Enriched 10-30-2012

After a long, relaxing weekend, it was great to come back to school for a little Acuity testing.  Okay, maybe not, but the Acuity pretest is an important step in understanding where we will be placing our focus for the second quarter.  We'll get the results soon and start shaping the curriculum.

 Tomorrow we will be discussing the author's perspective of "Harrison Bergeron".  Two questions I want you to consider are listed below.

What is Vonnegut's purpose for writing this story?
Based on this story, what do you believe Vonnegut's views are?

These questions will help us uncover theme and motivation while potentially generating some insight into Kurt Vonnegut and the story itself.  Be prepared to discuss, defend, and debate.

Since we have those computers in the class for at least one more day, we'll also spend some time prepping for our book group presentations.  I hope to start those on Thursday--yes, two days from now.  Better be working on those at home as well as in the class.  I'll give you a rubric tomorrow to clarify the assessment expectations.

One final thing that I'm going to use as my excuse for not blogging over the weekend. I received a book on Friday night that I used every non-spoken-for minute reading.  It's called The Twelve by Justin Cronin.    It's the long-awaited sequel to Cronin's world wide bestseller The Passage, a book that will have you leaving the lights on at night.  The setting is a post-apocalyptic world that has been overun by vampire like creatures called virals that were created by a governmental biological weapons experiment gone very wrong.  These virals are mean, vicious, blood-thirsty creatures who move in pods at amazing speeds.  They attack humans hard.  They attack humans fast.  They leave behind a horrific mess.  The heart of the book takes place about 100 years after the disaster started to take hold.  There are several heroes, mostly out of necessity, since Cronin has few qualms about killing off characters he has spent time fleshing out.  Cronin does a fantastic job of making us care about each character--even the less virtuous ones.  I loved the first book, and the sequel has picked up right where the original left off.  This is a trilogy and I can tell I'll be waiting impatiently for the third book due out in 2014.

Here's a link to the text.  Watch the video, short but engaging.

Now, I don't want you to think that all I read are violent, blood-filled books ("The Masque of the Red Death"; World War Z; The Passage; The Twelve).  You'll actually be reading quite the variety as we move forward.  But if you have time (The Passage = 800+ pages; The Twelve = 550+ pages) you could do a lot worse than these two end of the world books that make the "ordinary world disappear" (Stephen King).  Archer card signatures if you tell me the last line in the video on the link.