No news is good news

I've been blog-absent for a week now, but you mustn't think it's because I haven't been working on my thesis. OK, this hasn't been the most productive week, as I've had lots of distraction of this and that kind. The main reason for my absence, though, is the steady way I move an inch closer to my goal everyday. And there is only so much you can write about inches, right?

During the next two weeks, I must find the non-fiction texts that I want to use in my thesis. I will find texts in 4-5 different genres and present how I would use them in English class and how I would teach this rhetorical reading I'm promoting. My colleagues have agreed to test my texts (repeat that fast three times!), and I've promised them the texts + a user-guide (or would that be a reader-guide?) would be ready before Easter.

I've already found two blog texts that I want to use. One is a Christian blog, Fidler on the Roof, with an almost-thirty-yearold American who writes about God's greatness in the small things... Sadly, it confirms so many of my prejudices about rich, American, super-religious people...

The other one is Collegehumor - the name kinda says it all: jokey, childish, not very sophisticated, but very funny! The text is by a girl who has written about bigotry. See it here.

So that's the first genre: the blog text. The next genre I want to do is a New Journalism article. yesterday, I read an article about Daniel Radcliffe (the actor who plays Harry Potter, in case you've spent the last six years on another planet), who is doing a nude scene in a London play. That should interest all the teen girls!

Tom Wolfe should definitely have a place in my non-fiction list, as well. He is, if not the King, the at least one of the Lords of New Journalism. Can you recommend something in particular?

Last (and in some way least, as this is to me the most boring genre), we have the humble encyclopedic article. I think wikipedia will be the provider of that one. That way, the teacher can talk about authorship and the trustworthiness of wikipedia.

Any suggestions are more than welcome! As are satiric comments - like the ones I got last week about a spelling error in my title. Oops! Nobody is perfect - and as my brain has gone thesis-haywire, I am far from being the language-aficionado I normally believe myself to be...