Finally

At the beginning of this semester the category of reader that I fell into was... not a reader. I would say that I was very independent in my reading my reading choices, it's just that I chose not to read.The only things that I found myself reading on my own were short news articles or rage comics. Even then if the rage comic were to look like a wall of text, I would instantly be dissuaded from reading it. As this semester has gone on, I have begun to move into the category of "guy who reads when he is super bored or super frustrated with his video games" readers. I like to think that this is a massive improvement in my reading tendencies. I went from reading no books in several years, to almost 3 books in a single semester. That may be a promising rise in my desire to read or a sad realization about how bored and frustrated I am with video games, either way my reading habits have significantly improved. I have found that I pretty much like reading anything, it's all entertaining to me. So after this class I think I am much more likely to read during next semester and the summer, and I believe I will keep moving through the rest of the Artemis Fowl series.

This Week So Far

This week has been really good for me so far. Not too much homework, and that's pretty cool because I have been sleeping over 12 hours everyday. Also out of what homework I have gotten, I have done it. It's so crazy that when someone actually does homework they can understand the lesson 90000000000x better. Oh yeah, and today I happened to become #1 cool cat when my poem analysis was voted a winner. Felt really good to actually get recognized for something I put work into. Besides all that stuff I've read roughly 30 pages of my Artemis Fowl book. I think I can attribute most of this lack of reading to the fact that I'm never awake. The book is still good, it switches around the perspective a lot in order to cover all the facets of the story, and I enjoy when books do that. It makes it feel like I'm not missing anything going on in the story, plus it's so cool when all the separate stories are about to converge on each other and they are all unaware of it.

This weekend

Wow, this weekend was extremely unproductive. Since 3pm Friday I have honestly been awake for a grand total of 8 hours. However, in these 8 hours I have read for about an hour total. So using a bit of mathematics I have discovered that I spent 12.5% of the waking hours of my weekend reading, which if I'm not mistake, is LEGENDARY. Mr. Hill I can just see the tears of pride forming in your eyes right now. Anyway, I've basically just been reading more of that Artemis Fowl book that I found in my room.

TL;DR: Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II is a fantastic movie and I read exponentially more than my classmates did based on the ratio of time awake to time reading.

Reading

This week I decided to start reading a book that is a part of a series I used to read in 7th grade. I used to really enjoy the first two Artemis Fowl books, then this weekend I was cleaning out my room and I found the third installment in my room. I decided to start reading it, and to my surprise it is actually pretty cool. If you're not familiar it is about a 15 year old genius (12 in the first book) who is the son of an extremely wealthy crime lord. He gets in these ridiculous fiascoes with this group of magical underground people named Fairies. They can become stealthed on command, heal themselves and others with magic, and do all other sorts of awesome stuff. In past books he fought against them, then along side them, and in this one it looks like he will be once again fighting along side them. It starts off with him trying to seal a deal with a major Mobster with his "eternity code". Things turn sour and Artemis's bodyguard who is also his best friend ends up taking a bullet for him. The only way for him to save him is going to be with the assistance of the fairies, however the fairies believe that they successfully wiped his memory of their encounters. So getting in contact is going to be a little problematic. Well, that's about it so far. TOOTALOO

Close-reading Bingo

1. This student said "this" without putting a noun or a noun phrase after it. "This suggests that the day to come might be a little overwhelming and bleak. Sunlight is shining onto the handrails “formed by intersections of the lobby’s towering volumes of marble and glass.” http://kellylee25.blogspot.com/2011/10/practice-diction-analysis.html

2.This guy who likes peanut butter had a little bit of a blunder by using the past tense: "With the use of his realistic descriptions, the promt was easily visualized."
http://addie-line.blogspot.com/2011/10/practice-diction-analysis-mezzanine.html

3. The horse lover who wrote this slipped up by using common mistake number 6, the fatal use of "use."
"Salinger also uses the character's brother to enhance this "run-down" life with describing how his brother has nice things, like a Jaguar automobile."
http://livelaughloveridehorses.blogspot.com/2011/10/practice-diction-analysis.html

4. Finally this notorious Fulla of Moes exhibited one of the nine deadly weaknesses by being vague. "He compares the way view from the escalator on sunny days, and on dark days."
http://notoriouslymofulla.blogspot.com/2011/10/mezzanine.html

Practice Diction Analysis

The colloquial, coarse, and somewhat unmannerly diction in "Catcher in the Rye" exemplifies the narrator's down-to-earth, pissed off at the world personality. His defiant and thick skinned nature jumps out when he explains that all the background information about his life is just "David Copperfield kind of crap" that bores him. As the passage goes on, the author uses phrases like "He's got a lot of dough" and "they're also touchy as hell" to make it feel as though the narrator is just another regular kid who is telling you a story. The terse and all together informal nature of the narrator echoes through the entire passage in this excerpt from "Catcher in the Rye."

My reading

So far the past couple weeks (all of them except the first two) I have really been slacking on my reading. However, this weekend I kicked my reading skills into overdrive. My problem with reading before was that i just read painstakingly slow. Like 3rd grade level slow. Like "Ahh that was quite a nice hour long read, how much land have we covered Jim Jam.... 10 whole pages, golley gee what an achievement. So in search of a way to fix this issue I did what any man in my shoes would do, sit on the internet and browse through silly pictures of cats until all of my problems go away. Then suddenly, there was something that was not a cat, it was a post about reading faster.I was like AWWW YEAH, and then the wonderful power of the internet directed me to this website called http://www.spreeder.com/ where i learned how to read SUPER FAST. If you go there, you should click on the "Click here to speed read this introduction" to check out how pro you can be at reading. After that you should click the "The Application" button at the top of the screen and paste in any text from a book you want to read. What I did was download a book and then paste a giant section of it into the speed reader thing, and then BAM Jim Jam is reading like a boss at 300 words per minute. I read for an hour today, but the bad part is that my shamefully downloaded book does not contain the page numbers written in the corners. To quell this issue, I used my extra special skills with the google machine to discover that the average number of words per page in a book is 250. So then using my proficiency with the calculator program on my computer I was able to find out that I read SEVENTY TWO WORDS IN ONE SITTING. I then proceeded to fist pump triumphantly in a manner reminiscent of the "Nintendo sixty four kid" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFlcqWQVVuU).
So yeah Mr. Hill, prepare yourself because I'm fittin to overtake those reading leader boards with my all new secret speed reading weapon.