Words are Fun

Upon suggestion from a fan, hey Ann!, I am changing the format of my word list. I have been putting the words into my own little sentences, perhaps as a way to help remember the word, but more just because it is kind of fun. Now, I will use the actual text and source it.

I think growing up the only regular homework that I was ever truly eager to do was something similar with our weekly vocabulary list straight off the pages of Wordly Wise. Each week we had to create a sentence for each of the twenty vocabulary words, and my memories of it are trying to come up with the strangest sentences possible that still made sense. At the beginning of the year, I would try to have the sentences go together as much as possible, but towards the end, my running internal monologue would award me extra points if I was able to make each sentence as unique in subject and tone as possible. I guess I never really thought about liking the homework, and it hadn't translated into reading yet. That year the class read a book with a pink cover about a kid on a farm. I didn't read it. I never even tried.

I just started reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It's an Oprah's Book Club book! I am not very far into it but I'm guessing that Mr. McCarthy name will be used quite a few times. I just saw a list of the greatest modern novels, from 1900 on. James Joyce tops the list with Ulysses. It is not an Oprah's Book Club book. I can only assume that reading it would be one hell of an odyssey, but it uses over 30,000 different words. I'm not sure what kind of sacrifice it would make, but reading it may be worth the challenge.

James Joyce also came in at number three on the list with A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I was suppose to read for a class in college. Never even tried to read that one either. I was quite the student.