Book Review

The book I choose to read is The Lion The Lamb The Hunted by Andrew E. Kaufman. Known author of While The Savage Sleeps, Kaufman changed his writing style from horror, to thriller. In this fast-paced book, Patrick Bannister stumbles upon a locket in his recently deceased mother’s belongings early on. He also finds a letter from his uncle, assuring her that the body will never be found. Confused beyond belief, he goes on a quest to Texas to try and clear the murky details of the disappearance of Nathan Kingsley, which he believes his mother and uncle have something to do with.

Not only is he alarmed at how quickly strangers become enemies, he finds that things just don’t add up. Teamed with CJ, a sharp reporter from Corvine, he sets out to clear the fog. Only then does he find out he’s in way over his head.

 

Labeled a psychological thriller, Kaufman dives into your skull and swirls your thoughts, until all you think about is what happened to that poor boy. "Andrew Kaufman has been hailed to be the next Stephen King.” says S.B. Niccum, the author of the Veiled series. Claimed to be better than Stephen King, he finds a way to fit all those horrors in only 261 pages. Quite different from Stephen King’s over 1,000 page horror It. The book is rather short, and seems to lack in the certain aspect of slowing down and allowing you to breath. Tumbling from fact to fact and jumping at every sound, Patrick and CJ sprint through, determined to finish first. In chapter 54, they get trapped by the murderer, given a brief history lesson which explains the entire story, and almost killed, all in seven pages. The plot thickens throughout, but still seems to be fast-forwarded.

While he goes as fast as possible, you still somehow managed to enjoy it as you learn about Patrick in unexpected flashbacks that shock you to the core. Never once do you question if it’s just his opinion that his mother is evil, you see in detail that she truly is. “There wasn’t enough dirt on this earth to bury that much evil.” Patrick states clearly on the first page, showing you how much her truly hated his mother. Not long until you see how truly abused he was as a child. She says clearly on page 19, “Because, Patrick…quite simply, you can be rather unlovable.” Those words alone would devastate any child, as well as torment them and cause them extreme problems. All of this happens to Patrick all through his childhood, eventually leading to her drugging him to put him to sleep, and then from him overdosing from the strain of living with his hateful mother. Kaufman truly shows you Patrick’s hurt without just saying “Patrick’s hurting.” He lets you into his mind and into his true thoughts as he has flashbacks to his childhood.

Though his novel is short and sweet, he finds a way to give you a story that most authors would span out over at least 400 pages. He tells you the story of a man trying to find the hidden secrets of a boy, while unraveling his life as he does. Throughout the beginning it seems almost boring as Patrick goes through his daily life as a reporter. But suddenly, as he does so, he sees that things are not what they seem. As the action begins to pick up, so does the storyline and so do the stakes. He begins to elude death with his partner CJ, and as they get closer, danger lingers nearer. Unfortunately, the ending has no real bang besides them missing sure death. Kaufman decided before he wrote the book to leave out all things relating to relationships, but if he did, why does CJ have to be a girl? The book ends quickly, with nothing showing that CJ and Patrick shouldn’t be dating, but soon you find out that they in fact are not. His relationship with CJ stays just a friendship, causing your heart to grow weary since there is no spark when there was from the very beginning.

He being new to the publishing world, Kaufman avoids the typical style of thrillers, and dives right in with his wording and writing style. Not just does he tell you a story, he gives you the idea that you are talking to Patrick and everyone else he meets throughout the book. He seems to be able to let you see people’s emotions directly, without paper being the secondhand man. However, while he has major power in his voice, his description seems almost lacking. This alarming detail proved true when he met countless people, and all you heard was their voice. From how great he was at dialogue, you would expect that he was going to be great at telling how everything and everyone looked, but you really only heard their voice and had to make a picture on your own. Also, for being a thriller, his story should involve maybe a fight, or a large chasing scene. While The Lion The Lamb The Hunted does have most of those, they ended in almost pages and really didn’t seem to affect his characters at all. They got shoved off the road and rolled down a huge ditch, only to go to the hospital and come out walking. He had death notes waiting in his bedroom, and all he ever did was stay there, until he knew who was coming to get him. Clawed in the chest and pourin

g blood, he still managed to switch the tracks of a conveyer belt and cause a man to fall through his death. Add a large bleeding wound to Van Willebrand Disease, he should have been dead in minutes since that disease causes your blood to not clot, meaning that a paper cut could take you to the hospital. All of these, yet they ended before they began.  Probably because of length, his book never got made into a movie. But there was a fan-made video that covers the plot better and in less time.

The Lion The Lamb The Hunted

Andrew E. Kaufman’s psychological thriller is a story similar to that of sheer titanium. Glossed, perfected, durable, yet still managing to have a slight crack on the side from the blowing wind. 4 out of 5 stars, The Lion The Lamb The Hunted is a book that is will keep you up during the darkest night.

Top 5

P.S. I do read real books, I just thought that my five favorite books from my childhood would be interesting.

Post 7

A book should be mainly true in order to be considered non-fiction. Although, it can have a few things that are a bit stretched to make it more interesting or to add a different twist to something. I’m not saying go in and add a high-speed car chase to make it more interesting, because if you have to add that to make it interesting, you probably shouldn’t be writing a non-fiction piece. Because your life’s boring.

                Half-truths are okay, but don’t call them a memoir or an autobiography. Call it fiction. If you have a story that would be good if you could change it, just change it. Does it matter if it’s called a memoir or not? You can say in an interview that part of it is true and then you’ll have even more fame. But if you say the whole things true and it’s not, Oprah probably will yell at you. I’m just saying.

                It does matter that they bent the truth when they told their stories, because people like them because they are true. If you only read a story because you want to hear an inspiring story of recovery, and you read a story of recovery that’s not true, it’s kind of irritating. They lied about theirs so that they could sell and get money, which is dumb because you will probably get caught and have to apologies to the human race.  

                We don’t need lines between genres, but it helps the readers distinguish what they might like, verse what they will probably hate. I don’t think it is necessary to label something because we don’t label people, so why should we label books? David Shields is right when he says that the line between fiction and non-fiction should be obliterated, but he is wrong to write a book using other people’s hard work, without giving them a citation that the reader is not advised to rip out. They put hard work into writing what they did, and here you go taking it and making money off it. He did no real work unless you consider the fact that he might get a cramp in his hand from copying and pasting so many excerpts.

Blog Post 6

Genre Fiction isn’t less worthy than Literary Fiction, it’s almost more worthy because that’s what we read now. Jane Eyre wasn’t popular back when it was written, and it’s Literary Fiction. Genre Fiction is worthy to most people that read now, but in 100 years, the Literary Fiction will probably be considered the more worthy type. I don’t think it’s less worthy, but I understand why we don’t read it, and why we read Literary Fiction. Literary Fiction shows great writing style, and it usually can rope in the time period, people’s perspective, and new writing style that Genre Fiction doesn’t have. There is a difference, but some pieces can be considered both if they are extremely popular, yet still have great controversy and style. Most books that are great you either love or hate. Popular books are able to be great, but they usually aren’t because people read books that are easy and quick, and then those books get popular. I don’t think anybody but the reader gets to decide what good writing is. The reader will like different topics, like everyone on Earth, so only the reader can decide for themselves what is good and bad.

            We shouldn’t just teach that, but we should still incorporate the good old books so students get a variety of the books they read in school. Kids have to be able to moan and say, “Oh man, I have to go get Rebecca. Crap.” They can’t say that about new books, so you have to leave in a few of the old ones so they can complain. I think we should add more genre fiction just so some kids who don’t read outside of school can see that not all writers use extreme vocabulary or weird arrangements of sentences. I don’t think we should swap out Of Mice and Men or Macbeth for Twilight of Hunger Games. We need to see some of those old books, and Twilight has no great writing style or story line that isn’t in old writing. She falls in love with a guy buy can’t be with him. The same thing happened in Jane Eyre. They just don’t need vampires to make it interesting. It should have Jane Eyre, Romeo and Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harry Potter, My Sister’s Keeper, Odyssey, and Fahrenheit 451. it isn’t relevant, but it shows us what our culture used to be when people still had manners. It is preparing students for the job market they are about to enter because they will know what life used to be, and what it is know, so they hopefully won’t be so ignorant about life. Also, they will know about our history in literature and how far things have changed. We want kids to read so that they can be good at writing for college papers, and so they get to know how to know how to read, and so they understand more when they hear about things in the past or in parts old the world that still have that culture.  

Blog post 5 (VIDEO!!!!)

Here is the book trailer for Extreme Loud and Incredibly Close:

4: Adapting Your Book

                My book is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer so the filmmaker would probably have quite a few challenges with adapting this book. The first one being, the little boy has a very colorful vocabulary, so only of those parts would have to be changed unless you wanted the movie to be rated R. Also, he would have a challenge making people in the audience like Oskar, his mom, or his grandma, because they are just flat out weird.  And, they all act in ways that would make people not really enjoy them for two hours straight.

                One scene that is essential to keep would be the scene where Oskar’s dad is telling him the story of the sixth borough of New York. It really shows that Oskar fits with his dad in a way that nothing else really could. Another scene that is essential to keep is the scene where he meets Mr. Black. Mr. Black is cool and crazy, just like any old man and that would really take away from the movie if they didn’t have a crazy old war veteran in there. A third scene that is essential to keep would be the one where Oskar tells his mom that he wishes that she was the one who died in 9/11. This scene shows that they don’t get along, and that their relationship has become really rocky after his dad died.

                One thing that you would definitely have to change would be when Oskar thinks about things that he wishes he did. One of those things includes bashing in the head of one of his fellow classmates. This scene would be really graphic, and the audience would not respond well to a violent little child that cried for attention. Another scene that you would have to cut would be where his grandfather is sculpting his grandmother because it is really descriptive and once again, not really good for the audience to see in a book that is supposed to be about a little boy who lost his father.

                I haven’t seen the film version of this novel, but I really truly hope that they cut out those specific scenes. 

Book 1 Project

The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown, is a really good book, but it hasn’t been advertised at all yet. I have three ideas on how you could sell more copies of this book and how the author could get more money.

Idea 1:

One way that other companies try to make money for Harry Potter is by selling wands that look like the ones they use in the movies. For The Lost Symbol, you could sell Masonic rings of the 33^rd degree.  In the book, this ring comes into play a lot since it is Peter’s ring that he always wears, and since it helps them identify who’s hand it is that they find-“His gaze moved instantly to the familiar golden ring on the fourth finger.” Also, this ring has the number “33” on it and it symbolizes the Masons, which is extremely important to the book and to how they describe things.

 If you sold these rings to the public you could make lots of money because everyone wants to be wearing a ring that only honorary Mason brother get to wear. Also, it is a pretty cool ring anyway so it would look good with lots of outfits and that would inspire people to wear it to set a fashion statement. This idea would help people stay involved with the author because every time they would look down at their hand they would think either that they had a really cool ring, or about the book itself. You might though, if you make the ring, slightly alter it so you don’t offend the actually Mason brothers that are of the 33^rd degree. Just keep things happy, you know.

Idea 2:

                Another thing that companies could sell would be tattoo sleeves. This may sound weird right now, but, think about it. Companies would set them out on display, and they would be sleeves with tattoos sewn onto them, so if you put them on it would look like you had tattoos curling up and down your arms.

                In the book, Mal’akh has tattoos covering his entire body, and even though he’s the bad guy, people still would think it would be cool to look like they had ink all over their arms-“Tonight, as Mal’akh descended the ramp, the tattooed sigils and signs on flesh seemed to come alive.” Mal’akh uses them to symbolize how God-like he is, and they come into play a lot towards the end when it starts to wrap up. This idea would be a good idea because then it would involve maybe motorcycle gangs who usually don’t read which would then allow the audience to widen even more. It would also sell extremely well during Halloween when some people are trying to be Goth or look cool. Or, you could also make the tattoos the ones that you have to wet a wash cloth and then press it on your skin and rub the water on it. This way it would be slightly more realistic looking, yet it would appeal even more to people, and it might appeal to some kids who want to look like they’re so big and bad and have tattoos around Halloween time.

Idea 3:

              One more thing that people could sell to help publicize the book could be to sell miniature models of the pyramid Katherine and Robert find.”When Katherine saw the engraved symbols, she gasped in bewilderment.” It would be solid black, not quite as large as the one in the book, but maybe one that’s 6 inches tall and then a more expensive one that is actually a foot tall. The pyramid would have the same symbols on it as the one in the book so people would feel like they actually found the Masonic pyramid. This would help the book grab people’s attention because it is a pretty large pyramid and because the symbols are really confusing and almost impossible to read unless you have read the book and you have found out that way.

              All of these things would help boost sales for The Lost Symbol especially since it isn’t really publicized now.