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Showing posts from March, 2023

Olga Dies Dreaming Annotation

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Author: Xochitl Gonzalez Title: Olga Dies Dreaming Genre: Literary Fiction Publication Date: January 4, 2022 Number of Pages: 373 pages Time Period: Mostly set in 2017 with letters and flashbacks from the early 2000s Series: None Plot Summary: Olga Dies Dreaming follows the fraught lives of Puerto Rican siblings Olga and Prieto Acevedo living in Brooklyn, NY. Olga works as a wedding planner for the wealthy elites of Brooklyn and Prieto is a U.S Congressman. Their mother, Blanca, is part of the Young Lords revolutionary group in Puerto Rico. She never cared to mother the siblings and fell out of their lives years ago, communicating only with her children in scattered and manipulative letters throughout the years. When Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit the island of Puerto Rico, the lives of Olga and Prieto implode as their mother comes back into their lives, carrying family and national secrets with her. Subject Headings:  Hispanic Americans - Fiction Mother and Child - Fiction Family...

Nonfiction Prompt - Crying in H Mart

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1. Where is the book on the narrative continuum? Highly Narrative 2. What is the subject of the book? Michelle Zauner’s life as a Korean American, her relationship with her mother, and her mother’s death 3. What type of book is it? Memoir in narrative form 4. Articulate appeal What is the pacing of the book? The pace is fairly leisurely. Describe the characters of the book. As a memoir, it focuses mostly on the author Michelle Zauner, lead singer of the band Japanese Breakfast. Michelle is Korean American and grew up in Eugene, Oregon before moving to the East Coast. She had a strained relationship with her mother, which provided a lot of the narrative and emotional basis of the book.  How does the story feel? Emotional, deep, cathartic. What is the intent of the author? To share her life story and experiences, to come to terms with the death of her mother What is the focus of the story? Growing up as Korean in America, Michelle’s relationship with her mother, her life as a...

Spear Annotation

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  Author: Nicola Griffith Title: Spear Genre: Fantasy - Historical and Legend Publication Date: April 19, 2022 Number of Pages: 184 pages Geographical Setting : British Isles Time Period: Arthurian Times, likely 5th-6th century Series: None Plot Summary: The book follows a girl in the Arthurian times who grew up in the wild with only her mother and not even the knowledge of her own name. When she leaves her mother's hidden sanctuary, drawn by the call of heroism and knighthood, she learns her name: Peretur. The reader follows the adventurers of Peretur, as she finds a home amongst travelers at first before stumbling upon the body of a fallen knight and taking his arms and armor. Peretur disguises herself as a boy and learns she has an inherent knack for horseback riding and the spear. She goes on to Caer Leon to meet up with King Arturus (Arthur) and the legendary Knights of the Round, also eventually meeting the king's sorcerer, Nimue of the Lake. To prove herself worthy of kn...

Ebooks and Audiobooks

I am an avid reader of both ebooks and audiobooks as well as physical hard-copy books. I truly believe that the three formats serve different functions and niches for readers, and that the appeal factors are definitely different between the three though some remain consistent. Personally, I used ebooks for two main reasons: downtime at work and at night. The ability to read a book on a work computer during slow times is wonderful and not something that I could easily do with a physical book. And at night, I almost always read on my Kindle ereader because then I don’t have to worry about having light. Like Erin, I am always listening to an audiobook in my car! Or when I’m at the gym and sometimes when I’m cooking dinner. I highly appreciate the accessibility of the format. However, I’m a freak who listens to them super sped up so I might have different appeal desires than others! For ebooks, there are some important appeal factors that might differ. The ability to adjust font size, line...

Book Club Experience

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For my book club experience, I found a nearby library system that hosts a book club called Books and Beans in coffee shops throughout Johnson County, Indiana. I had honestly never attended a book club before and have only observed bits and pieces of the one we host at the library I work at, so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. The meeting was on a Monday morning which I found interesting because so many others that I’ve seen are in the evening or on weekends, but the timing fit nicely with the coffee theme. It did perhaps make it harder for some people to attend, but that’s always going to be the case with a daytime program or event. The experience didn’t start out amazing, but that was my fault when I went to the wrong coffee shop even though I had the proper information in my emails. After I solved that hiccup and actually got to the right place, it went better! I got a coffee and settled in at the table with the rest of the book club attendees. I did disclose my purpose being t...

Climate Fiction and the Potential for Change

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I chose to write my special topics paper on the increasingly popular genre of climate fiction, also referred to as cli-fi. Maybe more aptly described as a subgenre of science fiction, cli-fi novels revolve around environmental disaster and climate change brought about specifically by human activity. The acknowledgement of the anthropogenic cause of climate change is key to these n ovels and what set them apart from other dystopias or disaster fiction. Cli-fi books know that humans caused the environmental destruction of planet earth directly. Generally, these novels begin when the damage is already well and truly done, with a dystopian or pre/post-apocalyptic earth taking center stage in the narrative. There's no preventing the catastrophe of climate change in cli-fi novels. Instead, the protagonists must cope with their changed planet and learn to live differently, sometimes there's hope in the sense of solving problems or lessening the impact, but the majority have a decidedl...