Find three sentences that you love or hate in the latest reading from your writer. Share the sentences in your comment and tell me why you love them/hate them.
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13 comments:
This week I hated Molly Yeh's first sentence. It was clunky and initially completely incoherent. "you know what i would pay a good $26 for these days is like a 4loko-circa-2010 + emergen-c hybrid that actually tastes like matzo ball soup and is three ounces or less but fills you up way more than that." Once again, I found myself irritated by her lack of capitalization and level of seriousness.
I loved the simplicity and unapologetic self acceptance that the sentence, "so i don’t" contained. After admitting that she actually preferred or at least knew there was greater value in staying healthy and relaxing than going wine tasting and drinking til the sun came up with her friends, I loved the way this sentence cut the flow of the rest of the paragraph. I loved the sentence ". these guys have a party of flavors and are quick as a bunny to make." While I'm not totally sure why I was drawn to it, I think it may have been a combination of relief to hear a sentence unrelated to shameless advertising about different book release-related products and the cute yet quirky saying "quick as a rabbit" when referring to baking cookies. The pictures in her blog this week were superb as well.
Today I read, "Presumed Dead, Man Starts Moving on the Way to Morgue" by Sydney Lupkin. I really liked this piece right off of the bat––its title immediately drew me in. Reporting on a very bizarre and resultantly interesting story, Lupkin starts by describing how the man, who was thought to be dead, was found to be alive. She describes the initial response of the responders to this man, who thought he was dead due to the fact that he did not have a pulse. After this short paragraph, Lupkin writes the one sentence paragraph: "But then on the way to the morgue, he started moving." I love this stylistic choice because it adds life to her writing. The transition is so strong that you can almost see the article shift its focus. After this Lupkin writes on the little information that is currently known about this anonymous man, concluding with the fact that there is still an ongoing investigation as to what caused this man to fall into such a dire state.
I really hated it when Brody used the sentence “ Rather, Maitland creates a multifaceted narrative mosaic, in which news accounts—local and national—converge with rumor, in which a community is suddenly and catastrophically transformed and some of its members are inspired to undertake colossal acts of daring and heroism of the sort that daily life rarely elicits and even more rarely records” Just immediately it sucked me out of the otherwise interesting subject matter of the article. The sentence itself feels like it gets sucked up into itself and meanders, its too long and did not convey anything to me. It has too much shoved into one breath for me to handle. On the contrary I really liked the sentence “Whether actively, by well-meaning professionals or family members, or tacitly, through the prevailing ethos of the time, those who survived the massacre and those who stopped it were nearly silenced, or at least muffled” In an interesting contrast to the other sentence this one feels strong because each piece is properly compartmentalized and brings the idea across really well. It allowed me to see the two sides of what he is saying. My favourite is his ending sentence though “his own film is a commemoration more enduring than stone.” Although not a complex sentence it has the perfect finality to a review about a school shooting film and seals his review up in a really beautiful way. It immediately conjures the idea of a monument which the film was to Brody.
Today I read "Alabama’s probably going to lose a game at some point. Who’s got the best shot?". Here Connelly is dealing with a hypothetical scenario, but he attempts to use analytics to give the reader an answer. He mixes creative language with hard numbers as always. His third section of the article is also entertaining. He wants to talk about Michigan's rout of Rutgers (78-0), but instead of actually diving in with analytics, he just writes "No Comment" and puts a picture of the game stats. This is a clever way of conveying a strong message with fewer words. The fourth section of his article outlines the race for the non power conference outbid to a major bowl game. Because it has become a five team race, he attempts to use advanced statistics to show where the teams currently stand and where they might end up. This is a nice change of pace form his previous section where he only wrote two words. He effectively changes tone and pace to keep the reader drawn into his article throughout. My three sentences were first "No Comment" for the reasons I talked about above. The second was "And this says nothing of unbeaten Western Michigan, which lags behind in S&P+ (61st) but boasts road wins over Big Ten teams (Northwestern and Illinois, which technically counts)". Here he effectively reminds the reader that Western Michigan has an effective resume, uses advanced stats, and also takes a jab at Northwestern and Illinois. The third sentence I liked was "Eastern Michigan — Eastern Michigan! — is 4-2, and despite Saturday’s loss to Toledo, Chris Creighton’s Eagles still have an 84 percent chance of 6-6. If they bowl, it will be their first time in 29 years." It's a nice sentence that uses funny emphasis and makes the reader feel good about the season EMU is having.
This week’s post, “Merguez & Pastrami” was a review of a restaurant in Paris, a bit of a diversion from Lebovitz’s usual recipe-based posts. The first sentence that stuck out to me was, “The rosy sausages have somewhat of a downscale reputation in France, associated with meals wolfed down after a long night of beer-fueled revelry, along with piles of frites stuffed into bread with the sausages.” I love this sentence because the vivid description would have provided me with such a definitive idea of the type of sausages he is talking about, except that using the adjective “rosy” in the beginning reveals the author’s true feelings about the sausages, and causes the rest of the descriptions to be taken as false. The structure of the sentence just worked really well for me, as well as how the description made the ideas almost tangible. A sentence that I really didn’t like in the post was, “I’ve been loitering around the neighborhood for years and I love it.” It was just very unnecessary and I don’t think it added anything to the writing. It’s clear from the rest of the post that Lebovitz has spent quite a bit of time in the neighborhood, from his knowledge and specific details about the area. Also, in the way he writes and by virtue of how much time he’s spent there, its clear that he loves the area. It would have been more impactful to just go into his description of one thing he loves about the neighborhood. I don’t think the sentence structure or anything is bad, I just do not think it’s necessary and it cheapens the writing. Another sentence that I love is, “I’m normally a purist about pastrami and corned beef sandwiches, preferring just meat (and lots of it) piled between two slices of warm rye bread with only a swipe of mustard, but understanding that this is a Parisian deli, I’m not surprised by lettuce and tomato.” I picked Lebovitz as my writer because I loved the way he writes about food, and this is a wonderful example. I love the sentence for the very simple reason of how enticing it is, especially since I’ve eaten a sandwich just like the one he says he enjoys, and with his spot-on description I was immediately taken back to that experience. I also like his comment about the Parisian style, because it subtly shows his difficulty with having crossed between the cultures of the US and France, but it also provides some humor with the slight mockery of the French style of the sandwich.
This week I read "Virtual/Reality: Sword Art Online" by Bateszi. For those who do not know Sword Art Online, it is a anime series that takes place in a MMO video game, except that it has real world consequences. For example, if you die in the game you also die in real life. This is probably one of my favorite posts by this author, although I have loved all of them so fare. I like the sentence "The nature of the internet is that you can exist within a reality of your own making." I like it because of what it says and bluntness of it and the clarity of it. It also sounds very poetic in the words that are used in it. It is something that I had always know but had';t paid much attention to. The internet is used by so many because it is one of the few things in life they can control without dramatic consequence for mistake. You can leave it just as fast as you enter it, which is also why I like it. "As such, can we really say that these experiences are so trivial as to be 'just games?'" I like this sentence because it is a question. This brings the reader into the article and forces the reader to think about this paragraph before proceeding to the rest of the article. I thought to myself, are these "just games". When I thought about this I took it as a metaphor for everything we do online. Finally, the last sentence of the article is also very attractive: "Arms reaching from your computer screen, pulling you in?" This last sentence ends the article just how it started, with a question. I really like this sentence because of the imagery it uses. It is really something that I can imagine and that others can to. I also think that this question asks something that a lot of people face today with all of this technology surrounding us. Batezsi surprises me once again, connecting anime to some other deeper meaning that I just might have been thinking in my subconscious. I think I just realized that this is why I love anime so much. :P
This week, I read an entry from Kirsten about one busy day in the company titled ‘a wednesday journey’. When describing one pas de deux variation she says: “The first half is electric and sexy, until the music combusts and fizzles into a slow, bleeding romance”. I hate this sentence because I think there are just too many words that didn’t need to be there. There’s an overload of verbs and adjectives, and while those can enhance a piece of writing, they just take away from the description of the choreography, in my opinion. Conversely, I loved another sentence that followed the description of what I believed to be a different piece; she says, “In the blink of an eye the score has run straight through and we’ve danced every bit of it”. I loved this sentence because this exact same thing has happened to me. When I was towards the end of rehearsing Swan Lake and getting it performance ready, the scenes that used to feel like they lasted forever did not seem nearly as long and ended before you were even ready to process what had just happened. Once the steps get into your head, they don’t leave, and doing them full out can feel like second nature that requires no thought. Finally, I loved the sentence she used to describe her state of being after a long day with a show at the end of it: “It’s 8:30 pm at this point, and I am delirious”. I especially loved this sentence because once again, it is extremely relatable for me. After I have Saturday morning and afternoon rehearsals I drive home for what feels like an eternity and then I collapse on my bed, usually taking a series of naps before I can motivate myself to do anything else. And that is only at about 4 pm, so Kirsten definitely has it much harder than me, but at the same time I know we both love it.
The past few days I've been seriously craving pumpkin bread and coincidentally Deb posted her recipe this week in her post called "Pumpkin Bread". At first no sentences stuck out to me but soon they started to flow in. I loved this sentence "But as I was making it, I got very persnickety about it, bothered by a few things in the recipes I tried" because of the use of the word persnickety which makes the sentence much more interesting than it would be if it were just the word particular instead. I also loved this sentence that came in the next paragraph, "So, I scaled my recipe a little, and then a little more and until I ended up with an insanely towering pumpkin loaf with a crispy crackly impossible-not-to-pick off cinnamon-sugar lid that’s like a snickerdoodle landed on top of a pumpkin bread and if there was ever a time to shake off any pumpkin/pumpkin-spice skepticism, you are in the right place." While it is long and somewhat hard to follow, the descriptive words used to describe the simple pumpkin bread made the sentence all the more enticing. The final sentence that stood out to me was, " I didn’t get it at first — I mean, pumpkin bread is the most basic thing, right?" for its use of the dash and of course a rhetorical question. Deb doesn't usually do this in her blog posts so it was exciting to see unique sentence structure. Even if there had been any bad sentences, I don't think I could have possibly hated them because I was so distracted by the delicious pictures of Deb's homemade pumpkin bread.
Today I read "Venice Dreaming", by Kristen, Writer of This Is Tomorrow. She spoke of her experience traveling to the city of Venice, Italy. She took a unique angle, describing the contradicting beauties of Venice traveling through the cobble stone streets on foot. To describe the pain she experienced walking through the streets of Venice with two suitcases, she stated, "That’s when it hits you the hardest. Venice is a city of impracticalities. Winding labyrinth streets that make no logical sense." I appreciate that Kristen broke these statements up instead of combining into one sentence. In doing so, I believe these sentences have more emphasis on the reader. In making these short sentences, Kristen chose word choice carefully, so she could get across exactly what she meant. I appreciated this and hope to read more from This Is Tomorrow in the future.
This week I read Cathy's most recent blog post titled: "Over the years people have asked me why I believe in God." One sentence I really loved came after Cathy described her mother's prayers being answered: "But the Big Black Woman in the Sky works in mysterious, sometimes rather dramatic ways." This sentence is so interesting because it takes a cliche and plays with it, changing the typical race and gender of God in a fashion that defies the norm, grabs the reader's attention, and presents a quirky and original voice for the author. A sentence I really didn't like came towards the middle of the last paragraph: "I’m not really yelling at anyone about anything anymore, which is a bit of a letdown but also a relief." This sentence comes out of nowhere, having little relation to Cathy's religious beliefs and experiences. The statement also does not explain why "not yelling" is a "letdown," which is confusing. Shortly after though came I sentence I really liked: "It’s difficult for the true believer to see the gray without experiencing the accompanying disillusionment." This statement perfectly sums up the universal experience of religion in balancing faith and reality. The sentence is highly relatable to the reader, and gets across Cathy's sentiment in a concise yet meaningful way. I'm looking forward to more quality articles from Cathy.
This week I read Mike Pearl's "What If We All Just Didn't Vote?" piece. Since this is election offers such interesting candidates, neither of which America as a whole seems to be enthusiastic about, this is an extremely interesting question to ponder. One sentence(s) that I liked is a response to Jeb Bush speculating what would happen if nobody voted. The sentence says, "Sure, Jeb has been known to smoke weed, but don't be too dismissive. Voter abstention—a.k.a. "not voting and being really smug about it"—is more than just a stoner-thought experiment." I think this sentence is definitely an attention grabber and it shows an awareness of the writer's audience. VICE is geared toward a younger demographic, so I think the use of sentences like these that are very casual and comical makes reading an article more appealing to young people. However, I have a love-hate relationship with this same sentence. While I think it will hook a young audience, on a content level, I personally do not see why this information about Jeb Bush was necessary. To me it sort of implies that people who smoke weed are air-headed and have dull minds. Another sentence I liked is, "OK, so technically *pushes up glasses on bridge of nose* the United States is a constitutional republic, not a democracy." I think this marks a transition in the piece in a creative way that makes the writer's voice and personality clear. Right here is where we can tell that the piece is going from the intro which poses the question to a real educational breakdown of what would would happen if no one voted, yet Mike Pearl succeeds in not allowing this transition to be dry. If it were dry, a young reader might be detracted from reading the rest of the article because it would start sounding like a boring lecture.
This week I read a post where Lindsay made butternut squash ravioli with kale pesto. I could instantly tell by the way she opened her post with, "Butternutttt Squaaaash!" that she was excited it was finally fall and this fruit is finally in season. Lindsay's style of writing is very effective in getting me to feel exactly what she wants me to feel because it is very conversation-like. For example, in this post, she says, "Fall...the time of year I start saying things to Bjork like: remember when we went to that restaurant 7 years ago and I ordered the butternut squash ravioli with brown butter sauce and sage? and remember how light and delicate the pasta was? and how sweet the squash was, and how it perfectly complimented the salty butter sauce with those earthy fresh herbs? remember? remember? remember?" There are parts of these sentences that I really like. For example, I love the ending when she repeats "remember? remember? remember?" because it reminds me of a persistent child and really gets at her point, again, of being super excited for squash season. I also love her descriptions of the different dishes she has had and still remembers today because it makes me think of similar dishes I have had and the memories that surround them.
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