Our ebook has arrived!

Writing about Literature in the Digital Age is a free eBook by students at Brigham Young University who are pushing boundaries of traditional literary study to explore the benefits of digital tools in academic writing. This collaborative effort is a case study of how electronic text formats and blogging can be effectively used to explore literary works, develop one’s thinking publicly, and research socially. Students used literary works...

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What it was like to be on "the design team"

Being on the design team was A LOT of work. I already had a base knowledge of working with the InDesign program, but I know that my team mate, Sam McGrath, spent a lot of time getting familiar with the program before we even started. InDesign was the program we used to compile the entire ebook, and I know that it's a great design program when you are completely familiar with it, but when you aren't, you confront of little quirks that sometimes turn into big frustrations. Another program that was very helpful in our work was...

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What I have learned this term

The course outline we had for this class was to become more familiar with and appreciate the changing modes to reading literature and writing about it. This expected outcome was hard for me to see at first, because I was so used to the cookie cutter English major expectations. Starting a blog for a class to turn contribute our writing ideas was so new to me, and I enjoyed that aspect of the class.As far as writing styles go, this class was surprising and sometimes confusing about what kind of writing styles were expected for...

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The digital age kind of depresses me

I've been thinking about this for the last few weeks as we have been discussing literature and writing in the digital age, and today we talked about it more in my Print Publishing class today and it made me kind of sad. Remember the movie "You've Got Mail"? I love that movie. And as I watched it a few weeks ago, it made me sad to see the irony of it. Tom Hanks puts Meg Ryan's adorable neighborhood bookstore out of business with his book superstore a la Borders, but they still find love in the end. If they were to make a sequel...

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My chapter, bio, photo, and "Tweethis" statement

Here's my bio photo:My chapter can be found here.My tweetable statement: Modern writers are connecting with readers through modern means of communication: essentially creating a living, working, and involved relationship.character count: 148. it's good? ...

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Mastering the Art of Class Project Combining

As a graduating senior, I have learned how valuable it is to connect your classes to create content for your class projects and assignments. I'm not talking about using the exact same paper for two different classes. Not exactly. What I'm talking about is using different aspects of your research or learnings in one class and using them in your other class projects. This term, I was especially successful at doing this and it has really...

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Possible Chapter Images

Morrison discussing Song of Solomon on Oprah:Image from Academy of Achievement: http://www.achievement.org/achievers/win0/large/win0-023.jpgThe "in-your-face" painting of Morrison:Image url: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l3hpcfcAM41qc53v4o1_500.jpgOr, the interactive, public speaker Morrison:Image url: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/04/Toni_Morrison_2008-2.jpg/240px-Toni_Morrison_2008-2.j...

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Final Draft

Bringing the Author to Life in the Digital Age How involved does a writer get in his or her reader’s lives? How involved do the readers get in the writer’s life? If we had thought about this question 100 years ago, or even 50, we would probably say that there is very little involvement between the two. Literary theorist Roland Barthes certainly thinks so. In fact, Barthes’ theories about an author who is essentially “dead”—meaning that the novel and its creator have nothing to do with each other—may seem logical in a non-technological...

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On my way to a final draft. Thoughts?

How involved does a writer get in his or her reader’s lives? How involved do the readers get in the writer’s life? If we had thought about this question 100 years ago, or even 50, we would probably say that there is very little involvement between the two. Literary theorist Roland Barthes certainly thinks so as well. In fact, Barthes’ theories about an author who is essentially “dead”—meaning that the novel and its creator have nothing to do with each other—may seem logical in a non-technological world. But in today’s modern...

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Working title: Bringing the Author to Life in the Digital Age

Excuse the choppiness: this outline is a draft of how I want my chapter to develop, point by point.Intro: literary theories of Roland Barthes who "killed the author"--meaning that all that is important is the text and no supplemental information about the author or from the author is necessary. Through developing technology and social media, this is not the case any more. Authors are using digital means to connect with their readers. The author/reader relationship is completely changing in the digital age.Toni Morrison began...

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Using InDesign to create an Ebook

Ok, so I played around with InDesign to see how to create an ebook format. It was actually pretty easy. Rather than exporting the document to be a pdf file which most people usually do, all you do is export it as an epub format. I assume then, that that's how we can upload it to the place of our choice, but that's still what I'm not sure about.So for our ebook, I think that what would be easiest would be to compile all of our chapters into a word document or google document. We can then place that text into the InDesign document...

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The Tower of eBabel

I have realized as I have researched ebooks the last couple of days, that I really don't know that much about ebooks! I mean, I own a Kindle, but like I said earlier, all I do to get books on that is click a button.So, to find out more about the different types of ebooks, I went to the ultimate source: wikipedia. What would I do without it? It was helpful to me to read about the different formats, especially in considering which format I feel would be best for our class project in creating an ebook.Here is a page that was helpful...

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How much editing is done with political speeches?

I don't have a vendetta against President Barack Obama. But I just have to say that I want to know if his speech writers have editors. I want to explore more in depth the process that is involved in writing a public speech. Who is the primary writer? Who then edits it? This weekend was a first for me. I got to go to Arlington National Cemetery for Memorial Day and listen to the president of the United States and sit about 30 yards away from him. (And as a side note, I got to see Michelle Obama in person too, and she really...

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Using JSTOR to find black reader responses to Toni Morrison

I wanted to use JSTOR to find what has been written academically about the current popular readers’ response, particularly in the African American community. JSTOR is a great web source in finding articles from all kinds of publications. The one I found was from the African American Review. I used the search tool, but opened it up to search in all articles. I searched for “black readings on Toni Morrison” and I actually found quite a few intriguing articles. Toni Morrison, Oprah Winfrey, and Postmodern Popular AudiencesJohn...

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Exploring Project Muse to find themes in Toni Morrison’s novels

I explored Project Muse to see what kind of articles I could find that discuss the themes in Morrison’s literature, particularly themes that would demonstrate her role as an author today. Project Muse is an on-line resource that helps you find biographies, interviews, and scholarly articles about specific works or specific authors. I was new to using Project Muse, so I went to their basic search and searched “Toni AND Morrison”—I only narrowed it by designating that she was a female author. I found a lot of great articles,...

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Connecting my novel of choice with someone else’s through the Literature Resource Center

I chose to search for helpful things relating to To Kill A Mockingbird, because it deals with similar racial issues like Song of Solomon does. One takes place in the south, and the other in the north, but they still explore key issues about racism in the mid twentieth century.I decided to explore using the Literature Resource Center, an on-line source for biographical historical information about novels and authors. Rather than searching for both Harper Lee and Toni Morrison in the same search, I chose to just search for entries...

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My Morrison Research

The cool thing about studying an author that is still living and writing is that you can find some really cool insights into their literature because they are still living to talk about it. Toni Morrison is known for challenging all literary themes and motifs that readers may be expecting. She always is forcing us to rethink things and realize that things are not always as they seem. Something she has done that defies the traditional role of a "serious author" is being involved in communication media. In this case, I'm talking...

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My connection status

I figured out how to link GoodReads to my facebook, but oddly enough only when I add books to my "to-read" list. I wish more people would get on the GoodReads bandwagon (or just the reading bandwagon for that matter!) because it's such a cool social tool that connects people through books. I forgot how my GoodReads was linked to facebook, so imagine my surprise when I was all of a sudden getting comments on my facebook page from people who were offering their praise for a book that I just added to my list.I finally set up an...

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All That Jazz

Jazz by Toni MorrisonMy rating: 4 of 5 starsJazz is the story of a couple living in Harlem during the Jazz Age, and by the "Jazz Age" I don't mean F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jazz Age--it is anything but that. Joe and Violet's relationship is virtually falling apart, due to some adultery and murder, which makes for a juicy start to the story. Morrison then takes us on a journey back a few generations, where we see that Joe and Violet's stormy...

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More than just a book in Oprah's Book Club

I'm not going to lie. The only reason I had heard of Toni Morrison in years past was because of Oprah Winfrey. Toni Morrison is an African American writer who usually confronts social issues in her novels about Black culture and its fight to find definition among white popular culture that seems to be everywhere. So naturally, Oprah LOVES Toni Morrison, and has featured her novels in her book club, and even starred in the film adaptation of Morrison's novel Beloved. With that being said, with the Morrison novels that I had...

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Playing around with GoodReads

Song of Solomon by Toni MorrisonMy rating: 4 of 5 starsIn the classic Toni Morrison style, Song of Solomon manages to questions conventions of family and society, and you love the book and hate it at the same time. I love the character of Milkman--he is definitely a relatable protagonist. I loved the Afromystical elements of the novel: it really gives you a deeper view into African American culture and gave me a completely different view...

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The Pros and Cons of Kindling

I got my Kindle as a Christmas gift from my mom who thought it would be helpful in buying schoolbooks (which luckily for her, I am an English major--my school books are all novels which is possible with a Kindle. If I needed textbooks, then I would be out of luck---that's a con of a Kindle). But other than that, I have noticed some good things and bad things about using a Kindle in a school setting.I discovered immediately the fact that with a Kindle, public domain books are free. Before I even purchased a Kindle edition of...

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The thing about having an on-line presence is...

We all know them: friends on facebook, blogger, etc. who feel the need to give us every detail of their lives, whether it's interesting or not. I remember a "friend" on facebook announcing to the internet that he was finally getting around to washing his sheets. Now THAT, is too much information. Because of these kinds of incidents, it has really made me hesitant to have an "active on-line presence" and put content on-line everyday. I don't want people to get sick of me and I don't want people to feel like all I do is sit on...

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Just like Robert Gu

The novel Rainbows End connects to readers because we are all finding ourselves in the same situation as Robert Gu, a man who doesn't want to face the technologically changing times. I really felt that feeling just a year ago when I cam back from serving a mission in a country that was also "technologically behind". When I came home, it seemed like everyone had "smart" phones--even my mom had a Blackberry and could text which she couldn't do at all when I had left-- and for me who was used to just using a basic cell phone,...

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Consuming Fudge

I've been thinking about class discussions on what it means to "consume" literature. After the topic came up about how many times it takes to re-read a novel in order to really consume it, I thought about which books on my reading resume that I have read multiple times. I have read those meaty "classics" such as East of Eden, Anna Karenina, and Pride and Prejudice two times--maybe two and a half times. But really, I can only think of one...

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Exposing My Inner Feminist

This post is not a post about politics. But I feel the need to evaluate President Obama's speech he made last night, from an editor's point of view. Obama's speech was well-written and powerfully delivered. I felt the power, and I felt proud to be an American. But there was something that just rubbed me the wrong way, and that was his use of sexist language in using only the word "men" in expressing gratitude to those who accomplished this mission. It bugged me, even though maybe he was referring to the the group of Navy SEALs...

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The first book I read that I didn't need a teacher to tell me "the big picture"

"But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed--because "Thou mayest."The first time I read John Steinbeck's East of Eden was when I was a junior in high school. I read it over the summer, and it took me quite a while, and when I finished it, I just felt so accomplished. Accomplished because it was well over 700 pages, and...

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