Chrysalis Academy Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 I know what you mean. As I've grown older, I've started to think Goneril and Regan had some awfully good points. Yes, yes, yes. No one should read Lear until they are at least 40 and have a difficult elderly parent. That is my dogmatic literary firebrand for the day!!! 10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrysalis Academy Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 I finished two time travel books, pre-reads for Shannon's year. The first was The Reluctant Assassin, the first WARP series book. It's fine, she will like it. It's a nice mishmash of modern day plus Victorian London and will give her a little context for eventually reading Dickens. The second was Timeline by Chricton. I don't think she would like it much. I found it interesting because of all the discussion of history - comparing historical ideas about the medieval period with the "reality" - but I think it's the kind of thing that would go right over the head of a 12 year old. And it wasn't a particularly stellar book on its own. I was listening to Julie Bogart lectures/podcasts today while canning tomatoes, and she said something that made me laugh out loud, all by myself in the kitchen, for a long time. She was talking about how homeschoolers really "do" history, because all of us moms are over 30 and have discovered history, and what it adds to one's understanding of the world, but that kids really don't get this at all - they have no real grasp of history or the passage of time, they are equally likely to connect your childhood with WWI or the Civil War or the Revolutionary War or whatever - this is so true, IME. I am the one in my house who really likes history! My kids really couldn't care less, though they come along for the ride. Oh well, some day they will get it! But it just made me chuckle - how much of what we study day to day even makes sense to them? It will in the future, so it's all good, but it made me think that maybe studying what I find interesting and can engage in passionate discussion about - because I care about it - may not be such a bad strategy after all. But what do I know, I'm probably high from the skunk and tomato sauce fumes permeating my kitchen. 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 Hmmm... Maybe that is what bothered me about Kabul and Kite. They both struck me as benefiting from tradgedy. Kabul struck me as having the problem of one culture telling another culture,s story. And I will never find the main character a kindred spirit. And I worried about the women,s privacy. But I have to say that much of it did match conversations I,ve had with women from that part of the world, and it explained to me some of the parts that I don,t naturally get, being more puritanical New England about things like beauty parlours. Kite I just hated. Nan 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 Eliana - What fun it would be to work on the Japanese together! Nan 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mumto2 Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 I think I'm going to read Wuthering Heights as my brain is Swiss cheese right now. It really is and I'm stuck waiting it out (2weeks per the doctor) so hopfully an old staple like Wuthering Heights will hold me over until I can think and function like an intelligent woman. I'm learning slowly but surely and this is actually a peaceful thing to learn. Life seems so much simpler all of a sudden. And I finished reading the Bible😊!I hope you feel better soon! :grouphug: Robin, I just went looking to see if our Amazon streaming had Iron Sky. I was hoping for the edited version.......no luck. While working on my quilt, which is my current obsession, I have been watching Alias on amazon. How did I miss that show? I am almost done with the first season. Bookwise I have started Remarkable Creatures. Just a few pages in. So far it is good. ETA. Teacherzee, Glad your big move is over and went well. Enjoy the rest of your summer! 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 Rose! My sympathies! Nine month,s worth because that,s how long it takes to go completely away, in my experience, at least on wet days. Eyewateringly powerful stuff. We had a recent incident as well, involving a minute bunkhouse sitting up on cinderblocks and the dog. Middle son had to sleep in his car. Not fun. Nan 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 Rose - ps- i discovered that, not about history, which I continue not to like much, but about teaching things I could do. We pretty much studied what *I* wanted to study together and anything I didn,t want to redo myself, they had to do independently. Really independently. It worked out ok. -nan 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ausmumof3 Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 Now I remember wives and daughters is the one she never finished. I didn't find that out till after reading most of it. I've never read kite runner but definitely didn't get that negative reaction to 1000 splendid suns, that I have to some books - like they are making money out of writing someone else's sensationalised misfortunes... Hmm... It's possible that eventually Romeo and Juliet's parents will start to seem quite sensible! 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrysalis Academy Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 Rose! My sympathies! Nine month,s worth because that,s how long it takes to go completely away, in my experience, at least on wet days. Eyewateringly powerful stuff. We had a recent incident as well, involving a minute bunkhouse sitting up on cinderblocks and the dog. Middle son had to sleep in his car. Not fun. Nan Oh man, it was so horrible. It's not just a smell, it's a visceral, whole body experience. Luckily the baking soda/peroxide/dish soap wash worked pretty well on the dog, but the whole back of the house took a direct hit - it's on a concrete porch, the siding, the dirt, the fence. They say spray Clorox. I'm like, really? Spray bleach all over the house and the fence and the soil? I'm not sure that I have the hubris to try to bleach/sterilize the Great Outdoors. I definitely prefer the smell of tomato sauce! I made the first batch of the summer, 12 jars, yesterday. It was really just coincidental with the skunk attack, but it definitely improved the ambiance at my house! 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nan in Mass Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 We were luckier. Our skunk sprayed the neighbors dog, then hid under our car. Our dog barked to go out, and since she had been having diarreah because she,d spent several evenings shivering and panting in terror under our bunk, we let her. (4th of July is horrible.) She went tearing around in the woods, always a bad sign at 2 am, and she came back rubbing her face in the dirt. There was a fearful stink of burning rubber. With no plumbing, we couldn,t do much til morning, so we tied her to the picnic table. When we stepped into the cabin, the smell was even worse. It made our eyes water. The skunk was obviously hiding underneath. We blasted three large fans and tried to go back to sleep, planning to go home and tell the clan the cabin was out of commission for the summer. When we woke up in the morning, the smell appeared to be gone. I thought we,d just adjusted, the way you do after awhile, but when my husband trekked out to the car, the smell was just as bad as the night before. I guess the skunk moved on after the dog went to sleep. It smelled a bit skunky the next three nights, when the skunk came back to the nice safe cabin, and the car, which had a very fresh skunk under it, wasn,t great for a few days, but that was it! We were SO lucky! I agree. I,m not sure bleaching outdoors is such a great approach. What if you killed all the microbes that would normally deal with such things without killing the smell? Or the things that keep other bad things in check? It seems like if it did anything at all (unlikely), it would be something bad. I don,t know, though. We have a septic system, so I don,t know much about bleach, other than how to treat wells with it. Perhaps this is just the excuse you need to go spend the summer vacationing in Europe or something, grin. Are you planning to have houseguests this summer? Nan 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrysalis Academy Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 Our story started the same way - the dog whining and eager to go out at 2:45, which usually means intestinal trouble. I opened the back door, she raced toward the rustling sound in the back yard, and BOOM! The wave of skunk hit me. Not literally hit me, thank goodness, I was standing inside the door and the door/wall blocked it from actually getting on me, but all the widows in the house were open - hot summer night - and we were instantly engulfed in the stench. I think we will just wait for Mother Nature and UV radiation to do its thing to the back yard. I would love to use this as an excuse to go on vacation! But at this point I'm just hoping - hoping! that the skunk decided this was a bad place, and won't be back. I will never think the same about the rustling critter noises outside my window again. And I keep thinking of all the things I can't control - what if it comes back, and gets confronted by a feral cat or something? This could happen again! And what if my dog does get diahrea in the night? I will be scared to let her out! And that smell isn't so stellar, either . . . Luckily, no houseguests planned. We really need to remove and redo the whole back of the house anyway - old plumbing, rotten siding, all kinds of issues. Maybe this will motivate us to get on with it? Or will the construction guys demand combat pay to demo it? ;) :D 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Halcyon Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 I havent been participating as much here simply because i am on a mad knitting jag, but i have read a few books: Finished Americanah--great book. Over the Edge by Jonathan Kellerman--fast beach read. Next up: Unsaid by Neil Abramnson. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrysalis Academy Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 Re: The Conscious Parent by Shefali Tsabary: Feeling very reluctant to do so, I must abandon this book. Acknowledging that it is filled with good information, I nevertheless cannot take the repetition and psychobabble. Despite my best efforts to the contrary, I cannot read a book in which almost every sentence begins with a participial phrase. Exasperating my children by reading these terrible sentences aloud, I have finally been told to shut up. See what I did there? There were literally whole paragraphs where every single sentence started with a verbal phrase. Sadly, i found this book to be totally unreadable - it would greatly benefit from some stringent editing. There is a jewel of a message embedded in all the horribly structured sentences and repetitive content, I just can't whack my way through the jungle of words to find it. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robin M Posted August 1, 2015 Author Share Posted August 1, 2015 Robin, I just went looking to see if our Amazon streaming had Iron Sky. I was hoping for the edited version.......no luck. I just remembered. We watched first part on a site you tube directed us to for free movies. but the scrunched wide format on my computer was driving me crazy, plus no closed captioning. So paid for Amazon instant half way through. Looks like both regular and directors cut are available on instant video. Dc is 20 minutes longer. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robin M Posted August 1, 2015 Author Share Posted August 1, 2015 In regards to skunks, my technician swears mixture of hydrogen peroxide and baking soda or vinegar works really well. Fortunately I haven't had to test his method with our cats. Unfortunately our neighbor has skunks living in his backyard somewhere. We just got raccoons who like to play on our roof at night. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kareni Posted August 1, 2015 Share Posted August 1, 2015 Yesterday I read two contemporary western romances by Jennifer Ashley ~ Adam and Grant. Jennifer Ashley has written some historical romances and paranormal romances that are favorites of mine. She is the author of the Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries book series which she writes under the name Ashley Gardner. She also writes urban fantasy (I think) as Allyson James. She's quite prolific! While the above two books were pleasant reads, they are not among my favorite of her books. I will continue to read in the series though. Description of Adam: "Stuntman Adam Campbell returns home to Riverbend, Texas, after being seriously injured in a movie stunt gone wrong. He settles in to heal at his family's ranch, where his four brothers, famous trick riders, train horses. Adam is stunned to find Bailey Farrell working there-she was the shy girl who'd helped Adam graduate high school so he could run off to Hollywood. Except the budding Bailey, with whom Adam had a brief but intense affair, has blossomed into a beautiful woman. Now the sparks that had once ignited between them threaten to explode. Adam is beaten-up, broken-down, and has lost his nerve-the stunt that injured him also killed his best friend. The only one he can turn to is Bailey, but will Bailey, who has come back to Riverbend to lick her wounds after a painful divorce, be willing to help him again?" Description of Grant: "Grant Campbell, famous trick rider from Riverbend, Texas, thought it was over with Christina, the love of his life. But a chance encounter one dark spring night gives Grant hope that he can have a second chance. Things are changing in Riverbend, though, that threaten to take Christina away from him forever. Christina Farrell has tried to move on after her breakup with Grant, the hot Texas cowboy who stole her peace of mind the day he walked into her bar and gave her his sinful smile. But every reminder of him tells her it's not over in her heart. Christina realizes she'll never forget him until she makes some changes in her life, but before she can, a reconnection with Grant alters everything for her in an unexpected way." Regards, Kareni 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angel Posted August 2, 2015 Share Posted August 2, 2015 Gaah! I think one of the greatest dangers of what passes for literary analysis in many educational approaches is the implication that there is one "right" answer to the formulaic pigeonholing some practitioners like to engage in. If you read a work of literature and connect with it and engage with it you aren't getting it "wrong"... and there are rarely books for which there is a simplistic one-size-fits-all "this is the theme." It can be fun to play with these ways of looking at lit, but ***only*** if it is a ***tool*** not and end in itself. What is the point of identifying a 'protagonist'? (or any of the other FAQs?) The point is to use that insight/identification to illuminate some aspect of the text. By itself it serves no useful purpose at all. ...and there is very, very often more than one angle of view that can offer insights. An example: My favorite Arthur Miller play is All My Sons, and a different stages of my life as I've reread it, I have seen it with different protagonists. When I was a teen, the son, a young man, was the center of the story... his idealism, his questions, his sense of betrayal, those were the heart of the story. As I got older, I could see with my heart and well as my head that the father is the "real" protagonist... but then when I reread it a few years ago, despite all my intellectual realizations otherwise, it was the mother's arc that was central for me. ...and each of those readings makes different points about the story, emphasizes different themes, and brings out different truths. Please, please, please don't let critics and educators and "experts" get between you and the book. Neither you nor your kids will lose anything precious if you identify the "wrong" antagonist, or perceive a different theme than some random "expert", but if you miss you connecting with the Great Books because you're trying to get it "right" then you have lost something infinitely precious (imho). ...and you'll have stifled your own instincts and understandings. I strongly favor the Great Books approach, where readers engage directly with the texts on their first encounters, without answer keys or guidebooks or more than basic footnotes, so we can develop our own authentic relationship with the text, our own responses, and be a genuine part of the Great Conversation, not the consumers of other people's connections. Sorry, I'll stop ranting now. :hurray: :iagree: :thumbup: :hurray: Preach it sister! I absolutely LOVE what you said! And I so TOTALLY agree with you! I have seen kids connect and interact with books when left alone to read them and just sit and discuss afterward how they feel about the book and taking in how others felt about the book. I have taught three lit classes (Shakespeare, Austen, and Narnia) and every. single. time. the kids are engaged by this method. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kathleen. Posted August 2, 2015 Share Posted August 2, 2015 I read "How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare" by Ken Ludwig. I got this as an unexpected gift while visiting relatives - thanks, Mom :) My 9yo read "The Egyptology Handbook" by Emily Sands. :) 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ausmumof3 Posted August 2, 2015 Share Posted August 2, 2015 I remember during English lit in high school we had to write a diary as we read a novel with an entry every two chapters. I ended up just reading the book because it drove me crazy. I tried to write the diary afterward but it was hard and I didn't get a great grade on it. But I'm still glad I got to enjoy the book properly. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robin M Posted August 2, 2015 Author Share Posted August 2, 2015 Link to week 31 - please continue conversation in new thread Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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