaal Zindani

Is there a difference between literary and popular commercial/genre fiction in your mind?

In my mind when I think of a literary book I end up thinking about something boring or uninteresting. When I think about popular genre fiction books then the books like Twilight or Harry Potter, basically any popular trending book comes up in my mind. The teachers/schools put a negative image in our mind about what literary books really are, by making us annotate every page and read a certain amount of pages by a certain time period makes us not wanting to enjoy the book and makes us more uninterested.  When I read a popular genre book outside of school I don’t have to keep stopping to write things down which makes me go more into the book. Jodi Picoult, states how she doesn’t think readers have to choose between literary and commercial fiction, I would agree with that statement because if a person likes to read literary fiction more than they should be able to, same goes with people who like popular genre fictions.

If Gallagher’s argument is true in Readicide, should we continue to teach literary fiction so exclusively?

We should not teach literary fiction so exclusively because that’s going to make the future generations not want to read much, or for those matters just stop reading. People are already starting to hate reading because of the schools book choices so why keep teaching literary fiction so exclusively. I agree with Gallagher’s argument that schools should teach half literary fiction books and half popular genre books because if students start reading books they like it will keep them more enthralled in reading a book and possibly make more people want to start reading again because they forgot the feel of what books were like.

Book two project

Blog Post #4

Dear John
By: Nicholas Sparks

Adapting your book: Some specific challenges a filmmaker would make adapting my book to a movie are to show two sides of the story like John in the military and Savannah in college. It would be hard to keep on switching back and forth in-between the two because the more than half of the book they are away from each other, so the filmmakers would have to keep the audience going. The movie did a good job with how they showed two sides of the story because it wasn’t boring and it kept the audience going.

Three specific Scenes: Specific scenes that are essential to keep in the movie from the book would be the ending because if they changed the ending then the movie wouldn’t have the same message as the book and it’s important to keep the same idea going through the movie. The way the two characters met in the book because it’s how John met Tim and all the main people in Savannahs life. Then how the two characters wrote letters to one another because without that the title of the book wouldn’t mean the same thing.

Two specific Parts: Parts the filmmakers would have to cut from the book would be every year the main characters met because after a while people would start getting bored and they would bored and they would just want to get to the end to see what will happen. The other one would be a part is when John meets Savannahs family. They should cut that out because there are so many more important scenes the movie has to capture and this scene one isn’t very essential for the book or the movie it wouldn’t change anything.

~Faryaal Zindani

Book 1 Project

Book 1 Project

Along for the Ride

By: Sarah Dessen

Faryaal Zindani

Bell: 3

My idea?

The book I read for book one is Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen. The book is about a summer romance between two characters. A big part of the book includes a bike shop. My idea is to remodel the bike shop because it has a big impact in the book. The bike shop will contain names and quotes on the wall that give the visitors an idea about what the book is about and become more interested in it. The bike shop played a big role in the book because the two main characters (Auden and Eli) spent a lot of time there. It will also include a model of a bike that the two characters rode in the book and the bike on the cover of the book.

3 Quotes?

The bike shop is the place where Eli works, he is also a pro biker but quit recently because of his best friend’s death. In support of that they named the bike shop Abe’s Bikes. “Abe’s Bikes,” I read off the front. “It does have a nice ring to it.” “Don’t you think?” she replied, sticking her head over the edge to look down a t me again. “He’s freaking out that everything has to be perfect for the reopening.” In that quote, Maggie (Auden’s friend) is telling her how they finally renamed the bike shop, and how it is the perfect name because it shows that Eli is growing over his friends Abe’s death and moving on in his life.

In the book Eli doesn’t like talking to people because he is still going through his best friend’s death, in the following quote you will notice how he only likes working in the bike shop and Auden starts to like him. “I was still watching Eli, though, as he bent over the pink bike, adjusting one of the pedals.  “Like I said”, he was saying, “This is a really good starter bike.”  “She wants to learn”, her mom was saying running a hand over her daughters head.” (pg. 240) In the quote you can see that Eli values his bike shop and Auden is starting to notice him a lot more and possibly like him.

Towards the end of the book Auden tries to learn how to ride a bike to prove to Eli that she can if she wanted to.  She practices everyday by the bike store and eventually goes in to buy a bike one day.   “Bike?” Leah said. “What does a bike have to do with any of this?” “I just bought one,” I told her. “Because she also just learned how to ride one,” Maggie explained. “I’ve been teaching her every morning on the sly. She never knew before.” (pg.354) the previous quote explains how Auden has been working hard to ride a bike for a long time to make her and Eli’s relationship closer.

How will it work?

As you can see the Bike shop plays a big role in the book for multiple reasons. My idea will work because if people visit the model of the bike shop they will know more about the book, become more interested in it, and possibly aware more people about it. This idea will allow and encourage people who are already fans of the book to stay connected because when the people who have already read the book will reminisce about how good the book was and notice all the things they read in the book and how it relates so well to the bike shop. If people keep on going to the bike shop then other people who haven’t read the book will read it and take a visit to the bike shop.