Week 8 Media Blog Forum

Topic 1

I have read several of the books on the Banned/Challenged list, these include:

Cover Art for "Fahrenheit 451"

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Solid book about the dangers of censorship, ironically was censored for a time by parents and school board members that found it full of "vulgarity." 
1984 by George Orwell
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Great book and Hugo Award winner as well. Apparently it was banned for a period of time in a school district because a parent complained that it had "pornographic material" in it. Despite the fact that the book has no references to sex. Strange.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn & The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
I know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angalou

Some objections to these books seem reasonable. For example Maya Angalou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings goes into detail about when she was raped as a child. Although this book is powerful and really well written, you can understand why parents wouldn't want there child reading such explicit content. That being said, I still consider it a must read for anyone.

Cover Art for
 "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

I read books like 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Of Mice & Men, etc for school. So I find it interesting that they ended up on a list for banned or challenged books. Fahrenheit 451 especially, considering the book is a cautionary tale about censorship. No one found it ironic that they were censoring a book about censoring books?

A lot of the books I have at home are science fiction novels by Hugo Award winners. One of my favorite authors is Philip K. Dick who wrote one of my favorite books "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" The central theme of the novel is empathy towards others.  It challenges our understanding of others and asks the question of what constitutes something as a living thing. It also heavily inspired the 1982 film "Blade Runner" starring Harrison Ford.





Topic 2

The two magazines I found on flipster were Playstation Magazine and World Soccer.

Playstation Magazine had articles about new consoles, people behind gaming, new games coming out, several reviews of games, etc. The ads also primarily reflected this as most of the advertisements were for new games or for new consoles. The articles are pretty short and the magazine as a whole is pretty small as well, however you can use the zoom feature if you need to.

Cover of Super Bowl LI
edition of ESPN Magazine

World Soccer had articles on virtually on every league in the world from premiere and la liga all the way to MLS it had articles that covered matches, tournaments and all the latest in the world of soccer. The ads were mostly for soccer memorabilia such as jerseys, sweatshirts, and t-shirts. The articles are fairly long but the magazine was also small.

I looked through a recent issue of ESPN the Magazine on my break at Fred Meyer.

There were only slight differences between going through a print and online magazine. Obviously the print was much bigger on the physical magazine. The biggest difference I found was that it was much easier to flip through the online magazine. The ESPN magazine would occasionally not fully cooperate with me and I would flip through multiple pages at a time due to my ham-handedness. So flipping through an online magazine was a bit easier for me, and using it on the phone was alright as well. I don't really read magazines though so the comparison is sort of wasted on me.