101--More or Less --Ways to Discuss a Book

Atwell, N. (1998). In the middle-New understanding about writing, reading, and literature. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers.

How the Author Wrote

• Topic: What was his or her subject? Why this topic?

• Plot: What happened; what were the events of the story?

• Pace: How quickly or slowly did the author move the plot? Was it

gradual enough to be plausible and involving? Fast enough to hold a reader’s interest? Was there too much action and not enough

character development?

• Plausibility: Did the plot ring true? Would characters act and react this way? Were the circumstances believable? Did it matter?

• Description and detail: Could we see it happening? Feel it? Hear it? Too little description? Too many details?

• Dialogue: Was the talk realistic? Could we hear the individual

characters’ voices? Too much dialogue? Too little? What did the

dialogue show about the moods, ages, intentions, and backgrounds of the characters?

• Flashbacks, flash-forwards, and foreshadows: How did the author use shifts in time, and why?

• Affect: Did the reader laugh? Cry? Why?

• Setting: What time and place did the author choose? Why? Was the setting integral to the story? Was it convincing? Confusing?

• Main characters: Who were they? What makes a main character a main character? How can a reader tell?

• Character development: How were characters introduced and developed? How were their actions, thoughts, and feelings depicted? Were they believable? Could the reader enter characters’ hearts and minds and see through their eyes? Which characters did the reader relate to? Did the reader care about what happened to any of them? Did any of them remind the reader of characters from movies, plays, or other novels? Of people from the reader’s real life?

• Titles: Did it fit? Was it a grabber? Did it give too much away?

• Theme: What ideas about life and living come through the story?

• Problem: What was the issue for the main character to try to resolve?

• Suspense: Did the reader wonder what would happen next? How did the author establish a suspenseful tone? Did the author surprise the reader?

• Formula: Could the reader predict too easily what was going to happen? Was it too much like other books by this author or from this genre?

• Conventions: Did a reader notice short paragraphs or chapters? Sentence fragments? British spellings? Why did the author write this way?

• Information: Were there enough specifics about character, action, background, and setting? Was there too much information? Irrelevant information?

• Specific information: What did the reader learn about the world— about history, art, politics, science, etc.—through the narrative?

• Length: Was this book too long? Too short?

• Point of view: Who told the story? What voice did the author choose: First person? Third person/anonymous? Single character, dual, multiple, or no character? Why did the author choose this point of view? What were the advantages and drawbacks for the

reader? Where did the reader stand in relation to the narrator?

• Grace of language: Did the sentences flow? Were they choppy? Did the reader savor particular phrases and sentences? Was there figurative language? Was there imagery: did the writing create pictures in the reader’s mind? Were there sensory details?

• First sentence: How did the author bring the reader in?

• Lead: How did the author try to keep the reader there?

• Conclusion: How did the author leave a reader? Why this ending?

• Epigraphs and prologues: How were these special introductions used and to what effect?

• Epilogues: How was this special conclusion used and to what effect?

• Unusual or experimental narrative techniques: What did the reader think?

• In-jokes: Did the reader pick up on

The Author

• Speculations about, or references to published accounts of, an author’s writing processes

• Titles of other books by an author, including sequels, trilogies, and series

• Comparisons with other books by an author

• Comparisons with other authors’ styles

• Comparisons with similar books, in terms of topic, genre, or theme, by other authors

• Biographical information about an author or an author’s published comments about his or her oeuvre

• Publishing-world gossip about an author

• How authors use elements of their own lives and experiences in their fiction

• Other ways authors might have researched their subjects (for example, reading a particular kind of fiction)

• Finding authors’ addresses and initiating correspondence with them

• Published book reviews of an author’s latest release

• News of a new release by an author

Concepts of Genre

• What are the elements of fiction?

• Novels: What makes a novel a novel?

• Short stories: What makes a short story a short story?

• Poetry: What makes a poem a poem? In what ways does it differ from prose? What are the elements of poetry? How do different poetic techniques affect a reader?

• Fiction and nonfiction: How do we classify books as one or the other?

• Classification of other books by genre:

• Adventure/Survival

• Antiwar

• Autobiography

• Biography

• Classic

• Contemporary realistic fiction

• Diary

• Drama

• Epistolary novel

• Family saga

• History

• Historical fiction

• Horror

• Humor or parody

• Journalism

• Legend and myth

• Memoir

• Movie/TV tie-in or screenplay

• Mystery

• Nature

• New Age

• New journalism

• Romance

• Science Fiction

• Series novel

• Sports

• Supernatural

• Techno-thriller

• Urban life

• War and espionage

• Western

• Other kinds of writing one might like to read

The Reader’s Strategies

• Choice: How does the reader decide what to read?

• Pace: Did the reader skim, skip, slow down, regress, speed up, look ahead? Why? When? To what effect?

• Abandoning: How and when does the reader make this decision?

• Rereading: Why does the reader reread a book? What differences are noted a second time through?

• Revisiting particular parts of a book: Why does the reader skim back? For pleasure? Clarification?

• Planning: Does the reader anticipate reading a particular book, author, or genre?

• Predicting: Did the reader imagine what would happen next? Was the guess confirmed?

• Revising: Did the reader consider other ways an author might have written?

• Connecting: Did the reader relate a book to another book? To a poem or song? To his or her experiences or feelings?

• Analyzing: What did the reader think the book was about?

• Length of time it took to read a book: Why so long or so quickly?

• Reading rate: How many pages did the reader read in a half hour? How does a reader vary his or her rate depending on the nature of the text?

• Reading “holiday” books: Why do readers need mindless breaks sometimes?

• Difficulty: What makes a book a challenge? What does the reader do when a hook is difficult? Too difficult?

• Schema: Did the reader have adequate background experience to understand and appreciate the writing?

• Unknown vocabulary: What did the reader do when he or she came across an unfamiliar word?

• Contentives, eye fixations, and peripheral vision: What did the reader notice his or her eyes doing during reading?

• Rituals: When, how, and where does the reader read? Why?

• How did the reader learn to read?

• Does the reader buy, own, or collect books?

The Reader’s Affect

• How did the book make the reader feel?

• What did the book make the reader think about?

• What does a reader think or understand that he or she didn’t think or understand before?

• What was the reader’s involvement with the characters?

• What did the reader learn about through the story?

• What did the reader like or dislike about a book?

• What were the best and worst features of a hook?

• How does the reader rate books?

The Reader’s Own Writing

• Comparisons with what the reader is writing and how it’s coming

• Connections to ideas to use in current or future pieces of writing

• Ways the reader might use or has used elements of an author’s writing in his or her own work

• Connections between an author’s style or choice of subjects and the reader’s style and writing territories

Recommendations

• Is a book worth recommending?

• Who might enjoy it?

• What reactions did other readers report?

• Who are good authors?

• What are titles of good books?

• What are titles of other good books by this author?

• What titles by other authors address a similar subject or theme?

• How will the reader arrange to borrow, lend, or return hooks?

• Where can the reader find a particular book in the:

classroom library other classrooms other students’ private collections teacher’s private collection the town library (and its organization) the school library (and its organization) local bookstores (and their organization)?

Publishing

• Steps in how a book is published

• What agents do

• How advances and royalties work

• What editors do

• What copy editors do

• First editions

• Remainders

• How and when hard covers become paperbacks

• Comparisons between movies and the books on which they’re based

• Distinctions between screenplays, novelizations, and novels

• Sequels, trilogies, and series

• Format:

• appropriateness of the jacket copy

• appropriateness and effectiveness of the cover art or other illustrations

• about-the-author information

• copyright page

• number of printings

• style of typeface

• size of type and gutters

• typos

• lengths of chapters

• indexes, tables of contents, and appendixes

The Letter Writer’s Style

• When necessary, comments about conventions that affect the

readability of the letters:

• legibility

• punctuation

• spelling

• spacing of words and letters

• how to indicate titles of books (capitals and an underline) and titles of stories and poems (capitals and quotes)