Monday, January 14, 2013

Bringing history to life: Frederick Douglass

Recently I read the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, a former slave who escaped to freedom and fought for the abolition of slavery in the United States.  Why I hadn't I read this amazing book before????  Why wasn't this assigned reading in my U.S. history class in high school????  AMAZING, AMAZING, AMAZING book!  I encourage you to read it!  How did I end up reading it?  It was because of my job as a private tutor.  One of my tutoring students had to read it for his U.S. history class, along with Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson (which I will post about another day). 


 
Here are some fantastic resources for your own study of Frederick Douglass....

Download the writings fo Frederick Douglass for FREE at Project Gutenberg HERE.  Most are available as HTML, epub, or Kindle versions, as well as a few other digital types.

An in depth  (28 page) study guide from Penguin Books, under their Signet Classics imprint:  HERE

A briefer (8 pages) study guide HERE

Take a virtual tour HERE of the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, just outside of Washington, D.C.  There are two associated lesson plans at the website:
* Frederick Douglass's Hat (goes beyond just his hat!) HERE.
* Forward March: Continuing Frederick Douglass' Footsteps HERE

Frederick Douglass page at PBS.org HERE

Huffington Post article about "What Every American Should Know about Frederick Douglass, Abolitionist Prophet" - HERE

Hear (and watch) actor Danny Glover reading Frederick Douglass's "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" at Zinn History Project HERE

Frederick Douglass - An American Life (Part 1 of 4)


Frederick Douglass - An American Life (Part 2 of 4)


Frederick Douglass - An American Life (Part 3 of 4)


Frederick Dougalss - An American Life (Part 4 of 4)


Sunday, January 13, 2013

My four most popular posts round-up...

Despite my crazy 60+ hour work week, and the demands of being a single parent, I want to get back to more regular blogging!  Sigh...

In the meantime, I thought it might be fun to do a round-up of the most popular posts from my blog!

#1 - My most popular blog post of all time is Ancient Greece Part II which features pictures from a visit to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and an art study worksheet for you to print and use.  See the post HERE

#2 - FREE Art History Resources - Frida Kahlo and Pablo Picasso.  See the post HERE

#3 - Poetry and Children.  See the post HERE

#4 - The art of Vassily Kandinsky - See the post HERE.  

______________________________

In other news, I had a poem published recently in The Westchester Review, which is a literary journal!  I also found out that a second poem will be published in the August 2013 issue of another literary journal, Blue Lake Review.  How exciting!

We have other news as well, but for the moment it is still a secret.  I hope I will be able to share details by February 1st, if not sooner!  It means major changes in our lives, relates to living our dreams, and will hopefully allow us to slow down and focus on our goals instead of focusing on a 60+ hour work week to make ends meet!








Wednesday, January 2, 2013

The "Gilmore Girls" reading list...

Someone posted this awesome list of books mentioned on the tv show "Gilmore Girls." How many have you read?

Check out my reading blog, Reading Rory's List! Click HERE!

** indicates the ones I've read
(A) indicates the ones I've started but abandoned

(A) 1984 by George Orwell
**The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
**Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
**Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Archidamian War by Donald Kagan
The Art of Fiction by Henry James
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
**Atonement by Ian McEwan
**Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy

The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Babe by Dick King-Smith
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi
**Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
(A actually had to return it to the library)Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
**The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
**Beloved by Toni Morrison

Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney
**The Bhagavad Gita
The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews by Peter Duffy
Bitch in Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel
A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays by Mary McCarthy
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Bridgadoon by Alan Jay Lerner
Candide by Voltaire
The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
(A) Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
**The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
**Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White

The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman
Christine by Stephen King
(A) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
The Collected Short Stories by Eudora Welty
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora Welty
A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
Complete Novels by Dawn Powell
**The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas père
Cousin Bette by Honor’e de Balzac
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
**The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Cujo by Stephen King
**The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Daisy Miller by Henry James
Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
David and Lisa by Dr Theodore Issac Rubin M.D
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
**The Da Vinci -Code by Dan Brown
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
**Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
**Deenie by Judy Blume

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Nikki Sixx
The Divine Comedy by Dante
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
Don Quijote by Cervantes
Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhrv
(A) Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook
(A) The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn
Eloise by Kay Thompson
Emily the Strange by Roger Reger
** Emma by Jane Austen
** Empire Falls by Richard Russo
** Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol
** Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Ethics by Spinoza
Europe through the Back Door, 2003 by Rick Steves
Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Extravagance by Gary Krist
(A) Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore
The Fall of the Athenian Empire by Donald Kagan
Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
(A) The Fellowship of the Ring: Book 1 of The Lord of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien
Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce
Fletch by Gregory McDonald
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
(A) The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
** Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers
Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President by Jacob Weisberg
Gidget by Fredrick Kohner
** Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The Godfather: Book 1 by Mario Puzo
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Alvin Granowsky
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford
The Gospel According to Judy Bloom
The Graduate by Charles Webb
** The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Group by Mary McCarthy
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling
** Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry
Henry IV, part I by William Shakespeare
Henry IV, part II by William Shakespeare
Henry V by William Shakespeare
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
Holidays on Ice: Stories by David Sedaris
The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton
House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
(A) The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
** How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
How the Light Gets in by M. J. Hyland
** Howl by Allen Gingsburg
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
** The Iliad by Homer
** I’m with the Band by Pamela des Barres

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
Iron Weed by William J. Kennedy
It Takes a Village by Hillary Clinton
** Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
** The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
The Jumping Frog by Mark Twain
(A) The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito
The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander
** The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Lady Chatterleys’ Lover by D. H. Lawrence
The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal
** Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield
** Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
** Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken
** Life of Pi by Yann Martel
** The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway
The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen
** Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton
** Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
** The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Love Story by Erich Segal
** Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Manticore by Robertson Davies
Marathon Man by William Goldman
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman by William Tecumseh Sherman
** Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer
Mencken’s Chrestomathy by H. R. Mencken
The Merry Wives of Windsro by William Shakespeare
(A) The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Miracle Worker by William Gibson
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion by Jim Irvin
Moliere: A Biography by Hobart Chatfield Taylor
A Monetary History of the United States by Milton Friedman
Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret
A Month Of Sundays: Searching For The Spirit And My Sister by Julie Mars
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and It’s Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh
My Life as Author and Editor by H. R. Mencken
My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru by Tim Guest
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult – read
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
** The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin
Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature by Jan Lars Jensen
New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay
** Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
** Night by Elie Wiesel

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism by William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, Barbara E. Johnson, John P. McGowan
Novels 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell
** Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski
** Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Old School by Tobias Wolff
(A) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
** On the Road by Jack Kerouac
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
(A) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life by Amy Tan
Oracle Night by Paul Auster
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Othello by Shakespeare
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan
Out of Africa by Isac Dineson
** The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition by Donald Kagan
** The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
** The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington
Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
** The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
The Portable Nietzche by Fredrich Nietzche
The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill by Ron Suskind
** Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Property by Valerie Martin
Pushkin: A Biography by T. J. Binyon
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
Quattrocento by James Mckean
A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall
Rapunzel by Grimm Brothers
** The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
(A) Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
(A) The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad by Virginia Holman
(A) The Return of the King: The Lord of the Rings Book 3 by J. R. R. Tolkien
R Is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton
Rita Hayworth by Stephen King
Robert’s Rules of Order by Henry Robert
Roman Fever by Edith Wharton
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
(A) A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
(A) A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
Sacred Time by Ursula Hegi
Sanctuary by William Faulkner
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford
The Scarecrow of Oz by Frank L. Baum
** The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
** The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman
Selected Letters of Dawn Powell: 1913-1965 by Dawn Powell
** Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Several Biographies of Winston Churchill
Sexus by Henry Miller
** The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Shane by Jack Shaefer
The Shining by Stephen King
** Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
S Is for Silence by Sue Grafton
** Slaughter-house Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Small Island by Andrea Levy
Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
Snow White and Rose Red by Grimm Brothers
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World by Barrington Moore
The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos by Julia de Burgos
The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker
Songbook by Nick Hornby
The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
Sonnets from the Portuegese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
** Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
A Streetcar Named Desiree by Tennessee Williams
** Stuart Little by E. B. White
Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
Swimming with Giants: My Encounters with Whales, Dolphins and Seals by Anne Collett
Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber
(A) A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
** Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry
Time and Again by Jack Finney
** The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
** To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Tragedy of Richard III by William Shakespeare
** A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Trial by Franz Kafka
The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson
** Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
Ulysses by James Joyce
** The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962 by Sylvia Plath
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe – started and not finished
Unless by Carol Shields
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
The Vanishing Newspaper by Philip Meyers
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground and Nico (Thirty Three and a Third series) by Joe Harvard
** The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
** Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Walt Disney’s Bambi by Felix Salten
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
We Owe You Nothing – Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews edited by Daniel Sinker
What Colour is Your Parachute? 2005 by Richard Nelson Bolles
What Happened to Baby Jane by Henry Farrell
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
The Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum
** Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
** The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
**The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole