Summer Reading via Audioboo

If you haven't previously seen our annual summer reading list of 22 excellent books, here's a short audioboo introduction. Listen via the player below. Click here for the original list.

10 Characters from 'Hamlet'. 10: The First Gravedigger

Our Audioboo series on 10 (relatively) minor characters in Hamlet concludes with the first gravedigger, who we see at the start of Act V and who engages with Hamlet himself in a discussion about death. The episode tells us much about Hamlet's state of mind as we see him for the first time following his return from England.

Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. Listen to today's talk via the player below. Listen to the first 5 talks on one podcast here.

10 Characters from 'Hamlet': 8. The Player King

The eighth character in our series on (relatively) minor characters in Hamlet is in fact a character in the play within the play, The Mousetrap. What the Player King says chimes with some of the main ideas of the whole play.

Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. Listen to today's talk via the player below. Listen to the first 5 talks on one podcast here.

 

WBD Survey 17

We're coming to the end of book recommendations from our World Book Day 2011 survey, but there are still a few more after this post.

Liam C : The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
Beautifully written with excellently drawn characters. It opens up a place and a perspective in WW2 Europe that is an unusual one. Reading this is a strongly visual experience but all the other senses are also challenged to grasp the sense of space and light integral to this place. What is even more interesting is that is a building that exists as a national architectural treasure to this day on the edge of the city of Brno. 

(below, an earlier Audioboo review of the book)


debzanne: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
It's part romance, part science fiction, part drama, and part adventure, with a little humor thrown in.  When my book club read it, I stayed up the night before the meeting to finish it, and began crying around 2am because the characters were just so beautiful.  This is a novel when, truly, the little moments are the most touching; the author does a nice job of writing them without calling attention to them.  In recent years, I've convinced two men and one woman to read it, and they've all loved it.  Gorgeous book.

Anonymous: The Curative by Charlotte Randall
This book takes place in a cell in Bedlam, and reveals, eventually, why the narrator/protagonist is there. It is a snapshot too, of the 'medical' practices of the time and is beautifully written. My only niggle is at the end- the main character is incarcerated in chains in damp conditions for a long time, yet he walks... I don't buy that bit, but was absorbed by the rest.

Anonymous: The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
Haunting, imaginative, and full of truth about one of the darkest periods in human history.  I could not stop reading it.

5 'Hamlet' Audioboos

This podcast gathers together the first five short 'audioboos' from our series 10 Characters in 'Hamlet', which deal with six characters: 1) Fortinbras, 2) Horatio, 3) Laertes, 4) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, 5) Polonius. Another podcast will put together the remaining four when complete.

The series looks at the 'lesser' characters in the play, in five-minute chunks. Note that there is a brief gap between each talk. Listen via the player below:-
       

   
   
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You can also listen to this podcast via the player on each post, or the 'widget' on the sidebar to the right, or by visiting our podcast page here (if you have iTunes on your computer you can also subscribe by clicking here, and so download our episodes to your MP3 player, or by searching for 'SCC English' in the iTunes Store).

10 Characters from 'Hamlet'. 3: Laertes

The subject of the third short podcast on characters from Hamlet is Laertes, another young man in the play who is a revenger, and who provides a useful foil to Hamlet in our understanding of the latter's situation and personality.

Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. Listen to today's talk via the player below.
 

10 Characters from 'Hamlet': 2. Horatio

The second of the 'audioboos' on characters in Hamlet looks at the hero's most loyal friend and supporter, Horatio, a man who 'is not passion's slave'.

Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. Listen to today's talk via the player below.
 

10 Characters from 'Hamlet': 1. Fortinbras

This 'audioboo' is the first of a series which will look at (relatively) minor characters in the play Hamlet. Later and longer revision podcasts will consider the main characters, including Hamlet himself.

Number 1 examines a character who hardly appears in the story, and who hardly says anything, and yet who has a crucial role: Fortinbras, Prince of Norway.

Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. Listen to today's talk via the player below.

Patterns of Poetry 15: hyperbole

Last night this series was voted first runner-up in the Edublog Awards in the category 'Best Educational Use of Audio.' Many thanks to all our supporters.

The 15th talk (all under 5 minutes) is about the figure of speech called hyperbole, and uses Patrick Kavanagh's well-known poem 'A Christmas Childhood' to examine this effect.

Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. The first 8 talks are available as a single podcast here. Listen to today's talk via the player below.

Patterns of Poetry 14: metaphor

The 14th in the Patterns of Poetry talks (under 5 minutes, and mostly using poems from the Leaving Certificate course) is on metaphor, and examines Seamus Heaney's sonnet 'The Forge' (scroll down for the poem). The New York Times article by Robert Sapolsky on metaphor and the human brain referred to can be read here. Below, James Geary's TED talk on 'metaphor'.

Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. The first 8 talks are available as a single podcast here. Listen to today's talk via the player below.

Patterns of Poetry 13: foreshadowing

The 13th in the Patterns of Poetry series of talks of under five minutes is about foreshadowing, and uses John Keats's ode 'To Autumn'.

Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. The first 8 talks are available as a single podcast here. Listen to today's talk via the player below.

Patterns of Poetry 12: punctuation

The 12th talk in the Patterns of Poetry talks (all under 5 minutes) is about punctuation. The two poems quoted are Emily Dickinson's 'I felt a Funeral in my Brain' and the late Edwin Morgan's 'Strawberries'. Click here for Victor Borge's 'Phonetic Punctuation' turn.

Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. The first 8 talks are available as a single podcast here. Listen to today's talk via the player below.

Patterns of Poetry 11: sonnet

The 11th Patterns of Poetry talk briefly considers the sonnet form, concentrating on Patrick Kavanagh's sonnet 'Epic'. Click here on the Poetry Archive site to read the poem, and listen to Kavanagh himself reading it out.

Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. The first 8 talks are available as a single podcast here. Listen to today's talk via the player below.

Patterns of Poetry 10: repetition

The 10th Patterns of Poetry short podcast deals with repetition in poetry, and how it can be a useful way into a poem, examining Elizabeth Bishop's 'The Fish' and Richard Murphy's 'Moonshine'.


Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. The first 8 talks are available as a single podcast here. Listen to today's talk via the player below.

TY Book Recommendations 4

For her Transition Year Extended Essay Rachel Rogers has read Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and writes:-

This book is a tragedy. I found that it that grabbed my attention and was hard to put down once I started to read it. At the beginning I found it hard to get into and enjoy, but after the first chapter I adapted to the English and understood the story line. The main character, Tess, I found was such a good character and you always find yourself on her side. The story line I found was unpredictable. So when the twists and turns happen in the book it is so exciting and sad. I would recommend this book to someone who wants a challenge with their English and wants a new experience in reading. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would read it again.

And Dina al Hamdan has read Christy Brown's autobiography My Left Foot. She comments:-

It it interesting because it gives you hope. You'll feel that you can do anything you want in life and achieve your goals in different ways. It is a great book, and worth reading. The author is realistic and he describes the places and scenes really well: that's why I liked it. I'm not into reading books at all, because I didn't get use to it in my old school. I find it difficult, but that book made me turn one page after another without feeling or noticing which page I had reached. Then I got impressed: did I actually read all these pages?

Patterns of Poetry 6: onomatopoeia

This is podcast 6 in the Patterns of Poetry series of short discussions of poetic techniques, and looks at onomatopoeia, examining Seamus Heaney's poem 'A Constable Calls', as well as 'Sunlight'.

Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. Listen to today's talk via the player below.

 

Patterns of Poetry 5: symbols

The fifth in the Patterns of Poetry series deals with the use of symbols, and uses 'The Stare's Nest by my Window', the sixth in the sequence 'Meditations in Time of Civil War' by W.B.Yeats. A longer podcast on his poem 'The Wild Swans at Coole' can be heard here.

Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. Listen to today's talk via the player below.

Patterns of Poetry 4: personification

The fourth in the Patterns of Poetry series is on personification. This one examines Patrick Kavanagh's 1934 poem 'Shancoduff'.

Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. Listen to today's talk via the player below.
 

Patterns of Poetry 3: alliteration

The third in the Patterns of Poetry series of brief talks is on the technique of alliteration, and uses 'The Windhover' by Gerard Manley Hopkins to illustrate how powerfully it can be used.  Here's an article on Simon Armitage's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. Listen to today's talk via the player below.

The Patterns of Poetry

Today we start a 'major new series', as they say, of podcasts on poetry. These snappy talks (under five minutes, courtesy of Audioboo) will focus on individual elements of poetry, starting with titles (no 2, below), and including topics such as tone, metaphor, alliteration, the sonnet and lots more. Over the next few months these will build up into a library of ideas of ways to look at poetry. Get our Audioboos as podcasts on iTunes here. Our Audioboo page is here. Listen to the first talk, an introduction to the plan, below:-


The second in the series is the first that actually looks at poems, considering the importance of titles in poetry, and uses Elizabeth Bishop's 'The Fish' and Robert Frost's 'Out, Out' during the 4-minute talk.