Close Reading Bingo

His words are very dull and almost common, "At almost one o'clock I entered the lobby of the building where I worked...".
Weakness #2
Lori

He presents words like "if you really want to know" and "if I have to" that explains his boring life as the average teenager.
Weakness #1
Amanda

At the same time, he uses a figurative type of language when describing objects such as the lobby.
Weakness #6
Mariah

Overall, Baker wrote a very descriptive paragraph, but lacked colorful and exciting diction.
Weakness #7
Running In Circles

Best Example
From E-dubs

In this excerpt from Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine, it is both dignified and precise.The figurative language dipicts the intricut and buisness-likeness of the workplace and its apperance, "towering volumes of marble and glass", describes the gymormous lobby's interesecting pieces. Baker uses a lot of  language that magnifies the importance of the coldness felt, "spreading into a needly area of shine where it fell against their brushed-steel side-panels, and adding long glossy highlights to each of the black rubber handrails", this creates imagery for the reader of what the daily worker sees. The reader can make the inference that the office building is inviting with using "daylight" and "glossy" as if Baker views the office as warm and like summer.

Practice Diction Analysis

The excerpt from Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine is a straightforward, imigistic depiction of an escalator ride through his scholarly feeling and refined thinking. Baker draws a picture in your mind with his descriptions, "escalator of daylight" and "towering volumes." Comparing the black handrails, "like the radians of black luster," shows the way he is able to control his writing. Being more business-like than anything Nicholson describes the "integral" signs and "long glossy highlights" along side the escalator.  

Style Mapping

     Tucker Max, Ben Mezrich, and William R. Forstchen all have three unique writing styles. In Tucker Max's book, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, is a very harsh and vulgar writing technique. This writing is not intended to impress or confuse. It is very straight forward, using slang and simple language. Ben Mezrich on the other hand comes across as more complex in his writing. Using a combination of advanced and simple writing, he makes his books an enjoyable read. While those two have a more upbeat and enthusiastic writing style, William R. Forstchen uses more of a blunt and tense mood. In his book, One Second After, a nuclear war has errupted. A family now has to defend itself and use all their effort just to survive. Forstchen is more or less a deep, intellecual writer, setting the mood throught the whole book. These authors together have a wide variety of writing styles but one thing is for sure, you will never be bored reading one of their books.

Quarterly

  One Second After

This Week: 120
Semester Total: 809

This quarter I am suprised how much i am reading and how much i have enjoyed reading. Its not like any other english class where they force you to ready some boring story that you have no interest in. The book I've most enjoyed so far is I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell. Its kind of a contraversal book and not for everyone but it's one of my favorites. I sometimes just find myself reading when i have nothing to do or the opposite and should really be doing something else but i don't want to. I tend to travel a lot, going to bloomington or Arizona to see my brothers so I always have a lot of time in the car or plane. I spend that time mostely reading, because what else am I supost to do? I always see or hear about something I want to read but I know I won't have enough time to read all of them so it's kind of hard picking whitch ones to go for. I think the hardest thing I've had to do this week is to pick what to read next. I guess I don't have a very hard life. Before I hadn't really had much interest in reading but now that I'm doing it more often the more I like doing it. It is relaxing to me. Sometimes I go home from school and just sit down on the couch and read. My goal right now is to get threw a lot more books next quarter and continue this habbit through out my life.  

Currently

One Second After

Pages This Week: 115
Semester Total: 689

More About It

    The book details not only the blackjack team’s three strategies for beating the casino, but also how the team was built, and their various exploits both in the casinos and back at MIT trying to find ways to hide all their cash and keep their scheme on the down-low. As one would expect, the casinos really didn’t appreciate these MIT students coming into their casinos and actually winning. The team was barred from a few casinos, and the counties of Aruba and Monaco.

    Busting Vegas is a pretty interesting story, and it really gets you in the mood for some gambling. However, at some points the writing isn’t that strong and things can get confusing. Other than that, Busting Vegas is a pretty damn entertaining book.

Busting Vegas

    This book, Busting Vegas, is a sort of unintended sequel — it’s about just a few people from MIT that, instead of developing card counting techniques, decided instead to do some observational tricks to tilt the odds into their favor a lot. The book follows these half dozen folks from MIT to Las Vegas to Atlantic City to Aruba to Monte Carlo, and talks about how they did what they did.

    I was reading the epilogue, written by one of the principals, and he talked a bit about how folks would wonder why he was willing to share his techniques in detail — and he said he was lately watching the open source movement in software — particularly Firefox’s gains against Microsoft — and incredibly encouraged. So he figured he’d do the same sort of thing to bring down the casinos. Amazing, I thought.

    Fun book to read — ultimately, it reads a lot like his first book about MIT nerds breaking the casinos, but is fun nonetheless.

Currently

Busting Vegas

This Week: 70
Semester Total: 574

Sentences of the Week

"Because it's not just about how much you win, it's also about how much you loose!"

"Sometimes, in some circumstances, math can also get you killed."

Currently

Busting Vegas
    Ben Mezrich

This week: 105
Semester total: 504

Sentences of the Month

When I found my friends, two hours and $55 wisely spent dollars later, they were out in the parking lot eating sloppy joe's they bought from a guy selling them out of the back of his Chevette.

I hate having smart friends.

These two made me laugh when i read them because I can relate to both of them.

Other Claims

1. On Paper Wings
              
In the song "Your Love Is A Song" by the band Switchfoot, the pensive, tenacious air of the lyrics, along with the mellow drum and guitar accompaniment and the powerful, husky, and dreamlike quality of the singer's vocals combine to evoke an overwhelming sense of breathlessness and euphoria surrounding the song's subject, a love so solemn and earnest it becomes the singer's reason for living.
http://idreamofsushi.blogspot.com/


2. Mariah

In Fighting Gravity’s final Performance on America’s Got Talent, the voiceless and light dancers use graceful, upbeat, and a unique technique that expresses a new and an explosive futuristic type of dance.

http://mariahsetymologyblog.blogspot.com/

3. XC Hoosiers 3366

In the music video “The Adventure,” by the band Angels and Airwaves, resonant and alive music, roaming and adventurous surroundings, and powerful, real energy convey that a man’s life should be lived with passion and adventure, as long as his true love is by his side.

4. That One Guy's Blog

In this painting of a couple meandering down a sidewalk, the relaxed broshstrokes and comples simplicity of the colors embody a feeling of pleasant passion which mesmerizes with its unassumingly focused design.

5. InsideOut

  In this electrifying poster for the film 300, splashes of blood, open-mouthed screams of rage and anguish, and determined, hostile facial expressions,  deliver  impressive  feelings of wrath, exhilaration, and bloodshed that are sure to be felt in the heat of battle.

Close Reading

                                                                                    Bold As Love

                                                                                     by Scott Cicero

Observe:                                                           Infer:

-Movement                                                      -Compassionate

-Color                                                              -Complementary

                                                                        -Soothing

-Expression                                                      -Dramatic

                                                                        -Intense

-Design                                                            -Complex

-Flow                                                               -Spiritual

 Claim:

The painting “Bold as Love” by Scott Cicero portrays an intense and dramatic expression through the spiritual flow, soothing colors, and compassionate movement emphasizing the complex design.



Week 2 Blog Tour

Blogs I visited today..

-Swimstrong
-XC Hoosiers 3366
-Less Than Three
-Blogs With Friends
-Mariah
-Apples to Apples
-E-dubs
-Outspoken Since
-Life's Unexpected Adventures

Currently

I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell

Pages this week- 104
Semester total- 205

Sentence of the week

When I found my friends, two hours and $55 wisely spent dollars later, they were out in the parking lot eating sloppy joe's they bought from a guy selling them out of the back of his Chevette.

The Movie

Last weekend I downloaded the movie, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell. I was going to wait till after I finished reading the book to watch it, but I couldn't resist. When downloading the movie I was thinking to myself, this movie isn't going to be nearly as good as the book... One hundred and five minutes later I was impressed.


For those who don’t know, Tucker Max is a Duke Law School Graduate who had so many stories about drunken escapades and random crazy nights with friends and females that he decided to start a website with his stories.  These stories are vulgar, offensive, politically incorrect, and absolutely hilarious.  Not surprisingly, once somebody reads his stories, they forward a few to their friends, who then forward it to their friends, and so on. I started following Tucker Max's stories about a month back and i can't get enough. The guy is an absolute riot and writes with such humor and passion that it’s almost impossible not to laugh out loud.


The movie was pretty good; it’s not going to win any Oscars, but it was better than expected and I laughed pretty much the entire time.

Currently

I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell
                            Tucker Max

This week: 101

Sentences of the week

1. El Bingeroso decided he was hungery, so he took out a whole roll of unopened, pre-made cookie dough from the refrigerator, tore off the package, plopped the whole thing down on a cookie sheet, and threw it in the oven, setting the temperature at somewhere around "Lowest Level of Hell."

2."I hate having smart friends."
I feel the same way sometimes.

Book Review

Tucker Max can hope all he wants, but when it comes to eternal damnation he doesn't exactly have a choice. Unless of course one can think of another punishment for a man whose littlest offenses include hiding the crutches of a distracted cripple and crashing a car into a donut shop.

In his book Tucker involves 27 different mini stories.There's "The Pee Blame" where Tucker wets his own bed and somehow manages to get a complete stranger to pay for it. In the "Infamous Charity Auction Debacle" his drunken belligerence leads a respected law firm to offer him a golden parachute so they can get rid of him. And when "Tucker Goes to Vegas" he sets a new high in ridiculousness as he pretends to be a Christian rapper and goes without sleep and sobriety for 72 hours.

He is of course not alone on his adventures. Joining him are his friends that are just as bad, if not worse than him. Together as a group are just out to have a good time.

I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell

This book was recommended to me by my brother. I don't think a book has ever legitly made me laugh out loud until now. This true story by Tucker Max is one of the funniest stories i have ever read. I think the title says it all. He takes you through his, mostly drunk, journeys which are highly entertaining.

Tucker is just a normal, everyday guy, just like you and me so it is easy to relate to him and really start to like him. To me that is the deciding factor if I like a book or not, whether I can relate to it. If  there is nothing in a story that makes it relatable, I just can't get into it.

This is a classic "I can't put it down" novel. Once you start reading you won 't want to stop. You just want to keep reading and keep reading to figure out what happens next, then before you know it, it's two in the morning and you have to get up in a little bit for school.