Angel Beats

So I just finished Angel Beats, a 13 episode anime. It was very interesting. Not the best anime i have ever watched but it was fairly good. It was a tad confusing at first and you really don't get into all of the characters very well. It was mixed with humor and utter sadness. I'm not gonna give anything away really but it's worth checking out if your into anime thats humorous, romantic, sad and slightly odd.

Blindness

Now Originally I was reading It's Kind Of a Funny Story, however I wasn't able to finish the book. Now I wasn't about to write a review on a book I didn't finish because that is ridiculously unfair to the author Ned Vizzini. So here is a book review for Blindness By Jose Saramago.

Blindness.

You are going about your day, everything is average. The sun is out, you’re doing your usual morning routine. All of a sudden you’re blind. But it’s not a black abyss you see. No. It’s milky and white. And the next thing you know, everyone around you is blind and you are all thrown into an abandoned building to rot or lose all humanity. “That is precisely what takes place in Blindness by Jose Saramago.          Through the story you follow a variety of differBook Trailer For Blindness ent characters. The first blind man, the doctor, the girl with the dark glasses, the thief, the small boy with a squint, the man with the eye patch, and the only one left with sight is the doctor’s wife. They all are quarantined in an abandoned asylum while the government tries to figure out how the white blindness started. Normal tasks become almost impossible. Finding a bathroom for example. “Let’s form a line, my wife will lead the way, everyone put their hand on the shoulder of the person in front, then there will be no danger of our getting lost.”  (49) Weather it be attempting to find the bathroom or food, there is always a fight for survival.

There are parts in this book that were very difficult to read, while the characters were in the asylum they had power struggles and issues over food. There was a gang of blind people that had guns and began making demands in trade for food. At first it was just valuable items but slowly turned into a sick orgy type situation... “Unless you bring us women, you don’t eat.” (167) However the conditions in the ward were also becoming repulsive, poop and urine everywhere, bed bugs, fleas, no showers, no working toilet. Nothing was clean and no one was set to care for them. The whole book was pretty gruesome.

The group of main characters finally got out of the asylum when a fire broke out and went in search of food, and their homes. They all managed fairly well and even had the dog of tears to help protect them. However they quickly learned that things in the streets were about as bad as they were in the asylum. Fecal matter everywhere, food shortage and dead bodies being eaten alive by wild dogs wasn’t what the doctors wife entirely expected.

Though at the end of the book you get a very pleasant surprise that I can’t give away.

Jose Saramago’s writing structure was very different, I could see how it could be annoying to some and where it would be a challenging text to read, there wasn’t any marking for dialogue except a capitalized word when a new person spoke, there wasn’t any chapter indications and there wasn’t any indents for paragraphs either.

Over all I found this book widely interesting. It showed a very different side of humanity and how one small thing can completely tear apart society. Though I could have done without some scenes this book gives a powerful message and I highly doubt another writer will be able to flawlessly write something so contradictory and moving and sometimes stomach turning novel like this one. 

My Top 5

Blending the lines?

Look at these definitions...

fic·tion

  

noun1.the class of literature comprising works of imaginativenarration, especially in prose form.2.works of this class, as novels or short stories: detectivefiction.3.something feigned, invented, or imagined; a made-up story:We've all heard the fiction of her being in delicate health.4.the act of feigning, inventing, or imagining.5.an imaginary thing or event, postulated for the purposes ofargument or explanation.


non·fic·tion
noun1.the branch of literature comprising works of narrative prosedealing with or offering opinions or conjectures upon factsand reality, including biography, history, and the essay (opposed to fiction  and distinguished from poetry  anddrama).2.works of this class: She had read all of his novels but none of hisnonfiction.3.(especially in cataloging books, as in a library or bookstore)all writing or books not fiction,  poetry, or drama, includingnonfictive narrative prose and reference works; the broadestcategory of written works.

Now please tell me how in the world can we blur the lines of fiction and non fiction? It matters what genre a book is it. And it defiantly matters what we classify as fiction and non fiction. Has anyone heard about what happened when they broadcast-ed war of the worlds over the radio? 

On Sunday, October 30, 1938, millions of radio listeners were shocked when radio news alerts announced the arrival of Martians. They panicked when they learned of the Martians' ferocious and seemingly unstoppable attack on Earth. Many ran out of their homes screaming while others packed up their cars and fled.

Though what the radio listeners heard was a portion of Orson Welles' adaptation of the well-known book, War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, many of the listeners believed what they heard on the radio was real.

http://history1900s.about.com/od/1930s/a/warofworlds.htm

People actually thought that it  was real, why? because no one specified that it wasn't till a bit later. Now imagine that with Twilight, what if it was classified as a non-fiction book? How would you feel about that? Yea. It just sounds like a horror movie all around. Now look, I'm not saying David Shields is essentially wrong. I'm saying that what he wants authors to do just can't be done. It would't work. Why? Because books need to either be fiction and non-fiction. They honestly can't be both. Fiction and non- fiction are just polar opposites.

  

Readicide

I do not think that actual books should be traded out for genra fiction books, granted it would be nice for a while but then we would start to hate the genra fiction books. Then we wouldn't want to read at all. To be honest I didnt really read Catcher in the Rye or The Great Gatsby, I used sparknotes because I thought the books were boring. I think part of the reason they were boring is because they were so hyped up by my peers, I think if I picked up the books on my own I'd like and appreciate them a lot more. We can't replace actual books, litterary books, with genra books because if you analyze a genra book there isn't much there, everything is told to you, there is no chance to figure it out because the book is written that way, the books on the best seller list espically the teen fiction part is written so adults and kids over the age of 11 can usually understand whats going on in the book. But if an 11 year old picked up Great Gatsby they would have no idea what is going on. I don't think schools are killing reading, becuse I love to read, there are just books that aren't for me. I don't really care either way because I'm still going to be reading no matter what books they put in schools for us to read. The will to read comes from the person, not the schools, you can read whatever book you want at home. So it really shouldn't matter if you should be forced to read it in schools either.

Hunger Games Book Trailer.

Yea, I don't own anything and I don't claim ownership to anything either.

Happy Hunger Games

We all know that The Hunger Games is already a movie, though I have yet to see the movie, there are certain things that I'm very skeptical about. I think The Capital would be a very hard city to film, I'm looking forward to how it was portrayed in the movie. I think they would have to change some of the elaborate clothes that they wore before the actual games begun, like the one that was on fire and the one that looked a lot like fire. I don't think any of the initial plot would have to be changed, the same with the characters, and since this is a roughly short book and after you take out a lot of Katniss's mental thoughts then you have a even shorter book thus able to make a whole movie without leaving out key parts. And since the book flows well there isn't really a need to re-organize scenes either.
Now the most obvious thing to do is follow the book, however you also have to add scenes so you can figure out the characters. 

The Three Scenes that NEED to stay in the movie would be the Gale and Katniss hunting in the woods, The drawing for the Hunger Games and when they interviewed her. 

The two parts I would cut, the scene on the train would be shorter, and the Avox girl because that whole part didn't make a lot of sense.