Reading:
Things about literature

Defenders of literature usually attempt to justify it in one of two ways. Some follow a utilitarian approach and contend that reading does us good, makes us more intelligent and teaches us things we would have otherwise never known. Others prefer an ethical-moral argument and conceive of literature as a path to turning readers into better human beings. Let us revisit these positions in our attempt to determine why literature matters.

Literature is good for you

I recently started an undergraduate class that focused on Brazilian novels in English translation by asking students why they read literature. Their improvised answers amounted to a catalogue of the most salient points on the "literature-is-good-for-you" side of the debate. Unsurprisingly, students were unanimous in saying that reading literature was crucial for their education (after all, they were sitting in a literature class and were most likely eager to be in the good graces of the professor).

Many students believed that reading would give them a better command of the language and improve their competence as writers. Several commented that the textual analysis and interpretation skills they acquired by reading and discussing works of literature would be useful in other fields of study and in their future professional lives. A few also mentioned that literature offered them insights into other cultures and epochs, in this particular case, 19th and 20th-century Brazilian society. In short, students thought that literature was good for them in that it honed their interpretive, argumentative and critical thinking skills and broadened their knowledge.

At a time when literature is forced to compete with other forms of entertainment, arguments such as the ones my students vocalised have become common currency. Literature advocates stress that, in reading, we combine pleasure with learning and therefore make the most of the time allotted to relaxation in our busy schedules. But if literature is nothing more than a way to acquire skills and knowledge, could it not be replaced, say, by documentaries or by educational videogames?

Another widespread argument made in defence of literature points to its ability to turn readers into better human beings. Those who espouse this view postulate the existence of an intrinsic - though rather mysterious - link between enjoying good poetry or classical novels and making the right moral decisions. Yet, the apology of literature on ethical and moral grounds has been contested at least since Ancient Greece. To be sure, for Aristotle, literature, and especially tragedy, made us morally better, in that it purged us of negative emotions and impulses in a process known as catharsis. However, Plato, Aristotle's teacher, was of a different opinion. He thought that poets and the fake images of reality they spun in their texts were noxious to society, so much so that he unceremoniously banished them from his ideal city.

What does literature have to say for itself on this matter? How have writers depicted the effects of their craft? Seen through the eyes of its own creators, literature has been judged rather harshly.
For instance, in Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes' 17th-century opus magnum, literature neither makes you good nor is it good for you. In fact, Quixote goes mad from reading too many of the chivalric novels popular at the time and from trying to emulate the deeds described in these writings. More than two centuries later, Gustave Flaubert's most famous heroine, Emma Bovary, is driven to adultery and later suicide, partly due to the negative influence of romantic novels, where she read about handsome lovers and a glamorous lifestyle that contrasted starkly with the dullness of her own existence.

Reading has myriad effects

But if literature does not necessarily make you good and is certainly not the only form of entertainment that is good for you, what is it really for? Does literature still matter and, if so, why?
The problem with most arguments in the debate about reading is that they posit literature as an instrument used to achieve a certain goal: either the good of the individual (it is good for you) or the good of society (it makes you good). Leaving aside the issue of deciding whether what makes you good is not, ultimately, good for you, a more fundamental question arises: why does literature need to be defended at all?

The anxiety to justify literature is symptomatic of our age, when all activities should have an easily identifiable objective. The difficulty with literature, as well as with music or the fine arts, is that it has no recognisable purpose or, in Immanuel Kant's elegant formulation, it embodies "purposiveness without purpose". Reading certainly has myriad effects, but it is difficult to pinpoint exactly how it influences each person and harder still to translate this impact in terms of quantifiable gains.

Literature breaks the continuum of the everyday and makes us stop and think. The linguistic experimentation that is the hallmark of the literary estranges us from the most commonplace of tools, our language, while the fictional elements of novels, plays and poems offer us a glimpse into a reality that is not our own. In doing so, reading affords us an essentially human of experience: the realisation that what is does not necessarily need to be, that things can be different and that another world is possible. The struggle with or the embrace of a work of literature shapes our hopes and fears, dreams and ambitions. Literature matters, ultimately, because it makes us who we are.

Info taken from the web page http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/04/201341564843772137.html

After reading this, let me know. What do you think about literature? 

Reading Better | Study Strategies

Take a look at the following video and state which reading strategies you consider relevant to you. Most important, explain why. 

Literacy - critical literacy

Critical literacy is the ability to read texts in an active, reflective manner in order to better understand power, inequality, and injustice in human relationships. For the purposes of critical literacy, text is defined as a “vehicle through which individuals communicate with one another using the codes and conventions of society”. Accordingly, songs, novels, conversations, pictures, movies, etc. are all considered texts. The development of critical literacy skills enables people to interpret messages in the modern world through a critical lens and challenge the power relations within those messages. Teachers who facilitate the development of critical literacy encourage students to interrogate societal issues and institutions like family, poverty, education, equity, and equality in order to critique the structures that serve as norms as well as to demonstrate how these norms are not experienced by all members of society.

Critical literacy in practice

The development of critical literacy encourages students to question issues of power — explicitly disparities within social contexts like socio-economic status, race, class, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Becoming critically literate means that students have mastered the ability to read and critique messages in texts in order to better understand whose knowledge is being privileged. Essentially, teachers using critical pedagogy demonstrate how to evaluate the function language plays in the social construction of the self. Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear suggest that when students become critically literate, they can examine ongoing development, the parts they play in the world, and how they make sense of experiences. Facilitating the development of critical literacy promotes the examination and reform of social situations and exposes students to the biases and hidden agendas within texts.  Thus, in order to become critically literate, one must learn to “read” in a reflective manner; “read” in this connotation means to give meaning to messages of all kinds, instead of just looking at the words on a page and comprehending the meaning of those words. Instruction that encourages critical literacy development comes as a response to the marginalization of a growing number of American students who are not members of the culturally dominant group of white, middle-class youths. Furthermore, according to Adrian Blackledge, critical literacy emphasizes the potential of written language “to be a tool for people to analyze the division of power and resources in their society and transform discriminatory structures.”

Critical literacy and social action

There is often an activist component to critical literacy education, where the teacher serves as the facilitator of social change. Joseph Kretovics suggests that in addition to teaching students functional skills, the teacher must also provide “conceptual tools necessary to critique and engage society along with its inequalities and injustices.” Furthermore, with the activist potential in critical literacy education, students will learn how to envision a world in which all people have access and opportunity.  When students learn to use the tools of critical literacy, they can expose, discuss, and attempt to solve social injustices within their own lives.

When engaging in the development of critical literacy skills, students learn to acknowledge the unfair privileging of certain dominant discourses in which society engages. Students participate in conversations about the injustices of privileging one group or ideal over another because of skin color or socio-economic status, and teachers can help to empower students by providing opportunities for them to find their voices. Teachers engaged in methods that support critical literacy can, as Lisa Delpit suggests, “let our students know they can resist a system that seeks to limit them to the bottom rung of the social and economic ladder." 

By developing lessons based on dialogue with students about their needs and interests, educators can invite students to take part in a larger community discourse that attempts to solve problems and create alternatives to oppressive situations. Linda Christensen suggests connecting the curriculum to the outside world in a tangible way. By participating in social action projects or creating a public discourse, students may see the relation between curriculum and the world beyond the walls of the school. Essentially, students learn to restructure their knowledge base and challenge accepted societal norms in order to transform all institutions that oppress.

Critical literacy in the classroom

Because critical literacy theory focuses on the relationships between language, power, social practice, and access to social goods and services, there are numerous methods of engaging students in becoming critical members of their society. Within the frame of critical literacy, it is important to look at texts, like novels, magazine articles, short stories, films, etc., through a lens that challenges societal norms. Students can evaluate whose knowledge is being privileged in texts and de-construct the message of those meanings. As readers, students must also evaluate the social construction of a text and question the factors that may have influenced the author to create the text in a specific manner. Moreover, using critical literacy, teachers encourage students to look at texts from other perspectives and re-create them from the standpoint of marginalized groups in order to analyze the power relations and social inequities promoted by the texts.

Edward Behrman explains that the development of critical literacy encourages social justice and exploration of language and literature in many forms. Behrman suggests that the specific types of lessons examine power relationships that are found in language and literature and that these practices show students that language is never neutral. Because critical literacy looks different in every classroom, based on the subject matter and the population of students, there is no formula for how teachers engage students in mastery of critical literacy; however, there are some practices that appear in lessons more commonly. Behrman maintains that developing a pedagogy that includes critical literacy is an organic process that continually needs to be revisited and refined.

Behrman reviewed articles, published between 1999 and 2003 in The Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy that focused on lessons and units emphasizing critical literacy pedagogy in middle and high school grades. Behrman’s methodology included searching electronic databases for the keyword ‘critical literacy.’ After refining his search to include articles that contained classroom applications only, Behrman found 36 articles that presented “lessons or units intended to support critical literacy at the upper primary or secondary levels (grades 4-12).”

Behrman’s search revealed that the most commonly used practices that support critical literacy included: reading supplementary texts; reading multiple texts; reading from a resistant perspective; producing counter-texts; having students conduct research about topics of personal interest; and challenging students to take social action.

Taken from http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/4437

Red the article and answer the following questions: 

1. Are you a critical member of our society? Explain why.
   
2. Do you think we live in a critical society? Why?
   
3. How could you be a critical student outside the classroom?
   
4. Which are the difficulties to be a critical reader? 

Why Read Plays?  by Edward Albee. 

The question is so absurd that we need not only answer it but find out why it's being asked as well. Most simply put: plays--the good ones, at any rate, the only ones that matter--are literature, and while they are accessible to most people through performance, they are complete experiences without it.

      Adjunctively, I was talking to a young conductor the other year whose orchestra was shortly to give the world premiere performance of a piece by a young composer whose work I admired. "Oh, I can't wait to hear it!" I said, and the conductor replied, "Well, why don't you? Why don't you read it?" And he offered to give me the orchestral score--to read and thereby hear. Alas, I do not read music. Music is a language, but it is foreign to me and I cannot translate. If I did know how to read music, however, I would be able to hear the piece before it was performed--moreover, in a performance uncolored, uninterpreted by the whims of performance. This is an extreme case, perhaps, for few nonmusicians can read music well enough to hear a score, but it raises provocative issues, including some parallelisms. Succinctly, anyone who knows how to read a play can see and hear a performance of it exactly as the playwright saw and heard it as he wrote it down, without the "help" of actors and director.

      Knowing how to read a play--learning how to read one--is not a complex or daunting matter. When you read a novel and the novelist describes a sunset to you, you do not merely read the words; you "see" what the words describe, and when the novelist puts down conversation, you silently "hear" what you read . . . automatically, without thinking about it. Why, then, should it be assumed that a play text presents problems far more difficult for the reader? Beyond the peculiar typesetting particular to a play, the procedures are the same; the acrobatics the mind performs are identical; the results need be no different. I was reading plays--Shakespeare, Chekhov--long before I began writing them; indeed, long before I saw my first serious play in performance. Was seeing these plays in performance a different experience than seeing them through reading them? Of course. Was it a more complete, more fulfilling experience? No, I don't think so.

      Naturally, the more I have seen and read plays over the years, the more adept I have become at translating the text into performance as I read. Still, I am convinced that the following is true: no performance can make a great play any better than it is, and most performances are inadequate either in that the minds at work are just not up to the task no matter how sincerely they try, or the stagers are aggressively interested in "interpretation" or "concept" with the result that our experience of the play, as an audience, is limited, is only partial.

      Further--and not oddly--performance can make a minor (or terrible) play seem a lot better than it is. Performance can also, of course, make a bad play seem even worse than it is. God help us all! When I am a judge of a playwriting contest I insist that I and the other judges read the plays in the contest even (especially!) if we have seen a performance. And how often my insistence results in the following: either "Wow! That play's a lot better than the performance I saw!" or "Wow! The director sure made that play seem a lot better than it is!"

      The problem is further compounded by the kind of theater we have today for the most part--a director's theater, where interpretation, rethinking, cutting, pasting, and even the rewriting of the author's text, often without the author's permission, are considered acceptable behavior. While we playwrights are delighted that our craft and art allows us double access to people interested in theater--through both text and performance--we become upset when that becomes a double-edged sword. I am convinced that in proper performance all should vanish--acting, direction, design, even writing--and we should be left with the author's intention uncluttered. The killer is the assumption that interpretation is on a level with creation.

      I'm not suggesting you should not see plays. There are a lot of swell productions, but keep in mind that production is an opinion, an interpretation, and unless you know the play on the page, the interpretation you're getting is secondhand and may differ significantly from the author's intentions. Of course, your reading of a play is also an opinion, an interpretation, but there are fewer hands (and minds) in the way of your engagement with the author. 

Article found on the web page http://www.all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_story&story_id=85

After reading the article, i would like you to answer the following question: If you had the chance to read or see a play, which would you do and why? Answer the question providing an explanation (7 sentences at least)

DRAMA  AS  A  LITERARY  GENRE

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action", which is derived from the verb meaning "to do" or "to act". The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception. The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception. The early modern tragedy Hamlet (1601) by Shakespeare and the classical Athenian tragedy Oedipus the King (c. 429 BCE) by Sophocles are among the masterpieces of the art of drama. A modern example is Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill (1956).

The two masks associated with drama represent the traditional generic division between comedy and tragedy. They are symbols of the ancient Greek Muses, Thalia and Melpomene. Thalia was the Muse of comedy (the laughing face), while Melpomene was the Muse of tragedy (the weeping face). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle's Poetics (c. 335 BCE)—the earliest work of dramatic theory.

The use of "drama" in the narrow sense to designate a specific type of play dates from the 19th century. Drama in this sense refers to a play that is neither a comedy nor a tragedy—for example, Zola's Thérèse Raquin (1873) or Chekhov's Ivanov (1887). It is this narrow sense that the film and television industry and film studies adopted to describe "drama" as a genre within their respective media. "Radio drama" has been used in both senses—originally transmitted in a live performance, it has also been used to describe the more high-brow and serious end of the dramatic output of radio.

 

Info taken from the website Wikipedia 

 

 After reading this description of what drama is, how would you catalog the play you reanacted? Would you describe it as comedy, tragedy or somwhat in between? As usual, answer these questions providing an explanation as detailed as you can (10 sentences at least).

Is poetry important?

Poetry is vital language. Poetry relies on the writer's feelings, history and perceptions, so every person has the background needed to write poems. Because poetry draws on the senses and the senses give deep access to memories and feelings, poetry writing is relevant and interesting.
 
Poetry is ancient. The most primitive people have used it, and the most civilized have cultivated it. In all ages and in all countries, poetry has been written – and eagerly read or listened to– by all kinds and conditions of people – by statesmen, lawyers, farmers, doctors, scientists, clergymen, philosophers, soldiers, kings and queens. In all ages, poetry has been regarded as important, not simply for pleasure, but as something central to each individual'’s existence, something of unique value, and something which makes us feel better off for having and which we are spiritually impoverished without.

Initially, poetry might be defined as a language that says more and says it more intensely than does ordinary language. In order to understand this fully, we need to understand what it is that poetry “says”. Poetic language is employed on different occasions to say quite different kinds of things. Therefore, poetry is language of different uses. While novels, short stories and plays bring us a sense and a perception of life, their concern is with experience. The poet may create new experiences for the reader in which the reader can participate and which will give him or her a greater awareness and understanding of the world.


Poetry takes all life as its province. Its primary concern is not with beauty, not with philosophical truth, not with persuasion, but with experience. Beauty and philosophical truth are aspects of experience, and the poet is often engaged with them. Poetry as a whole is concerned with all kinds of experience – beautiful & ugly, strange & common, noble & ignoble, actual & imaginary. One of the paradoxes of human existence is that all experience, when transmitted through the medium of art, becomes enjoyable. Even painful experience is pleasurable when poetry romanticizes hard labour, poverty and even death.

Poetry comes to us bringing life, and focuses on giving us a better understanding of life. Between poetry and other genres of literature there is one sharp distinction. Poetry writing is a friend to all writers. Engrossing and honest, poetry extends universally to all members of society. Poetry exists to communicate significant experience imaginatively and creatively, deepening our knowledge of the senses more poignantly.
Poetry can be inspirational on the highest level, when it provides the reader with a precious affair, frequently incandescent, giving off both light and heat. Finally, poetry is a kind of multi-dimensional language. It is directed at the whole person, not just at his understanding. It must involve the reader’'s senses, intelligence, emotions and imagination. Poetry achieves its extra dimensions per word by employing devices including metaphor, allusion, sound, repetition, rhythm, irony, symbol, connotation and imagery. Using these resources and the materials of life, poetry, in its highest form, comes alive on the page.

Info taken from the web page http://www.chapterandverse.ca/worth-reading/60-why-poetry-is-so-important.html

These are  just some of the assumptions people have created about poetry over the years. However, it does not mean it is still accurate just because it was true at one point. So, taking that into account, i would like you to comment on the following:

1. Is poetry relevant nowadays? Why?
2. Does it have an important role in students' academic life?
3. Do you appreciate poetry right now? Why?

Read this article that includes two very relevant things for us: 

1.it mentions some helpful tips to take into consideration when reading

2. it describes some different types of readers and asks us to choose which one we are. 

After reading it, state which of the mentioned strategies you apply and describe what type of reader you are. 

Reading Comprehension Tips and Speed Reading Strategies

Some Quick Tips To Improve Your Reading Comprehension

• Read early in the day: This will allow you to concentrate and retain more information than studying later at night when you may be tired. When tired, your concentration and comprehension will decrease. 
• Read for short bursts: Try to read for 35 to 40 minutes at a time and then take a short break. If you have this as your reading goal it can serve as a motivator in trying to really focus on the material at hand. Try to make these “bursts” quality reading time
•  Find a quiet location: Try to avoid your residence hall room on campus as well as the lounge. There are too many distractions there that are not conducive for quality reading.
• Monitor your comprehension: Ask yourself every once in a while, “What have I learned?” If you are having trouble answering this, then re-read the material, ask a classmate, or ask the professor for some clarification.
• Try skimming the chapter first: Take a look at the title page, preface, subtitles, the introduction and the chapter summary before reading the entire chapter.

Remember: College Textbooks are designed to help you by providing

MAJOR HEADINGS
ItalicizedBold Words
List of Main Points
Repetition of information/facts
Summaries

What Type Of Reader Are You?

Are you a passive reader who likes to use a highlighter?

Result: Reading passively delays learning because you are continually re-reading the material highlighted and you may have the tendency to become lazy and highlight most of your reading. Ask yourself this question, “did I retain most of the material I highlighted?”

Are You Reading The Material For Hours At A Time Just To Get It Done?

Result: You become a lazy reader (you develop a lower retention of the material read as well) and you do not really focus your attention on the critical points; i.e., you “zone out.” 

Improve your reading by being a more "active reader":

Method One: SQ3R Method (Cornell Method)

Survey: Look over the chapter and get an idea of what it will cover. This will cognitively ease your way into the reading assignment.

Question: Think about, “what is this chapter about?” and “what examples support the author’s point in the chapter?”

Read: Go over the material carefully and if you have any questions with vocabulary or concepts write them down and review them after you finish that particular section. Continue assessing your reading to see if you are understanding the material.

Review: This is an extremely important point. Try to do this a couple of times each week. By reviewing, you will begin to see the larger picture of the main concepts introduced. Think of this as an athlete or a musician who continues to practice and becomes better and better during his/her performances. The more you review the material (i.e., “practice”) the better your understanding will be of that topic because you are “exercising” your brain.

Recite: Practice by saying aloud the material you are reviewing. This helps immensely because you are utilizing both hemispheres of your brain.

Method Two: Design Your Own Question Notes

1. Split the page so you have questions in one column and answers in the other column.
2. From the chapter headings, make study questions that you feel could be on the test (also look for and develop “cause/effect” questions from them).
3. Look for words in bold print. These are usually definitions; make sure you can give an example for the term. This will help because professors will sometimes give you an example of the term and not ask you specifically for the definition. This will aid you in learning the material instead of just memorizing it. Remember: You are playing the role of the instructor.

Practice: Please go over the reading sample on the next page and write out what you think are the important points of the material. A sample of what your questions/notes should look like appears right after the sample.

Remember: Writing questions and notes may be time consuming at first, but keep in mind that you are not rewriting the chapter. Rather, you are picking out the important points and, as a result, you now have your review sheets prepared for the exam!

THE END RESULT … A more active learner and better retention of the material since you are writing the information out!

Article taken from the web site http://www.providence.edu/academic-services/academic-skills/Pages/reading.aspx 

Summary of the first 2 books of the Iliad

Read both sections and provide a summary of your own (about each one) taking into account established parameters.

Books 1–2

Summary: Book 1

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy.

The narrator of the Odyssey invokes the Muse, asking for inspiration as he prepares to tell the story of Odysseus. The story begins ten years after the end of the Trojan War, the subject of the Iliad. All of the Greek heroes except Odysseus have returned home. Odysseus languishes on the remote island Ogygia with the goddess Calypso, who has fallen in love with him and refuses to let him leave. Meanwhile, a mob of suitors is devouring his estate in Ithaca and courting his wife, Penelope, in hopes of taking over his kingdom. His son, Telemachus, an infant when Odysseus left but now a young man, is helpless to stop them. He has resigned himself to the likelihood that his father is dead.

With the consent of Zeus, Athena travels to Ithaca to speak with Telemachus. Assuming the form of Odysseus’s old friend Mentes, Athena predicts that Odysseus is still alive and that he will soon return to Ithaca. She advises Telemachus to call together the suitors and announce their banishment from his father’s estate. She then tells him that he must make a journey to Pylos and Sparta to ask for any news of his father. After this conversation, Telemachus encounters Penelope in the suitors’ quarters, upset over a song that the court bard is singing. Like Homer with the Iliad, the bard sings of the sufferings experienced by the Greeks on their return from Troy, and his song makes the bereaved Penelope more miserable than she already is. To Penelope’s surprise, Telemachus rebukes her. He reminds her that Odysseus isn’t the only Greek to not return from Troy and that, if she doesn’t like the music in the men’s quarters, she should retire to her own chamber and let him look after her interests among the suitors. He then gives the suitors notice that he will hold an assembly the next day at which they will be ordered to leave his father’s estate. Antinous and Eurymachus, two particularly defiant suitors, rebuke Telemachus and ask the identity of the visitor with whom he has just been speaking. Although Telemachus suspects that his visitor was a goddess in disguise, he tells them only that the man was a friend of his father.

 

Summary: Book 2

When the assembly meets the next day, Aegyptius, a wise Ithacan elder, speaks first. He praises Telemachus for stepping into his father’s shoes, noting that this occasion marks the first time that the assembly has been called since Odysseus left. Telemachus then gives an impassioned speech in which he laments the loss of both his father and his father’s home—his mother’s suitors, the sons of Ithaca’s elders, have taken it over. He rebukes them for consuming his father’s oxen and sheep as they pursue their courtship day in and day out when any decent man would simply go to Penelope’s father, Icarius, and ask him for her hand in marriage.

Antinous blames the impasse on Penelope, who, he says, seduces every suitor but will commit to none of them. He reminds the suitors of a ruse that she concocted to put off remarrying: Penelope maintained that she would choose a husband as soon as she finished weaving a burial shroud for her elderly father-in-law, Laertes. But each night, she carefully undid the knitting that she had completed during the day, so that the shroud would never be finished. If Penelope can make no decision, Antinous declares, then she should be sent back to Icarius so that he can choose a new husband for her. The dutiful Telemachus refuses to throw his mother out and calls upon the gods to punish the suitors. At that moment, a pair of eagles, locked in combat, appears overhead. The soothsayer Halitherses interprets their struggle as a portent of Odysseus’s imminent return and warns the suitors that they will face a massacre if they don’t leave. The suitors balk at such foolishness, and the meeting ends in deadlock.

As Telemachus is preparing for his trip to Pylos and Sparta, Athena visits him again, this time disguised as Mentor, another old friend of Odysseus. She encourages him and predicts that his journey will be fruitful. She then sets out to town and, assuming the disguise of Telemachus himself, collects a loyal crew to man his ship. Telemachus himself tells none of the household servants of his trip for fear that his departure will upset his mother. He tells only Eurycleia, his wise and aged nurse. She pleads with him not to take to the open sea as his father did, but he puts her fears to rest by saying that he knows that a god is at his side.

Part 1 of an interesting set of videos about reading in general and reading some of "the literary classics". Here, John Green discusses some of the relevant questions readers ussually come up with while engaging on this particular activity. Plus, he mentions some of the challenges we all face at some point when reading critically..

After having watched the video, what do you think about it? 

Also, what challenges do you face when reading and how could you better struggle with them?