Write a review of three books, Fledgling, Butler; The Big Sleep, Chandler; and The Black Cat, Poe.

Write a review of three books, Fledgling, Butler; The Big Sleep, Chandler; and The Black Cat, Poe. And you only could use those three books. Your journal responses may be analytical, affective, associative (free association)–they may roam far afield from their original focus provided that said focus is an author or work on the syllabus. For example, a response to a character or episode in Siddhartha might move from the novel itself to a personal memory or train of thought triggered by your engagement of the text. No single entry should occupy more than one full page of your journal. The contents of the journal should be entirely or very nearly entirely your own thought, the only possible exceptions being, for example, your referring to events in a Poe story in order to analyze/interpret that story, your examining a Poe story in light of 1830s/1840s history or of Poe’s biography, or your opposing/disputing secondary or in-class critical response to Poe. In other words, your journal has no room for gratuitous (for its own sake) content, whether it’s plot summary, biographical or historical information, lecture notes, secondary criticism, or any other information not directly your own thought or strategically used to provoke or contextualize it.