Reading Response and Reading Times

     For my three short stories, I read The Sniper, Araby, and A Worn Path. Out of these stories, the two short stories that I enjoyed were The Sniper and A Worn Path. I thought The Sniper was engaging although I wish it were more detailed. I didn’t enjoy A Worn Path as much but I did like the story. I enjoyed A Worn Path because after all the trouble the main character Phoenix Jackson went through to get some medicine for her grandson made me think about how difficult the trip would actually have been if I were in her position.

     I honestly didn’t enjoy reading Araby because there was no closure and the plot was really strange. I wish I had chosen a different short story to read because I would have had a better list of short stories to choose from when picking one to analyze. The short story I am going to do my analysis on is A Worn Path. Although I enjoyed The Sniper more, I think it would be better to do my analysis on A Worn Path

10/27 Araby – 40 minutes

10/25 The Sniper – 30 minutes

10/27 A Worn Path – 50 minutes

free post

When I was a kid my dad decided I needed to have a haircut like he had when he was a kid.

We went to the barber shop and the barber asked how short I wanted my hair.  My dad said

“He wants a buzz cut”.  Of course, I did not know what he was talking about. After the haircut was over I looked in the mirror and immediately started complaining about how short it was. This was the worst haircut I had ever seen.  

The buzz cut the barber gave me is known as a number one at the barber shop.  The number one is

the blade length on the razor attachment.  That means the hair is cut one eighth of an inch long.

The hair is cut so short, it’s like not having any hair left on your head when the barber is through

cutting your hair.  It was a horrible experience and I would never do it again.

Reading Times & Questions

The hobbit:
10/8 30 minutes
10/9 20 minutes
Reviewing short stories:
10/9 35 minutes
10/10 35 minutes

How can I make myself a faster reader?
How do I make a reader want to read my short story?

Reading Log

9/30 The Girls and Their Summer Dresses- 35 min
10/2 Waltz of a Fat Man- 55 min
with annotating and rereading and everything.

Short Story Plot sort of

(Don’t have a name for the main character yet) is just a regular guy trying to get a job and have a nice life and he was living with his parents in (need a place for them to live) until one day he comes home to an empty house and no idea where his family vanished to. He had heard that a few people had gone missing not too far from where he lives and that they were never found. With the help of his friend he must get leads as to where his family has gone. If he doesn't find out what happened to them he will never see them again.

Short Story stuff

I don’t really know what I think about these short stories but I feel like it is helping me be better at annotating. While reading these short stories I've noticed that all of the stories we've read so far are really strange. I caught myself having to reread a lot of these short stories to really understand what is going on in them. In some of the long short stories it got more difficult to annotate because there were more sentences that just didn’t really need to be there and I noticed that I wasn't really underlining things that were important.

I don’t like the fact that we’re writing our own short stories. I don’t think making my own will help me learn as much as I could from reading other short stories. I enjoy learning and talking about these short stories in class because I think it helps understand how they are written so well. I don’t think writing my own short story will help me be a better writer in general.