SEGway
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Posts posted by SEGway
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Still really helpful! Thanks so much to your dh for writing it and being willing to share it, Farrar!
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Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
A Single Shard
Shadow Spinner
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Bumping for the last day (in case anyone's interested, but didn't see this earlier).
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I didn't see that anyone else has already posted this. I think it's on through July 22, 2016.For whoever's interested. (Feel free to ignore, otherwise. :) )They do want you to give them your name and e-mail. But, you don't have to purchase anything. This is a referral link, but you could google it for a direct link if you prefer. Hope this helps someone.(It includes Wayfarers Ancient, Term 1 and Quark Botany. Also, some Amanda Bennet unit studies.)
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At our house, I assign 20-30 min. of non-fiction reading for most of the elementary years (after they can read fluently). I don't care if it's in the same subject every day. Or the same book every day. I just want them to pick something non-fiction. (I see this as a separate skill to cultivate apart from reading quality literature. They gravitate towards fiction, so I want them to practice with non-fiction. Also, I can sneak in some library history/science of my choice when they get tired of our home selection.)
All that to say, if they just can't pick anything on their own, I usually suggest one of the Hirsch books. They can have any of the six books in hand and just flip through until they find something that won't make them poke out their eyeballs. Most days.
Sometimes they actually do pick them up on their own time. But, not super often.
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Anything by DragonBox (they're probably too old to really enjoy Numbers, but the others would be educational/enjoyable)!
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We recently got a 5th gen. Fire, and I discovered that you can turn the blue light off for reading at night. It's still backlit, but it's not using blue light. For some reason that seems to help reduce eyestrain by a lot for me. (ymmv)
I've been using it a lot more for actual reading (instead of surfing, etc.).
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It's been a while for me. But, I got on a role. So, I have to write it down or I'll forget. :) No real reading for weeks. Then....marathon-time!
Starting with the weekend, I read through Austen's Persuasion, then Emma. They were both first-time reads for me. I enjoyed several of the obnoxious characters in Persuasion. I think the hypochondriac sister, Mary, was especially realistic. Or maybe, recognizable is a better word? I figured out where Emma was headed pretty early on, but there were characters worth finishing the story for. I didn't really like Emma, herself, but I identified with her from time to time. So sure of her interpretation of other people's actions/motives. And, so wrong, mostly. Ha. It's embarrassing, really. :)
Pride and Prejudice is still my favorite in terms of the combination of cast of characters and plot. (I listened to that as an audiobook, too. Last week, I think. It's what started me on my Austen-kick.)
Then, (oh, this might have been last week...oops!), The Murder of Mary Russell by Laurie R. King. It was less a mystery for Holmes/Russell, and more (mostly) telling the backstory of Mrs. Hudson. I'm not sure what I thought of the way she turned out in the end. But, it was an enjoyable read.
And, finally, the YA selections, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Son of Charlemagne, and I'm finishing up If All the Swords in England.
Miss Peregrine was grittier than I expected, but seemed believable with that particular narrator. I really liked the grandpa. I think I'll read the next books at some point.
Son of... and If All the Swords... are both by Barbara Willard, I think, and I'm pre-reading for my dd's history list for next year. I liked them a lot better than most children's historical fiction. But, I'm still not sure what I think of the genre in general. I think there was a long thread a couple of years ago about chronological bias (and spinoffs about anachronistic attitudes/actions) that really interested me. I've steered away (personally) from historical fiction for a while because I was trying to sort through those thoughts. I'm still not sure. Any one else have ideas? I think my conclusion is/was that the most authentic historical fiction isn't actually written as historical fiction. (I'm thinking Dickens.) It's more just fiction written in a specific time period (separate from one's own). But, then, there are all those things that a contemporary author can assume his audience will just understand because. But, I think there are some really talented writers who do their homework and come up with some really well-done stories. I wonder if those are easier to evaluate when they are written in a time that is also not one's own. (Like me reading someone from the early 1900's writing about ancient times.) Would that make it easier to see their blind spots, because they're probably different blind spots than mine? This is devolving into something so vague as to be unhelpful.
All that to say, I'm thinking about the merits/pitfalls peculiar to historical fiction. (again) Especially as it relates to the study of actual history vs. just enjoying a good story.
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I'll take a look at the apps suggested so far. With a quick look, I couldn't find "Teach Your Monster to Read" or "Beck and Bo" in the Google Play store. Are those iOS only?
Oh, sorry! We have a kindle. It might just be at the amazon app store?
I think the "Teach Your Monster to Read" might be one of those free-download-trial-pay-to-unlock-the-rest-of-the-game. (But, that could be another one, I'm thinking of...)
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Dragonbox Numbers (for the preschool crowd...and any other Dragonbox offerings you think your kids are old enough to enjoy Elements and Algebra 5+)
Pettson's Inventions
Toca Builders
Toca Lab
Beck and Bo (more for preschool/Kindy)
some of the Dr. Panda games are fun, too
Enjoy! :)
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If Sassafras looks good to you in theory, check out Quark! I think the author has a 78 pg. sample free for each of the three books already written (google barefoot ragamuffin quark, and you should find it easily.)
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Life got weird and crazy. I haven't had time to read through the last several weeks worth of these threads (which is sad to me). But, I saw today that Audible's deal of the day is Neil Gaiman reading his _Ocean at the End of the Lane_ for 3.95.
It made me think of you lovely ladies.
Hope it's helpful!
-Sarah
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Specifically, Middle Ages and Renaissance books.
Which do you prefer for the middle school (6th grade) years with a strong reader. And why?
TIA
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Two kids were sick last night/this morning. So, we all stayed home from church today. And, in an attempt at True Sabbath, I let the kids watch Russian and British cartoons as I reread Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet (which came up in an unrelated conversation somewhere semi-recently...last fall, maybe...and has been on my mental reread pile for a while). I realize that this relegates me to definite nerdy status. I'm okay with that. :)One passage in particular really spoke to me. It's almost like a continuation/clarification of a conversation I was in yesterday. Part of the pleasure of reading good writing (however you define that) is finding at the right time, I think.For those who haven't read C.S. Lewis' sci-fi, this quote is one part of a conversation between the protagonist (a human named Ransom) and his friend, Hyoi (a Martian, one of three sentient/symbiotic-but-separate races on the planet). The conversation takes place on Mars.
"A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hman, as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing. The seroni could say it better than I say it now. Not better than I could say it in a poem. What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure, as the crah is the last part of a poem. When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then--that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it. You say you have poets in your world. Do they not teach you this?
"Perhaps some of them do," said Ransom. "But even in a poem does a hross never long to hear one splendid line over again?"Hyoi's reply unfortunately turned on one of those points in their language which Ransom had not mastered...."And indeed," he continued, "the poem is a good example. For the most splendid line becomes fully splendid only by means of all the lines after it; if you went back to it you would find it less splendid than you thought. You would kill it. I mean in a good poem.""But in a bent poem, Hyoi?""A bent poem is not listened to, Hman.""And how of love in a bent life?Don't feel obligated to have this mean much. :) But, this seems like the kind of place to share it, regardless.For the fact that there is an actual place in which to share a quote like this, I am thankful.-
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We finished our read-aloud Taran Wanderer today. I think it's my favorite piece of the Prydain series. It's a really fun one to share with the kids.
I started a while back and only came back this week to read E.M. Forster's A Room with a View. I read it on my phone, so I couldn't highlight the quotes that I thought made the book worth the time. By the end, I didn't really like the characters. (Except maybe Freddie?) But, since the characters were the reason the quotes were written....well, I did read the whole thing. :)
Now I just have to go back and find the diamonds in the rough.
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Stayed up too late last night finishing Ancillary Mercy. I really liked how it ended. I think this is a series I will come back to and reread in a couple of years.
Thanks, again, for the rec!
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Adding my vote for anything by Vandiver (Illiad and Odyssey, especially).
I enjoyed Philip Daileader's medieval history lectures. Dorsey Armstrong on medieval history, too.
Kenneth Harl's Barbarian Empires of the Steppes.
If you're looking for something linguistic-y, I really enjoyed Ann Curzan's Secret Life of Words.
Anything Robert Greenberg on music.
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I hear you. I've been unable to articulate my thoughts about The Bluest Eye as well. I think that it, and The Color Purple, and books of that type make me so angry, so furious about the horrific treatment of young girls. I want to direct that fury somewhere. The first place I want to send it is to the men, the "fathers" or father surrogates. Ok, but am I sending it to individuals? to a culture? to black male culture? Is that fair? What created that culture? were the men so beaten down, humiliated in their day to day lives that they had to take their rage, their frustration out in the only place where they had any power? So, is the fault really on the larger culture that treated an entire race of people as sub-human? Recent reads, like Between the World and Me and The New Jim Crow have certainly raised my awareness about what that experience must be like. Or, were family ties so broken down by the culture and legacy of slavery and discrimination that daughters seemed like legitimate sexual targets? That's where I realize that it's totally unfair to put this on "black culture" and where books like Bastard out of Carolina make it clear that it happens everywhere - so then what is it about? Poverty? Ignorance? The cycle of abuse continuing? It makes me feel so frustrated and discouraged about the human nature and lack hope for our children's future world. That's when I have to glance down at the quote in my sig and remind myself that despair is a a cop-out. But it's hard.
"To me, the grounds for hope are simply that we don't know what will happen next, and that the unlikely and the unimaginable transpire quite regularly . . . Despair is a form of certainty, certainty that the future will be a lot like the present, or will decline from it; . . . Optimism is similarly confident about what will happen. Both are grounds for not acting. Hope can be the knowledge that we don't have that memory and that reality doesn't necessarily match our plans."
-Rebecca Solnit, "Woolf's Darkness"
I just need to say how very much I love that quote (and how silly I feel for not having seen it before you referred to it in that post). Watching long-distance as people I love are getting hurt by systems and societies prejudices (different specifics from the ones in the book)...well, I really needed to read that. So, thank you!
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I finished Ancillary Sword. It made me think. I know it gets knocked for lack of action, but I really enjoyed it. I think these books make good followups to Coates' Between the World and Me. I shall have to wait on ILL for Mercy.
ETA: This amazon review of Sword made me snicker.
It was a week for kid-lit, too, apparently. I listened to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It's a multiple-times re-read, but I hadn't ever hear the whole audio before. Jim Dale is pretty good at voices. I also read Diana Wynne Jones' Castle in the Air (which I didn't like as much as Howl, but it was entertaining), and Artemis Fowl: Artctic Adventure (trying to keep up with the dd10). The storyline in AF wasn't nearly as obnoxious as I assumed it would be based on the hype. I may even read some more. :)
I started A Room with a View, because I could find it free for kindle, and you all made me interested in trying Forster, again. (Wasn't a huge fan of Howard's End, but other people's comments make me think I might not have seem some of the....subtilties.)
There's not much time for keeping up with these threads, but even reading/responding in snippets has spurred me to read a lot more consistently and more ambitiously than I usually do.
Pretty sweet!
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I missed a week or so, when life happened.
I got to read Oliver Sack's Gratitude. I'm sad, again that he died.
Then, Coates' Between the World and Me. Disturbing, but worth reading.
Robin McKinley's The Hero and the Crown. I read this in high school and enjoyed it. I think it held up well.
And, (out loud on a long road trip with the family for my grandpa's funeral), Wodehouse's Damsel in Distress. It was a good choice to entertain dh. I had read it before (which made it easier to read aloud); dh had not.
I think I must be missing something. But, maybe not.
ETA: Oh! I remember now. Also, Mister Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore after hearing about it on a BaW thread. Light and fun. Thanks for that! :)
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I make these for every birthday at our house. (from the Dessert Bible)
10 Tbsp. butter
4 oz. unsweetened baker's chocolate
3 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
1 3/4 c. sugar
1 1/4 c. flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. walnuts (optional)
add chocolate chips to the batter for more chocolate, if desired
Bake in a greased pan (9x9?) for 50-55 min.
350*
Works with gf flour as a substitute, too.
We really (Really) like this recipe.
Happy Birthday to your ds!
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DH finished Ancillary Justice, so I got to, too! :)
It reminded me a lot of Starship Troopers (Heinlein), but maybe just because the core message...no, more accurately, the core question resonated with other thoughts I'd already been thinking. I think I'd like to reread it now that the confusing style/setup/pronouns make more sense to me.
Thanks, again, for the recommendation!
ETA: I tried just googling. How else would I find last year's discussion about this book? Or does anyone wish to repeat themselves and tell me, again? :) TIA!
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TWTM 4
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
Huzzah! Kindle version here. Very exciting! :hurray: