Week 2!

Reading with Appeal in Mind

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

By Ben Fountain

       Billy Lynn and his fellow marines from Brava Company have been returned from Iraq to tour the country as heroes after surviving a firestorm.  The last day of the whirlwind hero’s tour finds them at Cowboys Stadium on Thanksgiving Day where they will be the honored guests and halftime participants of the Dallas Cowboys.  The author carefully sets the pace to match the pace of a tour in Iraq, it is slow moving but with a lot going on with Billy Lynn’s world.  This is an antiwar book at its heart; where the protagonist struggles to understand what his purpose is and why he is in the fight at all. 

      Camaraderie and loyalty are themes that prevail throughout the storyline as Billy Lynn struggles with his decision to return to Iraq or remain in Texas.  Fountain allows us to follow Billy Lynn, a smart young man, who, because of an impulsive decision, got thrown into a life that should have been different.  He should have gone to college after high school and spent the next four years partying and studying. Billy is everyman, and so the language of the novel is for everyman as well; it’s easy to understand and follow along.  Life and death, loyalty and family, grief and love are things Billy struggles to understand and are expertly conveyed through the language and tone throughout the story.  

 

 

 

 

Looking for Alaska by John Green



John Green’s Looking for Alaska is not your typical teenage angst book, this book is more Separate Peace and Catcher in the Rye.  The main character is Miles Halter, not your typical teenager,he has decided to leave his nondescript hometown in Florida and head off to boarding school in Culver Creek, Alabama where he hopes he’ll find a life more than ordinary.  He has memorized the last words of many famous people including dying poet Francois Rabelais  who’s last words spoke of a Great Perhaps.  Miles hopes to find his Great Perhaps at boarding school.  His roommate Chip, also known as the colonel introduces him to another classmate, the beautiful, Alaska Young. Soon Miles, now nicknamed Pudge by the Colonel, is on his way to his own Great Perhaps.

The book is set in an non airconditioned boarding school in Alabama where you are first introduced to the setting by way of the sweat pouring off Miles as he unpacks his suitcases to set up his room. The tone of the book is not like your typical teen book, there’s no whining or angst: the characters are real kids with quirks, lives and problems, richly characterized and developed.  There are the rich kids called Weekday Warriors since they come to school for the week but leave for the weekend. And then there are scholarship kids, kids who are not rich who know that being at Culver is a way to move ahead, but are also still just kids, who like to play pranks, and are also growing up and learning about themselves.  But these are not typical teens using just teen lingo and language, these are smart kids and proud of it.  Proud of the fact that while they may not be the best athletes, they are the smartest! But they are still kids, kids who make impetuous decisions and face the consequences of the decisions.