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.