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Category Archives: AP English – 18 Years Later
The Frou-Frou Diaries (and a Threesome!): Thoughts on Parts One and Two of Anna Karenina (by Bethany)
I’ll start with the obvious: this novel is wonderful, truly one of the greatest novels ever written. It occurs to me as I write this that when I made a list of my fifteen favorite novels about a year and … Continue reading
Thoughts on the Opening of Anna Karenina
I think the first chapter of Anna Karenina would be stronger without its iconic opening line. Am I even allowed to say this? Will lightning strike the minute I click ‘Publish’? It’s hard to find a novel more beloved and … Continue reading
Thoughts on Richard Hugo’s “To Women”
Richard Hugo’s poem “To Women” was included in the Norton Anthology that we used as a poetry text in A.P. English. We weren’t assigned to read this poem, but I found it anyway when I was flipping through the book … Continue reading
The book that is my Achilles heel: pre-reading thoughts on John Milton’s Paradise Lost
As Bethany mentioned a while back, Paradise Lost was assigned during “independent learning week” in AP English our senior year. Fr. Murphy had to go out of town, something to do with him taking over as principal at another Jesuit … Continue reading
Pre-Reading Notes on Anna Karenina (by Bethany)
I haven’t given up on Paradise Lost – really I haven’t. For the last several weeks I’ve been preparing for the workshop I took this week, and now I have a deadline this Friday. After that, though, I want to … Continue reading
You Know You’re in A.P. English When Some of the Sentences Start With ‘Me’: Some Brief Thoughts on Paradise Lost With More to Come Soon, I Promise!
If I had to pick a single sentence in Paradise Lost that is most linguistically intriguing (so far, anyway), it would be this one, from Book II, lines18-24: Me though just right, and the fixed laws of Heav’n Did first … Continue reading
Oh Henry James, how I love thee. But not enough to have written about these novellas right after I read them in June. Brief thoughts on The Aspern Papers and The Turn of the Screw
As Bethany said in her posts about The Aspern Papers and The Turn of the Screw, the sum total of time we spent on these potboilers in AP English was not very much. I remember talking about them at least … Continue reading
Take that, Shakespeare! Jill’s haphazard thoughts on Much Ado About Nothing
Yeah, so I read this play in like July, and apparently into August. What the hell was I doing last summer that it took me six weeks to read a Shakespeare play? I have no idea. And I’ll probably never … Continue reading
The AP English Challenge rides again: Jill reviews Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment
I feel like there is some symmetry in when I finished Crime and Punishment. I started it over Christmas break of 1993, which was just about twenty years ago. Finishing it almost twenty years to the day after starting it … Continue reading
Book II of Paradise Lost, Part II (by Bethany)
After they conclude their parliamentary debate about whether or not to wage another war against God, the rebel angels make plans to scout the cosmos out to see if the rumor they’ve heard about the creation of mankind is true. … Continue reading
Postcards From Purgatory 