YALIT/Crit

Congratulations Karen

Congratulations Karen, on your recent achievement and thanks for a great semester!

Thanks for the Sweets!

Thank you again, Karen, for being so kind as to bring us pie to celebrate Keturah on Thursday. We all really appreciated it. :)

And an even bigger thanks for sharing your personal story and struggles with censorship. We all appreciate your willingness to be so candid with us about something that is so unbelievably unjust but, sadly, could be something any one of us could face in the future. I can't wait to hear the rest of your story next week!

Seminar

Hi, Joe,

I will be in your seminar , and please count me in. Thanks. Li

Thanks Karen!

The lecture with Azar Nafisi was great! Joe and I truly enjoyed listening to her. Joe and I both agree that Nafisi truly embraces a pedagogy of possibility and a global critical literacy for all mankind. One of the highlights for me was when she said "poetry is a violence upon language." How profound! When Nafisi was asked about her fondest memories, she said that they were the times she had with her students. We were fortunate to be able to get a copy of Reading Lolita in Tehran. We were looking forward to coffee at the Mission restaurant afterward, but they were just closing when we got there. We walked for blocks in the rain, looking for a place that was still open, but the streets were deserted. Even Drunkin Donuts was closed.

Bruce! Bruce! Bruce!

Ok...now I  am charged with praising Mr. Coville, without making the blog anyomore redundant than it already is.  Might be hard.  First of all, Bruce is great.  Just an inspiration from top to bottom, if I am doing what he's doing in 25 years, I'll be thrilled.  And not just because he is going to be a rich, rich man very soon (as Ray wisely pointed out)...I mean come on, English teacher, acclaimed author, entrepreneur, that just about does it right there, oh wait father and husband, Yep, there we go.  Also, kudos to Karen for getting him to come talk with us, the guy is so clearly a pro at public speaking, I'm sure he usually gets paid a pretty penny to do what he did for us.  I also feel like that we got kind of the full tour: speeches, Q & A, book recommendations, acting classes, words of wisdom (about teaching and writing and business and life), dramatic poetry readings, free stuff, humor, I mean come on.  The fact that we are able to get that kind of presentation, in our own classroom!! is pretty fantastic.  Sincerest Thank yous to Bruce Coville, human being extraordinaire, and to Karen for pleasantly surprising a group of folks who were just starting to figure you out. 

Many thanks to Bruce and Karen!

I'd like to extend a warm thank you to Bruce Coville for visiting our class yesterday and sharing his brilliant work with us. Each of us is without a doubt enlightened by the exciting things Full Cast Audio is doing. I couldn't wait to listen to "Am I Blue" and "Old Glory" during my commute this morning, and I can confirm that it made my morning. Now I can't wait to share them with some of my younger family member who happen to be reluctant readers that I know will fall in love with the stories and the medium of the audiobook.

And thanks to you, Karen, for always working so hard to introduce us to innovators and great thinkers like Bruce!

Thank you Bruce!

Thank you Bruce for the wonderful presentation! I just finished listening to "Am I Blue?" and I can't begin to say how much I enjoyed it! It is revolutionary! I think that everyone should hear it, it is life-changing! It is too bad that we all couldn't have wish number three at least once a week. We could bring back "Blue Sundays" in an entirely different way!

I too, have had my limelight in the recording industry, but it was very fleeting. Still, I think that I was better than Sanjaya. Karen mentioned that I should share a link to my "wonderful "writing and my poetry with you. She is too kind. However, I must say it is better than my singing.

Bruce Coville

That was an interesting presentation and audio books may be the "newest wave" in young adult literature. It's possible that Coville may have "struck gold" in being an early pioneer in this industry and maybe one day, he will be a very rich man that many of us will only get a chance to see while watching the "idiot box" or televison.

What I found to be most interesting concerning Coville's presentation was when he talked about the recording aspect of the job; reason being is that I have recorded of few things myself and the time and preparation that goes into something like that, well it's unexplainable. The same thing can be said about musicians and how their voices are the sole components of what they do, similar to that of audio book actors. Sometimes their voices and words may not be "good enough" for the first recording, so they may have to do take after take after take until the audio sounds as perfect as it possibly can. It will be interesting in hearing the Cd which he gave us thanks to professor Stearns.

Thanks Amanda!

Amanda, your facilitation of the Twilight lit circle made it really groovy. I agree that Twilight wasn't an entirely thought provoking critical read and much of it was "gratuitous fluff." I guess that everything can't be a thought provoking critical read. Teens love gratuitous fluff and so do adults, although some of us might be hesitant to admit it. I guess we need to examine texts sometimes for their coolness and fun. What would life be without fun? …anyway, here are some links to some fun stuff…

About the origins of Bram Stoker's Dracula… (Read the article: BRINGING DRACULA BACK TO LIFE and pay close attention to the two paragraphs beginning with "Stoker grew up in Dublin during the same time as Oscar Wilde…") I found this to be wary interesting blah-ha-ha!

The Dead Travel Fast

Li/Steve, Thank You!

I just want to say a thank you this morning to Li and Steve, our discussion facilitators. Steve says it best in his post below: there's just so much to say about this book one feels like one is at the State Fair and wanting to go on all the rides at once. Well, that latter part is my analogy such as it is.

Li and Steve's late last night posts are terrific. Do read them carefully. Next week I plan to ask us to participate for a time in two smaller circles with Li and Steve facilitating one of each. That way there will be more opportunity to focus talk on topics of interest in the smaller circle and there is more "air" time for more people. It's very different to have a conversation with 5 or 6 other people than with a dozen other people.

I've added this new category because it's nice to have a home to put our thanks. Use this category for any reason you have this semester to thank any or all of our teachers in (or out of!) 619.

So feel free to use this category freely!!!