Book review

Hey guys!! What's up? I haven't posted in quite a while. But since my new school is starting soon I will probably be writing some poems about that, not to mention more book reviews. Anyway, I was trying to think of something to post and my friend Rachel suggested that I write a book review. I decided to make comments on Emma, another Jane Austen favorite. I actually read this last fall, but I haven't been reading much new stuff lately, and this is definitely one of my all-time favorites. So here you go.

The scene is set where Emma, a 21 year old unmarried woman who is determined to be a matchmaker, is at her Governess, Miss Taylor's,  wedding. Her mother died years before and Emma and her older sister were left with Miss Taylor. After the wedding she is reflecting with her father about how much her Governess will be missed. They are interupted with the arrival of Mr. Knightley, a longtime family friend. He is six years older than Emma and with the departure of Miss Taylor, sort of takes the place of Emma's counselor, so-to-speak. The book has many ups and downs such as when Emma meets Harriet, a seventeen year old orphan, and takes her under her wing to try to get her married. Harriet falls into many traps of men who she thinks she is in love with, but they turn out to disappoint her. In the end, they all lived happily ever after, but after quite a trial. This is written in a style that you have to get used to, but it is totally worth a shot! This is seriously one of the greatest books ever written. Read it!!!!


Louisa

P.S.
I will be starting Wives and Daughters soon by Elizabeth Gaskell, and I will probably do a review on that when I finish. TTYL!!

The Gym by Night part 7

(Sorry I didn't post this sooner; I just got back from vacation.)

The next morning, I woke up, refreshed, from my “long” night of sleep.

I bolted down the stairs as fast as one can bolt with a broken wrist. Alex and my Mom were waiting for me at the breakfast table. I sat down breathlessly and poured my cereal.

“Kerry, this morning I got a call from the gymnastics coach and he wanted to know how you are doing,” my mom informed me. Fine, Mom. Tell me what the real reason is, I thought.

“He also indicated that you were interested in trying Rhythmic Gymnastics as we discussed. He referred me to the Head Coach at his gym, Ksenia Afanaseyva. She was apparently the 1984 Olympic Champion for the Soviet Union. She sounds excellent.” My mom was a bookkeeper for a manager of Apple, and very exact and precise. “What do you think?”

“Umm yeah I met her. She seems, uh, nice.” I stammered, remembering my exchange with the Coach the day before. “I can’t exactly do Rhythmic Gymnastics in a cast, though….”

“Oh yes you can!” Alex pointed out. “You can always do strength and conditioning. Do you think…. Do you think…. Well, do you think you can climb a rope?”

“Alex, I really think I can’t do it in this cast.”

“I bet you can. It just requires upper body strength.”

“And guess what! I just broke my wrist!!” I exclaimed, as my dog came up behind me and started licking my empty bowl.

“Stop it!” My mom hated when he ate table scraps.

“Anyway,” I said as I went to the kitchen and got a new bowl, “She wasn’t exactly the nicest person in the world…. She was really snippy with me and she was like “I don’t have time for you right now,” and she left me stranded.”

“I see,” Mom said slowly, “Maybe we can find a different coach for you. Though I doubt they have any more Rhythmic Gyms in town. And it would be quite a struggle to get you to one gym in the morning and Alex to another one. But with Coach Chip resign-“ She stopped, realizing she had said something that she wasn’t supposed to. I was fascinated. Coach Chip resigning?? That had to be what she meant. What else would “resign-“ mean?

“I’m full!” I announced, “I’m going to Ana’s house. Ta-ta!!!” And with that I sailed out the door without another word. I kept on sailing right down the street to Ana’s house. I rang the doorbell. I did a double take. The doorbell was Ana’s FLOOR MUSIC!!! Ana’s parents were so serious about her gymnastics. Ana flung open the door, scaring me. She saw my open mouth and said: “What?”

“Oh, nothing,” I said, embarrassed. “Oh, by the way, I like your doorbell.”

“Oh, yeah. I tried to keep them from doing it, but they resisted.” She rolled her eyes and then grinned. “So what’s up?” She asked.

“I have some uhh, news.” I was about to tell her and then I realized: Ana would be really upset that the gym was closing. That was probably why my parents hadn’t told Alex.

“SO DO I!!!!!!!” She practically screamed.

“Omygosh what are you so excited about?”

“I qualified elite!!”

“OH!! Congratulations!! I’m surprised Alex didn’t tell me!”

“Well,” said Ana sadly, “She wants to do college; she’s working on a scholarship for UCLA. So we won’t get to go to Nationals together. ;-(

“You made it to NATIONALS?”

“Yes, through the elite qualifier.”

“That’s awesome! Congrats again!”

“Thanks. Now what’s your news?” I decided to tell her. There was one other gym in town.

“I have a new piece to add to our mystery at the gym,” I said reluctantly. “I’m pretty sure Coach Chip is resigning.” I braced myself. Ana’s face crumpled. She ran into her room and I could hear her burst into tears. I just knew I was going to get into trouble with her strict parents.

Great.

Road Trips

Here's a little Haiku that I wrote about the experience of being in the car with siblings for 8 hours a day:


8am: we start
the eternal bathroom stops
8pm: HOTEL!!!!!

I hope you like it and comment if you think it's accurate. ;)

Louisa

John Snyder Poetry Reading

Hey guys! Long time no see!!
I'm just doing a quick post on a poetry reading that I went to a few weeks ago. It was poems by John Snyder, world-renowned for his Haiku. (if you've read my other posts you know that I love Haiku!!) He read Haiku and other forms of poetry. Here's a bio:

John R Snyder's haiku have achieved international recognition. He was an invited poet at the 2004 World Haiku Festival in the Netherlands, where he won first place in the festival competition. His haiku, senryu, renku and longer lyrical poems have appeared in publications around the world, including the USA, England, Romania. France, the Netherlands, and Japan. He has served as a section editor for the World Haiku Review and has twice been a featured poet at the Austin International Poetry Festival.

I thought it was amazing. how he had SUCH a large vocabulary. I mean, he used words that I would never even thought of or heard of. Here's one of his Haiku:

 
open windows –
    from the garden I can hear
    the neighbor’s long shower


I LOVE this poem!!! He is a great poet!


bye 4 now!!
Louisa

The Gym by Night part 6(Finally!)

It turned out I had fractured my wrist. It wasn’t a very serious injury, but as I had never been really injured before, I collapsed from nervousness. I arrived at home that evening, sporting a bright pink cast.  I was enormously drowsy, so I practically fell down on the sofa in my room. What a day it had been. Why had I tried to do that back handspring? Sabrina had clearly warned me to not try it by myself. And now I had this. Ugh. This cast was already getting annoying. BRRRRING! The phone by my couch rang. I sat up weakly.

“Hello?”

“Hi.” It was Ana.

“Oh, hi.”

“Hi.”

“What’s up?”

“I was just calling to check and see how you’re feeling. I’ve fractured my wrist before and it was REALLY painful.”

“It does hurt quite a lot. But mostly I’m just tired. I’m just like, lying on my sofa.”

“I bet. Well, bye.”

“Bye.”

“See you tomorrow!”

“Ana, wait!” I cried. “We need to decide when to go into the gym and search your coach’s things.”

“Oh, can’t we just forget that? It really doesn’t matter, anyway.”

“It does. You just don’t think it does.” I heard a faint voice calling Ana’s voice in the background.

“Well can we talk about this tomorrow? ‘Cause I really have to go now.”

“Ok. Bye”.

“Bye”. I hung up, discouraged. Why was Ana always so stubborn? Didn’t she want to find out what made her coach lose his earnings? And now there was another downside. I was B-O-R-E-D! Not that THAT really fit in with this but…… “Ana! It was Alex, from the doorway. Mom sent you this fan. She said the leg inside the cast will start itching soon and the fan will help.”

Oh, mom. My mom was a nurse and always knew what to do for any health situation. 

“Well, ok. It might.”

“Which it will. When I broke my foot last fall, it itched a LOT during the night.” Being a gymnast, Alex had had lots of experience with casts and boots and things like that.

“Anyway, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” And with that, she left.

Sighing, I turned on the TV, flipping the channels. Boring. Boring. Boring. Boring. Boring.  Boring. Boring. Wait, here was a familiar voice. It was Tim Daggett, the announcer for NBC’s gymnastics. “What competition is this?” I said out loud. Hmm. It looked like…. The Pan American Games? “I didn’t know this was on.” I looked and I looked and I didn’t see any bars, beam or vault. All there was was a big floor mat.

I hobbled into the living room. Alex was sitting there, watching a movie.

“Hey Alex, was there a gymnastics competition tonight?”

“What? Oh well the Rhythmic gymnastics for Pan Ams is tonight.”  

“REALLY?” I have to watch this!” I bolted as fast as I could back in to my room where the tv was still on. “And here we have Julie Zetlin of America. Now this young lady went to the London Olympics last year. She was the only representative of the USA for Rhythmic Gymnastics at the Games,” the announcer was saying. Olympian??? I almost fainted for the second time that day. I watched, enthralled, until midnight, for there was a “Post-game show” afterwards, with interviews with the athletes and replays. “Kerry! You should  in bed, sleeping!” You can probably guess who this was. “Ok mom. I just want to finish watching this competition. They’re having a Post-Game show.”

“Well, if it goes to late turn it off.”

“They’re almost done.”

“Good!” She left the room.

“So we’ll see the Artistic Gymnastics, tomorrow night 7:30pm Eastern Time. We wish you all Good Night.” I switched off the tv.  I sank down in my soft bed and……. I ……. Fell…….. asleep.

Good Morning!

This haiku was inspired by my yard:

the golden circle
peeps over the dewy grass
a rooster is heard

I am posting a bio on Robert Frost. I know, I have not posted in like, weeks, BUT:  I'm just busy.... I know I always give that excuse, but what else can I say?
Anyway, Robert Frost, one of my fave poets.

Robert Lee Frost was born in San Francisco, and after his fathers death in 1885, he moved with his family to Lawrence, Massachusetts, where he became interested in reading and writing poetry while in high school. Frost attended Dartmouth College and Harvard University, but never received a degree. He was a jack of all trades, and had many different occupations after leaving school, including a teacher, a cobbler, and an editor of the local newspaper, the "Lawrence Sentinel". His first published poem was "My Butterfly: An Elegy" in the New York literary journal "The Independent" in 1894. A year later he married Elinor Miriam White, with whom he shared valedictorian honours with at his Massachusetts High School.
In the following years, he operated a farm in Derry, New Hampshire, and taught at Derry's Pinkerton Academy. In 1912, he sold his farm and moved his family to England, where he could devote himself entirely to his writing. His efforts to establish himself in England were immediately successful, and in 1913 he published "A Boy's Will", followed a year later by "North of Boston". It was in England where he met and was influenced by such poets at Rupert Brooke and Robert Graves, and where he established his life-long friendship with Ezra Pound, who helped to promote and publish his work.
Frost returned to the United states in 1915, and by the 1920's, he was the most celebrated poet in North America, and was granted four Pulitzer Prizes. Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died on January 29, 1963 in Boston.

And here's my favorite poem by him.......Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy evening. (Very famous poem!)

  Whose woods these are I think I know.
 His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

 My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
 Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

 He gives his harness bells a shake
 To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of the easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
 But I have promises to keep,
 And miles to go before I sleep,
 And miles to go before I sleep.
 

Robert Frost

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. He moved to New England at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and later at Harvard, though he never earned a formal degree.
Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first professional poem, "My Butterfly," was published on November 8, 1894, in the New York newspaper The Independent.
In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who became a major inspiration in his poetry until her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in 1912, after their New Hampshire farm failed, and it was abroad that Frost met and was influenced by such contemporary British poets as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves. While in England, Frost also established a friendship with the poet Ezra Pound, who helped to promote and publish his work.
By the time Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had published two full-length collections, A Boy's Will and North of Boston, and his reputation was established. By the nineteen-twenties, he was the most celebrated poet in America, and with each new book—including New Hampshire (1923), A Further Range (1936), Steeple Bush (1947), and In the Clearing (1962)—his fame and honors (including four Pulitzer Prizes) increased.
Though his work is principally associated with the life and landscape of New England, and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained steadfastly aloof from the poetic movements and fashions of his time, Frost is anything but a merely regional or minor poet. The author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes, he is a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony.
In a 1970 review of The Poetry of Robert Frost, the poet Daniel Hoffman describes Frost's early work as "the Puritan ethic turned astonishingly lyrical and enabled to say out loud the sources of its own delight in the world," and comments on Frost's career as The American Bard: "He became a national celebrity, our nearly official Poet Laureate, and a great performer in the tradition of that earlier master of the literary vernacular, Mark Twain."
About Frost, President John F. Kennedy said, "He has bequeathed his nation a body of imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding."
Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died in Boston on January 29, 1963.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/192#sthash.9FX6mUAw.dpuf

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. He moved to New England at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and later at Harvard, though he never earned a formal degree.
Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first professional poem, "My Butterfly," was published on November 8, 1894, in the New York newspaper The Independent.
In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who became a major inspiration in his poetry until her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in 1912, after their New Hampshire farm failed, and it was abroad that Frost met and was influenced by such contemporary British poets as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves. While in England, Frost also established a friendship with the poet Ezra Pound, who helped to promote and publish his work.
By the time Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had published two full-length collections, A Boy's Will and North of Boston, and his reputation was established. By the nineteen-twenties, he was the most celebrated poet in America, and with each new book—including New Hampshire (1923), A Further Range (1936), Steeple Bush (1947), and In the Clearing (1962)—his fame and honors (including four Pulitzer Prizes) increased.
Though his work is principally associated with the life and landscape of New England, and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained steadfastly aloof from the poetic movements and fashions of his time, Frost is anything but a merely regional or minor poet. The author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes, he is a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony.
In a 1970 review of The Poetry of Robert Frost, the poet Daniel Hoffman describes Frost's early work as "the Puritan ethic turned astonishingly lyrical and enabled to say out loud the sources of its own delight in the world," and comments on Frost's career as The American Bard: "He became a national celebrity, our nearly official Poet Laureate, and a great performer in the tradition of that earlier master of the literary vernacular, Mark Twain."
About Frost, President John F. Kennedy said, "He has bequeathed his nation a body of imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding."
Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died in Boston on January 29, 1963.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/192#sthash.9FX6mUAw.dpuf

Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. He moved to New England at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and later at Harvard, though he never earned a formal degree.
Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first professional poem, "My Butterfly," was published on November 8, 1894, in the New York newspaper The Independent.
In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who became a major inspiration in his poetry until her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in 1912, after their New Hampshire farm failed, and it was abroad that Frost met and was influenced by such contemporary British poets as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves. While in England, Frost also established a friendship with the poet Ezra Pound, who helped to promote and publish his work.
By the time Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had published two full-length collections, A Boy's Will and North of Boston, and his reputation was established. By the nineteen-twenties, he was the most celebrated poet in America, and with each new book—including New Hampshire (1923), A Further Range (1936), Steeple Bush (1947), and In the Clearing (1962)—his fame and honors (including four Pulitzer Prizes) increased.
Though his work is principally associated with the life and landscape of New England, and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained steadfastly aloof from the poetic movements and fashions of his time, Frost is anything but a merely regional or minor poet. The author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes, he is a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony.
In a 1970 review of The Poetry of Robert Frost, the poet Daniel Hoffman describes Frost's early work as "the Puritan ethic turned astonishingly lyrical and enabled to say out loud the sources of its own delight in the world," and comments on Frost's career as The American Bard: "He became a national celebrity, our nearly official Poet Laureate, and a great performer in the tradition of that earlier master of the literary vernacular, Mark Twain."
About Frost, President John F. Kennedy said, "He has bequeathed his nation a body of imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding."
Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died in Boston on January 29, 1963.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/192#sthash.9FX6mUAw.dpuf