Post 6: 5 Reasons why The Pacific should have stayed a book and not have become a miniseries

                The Pacific was overall a good miniseries but I feel as if the book just had more to offer. It went into greater detail that the show couldn’t do. Here are 5 reasons why I feel like it should have stayed a book.

1.       Hugh Ambrose should have stayed the writer.

Hugh Ambrose wrote the book so he should have stayed the writer. What I mean by this is; the miniseries had many script writers and I feel that has affect the book because the script wasn’t written by Ambrose. Yes, it had his oversight but he wasn’t directly directing it.

2.        Keep in the detail.

The book had a lot of detail that I feel the miniseries left out. Yes, the miniseries was action packed and gave detail of the events and characters. The book just had something different. It gave me a sense of what it was like on the pacific side of the war.

3.       Out with the visuals.

Whenever I picture The Pacific in my head I always see the same people, James Badge Dale, Joe Mazzello, and Jon Seda (the actors that played the characters). The miniseries gave me a visual that I didn’t really like. Personally I like to use my imagination when it comes to picturing characters in a book, I feel like the TV shows ruin that experience for me.

4.       Script-writing.

I can’t think of one movie or show that stays exactly to the script. They need to change something so it is more entertaining to the audience. I would like for once something that stays true to the book. Follows every action and word the characters say/do. It’s more fun to do it that way, sure it won’t be as entertaining, but the fans of the book will compare it to the show and say, “Wow, this is just like the book.” There would be as much criticism if it stayed to the story line.

5.       The book was amazing.

Have you ever had one of those moment when you think that the books ending was so good that they shouldn’t make another book because it will ruin the series? This is a moment I had with the book. It was a fantastic book overall, but than they had to make a show. They already had the icing on the cake so why put more of it? They should have stopped at the book and not made a show because in my opinion it just wasn’t as good.

Post 5: Can a non-fiction book contain un-true facts and still be considered non-fiction?

As you may know already, a non-fiction book tends to be true, but what if it contained un-true facts? Would it still be considered non-fiction? In my mind a book has to be 100% true in order for it to be non-fiction. This is because if you're reading a historical book and it has un-true/made up facts, will you be able to tell what is right and what is wrong? If you use this book as a reference to a paper you are writing; yet the "facts" you give are wrong. You quote directly from the book which caused you to get something wrong, yet you thought it was right because it was a non-fiction book. That is why a book that is put in the non-fiction genre should contain only the truth.

Half-truths are not okay even if they have a good story. If someone changes something only to make a profit it shouldn't be considered a good book because you are not getting the real experience that they got. You're not fully understanding what they actually did if the story is bent. That's why I think it does matter that Frey and other memoirists who bent the truth in their story should be considered un-reliable because they want people to hear their story but they have to bend the truth to do it.

David Shields in my opinion is wrong. There needs to be line in between genres because if you have a fantasy book without a genre label and someone thinks its real because they didn't know the genre, what do you think would happen? Also with history books, if it doesn't have a non-fiction label and it holds the correct information but there another history book on the same topic but it is fiction. Which one will we believe? That's why I think we need to have a line that draws when a book crosses over the line into another genre.