Never Again, William Faulkner

I have now had my Kindle for over 6 months now. It has been a blessing with all of the interminably long road trips I have had to endure over the same period of time. The kids watch DVD's and I listen to audio books. I have really listened to some good ones. I have been the ultimate multi-tasker. 


 However, my selections have not always been top-notch. For example, I have really been pushing my comfort level, trying to tackle the classics of our time. I listened to I, Claudius by Robert Graves and I loved it. But this has not always been the case. 


Today, after plodding through one particular author, I have had to throw in the towel. It was just a horrific book. I couldn't take it anymore. The worst part is that I invested 9.5 hours into it and only had 3 more to go. But I think I would rather eat a plate full of lima beans while watching a bowling tournament, than listen to another minute of that book.

The book was Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner.  It was the same small plot repeated over and over and over again with a whole lot of pronouns, so I was never sure who was talking or who they were talking about.  It was written in 1938, and so I guess that makes it a classic.  Here is another interesting fact from Wikipedia: The 1983 Guinness Book of World Records claims the "Longest Sentence in Literature" is a sentence from Absalom, Absalom! containing 1,300 words.   Yep, I think that sentence was the first 9 hours of my audio book, actually.

So here is my question...because a book is written by a well-respected, classic author, does that mean I am required to love and revere the book? I didn't care for The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I mean, it was just okay.  I totally don't get Ernest Hemingway and Anna Karenina was the longest. Book. Ever.

I keep a Goodreads list of all the books I have read. I love that website. I won't credit myself with reading a book unless I finished it.  However, since I invested so much time in this book and because I read the cliff notes to see how it ended, I am putting it down and checking it off. I mean, since I had to endure the 'n' word 300 hundred times, I think it is only fair.

School Update

We had a good day with school work. I kind of had a slacker week last week. The kids managed to weasel out of all math assignments, because I was just too tired to fight them on it. Therefore, I devised a new strategy. I put 10 math pages in their notebooks and informed them that all the pages had to be done by the end of the week. They did two today fairly quickly. I am hoping that they will just take it upon themselves to get it done on their own time. I am sure there will be resistance this week, but over time they will learn that math is not an option.

In addition to math, we reviewed all 19 poems in their memorization book. Level One is almost done. It is great. I love the fact that one word will trigger a poetry recitation while we are driving in the car or at the playground or the zoo. It is wonderful. Today, Zach was excited to find "Who Has Seen the Wind" by Christina Rossetti in another poetry book we own.

They made additional progress with their spelling words. Of course, Raef missed all of the words he missed last week. I hope he passes them off tomorrow. It is time to move on!

We are halfway through book #4 of the Odyssey series by Mary Pope Osbourne. The goddess Athena visited Odysseus' son Telemachus to help him get Odysseus to come home. She came disguised as a man named Mentor. I can see why the Odyssey continues to live on, century after century. It is a fun story.

Then we headed out to co-op. The kids are going to do a play at the end of March. Zach is going to be an inch worm and Raef is a narrator frog. Zach gets to turn into a butterfly! How fun is that.

They both had their art class and then joined me for astronomy. We covered Uranus and Neptune. I am soon going to have the kids start working on a model of the solar system. That should be a lot of fun. At the end of class, I decided to play a review game with all of the kids. It was tic-tac-toe and they could put an 'x' or an 'o' when they got the answer right. Zach's team was winning and his teammate decided to put the 'o' on a spot that would not win, even though the to right corner spot would give them the win. Zach almost had a nervous breakdown because Nicholas put it in the wrong spot and didn't win. He started bawling. He couldn't turn it off. They did win anyways, but he was really mad. Oh my word! He is so much like me, it is scary: competitive, control freak.

It carried over into PE and he was still upset so I took him to the store with me instead of subjecting everyone to his drama. We went to Trader Joe's and after he got some food in his stomach, he was much more pleasant. Aha! Maybe he was just hungry.

When we got home, I told them it was reading time. For the next hour, Zach read books to Raef. It was very adorable. Zach loves to read, and Raef loves to be read to. It worked out really well and I was able to load old high school photos onto facebook. What fun!