College Lit Independent Reading

1st semester: Give me some evidence that you are thinking or dreaming deeply about something that has to do with literature. Choose any of the following, or write something commensurate. 250 words, at least. Be sure the document is in your "Reading Log" folder by the due date. Always suggest and define a few cool vocabulary words somehow in the process.

Possibilities:

1. Recommend something you've read to me or to someone else. Get very specific: what is particular about the text? why would it appeal to me, or to whoever you're writing this to. Pay attention to audience. Share it with that person, too.

2. Respond to a reading recommendation someone else has shared with you. Make some sort of intelligent commentary on his/her ideas. Relate it to other text(s).

3. Do a traditional reading log, as detailed below.

4. Go on a rant about anything to do with the author's words, work, or life.

5. Relate any literature you're reading to any event out in public or in your own experience. Examine what's deep about it.

6. Write some fanfic: use an author's characters or plot elements and create more.

7. Comment on the fanfic you wrote last time, or on the fanfic a friend shares with you. How'd it go? How's it compare to the original?

8. Write a journal entry or a letter in the voice of a character from a book you're reading.

9. Comment on your own or a friend's #8.

10. Make a piece of visual art about something you're reading. Scan it, or photograph it... get it into your "Reading Log" folder with a paragraph of explanation.

Feel free to suggest other possibilities!

2nd semester:

Taking it up a notch... Give me at least three hundred words of analysis on the work you're reading. NO PLOT SUMMARY. Do ONE of the following, and don't do any one of these more than twice. Fit your quotes and cite appropriately.

1. What most surprises (delights, angers, saddens, amazes) you about this text? How does it manifest in the text? What is the author's purpose in creating this emotion? How'd s/he do it?

2. Draw a deep connection between this work and any other great work of literature or visual art. Get into the specifics of how the two works are related. Does one respond in some way to the other?

3. Focus on one particular, climactic moment in the text. How does this passage illuminate the themes or purpose of the work as a whole?

4. Explain how one critic is deeply wrong about the text.

5. Discuss the way the author is using some opposition, contrast, dialectic, irony or other device to accomplish a particular purpose in a text.

Traditional reading log:

Respond to your reading with an entry in our shared folder, as the calendar indicates:

1. Title, author, page numbers.
2. A paragraph summary.
3. A sentence from the book and a paragraph (at least) on what fascinated you about this sentence.
4. A paragraph (at least) on how your life relates to what’s going on in the book. What deep thoughts are you having because of the book?
5. A paragraph (at least) on the deep meaning you take from this section, with discussion of how the author got you to think and feel differently.
6. A list of five awesome words that are new to you. Define each word. Circle the one you want to teach to us.

Your entry must be shared with me in GoogleDrive on or before the due date.

Sample entry:

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, pages 3-18.

This first chapter of the novel introduces Sasha, who is describing her first and last date with Alex. It opens in the women’s bathroom of a hotel where Alex and Sasha have gone for drinks. Sasha sees a purse and decides to steal the wallet. She and Alex run into the frantic victim of the theft, and, pretending to search the bathroom, Sasha returns the wallet. Later, she steals a personal note from Alex’s wallet. Throughout, we keep returning to Sasha’s therapy session, where Coz, the psychologist, presses her to accept responsibility and empathy in relation to her many thefts. The chapter ends in silence: we feel that Sasha has no real intention to heal.

Sasha has been completely bored by her date. “Postwallet, however, the scene tingled with mirthful possibility” (4). I love that sentence, especially the made-up word that begins it, as if the wallet were a moment in time. She is suddenly excited… and by what? Her secret crime. Maybe we’ve all experienced that, the adrenaline of getting away with something. But stealing functions for her exactly like a narcotic: the same short-term buzz and euphoria, making everything, even her boring date, momentarily rosy; the same addictive, self-destructive consequence, long-term self-loathing. In this sentence, Egan shows us that high so quickly! Of course it will lead to despair.

The chapter is about good intentions, about the urge to turn one’s life around without the will to do it. Sasha dream of being a record producer, of living a life that means something to her, but she keeps falling short and hating herself for it. Do we all struggle with the temptation not to follow through on the work it takes to make our life great? I worked out this morning, but left after fewer sprints than I wanted to hold myself to. I want to write the experience of the theater company I directed, and never quite get around to starting. Well, I justify, there are all these other projects: teaching, taking care of family, and so on… Is the lack of time excuse simply self-indulgence like Sasha’s?

Doesn't it seem as though "the pursuit of happiness" in America is all tied up in ownership, possessions, material wealth? Egan is using this first-person confessional narrative almost as cautionary tale, social critique: Sasha doesn't know why she steals, but her addiction to theft has only partly to do with the adrenaline of the action. It's things. In her apartment, we see the pile of stuff she's lifted from people. Not that she uses any of it. It sits there. How strange to think about how much time we spend accumulating things--shopping, browsing, gifting, lusting after--things that sit on shelves or under the bed or in a basement, things that we so easily could live without. The chapter is full of lists, until each item in the list loses all meaning. How strange to think about the hoarding disorder people develop in our culture: stuff. Free stuff, if possible, or at least cheap. Or even expensive stuff: we don't just want a car that gets us from point A to B, but a symbol of our wealth, position, accomplishment. What emptiness are we trying to fill with this urge to acquire stuff? And this is the American Dream, right? success equals stuff: a nice house, nice car(s), our children leading a life of even more stuff than we had. Egan must despise that view... certainly we are disgusted by this glimpse into Sasha's--and by extension our?--values.

Tergiversate: to go back and forth between two options

Fugacious: hot, humid, and sweaty in atmosphere

Tenuous: flimsy, weak, slender

Mirthful: Full good humor, laughter

sesquipedalian: one who uses/enjoys long words

Grading scale:

•20 points for 80+ pages of reading AND awesome insights into the book—and life. Vocab done.

•18 points for 60+ pages of reading AND 4+ strong thoughtful paragraphs. Vocab done.

•16 points for 40+ pages of reading AND solid thought in four paragraphs. Vocab done.

•14 points for 20+ pages of reading AND four coherent paragraphs. Vocab done.

•12 points for 10+ pages of reading AND some comments. Vocab done?

•0 points for no reading and/or no entry