Improvement over the Trimester

The 4^th ever blog post I did was on Sunday, September 15, 2013 called Amped. It wasn’t very long and I used pictures to make it look longer. I wasn’t very interested in blogging just wanted to get a good grade. So, I did not explain my opinions like I should when writing a review of the book.  “I thought the book was very detailed.” I did not go on in my post to explain how the book was detailed or why I liked detailed books.” In my newest post from Tuesday, October 29, 2013 called Allegiant, I wrote; “I know many people who were very irritated with Tris, the main character, but I think it made her feel more human and the ending had a bigger impact because of this.” I went on to explain why Tris being disliked moved the book forward rather than saying “people didn’t like Tris.” I would have done something to this affect in my earlier blog posts. I wrote more in detail in my newer post compared to my old one. “I liked that the story was being told from different characters point of views, not just one.” (Old one) I personally never got bored while reading. I kept on wanting to read on and on! Roth writes in a more advance way, but makes it understandable by using context clues. I love how the author clues in little pieces of information, that you don’t notice, but it completely impacts the ending! I'm always really surprised! Allegiant kept me on my toes!” (New one) In my new blog post, I went into to detail why I never got bored when reading! I list my reasons why I didn’t get bored. But, in the old one I stated how I like the different point of views. I did not explain how this impacted the story and me as a reader. I feel like my organization helped improve my writing because people were more interested in my writing because it was broken up rather than being one big paragraph. In my newer post I used headings like; “Theme”, “Dislikes”, “Ending”, “Characters”, and “Veronica Roth's writing style”. I had no headings in my older blog post. In my old post, I included no quotes. I included a quote in my newer blog to help support what I thought the theme was in the book.

 I really struggled with thinking of what to write about. I thought my blog had to be about the categories contain within the rubric we received. I would be at points in my book where I couldn’t write about things like theme. I overcame this by empathizing questions I had during the book, and what I wondered. When I did these things I could then predict and analyze my reading. It really helped me write good, detailed, interesting blog post. I also struggled with not containing spoilers in my blog. I really wanted to tell the people who were reading my blog exactly how I felt at each point of the book, but then I would give away things. This really frustrated me because I wanted to write good post. I didn’t really overcome this. I need to work on this, so I can find a way to blog about it, but not reveal too much. One strength I had was asking good questions. I asked so many question when I was reading, it help me write efficient blog post. It helped people reading my blog see and understand my thinking.  My reading goal was 15 books and I did not meet this goal. I only read 12 goals. I didn’t really remember my goal while reading books, so next time I will focus on meeting my goal. I used Goodreads.com to find books I want to read. I also commented on my friends status to know what if the book was good and if I should read it. I did update good reads often. I have improved a lot as a reader. I ask more thought provoking questions and predict better. I learn some new words because sometimes I would include words I didn’t know from my book into my blog. I can now analyze the text better. I had to do this to put into my blog, so now it’s automatic for me to do this while reading. I make more connections to the characters and the books themselves. This makes the book more understandable and relatable.