Category Archives: books

Happy Birthday, Wendell Berry

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I just finished reading Distant Neighbors: The Selected Letters of Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder, which I bought, along with Farming: A Handbook, on a recent pilgrimage to City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. I followed up with A World Lost, one of Berry’s Port William books. If I had to name one person who most inspires me, I believe it would be Berry. I have only been farming for a few years but I understand his love of the land and how it has informed both his politics and his philosophy. Berry turned 80 today.

In this paragraph from his 2012 Jefferson Lecture, Berry gives homage to others who have shaped his ideas:

As many hunters, farmers, ecologists, and poets have understood, Nature (and here we capitalize her name) is the impartial mother of all creatures, unpredictable, never entirely revealed, not my mother or your mother, but nonetheless our mother. If we are observant and respectful of her, she gives good instruction. As Albert Howard, Wes Jackson, and others have carefully understood, she can give us the right patterns and standards for agriculture. If we ignore or offend her, she enforces her will with punishment. She is always trying to tell us that we are not so superior or independent or alone or autonomous as we may think. She tells us in the voice of Edmund Spenser that she is of all creatures “the equall mother, / And knittest each to each, as brother unto brother.”7 Nearly three and a half centuries later, we hear her saying about the same thing in the voice of Aldo Leopold: “In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it.”

I’ve been curating web resources related to Berry. Some great videos of him speaking and the terrific interview by Bill Moyers last fall.

Gamifying My Reading Practice

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Even though I love playing league of legends and getting a lot of lol wins, I consider myself more a collector and avid reader instead of a gamer. I ran a reading workshop for many years in my middle school classroom to both introduce my students to reading and to work my reading time into my day. Since 2005, I have tracked my reading at LibraryThing. I generally don’t have a reading plan past the next one or two books and these are often the ones on the newest pile or that I can get immediately on my ereader. But my shelves are filled with lots of unread books that I’ve collected over the years and one of my goals this year is to read some of them rather than continuing to buy new ones whether analog or digital.

Couple that with a desire to get more involved with online community, and I’ve begun to gamify my reading practice.

I did this by joining the 75 Books a Year Challenge Group. One of the perks is that it includes suggested challenges that help direct you to specific books using a wide range of criteria from book covers to characters to topics. Last month, I read one challenge book. The Red Tent was a book I shared with the LibraryThing user with whom I share the most books. I’ve had Anita Diamant’s retelling of the Old Testament story of Jacob and his family on the shelf for a long time. I’ve always meant to read it but somehow it never called to me. The challenge encouraged me in a way that nothing else has.  I finished on the last day of the month, determined to meet the goal and add “completed” to the challenge page.

This month, I signed up for four challenges and am meeting all of them by reading books that I already own. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin is going to be the biggest challenge as it is a long book: the challenge was to read a chunkster. LibraryThing provides stats about your reading including average pages. The challenge requires that you choose a book that is higher than your average by at least 50 points. At close to 751 pages of text (you can’t count the appendices and bibliography which, in Team of Rivals, get you to almost 1,000 pages!), this book is far above my average of about 300 pages. I’ve already started, and it is wonderfully readable as it describes Lincoln and four of his main rivals who also came to work with him. My plan is a chapter a day, which leaves a few days at the end of the month in case I fall behind the pace.

I’m wondering how I would translate this to the classroom reading workshop. We did a little of it by having them read books with Accelerated Reader…sometimes I’d ask them to read a book at the high end of their score. And some of the students found it fun to take a quiz and earn points but others struggled just to find a book. Giving them some kind of guidelines, even if it that the title has to be red (I’m reading All the King’s Men to meet that challenge this month), can help get them to pull a book off the shelf that they would normally skip. Then, and this is the most essential point, they need time to read and it can’t just be on their own time. If we value it, we need to make time for it. 

 

More On Moby Dick

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Joyce Valenza posted a link to Jen Hunter’s insightful review of Reading in a Participatory Culture: Remixing Moby-Dick for the English Classroom. Hunter is a student in Joyce’s social media course at Rutgers and the review is part of a larger website related to the reading of the book. Go read it now and be prepared to buy the book when you’re done. I did.

I am looking forward to reading the book even though I can’t imagine reading Moby Dick with any students, much less the challenging population described in the book. It almost makes me want to head back to the high school classroom, a place I haven’t been since the beginning of my career in the ice age before digital media:

Edited by new media literacy scholar, Henry Jenkins, and Melville scholar Wyn Kelley, the book describes how the two came to collaborate with Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, who had been teaching young men in a juvenile detention center not only to read Moby-Dick, but also to care about it and make sense of it in the context of their own lives through a stage production called Moby-Dick: Then and Now. This collaboration sparked a study in which NML strategies were applied in English classrooms to teach Moby-Dick, and more importantly, to empower students to claim ownership of their authority and participate in the wider conversations happening around them.

The section of the review that struck me was the notion that incorporating popular culture to help students grapple with traditional literature is somehow a lowering of expectations for those students:

Without ever saying it explicitly, the text seems to imply that while students can learn to read, find relevancy in, and enjoy Moby-Dick, educators need to reframe their expectations of their students, which might be interpreted as lower expectations as opposed to simply different expectations.

Hunter goes on to discuss how Jenkins’ addresses this concern:

Jenkins defends the use of popular culture in the classroom when he says, “It should not be seen as a means of entertaining students or holding their attention, but rather as a means of respecting their existing expertise and helping them to acquire core skills they will need to meaningfully participate in this new and emerging media landscape” (location 1071). While all of the authors advocate for the development of the kinds of skills that educators may associate with traditional literacy and scholarly inquiry, they suggest that there needs to be a gradual building to that level, particularly for at-risk youth.

Respect for our students’ experiences when they are different from our own is a powerful concept. I am, in no way, lowering expectations for contemporary students when I suggest that not every child needs to grapple with Shakespeare in the original. Or, as Jenkins and his colleagues demonstrate, plunge into Moby Dick without some kind of preparation. I may question if getting through Melville is a good use of time but if it really does provide the students with a confidence and sense of authority, then the time will be well spent.

The book is one my Kindle and may rise to the top of the TBR list. I’ll let you know how it goes.

 

 

The Right Book At The Right Time

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If you haven’t discovered Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore yet, add it to your reading list, or better yet, go get a copy and read it now. For me, it was a fabulous find at the local library. A bit surprising since my local library is tiny…I may actually own more books than they have in their fiction section and much of the shelves are filled with popular fiction and mysteries.

I went to pick up a book I requested. The library makes up for its small size by being part of system so I can usually get most any book I want delivered to my branch. But, I always take some time to browse as well, just to see what books might call to me. Browsing shelves is one of the joys of the bibliophile not really offered by ebooks. You can browse electronically, of course, but you can’t pull the book off the shelf and touch it, see how it feels in your hands, really interact with it in a way you can’t electronically. During this browsing adventure, I found two surprises: a new Joanne Harris novel called Peaches for Father Francis, the third in her series about Vianne, who first appeared in Chocolat. I stayed up well past my bedtime finishing it.

But it was the second book that was the real surprise since I wasn’t familiar with the author, Robin Sloan, but I took the book home with me purely because it has “bookstore” in the title. It turns out Mr. Penumbra was Sloan’s first novel. It was the best of the bunch and may be one of the best books I’ve read this year, no mean feat since I’m getting close to 70 books this year. The story included ancient books, a secret society, cryptography, technology, and a bit of fantasy thrown in. The main character is on a quest, aided by friends who just happen to work for legendary companies like Google and Industrial Light and Magic. The story is formed around nuggets of history with Aldus Manutius playing a role. (For my grammarian friends, Manutius is credited with creating the semicolon.) There is some discussion of old knowledge (OK) and what we’ve lost in our increasingly digitally mediated age. And, did I mention that the cover glows in the dark, something I discovered after I turned off the light one night.

Sloan calls himself a media inventor who worked at Twitter and because of this, there is great web support for the novel that allows a digitally-inclined reader like myself to spend happy hours exploring, a practice that helps extend my enjoyment of the original book. I’ve pulled together a few resources that you’ll find in the next post.

The last paragraph doesn’t reveal anything but seems to describe the sometimes magical experience of being a reader:

A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.

You can get a digital copy of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, but I don’t think the experience will be the same.

 

 

Consumed 10/12/2013

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

American Hero: Wendell Berry

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Wendell Berry is an amazing human being: farmer, writer, activist. His life and work inspire me as I pursue my own odd blend of technology and farming from my “chosen and cherished small place” here at Bottle Tree Farm. Last week, I spent time watching over baby pigs and reading It All Turns On Affection, a meditation on the loss of small farmers and the peaceful, sustainable life they represent. I’ve become a “sticker,” who loves the land and my place in it. Berry is unapologetic for his belief that we need to “espouse the cause of stable, restorative, locally adapted economies of mostly family-sized farms, ranches, shops, and trades.” He goes on to link this to Jefferson’s vision of America:

Naïve as it may sound now, within the context of our present faith in science, finance, and technology—the faith equally of “conservatives” and “liberals”—this cause nevertheless has an authentic source in the sticker’s hope to abide in and to live from some chosen and cherished small place—which, of course, is the agrarian vision that Thomas Jefferson spoke for, a sometimes honored human theme, minor and even fugitive, but continuous from ancient times until now. Allegiance to it, however, is not a conclusion but the beginning of thought.

I’m excited about the upcoming interview with Bill Moyers on October 4: Wendell Berry: Poet & Prophet. In anticipation, the Academy of American Poets featured this video of Berry reading The Peace of Wild Things, possibly my favorite Berry work (competing with Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front):

 

Wendell Berry “The Peace of Wild Things” from Schumann Media Center, Inc. on Vimeo.

Coursera Drop Out

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My summer reading led me to enroll in Thinking Mathematically, a Coursera course offered by Stanford professor Dr. Keith Devlin. This was my first formal MOOC and I was looking forward to taking the course. Then, reality set in. The course demanded 8 to 10 hours a week and in order to get a grade, you had to view all the videos and complete the problem sets. I managed to do so for the first two weeks despite travel and vacation. This week, it looked like I would be spending most of Sunday completing the work. When an event this afternoon got cancelled, I was relieved because I could spend the time viewing the video and getting started on the assignment for the week. As I watched and worked out the problems, it occurred to me that this wasn’t the way I wanted to spend those suddenly free moments! The content is interesting and I like being challenged, but I found myself asking the age old question, “When am I going to use this?”

What did I really want to do with that free time today? Read! Paula White has been writing about the Virginia Readers’ Choice Awards and how she and her students are reading the books. Today, the National Book Award nominees were named and I would love to read a few of those. And somehow I also found Library Reads, a website that crowdsources librarians to identify the top ten books published in a month. Here’s October.  Jhumpa Lahiri, “The Lowland”  is on both lists. And there’s an interesting nonfiction book about a food program in Toronto.

I also want to write! I am inspired by Paula…she has been blogging every day, providing rich descriptions of her classroom, engaging book reviews and intriguing questions. From doing online coaching to teaching online courses about elearning design and online communications and working as an instructional designer for a project developing online courses to, until a few hours ago, taking an online course myself, I am immersed in online learning. There is much to think about with online learning but I seem to be living it and not making time to reflect on my work.

And, this was the first week of my community computer/tutoring program. What started as a summer conversation has resulted in a small outreach program to underserved kids in my town. The first meeting was a little chaotic as we really had no idea how many kids were coming. We ended up with a group of early elementary and middle school. I’m wondering how to engage each group: I’d like to get the first graders involved in a make project. Maybe making their own shoes? Provide materials like magazines, cardboard and foam. I’m going to dive into gaming with the middle schoolers…play a few as a basis for our conversation and then explore various tools for creating online games, starting with Scratch. Edubuntu comes with a couple programming tools like laby and kturtle.

To his credit, the professor warned us that the course would take 8 to 10 hours a week. I’m not sure why I thought I had that kind of time to devote to the course. I think I’ll just read the book.

Timely Reading

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While I am a little embarrassed to admit that I have only now gotten around to reading Cory Doctorow’s books, I couldn’t be reading them at a more perfect time. Little Brother and Homeland deal with the privacy issues that are in the headlines as we debate whether Edward Snowden is a patriot or a traitor. Doctorow would argue for the former and provides powerful examples of what happens when innocent people think it’s okay to give up some of their privacy rights in the mistaken belief that by doing so, they help the government catch terrorists. In a conversation with my husband last night, I found myself giving those examples. Doctorow calls these books science fiction but when matched to the discussions on Meet the Press this morning, I would argue that they aren’t fiction.

There is a lot of science in the books, however. The young people are tech savvy and use their skills to protect themselves in smart ways. The books include extensive bibliographies and I added lots of RSS feeds to my aggregator. There are also articles from leaders in the field encouraging readers to consider careers in computer programming and security. And I gasped a bit when I saw the Afterword to Homeland written by Aaron Swartz, whose suicide in January shocked and saddened and led to many questions about the way he was being persecuted for his stance on freedom. A very special light went out. Here’s Swartz’s message to the readers of Homeland after he describes the fight he led against SOPA:

This is your life, this is your country–and if you want to keep it safe, you need to get involved…The system is changing. Thanks to the Internet, everyday people can learn about and organize around an issue even if the system is determined to ignore it. Now, maybe we won’t win every time–this is real life, after all–but we finally have a chance. But it only works if you take part. And now that you’ve read this book and learned how to do it, you’re perfectly suited to make it happen again. that’s right: not it’s up to you to change the system (pp. 389-390).

If you haven’t read these books, you should. And there’s no excuse. Doctorow provides free downloads of all his books in a variety of digital formats. I’m happy to say I bought the analog copies to help contribute a bit to this voice of freedom. I’m also glad there are lots more to read from this prolific writer. My next read is Makers.

When It Comes to Reading: No More Guilty Pleasures

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I am a lifelong bookworm, always in the middle of a book, sometimes several. I was excited to hear that what I always suspected was true: my reading habit is good for my brain. As a classroom teacher, one of my goals was to encourage my students onto the path of the bookworm or at least let them discover some pleasure in the act of reading. (I blog about my book reading and buying habits at In One Place.)

So, it was with great sympathy that I read Andrew Carle’s post about his young cousin’s reaction to the summer reading requirement. Essentially, by being required to read at a certain reading level, the cousin was left with nothing of interest to read.

This is an experience that I understand. In my middle school classroom, I ran a reading workshop ala Nancy Atwell. One of the guidelines was that students were allowed to choose what they wanted to read. I offered support for those efforts with a large classroom library, book circles where students shared their reviews, and my own suggestions. But I made every effort not to dictate. After all, I spent an entire summer reading every Nancy Drew mystery I could get my hands on even though they were probably way below my own reading level. My mother might have rolled her eyes but she just kept making trips to the library with me, feeding my love of Nancy but, even more so, my love of books and reading.

Then, my middle school adopted Accelerated Reader. The up side was that it came with a special quiet reading time every afternoon. Coupled with my own reading time, it meant that some of my students might spend as much as 45 minutes a day with their noses in a book. The down side was that it came with a scale. That same Lexile Rank that Andrew talks about. Now, almost every book in the library was color coded based on its scale. Every child was tested, and the goal was to have them choosing books either on level or one level below or above their tested level. So much for personal choice. As the AR bandwagon rolled out, language arts teachers began requiring an AR book each marking period. In order to count towards the requirement, it had to meet those levels. So, readers like Andrew’s cousin found themselves tackling Moby Dick or Pride and Prejudice, books that were never really meant for 7th graders. They would have been happy with Mrs. Piggle Wiggle.*

Forcing anyone to do anything is a surefire way to lead them to hate it. Andrew’s conclusion echoes my own experience: strong readers who who hate to read. UPDATE: I reread the title of this post and realized it probably didn’t make sense. Here’s the context: on my reading blog, I often refer to some books as “guilty pleasures.” They are books that I perceive as “pop fiction” or less serious reading. But, in the spirit of choosing what I want to read, I’m going to stop feeling guilty about them.**

*Mrs. Piggle Wiggle is actually on my own reading list, loaned to me by a young reading friend. I’m looking forward to it even though most of the plot has already been shared with me by my friend. I won’t tell her that it ranks above Huck Finn.

**One of my very serious undergrads once chastised me because I was talking about how much I was enjoying the Twilight series. I got very defensive, describing how I had read Chaucer in the original Middle English along with most of the traditional canon as though somehow I had earned the right to just have fun reading a book.