This morning I'm going to be serving some of those delicious biscuits from Pillsbury. They start out as individual frozen hockey pucks but soon they're delicious, flaky goodness. Sorry, no gravy this morning, just butter and blackberry jam.
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All the English period pieces I've been watching on Netflix (Downton Abbey, Catherine Cookson series and others) had me thinking about some required reading we had in high school. Do they still have required reading?
The upperclassmen would fill our hearts with dread, complaining bitterly about the awful book we'd be forced to read sophomore year. For a year and a half the sense of dread built on itself until the day came when the English teacher announced, "Your assigned reading is the book Silas Marner".
We dread, we read. Guess what? I didn't think the book was awful at all but I was always annoyed when teachers pressed us to find hidden meanings in everything. Sometimes a duck is just a duck!
Do you remember any books that were required reading in high school?
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Speaking of reading, I have noticed a crazy trend in publishing. Keep in mind that I worked in the publishing industry for years and spent many, many hours proofreading.
I just finished an interesting book called "Those Who Save Us", which was about Germans during the Holocaust.
The odd thing about this book is that there are plenty of conversations between the characters but not a single quotation mark anywhere! It was very odd.
My neighbor mentioned that he just read a book written by an author that didn't use commas.
Is this a trend? Have you noticed punctuation falling off the face of the earth?
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That's all I've got this morning but I'd love to hear about your weekend. Hopefully it was more exciting than mine. I cleaned, dusted and sewed.
Thanks for stopping by.
6 comments:
Assigned reading in high school... two that I remember were Julius Caesar, and a very weird book called The Lion. What I really loved was American Literature. I fell in love my junior year, with Thoreau and Emerson.
It sounds like you had a very productive weekend. I'll bet you sewed up some beautiful things.
My weekend was very eclectic. A beach day, lots of yard work around the house, and church. And last night we indulged in veggie burritos from a little Mexican market that cooks up the best food. Oh my goodness it's always so amazingly delicious.
The weekend concluded last evening with us sitting in bed watching some old TV shows on Netflix, while I fooled around with some white tulle and some small purple beads. Just making a couple of my weird little poufy ideas come to life.
It was a good weekend. I hope that you're on the mend and that the bronchitis is clearing up!
Have you noticed the misspelled words, too? I'm always wondering why you would have misspellings with the advantage of Spell Check. There are grammar checks out there also.
How's the big B treating you? My Doc wanted me to get a Whooping Cough shot! "There's a lot of that going around". I'm not out in the public much, so I didn't take it. Maybe that's what you've been having?
Loved the bun, Hun.
Hugs!
A biscuit? No no with your interest in all these British dramas you must call it a 'scone'. (if you're feeling slightly posh you can pronounce it like 'stone').
Books; One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, To Kill a Mockingbird, MacBeth, In Country, some more obscure Australian ones.
I remember reading A Separate Peace and The Scarlet Letter.
The fun part of my weekend was taking a class at the local quilt shop on how to make a fabric basket. The unfun part was taking my mom to the hospital - admitted with some odd infection involving spikey fevers and breathing difficulties. Luckily, she's doing better each day.
We certainly had required reading. Silas Marner was one of them along with The Scarlet Letter, and too much Greek mythology. =0) I also thought it was crazy that we always had to look for the hidden meanings or statements on society. I like Edgar Allen Poe, but like I tell my kids, the hidden meaning in his work was only that he was stoned. I'm certain that 100 years from now schools will be studying Stephen King the same way. lol
Suzanne, I was one of those creatures who assigned required reading!! A high school English teacher! Over the years, I assigned quite a few, many of those mentioned here in the comments. Only once did I assign Silas Marner; I liked it, but the students - eehhh, not so much. Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, My Antonia, All Creatures Great and Small are a few. The most current title I assigned was Glass Castle which they all loved!
As far as digging for symbolic meaning, I always used to tell my students that we English teachers could ruin a good book better than anyone!
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