An e-book can be many things

I have to say that I've been at a loss when thinking about what my class can do with an ebook for our final project.  Some want to write from an LDS perspective, which is fine, and something that would be worth doing.  I just have a hard time getting on-board with the idea, partly because I don't know how I could fit the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy into a project like this.


I've been thinking more along the lines of what Bri has proposed in her post.  I think that the best way to combine our novels into one coherent book is to write about our own digital literary research and combine the process with writing about our literary work that we've been studying.  I think this will serve our authenticity requirement, as we can make it available to those interested in doing similar work, having shown processes and tools for research 2.0. 

I won't cover everything that Bri talked about, but I do think I have an answer to her question about scope and how we can do an e-book with the time that is left in the term.  An e-book can be many things.  Its only requirement is that it be digital and consisting of a theme that binds it all together.  We don't have to make fancy flash-powered animation of page turning.  It can be simple.  I think that the best way to do this is with a wiki.  The menu on the side can be the table of contents and we could even have a topical guide of sorts that gives links to all 'chapters' talking about certain topics of research.  On the wiki we can include photos, video, and other things that a kindle format would not allow.  We can also submit the link to groups and projects like teachers and the DPLA so they can see the use of multimedia and web2.0 in modern-day research.

MLA Bibiliography and Borges

• I've been interested in Rachel's search for things about Borges, so I decided to see what I could find in MLA International Bibliography.  
• MLA Bibliography is a great bibliography of articles, journals, books and even chapters of books going back to the 1920's
• I originally looked in the MLA Bibliography trying to find a great article in Spanish that I might be able to translate for Rachel, something pertaining to her search about art and Borges.  I didn't end up finding anything that looked interesting in Spanish though. I used the adnvanced search options putting in Borges name and words in Spanish and in English using the OR boolean operator.  I got back many options but using the peer reviewed tab, I found a useful article online with a PDF and found the reference to it in the BYU library.
• Baler, Pablo. "The Subconcious of Civilization: An Interview with Lilian Porter." Sculpture (U.S.A.). 20.1 (2001). 26-41.
• Lilian Porter talks about her art and how it has been influenced by literature, especially by the writings of Borges and Carroll.
• I'm not positive if this will help Rachel, but it seems to fit with what she has talked about with her research on artwork and Borges and also her plans to maybe submit something to the DPLA project. It didn't help her get into a article written in Spanish, but hopefully it is something that she can use.

Researching ideas on Humor and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in ERIC

• I searched the ERIC database in hopes that I could find something on either The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or even just ideas about teaching humorous texts in the classroom.
• ERIC (Education Resource Information Center) is a database of indexes and abstracts of many educational journals and reports after 1967.
• I accessed ERIC through EBSCO on the BYU library wesite.  My intention was to see if anything has been written about using Hitchhiker in classrooms.  I didn't find anything, so I searched more generally for articles on humor in the language arts classroom and humor AND English.  This yeilded many resulsts and I was able to peruse the abstracts of the articles to find out which article might suit my needs. The article I found wasn't available but clicking the get@BYU button, I was able to find a pdf version on ProQuest.
• Goebel, Bruce A.. "Comic Relief: Engaging Students through Humor Writing." English Journal  98.6 (2009): 38-43.
• Goebel writes about the benefits of studying humor as a way to help students become engaged in learning and its use as a vehicle to teach grammar, language analysis, public speaking, and many other important aspects traditionally required in the study of language arts.
• I liked this article for two reasons. First, it gave some great general ideas for teaching humor in the classroom which I could apply to Hitchhiker.  Second, it talks about several ways humor is produced which gave me some new ideas and confirmed others that I already had as correct.

Time is an illusion. Wasted time doubly so

At least, that is how I feel about the opportunities available by blogging our research process.  In the old days, with traditional methods of research and writing, if I were to research something that ultimately led to a dead end I would have been frustrated and disappointed about all of that wasted time. Not so with this blog.  I can talk about the process and my thoughts behind it and it serves a purpose and guides me to the next part of my research.  This post is about what I learned and what I think about the possible connection between Douglas Adams' Vogon poem and Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky.

The answer is a strong maybe in my mind.

Another book that inspired a movie.

Mountain Man by Vardis Fisher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I read this book when I was in high school but had to add it to my goodreads shelf. Anybody who enjoyed the movie Jeremiah Johnson will absolutely love Fisher's novel. The amount of detail in this book really transports you into the world of the mountain man. After all of these years, I still remember the descriptions of food and everyday processes the protagonist goes through. But the book is so much more than that. It is about a man who lives in an untamed world, far from any comforts or civilization, but he is happy. That is until his Indian wife and unborn child are murdered by some warriors from another tribe. Then, he wanders the wilderness seeking vengeance against those who stole away his love and happiness. Very good stuff.



View all my reviews

Searching for a possible connection between Douglas Adam and Lewis Carroll in the Literature Resource Center

1. Searching for a possible connection between Douglas Adam and Lewis Carroll in the Literature Resource Center
2. My purpose was to see if the LRC (Literature Resource Center) had anything about Douglas Adams and a possible relationship between his work and that of Lewis Carroll.  I saw something while reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and wanted to research the perceived connection.
3. Literature Resource Center This is a great resource for literary topics, authors, and their works, covering all genres, disciplines and time periods.  It has full-text access to articles and also biographical essays and links to other resources.
4. I used the LRC to search any articles I could find on Douglas Adams and Lewis Carroll.  I did a simple boolean search of "Douglas Adams" AND "Lewis Carroll."  I also used combinations of these keywords with "Jabberwocky" and "Hitchhiker's Guide."  They didn't provide any useful results that were different from the first search. I found one article relevant to what I was searching.  Out of curiosity I searched "Douglas Adams" and it only returned about 21 results. This doesn't reflect on LRC necessarily, rather on the fact that not many people have felt the need to write scholarly articles on my chosen author or his works.
5. Nediger, Will. "Lewis Carroll and Douglas Adams." Word Ways 38.1 (2005): 19-20. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 May 2011
6. The author talks about the relationship between certain aspects of Carroll's stories about Alice and Adam's Hitchhiker writing, saying that Adams was probably inspired by Lewis Carroll.
7. This wasn't the best I could have hoped for but it was the best I could find.  I was hoping that someone had written about Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky" and a possible relationship with the Vogon poem read to Arthur and Ford before they are ejected into space.  This relates to my study of Adams' use of humor and a belief that I have that he was spoofing or even lampooning Carroll. 

Group Discussions about Hitchhiker's Guide

The other day I found some groups about Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on Google and Goodreads.  Part of the way I want to research Adams' skill with comedy is to connect with others who love his works and hear what they have to say about it.  So, I used the discussion sections on these groups and posted this to them.

"The first time I read Hitchhiker's Guide, I was blown away by Adams' uncanny ability to write comically. His books are so memorable largely because of Adams' skill with humor and his great one-liners.
What do you think? How does Adams do it? What is it about his writing that tickles our funny bone every time?"

I have put this question to three different Douglas Adams fan groups now (it has been a challenge to find good active fan pages. I mostly find blogs and other types of websites).  This morning I had some emails alerting me that I've received a couple of answers to my question.  Both have mentioned reasons why they find Douglas Adams so funny and have given me new insights into his writing style.  I can't wait to see what other people have to say.