it is no secret that I love literature, however books without pertinent knowledge are always incredibly boring slog through. Some people just don't care who killed who and when this man or woman died. I am happy to say that I found both chapters pertinent to my life as a whole. However I'll break them up into separate sections because they both had something completely different to say.
Chapter 3 was about the argumentative essay (cue dramatic music!). On the surface it probably sounds boring but it covered a wide variety of topics that related to life as a whole. We use argumentative essays every day, even if we don't have to write them down. As human beings we're constantly using a wide variety of information to verify, or prove what we're saying. For example if I'm trying to prove that purple elephants run wild in Africa I should probably have some pictures or first hand accounts ready to stop all of those nay sayers. However despite the many times the book drove home how important quotes and accurate information were I found myself not that interested in it. This was something that was taught to me year after year throughout highschool, it almost felt redundant reading it. The books saving grace was that it tried to drive home the ideas in different ways. Instead of just telling me how or what to do it simply gave examples for me to work off of.
What was really important out of Chapter 3 was the section on the ever present Ethos, Logos, and Pathos. These are different ways to appeal to your audience and with debates coming up featuring our favorite candidates it's a good idea to keep these in mind. Politicians can and will use a certain one of these to try and communicate their ideals to an audience. It is rather fascinating to point out, "oh hey did you see so and so use Pathos, ha! They thought I'd fall for the old appealing to my emotions gag." Patrick begins crying once he gets halfway through sentence. "I-I mean it was terrible right, didn't affect me at all!"
All joking aside however these were incredibly important, Ethos appealing to ethics, Logos appealing to logic or reason, while Pathos appeals to ones emotions. They are incredibly important and when forming ones argument they should always be handy.
Chapter 14 was less appealing to me as a whole, it was about visuals. Not to say that it wasn't filled with just as much pertinent information as Chapter 3 but it related more to presentations. It gave you the know how when it came to presenting your information to a larger audience and presenting it in such a way that everyone can understand you clearly. Once again this was important information and the info graphics were incredibly well done but I just could not get into it as much as Ethos Logos and Pathos. I digress however as it is still important and pertinent to our lives. How we present information is a lot like how we present ourselves, we can't doddle around with useless information or pictures of cats. Instead we have to be succinct and exact.
Super Serious Review Time!
Okay children time to get down into the meat of these issues, to be honest I feel like I covered a lot of good information above but I would like to talk about some technical things with this book that caught my attention. First of all the book is, well it's a college level book about writing. This means it is going to be dry at times, or maybe even most of the time depending. Now this isn't the books fault and we shouldn't look down on it for being this way, it was the authors job to communicate information and they do. However out of all the english books I have had to read I found this one to be the most enjoyable. In both chapters the author was clear, to the point, and wrote in a way that flowed particularly well when read aloud. This isn't just a normal English book, this one has pictures! Why does this matter however, well just like in chapter 14 images are important. They help convey information differently and sometimes far better than a simple string of words. I found all of them to be helpful whne tying to grasp some wide concepts and they linked different parts of the book together. There is no lack of pictures in this book, and as childish as that sounds it is something I am genuinely excited for.
That one guy from Venus, (Patrick McGill)
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