Outside Reading: Day 1

The book I chose to read is called Jerk, California by Jonathan Friesen. The first few chapters I read were about the main character, Sam, and the city he lives in. I liked the opening of chapters of the book because I felt that it gave a solid mental image of the town to the reader. This helped give additional understanding of the town’s people negative views on Sam's "disease" as he calls it. Sam live in a smaller town, where not many people come in or out, so anything out of the ordinary is the whole towns business, making Sam's twitches and jerks something to poke fun at. I am nearing the middle of the book, and it is becoming more and more interesting; the story is beginning to take shape, and actually get exciting! An interesting detail about the story is Sam's step father; he views Sam's Tourette's as some gruesome retardation, which Sam is at fault for. This is interesting because Sam's step-father has severe OCD, and counts cans, keys and other things excessively. I found this part even more interesting because of my experiences with both OCD, and Tourette's Syndrome, some severe traits of OCD can be quite similar to tourettes. His step-father treats him like dirt; he makes him do all the work, he beats Sam's mother, and even changed Sam's name; it was originally Jack. Having many friends and family members struggle with fathers in their family, reading about this gave me even more knowledge and insight into paternal conflicts.