Blog Post #7

For a book to be considered non-fiction I believe that the whole book should be true. I know it would be hard for the author to get the dialogue in books exact, but they should try their hardest to get it close, not just make something up. The whole book has to be true because otherwise you won’t know what to believe and what not to believe. No, I don’t think that half-truths are okay because then it would not be non-fiction. A book can still be good if parts are made up or half-truths, it doesn’t mean that it will be bad, it just won’t be a non-fiction or memoir. I do not agree with David Shields, I think that we should have lines between non-fiction and fiction and the different genres. It matters because readers like to know what genres some books are, so they know what books they may like. Everyone likes different genres, and without out the genre labels people will not know what to read. I also believe that we need a line between fiction and non-fiction. Some people like to read non-fiction, memoirs, and historical books, and they want to know what it true and what really happened. Without that line between non-fiction and fiction they won’t know what to read to get the facts they want, and they won’t know what they should believe and not believe.

Blog Post #6

I think that school is a reason for killing the love of reading. All of the test and notes we have to take on books is making kids not want to read, and no one like the books that they make us read in school. I think that schools should add some genre fiction books to the curriculum, and have a 50:50 ratio of literary fiction and genre fiction books. Kids enjoy genre fiction books more, so they may actually want to read the books for school. Not just go on spark notes and look up the summaries.  Eventually kids may like to read. I think it is important that there are some of the classic books, like Romeo and Juliet, that we should read because it helps us learn about that time period and how the wrote, but every book does not have to be a classic. We should want kids to read because it will help them with writing and it will help open up their imagination and be creative. Reading also can teach kids things, like new words or a specific time period in the past. I think critics can decide what a good piece of writing is, but they cannot tell us what we should read and what we have to read. That is each individual person’s choice to decide what type of books they like and want to read, not the critics.

Blog Post #5