Blog Post #1: My life as a Reader

Today we will begin blogging.

Please remember that all of your posts should go on your own blog, rather than the class blog. The class blog will be used only for instructional purposes.

Before you get started, have you done the following?

1. Read the pages on blog basics, etiquette and guidelines for blogging? (These are located at the top of the class blog home page, identified with tabs)?
 
2. Checked out the page entitled "Posts: Achieving a Level Four"? 
 
3. Added me as a reader to your blog? If not, go into your dashboard and select "Settings" and then "Permissions". Make your blog private, but add me as a reader with the email address msjraleigh@gmail.com. 

4.  On the layout page, have you added the gadget entitled, "Blog List" and added the class blog (eng1d2012.blogspot.ca).  This will allow you to access the blog each week with a mere click of the mouse! 

NOW, find a quote on the internet that displays well your feelings about books, or your relationship with books. Once you have found a perfect quotation, add it as the  subheading of your blog (give credit to the author of the quote as well). In my "Links" list, I have given you two websites that have lots of quotations.

HOW TO ADD THE QUOTATION:  You will need to go your dashboard where you will find your "'Settings" button. This will allow you to change your title and add the quotation as the description of the blog.

THEN as your first blog post , explain why you selected the quotation you have chosen.  Make a personal connection to the quotation and what it tells your readers about you and your relationship to reading. Be sure to include the quote itself as well as the author and a link to the source you borrowed it from.

Here's an example of a level four response to this assignment:

"In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you." -Mortimer Adler 

I do not read books as if it's a competition to see who can get to the end the fastest. It doesn't even have to be books; they can be articles, myths or anything written. For you can read something quickly countless times, but still know nothing of what it is saying. Instead ,why don't you take a few extra moments, read it more slowly, then you take in all of what the words are saying to you and then later you don't keep having to flip back to the text saying: "I read this in this part, but what did it say"? Then you have to spend more time on it. I know people who race through many books a week and enjoy them, but then you ask them what it meant, and they don't know. Some people are okay with not knowing exactly what the book was trying to convey, but that's not me. I would rather read one book and take it apart word for word. If I don't do that, then I don't see a point. Books are written to serve a purpose. If books don't tell you something or if they don't give you that feeling that hits you deep down, then it's not the author's fault, it's yours. So search for it, and then let the meaning get through to you .

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/22395.Mortimer_J_Adler