Week #2 Assignment

Death in the City of Light

1) Pacing- I really like this book due to the fact that the first chapter really grabs your attention, the opening scene you get from the chapter is a foul smell coming a house fire across the street in Paris. Which turns out to be a bunch of burning bodies who are thought to be of Nazi German soldiers killed by the French resistance. After the first chapter the pace slows down a bit due to the details given throughout the book.

2) Setting- Since I like history the setting of this non-fiction book is perfect for me. The story is set in Nazi occupied Paris during World War II. Mainly, the book focuses on the high end district in Paris where the grizzly scene in Mr. Petiot's house is found.

3) Characterization- The main character and focus of the book is on a Dr. Marcel Petiot, known as the people's doctor for giving free medical care to the poor. However, prior to becoming a doctor Mr. Petiot was found to be a complex individual. While he was a child there were stories of him killing cats and various other animals/insects for the fun of it. During World War I, he was thought to have wounded himself with a grenade in order to get out of the war and because of that he was shuffled between mental asylums, hospitals and jails for the remainder of the war. Once he received is medical degree from the University of Paris he set up a practice outside of Paris where he was found to have committed insurance fraud when people thought he was giving free heath care to the poor.

Eragon

1) Story Line- The story line for the book Eragon by Christopher Paolini is a good one for people who enjoy fantasy novels. Eragon is about a young farmer boy who finds a dragon egg on his farm and when the egg hatches he becomes the second dragon rider in the land of Alagaesia. This land is ruled by Galbatorix, a dragon rider who betrayed the dragon riders once they would not give him another dragon. This follows Eragon's journey from his farm to the Varden, the army resistance against the king.

2) Pacing- The book starts off pretty slow as the author is describing the land of Alagaesia and the type of world it is, but eventually the book picks up when the fighting occurs.

3) Characterization- Eragon has a lot of different characters and civilizations living in Alagaesia such as dwarves, urgals, elves, humans, shades and dragons. However, the thing that I like about the book is that it lays out who are the good people/heroes and who are the bad guys/villains.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

1) Setting- The setting of Uncle Tom's Cabin is the mid 1800's in the American South specifically Kentucky and Louisiana. The book follows Eliza and George through there journey to Canada for freedom from slavery.

2) Detail- Harriet Beecher Stowe provides vivid details about slavery in the south prior to the American Civil War. Reading about the punishments that the slaves were given in the book were heartbreaking. But that is what Stowe wanted to emphasize to the reader, that slavery in the south and in the United States as a whole needed to be abolished.

3) Learning/experiencing- While Uncle Tom's Cabin is a novel much of it was based on the reality of slavery in the south. Stowe did extensive research prior to writing the novel to give the reader a vivid account of the horrors that slavery caused. The other point that Stowe tries to get across is that Christianity and slavery are not compatible, in other words a good christian could not participate in the act of slavery.

Week #1 Assignments

1) For the assignment identifying adult and children book covers I scored 3/24 and 11/20 respectively. I scored 3/24 for the adult book cover recognition and 11/20 for the children book cover recognition. This is not surprising to me since I limit myself to non-fiction when it comes to adult books.

2) For the genre cover matching assignment I scored 5/12. While I thought I knew the genre for most of the book covers I did not realize how many sub-genres there are within any given genre. Gaining this knowledge will help me in my future reader's advisory endeavors.

3) The resource that I chose from the recommended links-book section is Goodreads. I chose this resource because I have played around with this resource when helping patrons. For the recommended links-genre section I chose the Locus resource. I chose this resource mainly because I have never used it and I would like to learn more about it.