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So what are your hs-age kids reading this week? :)


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DS:

Running Man by Stephen King for fun,

I, Claudius by Robert Graves, for school

 

DD: in preparation for her fantasy lit class:

The Fellowship of the Ring, Beowulf, Tolkien On Faeries, Sindbad, Hercules, an essay about contemporary adaptation theory

 

Correction: the Tolkien essay is entitled "On Fairy stories"

and can be found here: http://brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2004/fairystories-tolkien.pdf

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Ds16 - school - John Milton - Paradise Lost  and various biographical stuff about Milton

 

fun - Partials

 

Ok, I'll show my ignorance.  How do you know about these new things?  You sign up for some kind of list?  I think I steered dd toward some.  I'm not sure what she does with them, now that she's on the other computer and holed up so much, lol.

We're on a Cormac McCarthy kick here.  Ds17 is reading No Country for Old Men and Dd 15 is reading All the Pretty Horses.

I don't know who McCarthy is, but he/she sounds promising!  Off to look!  :)

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I don't know who McCarthy is, but he/she sounds promising!  Off to look!   :)

 

I'll warn you that McCarthy is pretty violent.  But -- when my middle dd was assigned No Country for Old Men for AP Lit, I read it first and warned her about the violence.  She read it and said, "Mom, that wasn't half as bad as the Iliad, which you made me read in 7th grade!"  Ds is writing a paper on No Country for Old Men for AP Lit today.  

 

If you want to read one McCarthy novel, I'd recommend The Road.  It is post-apocalyptic and dark, but absolutely masterful, in my opinion.

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DS 13 is reading Zombies of Byzantium as we start our Byzantium unit. I assigned it. 😀 Also Chapters 1-2 of SWB's History of the Medieval World.

 

For fun he has been alternating between the Maze Runner and Harry Potter series (Nth time through HP, good thing we bought hardcover way back when).

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DS 13 is reading Zombies of Byzantium as we start our Byzantium unit. I assigned it. 😀 Also Chapters 1-2 of SWB's History of the Medieval World.

 

For fun he has been alternating between the Maze Runner and Harry Potter series (Nth time through HP, good thing we bought hardcover way back when).

Ok, this is too funny!!!  So how did you find this??  You were just sorta randomly searching?  You know the author??   :lol: 

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Ooo, I don't know if my dd has seen Tolkien on Faeries!!  

 

 

It's an essay based on a talk he gave on his views of "eucatastrophe" and how fiction set in "Faerie" allows authors to give us a glimpse into bigger themes (esp. Christian ideas). The essay is rather scholarly, so it may not appeal if you're DD is thinking Tolkien will be discussing Faeries or the World of Faerie. Here is the text of Tolkien's essay, "On Fairy Stories". And in case your family enjoys Tolkien's scholarly thoughts on Literature, here is the text of his essay, "Beowulf: The Monsters and Critics", and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight".

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Ok, this is too funny!!!  So how did you find this??  You were just sorta randomly searching?  You know the author??   :lol: 

Randomly searching. If you search for Byzantium on Amazon, it comes up near the top.

 

It's definitely a book for a history-loving, teen boy - icon-painting monks swinging swords at shambling zombies. The action starts as two monks are headed toward Constantinople from their monastery in Greece.

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It's definitely a book for a history-loving, teen boy - icon-painting monks swinging swords at shambling zombies. The action starts as two monks are headed toward Constantinople from their monastery in Greece.

 

I sense a run on Amazon's stock of Zombies in Byzantium books coming on... ;)

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If you want to read one McCarthy novel, I'd recommend The Road.  It is post-apocalyptic and dark, but absolutely masterful, in my opinion.

 

The Road is a melancholy symphony, the movie is quite good as well. 

 

Ds is reading Words, Words, Words by David Crystal. It's a great little book if you have a child even remotely interested in linguistics. 

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Ds15: re reading (he read it 2-3 years ago, not for school) nothing to envy by barabara demick (on north Korea) because he just finished 1984 and is writing a paper drawing parallels.

 

Finishing (perhaps finished?) nip the buds, shoot the kids by Japanese writer Kenzaburo oe

 

No idea on personal reading, probably something gruesome like a Jeffrey Dahmer true crime book. I swear he isn't a disturbed child, he just reads like one...

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I'll warn you that McCarthy is pretty violent.  But -- when my middle dd was assigned No Country for Old Men for AP Lit, I read it first and warned her about the violence.  She read it and said, "Mom, that wasn't half as bad as the Iliad, which you made me read in 7th grade!"  Ds is writing a paper on No Country for Old Men for AP Lit today.  

 

If you want to read one McCarthy novel, I'd recommend The Road.  It is post-apocalyptic and dark, but absolutely masterful, in my opinion.

 

I agree about The Road as well. Love it so much I refuse to watch the movie because I don't want to ruin it.

 

DD's is reading No Country for Old Men in her English 1B class as part of their dystopian unit. Personally, I thought The Road would have been a better choice for that, but hey, who am I.

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