Post by Jili on Oct 20, 2014 2:58:07 GMT
Hi everyone,
It's Sunday night, and I checked in and can see that the lectures and discussion questions for this coming week are posted. It looks like there are six lectures to watch-- a little over an hour long.
This past week I was ahead on the assigned reading, so I digressed and am currently reading from A Little House Traveler (ordered from Amazon), which contains three separate sets of writings: On the Way Home, West from Home, and The Road Back. The first is Laura's diary of the journey from DeSmet to Mansfield, when Rose was a young girl. The second is what I am reading now, and is quite interesting. These are Laura's letters to Manly during the period of time (1915) when she visited Rose and Gillette in San Francisco. This is especially intriguing to me because I spent some time in the Bay Area this past summer, and can personally connect to some of the geography/places. Rose and Gillette were renting a house on Vallejo Street in Russian Hill, which is exactly where we rented a home this past summer. Mostly, these two pieces are pretty tedious reading, though I did get a picture of what the journey down to Missouri must have been like at that time-- tedious, with lots of other emigrants on the road, all in search of something better. Rose wrote an afterward to On the Way Home that is pretty good reading. She gives a little insight into Laura's character, in that "sometimes my quick mother flew out at him, but this day she was soft and warm". I do wonder if Laura had some edgy aspects to her personality that Rose shared with her. Also evident are Laura's tender feelings for Almanzo. My view of Almanzo is of a quiet man who kind of did his thing around the farm and stayed out of it when Laura and Rose got into it, but who was devoted to both of them.
I actually didn't mind this past week's lectures-- I felt like I'd learned a few new things that weren't necessarily in the book, and I was intrigued by the last two videos where she discussed the distinctions between autobiography and memoir--something I hadn't really thought about before. It has been eye-opening to view Laura as more of a person (as an adult) than as a children's literature icon. The episode of Laura including the Bender episode in Pioneer Girl as a way to make it more appealing and marketable is a good example.
As for this coming week, I have already read Little House in the Big Woods before the class started, but I still have to read the biography chapter. Like last week, I'll probably watch a lecture each day and then work on the discussion questions when I have time. I will plan to finish West from Home in the next day or two, and will postpone reading The Road Back until I have more time. I want to be able to keep up with re-reading the novels.
How are you all doing?
It's Sunday night, and I checked in and can see that the lectures and discussion questions for this coming week are posted. It looks like there are six lectures to watch-- a little over an hour long.
This past week I was ahead on the assigned reading, so I digressed and am currently reading from A Little House Traveler (ordered from Amazon), which contains three separate sets of writings: On the Way Home, West from Home, and The Road Back. The first is Laura's diary of the journey from DeSmet to Mansfield, when Rose was a young girl. The second is what I am reading now, and is quite interesting. These are Laura's letters to Manly during the period of time (1915) when she visited Rose and Gillette in San Francisco. This is especially intriguing to me because I spent some time in the Bay Area this past summer, and can personally connect to some of the geography/places. Rose and Gillette were renting a house on Vallejo Street in Russian Hill, which is exactly where we rented a home this past summer. Mostly, these two pieces are pretty tedious reading, though I did get a picture of what the journey down to Missouri must have been like at that time-- tedious, with lots of other emigrants on the road, all in search of something better. Rose wrote an afterward to On the Way Home that is pretty good reading. She gives a little insight into Laura's character, in that "sometimes my quick mother flew out at him, but this day she was soft and warm". I do wonder if Laura had some edgy aspects to her personality that Rose shared with her. Also evident are Laura's tender feelings for Almanzo. My view of Almanzo is of a quiet man who kind of did his thing around the farm and stayed out of it when Laura and Rose got into it, but who was devoted to both of them.
I actually didn't mind this past week's lectures-- I felt like I'd learned a few new things that weren't necessarily in the book, and I was intrigued by the last two videos where she discussed the distinctions between autobiography and memoir--something I hadn't really thought about before. It has been eye-opening to view Laura as more of a person (as an adult) than as a children's literature icon. The episode of Laura including the Bender episode in Pioneer Girl as a way to make it more appealing and marketable is a good example.
As for this coming week, I have already read Little House in the Big Woods before the class started, but I still have to read the biography chapter. Like last week, I'll probably watch a lecture each day and then work on the discussion questions when I have time. I will plan to finish West from Home in the next day or two, and will postpone reading The Road Back until I have more time. I want to be able to keep up with re-reading the novels.
How are you all doing?
