Legend of the Mermaid - Blog for English 493

Learning Letter -- Blog Post #15 I began this class uncertain of what it entailed outside of the obvious that could be inferred from the course title. Still, I found myself very intrigued by the book talks and the scale of the unit plan, even if the latter made me rather nervous. The idea of book talks, as well as the blog  were exciting to me, mostly because I hadn't done a book report in some time and I had enjoyed doing them as a kid and also because I've never had a blog before and I wanted to see what it was like. I can easily say the Book Talks and the weekly blog posts were my favorite part of the course. My first book talk I was nervous even after I read over the requirements, because I wasn't sure how to place five minutes worth of information about one book into a presentation. I was worried it would be too long, so I zipped through it in my haste. The second I felt a lot more confidence in. I was less concerned about explaining the entire summary, and more so a...

Edgar Allan Poe -- Blog Post #14 "The Purrloined Letter," "The Haunted Palace", & "Fairy-land" Edgar Allan Poe's work has long been used as standard reading for the seventh and eighth grade. Though he's mostly know for his work Gothic horror, I've always been fond of his detective short stories revolving around C. Auguste Dupin. Though I've read several of his works, I didn't really appreciate them until I began reading them as an adult since they had advanced vocabulary and the use of Latin and French, at least in the detective series of short stories, was a common occurrence. Nevertheless, it's great that Poe is taught in classrooms nationwide and definitely think higher grades should still take a look at his work as I found it more understandable the older I became. Mostly because my lexicon of words grew as well so reading it felt less heavy and more forgiving. What I chose to read this week was "The Purrloined Let...

Wiesel's Night -- Blog Post #13 Wiesel's Night is a non-fiction autobiographical account of Elie Wiesel's time in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald's concentration camps. Admittedly, I do no read non-fiction novels very often. This book and Krakauer's Into the Wild surprised me in its content. Not only was it engaging and inciteful, it was more compelling due to being based on true events. Wiesel's in particular was a translation of his account. The loss of his family members and the degradation of his humanity while being imprisoned in these camps being the heaviest reading to bare. As Wiesel described his father, mother, and younger sister with such care, that they felt real - certainly because they were real. I think I'd personally teach this in a classroom. This topic, though graphic and mature, is just as important as other historical talking points that can be analyzed and discussed like slave narratives and national documents. Much like The Diary of An...

Krakauer's Into The Wild -- Blog Post #12 Krakauer's Into the Wild's style was not something I've read previously. Where each chapter is a location and everything is piece together and the movement of the book is a swift back and forth between the life of McCandless, his journey Alaska and the author's personal musings and understandings of the events that transpired as well as their own stories meshed in at the end. The characters were dynamic - particularly the turmoil between Chris and his parents Walt and Billie and his close relationship with his sister Carine. The fact that this was a true story made it harder for me to read, because this was someone's brother and son, and not a fictitious character re-imagined in a world that centered around them and their conflicts. Still, Chris had conflicts of his own which he dealt with in his own way and with his own wayward philosophy. The parallels the other drummed up not only with himself but with several othe...