One of my favorite lines from a movie I like to quote is, “I’m home you lucky people!” Robert DeNiro used it in This Boy’s Life to let Leonardo DiCaprio’s character and his mother in the movie know he was home to continue torturing them.  Now I’m using it to announce my return to blogging and the return of the PRInSportsBlog, hopefully you don’t consider this return torture as well

For those that followed this blog often last spring, I apologize for the hiatus, but I’m back to a more regular schedule at home, and am committing to a return to this blog. I appreciate everyone that’s read in the past, and I hope you’ll return to being a regular reader. Now, let’s get back to the business of Sports PR!

During my sophomore year of college, I read for the first time This Boy’s Life, Tobias Wolff’s chronicle of adolescence, a bildungsroman as memoir rather than novel. It had been quietly waiting on my reading list for some time, but it took finding it on the cheap in the basement of a used bookstore for me to commit. It turned out to be that rare work that I could admire not only for its artistic excellence, but could also submerge myself in to the point where I wanted to live within its pages. Greedily, I read the rest of his output, everything except his novel Old School. And during his lecture last night at Southwestern University, he called me silly for not having done so. Not literally, of course – I didn’t speak to the writer, but he read an excerpt and immediately I knew I’d made an error by overlooking the novel.

I first heard that he would be giving this lecture during my time volunteering with the Texas Book Festival, an otherwise unremarkable endeavor. I brought home the flyer advertising the event, it sat on a table in my living room for more than a week, and it wasn’t until the day of his lecture that I decided I would go.

Wolff, who has an excellent moustache, moved to the podium after two introductions in the tiny auditorium. He was born the same year as my father and I’m happy to report that neither man look too far gone. They both appear fit and healthy, my father and Wolff.

Surprisingly, he seemed nervous – his hands shook, he tripped over words, mumbled a few names. But once he moved into the meat of his lecture–“Saved by Stories: The Writer’s Life”–his nerves steeled and he seemed at ease. His tone was conversational but commanding. Strewn with clever jokes, Wolff’s lecture rambled past Tolstoy, writing memoir versus writing fiction, whether or not he is a habitual killer of dogs (in his stories), Robert Frost, and the importance of “say[ing] something real.”

During the q&a, my mind drifted, the fault of the oldest, phlegmiest man complaining about kids and videogames (the moment seemed staged, it was so stereotypical), and I found myself reflecting on why I was there, why I go to see writer’s I admire. It has little to do with collecting tips on craft (although invariably this happens); instead, I think I go to try and see something of myself in the writer, to catch a glimpse of a shared quality, a similarity in character that might foretell my own future ability. I wonder if other writers my age feel similarly.

Seeing as that was my goal, I’m happy to report Wolff and I do overlap. My favorite moment came near the end of his lecture where he discussed revision, saying, “that’s when I feel most like an artist.”

Mr. Wolff, I feel the same way.

RS

As a group, come up with a few general ideas that readers of your book would benefit from thinking about before they begin reading. Each member of the group should then find something to read and something to watch that would help people think about those ideas before getting started.

For example: In This Boy’s Life, I might want readers to think more about what it means to have, or not have, male role models in their lives. So I might link to this article, from a non-profit organization in Tennessee.

Or, I might say that it would be useful for readers of This Boy’s Life to think about what life in the 1950’s was supposedly like. Not because I think Toby’s life was like that, but because it’s what Toby would have been comparing himself to; what “normal” families were supposed to be at that time. For that, I might suggest this film.

For both the written piece and the media piece, you have to include the following information:

• what is it?
• where is it from? who wrote/created it?
• in a paragraph or two, why would this be useful to readers before they started reading? what ideas would you want them to think about? how would this piece help get at those ideas? do you agree or disagree with the ideas in the piece?

For Friday, please read up to the 106 in This Boy’s Life.

Below are a series of links that will take you to information about, and interviews with, Tobias Wolff. I want you to take some time today to read and listen to Wolff, to get a better impression of who this guy is. We’ll take the first half of class to read/listen/watch, and the second half to write. At the end of class, I want a typed paragraph or two, answering this question:

What is your impression of Tobias Wolff, as a person, and as a writer?

The requirements:

• When I say “paragraph” in this class, I mean a good, substantial paragraph. My rule of thumb is, “at least five sentences.”
• Quote Wolff. Use what he says as evidence for what you say.
• Actually refer to the sources you’re using.

Talking with Continuum magazine.

Interviewed by The Guardian (a British paper).

An interview with Salon.com.

In a conversation for Fora.tv. (Video)

Reading an excerpt from one of his short stories, “The Benefit of the Doubt.” (Video)

A couple of interviews with Don Swaim (audio).

An audio interview with NPR (audio).

An interview with Tavis Smiley (either printed or audio).

Read up through page 64 in This Boy’s Life for Wednesday, and continue to take notes on major characters and events.

With every New York Times bestseller, Luanne Rice illuminates yet another of the secret wonders of the heart. Her unforgettable evocations of family, friendship, and loves lost and won in such novels as The Edge of Winter, Sandcastles, and Summer of Roses give voice to our most powerful emotions. Now she brings back two of her most beloved characters to tell of their journey across the sea to unravel the mysteries of a shared past�and two undying love affairs.�

What Matters Most

Sister Bernadette Ignatius has returned to Ireland in the company of Tom Kelly to search for the past�and the son�they left behind. For it was here that these two long-ago lovers spent a season of magic before Bernadette�s calling led her to a vocation as Mother Superior at Star of the Sea Academy on the sea-tossed Connecticut shore. For Tom, Bernadette�s choice meant giving up his fortune and taking the job as caretaker at Star of the Sea, where he could be close to the woman he could no longer have but whom he never stopped loving. And while one miracle drew them apart, another is about to bring them together again.

For somewhere in Dublin a young man named Seamus Sullivan is also on a search, dreaming of being reunited with his own first love, the only �family� he�s ever known. They�d been inseparable growing up together at St. Augustine�s Children�s Home, until Kathleen Murphy�s parents claimed her and she vanished across the sea to America. Now, in a Newport mansion, that very girl, grown to womanhood, works as a maid and waits with a faith that defies all reason for the miracle that will bring back the only boy she�s ever loved.

That miracle is at hand�but like most miracles, it can come only after the darkest of nights and the deepest of heartbreaks. For life can be as precarious as a walk along a cliff, and its greatest rewards reached only by those who dare to risk everything�for what matters most.

From the Hardcover edition.

What Matters Most is available at Amazon for $6.00. To Order click here
Amazon Product Pages contain a lot of other details on this product as Customer Reviews, Sales Ranking, Special Offers, Alternate products that customers are going for and much more.Want to read these details? click here

Want to get some other Format / Binding / Version? You can search for them from here

Other Products of Interest

• The Edge of Winter
• Stone Heart
• Sandcastles

When 17-year-old Mary Faith�s secret gets out, the news shocks everyone in her small town. The townspeople soon find out that just one small event can change their lives forever.

Due East is available at Amazon for $14.98. To Order click here
Amazon Product Pages contain a lot of other details on this product as Customer Reviews, Sales Ranking, Special Offers, Alternate products that customers are going for and much more.Want to read these details? click here

Want to get some other Format / Binding / Version? You can search for them from here

Other Products of Interest

• Eve’s Christmas
• Stark Raving Mad
• Talking to Heaven
• Stargate Atlantis – The Complete Third Season
• The Love Letter

Week 11 Day 3-4
Sentences and practice has passage analysis

VSC:
3.1.4identify fragments from sentences.
3.1.8 expand sentences by positioning phrases and clauses to accomplish a purpose

assessment limit: expand sentences by using correctly placed modifiers, appositives, verbals, dependent clauses

I do- hand out a set of sentence strip withs fragments, dependent, appositives, and verbals. Define fragment, appositives, verbals, and dependent and independent clauses. Have students copy definitions i n J
Ask pick out from pile…go around the room-place on board
I show how to create a sentence for each. Explain how.

You do – using Quia test fragment vs complete sentence and

We do- pick sentence parts to construct a sentence. Note placement.

Assessment- ability to explain why it is a sentence using the terms independent and dependent and appositive-which should know from earlier in the year.

You do- As a group construct a series of sentences using the part, and punctuate it.
On a handout

A phrase is a group of related words and does not have a subject and its verb.

Prepositional phrases
A prep. Phrase includes a preposition, the object, and any modifiers.

Of the day, under the black and grey black, along with several other friends, to me, like a cuddly teddy bear.

Independent clauses express a complete thought and can stand alone-a sentence.

Subordinate clause- does not express a complete thought and is not a sentence.

Mary Karr’s memoir The Liars’ Club opens with an epigraph from Ezra Pound (“nothing matters but the quality / of the affection / that has carved the trace in the mind“) and her earliest memory: she is seven, and the family doctor sits before her at her home in east Texas. It is 1961. We’re not sure of her injury, but the police are there, and her drunken father has been fighting. (Not, thankfully, with Mary nor her sister; a drunk through and through, he never lays a violent hand on either of his girls.)

It all started years before when Karr’s mother left her last marriage (she had many) and life as an artist in New York City and found herself pulled over at a gas station in Leechfield, Texas. The man she met there — her next husband and Mary’s father — was, “in short, a Texas working man, with a smattering of Indian blood and with personality traits that she had begun to consider heroic.”

It is a childhood marked by unseemly moments that hold a whole lot of meaning for a nine-year-old girl. When Mary and her sister Lecia find out that their mean, prosthetic-legged grandmother has died, their school’s principal drives them home from school. At home,

Daddy was squatting on the porch in his blue overalls and hard hat, smoking, when we pulled up. He was dirty and smelled like crude oil when he hugged Lecia and me, one under each arm. Our principal didn’t pause, though, before shaking his hand, didn’t even dig out his hankie to wipe the oil off his palm after he shook. He was partial to white starched shirts, but knew when to set that aside.

Mary endures. Her mother and father fight more and turn to the kind of sun-up-to-sun-down drinking (he whiskey, she vodka) that takes over their lives.

But it’s not all heavy. Karr’s book title comes from her father’s brotherhood of unionized oil workers who pass their non-working hours over Lone Star beers, hand-rolled cigarettes, pool, and stories at the American Legion bar in Leechfield. The Liars’ Club, young Mary calls them; they embellish almost everything they say. Daddy calls her “Pokey,” and she sits with the men while they tell stories.

Of her father’s pal Blue, she writes, “He was one of those clean, featureless men who can move for decades on the periphery of a pool game buying his fair share of beers without ever uttering a full sentence.” She says that something about the Legion made her “solid inside,” that it clarified for her who she was. Rural 1960’s Texas comes fully alive on her page.

Karr’s book, published in 1995, set a certain standard for the coming-of-age memoir, and the recent publication of J.R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar holds a similar stature. The Tender Bar is similarly honest and vivid in its portrayal of a boozy boyhood on Long Island. I reviewed Moehringer’s memoir in 2006, writing:

He was a fatherless boy who loved nothing more than the Mets, and wanted nothing more than happiness for his mother. The two of them lived in the smelly, falling-apart home of his grandparents just steps from the local watering hole, Publicans. There Wall Street execs and blue-collar workers alike were made to feel at home, and literature and war were discussed with the same frequency and emotion as New York sports.

If these two tales are any indication, it’s the case that, for better or for worse, American bars can sometimes do a better job than parents in raising a child. The Liars’ Club, for me, is also closely reminiscent of Tobias Wolff’s excellent 1989 memoir, This Boy’s Life.

What started out simply as a goal to stock up my bookshelf on Shelfari grew and grew. I constantly made trips to the library after finishing a big stack of books my mother purchased for me. My goal was to reach thirty. Well guess what? I DID IT!

Books devoured this summer of 2008:

1. Chicks With Sticks (Knit Two Together) by Elizabeth Lenhard (244 pages)
2. Peeled by Joan Bauer (247 pages)
3. How To Be Popular by Meg Cabot (288 pages)
4. Pretty Face by Mary Hogan (213)
5. Airhead by Meg Cabot (337 pages)
6. Skin by Adrienne Maria Vrettos (227 pages)
7. Forever by Judy Blume (192 pages)
8. The Boyfriend List by e. lockhart (229 pages)
9. Gender Blender by Blake Nelson (182 pages)
10. A Brief Chapter In My Impossible Life by Dana Reinhardt (228 pages)
11. Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson (250 pages)
12. The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks (263 pages)
13. At First Sight by Nicholas Sparks (277 pages)
14. The Burn Journals by Brent Runyon (374 pages)
15. The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld (269 pages)
16. Dangerously Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (304 pages)
17. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (214 pages)
18. Smart Boys & Fast Girls by Stephie Davis (178 pages)
19. Boomsday by Christopher Buckley (318 pages)
20. Something To Blog About by Shana Norris (246 pages)
21. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer (754 pages)
22. Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt (402 pages)
23. Briana’s Gift by Lurlene McDaniel (160 pages)
24. Prom by Laurie Halse Anderson (215 pages)
25. This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff (304 pages)
26. Reach For Tomorrow by Lurlene McDaniel (171 pages)
27. The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen (374 pages)
28. Hit and Run by Lurlene McDaniel (180 pages)
29. The Missing Girl by Norma Fox Mazer (284 pages)
30. Fly On The Wall by e. lockhart (192 pages)

There we have it. My reading frenzy began in June and did not end until last night. I feel so accomplished now that I know that I can read thirty books in such a short amount of time. My favorite out out of all these was definitely The Catcher in the Rye.

I have read 8,116 pages this summer… And I enjoyed every single one.

i tend to wait a week to write my book reviews, that way i have time to process and think about the book. but with this boy’s life, it’s been a couple of weeks. i found most of the book rather simple and formulaic, in fact i even forgot about it till i saw that i started a draft of this review. while the book is a memoir, it is written  more like a fiction book. the writing often reminded me of the hardy boys books i read as a kid. it wasn’t till the last section of the book that i think tobias wolff found is own voice, and the book took on a more memoir tone. it is also the only section of the book that didn’t make it into the movie adaptation, so i wonder if it was the newness of the story?

morgan really liked this book and mr wolff’s second book about his time in vietnam, in pharaoh’s army. i certainly did not connect with the book like morgan did, i’m sure i’ll pick up his second book at some point. i have to make it through the sea of science fiction books that have been lent to me by rachelle and morgan’s aunt first.