Corey Deogracias Reader Blog

  I chose to make my non-fiction matrix for the novel The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America (2003) by Erik Larson. The novel is a dramatic retelling of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and the simultaneous true-crime horrors of H.H. Holmes, based in Chicago at the time. 1. Where is the book on the narrative continuum? This novel is presented in a highly narrative style. 2. What is the subject of the book? The novel tells two simultaneous, seemingly unrelated stories of the main event designers and architects of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, switching back and forth with the life and exploits of H.H. Holmes, prolific serial killer. They intertwine as the Fair attracts people from all over the world, and unknowingly, to Holmes's "Murder Castle". 3. What type of book is it? While the book draws from official documents, records and newspapers for its material, the narrative presentation highly dramatizes ...

 My annotation for historical fiction is up here ! I chose The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See, from 2019. This was a fascinating book about a culture I didn't know existed, but became enthralled by! Through various life circumstances, the women of the island came to be the workers and fishers while the men stayed ashore to care for the children. These haenyeo divers developed a long and lived culture, that through the course of the novel, faces changes, exploitation, and political threats over the course of Japanese occupation, the Korean civil war, and modern day. Framing this narrative through the fictitious characters and their changing relationship brought in elements of relationship fiction, and gave an emotional depth and bitter nostalgia to the passage of time.

 I love The Lord of the Rings . But as a fan, I feel like I have to own up to a particularly embarrassing confession: I have never read the books. I have tried on multiple occasions to hold Fellowship in my hands and let myself get carried away to Middle-earth, but the very robust and grandiose verbiage that gives the series its depth can be its own roadblock. Though I haven't read the books, I have listened to them on audiobook at least 3 times through in my lifetime, with surely more to come. This I think is one of the great strengths of an audiobook. Not only are they convenient for multitasking, but great audiobooks with effective narrators (and perhaps even sound effects and music) can bring a book alive like a spoken-word tale. The emphasis and drama in the reading can help give the punch needed for climactic scene, or the subtle whispers of something meant to be unheard. If overdone, yes, the narration can be too cheesy (or way too lifeless and dry) for the listener to cont...

      I don't have any real structured book club experience myself. I enjoy reading and enjoy writing about what I've read. I like reading about what other people write about what they've read. I'm just not much of a conversationalist, and so I haven't ever really sought out a group to participate in book clubbing with.     Occasionally, if a book passage is sitting particularly heavy in my mind for whatever reason, I'll make a post about it on socials like Reddit, mostly just to have somewhere to write my thoughts and have a little feedback. It usually isn't exactly the most fulfilling, obviously, a lot of internet dialogue tends to be polarized and not very nuanced. Comments either boil down to "it was good" or "it sucked".     I find that to be a problem with a lot of online or published review or discussion media in the digital space. "The pacing dragged but that felt purposeful for the mood the author was intending, and the drab...

 I chose to write my special topic paper on a genre I am greatly familiar with: the graphic novel. As I state in the full paper, I believe that lumping all graphic novels together into one umbrella does a disservice to the depth of what the form has to offer. I framed the paper as an introductory guide for librarians to understand the far reaching potential of graphic novels, and provide some appeals that exist within the form that readers from other genres of written-word novels may latch onto. I began by acknowledging that yes, the American superhero genre is the most represented among graphic novel offerings. Even so, however, there is an advantage to the fact that these characters have had decades worth of stories and creators working on their canons. While action adventure is the most representative of the superhero genre, readers may be surprised how much page space is dedicated to crime procedurals, westerns, high science fiction, even relationship and romances. Further, the...

 My next annotation, Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi , is up now! This is a relationship fiction novel, following the inner thoughts and actions of the main character, Antara, while she processes the trauma put upon her by her difficult and sometimes abusive mother, Tara. Tara feels equally resentful and spiteful of Antara, whom she has had in her singular care ever since abandoning her own arranged marriage, escaping to live in an ashram, then become homeless and dependent on her estranged husband and in-laws.  If I was desperate for any respite after the difficult read of The Wasp Factory , I found none here. Unlike Factory, however, I was enthralled by this book. I can't say I enjoyed my time with it, the novel is miserable and trauma-dumpy and I wanted to find my loved ones and give them a hug, but the way the constant internal and external conflicts are equally traumatic, empathetic, brutally honest, and sometimes humorous, was very compelling. I feel equally compressed and cl...