Tiffanny Shell Blog Post
March 27, 2011
Hello Laura.
One of my biggest challenges in this class so far has been managing my time. If my time were better managed I think I would be more productive. I think one of my biggest successes has been the reading; I love to read and comprehend it very well. Sometimes when I am reading one of the passages it’s like I am actually there and can see what is happening.
Out of all the classes I have taken, the readings in this class have affected me the most. I was shocked and horrified by some of the readings. Some of the poems were so brutal and yet so beautiful and touching. I was offended by some of the material, but in a good way if that’s possible and I think it is. People need to be shaken up and take notice of things around them, pleasant or not.
Most of the writing I have had to do in college has been summary this far. In this class it’s different and the literary analysis is a more in-depth method. A person must put themselves in the story and try to see the symbolism.
When I was a young girl I saw the motion picture The Handmaiden’s Tale and it haunted me for years. The story was so tragic and the things they did to the maid, with the wife right there was horrific. I still can’t bring myself to read the book, the movie gave me nightmares. But in life one must look past that and do what you have to do. I will read the book and take from it all that I can, and that is what I hope to accomplish in the near future.
Sincerely Tiffanny Shell

The Thing They Carried
The name of this story can barely describe all that was carried during that war. This story opened my eyes to the all that is carried during a war. Some people carry just the essentials and other carry mementos. Most of the soldiers carried their families in their hearts. All of the soldiers carried ammunition and rations. Some carried different guns and others carried drugs.
Jimmy Cross was the captain of this particular team of men. They try to make light of the situation they all face, joking around when they can. Other times they burn down and sack whatever village they pass by. The soldiers must check down holes and caves, they draw papers and whoever got 17 went down the hole.
During one of the hole explorations, Jimmy Cross is distracted with thoughts of Martha and one of the men is killed seconds later. This haunts Jimmy and he burns Martha’s letters blaming him. Jimmy had a pebble that Martha sends him, he plans to get rid of it after burning the letters. Seeing one of his men die changes Jimmy and makes him want to keep stricter order of his platoon.
The soldier get rations every week and start discarding what they don’t want or need. The one thing that they can’t discard is the horror they have witnessed. War is traumatic and can’t be forgotten by a lot of people. The carried all that they could and more.
For more information about Tim O’Brien’ go to www.bookreporter.com

The Necessity to Speak

     The Necessity to Speak by Sam Hamill is thought provocing to say the least. He talks about raw emotions and how everyone feels them. There are some things in life that no one wants to talk about or face that they are happening. Sam talks about being fourteen and being brutally gang raped. How people are almost catatonic when rape is mentioned. But why should these rape victims hide is shame, when they have done nothing wrong. Poetry gives these tortured souls a way to feel better about themselves and life.

     The poems is poetry of witness tell many different stories, with many different emotions. Sam Hamill writes of the cruetly of life and all the disasters it is made of. He speaks of the battering of women and how it is the most common felony commited in the United States. How a domestic dispute kills more cops than dope dealers and bank robbers combined. That is a shocking fact.

     For some women poetry is permission to speak. Sam tells how some women who are battered look at it as a form of love, not knowing any better. He also talks about a women who took his class and was murdered by her husband because he feared she would tell the truth. Sam went on to say that she was one of the kindest women he had ever known.

 To read more poetry go to http://poetry foundation.org

      Nabokov believed that a good reader was someone who read with their spine and not their eyes. Someone who absorbed the book they were reading and had the open-mindedness to read the book without judging it first. Nabokov felt that by rereading the book many times the reader had a better understanding of the book. I do agree with Nabokov, a book does need to be reread to be fully appreciated.  I myself reread many of my favorite books over the years, each time getting a better understanding of the story and its characters.

     I believe that the characteristic of a good reader are open-mindedness and the love of a good book. If you are open to new ideas then it makes reading new books more exciting.  I consider myself a good reader and I have been all my life. I reread many books and like to read more than one book at a time. I have a large collection of books and do not like to part with any of them.

Top 10 tools for better reading, Online and off.   lifehacker.com