Here are some books I read this summer--you might enjoy looking at them to see if you like them. Also you will need to find a 20th or 21st century novel for your spring research paper. Most of these would work (not the non-fiction ones, though!)
Non-fiction:
The Omnivore's Dilemma
Mao's Last Dancer (autobiography) by Li Cunxin
Happiness and Architecture by Alain de Botton
Fiction:
Kafka on the Shore by Hayuki Murikami
After Dark by H. Murikami
The Windup Bird Chronicles by H. Murikami
The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen
To the North by Elizabeth Bowen
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
What is the What by Dave Eggers
The Palace of Illusions
The People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
Add some books that you have enjoyed and wish to recommend!
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Good Things
Write about something good that has happened to you during the summer or since school has begun!
Monday, August 25, 2008
Rules for Writing
State a definite claim--a thesis or destination--where you are going with this essay
Include specific, concrete examples and
Commentary on the examples relating them back to the claim.
Use effect when you mean the noun, affect is the verb
Use vivid, precise verbs--no "to be" verbs.
Avoid utility words such as nice, awesome, wonderful, clever.... be more specific.
Use more precise and interesting words for "show"; list to follow.... expresses, manifests, displays, exudes, .....
Infuse the essay with your personal voice.
Compress your style--never use three or four words when one or two will do.
Remember White and Strunk's three rules of writing: simplicity, lucidity, euphony.
Stop and think for a few moments before you write--this may avoid filler, fluff, deadwood, and other signs of lack of critical thinking.
Note: Be sure to sign your first name and last initial and your period so I can give you credit!
Avoid circumlocutions such as "Hawthorne give the reader the idea that"--say Hawthorne expresses.
Never use passive voice--unless absolutely the best way to express an idea. An example of bad passive voice would be "it is believed"--who believes it? state that.
Get rid of dangling modifiers, i.e. "When reading this passage, the narrator expresses the complexity of Pyncheon's character." (the narrator did not read the passage, who did?)
Post a response to what you learned about writing in class on Wednesday.
Include specific, concrete examples and
Commentary on the examples relating them back to the claim.
Use effect when you mean the noun, affect is the verb
Use vivid, precise verbs--no "to be" verbs.
Avoid utility words such as nice, awesome, wonderful, clever.... be more specific.
Use more precise and interesting words for "show"; list to follow.... expresses, manifests, displays, exudes, .....
Infuse the essay with your personal voice.
Compress your style--never use three or four words when one or two will do.
Remember White and Strunk's three rules of writing: simplicity, lucidity, euphony.
Stop and think for a few moments before you write--this may avoid filler, fluff, deadwood, and other signs of lack of critical thinking.
Note: Be sure to sign your first name and last initial and your period so I can give you credit!
Avoid circumlocutions such as "Hawthorne give the reader the idea that"--say Hawthorne expresses.
Never use passive voice--unless absolutely the best way to express an idea. An example of bad passive voice would be "it is believed"--who believes it? state that.
Get rid of dangling modifiers, i.e. "When reading this passage, the narrator expresses the complexity of Pyncheon's character." (the narrator did not read the passage, who did?)
Post a response to what you learned about writing in class on Wednesday.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Color Challenge
I love colors--when you are in my class for even a few minutes, you will see that. Now, here's the challenge: recently I read that over three thousand words for color exist in the English language; by the end of the year, let's try to name a good chunk of them.
I'll start--
red, carnelian, scarlet, vermillion, tangerine, orange, lime, watermelon, peach, oyster, biscuit, ecru, taupe.....okay, see what you can add......
Friday, August 22, 2008
Living in Montrose
After having spent a month living in New York City a few summers ago, I begin daydreaming about living in an area where people could mostly walk instead of driving. When you are able to walk in a neighborhood, you begin to savor its nuances--in New York I loved seeing people out on the streets, having dinner, bringing home groceries, shopping for towels, or stopping to buy falafel or a bottle of water from street vendors. And venturing into the subways, I might be enthralled by a Mennonite choir or a man playing the saw.
Two years ago, when I moved to Montrose, I was delighted because this is the closest I can get in Houston to the New York experience. My new house is within walking distance of several charming restaurants as well as the River Oaks and Angelika theaters and the Museum of Fine Arts. I am ten minutes away from the Alley Theater and the Hobby Center by car as well, so I don't dread a long drive home from the theater at night. I love to walk to Sunday brunch or to dinner in the evening, passing people on the street or stopping to chat with an old man sitting outside his apartment doing a crossword puzzle.
What I have been surprised by in Montrose, as well, is the sweetness and congeniality of the people who live and work in the area. Even post office employees are pleasant and kind, lacking the oppressed feeling they sometimes manifested in the old post offices I knew. I don't know exactly what it is--perhaps the sense of old-style neighborhood quiet and serenity. You do have to drive several blocks before you get into the nerve-wracking traffic at Shepherd and Westheimer.
The other explanation may be the variety of people and places here--on my way home I drive by car repair shops, a great coffee place, a Puerto Rican cafe, a Tee shirt maker, antique dealers, a sports bar, my favorite little restaurant for a quick bite, Barnaby's, townhouses next to small houses and apartment buildings with enchanting little courtyards--all on the streets before my final turn.
Two years ago, when I moved to Montrose, I was delighted because this is the closest I can get in Houston to the New York experience. My new house is within walking distance of several charming restaurants as well as the River Oaks and Angelika theaters and the Museum of Fine Arts. I am ten minutes away from the Alley Theater and the Hobby Center by car as well, so I don't dread a long drive home from the theater at night. I love to walk to Sunday brunch or to dinner in the evening, passing people on the street or stopping to chat with an old man sitting outside his apartment doing a crossword puzzle.
What I have been surprised by in Montrose, as well, is the sweetness and congeniality of the people who live and work in the area. Even post office employees are pleasant and kind, lacking the oppressed feeling they sometimes manifested in the old post offices I knew. I don't know exactly what it is--perhaps the sense of old-style neighborhood quiet and serenity. You do have to drive several blocks before you get into the nerve-wracking traffic at Shepherd and Westheimer.
The other explanation may be the variety of people and places here--on my way home I drive by car repair shops, a great coffee place, a Puerto Rican cafe, a Tee shirt maker, antique dealers, a sports bar, my favorite little restaurant for a quick bite, Barnaby's, townhouses next to small houses and apartment buildings with enchanting little courtyards--all on the streets before my final turn.
Everyone seems to thrive on the variety in the neighborhood rather than suffer from it. My neighbors, for instance, leave out aluminum cans for a homeless man who pushes a shopping cart around the area. He says a pleasant hello everytime I see him--and even--I think--went through the stuff in my garage when I accidentally forgot to close the garage door recently (Not a good idea, but no harm done this time!).
I have noticed a couple of parking lots a couple of blocks from my house and was wondering who uses them. Finally driving home later than usual from downtown recently, I found two quiet little places with barely visible names turn into hip, trendy spots for twenty year olds after ten p.m. or so--that's who parks there. Who knew that sort of night life was going on in my quiet neighborhood?
Living in an age where most of us are surrounded only by people like us, I am delighted to reside in a place where diversities of age, work, and styles of life are not just accepted, but embraced.
I have noticed a couple of parking lots a couple of blocks from my house and was wondering who uses them. Finally driving home later than usual from downtown recently, I found two quiet little places with barely visible names turn into hip, trendy spots for twenty year olds after ten p.m. or so--that's who parks there. Who knew that sort of night life was going on in my quiet neighborhood?
Living in an age where most of us are surrounded only by people like us, I am delighted to reside in a place where diversities of age, work, and styles of life are not just accepted, but embraced.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Personal Essay
My Life is Stories
Many years ago I bought myself a set of paper dolls, an extravagant and expensive set, that I justified to myself because I can display them in my high school classroom. The dolls represent “Beauty and the Beast,” which I used in my doctoral dissertation because it illuminates the mystery of female empowerment. I also screen the exquisite and enlightening film, Cocteau’s version, La Belle et La Bete, in my film class. The book was filled with beautiful period costumes, some for coloring, and some for cutting out to dress Beauty in. I experienced a rush of delight just looking at this gorgeous set of paper dolls, one I would have loved to have owned as a child (but which certainly were not available in the 1950s when I grew up.)
One of my happiest memories of childhood consists of the times my mother would take my younger brothers and me to the dime store downtown to let us choose a new coloring book or set of paper dolls. I remember the overwhelming joy of anticipation I felt as I watched her put them up in the cupboard, and how I longed for the moment she would get them out to entertain us that night. These occasions happened on the nights she and my father gave bridge parties. At that time, before television, my brothers and I, already dressed in our pajamas, would sit back in our den with our new books—theirs invariably of cowboys, mine of glamorous movie stars, to color or cut costumes out of. We would play all evening, totally absorbed in the alternate reality for which these characters provided a threshold.
I spent many hours subsequently coloring my books of Betty Hutton, Elizabeth Taylor, or maybe Esther Williams, dressing and undressing them ushering them through a never-ending procession of glamorous and dramatic situations. I imagined buildings with doormen in New York, careers in publishing or on the Broadway stage, sophisticated cocktail parties, and trips to Paris---all fed by my relentless passion for the Technicolor extravaganzas of the fifties which I saw at the local movie theater weekly.
I think back very fondly of those times spent alone in my room, though I remember complaining at the time that I had no one to play with (my brothers would have never understood!). But now I am grateful for the energy I spent dreaming and imagining, creating realms of fantasy and romance because, as an English teacher, I see the relationship of this play to my work. Throughout my life, then, runs the thread of my love of stories and my willingness to suspend disbelief—to involve myself in another realm of experience. I do everything I can to entice my students into these realms, into the other spaces known as fiction, drama, and poetry.
A friend told me recently, “Your life is stories, all kinds of stories,” and I like that depiction of myself. While I was debating with myself whether to buy those fairy tale paper dolls in the little store in Jacksonville, Oregon, a nine-year-old girl appeared beside me. She confided that she had enjoyed playing with the set her grandmother had bought her. For a moment I felt nine again, too, and shared with her the intimacy and enchantment of make-believe. Then I knew I had to have one more set of paper dolls. For me they are a celebration of the stories of my life.
Many years ago I bought myself a set of paper dolls, an extravagant and expensive set, that I justified to myself because I can display them in my high school classroom. The dolls represent “Beauty and the Beast,” which I used in my doctoral dissertation because it illuminates the mystery of female empowerment. I also screen the exquisite and enlightening film, Cocteau’s version, La Belle et La Bete, in my film class. The book was filled with beautiful period costumes, some for coloring, and some for cutting out to dress Beauty in. I experienced a rush of delight just looking at this gorgeous set of paper dolls, one I would have loved to have owned as a child (but which certainly were not available in the 1950s when I grew up.)
One of my happiest memories of childhood consists of the times my mother would take my younger brothers and me to the dime store downtown to let us choose a new coloring book or set of paper dolls. I remember the overwhelming joy of anticipation I felt as I watched her put them up in the cupboard, and how I longed for the moment she would get them out to entertain us that night. These occasions happened on the nights she and my father gave bridge parties. At that time, before television, my brothers and I, already dressed in our pajamas, would sit back in our den with our new books—theirs invariably of cowboys, mine of glamorous movie stars, to color or cut costumes out of. We would play all evening, totally absorbed in the alternate reality for which these characters provided a threshold.
I spent many hours subsequently coloring my books of Betty Hutton, Elizabeth Taylor, or maybe Esther Williams, dressing and undressing them ushering them through a never-ending procession of glamorous and dramatic situations. I imagined buildings with doormen in New York, careers in publishing or on the Broadway stage, sophisticated cocktail parties, and trips to Paris---all fed by my relentless passion for the Technicolor extravaganzas of the fifties which I saw at the local movie theater weekly.
I think back very fondly of those times spent alone in my room, though I remember complaining at the time that I had no one to play with (my brothers would have never understood!). But now I am grateful for the energy I spent dreaming and imagining, creating realms of fantasy and romance because, as an English teacher, I see the relationship of this play to my work. Throughout my life, then, runs the thread of my love of stories and my willingness to suspend disbelief—to involve myself in another realm of experience. I do everything I can to entice my students into these realms, into the other spaces known as fiction, drama, and poetry.
A friend told me recently, “Your life is stories, all kinds of stories,” and I like that depiction of myself. While I was debating with myself whether to buy those fairy tale paper dolls in the little store in Jacksonville, Oregon, a nine-year-old girl appeared beside me. She confided that she had enjoyed playing with the set her grandmother had bought her. For a moment I felt nine again, too, and shared with her the intimacy and enchantment of make-believe. Then I knew I had to have one more set of paper dolls. For me they are a celebration of the stories of my life.
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