Ten Books I'd Like to Read

• Demian by Hermann Hesse
• 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
• Emma by Jane Austen
• Persuasion by Jane Austen
• The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
• Harry Potter series by JK Rowling
• The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
• A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 

The Medium is the Message

Media is an indispensable tool today. People use many social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, twitter, and tumbler etc. People post their message or their thought to their social media page. The positive thing about media is that people can share, see and search information whenever they want, and easily use it to search. Also, they can enjoy a lot of different media even it does not exist in each other’s country. For people who work in marketing, social media is perfect marketing material to them. However, social media also has a negative impact because people use it too much, so face-to-face communication is getting lost. Also, some people like to show off their financial ability and beauty through their social media. I can see people everywhere only look at their smartphone. Media gives many abilities and possibilities these days but on the other hand, it is not really good to people. I hope people use moderation between the positive aspects and negative aspects of social media. 

In Class Discussion on Look Out, The Saints Are Coming Through

What is your reaction to the text you just read?

 This short story is very confusing. I could not find any relation between Bob Dylan’s song. The main character’s background is very vague and confuse. We do not know how he becomes a violence person and never gets into character’s mind. Really confuse the short story. Also, the structure of the short story is confusing because of the chapter start with  XII chapter.

What connections did you make with the story?

• Discuss the elements of the work with which you were able to connect

Unfortunately, I could not understand at all about the story. I know the Bob Dylan but never hear his song before. The only thing that I can make a connection is relationship and marriage. The two main character in a relationship but the male character is very violent and the female character has a smart brother and she has little of the humor. Also few reference of the Bob Dylan. 

What change would you make to adapt this story into another medium?

 - What medium would you use?

• What changes would you make?

I think graphic novel is works to this story, because if this is movie or drama could be confuse but the comic book contain the drawing. The comic book is people easily to approach the subjects. Explaining by drawing is more easily understandable with that. 

Curating yourself: The Harry Potter series of books

Harry Potter is a very popular and famous story in the world. It has several theme parks, books, movies, and a musical. So many things have come out with the story of Harry Potter. It shows how Harry Potter is still popular for everyone. Most people read the Harry Potter books or at least saw the movies. Some people who are really big fans of Harry Potter go to England to see the Harry Potter theme park.  

I’m a really big fan of the Harry Potter series. When I first heard about Harry Potter I was in elementary school. Harry Potter was very popular in our school and the library book was out of stock. I watched the movie first. It was a brand new world, and it caught my eye. Harry Pottery is still a nostalgic fantasy and the best story to me. However, after watching all of the Harry Potter series, I felt that I did not fully understand all of Harry Potter. I still had many questions and did not know about many characters. But this happened to a lot of people who only experienced Harry Potter by movie, because the movie’s running time is not longer than 2 hours and it has to be not boring and show just the most important scenes. Because this happens, movies usually do not show as much detail as books. Therefore, few month ago, I started to read Harry Potter by book and it is slowly solving my problems.

The book’s contents has potential power because of its strong messages and stories. Harry Potter is about a normal young boy who achieves big things and kills the dark wizard Voldemort. When he struggles, his friends help him to survive even though some of them die. This literature shows the power of love, friendship, and bravery to people. This book is important to me because it is fun and also very powerful.  It also helped me improve my imagination. The contents was unique to me because it was my first time reading about wizards and the story touched my emotions. Harry Potter grows up lonely because his uncle and aunt neglect him. He survives many obstacles but still becomes a strong person. I think this is really good message to give to people. 

I think that it is important for people to read the books instead of just watching the movie. When I read Harry Potter by book, it is very easy to understand because of the detail in stories that describes situations, character’s thoughts, and details of a scene. Also, the books explain the situation that is not shown in the movie. Using my own imagination I can draw the image with book description and words. Personally, I love to read books before watching movies because I can compare with book and movie and my originally imagination and visual of the movie. Also, even if I cannot understand what is happening in the movie scene, I can guess and compare from book. I can know what scenes appear or not in the movie.

The book’s dependent effect is people can use their own imagination to set up their own movies and can know the detail of the books. A movie visually shows many things and catches people’s eye but the effect of a book is that it makes people creative and improves ourselves.

Game as a medium: The White Day

In Korea, we have White Day which is the same holiday as Valentine’s Day but the person who gives a gift is opposite. In Korea, on Valentine’s Day, usually women give chocolate to men. On White Day usually a man gives candy to a woman. This day is exclusively in Korea. I think people want both holidays to make the giving fair. The White Day game is a horror genre game that comes from a Korean game company. My first play of this game was when I was middle school. Me and my friend were really curious about this game and it seemed like the subject was love because of the title, but when we started to play, we could feel that something was wrong. 

This game is about the main character transferring from a different high school, and before he officially transfers to this school he falls in love at first sight with one girl. Her name is So Young. He grabs her diary that she lost, and he goes to school that night to give her the diary. After entering, he realizes something is wrong through weird event. Through completing many missions and going through many obstacles he can move to the next stage. Eventually, the main character solves the problem of the school’s curse. I think this game can be a good subject in literature, because always mystery and horror contents are successful and popular to people. The horror environment and feeling make people tense and scared. It is traditionally a horror story but the setting makes it more interesting. Setting the game in a school and a school that has curse is enough to make people interested. When I tried this game with my friends, the game’s structure, setting, story, and missions was very interesting. It was enough to be popular in Korea. Using their concept and story, this game could be made into very interesting literature. 

This game should be literature because it is memorable in a good way and a bad way. On the down side because of the game was a horror game, it made me scared. The bad guy is a security guard and the main character has to avoid him. The sign of the bad guy coming is the sound of a key chain jingling. Even though I do not play now, when I hear that sound I keep thinking about that moment of game. However, in a good way, I can think about when I played this game with my friends. We helped each other to solve the missions and bonded along the way. Therefore, because of these emotions and bonds this game should be considered literature.

Literature is very good tool for creating our own images in our own imagination. Using our own imagination from literature is a good way to let us create new settings of this game. Personally, I am someone who really hates horror, because I do not like the feeling of nervousness and tension from horror. Sometimes randomly the horror stays in my head. This game is the first and last game I will try. 

Sense 8

The Sense8  is a drama series from Netflix. This is about eight different people from different cultures and countries whose souls are connected and at the same time. Also, they connected their five sense, so they can share what they see, hear, feel, taste, and smell. Even their languages are automatically translated for each other. They fight for a questionable organization that tried to kill them. The reason why I started to watching this tv series is because a famous Korean actress is one of the main characters. I did not really expect this but it is a really interesting story and subject matter. I think Sense 8 has more potential as a tv series than if it was made into a movie or book. 

The eight different people are connected to each other by their souls, so when one of the people has a struggle they can connect to a different person who can fight well. In the tv series, it shows many different cities, places and peoples such as  South Korea, India, Mexico, USA, England, Kenya, and Germany. I think this is one of the reasons why the Sense 8 has a strong effect as a tv series. It has to show each different country’s culture and environment because that is how they are different. Also, it shows how they are connected. However, if this tv series is a book, it will be a little difficult to use your own imagination for a person who has not visited one of the countries. I have never visited India, German, Mexico, and Kenya so it is really hard to use my imagination to picture that situation of a specific place and how they are different. 

A movie is usually 2 - 3 hours long, and it has to show the entire story and visually during the runtime. However, I think 2 -3 hours is not enough to show the whole story for this series, because, the important thing is different countries and cultures and how people can connect and understand each other. A movie can show a place in a very short time but I think the audience will very confused. This series is how each character solves the problem and how they progress, which is very important so I think it should be a season series. 

An Asian woman appearing in foreign tv series is very rare to me, so I am really glade to see her in a tv series and I am proud of her. Even before I started this tv series, because of her I am really satisfied. 

Graphic Novel: Asterios Polyp

The graphic novel’s name is Asterios Polyp and the main character’s name is Asterios Polyp. The author is David Mazzucchelli who is a really famous cartoonist and illustrator. This is his first graphic novel and major work. He uses many different drawing skills to describe people. In the story, Asterios is very famous and popular architect but in his 50th birthday, a storm destroys his apartment. Accidentally, he loses everything that he made. The only thing he has is cash so he goes to New York to live a new life. When I read this graphic novel, many scenes are visually very impressive to me. 

Asterios Polyp is an architect-artist that creates and realizes new places and beauty using points, lines, and planes. He has a fancy career that wins an award many times, but his architectural drawings are never realized in real society. At the beginning of the chapter, there is a drawing of sixteen apples in different styles to show his artistic character. The drawing is a still life of apples but it shows simply realism drawing, surreal drawing, black and white, a drying apple, and a fragmented apple, etc. The word “apple” is only one but each different style of the drawing shows different meanings. 

The color of this novel is very impressive. It is not colorful and fancy. In this novel, color is in moderation, and the only colors that Mazzucchelli uses are red, yellow, and blue which represent Asterios's feelings and mind. When Asterios first meets Hana, the blue and red line connect to each other and fill out only two people. This represents that they destined to meet.  Also, when Asterios and Hana get in trouble, the line and color show how they cannot connect to each other. Hana’s side is filled out with red lines and it seems like a pretty detailed line drawing but Asterios's side is only a simple blue line drawing. It is the same space but it looks really different to each side. 

This graphic novel is completely different from a typical comic book. The graphic novel drawing is not an ornament of the story, it has same power of storytelling. The normal comic book shows one panel for one plot and drawing but this novel shows over one page a description of a character’s thoughts and feelings and detail of those feelings by drawing. Visually it is very impressive and has interesting color, structure, and drawings.