Why did you choose this book? What were your expectations? Why did you expect what you did? How is the book living up to your expectations?

The summer before I started sixth grade, I went to Manhattan for a week to stay with my aunt and uncle. They invite each of their nieces and nephews to visit them when they are about twelve or thirteen, and it was my turn to go. My uncle wanted to find lots of fun things to show me in the city, and one of them was a tenement museum. We visited this tenement that had been preserved and had actors playing the residents. They designed the inside to look like it was inhabited by a lot of families, and the actors described tenement life to us. It was absolutely fascinating, and it left me with an extremely romanticized vision of what life was like back then. One story that I found particularly interesting was how in order to get gas into the tenement, the tenants dropped a coin into a slot in the machine and the gas would be pumped in. At the end of the month, the landlord would collect the money. Most of the tenants couldn't afford the gas, so they would slice potatoes into the size and shape of the coins and drop those down the slot. The problem with that was that at the end of the month the landlord would find the potato slices. So what they figured out was to cut ice into the right shape and use that. That way they could get gas, but the evidence would melt and the landlord would never know. I thought the creativity of the tenants was fascinating, but I also recognized the horrible situations they must have been in to be forced to come up with schemes like this to do simple things like cook and heat their homes.

The Christmas after I visited him, my uncle gave me this book. I was really excited to read it, but then I read the first few pages and realized it was going to be really hard. So I waited a few years, and now I think I can actually read it without falling asleep. Its still hard though, since it was written in the late 1890s. And even though I'm interested in the content, I still find the book really boring, but I'm trying!

Does the author seem to make any particular effort to compel you to read the book? If so, what? How effective is this strategy?

I finished A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare and am now reading How the Other Half Lives by Jacob A. Riis.

Jacob Riis definitely wanted people to read his book because he was passionate about its content, and he was passionate about its content because he had lived it. He was born in Ribe, Denmark and immigrated to New York when he was very young. He was one of the lucky ones, however, and was able to find work and avoid the worst tenements. His first-hand experience with the tenements came from his work as a police reporter at New York's police headquarters on Mulberry Street which is the "heart of the Lower East Side slum district." This familiarity lead to his usage of his journalism to let the public know of the horrible conditions in the New York Tenements.

His main tool to compel people to read his book is his photography. When he wrote How the Other Half Lives, he was already well-known for his photographic skills. His usage of flash photography was a very useful tool in photographing the horrible conditions of the tenements. He emphasizes in his book how dark the tenements were; the inner rooms received no light or ventilation. Almost every page of his book has some sort of photograph or other visual aid to help the reader grasp his revulsion towards the conditions of the tenements, whether it is a floor plan of one of the tenements, a picture of the residents, or a chart with mortality rates in New York vs. the tenements alone.

A Midsummer Night's Dream- did I actually understand any of it?

I still feel awkward blogging about Shakespeare. I feel like Shakespeare would not approve of the idea of blogs.

I think what I need to do is sit down with an expert on Shakespeare and read A Midsummer Night's Dream again, line by line, so that I truly understand what I am reading. In just trying to sit down and read it, I went too fast to even begin to comprehend any of what I was reading. Even when I understood it word by word, I know that I didn't get anything out of it other than the superficial meaning and basic plot line. Of course there were editors' notes on the side of each page, but they only told me what specific words and phrases meant, not what they suggested on a deeper level. The problem with reading Shakespeare is that since the average reader doesn't understand Elizabethan English very well, we have to rely on editors and other experts to tell us what it means. This removes any chance we have of coming up with our interpretation. The language barrier makes us dependent on others to enlighten us, and there is no way for us to come up with our own meaning. When we read modern poetry, we at least understand what all of the words we are reading mean. Every person can read a modern poem, no matter how profound, and come up with their own meaning. When we read Shakespearean poetry and plays, we rely on the editor to give us the meaning, making it his or hers and not our own.

A Midsummer Night's Dream- what is love?

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, the concept of love is played with in many different ways. Theseus's love for Hippolyta seems more drawn by physical attraction and desire. The opening scene of the play shows his impatience for their wedding night:

THESEUS

Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour

Draws on apace. Four happy days bring in

Another moon. But, O, methinks how slow

This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires

Like to a stepdame or a dowager

Long withering out a young man's revenue.

This impatience for consummating their love proves how love can often be fueled only by physical attraction. Shakespeare continues this theme of love's superficiality with the love triangles that occur within the four lovers. First, both Lysander and Demetrius are in love Hermia, but then with the magical flower both men fall in love Helena. This makes it seem like the objects of the men's love are interchangeable. Their love for Helena was just as strong as their love for Hermia, so how could one be true and one false?

Shakespeare's third display of love's superficiality and meaninglessness occurs when Hippolyta falls in love with Nick Bottom with the head of an ass. Hippolyta falls instantly and simultaneously out of love with Oberon and in love with Bottom. The idea of someone being in love with a man with the head of donkey proves that love is arbitrary and meaningless.

Shakespeare counters all of this at the end of the play, with the marriage of the three couples and the reconciliation of Oberon and Titania. Lysander and Hermia are in love with each other again and Demetrius finally loves Helena. However, Lysander and Hermia were in love before the turmoil in the forest, but Demetrius is still under the power of the herb. The audience is led to believe that all of the couples live happily ever after, even though the love between Lysander and Hermia is "real" and the love between Demetrius and Helena was fabricated. Ultimately, Shakespeare tells us that even though love can be superficial and arbitrary, it still has the power to be true and lasting.

Pay attention to word choice--how is the author shaping your judgement by the words he/she chooses

I finished Alive by Piers Paul Read. If you haven't read it yet, I would highly recommend it. I am now tackling A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare.

I feel awkward analyzing Shakespeare's word choice. First of all, it's really hard to tell what he's saying. Second of all, in my copy of the book, the editor sometimes says something to the effect of "we're not really sure what he meant by this, he could have meant this, or he could have meant this totally opposite thing." What the kindly editors have provided me with, however, is the fact that Shakespeare sometimes has the character of Nick Bottom use a totally wrong word. I feel that he does this to inform the audience of Nick Bottom's personality. He thinks he is a really interesting and knowledgeable person and that everyone loves hearing him talk. He tries to use intelligent sounding words and fails miserably. Someone in Shakespeare's time would definitely have caught his misuse of words immediately, whereas someone in my position with very little experience reading Shakespeare has to read the passage, go to the other page with the editor's notes to try to figure out what we just read, and then be told that Bottom used incorrect wordage. The effect is somewhat lost. Of course, I still realize what the audience is supposed to note, but I don't get the "oh haha, look at Bottom, he doesn't know how to talk" effect.

Let's discuss the issue of anthropophagy.

Anthropophagy is defined as "the eating of human flesh; cannibalism." The survivors of the crash of the Fairchild in the Andes succumbed to anthropophagy as a necessity. Had they not eaten the bodies of the already dead, they would have died weeks before they were rescued. The Roman-Catholic church, of which all of the passengers were members, does not consider anthropophagy in extremis a sin. The young men did not kill any of their fellow passengers, they were not guilty of any crime. They had two choices: eat the bodies of the dead in order to survive, or not. If they took the latter course, they all would have died. As Dr. Valeta, the father of Carlos Valeta, one of the boys who did not survive, put it, "We are glad, what is more, that there were forty-five of them, because this helped at least sixteen return. I'd like to say, furthermore, that I knew from the very first moment what has been confirmed today. As a doctor I understood at once that no one could have survived in such a place and under such conditions without resort to courageous decisions. Now that I have confirmation of what has happened I repeat: Thank God that the forty-five were there, for sixteen homes have regained their children." Piers Paul Read sums it up in one sentence: "If all forty-five had survived the accident and avalanche, all forty-five would now be dead."

What made me proud of the human race was this: only once was the possibility of murder mentioned, and that was by a story-hungry reporter who suggested that the avalanche was made up by the stronger boys as a cover-up for murdering the weaker ones. None of the parents or survivors ever suggested that they would have begun murdering each other for food had supplies run out, which they nearly had towards the end. In adventure novels about ship wrecks and the like, people always start killing each other for food. In reading Alive, I have new faith in humanity that even under extreme circumstances, people don't just resort to murder. In fact, many people won't even consider it.

What passage(s) do you particularly like in the book? (Copy parts of them in your journal and then write your answer to these questions) Why?

I know I used this prompt last time, but there's another passage I want to talk about.

The young men have been trapped for 59 days and, understandably, tempers are erupting. Canessa, nicknamed Muscles because of his stubbornness, is especially cranky.

"...Canessa lay around 'conserving his energy' or insisted on treating the boils that Roy Harley had developed on his legs. He also quarreled with the younger boys....He even quarreled with his great friend and admirer Alvaro Mangino... he told Mangino to move his leg. Mangino said that it had been cramped all night and so he would not. Canessa shouted at Mangino. Mangino cursed Canessa. Canessa lost his temper and grabbed Mangino by the hair. He was about to hit him but simply threw Alvaro back against the wall of the plane instead.

"'Now you're not my friend any more,' Mangino said, sobbing."

This childish phrase coming from the mouth of a grown man made me want to cry. It made me so, so sad to imagine these men, stuck in the fuselage of an airplane in the middle of the Andes Mountains, start crying and shouting childish insults at each other. They are just so weak and so tired and so sick of being with only each other for nearly two months that they are beginning to act like children. They have watched their best friends die and surrender their bodies to the survivor's lives, they have heard on the radio that their parents have given up searching for them, and now they are fighting with each other. It would make me want to act like a baby, too.

What passage(s) do you particularly like in the book? (Copy parts of them in your journal and then write your answer to these questions) Why?

The time period when the Fairchild crashed was very politically divided. The young men that survived the crash were from opposing social and political sides, so they avoided any sort of discussion of politics in order to avoid arguments.

"The safest topic of conversation was agriculture because many were training or already working as farmers and ranchers or else had a farm or ranch in the family. Páez, Francois, and Sabella all had properties in the same part of the interior, and Inciarte and Echavarren both ran dairy farms.

"Occasionally Pedro Algorta would feel excluded from the group because he knew nothing of country matters. Seeing this, the farmers would try and draw him in. They planned a Regional Consortium of Agricultural Experimentation in which Pedro was to have charge of the rabbits. They would all live together on some land that Carlitos owned in the Coronilla in adjoining houses designed by Eduardo."

This passage reminds me of Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. Lennie and George have a dream of owning their own farm and "live off the fat o' the land." Lennie fantasized about taking care of rabbits, which would be his job. Lennie was mentally challenged and therefore not fit for any sort of intellectually challenging job, but he would be allowed to take care of rabbits. Pedro Algorta, who did not have any experience on farms, would be given the job of taking care of rabbits. Neither were fit to work on a farm, but they both were given the same job.

Does the author seem to have a friendly, unfriendly, or some other type of relationship with the audience? Why do you think so?

Piers Paul Read seems to be telling the story in a very unbiased, objective manner. His relationship with the audience is professional and businesslike. He does not put his own thoughts or feelings into his retelling of what happened in the mountains. He relies only on what the survivors have told him. Piers Paul Read has nothing to prove in writing this book, so he doesn't develop any sort of friendly/unfriendly relationship with the audience. He adds nothing of his own character to the story, so the reader doesn't develop any sort of feelings toward him. He doesn't have to be defensive in his writing. It is almost as if the sixteen survivors are writing the story through Piers Paul Read. His tone is very flat; he portrays all emotion through dialogue between the characters and observations. Somehow this does not make it unenjoyable to read. It is actually quite riveting, and I'm not exactly sure how.

Does the author state her/his purposes overtly? If so, copy the purpose in your journal and tell how well you think he/she is/does achieve it.

I finished Good Omens and am now reading Alive by Piers Paul Read.

Alive is the story of the survivors of a plane crash in the Andes in 1972. It was a plane of 45 people, consisting of an Uruguayan rugby team and their family members, along with just a few people that the team didn't know but brought along to lower the cost of the flight for everyone. Piers Paul Read does not seem to have much of a role in the story so far; he does not state why he is writing it, nor does his voice show prevalently in the retelling. His purpose is not overt, however the purpose of the sixteen survivors is stated at the beginning.

"We decided that this book should be written and the truth known because of the many rumors about what happened in the cordillera. We dedicate this story of our suffering and solidarity to those friends who died and to their parents who, at the time when we most needed it, received us with love and understanding.

Pedro Algorta, Roberto Canessa, Alfredo Delgado, Daniel Fernández, Roberto Francois, Roy Harley, José Luis Inciarte, Alvaro Mangino, Javier Methol, Carlos Páez, Fernando Parrado, Ramón Sabella, Adolfo Strauch, Eduardo Strauch, Antonio Vizintín, Gustavo Zerbino

Montevideo, October 30, 1973"

That was the survivors' goal for the book: to quell any and all rumors so that the world would know the truth about their plane crash in the Andes. I wish I knew how they came into contact with Piers Paul Read. I wonder what his interests in the story were. He doesn't tell anything about himself. Maybe later on in the book he will start to talk more about himself and his reasons for deciding to write this book.

What do you think is the definining moment for the main character/person in your book? Why?

G00d Omens doesn't really have one main character, but for the purposes of this blog I will pick Adam, the Antichrist, to be our protagonist. His defining moment is easily spotted. It happens at the end of the book, and also the end of the world. He is speaking to his gang of children, the Them, about what will happen after the Rapture. At this moment his destiny is overtaking his personality, and he doesn't really know what is coming over him. He has a plan to rebuild the world after the Apocalypse, since all of the grown ups have messed everything up. He plans to give each of his friends a corner of the world, while he himself just wants Tadfield, the small village they live in.

"'But I'll have Tadfield,' said Adam.

They stared at him.

'An', an' Lower Tadfield, and Norton, and Norton Woods--'

They still stared.

Adam's gaze dragged itself across their faces.

'They're all I've ever wanted,' he said.

They shook their heads.

'I can have 'em if I want,' said Adam, his voice tinged with sullen defiance and his defiance edged with sudden doubt. 'I can make them better, too. Better trees to climb, better ponds, better . . .'

He stopped, his ears listening in horror to the words his mouth was speaking. THe Them were backing away.

Dog put his paws over his head.

Adam's face looked like an impersonation of the collapse of empire.

'No,' he said hoarsely. 'No. Come back! I command you!'

They froze in mid-dash. . . .

Adam opened his mouth and screamed. It was a sound that a merely mortal throat should not have been able to utter; it wound out of the quarry, mingled with the storm, caused the clouds to curdle into new and unpleasant shapes. . . .

It spoke of loss, and it did not stop for a very long time.

And then it did.

Something drained away.

Adam's head tilted down again. His eyes opened.

Whatever had been standing in the old quarry before, Adam Young was standing there now. A more knowledgeable Adam Young, but Adam Young nevertheless. Possibly more of Adam Young than there had ever been before. . . . 'It's all right,' said Adam quietly. 'Pepper? Wensley? Brian? Come back here. It's all right. It's all right. I know everything now. And you've got to help me. Otherwise it's all goin' to happen. It's really all goin' to happen. It's all goin' to happen, if we don't do somethin'.'"

I might be completely misinterpreting this passage, but I think that Adam overcomes his fate. Since his birth he was destined to bring about Armageddon, and now he realizes that that isn't who he wants to be, so he has to be stronger than himself in order to do what is right and good and not what he was meant to do.

How did the opening passage of the book (first paragraph up to first chapter) lead you to anticipate the tone of the book?

The first passage of Good Omens is as follows:

"It was a nice day.

All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn't been invented yet. But clouds massing east of Eden suggested that the first thunderstorm was on its way, and it was going to be a big one."

This passage gives the setting, Eden, and lets us know that the book will have some sort of religious theme to it. However, it doesn't take itself seriously. This isn't a deep philosophical book, it's philosophical, and occasionally has lapses of depth, but always under the facade of a humorous book. It actually is hilarious. This first paragraph, even the first two sentences, set the hilarious tone for the rest of the book. "It was a nice day. All the days had been nice." Of course all the days had been nice; they're in Eden. I don't know what the term for this voice or tone is, but in my head Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman are saying "Duh" in more eloquent ways and that is their tone. They have this sort of dry humor throughout, and its hilarious. I was able to predict their tone after reading this very first passage. I love the use of the word "invented" instead of, say, "created." Invention is a scientific process, and I love the irony of using it to describe Creation. It makes me giggle.

What passage(s) do you particularly like in the book? (Copy parts of them in your journal and then write your answer to these questions) Why?

When Crowley thought that Adam was the Antichrist, he sent him a satanical hellhound suitable for the "Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness." However, Adam wasn't nearly as evil as Crowley and the rest of the underworld had hoped, and while Adam was supposed to name his pet something ominous like Killer, he instead named him Dog, a name suitable for a dog. And instead of being huge, black, and bloodthirsty, Dog was small, scruffy, and had one crooked ear, as Adam wished. The following passage is about Dog's slide from satanical hellhound to beloved family pet.

"Dog slouched along dutifully behind his Master. This wasn't, insofar as the hell-hound had any expectations, what he had imagined life would be like in the last days before Armageddon, but despite himself he was beginning to enjoy it....

Form shapes nature. There are certain ways of behavior appropriate to small scruffy dogs which are in fact welded into the genes. You can't just become small-dog-shaped and hope to stay the same person; a certain intrinsic small-dogness begins to permeate your very Being.

He'd already chased a rat. It had been the most enjoyable experience of his life....

And then there were cats, thought Dog. He'd surprised the huge ginger cat from next door and had attempted to reduce it to cowering jelly by means of the usual glowing stare and deep-throated growl, which had always worked on the damned in the past This time they earned him a whack on the nose that had made his eyes water. Cats, Dog considered, were clearly a lot tougher than lost souls, He was looking forward to a further cat experiment, which he'd planned would consist of jumping around and yapping excitedly at it. It was a long shot, but it might just work."

The last sentence of this passage caught me slightly off guard, then I bursted out laughing. I think it was the randomness yet predictability of it that I enjoyed so much. I wasn't expecting it, and yet everyone knows that that is what small dogs do around cats. It's just so simple.

What has author done to engage you, the reader, in a relationship with the books content?

Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman are hilarious together. They make characters that are believable, and the tone of the entire book is really funny. The conversations the characters have with each other are spoken in ways that are very easily imagined because they are so true to the way the characters have been set up to interact. Not only that, but the conversations like normal conversations that people have. I don't know if you feel the same, but I've noticed that conversations in many books are slightly different stylistically than conversations in everyday life. If interactions between people in the real world were recorded in books, they would be much different from what we have in literature. People in literature rarely ever mishear each other. There are never simple misunderstandings where Person A thinks that Person B said C, but really Person B said E, and Person A argues that Person B actually did say C, and it just goes on and on and can never be resolved. And this makes sense, its confusing to participate in these conversations, confusing to witness them, and it would be even more confusing to read about them without the benefit of body language or tone. But somehow Pratchett and Gaiman have successfully created realistic conversations between their characters that are simply hilarious and also believable.

In some books I have read, characters mush together in my head. The author's tone of voice shows through so much in their characters that the characters, instead of being their own entities, are merely different facets of the author's personality. Pratchett and Gaiman, perhaps because they are in fact two people rather than one, don't have this problem. Each character has their own specific tone of voice and personality that make their dialogue easily distinguishable from the others.

What am I reading now?

I finished My Dog Skip by Willie Morris and am now reading Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

My parents gave me this book for my birthday. I think they bought it because it has gotten very good reviews, which cover the front and back cover. It is about the Armaggedon, and Good and Evil's struggle to make sure that everything goes according to Divine Plan, which was accurately prophesied by Agnes Nutter in 1655. This book is hilarious. Aziraphale, a book-collecting angel, and Crowley, a demon who "did not so much fall as saunter vaguely downwards", while being on opposite sides of the eternal struggle between Good and Evil, admit that fighting with each other for over 10,000 years has brought them to be reluctant friends. Pratchett and Gaiman have written very believable characters and the interplay between them is a lot of fun to read. Currently, they have just realized that a plan they carried out from opposite sides eleven years ago went dreadfully wrong. "Someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist" says the back of the book. There was a mix up at the hospital run by Satanic nuns and the "Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness" was accidently adopted, while a harmless boy was raised by an American family while Crowley and Aziraphale sent in their Satanic tutors and holy gardeners, respectively, to raise the boy right.

What is the author's dominant method of communication--dialogue, description, narration, exposition, inclusion of others' texts--?

How does the author's method of communication affect your relationship to the subject?

Willie Morris most often uses narration as his main method of communication. He tells little anecdotes about how cute his dog is or how smart he is or how faithful. It's cute, I guess, but I wouldn't really know because he doesn't hold my attention well enough. I read about a chapter and then realize that I haven't been paying any attention to what I was reading. Normally when that happens I go back and read it again. It's usually not the book's fault, its mine for drifting off. Sometimes I even consider it a good thing on the author's part; something he or she said triggers my brain to compare it to something in my life and off it goes in some sort of nonsensical adventure; it gives relevance to what I'm reading. But My Dog Skip doesn't do this. Willie Morris fails to make the initial connection in every story he tells about Old Skip. He doesn't hook the reader. So I keep reading for the sake of reading, never once considering the profoundness of anything he says. I have grown up with dogs, so you think I'd be able to relate to him. But he simply fails to make me care about Skip.

Does the author seem to have a friendly, unfriendly, or some other type of relationship with the content of the book? Why do you think so?

I finished The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman and am now reading My Dog Skip by Willie Morris, published 1996.



Willie Morris is most definitely, I believe, writing about his dog Skip with a very friendly and fond tone. This is a dog that he loved very much and that was a very large part of his childhood. He begins the book with the following passage: "I came across a photograph of him not long ago, his black face with the long snout sniffing at something in the air, his tail straight and pointing, his eyes flashing in some momentary excitement. Looking at a faded photograph taken more than forty years before, even as a grown man, I would admit I still missed him." This lets the reader know from the very beginning the depth of the relationship between Morris and Skip. Skip and Willie shared a lot of personal history in their time together. Skip is now long dead, and Morris most likely has made other human friends and perhaps gotten married, sharing very deep, personal relationships with other people. But the fact that he still misses Skip and recognizes the importance of their relationship says a lot about Skip as a dog.
Morris addresses Skip in his book as "Old Skip," giving him a very friendly nickname, furthering his friendly tone towards the dog. He also talks about Skip with pride, saying things like, "Our first dogs were the big ones--Tony, Sam, Jimbo--and since they were bird dogs, they had a fine and natural inclination to hunt. Yet Skip was the best of all, for he trampled the woods with an inborn sense of possibility and adventure." His bragging about Skip is an example of his love for him.

Did the book come to a satisfactory closure for you? Why/not?

The book did not come to a satisfactory closure for me, but I feel like that was the point. It definitely felt like it was leading us towards the second book in the trilogy. At the end, Lyra and Pantalaimon were facing a really hard decision, with all odds against them either way. I would elaborate more on the ending of the book, but I don't want to ruin it for anyone who hasn't read it. By the end of the book, we understand the nature of Lyra's "betrayal," as prophesied at the beginning by the Master of Jordan College. Or actually, maybe it was Farder Coram, I don't really remember who said it, but Lyra had to betray someone, we didn't know whom, and we didn't know how. All we knew was that Lyra had to commit this betrayal without knowing what she was doing. By the end of the book she has done that. Philip Pullman also lets us understand more about Lord Asriel and what his relationship with Lyra is like. It changed drastically throughout the course of the book. At first, she feared and respected him. In the middle, Lyra's admiration for him grew and she fantasized about her life with him as her father after the war was over. At the end of the book, however, her feelings for him shift to the other extreme. I won't go into why. Philip Pullman also ties up all loose strands about Dust and its role in the Church. So I guess it does come to a satisfactory closure, but it also leads us into the next book.

More summary

The Gyptians enlist the help of an armored bear named Iorek Byrnison and head north. By this time, Lyra has learned how to read the alethiometer and it has proved very useful in learning how Lord Asriel is guarded in Svalbard, the prison in the north, and what Mrs. Coulter is doing at the moment. Farder Coram, the leader of the Gyptians, reveals some things to Lyra about her past. Lord Asriel is actually her father, who fell in love with Mrs. Coulter while she was married to another man. Mrs. Coulter gave birth to Lyra but wanted nothing to do with her. Lord Asriel took the baby and put her in the care of a Gyptian woman. Edward Coulter discovered that his wife had been unfaithful to him and stormed after the Gyptian woman and Lyra. Lord Asriel killed the man in the defense of his daughter. As punishment for murder, he was stripped of his title and assets and set into exile. It was then that he began his philosophical research. While traveling to Bolvangar to rescue the children, the Gyptians are attacked by a group of Samoyed hunters, and Lyra is taken captive. They sell her to the Oblation Board at Bolvangar. Reunited with Billy Costa and her best friend Roger, Lyra plans an escape from Bolvangar. She spreads word around the children, and Lyra starts a fire and sounds the fire alarm. They escape just at the time that the Gyptians arrive with Iorek Byrnison and their witch allies, who all wage war with the scientists at Bolvangar and their allies the fearsome Tartar warriors. Finally safe, Lyra and the other children are in the capable hands of the Gyptians.

A brief summary of The Golden Compass so far.

Lyra Belacqua is an eleven-year-old girl living in a universe that the author says is "like ours, but different in many ways." Every human in this universe has an animal manifestation of their soul that is with them at all times. Lyra is an orphan, or so she thinks, and living with scholars in Jordan College in Oxford. Lyra overhears a conversation between her uncle and benefactor, Lord Asriel, and several scholars at the college. She doesn't really understand what is being said, but she knows that her uncle is asking for money to travel to the north and study mysterious particles called Dust. Around this time, children are beginning to disappear to a group called the Gobblers, whose intentions and methods are unknown. Lyra is then sent to live with Mrs. Coulter, who at first seems very worldly and educated, and Lyra is enchanted. Before she leaves, the Master of Jordan College gives her a device called an alethiometer that even he doesn't understand. All he knows is that it tells the truth, and Lyra will have to figure out how to use it on her own. While living with Mrs. Coulter, Lyra comes to learn that she is actually a member of the General Oblation Board of London, aka the Gobblers. She still doesn't know what it is that the Oblation board does, but she knows it has to do with Dust and children in the north. Fearing for herself, Lyra runs away. She is caught by Gyptians, a community of nomadic people who live on boats. They are also looking for the Gobblers because some of their children were abducted. They use the information they have and what Lyra acquired by living with Mrs. Coulter to piece together everything they know about the Oblation Board: the children are taken far north to a place called Bolvangar. There the Oblation Board performs experiments on the children concerning their daemons and Dust. Lyra also comes to learn that her uncle, Lord Asriel, has been imprisoned by the Gobblers and is being held in the north. Lyra is taken in by the Costas, a family who Lyra knew from her life in Oxford. Lyra used to play with their son Billy who was taken by the Gobblers.

What passage(s) do you particularly like in the book? (Copy parts of them in your journal and then write your answer to these questions) Why?

I particularly like a passage in The Golden Compass in which Lyra's daemon (familiar) Pantalaimon tries to get her to do something she is afraid to do. She needs to go speak to an armored bear who is very terrifying to her, but she knows that it is necessary for her to speak to him. The bear scares her because he is "so massive and so alien." In the passage, Pan pulls her towards the bear.

"She knew what he was doing. Daemons could move no more than a few yards from their humans, and if she stood by the fence and he remained a bird, he wouldn't get near the bear; so he was going to pull.... It was such a strange tormenting feeling when your daemon was pulling at the link between you; part physical pain deep in the chest, part intense sadness and love. And she knew it was the same for him. Everyone tested it when they were growing up: seeing how far they could pull apart, coming back with intense relief.

"He tugged a little harder.

"'Don't, Pan!'

"But he didn't stop. The bear watched, motionless. The pain in Lyra's heart grew more and more unbearable, and a sob of longing rose in her throat.

"'Pan--'

"Then she was through the gate, scrambling over the icy mud towards him, and he turned into a wildcat and sprang up into her arms, and they were clinging together tightly with little shaky sounds of unhappiness coming from them both.

"'I thought you really would--'

"'No--'

"'I couldn't believe how much it hurt--'

"And then she brushed the tears away angrily and sniffed hard. He nestled in her arms, and she knew she would rather die than let them be parted and face that sadness again; it would send her mad with grief and terror."

I like this passage because it helps the reader understand the connection between a human and their daemon. The concept is unfamiliar to us, so when Philip Pullman discusses an interaction between a human and his or her daemon we, the audience, really have no basis of understanding for that relationship. With this scene, Pullman really gives us a window into what its like to have an animal manifestation of your soul. This gives us a foundation for how to perceive other human/daemon interactions in the book.

Who do you think is the intended audience? Why?

I finished Losing Mum and Pup by Christopher Buckley and am now reading The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman.

I think that the intended audience is children, young adults, and parents reading to their children. However, the book is so well-written that it is enjoyable and engaging for anyone to read. It is a fantasy/adventure book, and that kind of book are typically directed towards children and young adults. I realize, Dr. Cassell, that this is probably not the kind of book you expect your AP language students to be reading, but I think that if you have read any book from this series you will understand what I mean, and if you haven't you should, because you will really enjoy them.

The heroine is a young girl, probably around age ten or eleven. However, I don't think the book is told from a feminine perspective, and boys will find it just as engaging as girls would. I think that Philip Pullman perhaps wrote this trilogy specifically for children/young adults, but he wrote it so well that those children's parents enjoyed them and chose to read them, too. I think he intended the audience to be children and young adults because part of the book is about not wanting to grow up. Every human in their world has a familiar who changes shape from different animals freely while the human is young. Once the child hits adolescence, however, the familiar chooses a certain animal to be permanently that reflects the human's personality. Lyra, the heroine, likes having her familiar, Pantalaimon, change shape according to what she feels or needs, and she doesn't want to grow up.

What has the author done to engage you, the reader, in a relationship with the book’s content?

Christopher Buckley tries to make the reader feel towards Mum and Pup something close to what he himself feels towards them. He doesn’t try too hard, though; he recognizes that they are his parents, not ours, and therefore we don’t feel the same filial love for them that he does. We can, however, recognize his love for them and relate it to our love for our parents. Those of us that have parents can relate to Christopher’s relationship with his, and those of us that do not can probably relate to his story about losing them. Of course, there are exceptions, and perhaps those who cannot relate to anything about the deaths of Christopher Buckley’s parents can gain something like a window into the life of someone whom they cannot understand.

The author uses little anecdotes about and quotes from each of his parents in order to give the reader some insight into what his life with them was like. Some of them let us know that his parents were in fact “larger-than-life people” as he informs us on page 2. Some make us question their sanity, like the story about his father going for an overnight sail in a nor’easter. His only comment was that it would be a “brisk sail.” And others let us know that these “larger-than-life people” were still people, very much so, who went sailing and cooked dinners and had a son and grandchildren, and, ultimately, died.

Why did you choose this book? What were your expectations? Why did you expect what you did? How is the book living up to your expectations?

I chose this book because it is a memoir and therefore nonfiction, it is short, and the back cover made it seem interesting. I expected it to be like many other memoirs I have read by semi-famous authors: kind of funny, mainly because of the author’s eclectic family, and full of humorous anecdotes about said family. The only reason I expected what I did was because of prior experiences with memoirs, and more specifically, memoirs my parents by. This book belongs to my parents, and when I found it on the shelf I knew that one of them had read a review and/or knew the author and bought the book.

Losing Mum and Pup is most definitely living up to my expectations. Christopher Buckley manages to make it both beautifully sweet and knee-slappingly funny. He had one conversation with his father attempting to convince him that it might not be the best idea for his remains to be in a hollow, giant bronze crucifix in the garden. Christopher thought, “Certainly it would present the real estate broker with an interesting covenant clause. Now, um, Mr. and Mrs. Birnbaum, you do understand that Mr. and Mrs. Buckley’s ashes are to remain in the crucifix, in the garden. . . .” His father responded with, “‘I wouldn’t worry about it.’ I knew this formulation well. I wouldn’t worry about it was WFB-speak for ‘The conversation is over.’ I was left with the impression I had committed lese-majesté by suggesting that a future owner…. might be anything less than honored to have William F. Buckley’s last remains in his garden, encased in an enormous bronze symbol of the crucified Christ.”

Does the author seem to make any particular effort to compel you to read the book? If so, what? How effective is this strategy?

I finished On Agate Hill by Lee Smith, I am now reading Christopher Buckley's memoir Losing Mum and Pup.

Christopher Buckley writes in a very humorous tone, even though the memoir is about the death of his parents. He begins with a quote from Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest that goes,

LADY BRACKNELL: . . . Are your parents living?

JACK: I have lost both my parents.

LADY BRACKNELL: Both? . . . To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

This quote sets the tone for the entire book even before Christopher Buckley says a word. In my experience people are more inclined to want to read books that are light and funny than books that are heavy and depressing. Somehow, Christopher Buckley has turned his parents' deaths into a series of funny anecdotes, without mocking either his mother or his father, or his own grief. When he writes about sitting at his mother's side in the hospital as she lay dying, he writes with sincere grief and love.

In Christopher Buckley's preface, he begins by saying, "I'm not sure how this book will turn out." His first sentence lets the reader know that it is not to be taken too seriously. Even though he says "I doubt you'll be stunned to hear that it has a somewhat dampening effect on one's general felicity and inclination to humor," yet he seems to have no trouble finding funny things to say. The rest of the story follows this sentiment, and I am still trying to figure out how he made the delicate subject of losing one's parents so funny.

What do you think is the definining moment for the main character/person in your book? Why?

I two moments to consider for Molly's defining moment. The first was at a picnic while she was attending Gatewood Academy. Before that point, she had been sullen and antisocial. Molly sat and ate her picnic under a tree, not with the other girls in her class. Her teacher and soon-to-be friend Agnes sat with her and talked for a minute about Agate Hill and how Molly was homesick and missed her cousin, Spencer. Agnes brought Molly back to the rest of the girls, and they tried very hard to include her. Molly joins in making dandelion crowns with them. There were two girls attending Gatewood Academy with Molly that knew her from their childhood. They began calling out "Orphan! Orphan! We know you're an orphan!" as if it were a bad name. One girl, Eliza Valiant, defended Molly, saying that it isn't Christian to make fun of people, and that they were supposed to be kind to orphans. At that moment, thanks to Eliza Valiant, all of the girls rushed to Molly's side and she immediately became immensely popular. We never again see the quiet, introverted girl she was upon her arrival at Gatewood academy, we only see the happy, helpful, cheerful, and loving Molly she is for the rest of the book.

The other instance that I think might have been Molly's defining moment is her marriage to Jacky Jarvis, performed with the bride and groom on a horse on the judge's lawn. She was engaged to another man, but while he was away for three weeks before the wedding, Molly fell in love with Jacky, a poor man. They decided to get married, and he came to her in the middle of the night and they got on a horse and rode to the judge's house. This moment epitomizes Molly's personality, her desire to never be a lady, and to "live so hard and love so much."

How did the opening passage of the book (first paragraph up to first chapter) lead you to anticipate the ending of the book?

The very first passage in On Agate Hill is a letter from drop-out college student Tuscany Miller to her professor explaining why she dropped out and why she is asking to be let back into the program and continue her thesis. She says she found a box with a diary and some letters as well as other "phenomena" belonging to Molly Petree, and she would like to share them with her professor. After reading this letter, I expected that Tuscany and Molly would share some common history, or perhaps be going through the same experiences. This hasn't seemed to prove very true yet, except for the fact that they both have interesting family lives (Tuscany's father left her mother for another man then got a sex change, and Molly was an orphan who's uncle then died and was sent to boarding school by her father's friend and her mysterious benefactor whom she did not see until her graduation 4 years later).

This letter from Tuscany was really funny, and I was expecting the rest of the book to be funny. It's not. Some parts are downright depressing. The first part is written by Molly herself and is about her broken home life. The second part is written by the headmistress of Molly's school, who hates Molly for reasons never clearly expressed. She has a mildly abusive husband and has approximately 10 children by him, at least two of whom died, before being admitted into a mental hospital. The third part is written by Agnes, Molly's friend and a teacher at her school. She writes about her and Molly's search for a teaching job after they leave the old school.

What has the writer done to engage you, the reader, in a relationship with the book's content?

The writer, Lee Smith, has kept me engaged with the story creating the feeling of sympathy for the heroine, Molly. Molly has lost all of her family and was living with her uncle's second wife, Selena, Selena's new baby and two daughters, and Selena's boyfriend. The boyfriend sexually assaults Molly regularly, as Molly tells us when she says "Nicky Eck came I guess he followed me and pushed me down in the straw and did things he does to me but do not worry Dear Diary for I was not really there anyway I was up in the hayloft looking down and thinking Why look at that!" The reader cannot help but feel sorry for and therefore be interested in Molly.
Smith also engages us by changing narrators a little ways into the story. Simon Black, Molly's father's friend from long ago, comes to Agate Hill and takes charge of Molly, putting her in a girls' school. He brings along a teacher from the school to be Molly's chaperone, and we read a letter she wrote to her sister the headmistress of the school about how she found Molly at Agate Hill. The chaperone, Agnes Rutherford, reveals to us things about Molly that Molly herself would not have told us. For example, Agnes found Molly to be very dirty. The house was completely unkempt with very few furnishings.
After we read Agnes's letter, the narrator shifts again to Mrs. Snow, Agnes's sister and the headmistress of the school Molly will be attending. All this narrator-switching provides a fresh perspective from which to see the story.

Comment on the perspective from which the book is told and how the author's choice affects your relationship with the book's content.

On Agate Hill is written in the style of a diary. Its author is a thirteen-year-old girl, and it is obvious to me that I am reading something written by someone very young. She uses improper grammar and spelling sometimes, and it can be distracting. The more I read, however, the more used to the style I get. I think that the author tried to keep the language mildly authentic to the time period, which makes it even more difficult to understand. The author also doesn't use any sort of quotation marks or anything to distinguish between dialogue and the rest of the text. Somehow I haven't gotten terribly confused yet.
It is interesting to hear about the the end of the Civil War from the perspective of someone so young. She is not nearly as interested in the political stuff that an older person would be as she is in the marriage of her dolls.

Why did you choose this book? What were your expectations? Why did you expect what you did? How is the book living up to your expectations?

I am reading On Agate Hill by Lee Smith, published in 2006.

This book was given to me for my birthday or possibly Christmas several years ago. It was most likely picked out by the giver because the heroine's name is very similar to my own, so he/she thought I would enjoy reading something about a girl with a similar name. It is the fictional diary of a young girl living with her uncle after being orphaned by the American Civil war. So far, it is almost exactly what I was expecting. Almost all of her immediate family is dead, and her uncle just lost his wife giving birth to their son, who also died. The girl seems too young to understand the loss that her uncle is feeling. At the very discusses the jobs she did for her mother when she was dying, and then says that she was glad when she died. I predict that by the end of the book she will have matured greatly.