you know what is also pouring in my life? papers, reflections, discussion boards...grading, grading, grading. i can't even tell you how much i've graded, just in the last 48 hours. okay, maybe i will. in the last 48 hours, i have graded 43 papers, 86 sets of discussion boards, and 33 field experience reflections. winning! the next two weeks are going to be equally as brutal, but we are at the finish line. i'm ready to start fresh this summer with new batches of students. you know what makes this grading life enjoyable? friends. friends who also spend most evenings sitting at their computers grading right along with me.
with all of this grading this semester, i am not finding much time to read, but i am trying to squeeze a few pages in every now and again as much as i am able. i have been able to finish a handful of books over the last month or so, and will be trying to pull my quotes from them soon. i'll share at least one set yet this evening. truthfully, i have a few other post ideas i'd like to get to soon, but only in time, folks, only in time...
the tiger's wife {tea obreht} was recommended to me by a friend. personally, i wasn't a huge fan, probably for a few reasons. simply put, it did not necessarily hit the target on my preferred genres. the bottom line, my comprehension of this book's content was low, real low. surface level, i could tell you what happened. ask me about the deeper meanings and the metaphors represented in this novel and i will have zero response for you. with that said, i'll just leave you with a few quotes...
"everything necessary to understand my grandfather lies between two stories: the story of the tiger's wife, and the story of the deathless man. these stories run like secret rivers through all the other stories in his life--of my grandfather's days in the army; his great love for my grandmother; the years he spent as a surgeon and a tyrant of the university. one, which i learned after his death, is the story of how my grandfather became a man; the other, which he told to me, is of how he became a child again."
"then the realization of it rushed over me: he didn't need me with him, he wanted me there."
"and the apothecary--tooth puller, dream interpreter, measurer of medicine, keeper of the magnificent scarlet ibis--was the reliable magician, the only kind of magician my grandfather could ever admire. which is why, in a way, this story starts and ends with him."
"he read the alphabet book, that staple of childhood learning, the first philosophy we are exposed to--the simplicity of language, the articulation of a letter that sounds exactly how it looks."
"'when men die, they die in fear,' he said. 'they take everything they need from you, and as a doctor it is your job to give it, to comfort them, to hold their hand. but children die how they have been living--in hope. they don't know what's happening, so they expect nothing, they don't ask you to hold their hand--but you end up needing them to hold yours.'"
"the war had altered everything. once separate, the pieces that made up our old country no longer carried the same characteristics that had formerly represented their respective parts of the whole. previously shared things--landmarks, writers, scientists, histories--had to be doled out according to their new owners."
"all along, my grandfather had hoped for a miracle, but expected disaster."
"for her part, magdalena indulged him. he was a great help to her, and she realized very quickly that by looking after her he was learning to look after himself."
"all through the war, my grandfather had been living in hope...but now, in the country's last hour, it was clear to him, as it was to me, that the cease-fire had provided the delusion of normalcy, but never peace. when your fight has purpose--to free you from something, to interfere on the behalf of an innocent--it has a hope of finality. when the fight is about unraveling--when it is about your name, the places to which your blood is anchored, the attachment of your name to some landmark or event--there is nothing but hate."
"in the end, all you want is someone to long for you when it comes time to put you in the ground."
find my other 2013 reading list posts here: les mis {part one}, les mis {part two}, march reads {part one}, march reads {part two}
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