"What the...?"

 This book doesn't have that much description compared to others, but when there is, it creates an image in your mind you wouldn't expect. That's what makes this book interesting to read. Absolutely nothing is predictable. For example, on page 53, Kemp describes Sala's apartment, and he says, "Sanderson shunned it, and Zimburger called it a sewer. It reminded me of a big handball court in some stench-ridden YMCA. The ceiling was twenty feet high, not a breath of clean air..." I knew exactly what Kemp was talking about, and my younger days at the YMCA came flooding back to me. I took gymnastics in such a gym, and played basketball in one too. It made me laugh. I got the perfect image of Sala's apartment.
 Another example of this is on page 54. Kemp says, "One Monday morning I was awakened by what sounded like children being butchered outside the window. I looked through a crack in the shutter and saw about fifteen tiny Puerto Ricans, dancing on the sidewalk and tormenting a three-legged dog." Never would I have expected to have an image of children being butchered in my head, but this description served its purpose, and I could hear the dog's helpless cries as the Puerto Ricans tortured it. This made the scene more real.
 It's also interesting because most of the non-dialogue text is Kemp's thoughts, and you can tell more about him from the way he describes the world around him. I really like how the author does this.

No Need to Wash Out the Mouths

 This book is filled with curse words. There are probably five swear words per page, give or take a few. Most of them are in the dialogue exchanged between the characters, but even when Kemp is thinking to himself, there are a few "goddammits" here and there.

 I've been taught that overloading on curse words could take away from the writing, but I can't imagine how this book would be without them. It'd be almost too polite, and unnatural. The words people use to speak help define personalities, and that's certainly the case with the characters in this book. Because of the use of swear words, I can tell who is the most educated, the most easily angered, etc. It really shows a lot of things without the narrator having to say them. The more I read, the more comfortable I become with the profanity, and the more I realize that they actually help the story to flow. For example, in one scene, Lotterman is arguing with Yeamon about a piece Yeamon wrote that he isn't happy with. The foul words move the scene along better because they really capture the heat of the moment, and you can tell how angry Lotterman is with the situation based on the words he uses. I think these words also help to convey the fact that the characters in this book are "real" people with "real" dispositions, and so they will speak as such. In our own lives, we will say the occasional "shit" and "f*ck", and that's just that.

 The curse words also come out the most after everyone has a few drinks in them, and since this book is about Kemp and his friends being drunk most of the time, the dirty words seem appropriate. 

Fluff

 Getting into this book took a little longer than I thought it would. Nothing very exciting happens in the first few pages. We meet our main character, Paul Kemp who moves to Puerto Rico from New York to work for a crumbling newspaper called The Daily News. 

 This book is written through the eyes of Kemp and we get to read his thoughts on his new life as he goes from one mini adventure to the next. As I continued reading, I realized that although it isn't written in a typical diary entry form, that's basically what it is. I found this technique interesting. Wouldn't it have been easier for Hunter S. Thompson to write it in a diary entry format? But then I realized that the way the book is now fits the story better. Kemp isn't trying to keep a diary or to keep track of what's going on in his life. He's just going at it day by day at a leisurely pace, just the way the book does. This diary entry-like format also keeps Kemp and the story as real as possible. There isn't any "fluff" that cushions the writing. It's just sort of like, "okay, here's what happened, with these people, in this order." I really like that.

 From Hunter S. Thompson I learned that you have to format your writing in a way that'll actually benefit it. How you write it is almost as important as the writing itself. I'm also one to write with a lot of unnecessary detail, and reading this novel is helping me to see that you can try taking all that out so you're left with only the core. Sometimes that's really all you need.

The Start of it All

 Up until a few hours ago, I didn't even have a book for this Creative Writing Honors assignment. Luckily, I ran into a fellow classmate at an after school club, and after complaining to her that I didn't yet know what book I was going to commit myself to, she pulled out this book, The Rum Diary out of her backpack and handed it to me. It looked interesting enough, the cover shows this black and white picture of a man in a pair of sunglasses (Johnny Depp?), and it informed me that it was now a major motion picture. But to be honest, I think it was just the word 'rum' in the title. 

 It's embarrassing to admit I don't remember the last time I picked up a book on my own and read it without an essay or a project coming after it. It's especially sad because I used to read all the time. My mom delighted in the fact that she had to go to the library to pick up more books on a weekly basis for her daughter. I wonder when it all changed. I've come to realize in the past that there is a certain skill one must possess to be a good reader, and I believe I had this skill. I don't know if I still really do. And that scares me. Will it come back if I start reading again? Is it like riding a bike, where after a few pedals, my brain will suddenly remember and it'll be like I never stopped riding? I guess we'll see.

 The purpose of this assignment is to read a contemporary novel and notice the writing styles and techniques the author uses and then try to use some in our own writing. I'm a little excited to see how this will turn out. I personally think it'll go well. I don't really see how it could go wrong, anyway. Happy reading!