“Blog Post 7”
Readers in the 21st century
I went to Barnes and Noble today and apparently they have these things called “paper books.” I had to do a double take because I had never seen this before. I know what e-books are because I read them daily on my Ipad but an actual, paper book???? I could not believe it. Upon discovering this peculiar surprise I had to dig deeper. I went to a library and apparently they have walls up walls of these “paper books.” I could not believe this. I was absolutely incredulous. Get this, e-books are not the default form of reading. They are just what have been used over the past 10–15 years with the development of tablets. For hundreds of years, no thousands of years people have not used e-books. They have read real, paper books, in which you physically turn the page. I know I may sound crazy but this is very new for me. I thought e-books were the normal way of reading but this is not the case. Libraries, as a matter of fact, have only had e-books available for the last 10 years or so. They have “paper books” from the 1970s to prove it! Anywho, as an avid reader, who has spent countless hours staring at my tablet or computer screen to read books, I must reiterate how shocked I am to make this discovery.
*Two weeks later*
I have been reading “paper books” for about two weeks now and I hate to admit it, but I really like them. The feel of the paper on my fingers when I turn the page, the smell of the fresh paper, I have found my new way of reading. I am still dumbfounded at the fact this is how people have been reading for the last several thousands of years. Like seriously, no one told me.
I have revised three of my original blog posts for my blog portfolio. The first one is my post about Edgar Allan Poe called “The Cask of Amontillado.” I revised this post because Poe is truly my favorite horror writer of all time and I wanted to do him justice by making the edits that my professor suggested for this piece. I am most drawn to this story as a reader so I definitely had to make sure it was the best it could possibly be. I revised the entry to include why I chose him over the other short stories that were available to write about. Also I gave a little more insight to the paranoia in which this eerie story makes me feel. This post’s best feature is the fact that I convey how paranoid and chilled I become everytime I read this story. The second post I revised is the Bluest Eye. I really liked the edits which were suggested to me by my professor because upon re-reading this blog post I realized that I was selling it short by not elaborating on “viewing life from different perspectives.” I really try to do this in my own life, and Toni Morrison did a great job helping me see life from the perspective of a young, Black girl in the 1940s. I expanded on this point by including a textual example. The best feature of this story is how I make note of how it is great to try and view life from another’s perspective. Even if you can never understand how it feels to walk in another’s shoes, at least be open minded enough to hear their story. The third post I revised was “Hunters in the Snow” (Part II). I did this because I really did not understand how this story ended, and my blog post was an attempt to give some closure to this short story for myself, and any potential readers of my blog. The best feature of this post is the emotion that I try to convey as Frank, who is in love with the family’s babysitter, calls his wife to tell her of his friend being shot. My personal favorite of all my blog posts is the “Slaughterhouse-Five Letter.” This is a post I write as Paul Lazarro in the first person. I write a letter home to my dad as I sit imprisoned in a camp by the Nazis, during World War in Germany. My professor did not suggest any edits to this one and seemed to really enjoy it so I just left it as is. The best feature of this post is the verbage and expression I use. It really resembles Paul Lazarro.
