When the hurly-burly’s done

English 213:

Pick one of these books and read it by November 1st. As you read, post about it in your blog (about two paragraphs each, though that’s just a suggestion). Note that I’m not asking for a formal essay about this book. There’s plenty of time for that later in the year.

If you and a friend (or several friends) decided to read the same book, that’s even better—read each other’s blogs, quote them, leave comments, start a conversation about the book. I’m curious to see if we can get some real online discussion going.

The titles of the books are linked to amazon.com–check out the information and reviews to help you decide what you’d like to read. The town library is a great source for most of these books, especially the works of fiction, and the Media Center has several of them as well. Let me know if you run into trouble getting any of the books and I’ll see what I can to help you out.

First post:
Before you read. What are your expectations about this book? What made you choose it? What else have you read, if anything, about the topic?

Second Post:
About a third of the way in (or at a logical stopping point). How’s it going so far? What thoughts/questions/ideas do you have now?

Third Post:
About two thirds of the way in (or at a logical stopping point). How’s it going so far? What thoughts/questions/ideas do you have now?

Fourth Post:
After you’ve finished the book. Was this book worth reading? What lasting understandings/knowledge, if any, did it leave you with? What do you now want to find out more about?

Evil

Delbanco, Andrew. The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil (Excerpt is in your packet.)

Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (A philosophical work about how/why the Nazis behaved the way they did.)

Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner (A boy in Afghanistan must live with his guilt after he makes a decision that some would consider evil.)

Wiesel, Elie. Night (Wiesel’s memoir of surviving the Holocaust. Short but powerful.)

Power, Samantha. A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (Power, a journalist, examines America’s responses, or lack thereof, to genocides in the 20th century. Dense but worth it.)

Krakauer, Jon. Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (An investigation of murder in Utah reveals the violent history of a Mormon splinter sect that’s been in the news very recently.)

Updike, John. Terrorist (A novel about what drives people to become terrorists.)

Rushdie, Salman. Shalimar the Clown (A spurned husband becomes an instrument of evil.)

Puritans

Philbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War (A wonderful, readable history of Plymouth Colony.)

Norton, Mary Beth. In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 (How did a whole community go witch-crazy?)

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible (A play about the Salem Witch Trials written at the height of the 1950s Red Scare. Terrifying.)

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter (A Puritan woman faces punishment for her sin of adultery.)

LaPlante, Eve. American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans (Thanks to Madeline and her mother for pointing this one out–looks like a great biography of this remarkable woman.)

The Scottish Play

Moore, Alan and David Lloyd. V for Vendetta (A graphic novel inspired by the story of the Gunpowder Plot, but set in modern times.)

Fraser, Antonia. Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot (How a plot to blow up the English Parliament was conceived and foiled.)

Hogge, Alice. God’s Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth’s Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot (Another book about the Gunpowder Plot.)

Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (An engaging, if a little long, biography of Shakespeare.)

Papp, Joseph and Elizabeth Kirkland. Shakespeare Alive! (A very readable book about life in Shakespeare’s time. Lots of fun.)

Kurosawa, Akira. Something Like an Autobiography (The director of Throne of Blood tells his life story.)

Wills, Garry. Witches and Jesuits (A new critical reading of The Scottish Play that ties it in to the Gunpowder Plot.)

Hugo Chavez and the Devil: An echo from 1692 Salem

“The devil is right at home. The devil — the devil, himself, is right in the house. And the devil came here yesterday. Yesterday, the devil came here. Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of.” — Hugo Chavez, U.N. speech, Sept. 20, 2006

Hat tip to Admiral Olmstead.

From the New York Times:

People who washed their hands after contemplating an unethical act were less troubled by their thoughts than those who didn’t, the study found.

Here’s something kind of interesting–a group of people in Scotland are working on digitizing The Book of Deer, which appears to be a book from right around the time that Macbeth lived.  The site’s still under construction, though parts of it work.  

And in the You’ve Really Got to Be Kidding Me, Right? Department, I present Lothene Experimental Archaeology.  They do historical reenactments that depict life and warfare in the age of Duncan and Macbeth.