Post 7- Truth in Non-fiction

I find it pretty odd that people would even consider a book that is only 95% true non-fiction.  Fiction is made up, so non-fiction isn’t made up.  If a book is 95% true, that means it’s 5% made up, so it’s fiction.  For a book to be non-fiction, it has to be 100% true and real. I can see small things like maybe minor changes in dialogue, or stuff like that.  It's not always easy to remember every detail of every event.  I think it’s a crime that authors can write a story about their life, and not all of it is true.  It’s lying, and it’s wrong.  Half-truths aren’t AS bad I guess, but people should still tell the truth when they write.  I think writers only do that to make what they are writing about actually sound interesting and cool, because maybe it really isn’t that exciting.  It certainly worked for Frey, but he kind of got a good dose of karma in the end.  I personally don’t agree with David Shields.  I feel like there needs to be a line between fiction and non-fiction.  If there was no division, how would you know if you were reading something that was true?  That would just bother me, a lot.  I guess that you really can’t always know if the non-fiction memoir that you are reading is true, but you would assume that it is, because it’s non-fiction.  But in the case of Frey’s memoir, it wasn’t.  Therefore, if your book is not true, don’t call it non-fiction.  That distinction is there for a reason, so I don’t think we should get rid of it, but authors should also have to follow it a little more closely.  Those genres are really important; we don’t want to be reading a non-fiction story that is actually full of made up stuff!  Combining fiction and non-fiction would always keep readers wondering and questioning if what they are reading is real, which isn’t good.  We definitely need the separate genres of fiction and non-fiction, but authors should follow those a little more carefully. If your non-fiction book isn’t 100% real, don’t call it non-fiction, because those separate genres are there for a reason.

Post 6- Readicide

I definitely think that we could read more genre fiction at school, because honestly, most of the stuff that we have to read doesn’t interest me, at all.  Literary fiction is still important, but we don’t need as much of it, because no one likes to read it.  I do believe that schools are killing the love of reading because no one actually cares about literary fiction.  Maybe if we add genre fiction books that people like, more people will enjoy the books.  If kids actually enjoy the books, then they will actually read it, because now, most people use Sparknotes. While I think that we should add more genre fiction to the curriculum, we still need literary fiction, or the classics, but just not so much of it.  I think there is something important that you get out of reading classics, but you get something out of reading genre fiction too—a passion for reading, which is what most people don’t find in the classics.  I feel like there is a big difference between literary and genre fiction.  I think literary fiction is there to almost teach us, or at least that’s how it is portrayed by school.  Genre fiction is more to enjoy, and maybe literary fiction is like that too, but because of all of the tests we take and worksheets we do for those books in school, it’s hard to enjoy it.  For that main reason, we need more books that kids could actually enjoy in the school curriculum.  The more that we like a book, the more we want to read it.  So if kids like the books that we read in class, they will be more likely to read it and understand it.  And the more kids understand the book, the better their test scores will be, and teachers would be happy, so adding genre fiction would benefit everyone!  I think that if kids read genre fiction in school, reading will once again be enjoyable.

Post 5- Book Trailer

Here is the book trailer for The Help.