I read this quote today and have been pondering it ever since. If we are considered insane for seeking grand things but great if we finally find these things, what does that say about our dreams and dreaming them? What about those who seek the seemingly impossible? Are they insane or are we for not trying?
What is it you seek?
Have you seen this great website? It’s called FreeRice and it features a vocabulary game in which your correct identification of a definition results in the donation of 20 grains of rice to the UN to eliminate world hunger. See what others have said about it here. But even better, go play! Go change the world one word at a time.
I have just been allocated an Extension English class for next year! Wooo!!!
I get to teach solid texts from the canon and I’m very excited about it.
My first task is to choose a theme or a character that has been represented in literature throughout the centuries. I have a few ideas. For example we could study ‘Heroes’ and look at Beowulf, The Odyssey, Ulysses as represented by Joyce in Ulysses and then I would need some contemporary texts including poetry and film. Or a closely related theme we could study could be ideas of ‘Saviours’ in literature throughout history. Or we could study the theme of ‘Redemption’ and look at Cry, the Beloved Country…
Ooooh! There are so many good options my mind is all a flutter! What theme would you study – either one of mine or of your own invention – and which film, poetry and fiction texts would you choose?
Well, that’s how many I hope to be reading anyway.
I have joined a book club! Hoooray!!! I’m very excited about this because the club that I have joined freely acknowledges, nay, embraces the fact that many of its members have children who love to read and be read to as well and has freely included them in the literary leisure. Usually the members of the club will choose two books to read over a two month period and will then meet to discuss them on a Saturday night at some appointed time. This time the book club has decided to choose a book that will interest parents and children as well as a grown-up option. The books they have chosen are Dragonkeeper and A Thousand Splendid Suns. At our next meeting – which will be my first – we plan to discuss Dragonkeeper with our children – who have read it with us- and then send them off to watch the movie version of the book while we discuss A Thousand Splendid Suns. How fantastic is that?!! Discussing books with children and grown-ups!!! I love it!!!
I bought A Thousand Splendid Suns yesterday and am already half way through. It is not becoming one of my favourite books, however, I am drawn to the pathos that pervades the lives of these Afghani women and the beautiful language with which this is communicated. Their pain, although more pronounced because of their terrible circumstances, is tragically universal though not overstated and my heart cries for the characters. Here are a sample of quotes that have left me sighing in woeful recognition:
On losing her best friend and barely acknowledged love Laila feels that one day “she would not miss him as she did now, when the ache of his absence was her unremitting companion.” I love how Hosseini masterfully describes the absence of someone as an “unremitting companion.” Sigh.
And on hearing of yet another death, after having already lost so much, we are told Laila:
could hardly move. She could hardly move a muscle.
She sat on the chair instead, hands limp in her lap, eyes staring at nothing, and let her mind fly on. She let it fly on until it found the place, the good and safe place, where the barley fields were green, where the water ran clear and the cottonwood seeds danced by the thousands in the air; where Babi was reading a book beneath an acacia and Tariq was napping with his hands laced across his chest, and where she could dip her feet in the stream and dream good dreams.
Sigh.
The novel is not this beautiful all the way through. There are snippets of wonderfully crafted sentences where imagery assaults the reader in powerful ways. It’s enough to draw me in. Gotta go read…
Kim said I should have a go at a 15 word poem thing people are doing on Thursdays.
Here’s my first attempt, inspired by this picture:
Mettle
with silver lining her heart shines
wrought by tears and melded steel
of her resolve
Join us. You too can play.
Let me know if you play!
I’d love to read yours.
food
| noun [mass noun] any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink or that plants absorb in order to maintain life and growth |
poison
| noun [mass noun] a substance that when introduced into or absorbed by a living organism causes death or injury, especially one that kills by rapid action even in a small quantity.
Despite my current situation, the irony is not lost on me. |
regainingparadise 