The Annual Book Post, 2010 version

Unfortunately, I haven't read outside of school as much this year as I have in the past couple of years -- but to make up for that, I've read *lots* more for school. While I don't always like what we read in American Lit, at least we're reading.

1. This summer I finished reading Shakespeare's comedies and romances. The ones I had left were Measure for Measure, Pericles, and Troilus and Cressida. Of those, my favorite by far was Pericles -- it's definitely my favorite romance, which puts it on the complete list somewhere around Midsummer Night's Dream. MfM was okay, not bad. TaC, however...if I hadn't been trying to read all the the comedies and all the romances, I would have stopped reading after Act II. In English II, we read Julius Caesar, which goes with this list. Ish.

2. The Sable Quean -- newest Redwall book. It actually took me to Thanksgiving to get around to it. Flib the shrew, the mole dibbuns, and Buck make me happy. I also like that Buck and one of the two main villains are swordbeasts -- so strange, that I would be fond of swords. ;) I didn't really like how far away the other main villain, Vilaya, stayed throughout the book. I understand that the distance was part of her; she was a secret even to the beasts that served her, but I wish there had been more motivation there.

3. The Calligrapher's Daughter. I like books about Korea during the first half of the 20th century, and this one is full of pretty. I thought the chapters that changed away from Najin's viewpoint were a little random, and I definitely liked Najin's voice best.

4. Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources. I read these in French with my teacher in the spring. Sometimes I don't really like the style of the books, but when there's *story* going on I found them very interesting. I also liked seeing the southern accent written down -- I hadn't really seen written accent in French, and since that's something I like so much in English, it was cool to see it in French.

5. Luke/Luc/Lucas -- during Lent, I read Luke twice. And I didn't really read Luke, just Luc and Lucas -- French and Spanish. Luke is now definitely the gospel I know best, if it wasn't already.

6. Jean, 1 Jean, 2 Jean, 3 Jean, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Rois, 2 Rois -- okay, I haven't finished 2 Kings yet, but I'm getting there. After that, I'm not really sure what I'm going to read. I might change to something very different and get away from the history, or I might be too curious about all those, "And aren't the rest of (name)'s works written down in the Chronicles?" But I should finish 2 Kings before deciding. Anyway, I've had my French Bible at school, and so I've been reading. Lots of John, and then I got tired of John, so I read Ecclesiastes, which is my father's favorite book of the Bible. Then I went and did histories. Esther and Ruth took me all of three nights combined. The Samuels and the Kings, on the other hand, have taken me two or three months.

7. Of Mice and Men and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. These were part of my summer reading for Lit. I really liked Of Mice and Men, but compared to the short stories and THiaLH, we didn't do much with it. I found THiaLH very heavy and *silent* the first two times I read it, but after going over it in class, I like it better. I guess it makes more sense, and I fill the silence myself.

And now for reading that's not actually books:

8. "Parker Adderson, Philosopher," "Chickamauga," "The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." Ambrose Bierce is...a good writer. And a little depressing. But he definitely gets his point across. And all of these stories are about the Civil War. We'll do more naturalism next semester.

9. Transcendentalism. I like Emily Dickinson. Bryant's okay. Melville is just wordy (Bartleby is *boring*), and I don't know what I think of Whitman. Thoreau and Emerson are both readable, I suppose. I was glad to get out of Transcendentalism.

10. Romanticism that isn't Transcendentalism -- Translation: Hawthorne and Irving. I actually like Irving, though not much happens in a lot of words. Hawthorne actually makes use of the words. As a general rule, I like this category better than the above, because (though we didn't read any) Poe falls here, too.

11. Realism -- we're finishing this up next semester, but we've read stuff by Kate Chopin (yay! really, really liked), Paul Dunbar ("We Wear the Mask" was good, and I liked it better than the short story of his we read), and William Dean Howell.

12. "Bernice Bobs her Hair" (Fitzgerald), "I'm a Fool" (Sherwood Anderson), "Almos' a Man" (Wright), "The Displaced Person" (Flannery O'Connor).
Bernice is my favorite of these, followed by Displaced Person. These were all part of our summer reading.

...
I promise I read other things (and reread too much. As usual), like If I Stay, which I could make into a decent DI if I were still doing Speech. These were the most memorable readings, though.