Book 2 Trailer

 

Book Talk Presentation

Book 4 Review

Readers,

      I’m Amy Dunne. If you’re reading this, then you must have ready Gone Girl. I’m here to clear up the many rumors regarding what happened with my husband, Nick. Gillian Flynn got everything wrong. She is just another typical writer who will twist stories to boost sales. Please put whatever she told you aside as I tell you the real story of me and Nick (that’s proper grammar).

      Yes, Nick was cheating. I did know of this, but I never did anything as psychotic as Ms. Flynn wrote. When I first caught him cheating, I tried to get a confession out of him. When I saw that he wouldn’t confess, I wanted to win him over. Everything written in my diary is true. I didn’t write it while I was planning out a plot to destroy my husband. The diary was written by me, and nothing was fiction in the first part of the book.

On our fifth anniversary, I planned an annual treasure hunt for Nick. In the past, the treasure hunts have really been a test to see how much he can recall about our history. This year, I realized that it was unfair of me to test him over small details that really weren’t that significant. I eased up on him. Did I know that every place on the treasure hunt was a place where Nick was with his mistress? No. I knew that he was having an affair, but I didn’t stalk them. I assumed those were our special places, places that would be sacred to only us.

      As for my disappearance, I did decide to take a vacation. On the morning of our anniversary, Nick came back from The Bar, reeking of her perfume. You can probably imagine how hard it was for me, and I couldn’t bear to be around him when he smelled of her on our anniversary. I took a vacation. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. To be perfectly honest, I just drove until my car ran out of gas. Looking back, I probably should have told someone that I was leaving, but I didn’t. The furniture being messed up and the blood in the kitchen were Nick’s father’s. You see, Mr. Dunne has Alzheimer’s. He broke into our home after I left, thinking it was his own. He was overcome with anger and was flipping couches. Eventually, he cut himself on one of our benches, which is where the blood came from. Everything in the shed was bought by him, but he forgot that he had purchased it.

      I left my vacation spot, and I ran into my ex-boyfriend, Desi. What I had originally wrote in my diary was true. When we were dating, he became obsessed. I quickly broke up with him when it became too much, and I found him in my dorm, trying to commit suicide. Desi kidnapped me in a parking lot. He did rape me, and yes, I did kill him. It was out of self-defense, and I ran because I didn’t know that I had killed him. I just thought I had wounded him enough to get away.

      This is why you can’t trust authors. Gillian Flynn made up the last two parts of “my” diary entries. Nick and I are still happily married. He is faithful again, and we have a baby boy, and a girl on the way. Our story of my disappearance was dramatized by Ms. Flynn, what I just told you was the truth of my story.

Amy Dunne

 

Book 3 Listicle

You may or may not know that the popular TV show, "Bones" is based off of Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs. In this book, the main character, Dr. Temperance Brennan, has an ice heart. However, it works for her.

1. To show up her male coworkers
Dr. Brennan is defiantly the most successful forensic anthropologist in the world. However, she is often disrespected and under-appreciated by her coworkers. Sometimes, to show them her real talent, she will show off a little to make the men respect her. She has absolutely no mercy, demonstrating her cold heart. It works for her though, because she deserves respect from her coworkers.

2. To stay strong in tough situations
In the show and the book, Brennan is put in hard situations. In the show, part of her team is murdered. When his body arrives at her lab, her fellow coworkers are questioning if they can go through with the investigation of this murder, because it hit so close to home. She gives them a pep talk about finding the killer for the coworker. In the book, her closest friend, Gabby (Angela in the show), goes missing for a couple of days. When Brennan does finally get into contact with her, Gabby blows her off and tells her that she can't talk at that moment. In both of these cases, Brennan finds strength through her toughness, and it rubs off on her coworkers.

3. To remove herself from situations
The main plot of Deja Dead is of finding a serial killer who brutally murders and dismembers women. Brennan feels a sense of fear, because she is a woman and the killer could come after her. She knows the danger in her investigating this case, and decides to do it anyways. She doesn't let her emotions mix with her work, and that allows her to go through whatever pain or anxiety she is feeling.

4. No emotional attachment
In both the show and the book, Dr. Brennan has the outstanding ability no get emotionally attached to cases. She doesn't let emotions cloud her thoughts, and she can think clearly at all times. This is part of the reason of why she is so successful, and why people admire her so much. Most of us can get distracted by other people, but she focuses until the case is solved.

5. Determination
Brennan has an incredible work ethic. She won't stop until she finds the killer. In many situations, this means to put herself in a dangerous situation to find evidence or to gain information, but she will go there every single time if it means getting one step closer. Her ice heart lets her go without limitations, and she puts back any fear she has to gain what she needs to.

Adapting Book 2

If The Blind Side by Michael Lewis was a movie (which it is), it would be essential to keep Michael's personality transformation in the story. It must contain the scene where Leigh Anne gives Michael his first bed, which helps us understand the situation that he came from. The scene where Michael takes an unnecessarily large amount of food from Taco Bell is vital because it shows how he was always on the hunt for food, and not knowing where  his next meal would come from. In the book, there is a moment where Michael's biology teacher realizes that he knows the material, he just needs to take the test differently. This moment is crucial to capture because it is a turning point for the teachers' mindsets. They used to think Michael was completely incapable of earning good grades. However, when Michael takes the biology test with the teacher's help, the teachers realize that he can take tests and earn average grades on them.

There are some points in the book that are unnecessary. For an example, the random chapters that are solely about football that are not related to the plot at all are not relevant and could be taken out in the movie. A scene that could be omitted is the intense amount of driving and proving who Michael is to get his license. It could have been said much faster in just simply stating that he got his license.

Book 1 Project

The book I read for my first book was Room by Emma Donoghue. The idea that I have to extend the reader's experience is to have a reality game show. In this show, contestants will be selected based off of a test that they will take, its questions all being knowledge of Room. Similarly to American Ninja Warrior, the goal will be to be the fastest completer of the course. Each person will be put in a situation in which they must escape. The viewer will not be told the correct way to escape, so they can play along at home and escape along with the contestants. The show itself would be called Escape Room, an obvious connection to the book that it is based off of. It would be structured in the same style as most speed game shows, where there is a preliminary round, semi-finals, and finals. The winner will receive a large sum of money as their reward.

This idea stems from the part of Room where the narrator, Jack, and his mother are making a plot to escape Old Nick and Room. The original plan in the book is for Jack to pretend to be extremely ill, and for Old Nick to take him to a hospital. Jack would then tell the doctors of his mom, who is still in Room, and tell them to call the police. The police would come for his mother, arrest Old Nick, and they would escape him forever. However, this plan fell through when Old Nick does not trust the mother and assumes that this is a plan to escape. The mother knows that nothing will convince the captor to take Jack to the hospital, so her and Jack come up with a second plan. Their new plan is to pretend like Jack had died from the disease that was not treated. The mother rolls him up in a carpet so Old Nick will not know that he is actually alive. When the truck comes to a stop, Jack unrolls the carpet and jumps out of the bed of the truck. He runs and finds help, and succeeds. He and his mother are successfully free, and Old Nick goes to jail. Obviously, jumping out of a truck after being wrapped up in a rug during an extremely bouncy ride in the back of a pickup is a bit intense. None of the challenges will be anything dangerous, and if one is, the contestants will be fully informed of the danger elements (but not how to escape) and are able to drop out if they feel like they cannot complete the task. However, they will not be able to reenter the competition and are automatically disqualifying themselves.

I am confident that this idea will work because reality game shows are very popular. It would appeal to a wide range of people because it is fairly gender neutral. Room by Emma Donoghue will have more attention to it with the name of the TV show being Escape Room. The fans will be connected with the author and the book by feeling active in the experience. Because the viewers also do not know how to escape, they will feel more involved in the show and will feel like they are experiencing what Jack did in his escape.

What is a book?

A book is an idea. It's that simple. People try to make it complex and argue e-readers aren't real or books are just a waste of paper. This argument needs to be put to rest. We don't have to say one is better than the other, or one is ruining society. We get so uptight about this, and it's really not a big issue. Just because I prefer chocolate ice cream over vanilla doesn't mean that vanilla is worthless and chocolate is the clear better choice and everyone who likes vanilla is wrong. It doesn't matter what the medium is: hardback, paperback, iPhone, Kindle, or Nook. What matters is the text itself. We judge people based on the content of their heart. In the same way, we should judge a book by what the author has created. A book is and idea that can be conveyed on a variety of mediums and touch a wide range of people. No matter how it is published, a book is a message sent to anyone who is willing to hear it. So let's get rid of this argument as to what is the better format, and just enjoy the idea that the author created and receive the message that they are trying to send.

Why I Read

Some people say they like reading because it's like a movie in your head. Therefore, if they like watching television, then they will automatically love reading. However, this is not my reasoning for reading. On TV, characters are forced on you. A writer creates a character and then bring that character to life. We watch this character interact with others and witness the experiences that make them the character the writer created them to be. TV is us sitting in on someone else's story, we have no part in creating this person. We automatically develop feelings towards this person, not because we decide if we like them or not, rather, because the writer made them to be dynamic so the viewer would pick up the correct emotion towards them.

In reading, creating the characters is a two way street. If an author creates a character, the reader comes up with their own ideas of what this person looks like, how they sound, almost everything. In a movie, the casting director picks an actor, immediately solidifying what this character is. When you read, you get to be the casting director for the movie that you are coming up with as you read over a book. That's why people who read a book typically don't like the movie. The character you have in your mind and the actor don't match, simply because everyone comes up with their own version of the character. I read to make my own movies, and to have a say in which actors I want to play which part. I make the movies, and I don't have the confines of television.