SHORT CUTS: books to read for people with unruly stacks in unlikely places

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Arthur Conan Doyle, Big Read, books, Cameron Art Museum, classics, Edith Wharton, eleanor lanahan, Ethan Frome, f scott fitzgerald, f scott fitzgerald books, Great Gatsby, guest blogger Sue, Julian Barnes, Literature, postaday, postaweek 2013, reading, rereading, Vladimir Nabokov

She’s never written a novel, but she’s read thousands.

Guest Blogger Sue knows that certain books lure us back.  Yes, I know what you’re thinking ~  so many books, so little time, that precarious TBR pile. …….. Vladimir Nabokov had the same dilemma. Yet he was convinced that rereadings were better readings.

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When we read a book for the first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do not have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to painting) that takes in the whole picture and then can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting.

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Rereading never gets old. Great books get greater. And we are unbelievably lucky to have them. And Guest Blogger Sue, who’s got street cred, just like Vlad.  So…ready for a second run?

Classics!

Read a classic. Or reread a book you were assigned in high school. Or junior high even. You’ll have a different point of view, that’s for sure. And there are no quizzes, no grades.  :) Here in Wilmington, several groups joined forces for their first Big Read, choosing The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Books are available free for the taking, a slim volume, only 180 pages. Library branches all have discussion groups. UNCW offers lectures, discussions, a screening of the movie. The Cameron Art Museum lavishly displays walls and walls of Zelda’s artwork. The museum hosted Eleanor Lanahan to lecture on her famous grandparents, bringing in a dance company presentation of original work based on Zelda’s art, and highlighting musician Gernoldo Frazier with the music of the Roaring ‘20s. Historic Thalian Hall offers a free screening of the 1974 version of the movie starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. Even Old Books on Front Street offered a performance based on Scott’s and Zelda’s letters. Wow! This town is hopping! . So start with The Great Gatsby. Learn through literature about some wild times and lost souls of the Jazz Age, the 1920s in America. . Then move on to Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. You read this one in high school. It is not one of her characteristic very long period novels but a slim volume of under 100 pages. Young Ethan is beaten down by circumstances, one being a drear New England winter. Another being his dour wife, Zenobia. Distant cousin Mattie Silver comes like quicksilver into their lives. Poor Ethan. ……

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Arthur and George by Julian Barnes is not a classic. But Arthur is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who created Sherlock Holmes, surely a classic detective. Barnes gives side-by-side pictures of these disparate young men as they grow to middle age, one from wealth and social standing, the other a half-caste son of a small town vicar. We see Arthur use his Sherlockian talents to right a terrible wrong done to George. An interesting picture of the social strata in late Victorian Britain.

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What makes you return to a book?  The prose?  The memories it evokes?   What books do you still love after a second (third? fourth?) reading?

Toni 2/22/13

Vogel-Wetmore School Closes the Achievement Gap with WordsWordsWords. Another Story from These High-Achieving/High-Poverty Classrooms I’m Watching.

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Classroom, close the gap, CONN-CAN award-winning school: Vogel-Wetmore, Education, high-poverty and high-achieving classrooms: their stories, Literacy, observing at Vogel-Wetmore School, pump them full of words to close the gap, reading, vocabulary, Vogel-Wetmore

Words for How to Close the Gap: Or How to Talk to the Elephant

FACT:  Within the first four years of life, children from welfare families hear 13 million words; children from working-class families hear 26 million words; children from professional families hear 45 million words.

FACT: Words are the soil for growing knowledge; well-composted soil is going to work way better than thin soil.

FACT: The elephant in our high-poverty classrooms is the WORD GAP.

Since language is the basis of reading and writing, words have star billing in Vogel-Wetmore’s high-achieving, high-poverty classrooms.

I don’t see commercial kits with names like Build a Strong Vocabulary. I don’t see flash cards. I don’t see word lists to memorize.

I do see classrooms where students build concrete vocabulary by interacting with a complex learning environment. I see a wide, rich use of words.

Choral reads, Chants, and Readers Theater: We need to hear a word multiple times to get it into our functioning memory. Rich literature that tickles the tongue and pleases the palate provides enough repetition for the heard words to become reading sight words.

Accountable Talk: I overhear both teachers and students seriously responding to and further developing what others in the group have said. How do you know that? Can you give me some examples? Where did you find that information?  Can you show us which part of the text tells you that info? What do you mean? I know that because it says here…Can you explain that more? Say more about that. Here’s what I heard you say. Is that what you meant?

Labeled Rooms: I see signs on objects. This is the faucet; please keep it turned off to conserve. This is the pencil sharpener; use it judiciously.

I hear teachers read aloud. A lot.

I see teachers write in front of the class and then say, In your writing today, do what I just did to tell more in other words. Some of our students come into reading through the writing door.

Small reading groups meet several times a week. And it’s all about reading and discussing the words.

Students attend to words. Throughout writing and reading, math, and the content areas,I hear kids compare, combine, and contrast words; use more specific words; identify or change a word’s part of speech or tense; use the root or affix; visualize or act out a word.

Classrooms have access to several paperback book rooms.

A new study confirms what these teachers know: Understanding basic words may come from a flash of initial insight more than repetition. But the flashes of insight need the whetstone of a fertile environment. Or retention is nil.

I walk by the book rooms–the doors stay wide open and welcoming; sunlight pours in the tall windows of this ancient building; and I think, This is what it’s all about, creating readers who read, and listen, and talk–and, along the way learn tons of words.

And close that gap.

Patty 9/22/12

THE BOOKS OF SUMMER: READING LIKE A WOLF

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books, Literature, postaweek2012, reading, smart summer beach reading, Stephen King

I read like a wolf eats.
I read myself to sleep every night.

― Gary Paulsen

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I used to throw random paperbacks into my striped tote and tear through them while soaking up Vitamin D.  But now that I’ve reached a new level of sophistication (as in I- can’t- bear- to- waste- my- time- reading- something -trashy), garden variety beach reads just don’t cut it anymore.  I want wildly entertaining stuff, huge sprawling novels that are witty and whipsmart ~ and a just little bit frothy. No slender volumes or hefty topics, thank you.  I want terrific dialogue, oddball characters and wild stories. I want the grasped-by-the-hair lift and thrill of a vicarious experience. Hey, there’s only so many hours in a sun-soaked afternoon.

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I just read 11/22/63 by Stephen King, the large-print hardcover version. It’s about 1200 pages and weighs in at around 3.5 pounds. That’s a lot of novel. But it’s a copiously cool page-turner and I finished it in a few days.  (Ivanhoe is a mere 400 pages and it took me months to read it, not counting time off for spring vacation and strep throat.) King’s book has dry wit and heart-wrenching emotion on both sides of the rabbit hole.  It’s got enough drama to make a grown man cry ~ if he were the crying type, unlike Jake Epping, the burnt-out English teacher who grapples with his new-found power and the destiny that comes along with it.

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Here’s some new, and not-so-new, reads that please ~ even after the sun goes down. ♦Sand not included.

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Swamplandia! ~ Karen Russell

Pictures of You ~ Caroline Leavitt

The Paris Wife ~ Paula McLain

Seating arrangements ~ Maggie Shipstead

Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake ~ Anna Quindlen

State of Wonder ~ Ann Patchett

Canada ~ Richard Ford

The Invisible Bridge ~ Julie Orringer

Little Heathens ~ Mildred Armstrong Kalish

The Sisters Brothers ~ Patrick DeWitt

The Age of Miracles ~ Karen Thompson Walker

Arthur and George ~ Julian Barnes

The Coffins of Little Hope ~ Timothy Schaffert

Emily, Alone ~ Stewart O’Nan

The Lisbeth Salander Series ~ Stieg Larsson

The Hunger Games Trilogy ~ Suzanne Collins

The Postmistress ~ Sarah Blake

Vaclav and Lena ~ Haley Tanner

The Night Circus ~ Erin Morgenstern

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~ ♥ ~ So, be sociable and share  ~  ♥ ~ tell me about your favorite tote-worthy authors and cover-to-cover berserkly great books ~ ♥ ~ 

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Toni 6/28/12