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".

Don't Judge a Book by its Cover

I think there's a lot of things that can go wrong with book covers. If you put too much on a cover, it'll seem too crouded. On the other hand, if you dont put enough detail on it the cover will look underdeveloped. If you try to use a simplified image, a lot of times it'll make the cover look childish and no respectable adult will want to read it. If you make it look too adult or gruesome, however, many people probably won't even pick it up. In the case of a series, you've got to make sure the covers all work together in some way or another. A great example of this is Oliver Sacks' collection of covers. He made all six of them work together to create one image when they come together. Alone their artwork is pretty powerful too, having the zoomed in piece of a larger image intrigues readers into wanting to read not only one book, but the whole series. An image of all of Oliver Sacks' covers put together is included below.:

 

Best and Worst Film Adaptations

Best and Worst Film Adaptations:

  There are plenty of books that have been made into films. Many of them are very good, but there are some that are just completely rotten. Whether it's the book or the movie that is bad, there are plenty.

• Fight Club: The book came out in 1996, about three years before the 1999 film was released. This is one of the best print to screen adaptations I've seen. The book followed a stange story line: starting at the end, jumping to the beginning, then returning to the end again. The movie followed this same story line, but without being more confusing than the plot makes it.
• The Hunger Games: This book became a best seller soon after being released, and only grew in publicity as each book came out. When the movie was released, it gained even more notice. This is a great adaptation because of the fact that the movie follows the story line pretty closely. It was an excellently written book, and a perfectly executed movie.
• My Sister's Keeper: Standing alone, the book and the movie are good. But when you compare them to each other, they lose some merit. The book was an easy read, and it was written very beautifully. The movie was well casted, and greatly made. But there was one major flaw in this adaptation: they changed the ending. I'm not going to ruin it for any of you who haven't read, but they gave the movie a completely different ending than the book. That's one element that makes for a bad adaptation.
• American Psycho: This story has a very interesting plot, making it a very good movie and what you would think to be a very good read. I have no issues with the adaptation of this book into a movie. They executed it perfectly, down to the main character's manic and slightly obsessive-compulsive behavior. The real issue I have with this story is the book itself. For being a psychological thriller, it was a very dull read. Due to the narrator's deranged behavior, he describes many things in excruciating detail. An example would be that whenever he met a new character, he would describe, in horrifying detail, exactly what they had on. If said character was wearing a suit, the narrator would go into detail about not only the pattern and color of the suit, but also about the designer and superfluous details like that. It was a great movie, and a really clever plot line, but a very dull read.

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.

Readicide.

I think one of the main reasons kids don't like having to read for school is because all of the writing is symbolic. None of the words mean exactly what they're saying. All of the authors are not just telling a story, they're hinting at a bigger issue. As kids though, we're not able to tell exactly what they're saying, so it confuses us. It gets difficult when teachers ask what we think the author is saying, because with most of the books we read, the ideas are very vague. I do think it's important for these authors to write like this, because a lot of their books are praised because of their ability to do this. I just think that for school purposes we should either be told right away what they're trying to say, or we should read books that come right out and say what they're trying to say instead of just hinting around it. Either keep teaching these same books you've been teaching, but don't make kids analyze as much, or teach newer books that come out and say what issues they're talking about.

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.

Is there a difference between literary and best-selling fiction?

I do believe that there is a difference between works that are prized as literary work, and ones that are recognized as "best-sellers". If a work is deemed literary, it is usually an older book that reflects on important social topics that are prevalent in our culture. These books' topics stay relevant throughout the years, and the messages they try to send out are timeless.
However, a book that is only seen as a best seller is usually only popular for a few weeks, until the heat about them does down. These works are usually only seen as good works because people talk about them enough to get attention pointed at them. Most of the time, they are only brought into being seen as best sellers because of controversy surrounding them. An example of a book like this is the entire Fifty Shades series. All three of those books have been on the best sellers list for about 35 weeks, all because of the controversy surrounding them.