Another Little Update

By -
Hello everyone--

I just wanted to throw in a little news before I start on the 3 reviews I have lined up, and the Spin, and some other things...

The other day I said I was starting August 1914 for the CC May Event.  It appears I got things a little mixed up--I thought May was going to be World War I, and that's June.  May is Post-Colonial Month, and I have nothing planned!  (Sure, I have many post-colonial titles on my CC list, I just wasn't thinking about it.)  But maybe this will spur me to finally get serious about reading Kaffir Boy, which I have had checked out from work for a truly embarrassing length of time.  Plus I have this interesting-looking mystery checked out from the public library which is also set in South Africa, so perhaps May will be South Africa month...

AND I really want to read Notes From the Underground as a follow-up to What is to be Done?  I'm thinking I'll take a short break from August 1914 (I'm on chapter 8 and it's pretty good so far) and read that first.  Notes is quite short, while August 1914 is about 700 large hardback pages.

Only 4 weeks to go until summer!  Things are changing up a little at work and it looks like I might get to do some collection development next year, which would be neat.

In blog news, a friend of mine has just started a new project: Chicory Folk Music.  She and her family are steeped in Appalachian folk music, and she will be sharing their talents, AND teaching ways for you to share folk music and history with your kids.  Homeschoolers will want to follow this blog, and anyone who loves music!  Here is a lovely sample for you:



In OTHER blog news, our classical homeschooling blog, Sandbox to Socrates, is growing.  This month we're doing a series on fostering creativity and talking about parents as teachers.  Stop by and take a peek!

Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 5, 2014 at 11:51 AM

    So funny... I forgot about May, had my reading lined up for June, and then found I had nothing on my book shelf for this month. I was saved by The Wharton Review, hosted by Brona's Books. So I will read The Age of Innocence before starting All Is Quiet on the Western Front.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ruth @ with freedom and booksMay 5, 2014 at 11:55 AM

    I love your homeschool blog. It's beautiful and right up my alley.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more