Happy Thanksgiving!

Clarity is important, even outside the Comp I classroom. I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

List with a Twist Revisited

Last Thanksgiving, I posted a literary list of things I'm thankful for. I thought I'd do a rerun of my List With a Twist

here (with a couple of additions):

I decided to do a “What I’m Grateful For” list with a twist today. Of course I’m thankful for family, friends, my health, my home, my car, my job, and all the other wonderful things I’ve been blessed with. But here’s a list of things that I am also thankful for:

1. novels
2. bookstores
3. Jane Austen
4. similes & metaphors
5. libraries
6. short stories
7. epiphanies
8. puns
9. electronic databases
10. adults who read to children
11. poetry
12. amazon.com
13. Shakespeare
14. a well-crafted sentence
15. drama
16. interlibrary loan
17. anthologies
18. limericks
19. signed copies
20. journals & diaries
21. free verse
22. freedom from censorship
23. onomatopoeia
24. satire & spoofs
25. audiobooks
26. the willing suspension of disbelief
27. blogs
28. grammar handbooks
29. quotable lines
30. Microsoft Word
31. gripping plots
32. film versions (sometimes)
33. foreshadowing
34. book shelves
35. satisfying conclusions
36. the 23rd Psalm in the KJV
37. memorable characters
38. dictionaries
39. allusion
40. friends who read
41. alliteration
42. clear and present thesis sentences
43. whodunits
44. new words
45. the classics
46. shades of meaning
47. re-reading
48. imagination
49. reading out loud
50. sequels

Happy Thanksgiving!

I want to add

51. palindromes

52. book circles

53. Brit Lit students who love to discuss what they've read

List with a Twist

I decided to do a “What I’m Grateful For” list with a twist today. Of course I’m thankful for family, friends, my health, my home, my car, my job, and all the other wonderful things I’ve been blessed with. But here’s a list of things that I am also thankful for:

1. novels
2. bookstores
3. Jane Austen
4. similes & metaphors
5. libraries
6. short stories
7. epiphanies
8. puns
9. electronic databases
10. adults who read to children
11. poetry
12. amazon.com
13. Shakespeare
14. a well-crafted sentence
15. drama
16. interlibrary loan
17. anthologies
18. limericks
19. signed copies
20. journals & diaries
21. free verse
22. freedom from censorship
23. onomatopoeia
24. satire & spoofs
25. audiobooks
26. the willing suspension of disbelief
27. blogs
28. grammar handbooks
29. quotable lines
30. Microsoft Word
31. gripping plots
32. film versions (sometimes)
33. foreshadowing
34. book shelves
35. satisfying conclusions
36. the 23rd Psalm in the KJV
37. memorable characters
38. dictionaries
39. allusion
40. friends who read
41. alliteration
42. clear and present thesis sentences
43. whodunits
44. new words
45. the classics
46. shades of meaning
47. re-reading
48. imagination
49. reading out loud
50. sequels

Happy Thanksgiving!

Food for Thought

Literary Gleanings for Thanksgiving

“Mrs. Norris had been talking to her the whole way from Northampton of her wonderful good fortune, and the extraordinary degree of gratitude and good behavior which it ought to produce, and her consciousness of misery was therefore increased by the idea of its being a wicked thing for her not to be happy.”
-Jane Austen, in Mansfield Park

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"Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West,
From North and South, come the pilgrim and guest,
When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board
The old broken links of affection restored,
When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more,
And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before.
What moistens the lips and what brightens the eye?
What calls back the past, like the rich pumpking pie?"
- John Greenleaf Whittier, "The Pumpkin"

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"I do not think of all the misery, but of the glory that remains. Go outside into the fields, nature and the sun, go out and seek happiness in yourself and in God. Think of the beauty that again and again discharges itself within and without you and be happy."
- Anne Frank

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"I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and new."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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"If we meet someone who owes us thanks, we right away remember that. But how often do we meet someone to whom we owe thanks without remembering that?"
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

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"Our rural ancestors, with little blest,
Patient of labour when the end was rest,
Indulged the day that housed their annual grain,
With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain."
- Alexander Pope

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"Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for - annually, not oftener - if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man's side, consequently on the Lord's side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments."
- Mark Twain

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"Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday...The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production."
- Ayn Rand

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"Turkey: A large bird whose flesh, when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude."
- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

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Happy Reading!