I've been devouring Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, even though I didn't want to like it. I remember reading The Corrections and also liking it in spite of myself. Something about the way he writes feels too smart (I think I stole that from the NYT Book Review) but there is also something so real, especially in the Minnesotan setting of Freedom. I'm reading it on the iPad so I'll include some good quotes as soon as I figure out how. The other book I'm reading is The Self-Healing Cookbook by Kristina Turner. I didn't realize it was about macrobiotic cooking when I ordered it from Amazon, but I love the homey, self-published feel of it and the way it's so gentle with its suggestions about changing your diet. It's so encouraging, all "just by reading this you're doing so well..." I guess I feel so frayed right now that although I'm eating terribly, I'm still comforted by the tone of it. And maybe I will be able to put some of it into use.
Great teaching moment today with my freshmen -- I was doing this worksheet with them that I hadn't previewed, and totally fumbling around with it, and I said, "You know, I didn't really look at this before now," and one of my students said, "No offense, but that's pretty obvious." I mean it was a great teaching moment for ME, not them... whenever I use canned, premade materials that I don't have ownership of, it just doesn't work out that well. When I finally decided to give up on the worksheet and just start talking about chapter three of Lord of the Flies, I think we all breathed a sigh of relief. And we had a great discussion, worksheet-free.
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