Jacob Bags' Reading Blog: Post #11: First Half Reflection

Hello, readers of this amazing blog! Today is the last day of my posts for the first semester. I have read many books over this semester, The Pursuit of Happyness (by Chris Gardner), The Bourne Identity (by Robert Ludlum), A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (by Ishmael Beah), and recently, The Appeal (by John Grisham), not to mention the back of my cereal, which I read more often than you would think. Regardless, I found all of these books to be pretty good books. Not the best books I've read in a given stretch, but still, pretty good, though, I'll admit, these books were all pretty depressing at one point or another since in A Long Way Gone, Ishmael IS A BOY SOLDIER IN A VERY DEADLY CIVIL WAR (Yes, I felt the need to put that in ALL CAPS), Chris Gardner, in The Pursuit of Happyness, is a single father at one point trying to get off the street, and in The Appeal, a chemical company dumped toxic waste into the river and killed 300 people, including a character's husband and son, her only family (As for The Bourne Identity, while I obviously didn't finish it, but it just didn't seem to depressing to me, just action-packed).

Over the course of the semester, my creative writing voice, in my opinion, evolved and was louder by the end. In my first post (that was not my summer reading, so Post #2), I thought that at the time, it was quality, but as time wore on, I began to realize that it really wasn't that great. The first paragraph was mainly a summary, and not a great one at that. My voice was really present in the text. On a bright side, The quote I used and how I introduced it was quality, and to this day, I still believe so, "[Chris] relearns a valuable lesson, the most important line of the chapter, and maybe even the book (I am not done reading yet), "For the second time in my adulthood, I was preparing to relearn that lesson about being careful what you wish for" (Gardner 172). Then, the analysis of this quote was just okay, not bad, but not great. The post itself was actually, pretty boring. However, by post #10, the tables had turned (for the most part). I've done better with drawing the reader in (HA! See, if you're still reading this...), I've made my voice heard within every exciting post (no bias present...), I have utilized technology more, adding more visuals and links. I've always had Goodreads widgets on the screen, my favorite quotes, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” (Dr. Seuss in I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!), everything is way better than it was at the beginning of the year. The only fault I have seen in my posts is how I quote quotes. It has been a problem recently, but I'm on my way to fixing it.

Finally, I know I need to constantly improve, there is no limit when it comes to blogging. First and foremost, I need to improve how I quote quotes (after already mentioning it). I know I can't use colons in quotes, and I have been. I don't know why. Anyways, my second goal is to keep up with my blogging chart(s). It's been a problem I've thus far this year, so next semester, I'll be committed to filling that out every week. Finally, I would like to increase the variations of visuals in my posts. More videos, book covers, different book covers, the author, a movie poster, whatever, just more visuals.