Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

I'm teaching summer school and this is one of the books that's taught. It's been almost two years since I've read Douglass's book so I thought I'd brush up. Even though this is my second time reading it, it's two more times than a majority of my students will have read for the assignment.

Any realistic English teacher is well aware that most of class will never read what is assigned to them. In fact when I was a student I can say with the utmost certainty that between 7th grade and my final year of college I probably read only 2 books from cover to cover out of the dozens and dozens of books assigned to me (pictured are just a few of the books over the years that I never read). Instead I relied on cliff notes, a run-down of the reading from a classmate during lunch, or by the time I reached college, summaries online. And if none of the options were available, or I was simply too lazy to pursue any of them I would rely on class discussions and lucky guesses. All in all I was mildly successful through all of it, maintaining a B average.

But why then did I ever become an English teacher of all things? Because an aspiring dentist doesn't avoid brushing his teeth and a wanna be vet doesn't hate animals, yet I avoided reading novels as if it was the smelly kid in school. Basically, I didn't decide to major in English education because I particularly loved the idea of being an English teacher but rather I didn't hate it or thought I could at least tolerate it, unlike the many other majors out there. I'm lucky in the sense that I grew to enjoy teaching as well as developed a strong interest in reading.

There are probably fellow English teachers that would look down on my past actions as not having a true love of literature. And I would tend to agree, because most "great works of literature" are crap, only good for curing insomnia. I equate having to read Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales to an unexplainable torture. That doesn't mean that all the books I never read were horrible books. But it's no wonder we can't convince kids to read when we're forcing the driest words ever written down their throats.

But with all that said Frederick Douglass's book is not one of these and is a great insight into the horror that was American slavery.

Angels & Demons

Imagine your name is Edwin Booth. You are an actor, in fact you are considered the greatest American stage actor to have ever lived. Yet today the average person has no idea who you are. They have never heard of you, but every single one of them knows your younger, less talented, president killing brother, John Wilkes.

Thus is the case of Angels & Demons which is far and away better than its more popular and hyped-up brother The Da Vinci Code.

So it's summer, and my favorite time of year mainly because, for every year of life I have always had a summer vacation. Every job I've had from the age 14 until now, over the months of June, July, & August, has either been part-time or temporary summer work. I have no real understanding of things like having to save paid time off days in order to take a summer vacation.

So with summer comes summer reading, and while I don't want to hype up this book too much because there is a difference between an entertaining book and a good one, Angels & Demons would be a perfect example of a beach book. First off, a 5th grader could read it. Mr. Brown isn't exactly James Joyce. Secondly, it has all the classic action/adventure cliches: the ticking bomb, the cliff hangers, the huge plot twists, the good guys who turn out to be bad guys, the love interest, the reluctant hero, and so on and so forth.

I'm a Christian but not Catholic so my reaction to the media focused, controversial elements of the book is from a slightly limited perspective, but with that said, I had a hard time seeing what all the hype was about. I mean it's a fictional story based on conspiracy theories. Interestingly enough there were many favorable, yet probably unintentional, pro-religion elements sprinkled throughout the story.

One last fact on Edwin Booth that's insanely interesting yet totally unrelated to all of this. Shortly before his brother became world famous, Edwin was at a railroad station when a young boy stumbled and began to fall in front of a moving train. Edwin was able to pull the boy out of harm's way saving the lad's life. The boy was Robert Todd Lincoln, son of the man Edwin's brother would later kill. This interesting tale and many more can be found in Assassination Vacation , a book by the voice of Violet in The Incredibles.