Some time ago, I helped my pupil with her first homework in English literature. It was a study of Robert Frost's famous poem, "The Road Not Taken". The homework consisted in answering questions about the text, which was supposed to lead us to understand it better. So first, here's the poem:

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost, 1916

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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Channel Blue

Author: Jay Martel

Published: 2014

Plot summary: Perry Bunt is an insipid fallen scenarist in Hollywood who now teaches scenario classes. When he follows his favorite student, Amanda Mundo, to her work, he discovers that she is an alien TV producer. Her advanced civilization got rid of violence, impulses and sex millenia ago, and all that is left for them to do now is watch TV all day - reality TV shows produced by filming inferior species on other planets. Earth has always been a very lucrative planet for Galaxy Entertainment because the "Earthles" are so mean, violent, unpredictible... But now, audience rates are dropping and the producers decided to end the show. But beforehand, they programmed a spectacular finale to draw as much audience as possible one more time. Meaning, this is not only the end of the show, they programmed a live destruction of Earth, and Amanda seems to think that only Perry can help her save Earth from anihilation.

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