Mute Dancers

      I think that “Mute Dancers: How to Watch a Hummingbird” was an extremely interesting essay.  It was an informative essay.  It had lots of very interesting and very random facts and information about humming birds.  Like I had no idea that humming birds had to restart their hearts when they wake up.  And that sometimes it doesn’t restart and they can die in their sleep.  I also like the facts about how the Native American’s viewed the humming bird.  She made it very obvious to see that the humming bird was an important symbol.  She also provided reasons that showed how little humming birds could be used to motivate warriors.

            I think that the form of this essay was a more traditional essay form.  It follows a logical order and is divvied into nice concise paragraphs.  Each paragraph is its own mini story.  I think that it works very well because each story is interesting to keep my attention, but also full of information.  She did a very good job at keep me entertained, while teaching me at the same time.  The content was educational stories.

            I think that another reason that I liked this story so much was the language.  She talked very simply and was easy to understand.  Most informational essays try to load up on so many facts that they use long sentences and big confusing words.  She was able to get all of her points across using to the point sentences and words.  So even though I did not have any prior specific knowledge of humming birds I was able to understand everything she was teaching.

essay packet

I think that this essay packet was very eye opening to me.  In the past I have only ever written persuasive and informative essays for class.  This showed me a lot of good different styles of essays.  There was much more than just the basic five paragraph essay.  There were descriptive essays and lists, and stories.  It showed me much more than what I have been accustomed to writing in the past.

                Specifically I would like to talk about the essay “total eclipse.”  I personally think that it is more of a descriptive story than an essay.  But that might be good since I need to open up my definitions of essays and this is helping me to do it.  Even, the last paragraph of page 87, when the author talks about what they did on the side of the highway.  He definitely phrased it as a story, like a sequence of events.  It was also very descriptive and I like the simplicity of the writing.  I think that even though it is simple and easy to understand the author used great detail and helps me picture it easily.

Fiction books

Outside of class I have recently finished two books.  The first was The Last Patriot by Brad Thor.  It is a fiction book about other religions trying to subtly undermine the framework of the USA.  I really liked the book because it used true historical events from between the times of Thomas Jefferson and September 11, 2001.  The author made everything seem connected and was able to make it exciting and relevant.  There was also a lot of action and a very intricate fictional plot to go alone with the true events.

The book I more recently finished was Just After Sunset by Stephen King.  This book actually matched up with our class because it is a compilation of 13 of his short stories.  Most of the stories were published in previously in magazines and other places, and one story was brand new in this book.  I really liked that some stories were as short as 20 pages and some as long as 120.  So that means that his stories were written very differently.  The short ones had fewer characters and they were directly introduced.  The longer ones had more characters, which were described through their actions, and more complicated plots.  I think that the stories were very different from each other but still had the same basic principles, about expectations and perception.  I liked this book a lot.