The Retreat

Dear David Bergen,

A couple things worked very well in your novel “The Retreat”. Your writing was very detailed and descriptive, and the metaphors used to represent certain situations in the novel were very interesting. On the other hand, I thought that the beginning of the novel was not very interesting and the plot seemed very stationary. I feel there should have been more a “bang” factor at the beginning, but sadly there was not and did not intrigue me as much as I expected. “Lewis had called the play dire. The actors were like spent swimmers who clung together and choked their art. Though these had been their father’s words, Lizzy echoed them now. Everett asked Lizzy what dire was and she said, ‘Desperately bad.’ They were in bed. Fish and William were sleeping. Lizzy was lying under a pool of light, writing in her notebook.” Pg. 87 This quote is good example of how you, the author uses metaphors that are interesting to me.

“Fresh croissants so buttery they melted in your hands before touching the mouth, and whole milk with thick cream, and muesli from the Swiss Alps, and then, after étouffing ourselves, we sat by the fire and smoked une pipe.” This piece of descriptive just makes your mouth water while reading, and having that feeling of waking up in the morning and having a wonderful breakfast. This practically describes your perfect type of breakfast to wake up to.

“Hart moved back to allow Raymond room, and as he did so, Raymond turned and swung his feet up and kicked out against his door. The door bucked outwards in a wild arc and caught Hart on the chest and waist and crotch. His face showed surprise as the air went out of him, and then he fell. Lizzy screamed.” Pg. 249 This part of the novel approaches near the end and is where the action starts to begin. After reading this part, I just intrigued me to keep on reading cause you could picture the scene so well.

Your novel seemed very sexual orientated why was that?

Why would you choose the main character, Raymond, to be a Native instead of another culture?

If you could re-write the ending of the novel how would you write it?

Sincerely, Michael Dawson

Rock Band 2 Vs. Guitar Hero World Tour

Rock Band or Guitar Hero it has always been a debate which one is the better game. Both Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2 were released during the holidays this past December. This created a huge frenzy between kids and teenagers to choose which game they were going to ask for a gift for the holidays. In my case, I chose Rock Band 2 for my PS3. My reasoning for this was that Guitar Hero is not made for PS3 in the first place, the song selection had much more variety and the drums were much simpler to use. In comparison, Guitar Hero also has a wide range of great songs to play, from Jimi Hendrix to some Sublime. Guitar Hero World Tour was the first to include the drums, guitar and microphone, out of the whole series. However, before Guitar Hero, Rock Band had already created their full set of instruments and got a head start on the competition. Even though Rock Band had a head start it gave the creators of Guitar Hero to make changes those instruments by: creating a touch pad for guitar notes, extra pieces to the drum set by having 5 notes instead of 4 on Rock Band and new/innovative game modes than Rock Band.

Rock Band Positives/Negatives:

Positives: Graphics are very realistic in comparison to Guitar Hero, where the characters look more like cartoons. The song selection is amazing for every person it mixes some darker, louder bands with some light, easy listening songs for the girls. Drums are easy and simple to use.

Negatives: Switching difficulty of songs is annoying because if you want to switch in the middle of the song, you will have to reload to the beginning page all over again. Guitar is much harder to use than the Guitar Hero ones.

Guitar Hero Positives/Negatives:

Positives: The wide range celebrity characters you can chose to rock out with. The new drums, which create a new challenge for the player to experience and the new, touch pad for keys on the guitar.

Negatives: The clunky guitar, which is bigger than the old version of the Guitar Hero guitar, the smaller one was much easier to handle and play with. The drums seem to break fairly easily in time, and are not covered under a good warranty.

In conclusion, if I would choose out of the two games and I had an Xbox 360 I would purchase Guitar Hero World Tour as it provides a fun and more entertaining format for players.