Goodmorning :)

I am off to work soon but figured I would post something beforehand. I'm approximately 1/4 of the way through Catch 22. I've been super busy and struggling with it still. I'm really trying to just relax and read it. I just finished the part about signing the loyalty oathes. I found that to be comical, because the ridiculous things they were doing doesn't even seem like patriotism or pride to their country. Seriously, I feel really bad for Major Major and I think Yossarian is the only one thats not crazy. True?

Progress

As of today I am more than halfway through Catch-22, which I was extremely excited about. Milo is quite the character... I'm not sure I understand his logic still on how he makes a profit, but I suppose things must be working for him.

Literary Quiz o' the Day winner...

It was on this day in 1613 that a historic literary landmark burned to the ground in London? What landmark was it?

Nicole Pike was the first to respond with the Globe Theatre.

On this day in 1613, the Globe Theatre burned down. It was built by Shakespeare's acting company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, in 1599. It was a round, wooden building with thatched-roof balconies for the gentry. A cannon was fired during a performance of Henry VIII to mark the King's entrance, the thatched roof caught fire, and the whole theater was lost in an hour. It was rebuilt the next year, but taken down in 1644 to make space for tenements, after the Puritans closed all theaters. A replica, the new Globe Theatre, was built in the mid-1990s.

Nancy Pearl's Best Summer Book List

Librarian Nancy Pearl picks her favorite books for summer reading. Click on the post title and you should be re-directed to the NPR article.

How to Read Literature Like a Professor

I sent an email about this, but I figured I would post this on the blog as well. Mrs. Richardson at the Bridgman Public Library has purchased five copies of How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster, the book I referred to as recommended reading at our meeting in June. You can email Mrs. Richardson (carol@bridgmanlibrary.com) to reserve a copy or stop in at the library to check one out. This book is still recommended, not required, but it certainly provides some interesting insights in helping you become a stronger, more efficient reader.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts/reactions if you happen to check this out as part of your summer reading.

Purdue University

Mr. Hutfilz passed this along to me and I thought I would share it with all of you. A little FYI for anyone considering Purdue University.

*As of 2011, Purdue will not even look at an application unless the student has 4 years of high school math
*If their high school offers AP classes and the student doesn't take any AP classes, their application is automatically denied.

Question

In Catch-22, I keep reading about men getting their "gums and toes painted purple" by doctors when they get injured. I talked to my dad and we figured it was some kind of medicine but we don't really know what? Any ideas?

Literary Quiz o' the Day

It's the birthday of the English author, born in Bengal, India, whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair.
What was his pen name?

question for conklin

Ok so I have a question on the reading log. So when you have to do the part "The Book says...." what do you do if its not a certain quote you want to talk about, if its something a character did or if you want to comment on a whole page, can you just sum it up?

not sure.....

So I'm not sure how I'm liking Pride Prejudice. I guess I don't dislike it, I think I need to give it more time. Some of it is hard to understand, I have to go back and reread whole pages. Conversations between people is probably whats giving me the most trouble, for example I just finished chapter 10 and Darcy and Bingleys' back and forth argument was a little confusing.

Catch -22

Alright so far this book is not my favorite. At all. I'm a little over 70 pages in and as of now I'm not seeing much of a plot. My dad recently read this book and he said it gets better as you get into it, and I'm hoping that this will be the case. Yossarian is an interesting character and difficult to figure it out. But hopefully more will be revealed as the book goes on. I'm looking forward to getting farther into the book.

yay ap

strange

This was very confuzzeling!!! Thank you Allie for helping me set up a gmail account that I will only use for this blog thing! I'm really enjoying "Catch-22" (sorry, couldnt find underline)MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR!!!! That poor fellow had a messed up life. Some of the characters are strange and I believe that all but Yossarian are insane!

Happy summer to all, and to all a good beach!!

Literary Quiz o' the Day winner...

And the winner of today's quiz is....Jill Bender! Jill was the first to correctly respond to today's literary quiz:

It's the birthday of the author who is responsible for two thriller mysteries that have become Hollywood blockbusters. HINT: a Harvard symbologist appears in both of them... Who is it?

Jill's answer of Dan Brown, author of The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons, was received at 8:36 AM. Granted, your insane teacher was up at 5:30 AM, which is why today's quiz was announced at 6:15 AM. You have to get up pretty early in the morning to keep up with us!

Running LQotD tally..
Caroline Pfliger - 10 AP bonus points and $1
Jill Bender - 10 AP bonus points and $1

Tune in next time to see what literary trivia awaits you when we play......
BHS - AP English Lit and Comp's "Literary Quiz o' the Day"

Happy reading...

Music and Books

As you may have noticed on the left side of the blog, I have listed some books I am reading (and the required texts) as well as music for your listening pleasure. Please feel free to comment on what books and/or artists/bands you'd like to see added. This blog's for all of us, and I'd like to make these suggested lists more inclusive. What would you like me to add?

Small Bites

Here is some readerly/teacherly advice on the summer reading. Take small bites. Like eating, reading too much in one sitting can make you sick. If you make a goal to read 50 pages and can only process (grasp, understand) around 30 pages, but press on because you are short of your goal, chances are pretty good that you'll have to go back and re-read the 20 pages your eyes merely glanced over. It's frustrating to read things twice, but sometimes it is necessary.

Now, I realize that the reading you have before you is somewhat time sensitive (read as: there's a due date) and that you are either working, playing a sport, helping out around the house - or all of the above - taking all of this into consideration, you have to make reading a priority. Put it on your to-do list. MUST READ THREE CHAPTERS OF CATCH or P&P. Take small bites. Read only what you will be able to process and annotate without your eyes going crossed. Don't get frustrated if you can only get through two chapters instead of three. Some chapters are meatier than others and involve more chewing.

Some don'ts: Don't read late at night - you will fall asleep. Don't try to read when there are a lot of distractions, especially if you are easily distracted. You won't pay attention to the reading and will be forced to re-read. Don't read outside in a thunderstorm. The book will get wet.

Some more advice: Bring the book with you wherever you go. You never know when you'll be waiting - in traffic, in a restaurant, at the doctor's office, in line at the store - and waiting time is reading time. Stephen King offers this advice in his book On Writing and I have been bringing a book with me wherever I go ever since. Make the most of your time. Read, don't wait.

Does anyone else have advice on how to make the reading easier/more manageable?

Regional Dictionary Tracks The Funny Things We Say

For the linguaphiles out there, here's a fun look at the words and phrases used around the country.

YAY!

I figured it out!!! I just accepted the invitation and followed the steps! I am beyond excited right now :)

Reading place...

So I have been having trouble getting "into" Catch-22. I tried reading in bed, but that made me tired. And I tried reading at the neighbors pond, but the geese hissed and the bugs were annoying. I was on p 25. Today I tried reading on top of the dryer and now I'm on p 60 (not to mention I got 3 loads of laundry done). So glad I found a good place to do some comprehensive reading :D.

Testing??? Testing???

I am thankful today that I have a somewhat grasp at computers. If I knew absolutely nothing about them then I would definitely be lost right now. Ha ha. So I am reading Pride and Prejudice. I'm about halfway through it and I am enjoying it so far. The language that was used back then is so much different then ours now. The way we talk nowadays is so lazy compared to back then.

Wahoooo

I got this thing to work! Yessssssssssss! Thanks Mrs. C and Jill. 

I have completed a whole 4 chapters of Catch-22 so far... 

But it's going so slow that I feel like I should be half done by now. 

And what is with the completely random stories in the middle of the chapters that have to do with nothing else that is being talked about? A little confusing and a lot rude.

Literary Quiz o' the Day winner...

Caroline Pfliger is the Literary Quiz o' the Day winner with her speedy response to the literary significance of June 16th. See the entry from Wikipedia below...

Good on'ya Caroline! (Irish slang for "nice job)

Bloomsday is a commemoration observed annually on 16 June in Dublin, Ireland, and elsewhere to celebrate the life of Irish writer James Joyce and relive the events in his novel Ulysses, all of which took place on the same day in Dublin in 1904. The name derives from Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses. 16 June was the date of Joyce's first outing with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle, when they walked to the Dublin village of Ringsend.

MCC post script:
I had the good fortune to be in Dublin five years ago today for the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday. I purchased a copy of James Joyce's Ulysses (see photo above) and read 150 pages of it last summer (It's 932 pages long). I have decided to read 100 pages each Bloomsday until I am finished. At the rate I am going, it will take 9 years. Yikes...

I've read 50 pages between last night and this morning, and if I get really hooked, I may just push through until my eyes and brain get crossed with Joyce's stream-of-consciousness writing. If you look closely at the edge of Ulysses, you can see green sticky notes, indicating words I need to define. This is your teacher setting a good example :)

Happy Bloomsday and happy reading!!

Awesome

I'm totally liking this blog thing. I've been reading Catch-22 and I'm on the 7th chapter (out of 42!!!) Its not easy to get through fast because how detail-oriented Joseph Heller is but I'm hoping I can get done by the 17th. I'm really liking how odd and funny it is. I might read some more of his books.

HOORAY!!!

I AM ABLE TO POST!!! Hooray. I had a lot of frustration. In case anyone else is having problems, you can't post until you are made an admin. When MCC invites you to the group you must put in your password, click "accept invitation," and presto change-o, the "new post" button appears. The explanation of this is in this link http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=42316 .

Three cheers for AP.

Jill

Discussion Question

I am about halfway through with Catch-22 and I am still confused about part of the story. Yossarian believes that there is a dead man in his tent named Mudd. I know he was a real soldier and everything, but I don't understand that Yossarian believes he's in the tent. Am I supposed to just get that Yossarian is crazy or is there something more that I am not understanding?

Independent Book Sellers' Best Summer Reads

In the event you were looking for some good reads, this is a great list of "indie" books that probably don't get the recognition they deserve.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105172756&sc=nl&cc=bn-20090615

Katie Higgin's post

I remain extremely, extremely frustrated with this blog. I tried to 'post' something and I ended up doing something entirely wrong and I accidentally created my own blog, I honestly have no idea. Then I tried to comment on one of the posts to see if that'd be easier, well it kept asking for a URL and I still have not written anything on the page. One would think that I could figure this out but it is completely foreign to me.

I will say though that I have started Catch 22. I'm only in the beginning and the introduction of the characters is a bit to handle. Sticky notes are already flying all over the place with character details. I can be very detail oriented sometimes and I'm moving really slow through this book. I'll keep with it though.

Test Post?

I think I have figured out how to make a post...yay. I started with Catch 22, mostly because I didn't feel like reading a romantic book yet. It's going rather slowly, but it is quite humorous. I wasn't sure if he was insane, or if my interpretation of the book was due to my lack of sleep in the past 24 hrs. So far I like it :)

Posting vs. Commenting

There seems to be some confusion with the whole "posting" vs. "commenting" issue. If you comment on what someone has already posted, that is a "comment" A comment is just as good as a post (in my opinion) because it demonstrates that you are logging onto the blog and commenting successfully.

To create a post: On the main page of the blog, just above the orange title box, there is a gray link that reads "New Post." Once you click on it, a new window will appear. You should create a title for your posting and then proceed to type in the text box. You can make things bold, italicize, or type them in a fun color. Once you are finished, spell check (just to be sure), and click on the orange button at the bottom left "Publish Post"

I've heard from a handful already - Nicole, Charlie, Andrea, and Jill - and I hope to hear from the rest in the near future. Whether you comment or post, either way is fine. The posts show up with the title in bold and underlined - the comments show up in small print below a post indicating how many people have commented on a post.

If you are still having trouble, shoot me an email and I will try to help you out.

Test Post

I started reading Catch 22. I had a feeling that book would be the toughest to read and I wanted to, in a way, "get it out of the way." I think it's very humurous and I'm slowly getting through it.

Test Post

I'm composing this at 2:19 am because I have recently acquired a sleep cycle akin to that of a meth addict in a zombie apocalypse. As of late my life has been increasingly morbid resulting from my parent-enforced lock down status--everyday I feel more and more like Andy Dufrane.

That said, I am eager to exploit this blogging opportunity to employ some of my ever increasing free time amidst my excruciating solitary confinement.

Problem solved...?

I enabled everyone who gave me an email address to contribute to the blog. You should have received an email that allows you to post on the blog. Please try a "test post" when you get a chance. Let me know if this still doesn't work for you.

Tiny little hiccup...

Let's hope the rain goes away so we can see sunsets like this more often!

I emailed Mr. Noll, our friendly computer/tech wizard at the high school, about our blog and he said he was having trouble posting a message with his bridgmanschools.com teacher email address. He said he had no problems with his Gmail email, so that makes me wonder if any of you are having similar problems. I'm going to see if this little hiccup can be corrected, but I'm hoping that as you post your "test posts" (...hint hint...) I will be able to see who can post and who cannot.

Bridgman AP, we have a blog!

Ok....I'm not all that sure if I've done this right, but I think we have an AP blog. If you are reading this - SUCCESS! I hope this is a way for us to stay connected through the summer and for each of you to offer your comments, observations, raise questions, basically check in to let the rest of us know how things are going for you.

I am very excited to have 25 students taking AP next fall. Hurrah!!

If you have any problems or concerns during the summer (not sure if AP is for you, struggling with one of the books, not positive you like reading enough to take this course...etc....) please communicate with me as soon as you can.

I want to hear your comments - how the reading is going, which book you started with, which characters you like/dislike/or are indifferent toward. Feel free to post comments and reply to comments as you wish, but please keep the content positive and appropriate (PG-13ish appropriate)

Happy summer and happy reading. Let the blogging begin!