Here’s the original youtube clip of Susan Boyle on the talent show:
(This clip has links to her other performances if you want to follow up.)
Here’s an analysis by Charlie Booker on Newswipe.
There’s some nice discussion and analysis by Slate’s culture gabfest.
For comparison, here’s Paul Potts on the same show 2 years earlier.
Is this reality, or a carefully crafted argument?
I was just looking at the video for this application, and it looks kick-ass for essay writing. It’s called zotero, and it is a plug-in for Firefox (which you should all be using, rather than Internet Exploder), that keeps track of your research and lets you take notes while you read articles online.
Emma is the last book we are reading this semester, and it is definitely the longest, and it has the most “old-fashioned” language. I am not going to make a ridiculous suggestion that you start reading it now, because, come on. However, I am going to suggest that you might like to have someone read it to you.
If you have an ipod, you can get an audiobook of Emma to listen to on your way to College, or at the gym, or when you are walking the dog. The book is quite long when read aloud, so I am suggesting you might like to get it now, and listen to it in stages over the course of the semester.
Audible.com has a number of choices of narrators, for a variety of prices (they offer discounts for audible members, if you are interested in more books, too) but there are other places that offer audibook downloads. Just make sure you choose an UNABRIDGED version. You might be able to find it on tape at the library, although the electronic format for your mp3 player may be more convenient.
Rules for reasearching the Wife of Bath online are the same as for Chaucer in general. The Chaucer sites on the blogroll are a good place to start, as most of them have specific sections on the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale.
Chaucer’s poem Gentilesse might also be useful.
