Presentations 4/16 & AR

Once again the presentations were fantastic! Craig, Doug, Kari, and Jennie Lynn all had great ideas that sounded really cool. I was especially intrigued with Doug's and Kari's papers. Each of them reminded me of one of my favorite authors-- Italo Calvino. For Doug's paper the connection of the tarot to Calvino's The Castle of Crossed Destinies was obvious because Dr. Sexson pointed it out. In The Castle of Crossed Destinies a group of travelers converges on a castle where, after a long journey, they are too tired to relate their stories, so instead of vocal relations they use tarot cards to tell their stories. I haven't read the book yet but I plan on it for this summer! On monday I'm going to bring the book for Doug to borrow and read.

Kari's paper also reminded me of a Calvino book, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, especially the opening. In the beginning of the book the main character "you" are shopping for books in the bookstore and you mention that you end up passing many books that you should read to say that you have read. Also, you must pass by the books that you've talked about with other people but haven't actually read yourself and should read now. Kari's feelings of reading War and Peace to just have read it really reminded me of this. I remember doing a similar thing with Moby Dick when I was in middle school. We had a program called AR (Accelerated Reader) where you would read various books, take a sort of comprehension test on them, and receive full points for the book if you got above a 75% or so. Each book had so many points according to the difficulty and such. A book like Holes was like 4 I think. Moby Dick was 40. With these points you could buy stuff from the school store at the end of the year. I picked up Moby Dick feeling like "I need to read this and get the 40 points! That would be awesome!" I think I made it through about 6 pages before returning it and settling back for the books that were about 8 points, so Kari I kind of know where you're coming from. Maybe I'll read Moby Dick someday just to see if I could get those 40 points:)