LITERATURE OF HORROR, FANTASY & SCI-FI

  I chose the Martian as my reading for this week because I had seen the movie previously and thought it was interesting. I re-watched the movie and then read the book to see what was similar and different between the two. What I thought was interesting was how normally, a book and the movie made based on it are often-time very different from one another. I was surprised to see that the two were pretty similar as far as the movie plot and arc. The only big change I noticed was that the ending was more dramatic in the movie than it was in the book. Which makes sense, since movies often overdramatize to keep audience members on the edge of their seats. As usual, the book format of the story has more interesting details, and more small moments that aren't as "cinematic", which makes it a more interesting read than watch.

  Night Circus is an interesting novel about love, choice and magic. A big theme of this book was forbidden love. As mentioned in the briefing, this type of fantasy is meant to help teens learn the world around them, so the idea of forbidden love applies here. As the apprentices were meant to duel, with only one surviving, the idea of making love over war is a theme that applies in our real world as well. Also, the circus itself is important. Where on surface level it might seem like a good thing, the characters quickly realize that it has a much darker undertone. Keeping with the idea that this novel is supposed to help teens in real life, you can see that what you could take from this novel is to not trust things on their surface value. Similarly, how each of their respective mentors is controlling, which brings the idea of teens rebelling against both authority and what they're told. Another thing that backs this argument up is that how the mentors are more focused on besting th

  For this week I chose to talk about both the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. I've read both and watched both movies, and they're great, classic tales of a heroic journey. In Lord of the Rings, an important factor that differs from the Hobbit is the value of corruption. Frodo, throughout the course of the novel, grows increasingly attached to the ring that he comes across. The audience sees and predicts the outcome of this greed, but the other members of Frodo's party are blind to it. This is why it comes as a surprise to Sam when Frodo decides not to cast the ring into the fire. The tale of a heroic journey is classified by many things that are present in both the Hobbit and LOTR. Taking the main protagonist out of their home or comfortable environment is key - this helps the average audience member relate to and feel the same way as the main character does. Another key point is having a "party", or fellowship in LoTR, a group of friends that accompany the main ch

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor  is something that I was actually asked to read last semester by another liberal arts teacher. So for this reading this week I went through a browsed for a few refreshers. I found this story to have some very strong harry potter vibes. One of the prominent things I noticed about this novel was how the character that was considered "different" by society, was also secretly actually different in that she had magical powers.  I absolutely love how this book brings women empowerment to light.  She felt like a real protagonist with compelling growth and not overly "girl power" incarnate. If only the conflict was a little more present in the overall story and this would be high on my "favorite books" list. The archetype of witches - or at least in the American sense - has been broken in my opinion in this novel. The go-to vision of witches for most Americans is from, for example, the TV shows like The Circle, Legacies, The Vampire D

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer , which I read and then also found out it was a movie...  So naturally, I  watched the movie for comparison.  As far as the week's topic of "weird" goes, the movie defiantly nailed it far  more than the book did. Visually demonstrating weird is much easier than telling it. Thus I feel like I did not react or enjoy this reading as much as I did watching the movie version. The book differs in the movie from how it deals with "weird", though. In the novel, the team relies on journals of others and writings from the biologist to express to the audience how Area X is described and interpreted. However, in visual form, the movie had no need for journal writings to express just how "weird" the X was. Especially in both the movie and novel, the idea of "weird" seemed, in this case, to be strangely linked to a form of attraction as well.  In the novel, it's seen as the biologist explores Area X and discovers all the