Sometime tonight I should get my one hundred thousandth visitor to Semicolon since I started counting. We need to have a party!
Anyway, thanks for reading!
UPDATE: I think my 100,000th visitor was someone searching Google for “why is the semicolon bad.” Ouch. I didn’t know it was bad, but welcome to everyone anyway. (I know the searcher was talking about the punctuation mark, but if I believed in signs and omens . . . )
We start school tomorrow morning. I’m ready. The urchins have been alternating all day long between asking if they could watch TV and asking for a snack. I’m ready for some structure and scheduling and plans and . . .
Let’s play school for a while. I’ll get tired of that eventually, too. But for now school days, merry old golden rule days, sound really appealing.
Around the World is the theme for Semicolon School this year, and our first week’s theme is Maps and Globes.
Here’s the basic plan for this week:
Music:
Antonio Vivaldi—Four Seasons
Mission Study:
1. Window on the World: Missionary Kids
2. WotW: Children of the Streets
3. WotW: Gypsies
4. WotW: Navahos
5. WotW: Refugees
Poems:
Spectacular Science—Lee Bennett Hopkins
Science Theme:
What Is Science?
Nonfiction Read Alouds:
The Book of Where, or How to Be Naturally Geographic–Bell
Fiction Read Alouds:
Mr. Popper’s Penguins—Atwater
The Boy Who Sailed Around the World Alone–Graham
Picture Books:
Mapping Penny’s World—Leedy
Somewhere in the World Right Now—Schult
How To Make an Apple Pie and See the World–Priceman
Elementary Readers: (We won’t read all these this week, but the sixth grader and the fourth grader get to chooose one each. Brown Bear Daughter chose Open Your Eyes, a collection of adventure stories, and Karate Kid chose Ghost in the Noonday Sun, a pirate story.)
Windcatcher—Avi
Ghost in the Noonday Sun—Fleischman
Open Your Eyes–Davis
Other Books:
Wild Places (Usborne)
Maps and Globes—Knowlton
Games of Many Nations–Harbin
Movies:
March of the Penguins
Eight Below Actually, we already watched this movie, and I thought it was a good family movie, It’s about dogs and Antarctica, even though I’m not an animal person (how many times have I written that?), I really enjoyed the movie.
In addition to this list of resources, we’ll be doing math (Miquon and Saxon) and grammar (Dailygrams and Easy Grammar) and handwriting (cheap practice books). And we have a family Bible reading and prayer time each morning. And soon they all start outside classes at co-op and dance and drama and piano and karate and Spanish and an English/history class for the tenth grader. If that sounds way too busy, it is, but we don’t ALL do all those things, and I do have eight children after all.
Oh, I almost forgot I have to send two of them to college next week. Yes, we really are on the school bus road again.
Penguin’s lists and categories are (mostly) all about sin, degradation, and sadness. Because I am so ingenious and clever, I combined some categories (decadence and debauchery, subversion and rebellion) and freed two categories for which I can create my own topics. I’m not sure if the editors at Penguin classics are fond of conversion stories, but I am as long as they’re done well. In the following books the author tells a powerfully moving story of a character who is reborn in the Biblical sense, from death to life.
Confessions by St. Augustine. I’ve not actually read all of St. Augustine’s spiritual autobiograpy, but I have read excerpts. This book constitutes the most famous and most admired Christian conversion story.
The Brothers Karamazov by Feodor Doestoyevsky. Alyosha accepts the mercy of God in spite of the intellectual questioning and emotional temptations that he shares with his two brothers.
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. I was plannning to put this book, my favorite novel of all, in the Best Heroes category, but I decided that there is no better picture of redemption in literature than that of the bishop who forgives Valjean his theft and charges him to live for God. Still, Valjean is a slave to the Law, pursued by Javert. Valjean doesn’t truly become free until he forgives and frees Javert.
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. The devil Wormwood cannot keep his patient from receiving salvation; nor can seriously undermine the faith that in growing within the man to whom he is assigned. But he tries.
In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden. I recently rediscovered this book that follows the journey of Phillippa, who first becomes a faithful Catholic and then is led to a vocation as a nun in an enclosed order. It’s a beautiful story, rather matter of fact in some aspects, but deeply spiritual at the same time.
It’s that time again. Let’s share some book reviews.
For the uninitiated, here’s how it works. Find a review on your blog posted sometime this week of a book you’re reading or a book you’ve read. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can just write your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, whatever.
Now post a link here to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. Please add only one book review per customer per week. (However, if your children, friends, orother family members have their own blogs and have written on a book, they are welcome to add their own link.) In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’ve written about. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.
Finally, follow the links to read other people’s book reviews for the week. I sure hope Mr. Linky doesn’t stumble over any apostrophes this week. I’m going to a meeting this morning; please leave lots of links to book reviews for me to read when I get home.
| 1. Janie 2. Ellen 3. blestwithsons 4. JOY in the Morning |
5. Karla 6. KarenDV 7. Kathryn (C.S. Lewis in a Time of War) 8. violet (Relentless by Robin Parrish) |
9. kimbofo 10. At A Hens Pace (Better Off) |
Auto-Linkies!! Powered by… Mister Linky’s Magical Widgets. As seen on all of the finest blogs!!
THE BEST TEARJERKERS (according to the Penguin List)
Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton
Notre-Dame De Paris
Victor Hugo
Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy
The Old Curiosity Shop
Charles Dickens
Best Tear-Jerkers (according to Semicolon)
Not Steinbeck. I just think Steinbeck is sordid. And unfortunately, I’ve never read The Old Curiosity Shop, so I’ve never cried for Little Nell. I don’t remember Jude the Obscure, and I’ve never finished Notre Dame de Paris. I’ll go with Age of Innocence, so that leaves me four slots to fill with my own tear-jerking choices.
I’ve already used A Tale of Two Cities and Les Miserables and several other tragic novels in other categories. I could list dog stories like Old Yeller or Where the Red Fern Grows, but since I lack the animal-loving gene, those aren’t really tear-jerkers for me. So I’ll start with a different animal story that does pull out the emotion from me.
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. If you don’t cry when Charlotte . . . Well, you’re lying if you say you don’t at least feel sad.
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. If we’re talking tragic, this book is tragic. I will never forget the line spoken by a black priest in the novel, “I have only one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find that we are turned to hating.”
Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Bittersweet ending.
Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. So. tragic. When all those doomed Confederates march across that open field in Pickett’s Charge, and when General Hood in the hopital after losing his arm says his boys could have taken that hill, and when Pickett yells at Lee, “General, I have no division!”
“Armistead turned away, walked back to his brigade. Now for the first time, at just the wrong time, the acute depression hit him a blow to the brain. Out of the sleepiness the face of despair. He remembered Longstreet’s tears. He thought: a desperate thing. But he formed the brigade.
Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Paterson. A very sad book for children. Can children cry more easily and without embarrassment than adults can? Is that why children’s authors are not afraid to evoke emotion, whereas authors of adult books are afraid of being accused of creating melodrama or maudlin sentimentality?
What book brings the tears to your eyes? What is it about a book or a movie that can create a sense of tragedy?
Let’s combine another two categories from the Penguin list since my dictionary tells me that rebellion is open resistance to established authority and subversion is an attempt to undermine the authority of an established system or institution. I get the difference, but if I combine them. I get another category to make up later.
THE BEST SUBVERSION (according to the Penguin List)
1984
George Orwell
The Monkey Wrench Gang
Edward Abbey
The Prince
Niccolo Machiavelli
Bound for Glory
Woody Guthrie
Death of a Salesman
Arthur Miller
BEST REBELS (according to the Penguin List)
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Malcolm X
The Outsider
Albert Camus
Animal Farm
George Orwell
The Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Les Misérables
Victor Hugo I put Jean Valjean in the category of Best Heroes because he wasn’t ultimately a rebel but rather a penitent sinner and a hero.
Best Rebels (according to Semicolon)
Paradise Lost by John Milton. In literature and in life, isn’t Lucifer the model rebel?
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. I’m breaking the rules myself because I haven’t actually read The Communist Manifesto, but don’t I know enough about it and its effects (Stalinist Russia, Maoist China) to declare it pernicious and its authors deserving of a spot alongside Lucifer?
1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell. Something about the category tempts one to rule-breaking. I can’t decide between these two masterpieces in which the characters mount an ultimately unsuccesful challenge to an unjust authority.
Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. Mr. Christian also rebels against what he sees as injustice, but his plans for an ideal society fall apart in the face of man’s sin and ingratitude. Pitcairn Island: Where rebellion becomes a way of life.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Humorously subversive and then openly rebellious Huck Finn refuses to conform to the society that wants to tame him and civilize him. Mark Twain uses Huck to make fun of, and yes, subvert, the hypocrisy of a society that condones slavery and other evils and inequities. Huck never does give in; at the end of the book he’s headed for the West “because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.”
Cathy and Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights) belong to this list, but they’re slated for the Best Lovers list. Becky Sharp (Vanity Fair) is a rebel if there ever was one, but she’s going in the Best Minxes list. Don Juan (Byron) and Judah Ben Hur (Ben Hur) and Maggie Tolliver (The Mill on the Floss) are rebels, too, but the limit is five and I’ve already gone over.
Whom do you nominate for Best Rebels and Subversives in literature? And is subversion ultimately more successful than open rebellion?
It could be argued that most great authors are somewhat subversive, trying to challenge the status quo in some way. Even those books that show a failed rebellion ( Mutiny on the Bounty, Huck Finn, Death of a Salesman) are attempting to encourage a real change in the laws and unwritten rules of society. And some books (Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Common Sense, The Communist Manifesto) have been quite successful in fomenting rebellion.
THE BEST ADULTERY (According to the Penguin List
Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert
Thérèse Raquin
Emile Zola
Les Liaisons dangereuses
Choderlos de Laclos
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
Best Adultery according to Semicolon
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Of course, this novel is the definitive study of adultery and its consequences.
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. Emma Bovary comes in a close second as Foolish Woman of the Year. Eldest Daughter thought Emma Bovary was annoying, and I must agree. But she’s supposed to be annoying.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I suppose so although I think Ms. Prynne is annoying. And what she ever saw in that Dim guy, I don’t know.
Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory. Those knights of the Round Table and Arthur himself were so promiscuous that it’s hard to keep up. But it can always be blamed on some magical trick. “I didn’t mean to sleep with her. It was a magical castle.” Camelot: where all sin is illusion.
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Scarlett’s adulterous longings are never even consummated (are they?), but she commits adultery nevertheless. Why would anyone choose insipid Ashley over virile Rhett? Yes, I’m thinking of Leslie Howard and Clark Gable, but really, how could she?
Adultery as a theme in literature is full of interest because it’s human and multi-faceted. To paraphrase Tolstoy, all sex and debauchery (see previous posts on the Penguin list) is accomplished in much the same way; each adulterer heads for destruction, unhappy in his or her own peculiar way.
debauchery n. excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures
decadence n. moral or cultural decline, especially after a peak or culmination of achievement
Decadence usually leads to debauchery, and debauchery leads to further decadence.
THE BEST DEBAUCHERY (according to the Penguin List)
I, Claudius
Robert Graves
Hangover Square
Patrick Hamilton
The Beggar’s Opera
John Gay
The Twelve Caesars
Suetonius
Guys and Dolls
Damon Runyon
THE BEST DECADENCE (according to the Penguin List)
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Vile Bodies
Evelyn Waugh
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde
The Beautiful and Damned
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Against Nature
J. K. Huysmans
I’m combining these two categories into one because I think the editors at Penguin were a little too obsessed with decadence, debauchery, sexual perversion, and sin. There are other important themes in literature. Combining the categories also leaves room for one of my own devising, which I shall reveal at the appointed time.
The Best Decadence and Debauchery according to Semicolon:
I, Claudius by Robert Graves
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz
The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas
The good thing about all these books is that they show the attraction of decadence and debauchery and also the degradation and despair that results from indulging in these pursuits. For the wages of sin is death . . .
This post is partly an advertisement for Library Thing, not that I get any remuneration, and partly an advertisement for libraries in general.
First of all, Library Thing. I love LibraryThing. At their website, you can catalog all your books and then share the list with whomever you want. LibraryThing “helps you to create a library-quality catalog of your books. You can do all of them or just what you’re reading now. And because everyone catalogs online, they also catalog together. LibraryThing connects people based on the books they share.” I’m planning to get our homeschool co-op members to use LibraryThing, and then we wil be able to set up a group and easily share and borrow books and other materials among ourselves. If you’re a book lover with a home library, you really should check it out.
Part 2, libraries. Our library system is so helpful. I didn’t know that not all libraries are giving this service, but if yours isn’t, you should talk to your librarians. In Harris County (Houston), I can go online to the catalog for the entire library system and find the books and materials I want to borrow. Then, I just put a request into the system and my librarian at my branch library gathers the materials for me whereever they are and puts them on a reserve shelf with my name on them. I can pick up the materials at my convenience. I am amazed at how easy it is to find and check out the materials I need for homeschooling or just for my own pleasure reading.
So, LibraryThing and libraries. Both of them work for me. Check out the other Works-for-Me Wednesday tips at Rocks in My Dryer.
THE BEST SEX (According to the Penguin List)
Story of the Eye
Georges Bataille
A Spy in the House of Love
Anaïs Nin
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
D. H. Lawrence
Venus In Furs
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer
The Best Sex (according to Semicolon)
I am at a serious disadvantage here because I don’t like to read explicit descriptions of sexual acts (see the post immediately before this one). I hold to that quaint old idea that some things are meant to be private. However, I do have one selection in this category.
Song of Songs by Solomon. Solomon is describing his love for and sexual attraction to his wife (even if she was only one of many), and it’s a very beautiful and sexually alluring description of the love of a man and his wife.
I can’t think of any other classic writers who write about this subject with excellence and without becoming prurient or prudish. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any. Maybe some poet would be a good choice in this category. It seems to me that poetry could preserve the mystery and the beauty of sex at the same time. I haven’t read the books on the Penguin list, except for some of the Canterbury Tales. Should I? Somehow I doubt the others would be up my alley.