Moving along with Defoe
let's go back to the actual text
Everyone should have been reading in A Journal, watching for "a passage -- a paragraph or so in length, not more than a page -- that you think we should all talk about" and should have copied and pasted the text into a posting on the forum, along with a sentence saying why you think it would be worth talking about. I didn't set a process up for reading those on line, and probably should have, as every one I've seen is worth reading, and thinking and talking about. We'll discuss some of those. I've printed the ones that were there up to a while before class out, one to a page, and I invite you to read them and propose any one of them for us to attend to.
Further reading
Today we'll be deciding what to read next. My expectation is that people will read various things, but you should have been thinking about what, in light of what we're learning about how he worked and what kinds of work he did, it would be most useful to know more about. Among the works we've already identified as nonfiction possibilities are the following
For next time, your assignment is to read and report descriptively on your chosen reading. Tell the rest of us, as clearly and descriptively as you can, what it was like to read what you read (and exactly what you read, if it was less than the whole work, and in some cases it will clearly need to be). Quote typical passages. Give us a sense of how it sounds; tell us how it's organized. Let us hear the voice.
Then post that report on the wider reading in Defoe forum. Post it an hour before class, so that I can print them and bring them in (or, if it's later than that, print out the posting yourself and bring it to class).