The purpose of book critiques are to make sure that you read your book. You have to choose 3 questions and answer them with a paragraph each and include an excerpt from the book to support each answer.
This assignment was interesting for me. In my first book critique the original book that I was going to do it on was too long so I had to change it to a shorter one. I did end up using the original book I chose for my second book critique though. I really liked doing book critiques because it helped me think about the book I was reading rather than just reading it and being done with it. Instead it made me think about what happened, what the author's thought process was when they wrote it and so much more.
Book Critique #1 (After You)
Select a passage you found meaningful. Explain why. “ ‘Eighteen months. Eighteen whole months. So when is it going to be enough?’ I say into the darkness. And there it is, I can feel it boiling up again, this unexpected anger. I take two steps along, glancing down at my feet. ‘Because this doesn’t feel like living. It doesn’t feel like living. It doesn’t feel like anything.’ “ (Line 21-24, Paragraph 4, Page 7). I found this meaningful because in the last book Will (the person Louisa Clark is a caretaker for and the person she falls in love with) leaves her a letter saying, “...Clark, I can practically hear you starting to hyperventilate from here. Don’t start panicking, or trying to give it away -- it’s not enough for you to sit on your arse for the rest of your life. But it should buy you your freedom, both from that claustrophobic little town we both call home and from the kinds of choices you have so far felt you had to make. I’m not giving the money to you because I want you to feel wistful, or indebted to me, or to feel that it’s some kind of bloody memorial. I’m giving you this because there is not much that makes me happy anymore, but you do. I am conscious that knowing me has caused you pain, and grief, and I hope that one day when you are less angry with me and less upset you will see not just that I could only have done the thing that I did, but also that this will help you live a really good life, a better life, than if you hadn’t met me…” (Line 33-50, Paragraph 5-8, Page 407-408). This relates to the passage that I found meaningful, because Will is telling Louisa(Clark) that she needs to get out into the world and do something with her life, and to make sure that happens, he gave her quite a bit of money to help accomplish that. But what I find meaningful is that she is yelling at him and being angry with him, which she has every right to be for what he did, but, he gave enough money so that she could go back to school and be successful. And all she did was buy a flat in London and find a low paying job that wasn’t the greatest, and she’s yelling at him for her “not living”, when she could do everything that she wanted but won’t let herself. Another example of this is where she is talking with her sister and she says this, “ You know what makes me feel down? The way you keep promising to live some kind of life, the sacrifice yourself to every waif and stray who comes across your path.” (Line 18-20, Paragraph 12, Page 123)
How does the title relate to the story? The title relates to the story because in the the previous book, Will dies and shatters Louisa’s heart, and this book is all about getting over his death, hence, After You. An Example of her trying to get over Will, or just her grieving in general is where she tells herself, “ ...‘Just have a nice evening’, I murmured, recalling the words of the moving on circle. ‘Allow yourself moments of happiness.’ “ (Line 16-18, Paragraph 2, Page 147). But two paragraphs later she contradicts herself talking to Will in her head saying, “ ‘What do you think, Will? Just a nice evening. It doesn’t have to mean anything, right?’ “ (Line 24-25, Paragraph 4, Page 147). I think that in saying this, she is showing that grief is running her life and she is letting someone who isn’t with her anymore make decisions for her by what she thinks he would like her to do. She keeps holding on to him when he very clearly told her to move on. I think that she thinks that doing anything that he wished her to so would just put her in more pain because it was what he would have wanted.
Discuss what the author might have been saying about family relationship and offer support from the story to back your position. I am not entirely sure what the author was trying to say, but it could quite possibly have been that you need to forgive and reach out to your family because they will always be there for you. I think this because when Lily first met her Grandfather, they were happy and then they had a little fight and Lily, being stubborn refused to see him again. And then the same thing happened with Lily’s Grandmother, until she reached out again and they made up, as well as her Grandfather and her. I think a good example of this in the book is when Lily said this, “ ‘But mostly you gave me a family I didn’t know I had. And that’s cool. Because to be honest it was not going that well before they all turned up.’ “ (Line 17-19, Paragraph 4, Page 345).
Would you recommend this book? No, I would not recommend this book to someone. I did not like this book that much. The first one was much better, and I would recommend that book. But this one was very lackluster. It focused on her grief and a lot of the book was her sitting around feeling sorry for herself, there wasn’t a lot to get excited about in my opinion.
Book Critique #2 (Under the Dome)
What feelings did you have as you read the story? Find some places that make you feel that way. Reading this story made me feel so many different feelings. But the thing I felt the most was anxiety. I felt anxious throughout the book because I knew what one character was planning to do to another character, which I knew because the writer’s style is switching from perspective to perspective, and knowing what was going to happen before it happened made me very anxious. I felt anxiety most in at the end of the book. I felt it most there because the characters were dying off and were in life or death situations trying to find a way to escape. One scene that made me feel this the most was when Julia, Barbie, and Sam went to Black Ridge to try and plead for their lives and for the “leatherheads” to lift the dome. Julia was talking with one of them and it was going through memories of hers, Barbie’s and Sam’s before she came back to reality with the dome lifting. The part of this that had me the most anxiety ridden was,
“Please let us go. Please let us live our little lives. No answer. No answer. No answer. Then: You aren’t real. You are- What? What does she say? You are toys from the toyshop? No, but it’s something like that. Julia has a flicker-memory of the ant farm her brother had when they were kids. The recollection comes and goes in less than a second. Ant farm isn’t right, either, but like toys from the toyshop, it’s close. It’s in the ballpark, as they say. How can you have lives if you aren’t real? WE ARE SO REAL! She cries, and this is the moan Barbie hears. AS REAL AS YOU! Silence. A thing with a shifting leather face in a vast white roofless room that is also somehow the Chester’s Mill bandstand. Then: Prove it. Give me your hand. I have no hand. I have no body. Bodies aren’t real. Bodies are dreams. Then give me your mind. The leatherhead child does not. Will not. So Julia takes it."
Select a passage that you found meaningful. Explain why. A passage that I found meaningful isn’t really a passage, but a sentence.
“She is realizing for the first time that once the beast is out of it’s cage, it could bite anyone, anywhere.”
I found this quote meaningful because it is foreshadowing so many things that are going to happen and the character is talking to himself and the cage he is talking about being let out of, is the dome coming down. Meaning that because of the dome coming down he can do whatever he wants with no consequences. This quote also shows you the type of person Jim Rennie is and what motivates him and what he wants.
How does the title relate to the story? The title relates to the story because in the book, the town of Chester’s Mill just one day has a giant dome dropped over the entire town of 2,000 people, around all of the borders. A piece from the text that can help relate the title to the book is from the beginning of the book where Barbie is leaving town and he is walking alongside the highway when a car comes by, and considers picking him up, but doesn’t. Instead they keep driving and cross the town line, in his words minutes or even seconds before the border closed.
“She must have crossed over the Chester’s Mill town line minutes(or even seconds) before the border slammed shut. If he’d been with her, he would have been out and safe. Unless, of course, he’d think later, when sleep wouldn’t come, the stop to pick me up was just long enough to be too long. In that case, I probably still wouldn’t be here. And neither would she. Because the speed limit out that way on the 119 is fifty miles an hour. And at fifty miles an hour… At this point he would always think of the plane."