Beastly: The modern adaptation of Beauty and the Beast

Beastly by Alex Flinn is a modern adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. The location takes place in New York city where Kyle Kingston, the handsome, charming and arrogant boy gets turn into a beast when he makes fun of Kendra, a witch in disguise. He has two years to find someone to love him or he would stay a beast forever.

This book is interesting because it starts out as a IM chat with most of the characters from the other stories that have been transformed by a witch such has the Ariel from the Little Mermaid.
There are many similarities to the Disney's Beauty and the Beast such has the witch gives him a time limit of which he can find love, he has a mirror that can show him anything he wants to see.

The book was recently made into a movie, I did not watch the movie but from the trailers I seen, the movie adaptation is different from the book.

The impact of the Lord of the Rings Series

I had been a huge fan of LOTR since 5th grade. I always felt it is a waste that this epic fantasy novel only have three parts. Because I think LOTR is more than a fantasy novel... it is completely a new universe created by J.R.R. Tolkien.

The world is in LOTR is called Middle-Earth. The evil lord, Sauron is about to rise again. But he need the one and only powerful ring, the Lord of the Rings. The rings happened to fall into the hand of a hobbit. The hobbit is named Bilbo Baggins. he passed down the ring to his niece, Frodo Baggins. Frodo need to travel to the core of all evil on Middle-Earth, Mount Doom, to destory the ring.

This novel had inspired modern video games. The genre RPG (Role playing games) is a remodel of the Fellowship of the Ring. This genre usually incorporate one hero/heroine embark on a quest to save the world from certain great evil that is about to take over the world. Its is common that a childhood friend of the hero/heroine go along with him/her. During the journey, the hero/heroine will meet new allies, and they will join the party.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pki6jbSbXIY

initial thoughts of song of the dragon by tracy hickman

this novel started in a most peculiar way...
it started with a song. i had no idea what to think. there were no introductions to any of the characters either. it was like waking up in somebody else's shoes. while this through me off so much, after reading deeper i realized that it was an amazing tool. my initial state of confusion drove me into the book. i craved knowledge of a world of someone else's creation. perhaps its an alluring quality of fantasy in general, the unknown. if u give a person something not of there world then wouldn't it spark their curiosity more than a newspaper? they would need to learn a new way of life so to speak. i happen to be an avid reader of fantasy but ive never seen this method. i could see myself burning through this entire book.

its crazy just how accurate these things can be

In Tracy Hickman's "Song of the Dragon" there are two opposing armies initially. the protagonist's army is composed of slaves of various warrior races, each with considerable amounts of experience. this army is so massive that the narrator doesn't consider defeat, he only ponders when victory will come. i think this matches up with the trope linked to this post. while the trope contains some langue i won't use, it contains an element of truth. it doesn't seem like anything can oppose this army. the novel has left me wondering where the story can go. however thats another discussion. this is definitely something one would see in an action movie. i mean its like the "A-TEAM" on steroids.

does anybody know what is typically found in the war genre of books? o.O

I'm reading "Song of the Dragon" by Tracy Hickman for my study of Fantasy. This is the first novel that I've read with such intense battle scenes, and i don't know if its different from battle found in a traditional war novel. There are different species of beings fighting in this book but I'm interested in the fundamentals of a war novel. in this book the narration is third person with insight into the protagonists mind. There is also a rank system that differs from a traditional one. is rank one of the things ever present in a war book? if so is creating a new system key in making this novel fantasy? Do war novels work in a similar fashion to vampire novels(i.e. vampires have evolved from Bram Stoker's "Dracula" to the objects of lust found in "Twilight")? Does war have to reinvented each time its taken as a subject for writing? Is it the reinventing that makes the book memorable? I'm not looking for answers to each of my questions i just thought i'd throw them out there. i'd greatly appreciate any insight.

When you blog, you begin with #abc.

One of the challenges we face in establishing and maintaining a conversation like this - across class sections, genres, subgenres, and other special interests - is organization.  Fortunately, there is a fantastic tool at our disposal for just this purpose.  Blogger (and others) calls them labels, and you'll find a list of the ones currently in use on the main page.  For example, you will see that there are several labels already in place that correspond to the three class sections of Senior English, as well as some of the genres that you are reading.


Note:  Each of your posts must be labeled with your section number as well as your genre (and any other relevant labels that come up along the way).


If you cannot find your genre in the labels list, please check again before writing your own.


Once these labels are in place, readers can click on them to automatically restrict their viewing to only posts with those labels.  For example, if the Period 1 Horror group wants to see what the other Horror groups are reading and writing about, they can click on the "Horror" label and see just those posts.  It's an elegant system for managing quite a lot of information on the fly, but it only works if everyone participates.


We'll review all of this (and more!) in class, so relax and keep reading!