Nicholas Sparks

Nicholas Sparks is by far my favorite author. He writes in a way that draws the reader’s attention in and creates a feeling of suspense. I have read many of his books including The Last Song, Safe Haven, and The Notebook. I love each one of these books all for the same reason; they are relatable and full of cliffhangers. He usually begins his books with a vague problem or journey that the character is facing. I think that this is how he draws the reader’s attention in. By portraying a "snippet" of the conflict, he creates suspense which makes the readers want to keep reading so that they can seek out the whole conflict and what the basis is for it. Another great thing about Nicholas Spark books is the ending. The ending is always my favorite because he always throws in a big plot twist that was not expected at all. To me, plot twists capture attention like no other. Once I discover the plot twist I can't stop reading.

I am currently reading The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks. Like usual he begins this book with a character who reveals conflict and foreshadows future events. What really grabbed my attention in the introduction of this book is how he introduced the character. He introduces Logan, the main character, as strong willed and calm by putting him in a situation with the police. The police officer Keith, was introduced as a troubled man that is always doing things that he shouldn't be. I knew that he was going to be the main antagonist in the story just by the way he was described. It excites me to be reading another Nicholas Sparks novel because I know that I will love it.

Blog Reflections

I believe that over the course of this trimester I have grown as a blogger.  When looking at all of my blogs one things stand out over everything else, the use of textual information. Not once in my blog post from the beginning of the year did I use actual textual evidence to support my thinking. Now, I reference the text in all my posts. I think that using textual evidence in blog posts really helps the people reading to understand what you are trying to say and helps set the tone of your post, the book itself, and the characters within the book. Another difference is the grammar. In the beginning of the year I was not the best with sentence structure and spelling in my posts and now my posts are mostly grammatically correct.

There were a few things I battled with all trimester while blogging. One of my biggest struggles was trying to figure out what about my book to blog about. I encountered this problem when I first started my book because I didn’t have enough information to blog about theme or the characters so I would settle with just posting a summary. Over the trimester I decided to broaden this and I would blog about connections and how they helped to better my understanding on my own book. One of my strengths was that I was really good at explaining and elaborating on a topic to help not only the understanding of the reader, but my own. Unfortunately I didn’t make my reading goal, but I plan to keep working it at it! I actually used goodreads.com a great amount. When I would finish a book I would go to goodreads.com and read recommendations on what I should read next. I also liked the fact that I could see what my friends were reading and how they liked their books. Over the course of the trimester I have become a very more active reader. When I read I question a lot of the choices characters make, the author’s purpose, and tone. Also, if I don’t understand what’s going on in my book I keep breaking it down or rereading it instead of just skipping over it. Overall the blog has helped me to grow as a reader and blogger.