Febuary 27th: Submit a map

Book: Years of Wonder
Author: Geraldine Brooks

This is a map of England. If you look closely, you can see London near the bottom right, and a city called Notts, towards the center. The plague was spread from London to Notts in 1666. The fact that the author chose to set this book in the year 1666 is interesting to me because 666 is the number of the devil, and religion plays a large part in this book. In fact, the people living in Notts were Puritans who believed the plauge was from the witches.

I looked up "England 1666" on google, and found something interesting. I found that this book was based on events that really took place in England 1666. There was an actual plague in London that caused the Royal Courts to evacuate the year before, but they returned on Febuary 2nd, 1666. Another interesting thing that happend during this time in England was Issac Newton invented differential calculus. It is interesting to me that the author chose not to mention anything about this in the book.

Febuary 21st: Blog Entry on Novel Two

Book: Years of Wonder
Author: Geraldine Brooks

PLOT: This book takes place in a small village near England in 1666. In the book, the main character, Anna, tells the story of how her village was destroyed by a plague that was brought to town by a man from London.

The book starts out from Anna telling the reader what the town is like in the present times (destroyed), then she goes back to describe how it got to be that way. Anna starts out by telling how she let a man, Mr. Viccars, come board in her house. Mr. Viccars, however unfortunately gets sick (with the plague) and dies very quickly. In his last moments of life, he asks Anna to please burn all the clothes he had made because he was afraid he might have infected them. Anna wants to take his advice and burn the clothes, but they are so beautifully made that his customers refuse to let them burn and naively decide to keep them.

Within a day her neighbors infant dies of the plague, then people all over town start to feel sick as well. The only two town "herbalists" are accused of being witches and causing the plague, and they are both killed. Leaving the town with no skilled doctor or herbalist to help save the sick.

The book goes on to tell about losing many people in the town, Anna becoming lovers with the Rector, Anna saving and adopting a little girl, Anna fleeing the town with the little girl, and Anna being pregnant once she is gone and having the Rectors baby. The book ends with Anna walking away in a new town with her two daughters (adopted, and birthed) in a new town because they escaped the sickness of the plague.

Wordles:

Audio Sotries: 02/05/12

1. “I looked in those big green eyes, and I was a done deal.”

http://storycorps.org/listen/stories/peter-and-jacqueline-headen/

This story absolutely tugged at my heart. What caught my eye in the first place was the title of the story. It is a phrase that describes love at first sight. When I heard the beginning of the story I thought it was going to be about a couple who met and got married immediately. However, it turned out that this couple was unfortunately split up for thirty years before they found each other again.

Peter said that when he was deployed in Vietnam for three years, he carried a picture of Jacqueline every day. He said that whenever he was having a rough day, he would just look at the picture and immediately feel better. Jacqueline on the other hand had gotten into a bad marriage with another man and was deeply unhappy. She said that the minute everything ended, she knew the only person in the world who she felt loved her was Peter. When she called him, their love was immediately rekindled even after thirty years without contact.

I think this is a beautiful story and it deserves to be shared with many people because it shows true love. Even after thirty years of being apart, they are still just as attracted to each other as they were when they first met. I hope to meet someone like this in my future.

2. “Does it bother you to think of home?”

http://storycorps.org/listen/stories/sarah-and-joshua-littman-2/

This story interested me because I saw that it was about a boy with asperger’s syndrome. My cousin has this syndrome as well. There are different degrees of aspergers so it was hard for me to tell which degree the young man in this story had. He sounded like he didn’t have it as much as some kids that I know.

One part of this story that I absolutely loved was his mother. His mother had the sweetest, wisest, most encouraging personality I have seen in a long time. In fact, she reminded me a lot of my own mother.  I thought that this young man would most likely be very lost without his mother. In the story as she is giving him advice, you can see that she pushes him to be his best, but gives him a lot of space so she doesn’t stress him out. This, in my opinion is a real gift and most parents don’t have it.

I thought it was interesting how he talked about not enjoying college and it made me wonder what aspects of college he didn’t enjoy. I wonder if it was purely the schooling that he didn’t like or if there were some social aspects of college that bothered him too. I think that kids can be cruel to other children with this disability because most kids don’t understand it and how it works.