Personal Effect: Dark Art

I am very intense in the book Personal Effect: Dark Art by J.C. Hutchins. When I first open the book，everything in the book attract my eyes: the lined paper, realistic American ID, bank credit card, photos, post card, numbers, e-mail adress and the web side. I was fascinated with those elements even without reading the book yet.  And also there are a lot illustrations in this multimedia book that help the reader finding clues in the novel.

Personal Effects

This novel starts with a fake mental diagnosis, which let me start to thinking about the authenticity of the murder. Every clue that appears in the novel that makes me feels confused and attracts me to forces on every detail. Also there are so many extensions that happen besides the main story line. The feeling of the book is so real that I even could not figure out what is real and what is fabricated. Every beginning of a new chapter that you will find a new clue that would influence the judgment you made before, and it is the most interesting part that I like about this book. Those fake ID, and fake card make the fun of reading this book never towards the end.

Personal Effects

This book expresses a mystery in an unique way and it is very attracting. The parts that I like most are the fake documents and fake websites. The first time I looked at them, I was totally amazed. The fake ID, credit card, pictures and the websites make this "fake story" realistic. You can even find the places mentioned in the books on Google Maps!
In the story, author gives the readers clues little by little in order to keep the readers' interests.

Personal Effects

This graphic novel has a different way of expressing the progression of scenes. Hutchins allows the reader to fully experience Zach's journey to figure out his family history and Grace's case on a more intimate level. While reading this novel, the set of clues in the front of the book and the series of online reference pages/ google searches act as a multimedia tool to induce creative thinking. Such a unique set of clues and facts put the reader in a detective mind frame which make the book hard to put down. The aspect of adding faces to certain characters, voice mails to cell phones, Google Map locations to places and various documents to back up this mystery aids a different way of thinking. Hutchins puts images in one's head and uses ideas he thinks become very useful and/or interesting.However now, in relation to common imagination and figurative interpretations,the reader has the option of thinking exactly as the author intended.

Personal Effects

I have really enjoyed reading Personal Effects, a novel written by J.C. Hutchins. This book is very different from any other book I have read. The story line is very complicated and therefore forces the reader to really think and try to figure out the different clues. I also find it interesting that not only is Zach trying to figure out the Martin Grace case but at the same time he is dealing with problems in his family and the mystery of his Uncle. Additionally the different pictures and websites that come with his book force the reader to become even more involved in the story line. This is my favorite book I have read so far at Sem and I am excited to see the end result and solve this mystery!

Immersed Into the Dark Art

I completely fell into the story of this book. I read for about 6 hours straight in the car on a road trip because I couldn't put it down. Personal Effects pulls the reader into the story mentally and visually. Following the unfolding mystery led me to different websites that explained a few things that the book in front of you couldn't show you. Zachary Taylor's myspace page was an active account with some information that you wouldn't get without going beyond the book. I finished the book and was mind-boggled by that one sheet of paper with the colorful drawing in the book that you could hold and look at yourself. It showed an unexpected twist that literally made my jaw drop. Really reading into this book and fully immersing yourself by reading the files, looking at the pictures, finding the websites will get you wrapped into the story more than you thought possible.

Personal Effects

I was honestly a little wary of Personal Effects when we first started with it, as I've always kind of liked traditional books more. However, once we began to read it I found that I couldn't put the book down. Since the author uses first person, the narrator's knowledge of the subject at hand is fairly limited, and we know only what he does. By giving us the materials at the narrator's disposal as well as any information we could find on our own through the internet and phone calls. I really enjoyed the aspect of the book that allowed us to explore a totally different world by giving us websites to places that don't really exist (like Brinkvale Psychiatric) yet appear to be legitimate websites. I also thought the implementation of "official records" and government issued ID cards was clever as well, and gave a kind of validity to the story which, with its mentions of "the Dark Man" would have seemed rather less realistic without.

Personal Effects: Dark Art

The effect of the realism in Personal Effect: Dark Art- the realistic phone numbers, e-mails, pictures, blogs, and websites all contribute to the non-fictional factor of this story. Without these elements there would not be such a suspenceful storyline in this novel. I believe, without the clues and hints outside of the book's pages this story wouldn't be as good. These things also add to the multimedianess of the novel

Personal Effects: Dark Art is probably the best book I have ever read. I love how it is set up in a journal style and I love how there are real phone numbers, websites, and e-mail addresses to make it all so believable. The storyline is so thought out that I sometimes believe the story is real when I'm reading. I also love how all of the ID's and pictures seem so real and not fake at all.

Personal Effects

This book is the most interactive piece of literature we've worked with so far in this class. The hands-on nature of it makes it so interesting to read, and it's been really hard for me to put down. A mystery usually sucks its reader in, and when the author allows you to participate as much as you can in this mystery it makes it an even more addicting read. The book asks its reader to use their sight, touch, hearing, and their mind in general. If it were simply a mystery story without all the included documents, clues, and phone numbers to call etc it would not be as intriguing as it is.

Personal Effects Journal

I am keenly interested in the book Personal Effects. Before we started to read it I was highly intrigued by the visual elements incorporated into the book. I was instantly fascinated with the visual and realistic clues that the author included with the story. I find that it's incredibly interesting to read a story that could come across as a real life event. I believe that the phone numbers and legitimate voice recordings also add a lot to the tone and the story line of the book. This is unlike anything I have ever read before and I highly enjoy the way that Hutchins draws the reader into the book through visual elements which ultimately help to move the story along. I think that this also really allows the reader to connect to the story and take on a level of familiarity with the characters, creating emotional ties and interest between the reader and the story line.

Fahrenheit 451

 In the book Fahrenheit 451,  I found the pictures have played a very important role in the novel. Almost on every page, there are some red onomatopoeia or red flame that to cause readers' attention, and  the color  in the  graphic novel also gives readers the clues that what is happening. I also like the drawing that none of the characters has the same looking in this book. Especially Linda, she always has differnet looking on each page, different hair's color and face shape. But you can still tell that is Montag's wife Linda from her speaking.

Over the weekend I stumbled across the text version of Fahrenheit 451. Personally, the general story line behind Fahrenheit 451 is very boring. I am not interesting in the text version or the graphic novel version. I think it is too fictional. However, without the pictures in the graphic novel version, I do not think I would be able to get through the story. The text version would be virtually impossible for me to get through because it would be so boring. The only interesting part of the entire novel for me was the tones of color Tim Hamilton uses to express the mood. Between pages 112-121, the color is a bright orange and yellow. On page 121, without even reading the words or looking at the pictures, the mood automatically changes because of the dark color. In general, bright sends a happier, positive tone and dark sends a mean, negative tone. This story falls out of the stereotypical interpretations of color because the bright is symbolizing fire which ultimately means destruction and death and the dark symbolizes the end. I think it would be interesting to read a book with very little words, as few as possible, and have each page a different color. Everyone would decipher each word based on the color of the page. This is similar to what readers do in Fahrenheit 451 only there is conversation and text on the majority of the pages.