Professor Jason Witt

 

• Write a letter to your book club members, describing yourself as a reader.  You may want to consider your earliest memories as a reader, notable books you discovered along your journey, influential people, habits, etc. Consider the model letter written for this assignment, but you may explore your experiences far beyond the model.

 

• Further, please provide a summary of the first several chapters, short stories, etc. How does the book begin? What themes, characters, or plot devices does the author explore? Does the writing have an unusual style? What is the point of view presented? These are just some of the questions you can consider.

 

SAMPLE BOOK CLUB LETTER:  INTRODUCTION OF YOURSELF AS A READER

 

Dear Book Club;

As far as I know, I could always read. I am pretty sure I came out of the womb ready and able to pick up my first chapter book.  Well, maybe I need a few years to get to that point, but I know that in kindergarten I read When I Have a Little Girl aloud to my class as my “share” and by the first grade, I was begging my mom to take me to the library to pick up the latest Babysitter’s Club book.  We went to the library every Wednesday after school following some playtime at the park across the street.  Soon after, I decided that those library books had an oddly sickly vomit smell, and persuaded my patient mother to buy me fresh, un-stinky books from the bookstore instead.  “I’ll enjoy them more that way, Mom, I am sure I said convincingly.  I would wait not so patiently until the latest adventure of those wonderful babysitters arrived at the store.  As I got older, I mowed through R.L.Stine, Roald Dahl, and more.  I arrived in the fourth grade at a “grown-up” book.  Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton.  I had no idea what all the science stuff was and probably glossed over entire chapters; but there were dinosaurs eating people and my dad had read it so it was good enough for me.  As an added bonus, all the other kids in my class were wowed by my literary taste. 

            I read the newspaper, I read Time magazine, I read the articles in National Geographic, I read Nancy Drew (many times over); I read pretty much anything I could get my hands on. I still read those same things now.  Reading is still my favorite hobby, although now I have to carve out time in my schedule.  I manage to find time to read nearly every night, in the bath and then in bed before I fall asleep.  The trick now is finding something to read in my house that I have not already read.  Throughout my experience as an undergrad, I honed my love for American Literature, particularly African American literature. I love memoirs, contemporary literature, books about the immigrant experience, coming of age novels, historical non-fiction and fiction, even works of fantasy.  It is these works that transport my sacred alone time into moments spent in another world in my mind.  I catch myself from time to time while reading wondering how I got to that [lace and realize then it will only take another sentence or two to get back into that magical state.  It happens effortlessly and easily, like slipping into the covers at night.  It wraps me up like a cozy blanket and pus me into a dream like state.  There is nothing more divinely agonizing than savoring those last few pages of a book that has come to be your best friend. 

Happy Reading!

Erin

 

SAMPLE SUMMARY

The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth

The first noticable characteristic about The Wake is that it is written in a cross between Old English and modern English, which may make this text unapproachable to some and a challenge to others. It begins, for example with the lines "the night was clere though i slept i seen it. though i slept i seen the calm hierde naht only the still. when i gan down to sleep all was clere in the land and my dreams was full of stillness but my dreams did not cepe me still when i woc in the mergen all was blaec though the night had gan and all wolde be blaec after and for all time." The author would comment that he could not do the subject matter justice without writing in the tongue of the times, but since he also added to the Old English dialect, this seems pretentious of Kingsnorth. The novel takes place in England a few weeks before the Battle of Hastings, when William the Conqueror of Normany invaded England and overthrew King Harold of England. Our narrator is unnamed, but carries the title of buccmaster, though there is no indication what this means. He is a land-owning farmer and the novel starts with buccmaster's dreams, which is first of a bird, then of a comet, and seems to be prophetic in nature, warning of the coming of some invader. It is also written, somewhat, like an epic poem, being repetative in nature at times, and poetic in the prose. The title of the novel, I have learned through some research, refers to an English hero named Hereward, who is called The Wake and who harries William several years after the Battle of Hastings. The subject seems interesting, so I am eager to see where this novel goes.