The habit of reading is integral to your learning.
Create that habit for yourself.
When do you structure it into each day?
Read
Read at least ten pages each week.
Read at least a book each quarter.
Read as much as you want.
Read any books you want to read, within these guidelines:
• Over 100 pages of text.
• Text, not pictures.
• Physical, portable: not simply online. (Kindle, Nook are fine)
Respond to your reading with an entry in our shared folder, as the calendar indicates:
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?
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 3+ strong thoughtful paragraphs. Vocab done.
•16 points for 40+ pages of reading AND solid thought in three paragraphs. Vocab done.
•14 points for 20+ pages of reading AND three 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