Blog #7

I think that a book has to be at least 50% true. This is because if you know at least half of what you are writing about and you can relate half of your story to your fictional story, then there is credibility to your made-up story. This is because you can make-up half of your story and have half of the story be real while you are putting your own experiences into both of them. You still have reliability and credibility to yourself and your readers. If you believe in your story, then so will your readers. If the readers feel that you know what you are talking about and can believe the story, then you still have trustworthiness. As long as you put something into your acknowledgments or prologue saying that this story is based on a true story but does have fiction related into it, then the readers will be able trust your writing. I think that half-truths are okay because you still have your own experiences into the believable fictional story. But when Frey and Mortenson bent the truth and didn’t come out or admitting that they did this right away, I think they lost their readers’ trust and nobody felt like they could believe any of their stories anymore. I think we do need lines between genres like fiction and nonfiction, because if we didn’t then no one would know what to believe or think that it is just made up. It does matter, but as long as you state what is real and what isn’t to the readers, they will trust your writing.

Readicide

Genre Fiction isn’t less “worthy” than Literary Fiction of our time as readers because in our time Genre Fiction is more interesting to read than Literary Fiction. But in a place of school’s curriculum it almost seems as though Genre Fiction is less “worthy” than Literary Fiction because we usually read the “classics” in school and sometimes get to pick our own books as an independent reading project. I think there is a difference in literary and popular books because literary books are usually the correct grammar and correct writing format classics that some grade school/high school students dread; while popular books are the books that might not have as much correct grammar and correct writing format as the classics but appeal to be more interesting and suspenseful. Some people would consider the popular books “great” because they give the readers interest, but in the minds of some critics, the popular books are less artistic. Usually the critics get to decide whether a book is great or not, but I think the readers should be able to decide because critics might not have the same taste of what is great than the readers do and the readers could put their commonalities of what they think is great together. If Gallagher’s argument is true in Readicide then I don’t think we should continue to teach literary fiction so exclusively and give students their choice of genre, but we should still teach some literary fiction. I think I would be okay with swapping some of the classics for one of the more popular and suspenseful books. A 21^st century English class reading list should have some of the classics to pick from but also some more popular books to choose from that students would like. Literary fiction is somewhat relevant to our culture, like when authors reference classics in their current popular book, but the classics use old language that is not really used anymore on a daily basis. It may be preparing students for the job market you are about to enter but not in a big impact way. We want kids to read books because it gives them an imagination of their own that they can escape to.

The Help Book Trailer