Ok so I finished the last book for this summer and I'm really glad I ended with The Great Gatsby. This book was a pretty easy read and it went fast. What the book was about was actually kind of intriguing and made me continue to keep turning the page!

This book is really good at describing it's characters. For instance, how Daisy's voice is so melodic and how Fitzgerald was able to play up her character. Same with Tom with his authoritative voice and body, he seemed like a tough guy that nobody was going to mess with. Nick, the main character, really seemed like he was an all-around guy with his head on his shoulders type of guy. Through out the book you could tell when he had made up his mind about a decision such as when he knew that he would have to be the one to take on Gatsby's funeral at the end of the book; he was just a very logical guy! Then there was Gatsby who was a very deep character and he definitely took some time to figure out. He was honestly the guy who came back from war who lost his love because she couldn't wait any longer. He was a man with a name of great parties but nobody was truly friends with him, guests just liked to go to his parties that he threw. Gatsby was a successful man, but he lacked the true love, family, and friends which I thought was really tragic. He was able to make a success through the drug-store chain he had, but money doesn't buy happiness and in the end he needed Daisy, but she was married to Tom. All these characters when intertwined made a really good story, and how Myrtle (who Tom was having an affair with) got hit by a car in the end by Daisy and Gatsby ends up getting killed in the end for it just makes this story so much deeper and meaningful.

I used the method of establishing territories in this book, not for any reason but that that was the only one left. I cross-referenced terms such as "abandoned," "loneliness,"purposeless and alone," because all those words kind of connected to the theme of the book. These terms were constantly used and seemed to have a connection. What worked with me for summarizing was summarizing page by page into a sentence and subject matter at the bottom of the page if it was an important part of the book. This took a while but summarizing actually helps me a lot because I'm able to remember it better. I really tried at the key words and realized that when I looked over my keywords it helped me see deeper into the book. Such as "dishonesty," "good girl," "old sport," just kind of gives off the idea of what it was like in the 20's and how women and men interacted. The glossary helped to cause I was able to better understand the text by finding the meaning of an important word.

Honestly, this type of method was probably the most efficient for me and The Great Gatsby wasn't too bad of a book. I'm done with summer homework!! That's always a plus too.

Heart of Darkness

Lets see the Heart of Darkness... this book was a very difficult read! As a reader I definitely had to slow down and re-read some parts. This book is quite intense and has very deep meaning to it that can be missed very easily! For this book I used the annotating method of establishing territories. At first I thought I would really like this method because I'm good with rhetorical analysis, but as I made my way through the book I realized there was so much to remember to do when I read that I forgot I was actually reading a book. Because this book is very complicated I much rather of read it than trying to remember to annotate it. It was like the purpose I was getting out of the reading was not what the text was saying but more for a search of rhetorical devices and tone; I lost the meaning of the book in my search. I would have to annotate a part then go back and read the text to get the full meaning. I didn't like this method at all, or more like I picked the wrong method to annotate this book with. I feel that this way of annotating should be used on a more simplistic book that's easier to understand because I understood this book more when I read faster through it than to stop and analyze.

Marlow, who tells the tale, is a very interesting character. At first it took me a while to realize that this book was pretty much going to be a story he was telling because on parts of the book, such as on pg. 52 or pgs. 108-109, where his story-telling dialog and the dialog of the characters in the story I would confuse. This was probably, in the sense, a style of Conrad's writing to make the stories more real, but I still had to slow down and figure out who was talking. Also the author used a ridiculous amount of listing when Marlow is telling his tale. There would be a list of descriptive words or words of feeling and then a dash and then the sentence. This was used on page 124: "There had been enemies, criminals, workers- these were rebels. " Such sentences as that were used constantly, and the author also used a lot of sentence variety which made a more boring, descriptive paragraph sound more interesting and made the words flow together. Through the piece I also boxed off lots of amazing word choice he used. The vocabulary the author uses is ridiculous! I could make a list of a 100 words easily that made his sentences more vibrant-"dazzling splendor," "gesticulating," "sagacious," prudence," "obsequiously," "abject." Some of these words I didn't know but it made me pretty jealous that I don't have a vocabulary like that because I would definitely use that in my writing. Even in this blog I use more dashes because of all the dashes in this book! I underlined numerous metaphors and similes that made what he was talking about more visible, and there were lots of prepositional phrases with commas to get all the detail in!

The most common word I found in this book was darkness. The whole book is based on bleakness, dismal states, dreary sights, death, evilness- all of which give the book it's character. It's definitely not a happy-go-lucky book. Even the type of sentences he used gave off the tone of the book. When the author used short sentences it was to get to the point, and when the writer used long, drawn-out, descriptive sentences you got the feeling of being lost in darkness. Darkness was definitely the tone and theme of the book!