My final project idea is to combine my first and last essay.
My first essay has to deal with personal experiences with reading and how that shapes ones attitude towards reading. My last essay was about the challenges I had while reading Patchwork Girl because of its drastic difference from the traditional form of a novel. I also wanted to expand upon other associations with reading, the original topic of my first essay, and maybe talk about how associations could inhibit or promote the reading of Patchwork Girl. I was thinking of possibly interviewing someone who has read Patchwork Girl who doesn’t personally enjoy reading and see if the difficulties I had while reading Patchwork Girl were because of my associations with reading. My last essay I wanted to expand on the concept of “bad reading” and possibly relate that to associations with reading. Maybe people who don’t enjoy reading and had a bad experience reading as a child and their views of Patchwork Girl were positive because it was so different from the dreaded books they had to read in previous English classes.
These are my initial thoughts about my final project.
ideas
-possibly going to interview Meaghan because she doesn’t particularly enjoy reading so she may have preferred reading Patchwork Girl to reading a more traditional novel. This would support the theories from my first essay that childhood experiences shape one’s attitude towards reading and that those associations could also shape the type of reading that people enjoy or dislike. I had a difficult time with Patchwork Girl, as expressed in my last essay, because I enjoy reading and the more traditional form of a novel is what I enjoy reading and am attracted to. The associations formed from one’s childhood change one’s view of technological literature. Another example of why this is true is Birkerts personal opinion of literature and technology. (He describes his personal experience with the computer interface and reading from the screen. He extrememly dislikes it because he is so passionate about reading and books, and that passion came from his childhood experiences ,as explained in my first essay.)
Bad reading
-expand upon this concept
-how this relates to how people read today
-bad readers of the traditional forms of texts enjoy the newer literature that is presented with more technologicial tools
-bad reading is thinking in spatial terms and without organization
-Shelley Jackson could be considered a bad reader because she thinks chaotically and her personal attitudes about reading could have spawned from her experiences reading as a child. I could maybe do a little research on her background to see if this theory holds true.
