Reading Response - Week 5

I definitely had a preference for one of the pieces over the other--I LOVED "Memory," but was not as much a fan of "First Family of Astoria."

Both authors chose interesting subjects, but Tracy Kidder hooked me pretty early. He used great scene and dialogue,and I think the most important thing was the emotion I felt reading the piece. I got really upset about these elderly people in this place, and started thinking about my own family and friends who could end up like this, or even myself; I became really emotionally invested in this piece and these people, and I think anyone who knows me knows that that isn't easy. I thought it worked really well that he used various different subjects (he even captured them all really well, despite the fact that he didn't always talk about each one for very long), and I really felt that he made the home accessible. Too often, I think, we write off places like this as just one of those places where the old people go and hang out, but he made them real people, with real issues and lives--I LOVED it.

I was less impressed with Trillin's piece, despite the bio about him that makes him sound really great. The subject of the piece itself is interesting, but I wonder if he could've approached it differently in writing. I understand that he wasn't there while all of this was going on, that he couldn't necessarily really recreate it himself, but I just wasn't very attached to the piece--I had to focus more, I wasn't desperate to know what was going to happen. I did think that his description of various members of the Flavel family was good, though they seemed a little sensationalized to me--it was like a bad soap opera. I don't know, maybe I'm missing something, but the piece just didn't really resonate with me.