Weekly Review 11/28/12

As the book starts out, Alice is just your average girl trying to cope with a lonely high school life. When she tries acid at a party her whole life begins to change for the worse. So why does she give up everything that she has: a loving family, a best friend, and her school life, all for drugs? I think there’s more than one thing to blame here. I think that one reason could be the loneliness. Alice talks about how the drugs make her feel and how the drugs brought her the friends she never really had. Maybe with the drug life, it brought her an instant group of friends, one who didn’t care about her faults, especially when she was on drugs. Which brings me to the next reason. She always felt like her family was constantly judging her. The drugs made her feel perfect. For someone who’s always felt like they’ve never measured up, that sense of peace and strength that comes from the drugs could be the one thing that makes them feel special. Even if she could only feel like that for a short matter of time, it was worth it. There was finally something in her life to make her feel like she was special. When her family life and school life wasn’t bringing her that kind of relief, it’s no wonder she turned to drugs as an outlet to finally feel free. I’m not saying that feeling lonely or judged is an excuse to do drugs; I just can understand why she would choose the high of drugs over a life of pain. Once she states, “Once you’ve tried drugs, there isn’t a life without them.” So maybe the real problem here is the addictiveness of the drugs, because in the end there’s no escaping them.

Reflection 11/29/12

I think that all works have the chance to prize winning. The popularity or unpopularity of a work doesn’t make a book less artistic, it just means that it was finally recognized by winning a prize for its success. That doesn’t mean that all best sellers are works of art. They can simply be a fun read, one that everyone seems to enjoy. And maybe that’s the reason best sellers don’t win these literary prizes. They’re not meant to be the next Pulitzer Prize winner. Some are just meant to be a quick read or something to take your mind off of your day-to-day life. Take the Twilight series for example. They’re not extremely well written or award winners, but people really seem to love them.  So does a book have to be well written to be popular? No. But is it going to win any awards that way? Probably not. But that doesn’t automatically mean that all popular books aren’t well written. There are some out there, like  The Bible, that are extremely well written and very popular. I don’t think that popularity has anything to do with how well the book is written, it’s just all based on opinion of the reader.

Post #1 Why I Read:

Why do I read? I read because I like to. I read because it’s fun. I read because when you need somewhere to escape to, a book can take you there. And it doesn’t have to be realistic. It can be 600 years into the future or maybe 100 years in the past. Reading gives you the chance to be someone else. Be somewhere else. Reading can be anything it wants to be. I can sit down and read about a girl who’s just like me. Or maybe read about a girl fighting to save the world. It always gets me excited to see how creative others can be.  See how they twist the same words in different ways to tell a completely new story.  There’s something about the familiarity of books. While books all look the same, with pages bound together, they’re different. Each contains a story, true or not, and is waiting to be told. And when you finally break into those pages you’ll find the truth. Reading is inspiring. Depressing. Crazy. No matter what you’re in the mood for, a book can have it. I think that’s why I like reading so much. It’s always a new adventure.