Because I know ever y detail of my so-called life is fascinating to you...

[spindlewand]

I managed to get out when DH got back tonight and go to Starbucks for the cards for the teachers and bus drivers, and then went to Michael's and Barns and Nobles.

Bigger brother taken care of, sisters in law taken care of, younger brother at least half if not entirely taken care of, DH bought his own pressie, lemme see, the kids...

I had a coupon so

Comments

[equinoxchick]

You're very passionate about Grapes of Wrath. I really should read some day ....

[spindlewand]

LOL! I had to try to teach that book.

Halfway in, I gave up.

I think there are perhaps two times in all my years of teaching when I just GAVE UP on a book and moved on, but that one started to go downhill when the students would not believe that the Joad family was white and it just never got better. It did, however, go on for about another million billion pages. I eventually gave up. It is a catalog of every possible misery that could visit a family fleeing the dustbowl of the thirties. It's like trying to read the Silmarillion, only worse because nothing good ever happens.

That may have been the same year I had to teach Desire Under the Elms, and yes, they were totally convinced these old New Englanders were Black, and also laughed at the infanticide.

(In both cases the implications of the story are different if the characters are not part of the ethnic majority, so it does matter.)

[spottedcat83]

I'm glad you got Braveheart a good book. It's okay to spend obscene amounts of money for a really good book, especially as the other book will be disappointing (to put it mildly).

Hmm. You know, Starbucks gift cards for those nieces might work well, too. They can caffiene themselves completely and go to school... oh, wait. They're probably used to caffiene because of those canned drinks that are mostly caffiene with a little flavor thrown in. Yeah, it's perfectly okay to give them Starbucks. Their parents might be thankful for their offspring having a slight break from the effects of RockStar or whatever the current favorite caffiene overload is.

Please remember to help Braveheart glue things tomorrow, my dear.

By the way, the telephone is competition. It takes away Mom's attention from important things (like... House Elves!). Just in case you were wondering, that's why!

*hugs*

[ebilgatoloco]

LOL. Now I'm glad I've never read Grapes of Wrath ;)
-huggles-

[equinoxchick]

I'm shit scared of it now ...

[astaraelweeper]

I believe that in high school I referred to that book as Grapes of Crap because I hated it so much. Read all of it, but it didn't do much for me.

I'm sure that Braveheart will much prefer your choice.

[spottedcat83]

Every now and then, English lit programs will try to update it. So they move from Grapes of Wrath to Chocolate War. Yay. Another depressing book. I was convinced that all literature had stupid endings where everything went wrong, and I developed a distaste for anything labled "literature" that lasted for years.

I didn't think of Jane Eyre (by Charlotte Bronte) to be literature. Why? Because it had a happy ending! If it's got a happy ending, it can't be literature.

And why did I avoid all Jane Austen books like the plague until about ten years ago? Because it was literature. And there was no way I was going to subject myself to literature about nineteenth-century young women where they all ended up dead or in permanent mourning or something. You cannot believe my relief when I finally watched (I watched it first, then I read it, in a reversal of how I usually do the book/movie thing) Pride and Prejudice. Happy ending! Oh my goodness! Then I started reading Jane Austen. Whoa. Could it be literature?