Pocketfulofsunshine’s Weblog

My new blog banner is courtesy of the lovely Elise.

Thank you, Elise! I love it. Be on the lookout for some fun thank you mail from me in the next week or so.

One of the blogs I read, Bookgirl’s Nightstand, had a meme about all things literary. I haven’t done a survey in a while and this one seemed like fun, so here goes.

Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews? The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. I have actually read this book - it was my junior year of high school and it took me an entire nine weeks to read it. I had to renew it at the library three times, they were kind enough to let me do it since it wasn’t a bestseller. And I can see why. It is the most boring, pointless book I have ever read.  I can’t understand the obsession or great societal purpose this book serves. Ironically, I ended up getting a copy of the book several years later in a boxed set of classics, so I own it, but I refuse to read it.

If you could bring three characters to life for a social event (afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would they be and what would the event be? Hmm. This is a tough one. There are so many great characters in literature. I would really like to meet Sylvia Plath’s character in The Bell Jar, Daisy from The Great Gatsby, and Edward from The Meaning of Night (this is the book I’m reading now and I am so intrigued by him because I imagine he is modeled after so many real life people from Victorian London).

(Borrowing shamelessly from the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde): you are told you can’t die until you read the most boring novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for awhile, eventually you realise it’s past time to die. Which book would you expect to get you a nice grave? Frankly, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn better get me the nicest grave going. Also, I felt like The Stranger by Albert Camus was pretty boring, but it was better than Huck Finn.

Come on, we’ve all been there. Which book have you pretended, or at least hinted, that you’ve read, when in fact you’ve been nowhere near it? I hint that I have read The Brother’s Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, because I actually did make it about 100 pages in for a literature class that I attempted to take in college. I say attempted because I actually weaseled my way out of the requirement for that class. Thank you, Laird!

As an addition to the last question, has there been a book that you really thought you had read, only to realise when you read a review about it/go to ‘reread’ it that you haven’t? Which book? I really can’t think of anything.

You’ve been appointed Book Advisor to a VIP (who’s not a big reader). What’s the first book you’d recommend and why? (if you feel like you’d have to know the person, go ahead of personalise the VIP) Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. It is one of my favorite pieces of ethnic literature. 

A good fairy comes and grants you one wish: you will have perfect reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which language do you go with? Hebrew. I also hope that I would be able to speak it and understand it and write it fluently.

A mischievous fairy comes and says that you must choose one book that you will reread once a year for the rest of your life (you can read other books as well). Which book would you pick? I’m not a big re-reader of books, but A Short Guide to a Happy Life by Anna Quindlen. It’s only about 30 pages (I believe it was Quindlen’s commencement speech that she gave at a college graduation) but it is full of wonderful bits of wisdom.

I know that the book blogging community, and its various challenges, have pushed my reading borders. What’s one bookish thing you ‘discovered’ from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new appreciation for cover art-anything)? I definitely appreciate cover art. The New York Times Book Review blog (which I rarely read) is big on cover art. They actually have an award for best cover art. I’ve found a lot of interesting books that way, especially non-fiction. I also have discovered a lot more great short story collections.

That good fairy is back for one final visit. Now, she’s granting you your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leatherbound? Is it full of first edition hardcovers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a few favourite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead-let your imagination run free. Oh gosh. I’ve plotted my dream library for so long. It has floor to ceiling bookshelves and it sorted by genre. Size and form of book doesn’t matter. Many of my teaching texts are hardback, so I can’t really say I’m picky. I also have tons of magazines so there would be a couple of shelves just for those periodicals, sorted by type. I would definitely have some first editions in there (of my favorites), but I’m not picky. I just love books.

Stay tuned for another book post in a few days. I’m off to the bookstore again today, but won’t post until I’ve had a chance to savor and look through all that I have purchased.

As some of you may know, I’ve been job hunting a lot lately. I’m always looking for that elusive dream teaching job, but rather than feeling like I’m just searching for the needle in the haystack, I’ve decided to become very pro-active about finding a good fit for a teaching job and moving on from my life in Vegas. In the last two weeks, I have applied for seven different jobs, none of them here in Nevada. They are all in Seattle and the surrounding area. Two of them were at Waldorf schools, but I’ve been turned down for both of those. This is okay, though. I understand why, but it never hurts to give it a shot. And, actually, the response from the second school was very positive and they would be interested in talking to me, should I decide to pursue Waldorf training, which is not completely out of the question. Unfortunately, there are no Waldorf colleges here in Nevada (this did not come as a surprise to me), so that plan has been put on the back burner for awhile.

The other schools that I have applied to are all private, independent schools. I heard from one, the Soundview School, and they’ll be contacting people for interviews in the next couple of weeks. I’m not sure if I’ll get a call from them. It will be interesting trying to figure out how to give interviews, given that I am out of state. I may have to fly out there at some point, but I’m not worrying about that now. I’ll just wait and see what happens.

However, I don’t want to junx myself too much, so I’m going to stop talking about job hunting for the time being. However, I’ll be updating, vaguely, as I hear more.

So, I’ll leave you with a funny story about work. For those of you who don’t know, I’m a teacher’s assistant for a four year old class at a preschool. We have 12 boys and two girls in our class, so something crazy is constantly happening. But I love it.

At any rate, this week we have been studying the letter m and our theme has been manners. My darling kids need some serious work on their manners, so I created the Museum of Manners and made a chart that allows them to get one thumbprint every time they do something that is good manners.

Well, Henry immediately latched on to the idea and all week he has been on his very best behavior. He is constantly looking for ways to get thumbprints next to his name. Well, today he comes up to me and says: “I said sorry four times and excuse me once”, meaning he wanted to be able to put five thumbprints next to his name. He didn’t get any today, because it’s reached the point that he’s just brown-nosing, but it’s very funny to watch him really think that he needs to make the best decision possible. He’s not typically a bad kid, he is just in a very compulsive stage and doesn’t always think things all the way through before he does something.

I am a sicky, again. I have a cold. Amazingly, it’s only the second of this school year, which is pretty good. Between August 2006 and April 2007, I had some sort of ailment (usually a cold) every other month. That time was during my student teaching, which I consider to be my unofficial first year teaching, since I student taught for so damn long.

However, this particular cold has brought the sneezes with it and it sucks. I’ve sneezed more since Friday than I have in my entire life. I am not a happy girl. I have sick time, but I really don’t want to use it for something as lame as a cold. I want to use it to escape this town I have to live in.

I’m off to practice my driving. I need to get my license asap if I’m going to move out of Vegas.

Otherwise, all is quiet. I’ve just been job hunting…a lot. Too bad I’ve already been turned down for half the jobs I’ve applied for. Which, honestly, is only four, but still. I want a new job. I want to leave Vegas for good.

I’ve been on a book buying binge lately. It all started when I got a gift card to Costco and since I didn’t need anything practical, decided to spend it on books. Then I went to Barnes and Noble and Borders several times in the last couple of weeks and gotten more books. I also have an Amazon order on its way to me. I’ll come back later and post the titles of everything I’ve bought lately. (P.S. Carrie, if you read this, I tried to read A Long Way Gone but had to stop. It was just too heart-wrenching and hard for me to read).