English 101 at Ashland

School starts in about a month, and I just got assigned to our section last Wednesday, so it’s time to start thinking seriously about our coming semester together. (By the way, all colleges experience these last-second rearrangements—it’s not surprising that Ashland is still nailing things down.) The first rearrangement (possibly) is our room number. I have two back-to-back classes in Bixler, and I have asked the official powers if the classes can meet in the same room so I don’t have to do a lot of shuffling. Watch this space for the latest when they make their decision. (This brings up an excellent point: Before your first day, take a last-minute look at your schedule to learn whether your classes are still where you thought they would be.) What to expect in our course In a way, our English course is like learning to ride a bicycle. There are a lot of tasks you need to focus on, but it is really difficult to separate them ou...

The books I am recommending from Project Gutenberg are all “Public Domain.” This means that their copyright has expired and anyone can download them or print them out legally. It also means that they are fairly old (because copyright extends for the author’s life plus seventy years). I was reading The War of the Worlds last night and realized a couple of things. For one, all those place names flew over my head because I never lived in rural England, and for another the author occasionally dropped a word on me that I just did not know. (Yes, even English teachers have limits on their vocabulary.) What to do? As for the place names, I let them sort of flow over me. Wells knows where things are, and it doesn’t matter much to me what was the name of the place where the Martians landed. Looking all that up would interrupt the flow of the story. Vocabulary is a somewhat different matter. The book was published in England 129 ye...

Summer is a great time for some relaxed reading. Hang out with friends? Go to the movies? Swimming pool? Shoot a few hoops? Expedition to the mall? Sure, but sometimes your brain just wants to chill. There’s only so much Facebook and Twitter that you can stand, and the evening news is plain depressing. I’m going to suggest a few books to read. Your local library is a great resource, but these are available free online so you can take them with you on your laptop or phone. These are all from Project Gutenberg , which is the home of an incredible number of great books, all free and legal. Onward we go, in no particular order (these are a few titles that came to mind as I threw this item together—I’m certain I will think of others later): The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (The original murder mystery author) Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (Long before there was a Captain J...