I am sorry if I have been lackadaisical with my posts I have been spending time with my family and I haven’t set aside a certain time to do my posts. I will get used to being home though and will make sure to post more frequently from now on. I start my Christmas shopping tomorrow with my mother and then, my sister comes home from college and I will go Christmas shop with her. I had a pretty great day today just relaxing and winding down after the semester. I got my grades back and I’m happy to report I did very well! I hope everyone is having a great night and hopefully we will all get our holiday shopping done soon so we can relax.
I finally made it home and got a warm welcome from my family. My step dad and mom greeted me with a homemade pizza, hot chocolate, a warm fire, and a decorated house. It is good to be home! I get to have a traditional Italian Christmas Eve dinner tomorrow made by my step dad’s mom because my family cannot go to her house for Christmas Eve, I am so excited to try it. I made a fun Christmas poll if you all want to participate, I know I did not include as many Christmas songs as I could, but there are so many holiday songs out there it is hard to choose which ones to include. I hope everyone is having a great night and I hope everyone can get all their holiday shopping done soon. 🙂
I finally get to go home after a long semester at my school. Tomorrow, at 10:30 a.m., I get to drive eight hours and finally be home for the holidays. My grades are due by Monday at noon so I hope to hear good news about my finals and grades in my classes. I hope everyone is having a great night and will have an even better weekend!
Using the poll from this site and an online literary forum I have decided that I will read The Time Machine by H.G. Wells over break! I will also read Beloved by Toni Morrison and A Doll’s Houseby Ibsen because I have to read these works for my seminar class. I will write posts based on these three works and will of course continue to do the quote of the day. Hope you all are having a great night!
“Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced” (Leo Tolstoy, BrainyQuote).
Hi everyone,
Today I thought I would post a quote about art and writing. Many artists and writers claim that they become inspired to do their work and that the results comes from their feelings. Feelings and inspirations lets the artists, writers and musicians create works of art. However, there are creative individuals who would argue against this claim. Octavia Butler, one of the most prominent female science-fiction writers thinks that good writing is produced by habit. In her short story, “Furor Scribendi”, she states what she thinks is important about writing. “First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you are inspired or not. Habit will help you finish or polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice. Forget talent. If you have it, fine. Use it. If you don’t have it, it doesn’t matter. As habit is more dependable than inspiration, continued learning is more dependable than talent” (Butler, 141).
Do you think feeling and inspiration are important? Is habit? Is there another factor that is more important?
Thanks for reading, please post your comments below!
Butler, Octavia. Furor Scribendi. New York: Seven Stories, 1996. Print.
Since almost everyone said they wanted to wait to read a book as a group, I decided that I will read a book over break and give my synopsis and thoughts on the chapters I read for that day. I have a poll listed below that has the options I chose but first I will give a synopsis of every book/play in case you are unfamiliar with the text. Please click on the hyperlink text if you wish to read a more in-depth synopsis of the book/play.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover- The story concerns a young married woman, Constance (Lady Chatterley), whose upper-class husband, Clifford Chatterley, has been paralyzed and rendered impotent. Her sexual frustration leads her into an affair with the gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. This novel is about Constance’s realisation that she cannot live with the mind alone; she must also be alive physically (wikipedia).
The Inferno-The book is an allegory telling of the journey of Dante through what is largely the medieval concept of Hell, guided by the Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine circles of suffering located within the Earth. Allegorically, the Divine Comedy represents the journey of the soul towards God, with the Inferno describing the recognition and rejection of sin (wikipedia).
The Time machine- The book’s protagonist is an English scientist and gentleman inventor living in Richmond, Surrey, identified by a narrator simply as the Time Traveler. The narrator recounts the Traveller’s lecture to his weekly dinner guests that time is simply a fourth dimension, and his demonstration of a tabletop model machine for travelling through it. He reveals that he has built a machine capable of carrying a person, and returns at dinner the following week to recount a remarkable tale, becoming the new narrator (wikipedia).
Macbeth The plot summary for this play is too dense and I do not want to give away the ending for the people who have not read it. Please go to wikipedia if you wish to learn more about this play, but be careful not to read the whole summary because it gives away the ending.
The Hunger Games– In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Long ago the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated. As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and one girl to appear in an annual televised event called, “The Hunger Games,” a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. The terrain, rules, and level of audience participation may change but one thing is constant: kill or be killed (amazon.com).
I apologize for the lack of posts this week, but I am finally done with my big exam! Now that I am done I only have a ten page paper to write and two more exams, which is nothing compared to the amount of work my classmates have. I can now give my blog, and my viewers, my full attention.
I wanted to ask if anyone would be interested in reading at least one book with me for the month of December and perhaps, part of January. I go back to school January 12th so unfortunately I would have to stop reading any major works by then. I have a couple of suggestions, but I wanted to see if anyone would be interested in doing this with me first. We could set a deadline where we have certain chapters done and talk about the chapters we read on my blog, it would be similar to a book club. If there are any current book reading “contests” going on that anyone knows about we can also sign up for that since those contests usually provide book suggestions. I will be reading at least one book over break and will comment on it, but I thought it would be more fun with other people. 🙂 Please let me know if you want to participate in this “book club” and post any suggested reading in the comments, thank you!
Today I thought I would ask you what you guys love the most about the holiday season. The picture below I think sums up what I am looking forward to when I get home. 🙂
weareliterarycritics 