You may wonder why I chose to read a historical account of the Puritans. If so, that's because you aren't familiar with Sarah Vowell. I became aware of her through NPR's This American Life and her Daily Show appearances. (You may also know her as the voice of Violet in The Incredibles.) She is that best possible combination--a hilarious nerd. As much as I like her, I figured it was time I read one of her books.
Also, though the Puritans are not my favorite people, I do have to give them a lot of thought each semester. Between actual Puritan literature (Anne Bradstreet, Jonathan Edwards), Nathaniel Hawthorne, and The Crucible, I end up spending quite a bit of time thinking and talking about this grim bunch. It certainly couldn't hurt me to get to know more about them.
I'm only halfway through the book now, but I'm really enjoying it. I actually laughed out loud at several parts of it, like her description of a speech by Puritan minister John Cotton:
"He begins with one of the loveliest passages from the book of Second Samuel, an otherwise R-rated chronicle of King David's serial-killer years. [There's a nice verse about the people of Israel finding a home.] Sounds so homey, like that column in the real estate section of The New York Times about how people found their apartments. Until I remember that talk like this is the match still lighting the fuses of a thousand car bombs" (Vowell 2).
That's what I like about Sarah Vowell. She's funny but also incredibly insightful. I already feel more knowledgeable--and more prepared to teach students about the Puritans--than when I started the book. I have a much better grasp on the concept of predestination than I did before. In the past, when my students started asking too many questions about that, I flailed a bit. No more!
And even if the rest of the book were crap--which it most emphatically is not--I would love it to pieces anyway for this:
"So the colonists dispersed south, breaking off into various settlements such as Roxbury and Dorchester, Boston neighborhoods famous in the twentieth century for race riots and the boy band New Kids on the Block" (Vowell 89).
An NKOTB shout-out? Vowell can do no wrong.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Ms. Hempel Chronicles, by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum
Ms. Hempel Chronicles is a story collection centered around Beatrice Hempel, a middle-school English teacher. I'm an English teacher, so I was excited to get someone else's perspective on what I do every day. What I really liked about Ms. Hempel Chronicles is that she isn't like Mr. Keating from Dead Poets Society or Mr. Holland (you know, with the opus). Too often, books about teachers make them into these mythical inspirational figures. And while they can be--we all have memories of teachers who have made an impact on us--most of us just aren't having these earth-shattering moments every day in the classroom. (Maybe that's a good thing--look at what happened to Mr. Keating.) Ms. Hempel is an ordinary teacher: she loves her kids and her subject; she tries hard, but not always hard enough. She says things that any teacher can relate to, like this bit from the first story, "Talent":
"Ms. Hempel was actively developing her sensitivity to the appropriate and the inappropriate. She still had difficulty distinguishing between the two: was it appropriate for her to laugh when a kid farted in class? Was it appropriate for her to wear stretchy fabrics? Ms. Hempel was not, she knew, a very good teacher...She bribed them with miniature chocolate bars. She extracted compliments from them. She promised herself that she would decorate her classroom with photographs of great women writers, but she never did" (Bynum 5).
She sells herself short, though; in the last story, after she has left the profession (that's not a spoiler, as the book really has no plot to speak of), she encounters a former student and learns that she actually did teach the kids something. They remember her fondly, and while this gratifies her, she has no desire to go back.
As I mentioned, this book really has no plot, but that isn't a bad thing. It just chronicles the thoughts of an everyday teacher who seems to feel that she is both better than and not good enough for her chosen profession. Bynum's writing is gorgeous. My favorite part is at the end, when Ms. Hempel (who is no longer known as Ms. Hempel, but we never get her new name) recounts a dream she has had of her soon-to-be-born baby's first day of school:
"Together they were walking down the hallway, headed toward some bright, severe place where they didn't really want to go. It was her role to take the child there and then return....But for now she was alone with the child she loved, walking farther down the hall, deeper into the silence, the strange glow ahead of them, the child slipping his hand into hers and holding it lightly, the whole dream filling with her wish that their steps would grow slower, and the passage grow longer, so that they might never have to reach the place where they were supposed to arrive" (Bynum 193).
Coming next: The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell.
"Ms. Hempel was actively developing her sensitivity to the appropriate and the inappropriate. She still had difficulty distinguishing between the two: was it appropriate for her to laugh when a kid farted in class? Was it appropriate for her to wear stretchy fabrics? Ms. Hempel was not, she knew, a very good teacher...She bribed them with miniature chocolate bars. She extracted compliments from them. She promised herself that she would decorate her classroom with photographs of great women writers, but she never did" (Bynum 5).
She sells herself short, though; in the last story, after she has left the profession (that's not a spoiler, as the book really has no plot to speak of), she encounters a former student and learns that she actually did teach the kids something. They remember her fondly, and while this gratifies her, she has no desire to go back.
As I mentioned, this book really has no plot, but that isn't a bad thing. It just chronicles the thoughts of an everyday teacher who seems to feel that she is both better than and not good enough for her chosen profession. Bynum's writing is gorgeous. My favorite part is at the end, when Ms. Hempel (who is no longer known as Ms. Hempel, but we never get her new name) recounts a dream she has had of her soon-to-be-born baby's first day of school:
"Together they were walking down the hallway, headed toward some bright, severe place where they didn't really want to go. It was her role to take the child there and then return....But for now she was alone with the child she loved, walking farther down the hall, deeper into the silence, the strange glow ahead of them, the child slipping his hand into hers and holding it lightly, the whole dream filling with her wish that their steps would grow slower, and the passage grow longer, so that they might never have to reach the place where they were supposed to arrive" (Bynum 193).
Coming next: The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell.
An introduction
A couple of years ago, I did a grad-school presentation based on that NEA study bemoaning the state of reading in America. The study grouped readers into categories like "light" (1-5 books a year), "moderate" (6-11 books a year), "frequent" (12-49), and "avid" (50 or more). I've always considered myself an avid reader, but I don't know if I actually manage to read 50 or more books every year. All of my life, I've consistently been two things: a reader, and competitive. I need to be in the avid group, dammit! I can't be in the second tier of American readers. That just won't do.
That's where this blog comes in. It's my attempt to document my reading habits, as well as sort of a one-person book club. I don't mean that to sound asocial--I welcome feedback from anyone who would like to join me in my quest for NEA-approved avid readerdom.
The title of this blog is inspired by, of all people, Laura Bush. If you know me, you know how improbable it is that she would inspire anything but bewilderment over her choice of husband, but I am quite taken with a story I once heard about her. Apparently, in response to her future mother-in-law's query about what she did for a living, she answered, "I read. I smoke. I admire." Yes, smoking is vile, but that is a pretty badass thing to say to an imposing dowager like Barbara Bush. I like it, and so it is my title.
That's where this blog comes in. It's my attempt to document my reading habits, as well as sort of a one-person book club. I don't mean that to sound asocial--I welcome feedback from anyone who would like to join me in my quest for NEA-approved avid readerdom.
The title of this blog is inspired by, of all people, Laura Bush. If you know me, you know how improbable it is that she would inspire anything but bewilderment over her choice of husband, but I am quite taken with a story I once heard about her. Apparently, in response to her future mother-in-law's query about what she did for a living, she answered, "I read. I smoke. I admire." Yes, smoking is vile, but that is a pretty badass thing to say to an imposing dowager like Barbara Bush. I like it, and so it is my title.
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