School. La escuela. Hm.
It’s the task at hand. I should stick to the plow and press forward. With February Break over and done with, I am very close to the long haul for the end and to my sweet, sweet diploma.
In other news, I am trying to decide which AP tests I should muster up and take. I’m absolutely ruling out AP Economics. I am only taking it because it was a requirement (or pork barrel fine print) for my AP Government class, which, though I really enjoy it, I find myself hesitant to ascend to the AP chopping block. Last year I got a 2 on my AP US History exam. So embarrassing! And the AP test was sheer torture! Of all the things to write an essay on, the impacts of the Vietnam war is so not my forte. It’s hard enough distinguishing one post-modern president from another, they were all alike enough, but all the conflicts with them? It’s hard to keep up with the new names they have developed for the same agendas. I suppose there is a reason why Congress was the leader of the democratic trio until the 1930s; we don’t have to remember the names of the back-scratchers that haunted its halls. The White House, on the other hand…
Anyway, I digress. I suppose AP Literature should be a shoe-in. I like it enough, but not enough to finish one book the class has read together this year. Keep your Vonnegut. If I wanted to read an emotionally-detatched book, I would open my math text book and practice statistics. And Their Eyes Were Watching God? Anyone can be compassionate about their hair. Human experience, my fannie. Give me Plato, give me the Romantics! Give me the supernatural, imagination, the reconciliation of opposites! A bit dramatic? Yes, but oh so enjoyable. Reading for school is so different than reading on my own. I’m distracted by the time, what page I’m on, how long I have left in the book. On my own, I am completely oblivious of the world and exasperate my mom when she repeatedly asks a question while I’m absorbed in, for example, early 19th century England. I’m truly not ignoring her, I swear. I just can’t hear her in my head over the noise and narritive of the book. Amazingly enough, voices from the real world can easily mix in with those in my imagination. When I do emerge from reverie, I’m sorry to say that I’m terribly grouchy and impatient to get back to my book. That is the real reading experience. Unfortunatley, my grades from second quarter have reflected the former description. *sigh*
This is my predicament. Advice? Thoughts? Book reviews?
7 Comments
February 22, 2009 at 1:17 pm
I would take the AP classes in subjects I’m not interested in to get them out of the way. The last thing you want is to be in college taking a required course from some zealot who thinks etymology is the bee’s knee’s just because he wrote a book on the subject that you are required buy. You don’t want to be in your last semester taking that required statistics statistics class and miss something like “Dante, and the Art of Neopolitan Cooking”.
Kurt Vonnegut is an acquired taste, like Tab. I went through my “Slaughter House Five” period in my teens. My last book was “The Forgotten Man”, it’s a look at how FDR actually prolonged the Great Depression. If you want something lighter I recommend “The Shack”. I have trouble finding good books at the library, most of the new arrival section is pure swill. If you haven’t read ” Atlas Shrugged ” you should. It’s long, 1,100
pages, but it will blow your mind. I challenge you to read it.
February 22, 2009 at 1:49 pm
“The Shack” is spoiled goods. Hannah watched my face twist and contort as I lumbered through it.
Advice? 2nd paragraph. 2nd sentence. Keep your eye on the prize!
February 22, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Study hard and take as many as you possibly can. These are the cheapest college credits you will ever earn. I took AP physics: $75. I got EIGHT credits for it at Grove City! That had to have been about $5000! Saved me two semesters of physics, too.
Want me to come up and tutor you?
Books to read for AP English: Great Gatsby–1-2 afternoons
As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner–weird but short. Try to just enjoy the amazing language
Madame Bovary:BORING read the cliff’s notes
Dickens–Great Expectations, Bleak House, any of his are good
Jane Austen, the 6 best novels in the English language
The Awakening–whoa nanny! SHOCKING 19th C American novel
Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence. YOu watched The Buccaneers, you know how awesomely she tells a story
Shakespeare’s tragedies, and 12th Night
Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Dorian Gray–short, and very important
James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mam–the easiest Joyce you’ll ever leave and the hottest young artist hero in literature
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49–high modern detective novel…but who’s the suspect and what is the crime?
the poetry of
William Wordsworth–read “Tintern Abbey” it’s online
William Blake, try him, he’s AWESOME
Keats, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn
Shelley
Coleridge, Kubla Khan, Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach–the lament for a dark Modern world–so beautiful and so important
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Then there’s Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Raymond Carver, William Carlos Williams, ee cummings, Emily Dickinson (blech), etc
just go to bartleby.com there’s tons of great poets, including old stuff
when I unpack my books in my new house, i’ll find you teh frist EVER novel, from Greece, called Callirhoe. You’d like it.
Greek poetry? Try Sappho’s love poetry! It’ll terrify your dad.
February 23, 2009 at 12:51 am
Hannah: disregard everything in the previous comment. All her reading has made her insane. Read Atlas Shrugged I’ll pay you a penny a page.
February 23, 2009 at 12:59 am
Babba: LOL!
Marianne: Please come and tutor me. What do I have to do to get you up here for an extended period? I’ll pay you. Please tutor me, I’m begging you!
February 23, 2009 at 5:31 pm
What it takes to get Marianne to Rochester? $$$$$$$ in Euro’s please!
February 27, 2009 at 5:57 am
Talk to Mr. Sample at church.