Franki Colett RCAD Lit of Horror

I went back a few weeks to a topic that we had covered and started to watch the show The Magicians. After the first 20 minutes, which I didn’t care for, I was hooked to the show. Quickly binge watching my way through the show I find it very engaging and unpredictable. Many fantasy shows stick to stereotypical fantasy tropes that already exist but this show (therefore the books as well) really makes up a lot of its own world. I find it very interesting that as I watch the show it often makes me wonder how everything would be described in the book so I can see myself going back and rereading the book. I enjoyed seeing how the story progressed and how the different plot lines and character backgrounds getting revealed and connecting. Can’t wait to get more time to finish the show and start the novel.

I actually truly enjoyed this week reading assignment! This isn't something that I would normally choose to read on my own but for only being 7 pages long it was really something that held your attention. The idea of that the higher evolved frog wants to return and be with her boyfriend's less refined uncle was extremely engaging. Prior to the ending, of course, I found the story very relatable for me personally with trying to get older family members to move into more modern times and them rejecting it. The idea of using evolution to describe a family dynamic I haven't read about before which made it a refreshing storyline The story was able to fit a lot of meaning into such a short story and it moved along at a quick pace too. Overall, I would read this type of fable again because of the interesting way that it was written and concept.

1.    I’m not entirely sure how to react to this story by any means. I actually really hated it and how it was written if I’m being totally honest. It took a long time for me to understand what exactly was happening and I’m still not sure if I ever really figured it out in the end. I didn’t find the storyline interesting at all and it felt like it was trying very hard to be “different”. 2.    I guess the only connection I can make is a theme of motherly love. The affection from a mother is a constant theme in the story and is often touched upon with Gan and his mother and T’Gatoi and her eggs. I was unable to make any sort of personal connection or tie to this story because of how disconnected I was from the plot and storyline itself. 3.    I feel like this story would be best suited for a graphic novel and it would be way better than the novella itself had it been illustrated to start with. I feel like there needed to be more descriptive language to help support this unknown world w

For this week I took the opportunity to read Fahrenheit 451 since I’ve wanted to read it for a while but haven’t gotten the chance to. The book is based on the ideas that books are bad and that they provide anti-social tendencies and conflicting views so they are banned for being owned and read. Firefighters are in charge of going and burning books and the main character goes against his firefighter wats and starts to read. Montag goes against society and starts to think for himself and is forced to run away from everything that he knows and start over. I really enjoyed this book and am glad that I got the chance to finally read this since we didn’t read it in high school.  This book addresses the problems with not thinking for yourself and not educating yourself. It was fun to read about this world that had a lot of things that we have now like big TV’s.

This week I read the book Anubis Gates by Tim Powers. I had a back and forth relationship with this book because I would go from really enjoying it and finding it very engaging to being lost and confused and not liking it at all. The thing that kept me reading the book was the curiosity of what could possibly happen now that he’s stuck in a different time period. The book also went into amazing detail of what the environment was like and the characters personal thoughts and fears. The book started off with a long preface which took place in ancient Egypt and was rather confusing to start with because once the book started it was very different and it was quite jarring at first. The idea of this novel is definitely unique for me, with the mix and jumping between time periods. I had never explored steampunk novels prior to reading this one and it was good enough for me to consider diving deeper into the genre to read more of them.

I’ve never been someone who enjoyed either the Star Wars or the star track franchise so I couldn’t commit myself to read a full book in the “space opera” genre. I read a few short stories and novellas instead this week. I was surprised when I was reading and the books didn’t have that “unreal” and out of this world, space feel that I was expecting based on what I know about the Star Wars films. They felt more like works of fiction that had aspects of space and not books about outer space and made up galaxies. I was overall impressed with how much I enjoyed them since I was expecting to just struggle through this week and the book choices we had in the genre. The genre is very vast and I realized that since none of the short stories gave me any star wars vibes at all. Of the ones that I read, The Man Who Sold the Moon was by far my favorite because it was an interesting concept and was able to keep my attention as opposed to some of the other ones which felt very cold and dry.

This week I read The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. The book was different from anything that I had ever read and it kept me engaged the entire time as I had no idea what to expect from it next. The book was not set in a far-off time period and does not start off in a magical place and it slowly works its way into the myth as the story goes on while most myth stories have the myth throughout the entire book. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and all the turns that it took. After watching and listening to the author talk in class I enjoyed the book even more because the authors speaking voice and speech was so interesting. I didn’t realize until the end of the book that Gailman never introduced the narrator by his name so you never know what he is called the whole time. From getting a worm that crawls into his foot that then becomes a controlling housekeeper who threatens to kill the boy.  The book features a lot of ups and downs and leaves you guessing what could possibly hap

This week I read the Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. In the past, the closest book I’d come to reading something like this would be the first Harry Potter book (I never got around to reading the others).  In this book, the main characters Marco and Celia are both training magicians in a magical circus that happens only at night and has the ability to move by itself. Celia’s father is a magician and he asks his old teacher to have a duel to the death between both of their young magicians they’re training. Marco and Celia try to impress each other with their magic ability and end up falling in love with each other. With the spell that Isobel casts over the circus, it’s as if love is blind because the two of them develop a relationship without ever knowing that they are to battle to death soon enough. In the end, Celia chooses to save Marco and the circus at the risk of her own safety and sacrifices herself for the lives of everyone else.