Here was my assignment from my fellow Southeast Polk instructional coach, Mandy Leaming: In your status, list 10 books that have stayed with you in some way. Dont take more than a few minutes, and dont think too hard. They dont have to be the right books or great works of literature, just books that have affected you in some way. (Then tag 10 friends.) Im not very good at following directions, so here is my overly-verbose list, with fewer than 10 friends tagged at the end. 1. All of the Black Stallion books by Walter Farley. I started reading them in 2nd grade, and even though I’m not overly fond of horses, was absolutely hooked by these stories for most of elementary school. A few years ago, when I read Seabiscuit, it reminded me so much of that time era in thoroughbred that Walter Farley made me fall in love with as a young reader. 2. The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien. My 6th grade teacher Mrs. Cort was tired of seeing me read only sports autobiographies, and wouldn’t let me check anything else out of the Altoona Elementary library until I completed all three books, so she can share a good part of the blame for helping me become the geek I am today. 3. 1984 by George Orwell. I read this in 9th grade English because it was 1984, and because I had already read A Night to Remember, a book about the Titanic that I had already read at least twice. Orwell’s authoritarion dystopia was pretty mind-blowing, and set me up well for a number of books that are further on down this list. 4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is the first of two books from Dale Vandehaar’s sophomore lit class to make this list. An amazing story that I came to appreciate even more when I taught it to freshmen at Valley High School. 5. Dune by Frank Herbert was another book I learned about from the amazing Mr. V. No other SF story approaches Herbert’s novel about Paul Atreides ascent from nobility to messiah and emperor of the known universe. 6. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller was the first book I read for Joyce Tremble’s American Writers class, and I liked it so much that I somehow managed to tie it in with essays I had to write about every other book I read for her. I still can’t think about high school lit classes with the words, “There was only one catch, and that was Catch-22” running through my head. 7. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. If I were ranking these books by their importance to me instead of trying to do this chronologically, Vonnegut’s amalgamation of his own World War II experiences with time travel and aliens would be at the top of the list. After reading it in American Writers, I would eventually teach it to my own Modern American Lit students at Valley, and I have lost count of the times I have read it on my own. There is no writer who has ever appealed to me like Vonnegut, and Slaughterhouse Five is his masterpiece. 8. The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Barb convinced me to read this shortly after we started dating, because she was convinced my personal literary background was too old, too white, and too male. Alice Walker changed that in a hurry. When I taught at Stuart-Menlo, I slipped a copy of this onto my classroom bookshelf as a reading option after the school library copy of it mysteriously disappeared shortly after the librarian learned what the book is about. 9. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving was a bestseller when I picked up a paperback copy of it during my sophomore year at Iowa. True story: I had gone to the bookstore at the Old Capitol Mall to get a copy of Playboy’s NCAA basketball preview because Southeast Polk’s Shon Morris was in it as part of their academic All-American team. (There may have been other reasons, too, but there’s no need to get into that now.) When I saw the pretty girl behind the counter, I became far too embarrassed to buy the Playboy, so I grabbed Owen Meany and bought it instead. Best decision I have ever made about reading materials. 10. I’m going to cheat now and put two titles down for #10: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Two wonderful books (although I will say that I prefer Ernest Hemingway’s short stories over his novels that gave Barbara Timmins and me two wonderful names for our daughters Brett and Jordan. Im friends with a few of my former English students on Facebook, so Im going to tag them, and Im looking forward to reading about their reading history without having to grade it. Clint Powell, Katie Martinez, Diccon Dawson, DArcy Reinhard, Anne Dawson Powell (who wasnt my student, but her brother was, and also married one, so close enough), Jeffrey Kanselaar, Pete Gulbranson
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 22:17:02 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015