Book Genres

My second book, Fight Club, fits into the genre of Thriller, and it fits perfectly into the subgenre of Psychological Thriller. I believe this because it's very thrilling with how much violence, fighting, and mystery actually goes on. It's also psychological, though, because the main character is fighting with a character that is in his head the whole time. It's very much a mind game, and in the end it leaves you with that "whoa." feeling of being tricked. It doesn't completely fit into this category, however, because when I think of thrillers I always tend to think of a murder or a kidnapping, or just a story that needs to be solved. There is nothing really driving this plot line for the beginning part of the book, and it's just detailing these weird things that happen to this odd man, so it doesn't feel too much like a thriller. When he starts to question who Tyler Durden is, however, it starts to feel more like a thriller with something that you need to figure out. You begin to think back to everything he has ever said about Tyler and wonder who exactly he is. You start to question what exactly the narrator meant when he said things like "I know this because Tyler knows this" and why Tyler told the narrator never to talk to Marla about him. It begins to drive you slightly crazy wondering about what exactly was going on and who everyone is. But being driven this crazy is a good thing because it fuels your desire to keep reading. It makes you read faster, but also closer, trying to pick up all the little details you can to try to figure it out. You begin to get an idea of what's happening, but you're still driven to keep reading father into the book. Once you get to the end and the author reveals everything, all the little details, the madness that was actually going on the whole time, even though it's exactly what you thought it was, you're still blown away.

It's only after we've lost everything, that we're free to do anything.

Fight Club Review:
Fight Club is by far one of the best books I've ever read. It is full of action, mystery, and psychological thrills that all keep you happy and on the edge of your seat. The entire time while reading it, I couldn't wait to get to the next page, the next chapter, the next big event.
Fight Club starts out with a man who is down on his luck going to the doctor for insomnia. The doctor tells him to try natural remedies, and if he wants to see real pain he should go down to Remaining Men Together and see the men with testicular cancer. When the main character does go down to the meeting, he finds that he's able to let go and just cry, and the crying helps him to sleep better. So, he starts going to many different meetings. Eventually, while he's out on a business trip, his apartment blows up and forces him to move in with a guy he had just met, Tyler Durden. Before they headed to Tyler's apartment, they decided to beat each other up because neither other them had ever been in a fight and didn't "want to die without any scars". Eventually their little bar fight turned into a group of men that fought just to feel like something mattered. This group of men called what they were doing Fight Club. Eventually this fight club turned into a movement of destruction that was called Project Mayhem. This lead to the infamous scene where Tyler and the main character are sitting in an abandoned building waiting to watch many others blow up. The main character is done having to deal with Tyler, so he shoots himself in the jaw.
The author's writing style is very unique and interesting to read. He writes in a confusing way that eventually begins to make sense only when he gives you enough information and only when he wants it to make sense. He uses a lot of literary techniques like similes, metaphors, hyperboles, and others. It's really interesting when he writes small, incomplete sentences to enforce his point. They're really powerful and interesting to read, they really keep your attention and make the storyline flow more.
This book was also made into a very well-selling movie by the same name. Most people have seen it, and can even quote it. The movie follows the storyline perfectly, and often times directly quotes the book. It seems like it would be a hard book to turn into a movie because of all the fighting and the destruction caused by Project Mayhem, but it was executed perfectly. The characters were perfectly cast, they're exactly what you imagine as you are reading the novel, with the exception of Robert Paulson (Big Bob), who was played by Meatloaf. In the novel, he's described with the same physical attributes, but he's described as having blonde hair. Meatloaf, however, has pretty dark hair.
All in all, this is one of my favorite books, and one of my favorite movies. I would give it an A++ because it is just so great. It is very well written and has so much imagery in it. I could perfectly imagine everything that the author, Chuck Palahniuk, was describing. When you see it in the movie, too, it is exactly what he described and you imagined. It is a great read and I would recommend it to anyone.

Book Covers

There are two covers that are used for this novel before it was made into a book. There is one cover for the paperback edition, and one cover for the hardcover book. The paperback version is just a fist that is placed in the center of the cover with red stripes placed over it. The author, Chuck Palahniuk's name is placed at the bottom of the page in very large and very bold letters, and the title, Fight Club, is placed in the same large, bold font at the top of the page. I feel like the creator of the cover did this to show that the book is mainly about violence, but it's also got some crazy mind-games going on behind it. The fighting aspect is shown with the fist, and the brain games are shown with the interesting pattern of the red lines across the whole cover. I like how the creator put the title and the authors name in the same size, because it kind of shows one of the main themes in the book: how everyone is just as significant (or worthless) as everyone, that we are all the same "trash of the world". I believe that this cover helped market the book more towards the men who are drawn to the fighting aspect of this novel.
There is another cover that was released only on the hardcover version of the book. Not as many people have seen this version as have seen the paperback one. When the movie was released, they rereleased the book with a cover that related to the movie so that it would get more publicity.

Adapting My Book

Fight Club has already been made into a very famous movie that has been seen and quoted by millions. But I'm sure the director had a hard time adapting many of the Project Mayhem scenes. It must have been hard to create as much destruction as was portrayed in the novel. Project Mayhem was created to make things fall apart and to make people question things around them. When they blew up big buildings, that must have new hard for the filmmakers to recreated and adapt onto the screen. I'm sure it was also a challenge to portray the end scene when the narrator shot himself to try to rid himself from the harmful words of "advice" from Tyler Durden. One part that I think would be okay to cut would be web the narrator imagines the airplane crashing. It's not completely relevant to the main story line and only shows how far-gone the main character is and leads up to a Project Mayhem project. I think it would be very important to keep the minor character, Bob, because he later on is participating in the Fight Club and in Project Mayhem. Another important scene that shouldn't be cut is web the narrator's apartment blows up. Although that might have been hard to recreate, it was major scene in the book that set up the narrators fall to destruction.

What you don't understand, you can make mean anything.

  Chuck Palahniuk's twisted imagination came to life yet again in his novel, Diary. He writes of a woman who is destined to save Waytansea Island with her artistic talent. This woman, Misty Wilmot, is writing a "coma diary," so that when her husband gets out of his suicide induced coma, he will know everything that has happened. And it's been a lot.
  All-in-all I didn't think this book quite matched up with all of Palahniuk's previous books. Most of his other books are very action-packed with a lot of unseen twists and turns. This book, however, didn't have very many twists, just a few slightly surprising bits here and there. For example, every so often Misty would find notes left behind by the women whose lives supposedly mirrored hers. These notes were pretty eerie, but were never very scary or surprising.
  One of the most memorable quotes from this novel is "what you don't understand you can make mean anything" (Palahniuk 1720-21). It really explains how I feel about the book in general. I was very confused reading it, and most of what he said I just downright didn't understand. I was confused on what was happening, on who was who, and even his descriptions in this book were confusing to envision.
  One part I really like about this book, however, was when Misty explained how she felt about a situation. Instead of coming out and just saying, "I'm feeling really betrayed right now," Misty would say things like "Just for the record, the weather today is partly suspicious with chances of betrayal" (Palahniuk 725). I think this is very unique and clever, and it really portrays Palahniuk's strange mind and clever way of thinking.
  Although I didn't really understand the book, it wasn't too terrible. Once I got past the sting of the original dullness, it became a pretty good story. It has a pretty clever and original plot, and the characters are pretty relatable. Misty, the "author", has a lot of problems that she doesn't quite know how to deal with, so she turns to drinking and complaining. She is very relatable, because she doesn't ever solve her problems completely, and her main way of dealing with things is to write them out in her diary. Most of us don't do much to solve our problems either, other than complaining.
  There were a few really neat things that I noticed as I was reading that really show how clever Palahniuk really is. The most notable is the name of the island, Waytansea. As I was reading, I just kind of skipped over this and never thought of how it was said. But when I was looking back at important parts, I was trying to spell it, and I ended up sounding it out. It's already spelled out, though. Way-Tan-Sea. Say it out loud: "Wait and See". I think Palahnuik did this because Misty was never quite sure what was going to happen to her, in fact, none of the island inhabitants knew exactly what was going to happen, so they all just had to "wait and see". It also goes along with how I was feeling about the book in the beginning. Palahniuk knew that it started off dull, but he let you know that all you had to do was put a little time into it, and it would become something spectacular. Everyone just needs to "wait and see".

Does Setting up a Book like a Diary Help the Story?

The book Diary is set up like, well, a diary. It's written from the wife's point of view to her husband who is in a coma. It's recounting their entire relationship from her point of view with the angst she feels towards him now. Intermingled between her writing about the past, she's also explaining what's happening in the present. It's called a Coma Diary, "It's what sailors and their wives used to do, Grace said, keep a diary of every day they were apart. It's a treasured old seafaring tradition. After all those months apart, when the come back together, the sailors and wives, they trade diaries and catch up on what they missed." (Location 493)
Is it better to have a book written as a diary? Does it help move the story along in a different way, or is it just confusing?
I think that in the beginning it was confusing, because they hadn't said yet that it was a diary. Once it came out that it was, in fact, a diary, it got a little easier to read. It's still a little jumbled up, but I think that's how Palahniuk meant for it to be. I think he likes to mess with the reader's mind a little bit, so he purposefully made it a little difficult to read. Either way, it's a fantastic book, and I do think that having it set up as a diary really adds to the story.

Character; why does Peter Wilmot seal off rooms in people's houses?

Peter Wilmot is a main character in the novel, Diary, by Chuck Palahniuk. Before he fell into a coma (which he has been in since the beginning of the book), he would seal off rooms of people's summer houses and write obscenities inside of these sealed off rooms. At this point in the book, the reader is still not quite sure why he does this, or if there is a reasoning behind what he is writing on these walls. One could speculate that he is either going mad, or he's got some kind of agenda to follow that is obligating him to write these evil obscenities on unsuspecting people's walls.
I've been reading this book on a kindle, so the pages are all wonky, so forgive me for that now.
There is a quote that relates to this topic on page 347; "Every contractor, Misty tells him, they'll sign their work. Mark their territory. [...] They'll write on the walls before the wallpaper or tile. This is what's inside everybody's walls, this record of pictures, prayers, names. Dates. A time capsule." This might have something to do with why Peter was writing on the walls of the rooms he sealed off. At this point, though, it's still up in the air, and with an author like Chuck, there's no telling what could happen.