A personal adventure...

You know, I used to be quite the book worm.  I devoured books.  I kept telling myself in college that the reason I didn't do that anymore is because I was reading all these academic texts and I was, but what's my excuse now?  I don't have one.  And there are an awful lot of books I should have read that I just didn't ever get to.  This week and the next month, I'm turning off my television and going to get some things read.  Here is my list so far and I welcome some recommendations!


Danse Macabre - Gerald Elias
Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury (Thanks, Daniel!)
Turn of the Screw and Other Stories - Henry James
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Long Days Journey Into Night - Eugene O'Neill
Bhagavadgita
Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - John Berendt
The Student Conductor - Robert Ford

Brundibar

Brundibar was a story I heard when I was pretty young; I had a music teacher in elementary school who thought it'd be a cool thing for us to learn as a Holocaust survivor was coming to speak to us around the same time.  Brundibar is a Czech children's opera written during the time of the Holocaust about two children who go to the town square to get some milk for their sick mother.  With the help of their animal friends, the manage to end the musical tyranny of Brundibar the accordion player (with very Nazi-esque evil tendencies) over the town square so they can sing and earn some money to buy the milk.  The wiki of the story is really good if you want to learn more about it.  Now as a college graduate with a degree in music education, this lesson has popped into my head on more than one occasion because I think it'd be a neat thing to teach my older students and tie into learning about the Holocaust and WWII in their main classroom some day.  What fortune that I should happen upon a copy of the adapted book by Tony Kushner (Angels in America) and Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are) in the delete rack while I was processing books to go to the book sale room!  The book was in lovely condition and $.50 for such a rad children's book is a steal!  I'm pretty jazzed about the find and will definitely find a way to use this in my classroom in the future.  ^-^

Creative Commons Just About Rocks My World

Throughout my college career, I've found safe haven from the strains of my academic pursuits by playing silly trivia games and reading a rather large collection of articles about random things on the internet. I'm certainly not unique in this respect; many a college student trolls the internet for amusement these days, I'm sure. The point of this is that after stumbling on a link on Neil Gaiman's blog, I have fallen in love with the articles of Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing. They happen pretty frequently, so he has gotten me through many a long desk shift here in the ResLife department. I also knew he was an author and one that my favourite author, the aforementioned Neil Gaiman, had great praise for. Sadly, being a college student comes attached to being near destitute and my book-buying funds are often spent on things such as "Teaching Music through Performance in Choir" not Cory's book "Little Brother" which I have long coveted. Luckily, Mr. Doctorow is a strong supporter of Creative Commons licences! Huzzah! As a result, I've spent quite a bit of time reading the book I have so long desired here in front of the work computer screen. Link.

On a side note, I will probably be purchasing a copy of the book as soon as I've paid off my trip to Europe for the Shakespeare course this Summer.