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: