Dana Swier Huff's Blog, page 88
July 5, 2010
Versatile Blogger
Some time back, Birdie gave me an award, and I've been negligent about posting about it.
Rules are as follows:
Thank the person who gave you the award. (Thank you very much, Birdie!)
Share seven things about yourself.
Pass the award along to blogs you have recently discovered and you who think are fantastic for whatever reason (in particular order).
Contact the picked bloggers to let them know about award.
Seven Things about Me
Maybe you recognize the title of my blog from a poem by Emily...
July 3, 2010
The Three Weissmanns of Westport
Catherine Schine's novel The Three Weissmanns of Westport is a modern retelling of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. I first became intrigued by the novel after I heard Lois Reitzes interview Schine on Between the Lines. Here is the interview:
Catherine Schine, author of The Three Weissmans of Westport
Schine explains in the interview that her motivation for telling the tale lay in part in the fact that in many ways, women today are as vulnerable to the same financial difficulties as the...
July 1, 2010
Posting Schedule
You may have missed this small update I made earlier this week. Well, I have made some revisions to the schedule. I originally decided to dedicate myself to posting at least twice a week, but I have changed my mind and will try to post three times a week instead. Tuesdays will be dedicated to book news, Kindle news, reflections on reading and books, and the like. Thursdays will be dedicated to Booking Through Thursday (just discovered via Bookish Nose, although I wholeheartedly disagree...
Reading Update: July 1, 2010
I am in the midst of reading three books at the moment: Gulliver's Travels via DailyLit, The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox (paperback), and The Three Weissmanns of Westport (Kindle).
As of today, I have read 80 of 115 sections via email of Gulliver's Travels. My verdict so far: I am ready to be finished with it. My favorite part has been Gulliver's stay in Brobdingnag, which might change before I finish the book. As I read, I find myself annoyed with Gulliver for repeatedly abandoning his...
June 29, 2010
Cool Kindle Tricks
If you have a Kindle and the most recent software update—2.5—you can do some pretty cool things.
Most Kindle owners probably know that you can highlight and annotate passages in the Kindle. You probably also know that you can download Kindle on your PC or Mac and iPhone and read books on all of your devices.
What you may not know is that you can access all your highlights and notes from your Kindle account. Simply visit the Kindle account page and log in. Really handy for creating blog posts...
June 27, 2010
Everything Austen Challenge II
Just as the All About the Brontës Challenge is ending, I am embarking on a new reading challenge: the Everything Austen Challenge. Regular readers know I love Jane Austen, and I'm looking forward to completing this challenge. In order to complete the challenge, which runs from July 1, 2010 to January 1, 2011, readers must choose six Austen-themed things to complete for the challenge—books, movies, and even crafts count.
The six things I have chosen are the following:
The Three Weissmanns of...June 26, 2010
Medieval Lives
Terry Jones is perhaps best known as one of the members of the British comedy troupe Monty Python. Anyone who has followed his career since his Python days knows that he has become a respected medievalist, something my Medieval Literature professor told us one day in discussing Chaucer's Knight. Jones's Medieval Lives may be seen as a companion to the series of the same name.
The book is broken down into eight chapters the explore the lives of people of different classes and occupations...
June 21, 2010
The Little Stranger
I have never read anything written by Sarah Waters before. I had no expectations going into this book. The art teacher at my school said I would like it, and that the last page was a doozy. If what I think happened is what happened, then she's right.
The Little Stranger is the story of Dr. Faraday and his long-standing obsession with Hundreds Hall, the home of the Ayres family. He first encounters the family as a small child when he visits the estate as part of an Empire Day celebration...
June 16, 2010
The Adventure of English
Melvyn Bragg's book The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language is a companion to the documentary series of the same name. It explores the twists and turns in the development and spread of English from its beginnings to the present day. I found it to be an entertaining read, and I certainly learned some interesting things about language that I will use in my American and British literature curricula next year. In many ways, it does seem astonishing that English has managed to...
June 15, 2010
Remarkable Creatures
When I was a little girl, I loved dinosaurs. It might be I don't remember things correctly, but I don't remember dinosaurs being all that cool when I was a kid. Mrs. Jones taught us about the Trachodon in first grade, the first day of our unit on dinosaurs. I was hooked. The first "chapter" book I ever read was called Prehistoric Monsters Did the Strangest Things. As an accurate dinosaur book, it probably wasn't very good, but I was fascinated by it. The book was part of a series on...
