Years later, in Taiwan, my television broke down, and I decided not to spend the money on repairing or replacing it. So there were immediate savings, but what I still remember was having much more time to talk to guests and for reading. Then I went several years with no television by choice up until the last two years or so - and now once again I am choosing to not use cable TV at home. At this point I am watching some movies or downloaded TV shows on occasion, but gone is that daily habit. It frees up lots of time!
I wonder what would happen in your home if your TV got removed, covered over with cloth for two months, or the decision was made to simply not have it anymore? Would the sun not rise tomorrow, or would the rivers run dry? I doubt it - no, the world would keep on turning.
My Modest Proposal for you right now is not exactly that you should just take a sledgehammer to your TV, although that might be fun to watch or perhaps do once in your life, but rather to examine your use of time. If you take away all the time spent at school or work, sleeping, transporting yourself, eating, washing, exercising - you may find you only have about three or four free hours per day. How many of those hours are used by watching TV, playing computer games, or surfing the Internet for fun? Do you have fun before you finish your work, or after? Do you go to sleep at the same time every night, or at different times?
All right, for those that manage their time well, and spend some of that time reading, there is on offer the chance to convert our course into an honors course. First, keep in mind that we should normally read about two books anyway per year. My thoughts on that for the regular class are this - you should aim to read about a chapter per week of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass using links on this blog, and if that works, we can put questions on those books on the quarterly exams - especially the second one at Christmas time. Then, in the Spring 2014 semester, we would like to have a second book, and I am thinking about asking the class to read Pride and Prejudice, which was something we encouraged you to read independently last summer. If anyone has the questions from last summer on that I would like to receive them, by the way. But my idea is to go through the novel as a class and not read it independently as I am suggesting you read Alice in Wonderland. Oh, so by the way the questions for Alice on the quarterly exams will be extra-credit oriented, at least in part, so this book will not be one I cover much in class, but help you with if you ask me. I am reading it myself. Pride and Prejudice would be discussed every week, quizzed, and tested.
Now, for an honors student, you can expect to read about 4 to 5 more books per year, have at least one more presentation per semester beyond what the other students are doing, and one more longer paper per year. I have put thought into a reading list, and here is what I came up with:
1. V.S. Naipaul – (British; Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001) – A House for Mr. Biswas
2. William Golding – (British; Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983) – The Lord of the Flies
3. Alan Paton (South
African) – Cry, the Beloved Country
4. Aldous Huxley (British)
– Brave New World
5. Shakespeare – Macbeth reader planned; add original Macbeth or King Lear (see below)
Somerset Maugham
(British) – Of Human Bondage
James Joyce (Irish)
– A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, maybe Ulysses
Robert Graves (British)
– I, Claudius
George Orwell (British)
– 1984, Animal Farm
Agatha Christie
(British) – And Then There Were None, MousetrapJonathan Swift (British) – A Modest Proposal, or Gulliver's Travels
So the books above, 1 through 5, are carefully chosen, and let me speak of them. All authors above are British, which qualifies them for our consideration. I've avoided Canadian writers here, much to my chagrin, mostly because we have a full list already. We could have a separate class just on our Northern friends, actually. The first choice, Naipaul, comes very highly recommended. I have not read this book but am almost burning up to do so. Someone I know who devoured books right and left spoke very highly of this particular author, and this is enough for me. Number 3 on the list is similar - a good teacher friend of mine who read a lot and was into making lists of books for other people to read, spoke eloquently of the beautiful word painting we'll find in Cry, the Beloved Country. Just look on Amazon for a chorus of reviews supporting this. William Golding is one I like - one odd thing is that I first heard this book as a boy when my father read it to me. Some difference - my dad was reading my Lord of the Flies and my mom was reading my Jonathan Livingston Seagull! I suppose, looking back, Lord of the Flies had the greater shock value. Brave New World was the favorite book of one of our excellent environmental science teachers of the past, Mr. Zarubin, and I remember kicking myself for not yet reading it. I have come close with "The Giver," and read others in the genre like 1984, but Brave New World is a must-read, currently number 5 on The Modern Library's 100 Best Novel list and I am reading it now along with half a dozen other books. Finally, Shakespeare is a must, right?
So we are already reading the graded reader for Macbeth. The book also has some of the original play so we will read parts of the original. Honors students could decide to read the entire play of Macbeth in the original. However, I believe the school is also getting a graded reader that contains King Lear, so we could rip through that and then read the original, or as much as we can of it, as well.
Since the honors class is not required, the idea of 5 books - or these 5 books - is up for discussion and even negotiation. I have some other books listed that I consider pretty good choices. Usually honors students read the books on their own, confer with the teacher, then write some kind of short paper or at least answer written questions from the teacher proving they have read the books. Or we could make a small reading group or "cell," or something like a small group lesson focusing on the books. I had thought honors students would likely read the first five and then also choose one more, a sixth book, from the list below. I might suggest going for something different if you are reading a sixth book - like I, Claudius, which vividly portrays ancient Rome, or Mousetrap, a play by Agatha Christie that I saw staged in London and has a superb twist at the end which is nearly impossible to guess. I could also recommend books of poetry or short stories if you want to avoid novels. An honors student could use this sixth book and perhaps take away the Pride and Prejudice requirement if it has already been read in the past.
I hope you can see that part of what needs to happen here in your final months and years before you go off and get a tertiary, or university, education, is to a) ruthlessly analyse the way you are using your time, b) take any opportunity you can to learn more, to experience something extraordinary with learning, and c) take a long-term view. The habits you develop now will be with you for life. So learn to be inquisitive and how to become a lifelong learner. Also, looking back, do you think you will be happy you spent your time on entertainment or on reading a book that helped you know and experience life better? Will you learn to soothe the mind or expand the mind?
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