Maia's Blog: LMST345

 Annihilation- 6 pts A Wild Sheep Chase- 6 pts Aunt Maria- 5 pts The Hobbit- 6 pts The Night Circus- 6 pts Interview with a Vampire- 6 pts Anasi Boys- 6 pts Troll Bridge- 1 pt The Martian- 5 pts The Drowned Giant- 1 pt Snow Crash- 6 pts Blood Child- 2 pts The Distance to the Moon- 1 pt A Wrinkle in Time- 5 pts Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy- 6 pts The Future- 6 pts Total zoom sessions: 13/15 (The first one I missed because I joined the class the following week, the second one I missed because I had terrible strep throat and was very sick) Total points: 87 points Because I ended up getting sick during this semester, it was difficult for me to read more than I did. I hope that everything I read and wrote was enough to keep a fair grade in this class. I'm glad that I got to chance to read all of these stories and open my mind to a ton of new ideas. I enjoyed this class and everything it had to offer!

 10 years: I'm out Christmas shopping with my husband. Not only are we looking for toys to put under the tree for our daughter, but we are looking for other Christmas presents for our friends and family. Technology has improved even more so and everyone is looking forward to getting new phones which can do practically anything at this point. Screens? We don't even need them. We are able to use these phones to project the images into the air and use our hands to scroll through. Me? Well, as much as I care about the latest phone, I'm more interested in the latest tablet to draw on. I'm working as an artist freelancing at home. I worked for a company as an illustrator in the past, but now that I'm raising kids I work on commissions in my home studio. Art is one of the only things people look forward to these days. Social media has ruined a lot of people's lives with it's constant negativity and false perceptions of the world. In fact, every social media app I

I enjoyed this audio story so much! I did not know what I was expecting listening to this audio, but I certainly did not think I was going to like it as much as I did. It was absolutely hilarious and very entertaining. The characters were likable and I found myself excited to hear the next part of the story every time it would end! I really enjoy satire in general so the whole audio was super fun and interesting. I personally don't enjoy space themed content as much but I actually liked learning about all of the character's adventures in space. It was funny how they talked about the Earth and what humans were like as well. Earth was so unimportant to the rest of the galaxy that they easily destroyed it without any thought. All of the characters dialogue amongst each other had me laughing. I think this is something that, if remade today as a podcast, would do well with audiences even now. Stories like this do incredibly well as movies (I know this one is a movie already) but pod

I wanted to read this book because I loved the movie as a kid. I saw that they remade the movie recently, but reviews told me to steer clear. When I was a kid, the story was super interesting to me, mostly because of the different worlds that they kids travel to and "it"'s world always freaked me out. I was excited to dive into the book and compare it to the story I knew as a child.  The book was really enjoyable and the storyline is very close to how I remembered. I have always loved the idea of time travel and it is something I really like about this story. The kids are able to jump through portals of time to find their father and defeat "the dark thing". There are messages throughout this story of dealing with insecurities, bullying, and most importantly love conquering all and ultimately saving their lives. I also think the idea of "It"'s world being a society where everyone conforms to a certain pattern of behavior is incredibly interesting. I

This story was actually, in my opinion, very poetic in the way that it was written. I really enjoyed the world that was painted for me by this author. It's clear that he has an incredibly interesting and beautiful imagination. I felt like the imagery was incredibly dreamy and magical as I read. I love the idea that one has to sail out to sea and jump up to the moon to collect it's milk. There is a love story involved here as well, or should I say a love triangle with the characters. The main character is in love with a woman who is the wife to another, but she also is in love with someone else. They all try to show their love for the other person in some way. The only thing that I did not like about this story was the character's names. Other than that, I thought this short story was a magical little journey that I enjoyed reading.

1. What is your reaction to the text you just read?: It was definitely an interesting read. At first, I felt super frustrated because I could not understand anything that I was going on. I wanted so badly to understand what they were and what kind of world they lived in. It wasn't until way later that I finally understood that there were two different species involved, one that was "alien-like" and one that was human. It definitely was uncomfortable to read at times but it gave me "Planet of the Apes" vibes with the idea that the aliens were the superior race and using humans. Humans are considered to be animals designed to host their children. It was all a very weird but interesting concept. I would have liked the story more if they explained a lot more at the beginning. I wanted to know more and it was frustrating trying to figure it out and understand all of it myself. 2. What connections did you make with the story? Discuss what elements of the story with w

 This is definitely not a book I would have typically picked up myself. Personally, I am not a huge fan of cyberpunk style. It might be that I haven't been exposed to it enough, but I typically find the futuristic/action/adventure genre to be a bit more on the boring side. It reminds me a lot of futuristic video games, which I do enjoy but I would have trouble reading about.  "Snow Crash" is written in a captivating way, though, because the narrator really tells it how it is. The story itself was harder for me to follow along to. I had a hard time staying as interested as I could have been, but this book does open up a lot of discussion about America. It's interesting that the things that remained important to Americans in the future were guns, movies, programming and of all things...pizza. Pizza is so important that they have these special delivers who make these crazy deliveries (the main character's job). The entire future that the author created is a mess, whi

This was an eye-opening and extremely intriguing story. This short story is about a giant that washes up on the shore of this beach. Everyone is fascinated and come to observe and examine it. This story has a deeper message, though. The people in this town treat this giant as if it is an object and not a person. Though they have never seen anything like it, this giant has human features and is pretty much just a giant person. This giant is dead, but the people step on it, walk on it, sit on it and treat it as if it is some sort of playground and not someone that died. As the main character continues to visit the giant week after week, more of it's body parts go missing. The giant is used for the human's personal gain around town. It is like how people are used or treated like objects in real life. This could be about how a person feels when they are walked all over, taken advantage of or treated like less of a human being. There is so much more to this story than the interestin

 I was pretty excited to read this one because I had heard really good things about the movie. I remember when the movie came out it was one of the top films that people were talking about. I never saw the movie fully, but I knew what it was about and was interested in seeing what the book would be like. Sadly though, I did not enjoy this book like I thought I would. The concept itself is an interesting one, but the way that it is written and the ideas themselves end up stressing me out as I read. It makes sense that it is written the way that it is because it is written how Mark would be explaining what is going on. I understand why, but it was very unenjoyable for me. I would find myself struggling to understand what he was talking about half of the time (my brain has trouble wrapping my head around most science related ideas). But when I was not struggling to understand and figure it out, I was stressed out thinking about myself in a situation like the main character's. One of m

"Troll Bridge" is about an old barbarian man who, while talking to his horse, travels to a bridge to battle a troll. It was interesting because almost all of this short story is dialogue, so I am learning about this fantasy world through the character's interactions with each other. The barbarian tells his horse that he must fight this troll because it is something that all heroes have done in the past. At the beginning when he is explaining all of this to the horse, I imagined that the troll would be more of a monster that needed to be defeated. Once the troll meets the main character however, it is far from that. The troll has a family and can barely make ends meet. It's interesting because his troll family doesn't seem to care much that the barbarian came to kill him and they expect that that was his destiny. Instead of battling, the two end up talking about the way that the world use to be. Both of them seem to have this "destiny" that they were mean

 I was very interested to read a book by Neil Gaiman because I absolutely love the story Coraline. Someone who has such an interesting and creative mind to come up with a story like that probably would not disappoint with his other fantasy stories. I have to say, "Anasi Boys" did not disappoint me. It was definitely worth the read and very interesting. At the beginning, I was already engaged just learning about how Fat Charlie's father was a negative aspect of his life. I could see that the main character was going to be one of the self-loathing types which I don't particularly enjoy reading because I enjoy more emotional characters. His wife, Rosie, was definitely more on the positive side that I could enjoy. As the story continues with Charlie's father's death, I became more interested in where the story was headed and what would truly make this a fantasy. I did not expect how quickly it would turn. All of a sudden, I was reading a story about African Gods.