Reading Journal Assignment
DUE: At the end of the semester

Professor Rodgers
Intro to Fiction

Reading Journal

First, please decide whether you plan to keep an electronic or a paper reading journal.  Depending on your choice, please set this up.  I would like you to keep notes about your reading, as well as any reading journal assignments in this journal.

Second, please read Chapter 2 of Bazerman’s The Informed Writer, which you will find here: http://wac.colostate.edu/books/informedwriter/, paying particular attention to the section on keeping a Reading Journal.  After reading this chapter, please use the first entry in your reading journal to describe and explain what you have learned from reading the chapter.

Third, please select an American novel to read from the list below, or come talk to me about selecting a book that you are particularly interested in reading.

In one Reading Journal entry discuss the following:

a/ why you selected the book to read that you did
b/ how you plan to approach reading the book, e.g., as a writer, as a casual reader, as a student of a particular discipline, etc.

In your subsequent reading journal entries:
Based on the structure of the book–is it in chapters, sections, etc.–and your own individual reading goals–comprehension, enjoyment, inspiration, etc.–please make at least four additional entries in your Reading Journal about the book you are reading.  These may include:  your reactions to a particular chapter/section/passage/sentence in the book, that you have to the book, questions that you have about a particular chapter/section/passage/sentence in the book, discussions of what a particular chapter/section/passage of the book is about, descriptions of and feelings related to your experience of reading a particular chapter/section/passage of the book, connections to other books/media/personal experiences and ideas that a particular chapter/section/passage of the book made you think of, notes about other books/media mentioned in the book that you would like to read/see/find.

You will be handing in this Reading Journal at the end of the semester as part of your Portfolio of work for this course.

FOR EXTRA CREDIT, before the end of the semester, please write a blog post about  the book you have read and why or why not you would recommend reading it and post it to the following City Tech Open Lab Site:

https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/whatwearereading/

You will be graded on this assignment based on its completion (50%) and your overall sense of engagement with the assignment (50%).  You must have at a minimum five (5) journal entries for the assignment to be considered complete.

 

PLEASE CHOOSE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING NOVELS

Calvino, Italo.  If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler…
Chopin, Kate.  The Awakening.
Dos Passos, John.  Manhattan Transfer.
Ellison, Ralph.  Invisible Man.
Homer.  The Odyssey.
Hurston, Zora Neale.  Their Eyes Were Watching God.
James, Henry.  Portrait of a Lady.
Melville, Herman.  Moby Dick.
Mitchell, David.  Cloud Atlas.
Morrison, Toni.  Sula.
Wharton, Edith.  House of Mirth.
Wright, Richard.  Black Boy.