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Archive for the ‘Language and Literature’ Category

Reviewed and Recommended: Cloak, by James Gough

Posted in Language and Literature, tagged , , , , , on February 9, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

I have a secret.  It’s James Gough’s young adult fantasy novel Cloak.  It’s a terrific read and a solid entry in a trending genre but, thanks to Gough being a new author and Cloak being put out by a small press, you’ve never heard of it.  It’s a secret I’d love to have more people [...]

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More Stephen King-Inspired Media About Teens

Posted in Language and Literature, tagged , , , on February 9, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

A few days ago, I noted that the plot for the movie Chronicle is very similar to the plot for Carrie.  That reminded me of another similarity. I read The Hunger Games a couple of years ago and really liked it.  But the basic template was not new. A tyrannical government in a future dystopia [...]

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The Value of Term Papers

Posted in Education, Language and Literature, tagged , , , on January 25, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

The brilliant professor Mark Bauerlein scores yet another direct hit in a recent post about the value of those old-fashioned writing assignments: In my classes I include both types of assignments, short, one-page writings and longer 7-page papers (I rarely go over 10 pages these days, but I try to make the class have 25-30 [...]

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Why I Never Bothered Finishing Eragon

Posted in Language and Literature, tagged , , , , , on January 12, 2012 | 5 Comments »

I’ve started many books which I’ve stopped reading before they were finished–some after only a few chapters, others when I was halfway through–but there has only been one where I read far more than half and then decided that I had wasted enough time on it.  That was Eragon; I only had 50 pages left when I [...]

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2011: My Year In Books

Posted in Language and Literature, tagged , , on December 29, 2011 | 2 Comments »

I only read 26 books in 2011, but on the plus side, this year had the highest overall quality of any year yet–by far the most perfect tens.  And in my own defense, some of these were pretty long.  Mostly, this makes me realize how little I’ve blogged about my reading this year–I used to write [...]

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Reviewed: Truth Barriers

Posted in Language and Literature, tagged , , , on December 8, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Reading this old collection of poetry by this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature showed me pretty clearly just how little poetry I read.  It took me a while to get into the rhythms of the technique, and even though the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer is extraordinarily lucid (his accessibility is often praised [...]

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The Oxford English Dictionary Has a Blog!

Posted in Language and Literature, tagged on November 17, 2011 | 2 Comments »

Doing some research this morning for an upcoming vocabulary assignment my classes are doing, I found that the Oxford English Dictionary has a delightfully logophillic blog, OxfordWords.  The most recent offerings appear to be about invented languages, word origins, eponyms, and the persistence of cassette tapes. Has this blog already been added to my link [...]

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Punctuation Riddle

Posted in Language and Literature, tagged , , on November 10, 2011 | 3 Comments »

This one was in Eats, Shoots & Leaves; punctuate such that it makes sense: Every lady in this land Has twenty nails on each hand Five and twenty on hands and feet And this is true without deceit  

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Scrutiny in Teaching Writing

Posted in Education, Language and Literature, tagged , , , , on November 5, 2011 | 3 Comments »

A post at National Review, and some great follow up comments from readers, offers some great ideas about teaching writing: The only way to address writing is to give line-by-line feedback. We cannot assume that students know what good writing looks like. Every time students pass a written assignment at any level with subpar writing, such [...]

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Animal Farm Shrugged

Posted in Language and Literature, Politics and Society, tagged , , , , , on November 5, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

I just read chapter seven of Animal Farm, George Orwell’s allegory for the disastrous early years of the Soviet Union, and noted this passage: One Sunday Squealer announced that the hens, who had just come in to lay again, must surrender their eggs….When the hens heard this, they raised a terrible outcry….they protested that to take away [...]

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Words and Music

Posted in Arts, Language and Literature, tagged , , , , , on October 20, 2011 | 1 Comment »

A fascinating and wonderful article ran in the Guardian last week.  The author eloquently ruminates over the parallel evolution of literature and music in the 19th century, and laments a perceived divergence since the 20th.  His descriptions of the intertwined nature of the two media are divine: To read Molly Bloom’s great gush of resigned affirmation [...]

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Professor Huston Performs and Lectures on YouTube

Posted in Education, Language and Literature, tagged , , , , , , on October 1, 2011 | 3 Comments »

Ever since I started blogging, I’ve wanted to do some kind of podcasting: I’ve always been told I have a pretty good voice, and I try to have an energetic, engaging classroom presence.  Therefore, I thought I’d post some audio of me at work, to see if anyone else out there might like it or [...]

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The Cold Darwinian Erasers of Editorial Evolution

Posted in Education, Humor, Language and Literature, tagged , , , , , , on September 21, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

As writers, we wield the cold Darwinian erasers of editorial evolution.  Scrutinizing the compositional gene pool, we are a vehicle of natural selection, finding the weakest words and the unfit phrases.  We exercise the instruments of the delete keys at our fingertips, and thus remove the dead weight that threatens to hold back the success of [...]

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Crucible Joke

Posted in Education, Humor, Language and Literature, tagged , , , , on September 8, 2011 | 1 Comment »

This year, I’m starting my American Lit Honors classes with The Crucible, the classic play about the Salem Witch Trials.  I usually end my introduction to it with a joke like this: “So this is a story about desperate, repressed, stressed-out people crowded into a little village in a hostile wilderness, whose desire for excitement [...]

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Homer’s Iliad For Halloween

Posted in Language and Literature, tagged , , , , , on September 1, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Homer’s Iliad is great for the Halloween season.  I’ve been reading it, and I’m trying to finish so I can start on some easy, stress-relieving scary stories as summer ends, but I’m realizing now just how appropriate this ancient epic poem is for the new season. I’m in Book 15 out of 24, and several [...]

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