Essay

1.) I am going to choose to focus on the sub story of Lancelot and Guinevere.

2.) “While I am living I shall rescue you” is a quote that I believe has a lot of meaning towards risk. It is the statement that as long as Lancelot is alive he will do whatever neccessary to rescue her. Rescue her from physical danger but also the danger of not being in love. This is risky because their love for each other is forbidden, but there is a strict determination between the two that can not be broken. This risk leads to death and hatred from others.

“That you were married to someone else meant nothing to me” is a quote that again the bond of their love could not be broken. It incorporates the risk in intervininig with a relationship and especially that of a King and Queen that deals with life and death.

A place in the story where risk is seen is when Lancelot visits Guinevere at the nunnery. Lancelot knows she is there but ignores the risk that she could be totally devoted to the nunnery and may not want to love him anymore. Their relationship at been thwarted by the Kingdom but he still goes to see her despite all this.

3.) My argument is that Winterson’s point in her writing is that even though love is a very powerful and great experience that is also the ultimate risk in every aspect. In these stories people are putting their hearts on the line just like in reality without any idea of how it might work out. Love is the most excrusitating pain but people still take that risk. Also love is a journey for the concept of love can be frowned upon depending on the people in the relationship. People in the past have been killed over love just like Winterson shows in this story of Lancelot and Guinevere.

Question about Power Book

Want does somebody think about the fact that the author uses her own-self as a character in fictional writing? I noticed that when the person she is emailing asked what she had written she replied The Passion. I noticed on the front of the book it says the author Jeanette Winterson wrote a book called the passion. This is interesting I cant say that I have seen any writers do this.

My Choice

Since the blog for this week has been assigned as my own choice I have decided to discuss what at the moment is making me the most excited. I have recently just booked a flight out of Columbus to Los Angles, California where I will be spending the duration of spring break. I can hardly wait for the day to come. My reason for going out there is so I can hang out with my best friends from high school, who are going to school there, and they have their own condo. My intention was to also attended school in California with them but when Miami asked me to join the football team I couldn’t turn it down.

It has been awhile since I have seen my friends who I use to spend every day with. It will be nice to catch up and see how they are doing. I know we plan on going to beach every day, and cruising around Hollywood is a definite. California will be different for me because I am use to going to Florida every year for spring break, so it will be nice to see a different atmosphere. My friends have told me that it is very different out there with the way people dress and act, and I am looking forward to the experience.

History

A sense of history I got from the reading was when the interview came of the Japanesse man who experienced the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hearing this part reminded of the time I read the book Hiroshima, which is about Japanesse people trying to survive the hardships of the bomb and its after effects. The book Hirsoshima is also a histroically and critically accalmied book which related very much to the story the man in the interview gave. They both tell of people trying to desperately find their loved ones and escape unharmed which is something us americans usually dont get the perspective of. We see in the media the terror of pearl harbor, or 9/11, but never the terror that maybe America as a country causes to others.

Questions about the book

After reading the last few chapters a question has come to my mind that is now bothering me very much. It is clear now that the man telling the story at the beginning is Oscar’s grandpa, but when his Granma told the story it didn’t match up to how his grandpa did. When Grandpa wrote his letter to his unborn son he explained that the day he met his wife was the day she asked him to marry her. At first I thought it might be a different woman that he is talking about but she is quoted saying “And the weather is one hundred dollars.” When I flipped back in the book I realized that Oscar’s grandma is always saying that something is one hundred dollars.

Oscar’s grandpa says that he met his wife at the Columbian bakery shop and that is where she purposed on that first day they met. but his grandma is quoted saying “We walked together to the bakery where we first met.” This proves that according to grandma they had been with each other before she purposed to him, instead of purposing to him the first time they met.

Another part of the book that I thought about is what exactly happened to Anna. It must be tragic because when Thomas went to say her name was when he started to lose his speaking ablity. My guess is that she died in a fire because Oscar’s grandma is quoted saying “Sometimes I would think about those hundred letters laid across my bedroom floor. If I hadn’t collected them, would our house have burned less brightly?

This is mysterious book and I hope that questions will be answered as we keep reading.

Setting

Since a main part of the book kind of has to deal with September 11th I belive that is why the setting of the book is in the middle of New York City. In my mind the future of the book will and the mysteries that will be discovered will have a lot to do with the terriost attacks and in particular New York. If it was in another city it would not have the same connection that New York does to 9/11.

As for the time of the book I was actually kind of confused as to what exactly it was. I knew the characthers have stayed the same but it keeps switching back to the funeral and then back to present and then it might tell of another time in the main characters life. For a moment judging by how the kid was going out to the city on his own made me believe that the book was now telling the story much in the future and maybe he was in high school, but when he says that it was a year ago his dad had died I realized he was still young. The fact that the book is set only a year after 9/11 leads me to believe that the book will get more into how exactly New York City did deal with the attacks and what kind of effect it had on them. It is different now because it was years ago but with the books story being told a year after, I can imagine New York City was a much different place. 

Borders

Afer beginning to read ELIC I found myself very entertained by the main characther in the book. It has been quite humerous but it is apparently clear that the story is soon to get emotional. But as far as boarders go I would have to say that the obvious one was the break in the story line where a letter is addresed from a man to his unborn son. I was totally lost but it is one of those things that you know will be explained later in the book sort of like a flashback in a movie. I had to stop though for a couple minutes after reading it to try and figure out exactly who it was that was talking or what it had to do with the orgianl charachters in the story.

I encountered little gaps in the first chapter when i slowly had to stop and reread just to see who actually was talking because the kid in the story talked so much and changed the subject constantly.

Active Reading

I read many books when I was in high school but thinking about where and when I read them I realized that one place in which I do my best active reading is the classroom. I never really had time to do my own personal reading outside of school and I avoided all the readings of my text book that were assigned for homework. My classes in high school were all an hour and a half long and due to this fact teachers would finish their lessons early. With the amount of free time I had in school I spent most of it reading and found it to be the best place where I could concentrate on the book. Yeah classmates could be distracting, but so was being home with my phone ringing off the hook and the constant smell of good food streaming to my room. Being in class with nothing to do made me feel like reading would pass the time and it did. On good days where teachers didn’t have much to say I found myself reading 100 pages to a book and really getting into it. I could finish books at school in two weeks time and I always impatiently waited for the teacher to quit talking so I could start reading again.

A post on blogs

The first blog that I found was at http://bostonist.com/2008/01/21/reel_hub_monste.php. This blog gives a review of how well movies did this past weekend at the box office. It discusses how “Cloverfield” came in at number one with 41 million dollars and how awful Katie Holmes’ new movie “Mad Money” was.

Another blog I found which was at http://sportscouchpotato.typepad.com/sports_couch_potato/2008/01/super-bowl-bona.html

talks about how the New England Patriots making it to the Super Bowl will be a ratings extravaganza for the Fox network. The fact that the Patriots remain undefeated might make this the most watched Super Bowl in history.  It also talks about how the other team playing in the super bowl, the New York Giants, were the toughest match up for New England during the regular season. The blog believes that this will be a Super Bowl for the ages.

The last blog I found at  http://aclabookmobile.blogspot.com/2008/01/end-of-book-as-we-know-it.html

discusses the fact that books might be soon non existent.  The blog brings up things like audio text that can be downloaded to ipods and e-books online that make the production of a book invaluable. The blogger goes on to say that there is much about real books that can not simply beat electronic readers. The fact that books can be dropped and taking to the beach to the blogger makes them more essential than technological advances in reading.

Eiger Dreams

In my mind the short story of Eiger Dreams was a terrific portrayal of people attempting to overcome the great odds that are facing them. Even though the men fail at climbing the Eiger it is made pretty clear throughout the story how difficult it really was to make it to the top. With all the discussion of people having died, and the stories such as the one about the Staff Sergeant who had fell 500 feet made me realize how scared the narrator must have been. Eiger dreams was exciting to read and I really enjoy stories of people who are determined to take on great endeavorers.