McConico's Blog

  My favorite narrator is Nick from The Great Gatsby. The best narrators are ones that don’t just describe what is happening but also keep an air of mystery in the scenes. Nick is placed in the bustling New York of the roaring twenties, as a middle class man in an extremely wealthy circle. This allowed him to come off as relatable and somewhat removed from the other characters to the audience, while at the same time him being very connected to these characters. Nick doesn’t baby the readers by telling them everything all at once. He won’t say that Daisy is being beat by Tom, but will allude that she has blue bruises around her wrist. This embedding of the narrator with the main cast while not babying the audience and also being very entertaining is the perfect mix for a successful narrator. It also allows the novel to be enjoyable by people of all ages, as this narrative style is welcoming but also leave a lot for analyzation of the work of art. There is a great reason this novel i...

William McConico Mr Davidson Contemporary Literature, 2nd Period   September 13th , 2023 AMDG  Penumbra Book Review *spoiler alert Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan is a mysterious 21st century novel that follows Clay Jannon navigating Mr. Penumbra’s mysterious bookstore. Clay gets this job after seeing a flier in the window of the store, and coming in to get the job. He accepted the mysterious job, with horrible night hours, as it was the 2008 recession and he just needed a job. When employed by Mr. Penumbra is told to write detailed descriptions of the customers, be extremely punctual, and to never ever read the books. Clay lives with his roommates Matt and Ashley, with the former being super artsy and the latter being very organized. When Matt comes in and looks at some of the books, Clay realizes there is more to the store, and begins his investigation. During this investigation, he meets the beautiful Kat, who is a Google employee and a huge tech en...

  ​The Project- I chose to do a poster project, as I felt as though it would be the easiest way to reach the academy students in an impactful way, in order to be able to convince them to read. As previously stated, the purpose of my project was to figure out the core reasons why some academy students don’t read, and to show them that by reading more and taking more challenging English classes, that they will not only improve their reading skills but maybe even like it as well.  The Poster- I choose to have the format of the poster be three small posters on one big poster, with silver borders on the big poster board. I choose this format, to make it easy to read, easy to read just one at a time, easy to show the different problems, and more meat than me just writing on the poster board myself. Each small poster started with the academy kid’s reason for not liking reading in big bold letters, and then an A.P. English students explaining how accelerated reading has helped the...