Trinity Banter | kbergren | Activity

kbergren wrote a new post, reading questions for Thurs. 12/4, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Mon, 01 Dec 2014 21:27:09 -0500

Team C reading questions. Responses of 250-300 words are due by 9PM on Wednesday 12/3 as an original post. Don’t forget a creative title for your post.

1. Imagine the habitus of a fan of World Wrestling […]

kbergren wrote a new post, reading questions for Tues. 11/18, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Sun, 16 Nov 2014 15:25:06 -0500

Team B reading questions. Responses of 250-300 words are due by 9PM on Monday 11/17 as an original post. Don’t forget a creative title for your post.

1. The reading for today is considerably darker in terms of […]

kbergren wrote a new post, reading questions for Tues. 11/11, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Sun, 09 Nov 2014 21:54:16 -0500

Team A reading questions. Responses of 250-300 words are due by 9PM on Monday 11/10 as an original post. Don’t forget a creative title for your post.

1. In her article about Jennifer Weiner’s novels, Laura […]

kbergren wrote a new post, reading questions for Thurs. 11/6, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 21:43:00 -0500

Team C reading questions. Responses of 250-300 words are due by 9PM on Wednesday 11/5 as an original post. Don’t forget a creative title for your post.

1. Jennifer Weiner’s thesis is clear from the title of her […]

kbergren commented on the post, Close Reading: The Great Gulf Between Lucy and Alicia , on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 19:07:28 -0400

this is a great metaphor to focus on, and i like what you’re saying about the syntactic repetition between “decimated and been decimated” and “forgiving and forgiven.” i think you could say more about the […]

kbergren commented on the post, Close Reading: The Storm Behind Lady Audley's Secret , on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 19:04:40 -0400

the storm symbolism is a little belabored (i think you could say it in a sentence and move on), but throughout the attention to detail is excellent and you add nuance to our understanding of our passage. i love […]

kbergren commented on the post, Close Reading: George Mood Change, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 17:02:59 -0400

there isn’t enough detail here. you say “the choice of words used by braddon” but don’t point out which words are depressing and sad. instead, you return to your paraphrase of the passage, which is very broad. […]

kbergren commented on the post, Close Reading: Beauty as a Weapon, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:59:20 -0400

you’ve noticed some important details here, but for the most part you haven’t connected them to the content. from the end of the first paragraph through the middle of the second, you list literary devices without […]

kbergren commented on the post, Close Reading Analysis: The Light that Is Lucy, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:55:53 -0400

my favorite point here: the length of the 3rd sentence.
my least favorite point here: the pale sunbeam (light can be pale!)

some excellent details in here chris. i like how the paragraph has drive, but don’t […]

kbergren commented on the post, Close reading: "Innocent amusement", on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:52:22 -0400

there are some good details in here, but you don’t have to be quite so exhaustive (for instance, if there’s no interesting figurative language, don’t mention it). instead, dwell more on each detail. this is a […]

kbergren commented on the post, Lady Audley Description, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:48:44 -0400

i like your final point–it might be worth exploring throughout the paragraph! there’s a good level of specificity here, but you need a little more explicitness. for instance, how do long sentences with lots of […]

kbergren commented on the post, Close Reading: Lady Audley's Disease, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:46:28 -0400

great focus on parts of speech here. a couple of suggestions: you may be overreading “unnatural,” since that word is describing not LA but the light in her eyes (can that really be indicative of mental illness?). […]

kbergren commented on the post, Close Reading: The Wicked Lady Audley, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:42:46 -0400

there are some nice details in here (the bursts of thought, the small words). but the prose is pretty choppy, and lacking in transitions from sentence to sentence. a more overt point-of-view would help – for […]

kbergren commented on the post, Close Reading: Wrestling with a Madwoman, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:39:59 -0400

you’re mostly talking around this quotation rather than close-reading it. if you reread the sentences around the quotations, you’ll see what i’m talking about–they tend to summarize the quotations rather than […]

kbergren commented on the post, Questioning Lady Audley's Character, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:36:56 -0400

some great details in here! i particularly like your point about how the sentence structure emphasizes LA’s individuality, as compared to the hordes of other unremarkable people.

a writing tic–watch out for […]

kbergren commented on the post, A Description After Death, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:34:40 -0400

a lovely close reading, particularly good on how the passage’s descriptive nature reflects George’s own lethargy.

kbergren commented on the post, The Garden, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:00:13 -0400

great formal details (the parallel structure, the diction); i especially like how you point out the ambiguity of “intense” and show how the the diction surrounding it changes its connotation.

kbergren wrote a new post, script for "the wire" pilot, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Thu, 23 Oct 2014 15:57:21 -0400

in case it helps with your close-readings

kbergren wrote a new post, reading questions for Tues. 10/21, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Sun, 19 Oct 2014 22:58:18 -0400

Team B reading questions. Responses of 250-300 words are due by 9PM on Monday 10/20 as an original post. Don’t forget a creative title for your post.

1. The conclusion of LAS is what Ruth Graham might call […]

kbergren wrote a new post, reading questions for Thurs. 10/16, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 14:57:20 -0400

Team A reading questions. Responses of 250-300 words are due by 9PM on Wednesday 10/15 as an original post. Don’t forget a creative title for your post.

1. Do you think that Robin Goodfellow would have […]

kbergren commented on the post, Talboys’ Literary Personality , on the site Guilty Pleasures

Fri, 10 Oct 2014 17:06:12 -0400

Eton is also the epitome of an English prep school (I mean, look at these pictures: http://bit.ly/1q8HSym)

kbergren wrote a new post, reading questions for Thurs. 10/9, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 07 Oct 2014 19:04:23 -0400

Team C reading questions. Responses of 250-300 words are due by 9PM on Wednesday 10/8 as an original post. Don’t forget a creative title for your post.

1. Although we rarely see Robert Audley doing any real […]

kbergren commented on the post, Lady Audley's Independence, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 07 Oct 2014 15:27:01 -0400

your description reminded me of this:

Two Monks Invent The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

for example, riffing on the idea that all women in pre-raphaelite paintings look […]

kbergren commented on the post, The Rise of Snapchat, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Sat, 04 Oct 2014 16:19:38 -0400

i’m old enough that i don’t get snapchat (none of my friends use it; we all just text). i understand how it’s different from texting, but for most circumstances i don’t understand why those differences would be […]

kbergren wrote a new post, reading questions for Tues. 10/7, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 21:17:33 -0400

Team B reading questions. Responses of 250-300 words are due by 9PM on Monday 10/6 as an original post. Don’t forget a creative title for your post.

1. When Robert Audley and George Talboys steal into Lady […]

kbergren wrote a new post, books and authors and critics, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 16:09:09 -0400

this twitter manifesto reminded me of our discussions of celine dion (and we’re reading jennifer weiner later in the semester, so her tweets are particularly apropos).

[in case you missed it, she’s referring to […]

kbergren wrote a new post, reading questions for Thurs. 10/2, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 13:58:08 -0400

Team A reading questions. Responses of 250-300 words are due by 9PM on Wednesday 10/1 as an original post. Don’t forget a creative title for your post.

1. A novel’s opening is one of its most crucial moments. Choose any part of the opening—the first sentence, the first paragraph, the first page—and pay close attention to its diction and sentence structure, as well as its content. What does the opening tell us about LAS as a novel and what’s to come?
2. The first issue of Robin Goodfellow opens with a meditation on “Our title and purpose.” What does the journal’s namesake tell us about the journal and the niche it’s trying to fill? What do you learn about the journal from the names that the editors rejected?
3. Choose one of the articles that appears alongside LAS in Robin Goodfellow and explore what its inclusion reveals about the journal’s aims, appeal, and audience.

kbergren wrote a new post, persuasive essay: peer review and criteria, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Wed, 24 Sep 2014 19:17:33 -0400

So, tomorrow:

You’ll be in groups of three, which Maddie will assign at the beginning of class.

First, share the docs:
-open your essay in google docs
-click “share” in the upper right corner, then select […]

kbergren commented on the post, What's Happening in YA Literature? Trends in Books for Adolescents, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 20:15:09 -0400

Not a ton of analysis here – it will be worth your while to find a source that gives you more to say.

kbergren commented on the post, Judging a Book by its Cover: Publishing Trends in Young Adult Literature, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 20:13:36 -0400

I think you’re right. But isn’t this a huge bummer? (I say this as someone who loves book design.)

kbergren commented on the post, Why Can't You Put the Book Down?, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 20:10:13 -0400

I’m so glad you’re bringing Judy Blume into this discussion (though I imagine she’s much less frequently read than she was when I was young?). Something implicit in what you’re saying, that could be emphasized, is […]

kbergren commented on the post, Irony in Narration, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 20:07:04 -0400

This sounds like a kind of crucial article – I got a little confused in the middle of your summary, but the idea that the YA first-person narrator is never “authentic” is really interesting. I imagine a lot of you […]

kbergren commented on the post, Young Adults Exist!, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 20:04:23 -0400

Point taken. (the OED backs you up too, in a different way: the word “teen-ager” isn’t recorded until 1941)

kbergren commented on the post, Young Adult= Everybody, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 16:02:50 -0400

So rhetorically impassioned that I now feel guilty for every sneer I’ve given to a YA book.

THOUGH. Your point at the end about black writers, and female writers, doesn’t seem a perfect comparison to YA novels, […]

kbergren commented on the post, New Cancer, New Me., on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 15:59:37 -0400

These sentences:

While a shocking figure when applied to the entire corpus of a genre, the statistic, 85% of books, may hold a little less gravity when one considers the nature of the young adult genre. In fact […]

kbergren commented on the post, Teens and YA Literature Impacted by the Media, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 15:56:13 -0400

The two points from this article don’t seem to belong in the same paragraph. The first one is about maturity (though it’s not clear what’s particularly mature about “plot concerning the idea of a typical teenage […]

kbergren commented on the post, Humor and Relationships, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 15:51:26 -0400

This sounds like a pretty complex article (which is great!). You do need to help your reader along, though. Anytime you include a long quote, assume your reader is getting distracted (I know I did) and provide a […]

kbergren commented on the post, Pessimism in YA Literature, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 15:47:29 -0400

I like the twist here. Can you extrapolate a bit more? Is TFIOS worth reading because it’s optimistic? Does Abrahamson and Carter’s argument carry over to adult novels as well?

kbergren commented on the post, Young Adults Exist!, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 15:43:54 -0400

Hasn’t this always been the case though? Teens aren’t a new thing, nor is adult contact with teens.

kbergren commented on the post, The Relatable Element in Young Adult Literature, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 15:42:01 -0400

This article presents a much more thoughtful way of discussing “relatability,” which can often be a vague catch-all term. But I’m not yet convinced by what you’re saying about TFIOS – most teens haven’t […]

kbergren commented on the post, Writing Assignment 1, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 15:39:45 -0400

Tori, this little post is practically perfect – the article you chose is germane, you paraphrased it clearly and specifically, and you used it to analyze TFIOS in an unexpected way, suggesting the novel doesn’t […]

kbergren commented on the post, Young Love, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 15:37:16 -0400

This sounds like a really useful article for TFIOS – but I might quibble with your assertion that Hazel and Gus never fight. Although they don’t fight much, they have a recurring argument about Gus’s valiance – […]

kbergren commented on the post, Relatability to Foster Critical Thinking: The Benefits of Young Adult Literature , on the site Guilty Pleasures

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 16:07:13 -0400

I’m going to play devil’s advocate here, because I think a lot of you might make arguments along these lines (i.e. YA literature is relatable; therefore, its readers learn better from it). What about […]

kbergren commented on the post, No Surprise That YAL Continues To Grow In Popularity, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 16:01:06 -0400

_An Imperial Affliction_ isn’t meant to be a YA novel, I don’t think – Hazel describes it as “very literary” (which is not how people usually describe YA novels, even if they ARE very literary). In fact, neither […]

kbergren commented on the post, Defying Oblivion, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Tue, 16 Sep 2014 19:42:57 -0400

one of this things i really like about the book is the way it DOESN’T buy into gender stereotypes about whether men or women have more emotion and sensitivity. if anything hazel and augustus fly in the face of […]

kbergren commented on the post, Love or Hate?, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Mon, 15 Sep 2014 20:25:02 -0400

i am 100% pro sad music for sad times – for me it sometimes turns the act of being sad into an aesthetic experience. so then there’s a respite from feeling bad. and most of my favorite books are incredible […]

kbergren wrote a new post, the poem in ch. 10 of TFIOS..., on the site Guilty Pleasures

Mon, 15 Sep 2014 18:24:56 -0400

…is the modernist classic “the love song of j. alfred prufrock” (by t. s. eliot). one of its most famous lines, which you will often encounter quoted out of context:

Do I dare to eat a peach?

kbergren commented on the post, Class Recap 9/9, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Mon, 15 Sep 2014 17:23:52 -0400

the BIG lebowski, not great!

if you like coen brothers movies, this is an early example. it’s not all super weird like the clip we watched, though it is VERY 90s (think near constant references to saddam hussein).

kbergren wrote a new post, reading questions for Thurs. 9/18, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Mon, 15 Sep 2014 12:46:23 -0400

Team C reading questions. Responses of 250-300 words are due by 9PM on Wednesday 9/17 as an original post. Don’t forget a creative title for your post.

1. Imagine you are the script doctor tasked with adapting […]

kbergren wrote a new post, reading questions for Tues. 9/16, on the site Guilty Pleasures

Mon, 15 Sep 2014 00:29:42 -0400

Team B reading questions. Responses of 250-300 words are due by 9PM on Monday 9/15 as an original post. Don’t forget a creative title for your post.

1. How would the novel be different if Augustus narrated it? How would it be different if it had third-person narration instead of first-person? What do these other possibilities tell us about Hazel as a narrator?
2. Imagine you are thirteen years old and reading this novel for the first time. How does it strike you? How would this response be different from your current reaction? What specific moments and characters might you interpret differently?
3. Talbot’s profile doesn’t have a clear argument. What does its underlying point seem to be? What themes and conflicts guide it? What is she trying to reveal about Green?