Chapter 4: Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before?
Frequent readers, like myself, tend to pick up on similarities between the many books that they have read. Characters may have the same personality or a plot may be heading in the same direction. Foster says that it's all about where the reader looks. If you read a certain book and then read another, you may be able to pick out specific details if you were really looking for them.
I read a book recently called The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau. I had no idea what the book was about since I didn't even bother to read the summary on the inside flap; I picked it up and bought it when I saw that the author and I share the same name. I thought that it must be good since I, in the form of another person, wrote the book. I also saw a review on the front cover that said "fans of The Hunger Games will love it." I am a huge fan of The Hunger Games, so I had to make sure that the review wasn't lying.
As I was reading it, I noticed some similarities in plot between it and The Hunger Games, hence the review. In both books, killing to attain glory or to win a prize is present. Both of the main characters happen to be similar, too; they both are teenage girls who want to fight the system and change society for the better.
Foster mentions authors that purposely draw on other works to make the readers think of characters or situations in a different light. With The Hunger Games and The Testing, the characters are similar, both being teenage girls and all, but since their personalities are different, the methods that they used to change their separate worlds were different. They essentially had the same goals, but the authors used their separate character's wills to make them their own.
Being able to see deeper connections within a text helps the reader grow intellectually because they are able to pick small details and have them mean something, rather than just be words on a page.
Me, I used to have a hard time connecting things. For English assignments and things of the sort, when we had to connect a snippet of a poem to something in real life or another work, that would be difficult for me. After reading this chapter, it made me realize that finding connections isn't as hard and complex as I was making it and now picking out things shouldn't be so frustrating. Since I read a lot of fiction, I'll just connect everything to a book I've read, like I'm doing for these blogs, so they'll be relatable to me and to other people.
This is probably the most beneficial summer assignment I've ever done.
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