You can critique when you expend the ten seconds of energy necessary to go find your own links. Lazybones.

You'd be surprised at how much less effort it takes to critique your lame Rush joke than it does to hit "Previous," followed by Ctrl+F and coming up with some clever search string that would take me to just the link I was looking for.

Skipping 200-odd posts to say, boy howdy, y'all are chatty for a Thursday.

Today's afternoon nap involved a dream in which I rejected the invitation of a nice, fatherly Indian doctor type person to join him in a dark, secluded hall.

"Right, like I'm gonna go into a dark, secluded hall with some man I don't know," I said.

He replied, "Not like that! You don't understand."

By which time I'd passed the dark, secluded hall, gotten out into the open, and found myself in the middle of gang fight which the nice, fatherly Indian doctor type was trying to keep me out of. Oops. I defended myself by smacking people with my bicycle. After a while I just looked at the rival gang leaders and said, "Are we done here? Cuz I can keep this up for awhile yet."

Then I woke up.

Question: Community College application - how important it is that I type this? And by typed I mean, I'ma screw it up at least twice. Hand-printed I know will be neat, but it will be hand-printed.

Maybe they could research Twain himself, and the influence he (through TS and HF) had on the modern novel? How old are your students? Twain is just so lovely. He's quotable. He's astute.

I don't have a choice -- I gotta teach these. And if I'm not interested, how can I interest the kids?

Is there a modern version of Tom Sawyer? Or is it pure Americana nostalgia for a boyhood that is defunct?

Maybe I'll be more interested after I eat.

I like Twain, but I'd prefer HF over TS. Or Connecticutt Yankee. Or a bunch of short stories.

I'm teaching 3 freshman classes.

Oh, and WS? Hand write it, but essay and personal statements need to be typed.

Erin, I like TS because unlike a lot of childrens' books of that era, it celebrates impulse and freedom and ignoring convention. The kids do WAY more scary, dangerous, transgressive shit than kids today are allowed to do, and Twain captures how fun that is.

Is there a modern version of Tom Sawyer? Or is it pure Americana nostalgia for a boyhood that is defunct?

Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker got compared to Tom Sawyer. Albeit a post-apocalyptic, Joyce influenced Tom Sawyer.

Good thought there, Robin.

Hmm. Maybe I could go from that angle; compare and contrast. Maybe tie in an essay.

I'm also thinking about a book club approach to reading these books. My mentor teacher is a 30 year veteran, and I don't think he does a lot of interactive stuff. He's, well, mostly I think he likes the golf coach aspect of this job. But he's nice enough.

Maybe you could find another book from that era and contrast the treacly moral tone and two-dimensional characters?