Harry Potters 1-3

I've finished my rereads of Harry Potter through the end of book three, The Prisoner of Azkaban.  I'm not going to spend a lot of time rehashing them here. I feel like everyone who reads this blog has either already read them or pretty conclusively decided not to. Which is fine.

What I have noticed that's worth commenting on is that narratively Prisoner of Azkaban is the strongest of the first three books which I'm not sure I was properly aware of before. Sorcerer's Stone (book 1) is a cute kids book, but the plot is pretty spare and rushes in places. Chamber of Secrets (book 2) is a solid read but the heir of Slytherin thing was all a little over telegraphed. After the first reading, the plot twists aren't as satisfying which is, of course, the danger or hinging action on a major plot twist.

On the other hand, Prisoner of Azkaban is more thematically layered and simply richer of detail. The characters of Sirrius Black and Remus Lupin are more complex than many of the main characters and Snape finally has a crisis or breaking point. It also seems that the conflicts are more nuanced and that there are more total points of conflict in the book. If book 1 and 2 are good, Azkaban is excellent.

Prisoner of Azkaban is also the last book for the great page bloat begins. Each of the first three books comes in between three and four hundred pages. Goblet of Fire book 4 is over 700. Bigger is not always better.

In defense of Rereading

I struggle with the idea of rereading. Most books I read, I absorb, I'm done. Most of the time, this is enough. Certain books though beg to be reread. It's not necessarily about reading level either. I am currently in a reread of the Harry Potter  books. I reread through Mercedes Lackey's Valdamer series on a regular basis. Both of these are not what one would call a tough read. On the other hand, I also have an urge to reread I, Claudius which is considered a classic, and it strikes me that I haven't reread the Gothic romances in a while.

On the downside, rereading means spending book time covering ground already traveled.

However, on the upside there's much to be gained too. Rereading means greater attention on the thematic levels. Generally, we get pretty distracted by the surface of the plot. (And fair enough, that's what drew us in.) During a reread, we tend to notice things on a higher level of analysis. We notice what themes the author was trying for. We might notice references to other texts. Me might even notice things the author didn't intend.  There is value in rereading.

Because I teach Brit Lit, I've now reread Hamlet something like 15 times. Each time I notice something new.  Now Shakespeare is awesome, but it's not just because he penned the play. Any literature of any worth operates on multiple levels. Those levels often take rereads to access. So yes, reread a book every once in a while. It's a good thing.

Shame

So, I dropped the blog for a bit there. It got hard at the end of the year there and then I just lost momentum. Then of course is the guilt of having to admit it. Well here I am. Whoops! I'm also having a hard time getting through books. I went from nine books ahead of schedule to three books behind. I'm not sure what's really going on aside from just being busy.

I also having gotten the garden going yet.....yeah I'm just a mess.

Heaven

May is always a tough month for my goals. The end of classes and post planning always takes a phenomenal amount of time and energy. It's all necessary though. Sometimes I long for my dream of sitting in a musty library by myself and reading.

It's not practical.

One of the exercises I take my freshmen through is a descriptive writing on "Heaven". It's linked to a poem that we read about a woman describing snow to her mother who has never lived anywhere but the tropics. Her mother is dying and having been warm or hot all her life, she envisions Heaven as being someplace peaceful and cold blanketed in snow.

When the kids talk about heaven there's a lot of conversation about clouds if they are religious and a lot of half panicked looks if they are not. So this leads to a conversation about ideals and perfect places and that these ideals are personal to the individual. From there I get descriptive essays on everything from dance studios to beaches to mountain forests.

The point of this is that different things confer peace to different people. For me, I'd be in a big room filled with overstuffed couches and books. Hundreds of books of all types, but heavy on the fiction. There would be a cat and an endless supply of coffee. It would be quiet but not silent. I'd get bored eventually...but it would be a nice retreat.

Musing

I think when we are young we think that adults have all the answers and that all that uncertainty that we feel in adolescence will fade. It doesn't, I still say things I don't mean, find people inscrutable, and wish that I could live my life in a room where I could limit entry to the chosen few. I've never had the ability to cut myself some slack and anything less than perfect is crushing in the sense that I can never be done and it can never be enough. I'm still the person I was as a teenager.

What I have gained with age is perspective. A lot of the things that still trouble me don't seem as all consuming as they did. These things all still bother me, but I don't get as stuck as I used to. Some days are better than others.

It makes me wonder if the monks sitting on the mountain overlooking the ravine in lotus pose ever have difficulty meditating because they know they turned the oven off....but they just can't remember doing it.

Exams

Exams started today. It always seems wrong to me to give an exam in English. It always seems to me that for something like English, a term paper is more appropriate. After all, English is really more about ideas as opposed to facts. Obviously I want my students to remember the things we read, but whether my students have lists of characters memorized is less important to me than their ability to express the ideas we discussed in writing. So I end up giving a lot of essay tests which kind of split the difference. I'm not very happy with that either, but it is a compromise.

Regardless, it really bothers me when parents plan family trips during exam times. We have a system where if a student's grade is high enough and their attendance is good, they can  buy off the exams. I'm actually all for that. It disperses the grading load some. However, some parents seem to think that if they have the hours, then it's a given that we will sign them off to buy-off the exams regardless of their grade. Then, in the worst cases, they cart them off to some other state meaning there is no option to fix a poor grade. It really puts the student in an awkward position. In some cases, failing the exam means that they could fail the class. Talk about adding pressure.

I just don't get it. Why spend all the money to send their kid to our school if they are then going make it more difficult for the kid to do well. *shakes head sadly*

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day all you mothers out there. For my mother's day I giving myself permission to be a little lazy, so I'll leave you all with a quick thought and a comic.

Thought: Anna Jarvis, founder of mother's day, spend most of the rest of her life trying to get rid of it. In its conception, it was intended as a day for mother's to see and be with their children without having the pressure of chores. It was supposed to be more of an observance than a gift giving thing. Of course, it commercialized pretty fast and the founder, Jarvis, even protested it publicly. All this is to say, stuff is nice, but it's nicer to be with the people who love us.

Comic:

Spring Done Sprung

Somehow in all the hustle and bustle of school, I missed that the weather has really turned and that my front yard was being reclaimed by jungle. There were weeds growing tall enough to look me in the eye as I mowed them down. As it turns out there's a version of a dandy lion with spines - wicked.

So, today I mowed. It's not perfect. There are a lot of woody stalks already springing back up that I'm going to have to go back with clippers or a shovel and get them tomorrow. The boxes are a mess that I'll have to deal with later. I've also started digging out the front bed and putting in border. The clay is so packed that I had to pull the mattock out to start breaking it up. Even so I only got about a quarter of the way along the length of it.

I'm exhausted now. I suppose that this is not a shock, especially since I'm still recovering from strep, but it felt good to start putting things in order.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

This is a book that has created a lot of buzz. It was published in 2017 and almost immediately started winning awards. Part of the buzz had to do with its subject matter; it is a YA book very much about the Black Lives Matter movement. In my experience, books focused on a single main social issue are either a real slog or absolutely brilliant. In this case, it's brilliant.

Starr is a 16 year old African-american girl living in Garden Heights (a.k.a the Ghetto) but she goes to a private prep school across town. She lives in two worlds with two languages, two cultures, and two sets of behavior standards. This, of course, causes conflict. Her friends from Garden Heights think she's ashamed of them and the kids at school never get to see the real her, not even Chris, her white boyfriend.

The novel opens on a party in Garden Heights where Starr sneaks out of the house to go to. While she's there, feeling awkward, she runs into Khalil who is a boy she's grown up with and is very close to. While they are talking, a gun is fired at the party. Khalil whisks Starr away to his car to take her home. On the way home, they are pulled over by a white police officer and Khalil ends up dead. They didn't do anything wrong really, there was no real reason to shoot him. The rest of the book is about what Starr does and what she experiences.

To say that this is a powerful book is an understatement. It's thought provoking which is even better. I'm white, which I mention because it's relevant to my experience. I don't think of myself as racist and I don't think I am racist, but I know I've been guilty of saying or being insensitive. I'm human, it happens. It's true I don't know what it's like to be black which is something that Starr says to Chris in the book. That's why books like this are important, I think. I still don't really know what it's like to be black, but books like this give me a little more insight than I had before I read them.

It's also true though that a black person doesn't know what it's like to be white. I think the core of the problem is a whole base of assumptions. We are all, regardless of skin color, raised with certain assumptions. Some of them are right most of the time, some of them a right part of the time, and some of them are only rarely correct.

It all reminds me of when I worked back at the library. One of the policies was a bag check before exiting. That was because there were a number of incredibly rare books floating around the collection at the time which was a problem, particularly because the security stripping didn't always work. I applied the policy evenly and without regard to anything. I checked professors, students, visitors, and personal friends. It didn't matter who, the policy was the policy and I did my best to enforce it. I'm not sure everyone did, but I know that I did. So when I got called racist several times it made me a little indignant. I wasn't checking their bag because of skin color, I checked everyone's bag, but then I suppose they had no real way of knowing that. They made an assumption about me probably at least partly based on the color of my skin. The problem wasn't my skin or theirs...the problem is in the assumption and the assumptions run both ways.

It seems that Thomas is cognizant of this, though, in the way she handles the two white characters Hailey and Chris. While this isn't the main thrust of the book, I found that the handling of those two side characters was masterful. I also really enjoyed the analysis of Tupac lyrics, lol.

Clearly, I'm still processing...but seriously guys, read the book.

Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett

So I sense that Terry Pratchett was a fan of "Young Frankenstein". Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if he were some sort of generalized Mel Brooks fan.

King Verence is a father and in the interest of good politics, he invites all the neighbors to the naming. All the neighbors, including the family of vampires out of uberwald. These are progressive vampires. They've accustomed themselves to holy symbols, holy water, garlic, and low doses of sunlight. They've done away with dank castles and biting young women in nightgowns. Instead they develop arrangements with their food enforced through mind control.

But let's face it, Uberwald is so last century. They have their eye on sunny Lancre and are totally willing to eat King Verence in the process. This is of course where the witches get involved. Witches in Discworld are hard to control and most people would probably say, don't bother. Granny Weatherwax didn't get an invite to the christening and has gone off leaving Agnes/Perdita and Nanny Ogg to manage things. Witches work best in groups of three so Queen Magrat comes out of retirement toting baby Esmeralda and going to the rescue.

Ok, so in terms of all of the Discworld novels, this isn't one of the strongest. However there are some really good moments. I really like the Igors and Uberwald in general. It's like the area of Discworld reserved for hokey horror stereotypes. While it's been mentioned in several of the books, this is the first partially set there. So, yeah fun.

Arg!

You've got to be kidding me! Strep Throat! At my age!

AAAAAAARG!

Snotgirl: Green Hair Don't Care Vol. 1 by Bryan Lee O'Malley and Leslie Hung

I find my books from a variety of sources. One of the places I lurk on for YA books is book riot where I read an article talking about how social media is a positive communication tool. Part of the article was a group of three recommendations. Snotgirl was one of the recommendations. I shared the article with my principal and as a result our media specialist ordered the books. Yay.

Snotgirl is a graphic novel about this completely insecure hot girl named Lottie. She's beautiful and self absorbed. She's a fashion blogger and she's recently broken up with her boyfriend of five years. She also suffers from ridiculously bad allergies (not attractive). So, her doctor puts her on a drug trial for a new allergy medicine. At this point, things get weird. It seems like the pills are causing memory gaps and screwing up her emotions. There are elements of the unreliable narrator here, and I finished volume one semi-convinced that Lottie is hallucinating some things.

The social media angle is pervasive. First, Lottie is a blogger which is a sort of social media but she is also constantly texting and tweeting. She updates Instagram constantly and she is constantly check the social media of others, including semi cyber stalking the girl that her ex-boyfriend is now dating. It's everywhere and the source of a lot of plot development. Mixed in is this weird conflict with identity. Lottie is the girl with the crazy bad allergies but she also her fashion perfect alter-ego for the blog. They are not similar to each other, but both real. It sounds weird but I've actually had students who struggle with this.

As a teacher, there's a lot of mixed feeling about social media. Eight years ago, or so, it was a lot of alarm about social media, so we are making progress. I think we, as a group, still aren't sure how to deal with it. It's like any other tool. Neutral, like a hammer. I can use a hammer to build a house, I can also use a hammer to break down walls. Constructive and destructive like all tools. It's all about how it's used.

I have a personal dislike for a lot of social media. I'm shy and somewhat private by nature, spewing my random thoughts online just doesn't appeal to me, generally. However, I think the perception of audience and anonymity appeals to many young people. And, they do use it to communicate. One of the big criticisms is that young people use their technology to isolate from the world, however, much of what they do with it is reaching out to and communicating with the world. In a sense, when I pick up a book, I am isolating more than they are. That's just a reality.

I think the issue comes with that very sense of anonymity. There's a lot of ridiculous crap out there and the perception of distance and protective layer of anonymity means that young people feel free to say things that they would never say in person. In person, the repercussions and judgement are immediate and clear.  Society has a moderating effect on behavior. Online, that's diluted. There are as many people celebrating trolls as denouncing them. If someone makes you angry, you can block them. You can't block people in real life...at least not very effectively. In extreme cases, they bring that less constrained communication into real life and suffer real life consequences.

Ultimately, I think that things will re-balance as the internet generation gets older and more mature. Society will begin policing itself again....it just takes time. In the meantime, teachers teach. Which means we need to find positive ways to deal with social media (god help me).

Zzzzzzzzzzz

I will have interesting things to say soon, I'm sure today I'm just tired and feeling a little overwhelmed.

More tomorrow, when hopefully I have two, just two mind, minutes to think.

A Return to Normalacy...

Ryan (and the seniors) are back from the cruise. I'm looking forward to things getting back to normal. It always seems like the week should be a good one for getting things done and I do get things done. However, I never get the things that I'd slated for that time done. It's frustrating. I did get the Summer Reading Challenge set up. So that's a thing.

In home news, we are officially looking for a home for our cat Ashley. We've been wrestling with it for a while now, but we just can't keep him. He keeps taking aggressive swiping leaps at Thomas. It would be one thing if Thomas was doing anything at all to incite it, but it really just is a completely random thing. Thomas has long since learned to give Ashley a wide berth. Ashley just lunges at him. The weird thing is that he never does it to Ryan or I. He mostly avoids Ryan and he's positively cuddly with me.

I could deal with the lost sleep when Ashley started deliberately trying to wake me up every night between midnight and 1 AM. I could deal with giving him insulin shots since he's really very tolerant of it. This aggression towards Thomas I just can't tolerate. He's always been weirdly aggressive with Thomas even when he was a baby, but it seems like it is getting worse in the last six months. We even tried the pheromone collar. No dice.

It really sucks. I feel like I failed Ashley somehow.

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

I actually finished my read of this a couple days ago, but I couldn't quite get my thoughts together on it. Some books read like a punch to the gut and when you finish you are helpless to get a breath. I've been a fan of Reynolds for a full year. I first read his book American Boys which is about the beating of a black boy by a police officer and witnessed by a white kid who had connections to both the black boy and the police officer. What impressed me at the time was that the book was set up in alternating chapters from the points of view of the two young men. I felt that the feelings and conflicting issues were handled with equal sensitivity. As a result it felt like a fair-minded examination of the issues at hand. That's not an easy thing to manage.

Long Way Down takes on similarly difficult material. In this case, Reynolds tells the story of Will, a young man who's older brother just got gunned down in a part of a cycle of gang retribution. Will wakes up in the morning and decides to take his brother's gun and shoot the boy he's sure killed his brother, Shawn. He gets into the elevator on the seventh floor and it takes an unusual amount of time to make it down to the lobby. At every floor, the car stops and a different person affected by gang violence steps on to talk to Will about his decision.

This is a book about gang violence. Yes. Really though, it's about the cycle of retribution. How violence begets violence and revenge is a self perpetuating goal. It's about gangs but it's really just about the nature of revenge.

Long Way Down is a novel in verse told in the close perspective of Will. His reactions and feelings are raw and well expressed. This book gave me chills and despite the subject matter, I would hand it to virtually any of the boys I teach (with varying amounts of preparation). I continue to be a fan of Reynolds.

Advice to the Wayward Teen

If you are a teen you are probably going to experiment with lying. When you do this remember that your lie should be both possible and plausible. It helps if you lie to someone who would be less likely to know the truth like...say...a sub. But if you go that route, make sure that the sub in question isn't the parent of someone who 1. knows the truth, 2. is known for following up in the details, and 3. has no problem making sure your parents know what you did.

just saying.

Sunny by Jason Reynolds

Part three in the four part Track Series by Jason Reynolds, Sunny  just came out at the beginning of April. That makes this unusually fresh read for me. I generally wait with great patience for prices to come down, but this one was a media center purchase and I swiped it. In my defense I waited a whole three weeks.

Each of the four books follows a different character and is named for that character. These four kids are the new members of the community track team. I have to admit, of the four characters I was least looking forward to Sunny. I mean Ghost starts it all off and he's an amazingly compelling and sympathetic character. Patina comes next and she's super sassy coupled with an interesting home situation. But Sunny.

Sunny is just weird. He's this super smiley kid who seems to react weirdly to the events in the other two books. There's just something off about him.

To give Reynolds credit, he really works with that for this book. Sunny is written as a series of diary entries but I swear the kid is suffering from synesthesia. He interprets everything as sound, but it does enliven the diary entries.

Sunny also has an interesting back story. His mom died giving birth to him and he lives in a giant house with his father, Darryl. He's also home schooled. (I'm not inherently opposed to the idea of homeschooling but I have to admit that as it is described here I have to wonder what the kid is actually learning.) All of this accounts some for his weird affect.

This is a good quick read. The diary entries are short providing a lot of breaks and the subject matter is relatable.I'll be interested in how Reynolds closes out the series.

A New Month Just Like the Last Month

April was a tough month in terms of meeting goals. I knew that my reading would be off, but the sheer frantic pace of the month threw everything off. I still haven't figured out why it was quite so crazy. I think it was probably a mixture of usual end of year stress coupled with the drama performance and getting very very sick. Ryan thinks that I actually got a cold on top of the sinus infection which makes as much sense as anything.

In any case, that means the this list is almost a complete repeat of April's. I've added a bit more than usual for variety and I have a hankering to re-read the Harry Potter series that I'm planning to indulge. The goal this month is to just get back on track now that the crazy is mostly over. Cross your fingers for me.

Non-YA

1. Grammar to Get Things Done by Darren Crovitz and Michelle Devereaux
2. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
3. Christian Mythmakers by Rolland Hein
4. Native Tongue by Carl Hiaassen
5. Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
6. 1984 by George Orwell 
7. Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult
8. Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett (Finished 5/9/2018)
9. The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett
10. Richard II by William Shakespeare 
11. Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

YA

1. City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare (The Mortal Instruments)
2. One Whole and Perfect Day by Judith Clarke
3. The Ropemaker by Peter Dickinson
4. Angel Isle by Peter Dickinson
5. Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes 
6. The Returning by Christine Hinwood
7. The First Part Last by Angela Johnson
8. The Revenge of Seven by Pitticus Lore (Lorian Legacies) 
9. The Fate of Ten by Pitticus Lore (Lorian Legacies)
10. A Step from Heaven by An Na
11. Snotgirl: Green Hair Don't Care by Bryan Lee O'Malley and Leslie Hung (Finished 5/8/2018)
12. Sunny by Jason Reynolds (Finished 5/1/2018)
13. Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds (Finished 5/2/2018)
14. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling (Finished 5/19/2018)
15. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling (Finished 5/27/2018)
16. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling (Finished 5/29/2018)
17. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
18. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
19. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
20. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
21. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling
22. Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman
23. Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey 
24. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (Finished 5/10/2018)
25. Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld (Leviathan Series)
26. The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey (Fifth Wave Series)
27. The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey (Fifth Wave Series)
28. The Last Star by Rick Yancey (Fifth Wave Series)
29. The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey (Monstrumologist Series)