Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Autobiography of Myself as a Reader

http://prezi.com/qos9zihui38v/living-an-imaginary-life/#

I have realized that I am very specific about the kinds of books that I do or don't like, and that I prefer to choose my own books rather than have someone choose for me.  My mom taught me to read before Kindergarten, which helped immensely towards getting me into Quest and into other advanced classes at my two elementary schools.  It also feels as if I have become a stronger reader, able to tell from the first few sentences or chapters if a book is right for me; sometimes I can tell just from the cover what books I would like (yes, I know.  "Don't judge a book by its cover" but sometimes you can judge a book by its cover, and that is why it is important that when you are publishing your book, if you want your audience to want to read it, get a good cover!).  I'm rambling on, so back to the topic at hand.  ANYWAY, I was saying that my love of reading has helped me to hold things in my head better and do better overall in school.

I also believe that people fall "out of love" with reading because they are always FORCED to read things, for projects, and that makes them hate books, because books are adding to the homework pileup every night, and why should they read a book they don't want to read?  That is not the case for me, but I am feeling the pull of not wanting to read, or boredom with books because I have nothing to read.  Now, what I'm feeling about books and my boredom with them is probably nothing like what other people are feeling when they start to lose interest in books, but I'm just saying.  So that's my story.  What's yours?

-bookhouse4

Friday, September 5, 2014

Truth

It is hard to explain truth completely, for it has many sides, and is not just "right" and "wrong."  How do you know that things really happened?  How do you know that what we are learning in school is true?  We will probably never know.

Truth, to me, is what is right or correct from a certain point of view.  It all depends on your perspective, and what your beliefs are.  You will never be able to tell the entire truth, because in order to do that, you would have to have everyone who was involved tell their story exactly how they saw it, and even then they could be lying.  


There are many parts to truth, and if you really dig down in it, it would seem that there is always a different view of truth and that in reality, truth doesn't exist.  Fiction and nonfiction are just names that we give to genres, but how do we know that nonfiction is real and fiction is not?  History is usually told from the winning side, and that is what is considered truth, but what about the losing side?  The "dark side" such as during the first World War, with the Germans?  They may have seen us as the evil ones, just as we thought that the Germans were evil.


If you are a writer or a reader, you must understand that the truth can be twisted, and that not everything can be trusted.  You could believe that a "fictional" story is true, when the author of the book does not.  It all depends on your point of view.  Take, for example, the writer Tim O'Brien.  He gave a great example of your point of view on a story and his point of view.  He says in his writing of How to Tell a true War Story that if the answer to your question of "is it true?" really matters to you, then it will be truth, and you will say that it is truth.


If you write or tell stories, you will, at some point, add or subtract something that will make it not entirely the truth, and it will never be the whole truth.


When you listen to a story or read a story, there is no real "truth", yet not all stories are lies.  There is but a small amount of truth, despite facts given, and you must always remember that there is always something more that can be added in the telling of the truth.


-bookhouse4