The Vigil, Born Digital, Ancient Monuments, Cuore

I read an issue of Entertainment Weekly, an issue of Royalty, and the four books cited above. Cuore, by Edmondo de Amicis, is the required reading of all schoolchildren in Italy, and I liked it. It's a sweet look at 19th century school life, with stock characters like the handicapped child protected by the big lug, the spoiled rich kid, the hardworking poor kid, etc. The Vigil by Satinath Bhaduri is a striking novel about four family members imprisoned in India during the independence campaigns, and one of them is hanged. It's all about the reminiscence of lives past, but also about the reality of prison life in excruciating detail. I felt like I was there. I didn't like Ancient Monuments, a Swedish pastoral by Stig Claesson. From the essay Born Digital, by Palfary and Gasser, I mostly remember that the superficiality of research I notice in my students could well be a mechanism to protect them from information overload. This poses some particular problems in teaching, which I don't know how to resolve.