Christmas Break

Mari gave me and Jeff Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces. I'd like to have you seniors read this one, but it's like $21. I hate asking you to buy books that are over $10, so I really don't want to ask you to buy a $20 book. I also saw Avatar. I highly recommend it! awesome movie. I love the archetypes. It's just a great good vs. evil story. Right now, I'm supposed to be working on cleaning Luci's room, but here I am at the computer, with the t.v. on. You've Got Mail is on--I love that movie--and it's at the part where Kathleen has a cold and Joe brings her daisies and they become friends. They have a whole conversation about Pride and Prejudice, and I just love that.

Quick bit of reading log instructions: PROOFREAD before you publish your posts! The temptation with blogging is to slip into unprofessional text slang and email speak. DON'T do that! You are getting a grade for this, but you are also publishing your thoughts in a public forum. Represent yourself and your school well! All that said, occasionally you'll find errors in my comments or posts. Sorry. I usually type with three children screaming in the background or asking me to solve their 6- or 3-year-old crises.

Shakespeare in Love

We can't watch Shakespeare in Love in class because it's rated R. There's some nudity and a LOT of sex, so it would definitely be inappropriate for the 9th grade English class. If your parents don't really care what you watch, I reccommend it. It was on one of the Encore movie channels on digital cable last night, and I watched it. I've seen it before, but I had forgotten what a good movie it is. It is a fictional account of Shakespeare's life and a fictional affair with a lady named Viola. She wants to be an actor and it's illegal for women to be players during the time period. He casts her as Romeo in his newest play, and they end up falling in love. The whole movie gives a fictional backstory that attempts to imagine/explain how one man came up with Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night. It really is a fun movie with a sweet love story. If your intereseted in watching it...:)

Part One of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Edgar is mute, and his parents breed and raise an unusual mix of dogs. Edgar signs and his parents and his dogs understand him. His dad's brother comes to stay with them for a while and he fixes the roof on their barn, but Claude and Gar get in lots of fights, and finally, he leaves. Then Edgar's father has a stroke or something and dies.

Okay, so my summary kind of sucks. A lot more than that happens in the first 100 pages. You get the whole backstory of how the Sawtelles ended up on the land where they live in Wisconsin. You also learn about the breed of dogs they raise. Gar places them with families when the pups are a year old. You also learn that Edgar's mother Trudy has had many miscarriages before successfully carrying Edgar. She and Gar are terribly distressed to realize he is mute when he is only a day old. The backstory about how he learned to sign is kind of strange and difficult to explain. I don't know if that information will be important later.

So far, I like the book. I hate that Gar died the way he did. I hate how Edgar felt so helpless trying to call for help--he can't speak so using a phone posed a grave difficulty. Part II is titled "3 Griefs" and that worries me. I don't want Trudy or Almondine (Edgar's dog) to die. That would be too much for ol' Edgar. I think I'm to a point where I'm emotionally vested and now I want to read. I hate it when books take 100 pages to get interesting. But so it is with many that I read.

Independent reading and Romeo and Juliet

I'm excited about what this second half of the semester will bring. I think I will enjoy reading your blogs on your independent reading. I'm reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle way too slowly! I'm hoping I can pick up the pace this week. I think there is an interesting story in there, I just haven't really found it yet.

I'm also very excited about Romeo and Juliet. I am a Shakespeare junky, so I hope you guys have as much fun reading it as I will.

Leper

So, I totally don't understand why some of you like Leper so much. He kinda gets on my nerves, and I think I would probably treat him the same way that Gene does. Just sayin'

Chaps 10-13

Thank you to those of you who posted on the last chapters WHEN you were SUPPOSED TO! THANK YOU! If you've struggled through the book, you might want to check out sparknotes.com or one of your classmate's blog. I recommend Sara's, Carrie's, Meagan's, Olivia's, or Adrienne's. Their blogs offer interesting insights. If you enjoyed A Separate Peace, I'm glad. If you didn't, oh well. I can't please everyone. The good news is that next 9 weeks, you will choose your own outside reading to blog about. I will be reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. My sweet husband was gone to a conference last week, and he bought me Edgar Sawtelle, hoping I would want to read it. He did not know that I had been wanting that book for about a year now! Yay! So, I'll blog on that one. I plan on giving you more instructions/modelling what I want you to do when we get back from Fall Break.

Blogging

I'm sorry some of you have had troubles setting up a blog and keeping up with the blogging assignments. Obviously, if you are having troubles, you're probably not going to read this blog, but...I have certainly enjoyed reading your blogs. A much more enjoyable way to grade and respond to reading journals. If you haven't started following any of your classmates, try it! You need two more comments!

Spell-Check

There is a wonderful spell-check tool in the tool bar at the top of the writer. USE it!! And pay attention to subject-verb agreement. In writing, it is never ok to say, "I seen..." That's my grammar mini-lesson/rant for today. You'll get more of that in bell ringers to come. I know you're super excited about it! ha.

Video post

Shelby Dilmore has a video bar on a special post she created for The Piano Lesson...a fun clip from the 1995 film. Watch it!

A Separate Peace first three chapters

I'm loving reading your blogs! I will never go back to pen-and-paper reading logs!

So here's my favorite part of chapter one: "So the more things remain the same, the more they change after all--plus c'est la meme chose, plus ca change. Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even death by violence. Changed, I headed back through the mud. I was drenched; anybody could see it was time to come in out of the rain." I think these sentences set up the theme for the whole book.

Chapter three ends on Gene's life-long regret, maybe. The fact that he didn't return Phineas's sentiment--he didn't say, "Yeah, you're my best friend, too." I like that last sentence: "Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth." I'm not sure if he's saying that what he felt for Finny was stronger than friendship--a brotherhood of sorts. But that's what if feels like.

The Slacker Kid

Okay, so my blog is going to have nothing to do with A Separate Peace right now. My blog is a bit of a grievance I have with a certain type of student. The Slacker Kid. The one who really is a good kid that I would probably really like if I got to know him/her, but he/she is so busy being lazy in the back of the class that my first impression is rather soured. The kid who turns in his/her essay, bell work, blog, etc. two to three days maybe weeks after it's due. You know who you are. So here's a little analogy as to why I don't like your lazy behavior: when you turn in that late piece for me to grade, it's like when you throw a dirty fork in the sink right after your mom finished washing the last dish from tonight's supper. It's like when she's finally finished folding last week's laundry, only to discover this week's load is an insurmountable hill. DON'T TURN IN WORK LATE!!!

Welcome to blogging

Hello, freshmen! I hope you gain valuable experience in posting your reading responses via a weblog. Good luck, and happy blogging!