Reading Report: 10/30/22

On the Bus with Rosa Parks by Rita Dove: I started this book of poetry back in 2021, but got distracted from it repeatedly. Last month I decided that enough was enough. I deliberately sat down and read it, cover to cover, over the course of a few days. My favorites were “Black on a Saturday Night,” “Incarnation in Phoenix,” “Best Western Motor Lodge, AAA Approved,” “The Peach Orchard,” “Against Self-Pity,” and the one I liked the best: “The Pond, Porch-View: Six P.M., Early Spring.”

Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville: How often is a book title so perfectly self-explanatory? Here is a sweet little book for anyone who ever wished they could hatch and raise a dragon (ooh, me me me!). I would have read this story as a child if I could have, but it hadn’t been published yet. Better late than never.

Harry Potter à L’École Des Sorciers by J.K. Rowling: This is the first book I ever read entirely in French. Reading in French is difficult, but I’ve gotten better at it. I know the language well enough to distinguish the parts of speech, and I can make reasonable guesses about the general nature of the words (e.g., “this is a verb of motion,” “this is an adjective having something to do with darkness,” etc.). That allowed me to continue reading even when I couldn’t guess the precise meanings of words, but it made reading a strange experience. So much detail was lost on me, and the images that the words created in my mind were drab. But was I was rewarded with great moments of victoriousness every time I managed to translate a knotty sentence without resorting to the dictionary (I didn’t want to get bogged down in definition hunting!). The big payoff was that I learned a lot of new words. My favorites: chuchoter (to whisper), jumeau (twin), and the tricky au-dessus/au-dessous pair (above/below).

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