Rhonda Does Research

Friday, April 3, 2015

Gotta Love those E-readers!

I am totally crazy about my Nook, even though it doesn't perform up to specs. I could fix it, but that would involve re-registering it, which would clear out all of the books I side-loaded to the 32 gig card I added on--and it might not be possible to reload them, for reasons I don't want to get into here. Anyway, I've had it for a few years, and I have almost a thousand books, most of which were picked up for less than five dollars (probably a hundred or so were free). Yeah, I read a lot.

One of the things I love about it is that, thanks to the daily specials, I've been introduced to a lot of writers that I wouldn't have picked up on in print. A while back I bought Faye Kellerman's The Ritual Bath. It was the daily special to promote her latest book in the Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus series.

I don't know about you, but I like to learn stuff when I read a mystery, and this one has a lot to offer, in this case about Judaism and the daily issues that arise for the seriously religious. With that and the relationship that develops between the two main characters, I was able to take a mental vacation from everything that normally has my brain on the worrier's exercise wheel.
If this sounds good to you, try it for yourself.

I hate my textbook; I love to read

English: Six year old boy reading "Diary of a wimpy kid" License on Flickr (2011-01-07): CC-BY-2.0 Flickr tags: diary, wimpy, kid, book, read, bed, boy, hold (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This blog is supposed to be about writing and reading. So far, so good; I like to read, and I have to write for the class, so you'd think I'd have enough material right there. The problem is that I'm supposed to be writing (in half the posts) about the essays and articles in our textbook, How to Write about Anything, and I don't want to read most of them, much less write about them.

So, while it may look as though I'm not reading much, I'm actually reading a lot-- but I'm reading stuff that gives me a break from my everyday thoughts, particularly the sad ones. As just one example, the first anniversary of my mom's death is coming up (more about that later), and I've been reading mysteries. In those books, nobody dies of cancer of the spine. People are murdered, the murderers are caught and usually punished. Unlike real life, there's some kind of justice. There isn't anything that satisfying in the textbook.

Therefore, and with the permission of my prof, I'm going to write about what I've read lately.

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Aliens, or Angels? Who Knows?

English: "The Snake in the Grass or
Satan Transform'd to an Angel
of Light." At the sides are a
Puritan and a Covenanter above an
author writing. Courtesy of the
British Museum.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yeah, I'm playing catch up again. I really intended to post every day while I was off school, but after working so hard on my critical analysis draft, I was feeling pretty self-indulgent. Anyway, this morning I realized it was Thursday, and now I'm kicking myself (also again).
I think my draft was okay, although my thesis was not. I went with: The information revealed about Quill's father in Guardians of the Galaxy adds up to him being an angel rather than just another nonhuman. I don't think I really made that point.

I had to make a list of everything that is said about him in the film, and in the draft I basically used the list, except for the material that was in my scene. The point of this was to include the info without saying too much about all of the other scenes, because I didn't want to give the impression that I was analyzing those scenes (something forbidden in the instructions). I'll find out if this is a problem at my conference with the prof next Monday, when I also hope to get some help with my thesis.