Spring and reading habits…
It has occurred to me that with Spring and longer daylight hours, I’ve been able to read (without falling asleep!) more than I could most of the winter. I have been indulging my reading habits with a little historical fiction by Margaret George, whose Mary, Queen of Scots and Henry VIII I’d already read. Now I’ve been reading Mary Called Magdalene and have on deck Helen of Troy. George takes her historical heros/heroines and gives them a voice, a character and the situations as realistic as she can, and still create a fictional account that is interesting for a history buff and a literature enthusisiast. I’m enjoying her books immensely, and her Cleopatra is next on my ‘to buy’ list.
I’ve also enjoyed, in the same fashion, Phillipa Gregory’s historical fiction-her collection is from the female queens viewpoints, mostly from the Tudor England time period (The Other Bolyn Girl was made into a film with Eric Bana, Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson) and I have her Mary, Queen of Scots: The Other Queen sitting beside my bed waiting for me to read it.
I also have a few more books to read from my school’s English department to read, so that I can teach any of the courses with the novels/plays already read!
I enjoy the challenge of teaching a new novel (at least new to me), however am getting great pleasure of teaching To Kill a Mockingbird-my students are very interested and asking wonderful questions! Such a novel-to succinctly show both the failures and successes of human nature-through the eyes of a young girl. We just read the chapter (10) where Atticus tells his children (who had recieved air rifles for Christmas) that it was a sin to kill a mockingbird. My whole class was hushed to find out why the book was entitled To Kill a Mockingbird. We had a short discussion about metaphor and what that would forshadow as a metaphor for two injustices in the novel.
I love that they are inquisitive! 
