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!
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Great reading and blogging for 12/10/09!
ReplyDeleteThe next time you decided to take on Shakespeare (MND or another), remember that S. didn't write it to be read, and you might enjoy gathering a group of animated friends to all read it aloud together. Have no fear that you'll interpret a word wrong--just interpret it to figure out the character as best you can. I expect you can enjoy it without the guilt that you didn't get enough out of it.
You've chosen excellent books (or they've chosen you!).