Sunday, January 20, 2013

Reading and Writing Reflection #3

Book: Water For Elephants

Author: Sara Gruen

Pages Read: 1-13 (part 1)

 The book threw me right into a moment of action – the Disaster March. Right away I had numerous questions going through my mind… What’s going on? What exactly is the Disaster March and why is everyone panicking and fleeting? What exactly went wrong? None of these questions were answered, but I’m hoping that they’ll be cleared up later in the book.

 When the main character, Jacob, was paying special attention to Rosie the elephant and Marlena, the girl who performs with and rides Rosie at the circus (or so I assumed), I couldn’t help but wonder of what significance they were to him. As a result of Jacob’s description of them, I decided that he’s in love with Marlena and that Rosie has a special place in his heart. I later found out that Jacob was a vet, and worked with elephants, which put a few of the puzzle pieces together in my mind.

 There was a sudden murder performed by Marlena. (Why?) Though Jacob was in shock and tried to stop her, it seemed like he was generally okay with it. He had referred to the man who was murdered as a “son of a b*tch” right before it happened, which made me wonder what this man had done to get such a title. The strange thing is that despite this murder, I was already taking Jacob and Marlena’s side. I understand that this was the author’s intention, but it still seemed so odd to me considering the terrible thing Marlena had done. Jacob said that he kept this a secret for the rest of his life. He said, “In seventy years, I’ve never told a blessed soul.” It really made me curious as to why he had taken it upon himself to protect Marlena like that. Seventy years is a long time, especially to stay quiet and keep something so big to yourself.

Six Word Memoirs:

As you may know, I joined the class a month late, so this was one of the projects I missed and have been putting together on my own time. Despite thinking that the project was a really neat idea and enjoying the examples of other students and those found on the internet, I have been putting it off… and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because of the personal aspect of the memoirs, or it could be the fact that we’re supposed to post all of them at once (ahh, a lot of reflecting and writing for one day!) Either way, I think that a weight will be lifted off my shoulders once I do complete all of them (2/6 to go!) and that it’ll be really cool to see all of the memoirs side by side… the finished project!

 Blogging:

 Oh blogging… just a few months ago the idea of blogging made me so uncomfortable, but look at me now! It was difficult to get myself out there, post thoughts, opinions, and just about anything that came to my mind and share it with the public. It was a bit of a burden and time consuming to turn on the laptop, sign in, and type everything out. I found myself putting other things ahead of blogging on the importance scale (sorry.) However, once the blog started to come together, I started to enjoy it more and more. I got to open myself up to something new, and am now at ease with writing about things that are not just facts. My blogging goal for the next week is to get fully caught up with all of my assignments and add some more personal additions (maybe 2 or 3.) I will accomplish this by setting some time aside just for creative writing and by using my mom’s iPad Blogger app when I’m just much too lazy to pull out the chunky laptop.

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