Adventures in Reading: Pegasus Edition

by Fannie Safier, Donna Lemole Saucier

Unit Mastery Tests, Selection Tests, and Reading Checks

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[Chris Gager · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only reason I'm on page 717 is because I'm reading "Great Expectations(abridged)" and it's the last entry in this 912-page textbook. Formerly property of the Bath(Maine) school system. I don't know where I got it, but the most likely answer is our local transfer station. Anyway, I was feeling less than enthusiastic about picking up one of my "currently reading" books and plucked this off my shelves. And so... this is very likely the first time I ever found myself reading two 19th-century English novels at the same time. The other is "Dr. Thorne" by Trollope, which I'm finding to be entertaining, but a bit on the pokey side. "GE" is entertaining and not at all pokey - so far at least. OF COURSE I've read it before - twice I think. First in high school and more recently... within the last ten years or so. GREAT book - if you like Dickens - and enhanced by the inclusion of several still photos from the David Lean-directed film version from the 1940's. One of the great films... ever!

And so... I've taken to comparing "GE" to "Far From the Madding Crowd," a book I finished recently and found to be a bit boring the third time around. The difference, of course is in the writing and writer. Though the two writers were semi-contemporaries(CD was actually a bit older) the earlier writer is the more entertaining and easier to read. It's well-understood these days that Dickens was very much focused on theatricality while Hardy was much more doom and gloom. Also, Hardy's style of writing can wear one down. Stiff and over-stuffed are words that might apply. Reminds me a lot of Henry(UGH!) James, another writer who takes a back seat to Dickens when it comes to pure enjoyment of reading. Trollope's in the middle somewhere I suppose. He might be described as lucid, but leisurely.

Finished GE last night and I shed a tear or two. I has both endings, the original very depressing one, and the one CD put in after friends complained vociferously about the downbeat ending. That makes it the third time I've read this. Great book!

And now... I'm back at the beginning of the book and reading short stories...

"War" by Jack London(a great writer!); "The Eclipse" by Selma Lagerhof(Swedish naturalism); "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell... another moldy oldie(I skipped it as I'd read it recently). I just now realized the the word "Game" in the title has a dual meaning; "The Lady or the Tiger" by Frank R. Stockton - another oldie and read by me many years ago. Still kind of interesting.

More stories: "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" - an oldie but goodie; "The Musgrave Ritual" by Arthur Conan Doyle - more Sherlock; "All the Years of Her Life" by Morley Callaghan; "Split Cherry Tree" by Jesse Stuart; "A Mother in Mannville" by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings; "The Cask of Amontillado" by Poe - another moldy oldie that's always worth a re-read. This one is accompanied by a neat illustration that unfortunately happens to be inaccurate according to the text. Oh well... "My Delicate Heart Condition" by Toni Cade Bambara(never heard of this author - African American I think.).

More stories: "Before the End of Summer" by Grant Moss, Jr.(African-American I think;) "The Pacing Goose" by Jessamyn West(she attended Whittier College - did she know Dick Nixon? She was his second cousin.); "The Portable Phonograph" by Walter Van Tilburg Clark - read before I think. "A Summer's Reading" by Bernard Malamud; "The Scarlet Ibis" by James Hurst: "Mana Seda" by Fray Angelico Chavez; "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry - famous story - probably read before long ago.

And more... "The Balek Scales" by Nobel winner Heinrich Boll; "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant - another oldie and read before not to long ago; "The Fifty-First Dragon" by Heywood Broun(father of Heywood Hale Broun, TV sports commentator of the 60's and 70's). Coming up next...

Non-fiction: "Close Reading of an Essay" by E. B. White; "Growing Up Game" by Brenda Peterson; "How to Name a Dog" by James Thurber; The Death of a Tree" by Edwin Way Teale: "The Flight of Rachel Carson" by Geoffrey Norman; "My Mother, Rachel West" by Dorothy West; from "A Sense of Where You Are"(about Bill Bradley- typical boring McPhee); "Fragments of an Autobiography" by Charles Dickens(mainly about the blacking factory);"A Whole Nation and a People" by Harry Mark Petrakis; from "Life on the Mississippi" by Mark Twain; from (Arctic Dreams" by Barry Lopez.

Poetry: Emily Dickinson, Robert Graves, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Samuel Allen(Paul Vesey), John Masefield, Langston Hughes, Thom Gunn, Theodore Roethke, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Stephen Spender, Gary Soto, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Denise Levertov, Walter de la Mare, Claude McKay, Robert Frost, George Gordon, Lord Byron, Carl Sandburg, Edgar Allan Poe, Ogden Nash, James Stephens("The Shell" has echoes of "Dover Beach"), The King James Bible, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow("The Sound of the Sea" - Reminds of "Dover Beach") , William Shakespeare, Karl Shapiro, Maxine Kumin(illustration dysfunction... the accompanying photograph depicts female swimmers but the poem is about a men's race. Also, the title of the poem is "400-meter Freestyle" but the swimmers in the picture are doing the breaststroke.). Leslie Marmon Silko, Robert Frost(More illustration dysfunction... The poem "At Woodward's Gardens" is accompanied by a photo of a chimpanzee while the poem refers to a monkey. A chimp is NOT a monkey, it's an ape.), Kenneth Fearing, Pat Mora, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Southey, Robert Burns, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, A. E. Housman, Robert Frost, Rudyard Kipling, Anonymous("Lord Randal"), E. E. Cummings, Edwin Muir, William Shakespeare, Christina Rossetti, Johan Wolfgang von Goethe

Drama: "Mozart and the Grey Steward" by Thornton Wilder; "A Marriage Proposal by Anton Chekhov"; "Visit to a Small Planet" by Gore Vidal(Seems to be saying the same thing as Cormac McCarthy in 'Blood Meridian' - Also, seems to connect to that Star Trek episode with Willam Campbell as Trelane... "The Squire of Gothos"; "Thunder on Sycamore Street" by Reginald Rose(solid-but-now-dated liberal propagandizing. Reminds of "The Lottery"... "Twelve Angry Men(written by Rose)."

"Romeo and Juliet" - the whole thing??!! Will I read it again? Not at the moment I won't.

And so, I didn't read Romeo and Juliet(read twice already) and went on to a chapter on The Odyssey featuring excerpts from Robert Fitzgerald's very nice translation. And then to the end with Tennyson's "The Lotus Eaters" and "An Ancient Gesture" by Edna St. Vincent Millay and a bit of Alexander Pope's "The Odyssey" translation in rhyming couplets. And that's it...

- 4.25* rounds down to 4*

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Old Children's Book. Liked it as a kid, but haven't read it in years.

[Felicia Latoya Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good starter for middle school kids.

[Chris Seltzer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this when I was in school. It's a serviceable middle school reading text.