Sunday, June 29, 2008

Eighteenth hour (5:00-6:00 a.m. EDT) ~ REPORT and MINI-CHALLENGE

Title of book(s) I've been reading this hour (hourly # of pages):
..... Forgive Me ~ by Amanda Eyre Ward (7 pages)
..... Total pages this hour = 7 pages

Books I've read (or dipped into) since I started (total # of pages):
..... A Three Dog Life ~ by Abigail Thomas (182 pages)
..... Big Woods ("The Bear") ~ by William Faulkner (15 pages)
..... Memories, Dreams, Reflections ~ by Carl Jung (12 pages)
..... Rules Are Rules ~ by Julie Scandora (32 pages)
..... Forgive Me ~ by Amanda Eyre Ward (154 pages)
..... Total pages today = 395 pages

Comments about this hour:
..... Wait! I thought I read a long time, but it's only 7 pages? Obviously I didn't read more than 5-10 minutes of the book, at least.
..... So what did I do this past hour?
..... Some reading, some blog visiting, some ... what?
..... I don't know.
..... Maybe I'm running in slow motion.
..... Maybe I'm sleepwalking.
..... Maybe I'm slogging through sticky molasses.

Time spent reading since my last post (and collectively):
..... 10 minutes (400 minutes = 6 hours + 40 minutes)

Other participants I've visited this hour:
..... Icedream
..... Dewey

Mini-challenge for Hour 19:
Care's Word-Sentence Challenge: Write about (A) strangest new vocabulary word found during entire read-a-thon, and/or (B) most interesting / annoying / favorite RUN ON sentence encountered.

I can do this (I think). Both examples are from Faulkner's book that I was trying to read during the Fifth Hour, when I wrote this:
..... I'm putting aside the Faulkner book with its sentences half a page long that I have to read and re-read to make myself cognizant of what was said. I guess I'm not really much interested in a boy's "apprenticeship ... to manhood" (p. 15) by taking part in a hunt for a bear who'd been shot and trapped and mutilated multiple times since before the 16-year-old boy was born. I'm just not into that.
There were three words in (part of) a single long sentence that I just had to stop and comment on, but I guess I'd pick the first one as "THE" word for this challenge:
WORD = (p. 4) Faulkner describes a pioneer Anglo-Saxon as "uxorious and polygamous: a married invincible bachelor, dragging his gravid wife and most of the rest of his mother-in-law's family behind him."
uxorious (adj.) = doting upon, foolishly fond of, or affectionately submissive toward one's wife.
polygamous (adj.) = having more than one mate at a time [ant: monogamous].
gravid (adj.) = in an advanced stage of pregnancy; "was big with child"; "was great with child" [syn: big].
Technically the sentence I've chosen to share is not a "run-on" sentence, but it DOES run on and on and on and on! It takes up one line more than half of page 13:
SENTENCE = "It was as if the boy had already divined what his senses and intellect had not encompassed yet: that doomed wilderness whose edges were being constantly and punily gnawed at by men with plows and axes who feared it because it was wilderness, men myriad and nameless even to one another in the land where the old bear had earned a name, and through which ran not even a mortal beast but an anachronism indomitable and invincible out of an old dead time, a phantom, epitome and apotheosis of the old wild life which the little puny humans swarmed and hacked at in a fury of abhorrence and fear like pygmies about the ankles of a drowsing elephant;--the older bear, solitary, indomitable, and alone; widowered childless and absolved of mortality--old Priam reft of his old wife and outlives all his sons."

3 comments:

Care said...

of course! Faulkner would be a great choice for options on the run on sentence contest, huh?! I must say, your post here is in my top 3 so far (if not the best!) - LOVE the words! good job.

and I love the header photo, too. forgot to mention that earlier...

jessi said...

I remember reading Faulkner in college; I don't know that I would be brave enough to try him again. :) Good choice!

Ana S. said...

wow, that is a LONG sentence!