More than 220 books from my Shelfari shelves are on sale @ http://www.amazon.com/shops/eye_DEAL_books
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My avatar picture is a literary tattoo of a quotation from Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities." Those of you who know your Dickens and remember the opening paragraph will already know what it says, but for those of you who have not yet read the novel -- you definitely should! The tattoo reads:
(Arm on the left -- as you look at the picture):
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
(Arm on the right):
we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." Dickens 1859
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About me: I've been an English teacher at the college, high school and middle school level for more than 12 years now. I grew up in Southern California, left for a decade to get my B.A. and M.A. in English and now I'm living and working in China. I'm the Program Coordinator of Academic Affairs for a Language Training Centre in Guangdong Province.
Teaching is a path I chose for myself not just because I enjoy working with young people, but because I don't think of teaching as "a job". . .it's really more about who I am, rather than what I do for a living. Ironically, it doesn't always leave me enough time to actually read what I want to read, and so I know how my students feel when they say they're "being forced to read" by me, my class syllabus, or my incessant reading lists!
The books I've listed on Shelfari are books I read as a child, books I've bought or sold, books I've read for pleasure or school, or out of interest in the author, subject, topic or genre. I've used some of the books in my teaching, and some were suggested to me by professors, colleagues, students, relatives, friends, Shelfari members, or other prolific readers. My Shelfari shelves contain books that -- for one reason or another -- are very important to me.
That's not to say that I've enjoyed every book I've read from cover-to-cover. Some books, like Gertrude Stein's "The Making of Americans" are damn near IMPOSSIBLE TO READ -- some people feel that way about Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" and "Ulysses" or Samuel Beckett's "How It Is" "Watt" or "Waiting for Godot" -- but I've always felt that once you read those books, once they're finished and you've "absorbed" them. . .then they become more valuable to you for the simple reason that you had to work so hard to read them. Nobody said that reading should ALWAYS be easy, and I would argue against the idea that the "easiest" or "most enjoyable" reading is the best, the most productive, or the most sincere.
I first read Stein, Joyce and Beckett while I was in college; it wasn't easy, but it was NECESSARY -- and I'm glad that it was -- because I'm not sure I would have had the fortitude to stick it out if reading those authors hadn't been so important to my classes, my grades, and my overall education and career goals. Reading is such a personal investment of time, energy, attention and emotion, and even the books I didn't really like still mean a lot to me on that personal level. They've ALL taught me something!
As a rule, I've tried to stay as true as possible to the Shelfari rating system. It's safe to say that the books on my shelf which I've rated at 2 stars (or less) did not impress me at all! There aren't that many of them, but they will stand out. I try to up-date my reviews as much as possible, but I'm WAAAAAAY behind as far as that's concerned.
If you see a book on my shelf that interests you or that you want to ask me about, then please drop me a line. I'd be happy to go into more detail about it, and it will give me a chance to "rant" about literature (which I love to do anyway)! I love discussing books, and I enjoy meeting new people.
TTYS! --Greg
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