#13: Golf is Not a Game of Perfect

Ive been trying to improve my disc golf game. I've herd good reviews of this book, do I bought it a few months ago and read it. I just read it again. It's a very positive book about improving the mental game of golf. There are lots of inspiring stories and quite a lot of good, clear advice. Hopefully some of it will have an effect on my game.

#1-12

The Pigman by Paul Zindel

Somewhat dated young adult fiction about two teens who befriend an older man.  I like the story well enough, but it's, as I already said, a bit dated.

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

Also a popular text for younger teens, also somewhat dated.

Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick.

Taught at my school to 6th grade.  Nice enough story, worth keeping in the curriculum.

Tangerine by Edward Bloor

Also taught to 6th grade here.  Better story, slightly more complicated.  Definitely longer.

The Cay by Theodore Taylor

In the 6th grade curriculum.  Needs to go.  Too simple, too dated, too crappy.

The Giver by Lois Lowry

In the 8th grade curriculum.  Good story, not too complicated, we could find more advanced material.

The Hunger Games

We’re considering adding it to the curriculum.  I’m worried that it’s not such high quality writing and that every kid I know has either read the book or seen the movie.

Ender’s Shadow

We’re adding Ender’s Game  to the curriculum, which I re-read somewhat recently, but I wanted to read this one again, too.  I still think this book is almost as good as the first one.

Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie

We’re probably going to add this to the 8^th grade curriculum.  It’s a good, straightforward, somewhat positive text, which will balance nicely against all the dystopian fiction we have for the rest of the year.

The Prince of Tides, by Pat Conroy

It’s been a few years since I’ve read this.  His command of language is beautiful, but sometimes he needs to move the story along a little quicker.

The Expats by Chris Pavone

A somewhat interesting spy novel.  Pretty good.  Not great, not terrible.

Understanding by Design by Wiggins and McTighe

This book has been very useful in helping plan out curriculum for next year.  Very valuable resource.

Wow. 12 books and it's only April.  Maybe I'll make 50 this year.

2012--The year to break 50?

Ok, I just re-discovered this blog and have decided that I'm going to attempt to get to 50 again.  I've read a bunch lately, so I'll just start listing them in whatever order I can remember them.  I've been reading a lot of literature designed for middle school students and some educational books about assessment and learning, so you're likely to see some unusual choices this year.

10: Slaughterhouse Five

I think I tried to read Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five many years ago, but just didn't get into it. Two friends of mine at work were raving about it and said I should read it. Yesterday I did.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I won't go as far as my friend Maggie and say it's my favorite book, but it really was interesting. I think I'd like to read some more Vonnegut now.

I found this book to be at once deeply serious and very funny. One of my favorite quotes is as follows:

Billy wasn't Catholic, even though he grew up with a ghastly crucifix on the wall. His father had no religion. His mother was a substitute organist for several churches around town. She took Billy with her whenever she played, taught him to play a little, too. She said she was going to join a church as soon as she decided which one was right.
She never did decide. She did develop a terrific hankering for a crucifix, though. And she bought one from a Santa Fe gift shop during a trip the little family made out West during the Great Depression. Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

9: The Sparrow

I have read a couple books in my own spare time. This is the first.

I learned about this book on a forum I read that's not connected to teaching in any way. Some people said they read this book and it was something memorable that really stuck with them. I can't resist listening to what people outside of education say about what they're reading, so when I got a chance I read this book.

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell is a memorable book. In fact, I agree with those people on the forum who said this is a book that you remember for quite a while afterward. The only problem is that, while very interesting, Russell just didn't pull off this book. She had some very interesting ideas, but about midway through the book, it just fell apart. Characters started behaving in ways contrary to their character, the plot just zipped along, not really focusing on characters as it should, and the end is just a little too pat.

I was hugely disappointed with this book.

8: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

I dug this one out of the bookroom, too. Lots of dust on these copies. I'm moving away from what others in my department are teaching, but really, if we're going to say that the junior curriculum focuses on the American Experience, how can we not teach some real standards of the cannon, such as Huck Finn, The Sun Also Rises and My Antonia?

We're in the middle of this book now, and I'm glad I'm ending the year with this. There's plenty for us to dig our teeth into for analysis, but Twain tells such a good story that many students are really enjoying their ride down the Mississippi.

7: My Antonia

I scrounged both schools in my district for enough copies of this to teach to my juniors, and actually ended up buying a few copies myself so I could do it. I'm glad I did. It was nice to have a book written by a woman with a woman character people could like. Plus, after so much of the fiction we read this year that portrayed such dismal views of the U.S., it was nice to have something positive and uplifting.

Again, the plot isn't so much of a focus here, so I think it was also good to push the students to read more analytically. Some enjoyed it, some were bored out of their minds. And so it goes.

6: The Sun Also Rises

Yes, I just listed this last year, but I read it again as I taught it. I expected this to be the hardest book of the year, and I think I was right. But I also think that some students ended up liking it. As one student said, it's not something you really enjoy as you're reading it, but in the end, you really end up liking it.

I'm glad it worked out for some of them. With a text like this, we really have to start analyzing the work with more skill. You can't just coast along talking about plot, because there really isn't much of any. I'll certainly teaching this again next year. I enjoyed this book and the unit I created for it.

5: Death of a Salesman

So, now I'll only cheat a little bit by listing the books that I taught for the first time, or at least for the first time in a long time.

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is a required text for juniors at my school, which is why I read it and taught it. I'm not a huge fan of this play. In some ways it reminds me of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar; it's an interesting play, I'd love to see a live performance of it, but I just don't enjoy teaching it to high school students. I focus on Biff and his issues with the ways his dad raised him, but I really am not all that great about connecting this to my students. Perhaps the biggest problems is that I don't like it, which means they end up not liking it. Oh well, I'll try again next year.

Books 1-4

Ok, I'll start off by cheating and listing the books I have already read but read again because I taught them again.

1. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
2. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
3. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
4. The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

Delayed Start

Hmmm.... Here it is June 6th and I haven't posted any books yet. Excuses? None. Read any books? Not many outside of school. Will I make it to 50 this year? Doubtful. But I'll do my best.

#23 Inside Out: Kirby, Liner and Vinz

I read this book several years ago and had to read it again for my last graduate class. This is such a great book about the teaching of writing. Useful ideas and activities, an appropriate blend of theory and practice. It was fun to read it this time and recognized how many of the things I do today I learned from this book three years ago. It was a pleasure to read this again and I picked up a few more great ideas.

#22 Peninsula: Essays and Memoirs from Michigan: Michael Steinberg, ed.

This is the second time I've read this collection of essays and I didn't enjoy it any more this time. But it (book #23) are the two books for my last graduate class. I've completed 30 graduate credits in the last two years and I'm grateful to have a break coming up.

#21 The Crucible: Miller

I enjoy reading and teaching this play quite a lot. The figure of John Proctor is so powerful and the hysteria that Miller warns about it is still so relevant today. The ending is so powerful. Certainly my favorite Miller play. I'm not so much looking forward to Death of a Salesman later this year.

#20 The Great Gatsby: Fitzgerald

One of the benefits of being a teacher is I get to read some good stuff. Gatsby was no exception. In class I was even able to help my students see that it's not just the story that matters; Fitzgerald's writing is so controlled, so powerful.

#19 The Sun Also Rises: Hemingway

I read this book a month or so ago. I'm seriously tempted to teach it to my juniors this year, but haven't quite decided yet. It will be very hard for them to read and I can already hear the chants of "this is boring" in my head.

But I enjoyed the read. I haven't read it in a long time. Perhaps not since my junior year of high school.

#18 Joan Didion: Year of Magical Thinking

I finally took some time to wrap up a few books I'm reading this summer. Good thing, too, because I start school next week. I'll be reading a bunch of new books this year, however, because I have a new prep: English 11.

Anyway, back to Year of Magical Thinking... it was good, I guess. A bit slow. But a very interesting and methodical look at the year following Didion's husband's death and the near loss of her grown daughter. I think I've read something by Didion a long time ago, maybe Democracy. It might be worth looking at her fiction again, but I'm not too sure I'd recommend this book to anyone.

#17: Things Fall Apart--Chinua Achebe

After I finished Gilead yesterday, I tried to read something more lighthearted: Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. I read The DaVinci Code several years ago and enjoyed it's tale (if not Brown's writing style) and thought I might enjoy this one. I know that it's a dramatically different genre than what I just finished, and tried not to hold Brown's writing up to the same measure I would judge other, more serious authors, but I couldn't stand it. I tried to just let go and enjoy the tale he tells, but after 65 pages I finally gave up and went to find something better.

I've been meaning to read Things Fall Apart for several years now. A teacher I once taught with in Virginia taught it to her sophomores and really thought highly of it. This book was clearly better than anything Dan Brown could think to write. Powerful, direct prose that is subtle, yet powerful. I really like Achebe's plain and clear writing, and the story of one stubborn and flawed man facing the end of his civilization as he knows it is powerful, both as a testament to what happened to African tribes and also as a metaphor for societal change in general. I can see why my colleague enjoyed teaching this book--there is so much to teach here on many different levels.

#16 Gilead--Mariylnne Robinson

I'm not sure where I got the recommendation to read this book, but I ordered it from PaperBackSwap a few months ago and finally had a chance to read it. What a beautiful book! Robinson is clearly a talented writer and I'm looking forward to reading more of her work. Gilead is told in the first person by an aging (and dying) minister, writing to his seve-year-old son. His goal is for his son to read this journal when he is an adult so that he will understand more about his father. The narrator is dying of heart disease, and knows that he will not be there to watch his son grow up.

The story is a meandering account of the narrator's life, friendships, and family. The narrator often interrupts himself with observations about current interactions and ramblings about his father and grandfather, both preachers as well. While it gets a little slow at times, it ends powerfully, demonstrating the power of friendship, family and faith. And did I mention that Robinson's control of language is outstanding?