Doctor Who

            Why Doctor Who make an amazing book series? Okay, so I’m a bit obsessed with Doctor Who along with many other people. There is seven seasons right now that I’ve watched and the show is extremely interesting. Each episode is completely different and there is a lot of humor to keep you interested in what’s happening.

            I think that some people have made short stories about Doctor Who, or there could possibly actually be a book series that I’m not aware of and if so they should make it widely known there is a book series like Doctor Who because I have a feeling the series would be really popular as the show is widely popular, I mean you have to love those British accents…And I know that a book series would have no British accent, but I just really adore this show.

            So many movies get based upon books, that if someone was creative enough they could make a book based upon a movie. I feel like the same thing can be done with shows; the people that write the scripts should give their ideas to an author and let the author mess around with the word play and putting everything into a legit story that sounds like something someone would want to read. And I’m not saying the books would have to follow the show completely they could go off on their own thing. It’s just an idea, someone creative enough to write a book based upon a show….Which I bet a ton of people have tried, but that is what I call fan fiction that usually isn’t the best and they end up doing something insane like for instance making Rose come back and marrying the doctor? Another thing insane like is even making multiple doctors, so all of his companions will get a doctor to love.

            Overall, my point is that with shows that are this interesting, they would have to be really good books as well, right? Since usually people enjoys books more than the movies I think that the same thing would go for shows, that with a little bit of added detail and books based upon shows would be magnificent.

            Doctor Who was just an example since I love the show so much and science fiction/fantasy makes really interesting books (well, again my opinion). So with asking permission to steal the director who wrote the script I think that books would be amazing based upon shows; maybe they already did this, but if so it isn’t that popular. 

Why read?

            So the big question is why should people read? Actually, I can go both sides to this as to why we should read and why we shouldn’t read. But basically, reading broadens our concepts of the world; it allows us to learn new things.

            Reading allows people to sound more intelligent in everyday life. Well, maybe depending on the book. You learn a new word you haven’t used before and then you start to use that word in your everyday vocabulary; which we all know if you say words average people don’t know then people think you’re smart. Another thing reading does is it allows us to see how others use their words to get their ideas and concepts across to us. I believe it is so interesting to ask one person to describe a situation and then ask another person to describe the situation, no one will say it exactly the same way (unless they rehearsed it) because people talk differently and that’s what makes everyone unique. If we all kept saying like and omg or the same words everyone else does we just kind of just group all those people into one category since they clearly talk the same. But anyway to get back on track; while I’m typing this up no one will say it like I do because I have my own voice and own thoughts that cause me to have a different story than other people do.

            Now I will say one reason to not read, you should not read because it ruins your eyesight. Well, maybe, when reading it’s important to look up at least every 20 minutes and stare at a distant object or your eyes will just mess up. I’m not really sure the science behind it, but that’s one reason to not read, if you get so engrossed into a book that you can’t even look up every 20 minutes or so. But reading allows learning, I mean we read textbooks during school to learn new concepts the same goes with any book, you will learn something from it. Whether it be some useful information in life or something like this author was terrible I wasted my time reading this book; you still learned something.

            So read it’s good for you…mostly. And there are so many different books out there to choose from and all these different subjects you can read about; you just need to figure out what you like and pick that book up and begin to read. It’s honestly like watching a movie or watching the telly except there is more detail that will go up to your head. So just pick up a book and read. 

Free Reading

            During school especially in language arts classes many teachers make students read a certain amount of pages that they have to read and then eventually the end of the year or whatever they do a project on the book. I think that students should be able to pick the books that they want for the free reading.

            One big reason that us students should be able to choose the books we read is because the books that are already free chosen for us we have absolutely no interest in it. I understand that by having to read books we wouldn’t originally want to read is expanding our horizons, but as long as the book is at a high school level we should be able to read what we want.

            I for one read books that I would consider them past high school level for reading and I think that since I already read these difficult for free reading that I should be allowed to use that for counting my pages. Some books I understand are pretty simple that students shouldn’t be able to use for their free reading assignment, but most of the books us students read are usually at a teenage/ high school level and the few students that are reading easier books are completely ruining it for the rest of us.

I think a solution for this idea is to let the students read what they want, honestly the students reading the easy books that are at a lower reading level than what they should be reading are only hurting themselves. Or another solution is to simply search the book into Google or something and it will be pretty easy to tell if the book is at their reading level, if we seriously have to read books at our reading level.

My teacher last year just let us pick what we wanted, and I know sometimes there is restrictions to books we should read like Fifty Shades of Gray, but isn’t the point of reading books to expand our vocabulary and recognize the lesson from the story? And of course entertain ourselves, but students don’t want to read books that are chosen for them essentially. So they won’t want to read them and will just pretend they did when clearly they didn’t. I’m not saying all books that teachers say we should read are bad, but some of them are a little out dated for my and other students taste that’s why we should be able to read what we want.

The Great Gatsby

            The Great Gatsby the book compared to the movie (or at least what I can remember of it.) So out of order I saw the movie the Great Gatsby (the new one because I think there’s an older version too) and then about a year later I decided to read the book. So which do I think is better? The book obviously since it has more details and always more happens in the book than with the movie.

            Comparing the book to the movie I was actually quite surprised at the length of the movie compared to the length of the book, because the book only has between 200 and 300 pages and the movie is about two hours long. But now that I’m thinking of it I guess with the first Harry Potter book, the Sorcerer’s Stone (the Philosophers Stone) it was about 300 pages as well and the movie was turned into a two and a half hour movie. Well, anyway like Harry Potter since the Great Gatsby is a shorter book more of the details are within the movie.

            During the movie I felt that everything went by slower in the events that occurred compared to the book, I don’t know why, but the movie just seemed to have a slower pace while the book it seemed like one thing happened and then the next thing happened and so on and so forth. One thing I will say is I thought that Daisy was a conniving evil little witch in both the movie and the book, but I feel like in the book it described her as being a more petite, sweet, and later mean than the movie did. Some of the actors and actresses in the movie fit the role quite well; while others I just didn’t seem them exactly like that as I had while reading the book.

            One thing that I think is a big difference between the book and the movie is I believe that no one shows up to Gatsby’s funeral except for Owl Eyes, but in the book Gatsby’s father shows up, but maybe I’m just recalling it wrong, but I think that if you liked the book you’ll like the movie since they are a pretty close fit to each other in my opinion.

            One good reason to go see the movie is that it had Leonardo DicCaprio in it (though he is older now sadly) and Tobey Maguire in it. Of course both of those people are famous for roles in other movies like the Titanic and Romeo and Juliet, and with Maguire he’s Spiderman and they will always be known to me by those roles and nothing else. But anyway the movie is pretty good, I don’t think they could have done any better, and the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald created a marvelous book for his time period. 

Non-Stop

            The movie called Non-Stop is a surprisingly interesting movie. It’s kind of like an action movie in a way and reminded me of a different movie I had seen before, I can’t recall what it was, but it was definitely better.

            The main actor in the movie is Liam Neeson who if you don’t recall the actor he is famous for his role in Taken. Also some other movies he was which were called the Grey and Unknown. Taken was released in 2008 and is well-known the famous quote from the movie, “I don’t know who you are, but if you don’t let my daughter go I will find you and I will kill you.” That is one of the movies that have Liam Neeson in it that’s worth seeing; there is also a Taken 2; which I can’t comment on at this time since I have not gotten around to seeing the movie yet. Unknown is quite a confusing movie, but since it has Liam Neeson it’s a pretty good movie, he acts really well. So how does this relate to Non-Stop? The movies main actor is Liam Neeson, and with the other movies he’s acted it they have turned out quite well.

            Liam Neeson in the movie Non-Stop plays his role of protector of the airplane extremely well. I thought that the start of the movie kind of just jumped right into it; which is good because some movies try to explain the back story to everything that has happened in the person’s life at the start and it just bores people, with this movie it doesn’t really tell the main character, Bill Marks, past till the middle/end of the movie which I actually kind of liked it like that, it let the movie unfold.

            One thing I didn’t like about the movie was all the texting going on; if you can’t see really well I suggest not sitting in the very back of the theater because there is a lot of reading you have to do. Some of the messages I feel like it went by too quick, but then again I probably have bad eyesight compared to most, since I need glasses or contacts. I will admit like Unknown the movie is kind of confusing, but you’ll catch on eventually and understand (with Non-Stop) what happened in the end of the movie.

            I liked this movie, it’s not going to be one of my favorite movies, but it’s interesting to see and action packed. It’s not horrible, and I actually at the beginning of the movie thought I wouldn’t like it all that much, but surprisingly the middle/end turned out to be good. So go see Non-Stop since it has Liam Neeson in it. 

Banning of Books

            There are many books that throughout the year’s public schools have decided to ban these books for reasons like language, general offensiveness, sexual content, witchcraft, and many other reasons. Generally, the books that are being banned by schools are known to be the ‘classical’ literature books like the Great Gatsby, the Catcher and the Rye, Fahrenheit 451, the Scarlet Letter, and just a lot of books that language arts classes usually read. Why shouldn’t schools be able to ban these books?

            Language arts classes are all about reading, writing, speech; which is just language in general. They focus upon books that are written a certain way that makes the books popular for the theme, language, and style of the books. So why are certain schools banning these books when a lot of language arts classes focus upon them? Because of how it’s written is usually why schools ban certain books; which is kind of ironic since language arts teachers make their students read the books because of how it’s written, but anyway since many of these ‘classical’ or older books have inappropriate language or have sexual mentioning’s in them they get banned from some schools.

            The banning of these books is significant because it’s changing the curriculum of the language arts teachers since they can’t use books like these since they are inappropriate for students. Though, public schools (in turn the government) do have the right to ban books at schools, they shouldn’t. The reason they shouldn’t is because first off especially in high school, the teenagers have already been exposed to content and everything else that is far worse than some of these books. The second reason is that students learn from the books, like in the Pride and Prejudice and Of Mice and Men, the students can learn about discrimination and judging others.

The significance of this is that since the students are learning, so teachers should be able to choose whether or not they want a book like that in their curriculum, the drawback to adding these books though is that it may be considered inappropriate, but the students will end up being exposed to concepts in the books eventually anyway. By banning different books it will just make the students more interested in topics that are banned and they may eventually read it, so by banning books they’re sparking the inevitable and basically drawing attention to books that are bad enough to be banned at school.

            Schools shouldn’t ban books because of it being considered inappropriate at school, the students learn from them. Though, some books like Harry Potter may not seem at first to have any learning from them, all books you can learn from. So even the books about witchcraft shouldn’t be banned from schools because students may read it whether the schools provides the books for them or not, so why not just allow the books at schools in the first place? Books are a great way to learn, even in classes like Ap Biology they go into major detail about sex, so guess that means teachers aren’t allowed to teach about that either. The point it just because there may be a book that has something a little ‘bad’ in it, it shouldn’t be banned from school. For more information about the banning of books check out http://www.ala.org/bbooks/about