Maria Semple’s book, Where’d You Go Bernadette is about a daughter's search for answers as to where her mother disappeared to. As a reward for Bee’s perfect grades, she request a family trip to Antarctica. Her father, Elgin Branch, is a very important man to Microsoft and is rarely home. Bernadette Fox, Bee’s mother, is a former architect that won a MacArthur grant and stays in the house whenever she can do to her agoraphobia. She avoids leaving the house by having her virtual assistant, Manjula, who claims to work for a company out of India, make her calls, reservations, and orders. The book is told through various documents, which mostly emails but sometimes have accounts written in Bee’s point of view. Bernadette will slowly be pushed over
Lisa Genova, the author of Still Alice, a heartbreaking book about a 50-year-old woman's sudden diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, graduated valedictorian from Bates College with a degree in Biopsychology and holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Harvard University. She is a member of the Dementia Advocacy, Support Network International and Dementia USA and is an online columnist for the National Alzheimer's Association. Genova's work with Alzheimer's patients has given her an understanding of the disorder and its affect not only on the patient, but on their friends and family as well (Simon and Schuster, n.d.).
It is safe to say that work comes in many different forms. Whether it be a fast food or a corporate, the people that surround an individual make a great impact on the way he or she may work. Singapore, by Mary Oliver, is about a young woman working as a custodian in an airport who although works alone, enjoys her work and the people she meets. Dorianne Laux’s What I Wouldn’t Do, introduces another young woman reviewing the jobs she has had throughout time and reflects on those that she liked and disliked. Hard Work, by Stephen Dunn, exemplifies a young boy working in a soda factory during his summer break. Searching for happiness in life and work is just what these individuals are doing.
For my reading assignment I read “Car Trouble” by Jeanne Duprau. The story takes place in many cities in the United States. Some are real places like Richmond, Virginia, St. Louis, Missouri, and Los Angeles, California. The book also has some fictional towns like Sunville, New Mexico, a town built completely off of solar power and other natural resources. There are many more real and fake cities throughout the story, but the ones mentioned are the most written about and most important to the story.
The fourth Chapter of Estella Blackburn’s non fiction novel Broken lives “A Fathers Influence”, exposes readers to Eric Edgar Cooke and John Button’s time of adolescence. The chapter juxtaposes the two main characters too provide the reader with character analyses so later they may make judgment on the verdict. The chapter includes accounts of the crimes and punishments that Cooke contended with from 1948 to 1958. Cooke’s psychiatric assessment that he received during one of his first convictions and his life after conviction, marring Sally Lavin. It also exposes John Button’s crime of truancy, and his move from the UK to Australia.
This frustration acted as a vehicle for her to gain a desire to be more
Deborah Landau’s “You’ve Got to Start Somewhere”, is a lyric poem that tells the story of a speaker realizing how much technology has changed the way we look at the world. It takes place in the city as the speaker is observing life around her, and realizing how disconnected people actually are from the world, this is ironic because all people want to do in this day and age is be connected. The speaker talks about the future of human relationships through nostalgia and urges for a change.
The setting in the short story “Shiloh” by Bobbie Ann Mason works well to accentuate the theme of the story. The theme portrayed by Mason is that most people change along with their environment, with the exception of the few who are unwilling to adapt making it difficult for things such as marriage to work out successfully. These difficulties are apparent in Norma Jean and Leroy’s marriage. As Norma Jean advances herself, their marriage ultimately collapses due to Leroy’s unwillingness to adapt with her and the changing environment.
While running the Whistle Stop Cafe, Idgie and Ruth help certain individuals, especially throughout the extraordinary misery, when the ladies sustain each eager individual – frequently at no charge – that passes through their entryways. Idgie likewise supports the "colored" occupants of Whistle Stop by serving them from the indirect access – despite the fact that isolation is strictly upheld – and treating her colored people with the same reasonableness with which she treats her white workers. A scene that was very gruesome which leads to a character development in Idgie is at the point when the forthcoming Bennett tries to take the infant from her house one night, a hued workers, Sipsey, kills him with a griddle, and her child, Huge George, discards the body in that week's barbecue, which he then proceeds to feed to the analysts performing the homicide investigation. Eventually when Idgie is captured for the wrongdoing years after the fact, she declines at fault Huge George or Sipsey, and dangers time in jail deceiving the jury by providing a plausible excuse for all of them. At the point when Ruth dies, Idgie's story basically ceases from all operations, however at the end of the novel, it is indicated that she is still alive. But when idgie was young it was quite clear that she was not always like this because she used to be the type that needed to run about and scratch her knees, get bruised eyes, and get messy, and that is simply what she did. Not much her own particular Momma could do to control her. Another side that reveals a character trait of Idgie’s is the point when Buddy dies Idgie runs off and doesn’t let anybody in her family draw close to her. She might go back just to check how her family was doing, yet she lived ...
The main character of this book is Susan Caraway, but everyone knows her as Stargirl. Stargirl is about 16 years old. She is in 10th grade. Her hair is the color of sand and falls to her shoulders. A “sprinkle” of freckles crosses her nose. Mostly, she looked like a hundred other girls in school, except for two things. She didn’t wear makeup and her eyes were bigger than anyone else’s in the school. Also, she wore outrageous clothes. Normal for her was a long floor-brushing pioneer dress or skirt. Stargirl is definitely different. She’s a fun loving, free-spirited girl who no one had ever met before. She was the friendliest person in school. She loves all people, even people who don’t play for her school’s team. She doesn’t care what others think about her clothes or how she acts. The lesson that Stargirl learned was that you can’t change who you are. If you change for someone else, you will only make yourself miserable. She also learned that the people who really care about you will like you for who you are. The people who truly love you won’t ask you to change who you are.
...lis, Christina Marsden. "'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?': Seduction, Space, And A Fictional Mode." Studies In Short Fiction 18.1 (1981): 65. Literary Reference Center. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.
The story, “Good Country People,” by Flannery O’Connor, is a third person limited narration which means the reader can only look into the mind of only a few of the characters. Those characters are Mrs. Hopewell and Hulga, or Joy. Schmoop discusses a deeper understanding about the narrator of the story.
This book is told from the diary of the main character, Sam Gribley. Sam is a boy full of determination. He didn’t give up and go home like everyone thought he would. He is strong of mind. After the first night in the freezing rain, with no fire and no food, he still went on. He is a born survivor. He lasted the winter, through storms, hunger, and loneliness, and came out on top even when everyone expected him to fail. “The land is no place for a Gribley” p. 9
For as long as man has walked the earth, so has evil. There may be conflicting moral beliefs in this world, but one thing is universally considered wrong: serial killers. Although some people may try to use insanity as an explanation for these wicked people, they cannot explain away the heartlessness that resides in them. As shown in The Stranger Beside Me, infamous serial killer Ted Bundy is no exception to this. Even though books about true crimes may be considered insensitive to those involved, the commonly positively reviewed book The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule handles the somber issue of Ted Bundy’s emotionally destructive early life and the brutal crimes he committed that made people more fearful and aware of the evil that can exist in seemingly normal people well.
Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver Six thousand years ago in Northern Europe, a teenager named Torak woke up with his shoulder throbbing in pain. His father lies next to him, bleeding from an open wound. The two have been attacked by an enormous demon bear, which is bound to come back at any moment. As he bleeds out, Torak’s father can only bear to say a few more words. He says that the demon bear will only grow stronger with each kill it makes, and he also tells Torak that he has to go to the Mountain of the World Spirit in order to defeat the bear.
“Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield tells a story of a lonely, English lady in France. Miss Brill is a quiet person who believes herself to be important. The whole afternoon at the gardens, Miss Brill does not converse with anyone, nor does anyone show any inclination to talk with her. She merely watches others and listens to their conversations. This provides her with a sense of companionship; she feels as if she is a part of other people’s lives. Miss Brill is also slightly self-conceited. She believes that she is so important that people would notice if she ever missed a Sunday at the park. It does not occur to her that other people may not want her to be there.