Society Reflection

What is interesting about this novel is that it is already reality.  It is simple stories that are told in a way to alter perspective of life.  With the sarcastic tone, it is Sedaris' way of lightening the mood on somewhat important issues, such as smoking.  Sedaris notices little things about himself that also can describe his personality.  Such as the second chapter that is called Keeping Up depicts his relationship with his good friend Hugh.  He tells a story of when he is so excited to see a prairie dog for the first time ever, and he has to drag Hugh along with him.  Hugh is to the point and wastes no time, therefore he finds the prairie dogs in the zoo while Sedaris is chasing after him.  Other stories encounter relationships that Sedaris has with random people such as his trashy babysitter or his weird neighbors.  He hits home with depicting the average, middle class American life growing up.  Every family has their stories about life lessons and ironic situations, Sedaris just knows how to make it funny.  Most of the stories are things that everyday people go through such as starting up conversations with random people and getting to know their story, whether you really wanted to or not.

Lunch Date

As I may repeat myself for the third time, this novel is nonfiction, therefore the most recurring character is David Sedaris himself.  He would be the perfect person to take out for a meal because of his dry humor, fluency in sarcasm, and his memories and stories that range from his early childhood until his present life.  I love people who can make me laugh, so I am 100% positive that someone who can make me laugh from reading can certainly make me laugh in person.  Through his memories, I can tell that Sedaris is a very down to earth kind of dude.  He likes simple things, like he says in one of the chapters that he can fix something himself or call a repairman.  Therefore we would probably eat a simple lunch, such as hotdogs or hamburgers and it would definitely be at lunchtime.  He is worthy of my time because I enjoy hearing stories that are worth telling, and he has definitely got those.  He is able to create something funny out of really nothing which amazes me.

Characters

I guess I picked a pretty hard book to do these blog assignments on because it is so different.  The stories are all different, including a lot of the characters that fall into these stories, but the one thing they have in common is they are revolved around David Sedaris himself.  We, the readers, get to know and understand Sedaris a little better with each story and each chapter through the book.  It is easier to get a grip on his type of humor through the tales that he tells.  What makes these stories worth being told is that they are so relatable to normal people.  David Sedaris is really just an average guy with a really good sense of humor, therefore people can relate to his stories, such as his very last chapter called The Smoking Section.  That chapter is dedicated to his tough journey trying to quit smoking.  Many people have this same exact issue that they are dealing with in their life, David Sedaris's humor helps lighten the mood with the people who are also dealing with this problem.  As much as I hate to admit it, because this character drives me up the wall with his complaining, Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye reminds me a little bit of Sedaris with his strong sarcastic tone.

If it were a movie...

My book is not exactly the easiest book to make a movie of, but it could also be because I have not finished it yet.  Each chapter is a different story coming from the authors life and past experiences.  This book is nonfiction, therefore these are all true stories.  I was thinking if I were to make a movie out of this novel I would make the story line more choppy, showing different parts of the authors life on and off from past and present.  Now I would not be able to make this movie strictly off of this novel since, so far, most of the stories do not have relevance to one another.  Therefore I think it would be good to find, or possibly even make up a connection, between each story to lead to an over all theme or message.  Again, I could not go exactly by the novel.  David Sedaris is a pretty funny guy, so an actor that would play his part would have to be funny, such as Jim Carrey, Ben Stiller, or Will Ferrell.  There are many other characters throughout his story, I do not know these characters personalities as well yet so I can not exactly name people who could play the roles of people such as his mother, and friend's mother, Patsy, ect.

When You Are Engulfed In Flames

The book that I chose is called When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris.  This is a nonfiction book that is about the author's past experiences; each chapter is a short story or essay.  The reason why I chose this book is because people have hyped up this author as being hilarious.  I saw an story of him on Sunday Morning where they talk about his novels and his type of humor.  Since I have always thought that it is nearly impossible for a novel to make me laugh, I was curious to read some of his work.  He has quite a few books out, but this one was the one that fit all the requirements. I hope I end up liking it!

SRP ANALYSIS

Well I am definitely glad to say that i have completed the senior research paper, the one that we have been dreading since freshman year.  To be honest it really was not as bad as I thought it would be and that is because of all the deadlines kept me from procrastinating.  Even though, at the time, I did not like turning in a introduction, then another 6 pages, then another 6 pages, ect, it really did help me at the end.  I did not have to spend my whole weekend working on my paper because it was pretty much already done.  Something that I could have improved on my paper is probably my transition and ending paragraph.  I know that I got a lot of facts, information, and analysis down but my writing has never been a good flow.  I have always had trouble with the flow of sentences in general, it is definitely something that I am going to have to look out for next year.  What I did well was that I stayed organized, and on track.  Also I think that I understood the novel very well by the end of the paper.  My book definitely does not fit in the easy sit down, read, and fully understand category, so I am impressed that I was able to dig deep and figure out Arundhati Roy's message.  If I were to redo something, it probably would have to be doing a better editing job.  I am not going to lie but towards the end I started to get a tad lazy, but not too bad!  I wish I would have paid better attention to what the articles said because they had some really good information that I decided to skip out on; I mean I didn't want to write another 8 pages!  For next year students, I suggest that they just keep up with the workload, all those extra points are really important to the third quarter grade and it helps prepare you for the final paper, leading to the whole fourth quarter grade.  It is not that bad, just have fun with it, enjoy your book and enjoy writing it because that is what is going to make your paper good.