Weekly Focus for September 15-19

As you read this week, you will be taking notes about the setting of your book. Remember to include details about the:

• Time
• Place
• Atmosphere
• Physical Characteristics
  
• Background Information
• Surrounding Circumstances

Example:

The Pillars of The Earth

This book takes place in the 12th century in England. The country is ruled by Kings, Bishops, Priors, and other wealthy land owners. One of the main characters, Tom Builder, and his family are poor and homeless. They wander throughout the land to find work for Tom as a mason, and end up having to beg for food and a place to stay where he is rejected. Because of the time period, even the working class people live in small huts with few amenities, and depend on the castle around which their village is built for some of their necessities.

The country is ruled by the King, but most people are very religious and look up to their clergymen for spiritual and moral guidance. Despite this emphasis on religion, most of the people in the story are motivated for their own advancement, and are hungry for wealth and power. The unstable ruling class creates an atmosphere that suggests that anyone may overthrow the current ruler, and no one can discount that one's allies may be plotting against them. Everything is very political, even when dealing with the Church.

Because of the time period in which the book is set, the lack of information about science creates very superstitious people who are afraid of the devil and witches, which play an important role in the main characters' lives.

The most difficult part about the setting is that the entire country seems to be traveled by the characters, and it is hard to keep track where one castle or cathedral is in relation to another.

Weekly Focus for September 8-12

As you read this week, you will be taking notes about the characters in your book.

Choose 2-4 characters that are important in your book. As you read this week, take notes on
· Their appearance
· Their personal strengths and weaknesses as a character
· Their problems/struggles/obstacles
· Changes that happen to them
· Quotes from the book about them
· Your personal thoughts about the character

Example:


The Pillars of the Earth
by Ken Follett

My post this week is based upon the book The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. The book takes place in the year 1135 in England, and follows a few characters and their plights during this difficult period.

Tom Builder
The first character that I will discuss is Tom Builder. Tom Builder is a tall, muscular man with light-brown hair and greenish eyes with brown flecks. He has a curly brown beard, and is in his thirties. Tom is a mason, and his dream is to become a master builder overseeing the building of a cathedral.
Tom is married to Agnes, and has two children: Alfred, 14, and Martha, 6. His wife is pregnant with thier fifth child, as two of the children did not survive infancy. Tom is a compassionate man, who cares deeply for his wife and children, even though he has made some bad decisions. In the beginning of the book, Tom has passed up some job opportunities becasue of his desire to work on a cathedral; consequently, his family is left homeless and without a paying job in the dead of winter. They are left to scavenge in the woods as they travel from town to town looking for work. These consequences eventually lead to disaster for the family.

Philip of Gwynedd
Philip is an interesting character, raised by monks since the age of six, when his parents were brutally murdered in front of him and his younger brother, Francis. The local priory took them in, and raised them as holy men. Philip rose quickly in the ranks of monks, and by the age of twenty-one, had many responsibilities overseeing the supplies of the priory. His brother decided to leave the monastary and become a priest and serve God in the "world outside."

First Post Assignment

Your first post assignment is to write about yourself as a reader. You may write about your earliest reading memory, or favorite books you read when you were younger. You may also write about the type of books you enjoy reading and why, or how you choose a book to read. The aim is for you to give a little background information about yourself and your history as a reader.


Myself as a reader
Some of my earliest memories of reading take place at our city library. In the summers, my mom would take me and my sisters to check out books for the summer reading program. I would browse the young adult section, looking for the books with cool looking covers (yup, I always did that!). I would spend hours in my house, devouring the stack that I brought home, eager to fill out my reading chart and move on to the next book. I got hooked on the "American Girl" series, and read all of the "Felicity" books. Unbeknown to me at the time, I was reading historical fiction, and really enjoying it!
I continued my love of reading through middle and high school, always carrying a book around with me, reading in every spare moment of my day. It was so bad some days, I would go through an entire hour without remembering a thing my teacher said because I was so engrossed in my book. In hindsight, this probably wasn't a good way to get better at math, but I have carried with me that same devotion to books to this day.
As an adult, I decided to use my affinity for books to guide my career choice- deciding to pursue English Education at the University of Missouri. Since my early reading days, I have broadened the genres that I choose to read, and have joined a book club so that I have an outlet for discussing good books. I have now added "children's literature" to my book list, and I hope to pass on this love of reading to my daughter.

Welcome to Blogging!

Our class will be working with a new way to share information, called a web log, or blog. Each week you will have questions to answer or a task to complete over the book that you are reading. We will have time during class in the computer lab, and you are expected to complete your assignment in that time. Additionally, we will also be taking time to read each other's posts and responding to them. I hope that this is a way to share the great books that we read and familiarize ourselves with an ever-growing mode of communication.