Literary vs. Genre

I don’t think there is a problem with teaching literary fiction because it teaches students a lot about life, growing up, and hardships. I feel like the reason students are so against reading literary fiction because they already have the idea in their heads that the book will be "horrible."  I feel like part of the reason this is, is because of the way teachers teach books. I have had both good and bad teachers and the impact of their teaching styles have been great in different ways. The “good” teachers that I have had tend to teach the better books. However, I don’t think that that is a coincidence. I believe that these teachers just know the right techniques to get students to read the book while also understanding important concepts. Overall, I don’t think that it is the books that are considered “bad” by students are actually bad, I think it is the teaching style; so literary fiction should be kept in schools.

I don’t think that literary books such as Of Mice and Men should be swapped out for books such as Twilight because if people have been reading books like this for years they shouldn’t be forgotten just so that kids can keep up with the latest book trends. There can and should be certain books for genre fiction but they should take the place of the classics. A solution to this problem would be to give students more options so they don’t feel like they are being forced to read certain books. Such as when I had the choice between Gilead and The Road for a summer reading project I was more motivated to read because the project was more about me and it was more flexible.

I also don’t think that it is up to anyone to decide what good writing is because both literary fiction and genre fiction is good writing in different ways. I also don’t think that literary fiction is written better in terms of theme and symbolism because I think that a lot of genre fiction has those types of things woven into them and they could be studied. I think that a book list for today’s school should still include classics, because they are classics for a reason.  However, they should also have a few other more modern books that are really successful yet impactful; just because they weren’t read by people over many years doesn’t mean they aren’t good. I think that a book needs to be studied in its present time in order to become a classic.   

Overall, I just think that book lists should include newer books, and give more options, but I don’t think that the classics should be forgotten.

Adapting The Lovely Bones

     The biggest challenges a filmmaker would have when adapting The Lovely Bones is the fact that Susie dies within the first few pages of the book and as the story goes on there are flash backs of her life before she was murdered. I saw the film version of this story and the film makers did a very good job of this by showing little snippets of Susie's life and she narrated them. Then after that she was killed and it went on with the story. It was still probably hard to do because in the book the flash backs always tied in with what was going on in the current time period. However, I don't really think that the characters would really need to be changed to do this; they would actually need to be very developed in the movie like how they are in the book for the viewers to get a good idea of how they are. Also, the book was written in Susie's point of view so in the book you didn't see inside any other characters thoughts. This would help the film makers because they wouldn't have to turn the thoughts into actions for a movie and they could still have Susie narrate from Heaven for certain parts of the story. Basically, the film makers would be able to keep most parts of the plot they would just have to rearrange some of them for the story to make sense to people viewing the movie.
      Obviously, one scene that the filmmakers must keep for the story to work would be when Susie is killed, because without this scene there would be no point to the rest of the story, because her dad would not be looking for the killer, Susie would not be in Heaven, and none of the rest of the commotion would have been started or would have happened. Also, in the film Susie's mom, Abigail, doesn't cheat on Susie's dad, Jack, it just shows Abigail leaving the house. I think that that part of the plot is essential because it shows how the death of Susie destroys their family and how depressed Abigail really is. I think that that is an important part of the story and I would add it if I was the filmmaker. A third thing that the filmmaker could not exclude is when Susie's sister, Lindsey, goes into Mr. Harvey's house looking for evidence to prove that he was Susie's murderer. I am in the middle of reading this scene right now and I don't know what happens after it yet but in the movie this is what shows the police and Mr. Harvey killed Susie. This progresses the movie plot and ties it all together so I think that this scene is important in that aspect and it cannot be removed.
     I honestly think that some flashbacks of Susie's life before she was killed are pointless when adapting the story into a film, like when she saves Buckley's life when he is choking because that doesn't progress the plot and it will just take up more valuable time in the movie. The filmmaker would also have to cut a few details about Lindsey growing up because that isn't necessarily relevant to the story, although it is interesting to read. In the movie in shows Lindsey growing up in a scene with music in the background and just shots of important moments in her life. This would save time in the movie and it would be effective to cut out details of Lindsey growing up. A third thing to cut out is stories about minor characters, like neighbors and Ray's mom, because they don't progress the story and it only adds more details about the neighborhood and story, but it wouldn't matter in the movie, it would just take up time.