This will be quick and totally trivial. Over Christmas break this past year, I had a belated Birthday party. It was really fun and surprisingly successful. The best part was that three of my friends from BYU--Alyssa Simmons, Carson Twitchell, and John Hadlock (Lys and Cars live in orange county and John was down visiting them)--were able to come. Their present for me was my favorite of all the presents I received (though the many iTunes cards were also greatly appreciated and well-spent on some great music). It was a neon green candy poster, with the cleverest use of candy-bar names I have ever seen. Taped to the back was Coldplay's latest album Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. I loved it so much that I didn't eat it but just looked at it and smiled. Eventually it made its way, still uneaten, from my bedroom floor to a hidden spot under my cedar chest. I took it from its hiding place yesterday while sorting through everything in my room. I dusted it off and smiled once more, remembering my friends. I decided it was time to eat it, so I started with the Reese's Pieces and, finishing those, moved on to the Air Heads. I have one more left of the six in the package and I will soon eat it. I'm really grateful that candy doesn't go bad (or hasn't gone bad yet--Mama says that chocolate can go rancid), I'm grateful that Uncle Kelly taught us thorough and proper tooth-brushing technique at the family reunion so that I can brush away all the plaque that the candy poster is sure to cause, and I'm especially grateful for my three kind friends. Well, that last airhead is calling me, so I'm out.
Love and Peace,
Christian
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYSXJ1mnJEQ
Lyss and Cars are in this video :-)
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
Summer Reading
Upon returning home last night, I discovered a lovely surprise from my sister Gabrielle. She sent me a book called How to Have Fun without Failing Out: 430 Tips From a College Professor by Rob Gilbert, Ph.D. I read half of it last night and the rest this morning. It was fairly helpful and very entertaining. It certainly didn't have four hundred and thirty distinct different tips to offer, but it did do a good job of hammering in several concepts (over-preparation, study habits, discipline, commitment, punctuality, health, et cetera) that are very important. I think its intended audience is a collegebound student without nine older siblings and plenty of college-aged friends to show him the way, but it was a fun way to officially kick off my summer reading.
I had unofficially kicked off my summer reading with The Chronicles of Narnia (it was so good to read them again now that I'm older--they are such beautiful stories) but I finished all except for The Last Battle while school was still in session. I also started The Lost Years of Merlin and The Hobbit while in Utah, but I am barely into those. How to Have Fun... was the first book I have started and finished this summer.
I'm very anxious to read a lot this summer. I have read some good books through my high school career, but I almost completely stopped reading for pleasure over the last four years. There simply has not been time. What's more, I did not finish a single assigned novel this past year in my English class, except for the "Outside Novel" for the second semester (we chose a novel of our own--from a list or with Mrs. Willshire's approval--read it outside of class and wrote analytical journals to be turned in and graded). In my junior year we only read a couple books (and they were of shoddy literary value--Silent Spring was among them). So my Honors English class in my sophomore year was the last time I thoroughly read and analyzed a body of respected literature.
It's no surprise that my writing abilities have significantly declined over the past couple years. The structure of my two AP English courses was such that the writing focused on quantity and speed. We wrote so much that I never had a chance to catch my breath and work on my craft. What's more, I wasn't adequately feeding my vocabulary and sense of style. I was a precocious writer in elementary school, middle school, and early high school because I read so much. I constantly learned new words and sentence structures. I was interesting and varied and talented. But when I stopped reading for pleasure and barely read for a grade, I cut off that corner of my brain from all nourishment.
This just won't do in college, and it certainly won't do in life. I miss feeling proud of my writing. I miss knowing that I had written something clever and interesting and unique. I miss knowing how to write. I need to read a lot of intelligent literature this summer to educate myself as a person and also to give my mind some much-needed high-nutrient brain-food. Hopefully a full summer of wading through literary classics and contemporary hits will revive my writing by osmosis, just in time for college. But even if my writing doesn't fully recuperate, at least I'll have a few more authors, books, and characters to reference and synthesize and analyze next year.
So here are some of the books on my list. If I miss any you think are important, please leave a comment:
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy (as much of it as I can finish) -J.R.R. Tolkien
The Chosen -Chaim Potok (I read much of this during the year but never finished it)
The Stranger -Albert Camus (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
Gullivers Travels -Jonathan Swift (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
Heart of Darkness -Joseph Conrad (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
The Prince -Machiavelli (Mrs. Chahine gave us the option of choosing either Common Sense or The Prince and I chose the former)
Angels and Demons/The Da Vinci Code -Dan Brown (I know they aren't pieces of genius, but they're fun and I have never read either)
A Tale of Two Cities -Charles Dickens (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
Mrs. Dalloway -Virginia Woolf (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
Pride and Prejudice -Jane Austen (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
Anything by Shakespeare
It will be a full summer, that's for sure. Any recommendations are appreciated. And there is a summer reading assignment for BYU that I will absolutely read, but I can't remember its title so I didn't list it there.
Here are the obligatory YouTube suggestions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LwocqYj3f0
This girl was eleven when she sang this back in 1999. This video went viral in the Musical Theatre community a few months ago. I may have linked it in a previous post.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS2P0eteRzM
This is the incredible Natalie Weiss paying tribute to Jazmine. She practiced so hard to get those two riffs down, I would know, she told me on facebook. The crowd clearly went crazy.
--Christian :-)
I had unofficially kicked off my summer reading with The Chronicles of Narnia (it was so good to read them again now that I'm older--they are such beautiful stories) but I finished all except for The Last Battle while school was still in session. I also started The Lost Years of Merlin and The Hobbit while in Utah, but I am barely into those. How to Have Fun... was the first book I have started and finished this summer.
I'm very anxious to read a lot this summer. I have read some good books through my high school career, but I almost completely stopped reading for pleasure over the last four years. There simply has not been time. What's more, I did not finish a single assigned novel this past year in my English class, except for the "Outside Novel" for the second semester (we chose a novel of our own--from a list or with Mrs. Willshire's approval--read it outside of class and wrote analytical journals to be turned in and graded). In my junior year we only read a couple books (and they were of shoddy literary value--Silent Spring was among them). So my Honors English class in my sophomore year was the last time I thoroughly read and analyzed a body of respected literature.
It's no surprise that my writing abilities have significantly declined over the past couple years. The structure of my two AP English courses was such that the writing focused on quantity and speed. We wrote so much that I never had a chance to catch my breath and work on my craft. What's more, I wasn't adequately feeding my vocabulary and sense of style. I was a precocious writer in elementary school, middle school, and early high school because I read so much. I constantly learned new words and sentence structures. I was interesting and varied and talented. But when I stopped reading for pleasure and barely read for a grade, I cut off that corner of my brain from all nourishment.
This just won't do in college, and it certainly won't do in life. I miss feeling proud of my writing. I miss knowing that I had written something clever and interesting and unique. I miss knowing how to write. I need to read a lot of intelligent literature this summer to educate myself as a person and also to give my mind some much-needed high-nutrient brain-food. Hopefully a full summer of wading through literary classics and contemporary hits will revive my writing by osmosis, just in time for college. But even if my writing doesn't fully recuperate, at least I'll have a few more authors, books, and characters to reference and synthesize and analyze next year.
So here are some of the books on my list. If I miss any you think are important, please leave a comment:
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy (as much of it as I can finish) -J.R.R. Tolkien
The Chosen -Chaim Potok (I read much of this during the year but never finished it)
The Stranger -Albert Camus (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
Gullivers Travels -Jonathan Swift (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
Heart of Darkness -Joseph Conrad (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
The Prince -Machiavelli (Mrs. Chahine gave us the option of choosing either Common Sense or The Prince and I chose the former)
Angels and Demons/The Da Vinci Code -Dan Brown (I know they aren't pieces of genius, but they're fun and I have never read either)
A Tale of Two Cities -Charles Dickens (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
Mrs. Dalloway -Virginia Woolf (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
Pride and Prejudice -Jane Austen (Unfinished from earlier in the year)
Anything by Shakespeare
It will be a full summer, that's for sure. Any recommendations are appreciated. And there is a summer reading assignment for BYU that I will absolutely read, but I can't remember its title so I didn't list it there.
Here are the obligatory YouTube suggestions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LwocqYj3f0
This girl was eleven when she sang this back in 1999. This video went viral in the Musical Theatre community a few months ago. I may have linked it in a previous post.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS2P0eteRzM
This is the incredible Natalie Weiss paying tribute to Jazmine. She practiced so hard to get those two riffs down, I would know, she told me on facebook. The crowd clearly went crazy.
--Christian :-)
Rebooting the Blog
Dear Readers--
So now that I'm all grown up and graduated, I'm going to try a different approach called brevity. The problem with my last wave of blogging efforts was that I couldn't stop myself from writing once I began a post, and that quickly became very exhausting and time consuming. So this time around I'll exercise a little more self-control in my writing and hopefully make leaps and bounds in consistency. Nothing philosophical for tonight besides my analysis of my past posts.
--Christian
P.S. I just discovered this girl a few days ago and she totally amazed me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKfzXq1gcG4
So now that I'm all grown up and graduated, I'm going to try a different approach called brevity. The problem with my last wave of blogging efforts was that I couldn't stop myself from writing once I began a post, and that quickly became very exhausting and time consuming. So this time around I'll exercise a little more self-control in my writing and hopefully make leaps and bounds in consistency. Nothing philosophical for tonight besides my analysis of my past posts.
--Christian
P.S. I just discovered this girl a few days ago and she totally amazed me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKfzXq1gcG4
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