Latest Readings

For my yr 12 English and Literature classes, I had to do a little bit of reading over the past school holidays.

First of all, English. We read The Crucible by Arthur Miller. The play was interesting, and some quotes really stood out to me. I'd already seen a movie-version of the play a couple of years ago and had a better understanding of some of the action in the play because of that. We were given 80 comprehension questions and told to do 60 before we came back to school. I may have overdone my homework and done the extra 20. Why not? I had the book there in front of me, and I was reading it. We watched the movie in class this week, and it was interesting to see how the play was adapted into a different medium. The task for studying The Crucible is a context response (just like when I read The Rugmaker of Mazar-e-Sharif by Najaf Mazari earlier this year), so we have also been learning about the real events in Salem during the witch trials in 1692. It's been pretty interesting. I'm not too keen on context responses, but I'll kick butt and get an awesome grade because I want to. 

In Literature, we were told to read after the quake, a series of short stories by Haruki Murakami, set after the Kobe earthquake in 1995. Oh my God. I LOVE them. They are strange. They are weird and they are different and he manages to bring some element of sex into all six short stories, but he does a damn good job of it! I LOVED reading them and I am eager now to read even more of his work. I've been going around randomly saying "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo", the name of my favourite short story. It has been interesting to do a bit of research and draw parallels between the author and the actual even of the Kobe earthquake and how he's incorporated both himself and those events into his stories. Brilliant read. *Please note that the title was intended to be written without capitals by the author. 

Has anybody read either of these books? Or something else by Haruki Murakami? 

- Bonnee.