Sunday, May 15, 2011

Wednesday, May 11, 2011


Saw Thor tonight, and finished Magnificent Ambersons.  Busy night.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day.

Grandma was up from NC for the weekend.  She was leaving early Sunday morning, so I went to church in order to spend some time with her before she left.  Her phone went off during some very solemn prayer.  Full volume.  She couldn't find it, and I couldn't stop laughing.  An elderly woman came up to me after the service and asked me why I didn't turn my phone off.

I'm trying to take a 20 minute power nap everyday.  They're supposed to energize you, but when I lay down and fall asleep I can't wake back up.  20 minutes turns into an hour and now I'm full of fettuccine carbonara and cianti and feel pretty sluggish.

Today was the first time I wore a button-down since I shaved my head: I think I look like a serial killer.

Watching The Real Housewives of...New York I think.  Someone once called it an interesting dissection of the postmodern American human condition.  Bull.  Such a difference between these housewives and the REAL housewives of Victorian times.  Those women couldn't manage to feed their kids, meanwhile in this clip, two six-year-olds got a grand piano for their birthday and were serenaded by a Juilliard graduate.  These kids are named Francois and Johann.  I think the mom's name is Karen or something.  Ridiculous.  

Spell checker changed "serenaded" to "marinated."  Should've left it that way.

Sorry for the inane post, but I've got nothing really to talk about.  Trying to wake up from a power nap.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Hiatus Briefing and "Invisible Cities"

Hey all, been a while.  Took a bit of a break as the spring semester started to get hectic really quickly.  Shakespeare, Advanced Composition, just needed to focus.  Sat my final exam today: Shakespeare.  Think I'm coming out with a 3.9 this time around, oh well.  Heading to London in two weeks for a summer study abroad, hopefully I'll be able to keep up with this blog and the London vlog at the same time.  Check in for updates.  Anyway, here's what I'm reading now.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

It's On...Again

For those of you who have kept up with my other blogs in the past, you will be familiar with my failed attempts at the ML Challenge.  For you newcomers out there, I will explain to you what this is:  The ML Challenge is an attempt to read all the works listed on one of Modern Library's sponsored "100 Best" Lists.  One can choose from the "Board's 100," the "Readers' 100," "100 Non-fiction," or even the "Radcliffe Rival 100."  Last summer I tried the "Board's 100" -- the 100 Best Novels of the 20th century as selected  by the Modern Library Board -- and failed.  That list began with The Magnificent Ambersons, followed by The Ginger Man, which I simply put down one day and never picked back up.  This semester, however, my reading load is light as seems by general work load, so I am attempting to plow through the "Readers' 100," the 100 best of the 20th century as chosen by the general populace who voted on ML.com.  Democracy at work.  Check below the cut for my progress so far, the problems inherent with the list, and a link to the list itself.  

Sunday, January 23, 2011

The H-Word

  In perusing the nigh-on-400 comments made on The New York Times’ website concerning Lorrie Moore’s article “Send Huck Finn to College,” one gets a taste of the immense can of worms that was opened when NewSouth Books announced their new, “n-word”-free edition of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  The commentators – and the author – bring up good points:  Does the American canon need revision?  Yes.  Is the literature on the average high school curriculum racially biased?  Sometimes.  Is the infamous “n-word” a sensitive term connoting centuries of racism and atrocities?  Of course.  Should Huck Finn be censored?  Absolutely not.  Censorship is the worst enemy of literature.   But Moore’s point in writing her article is not questioning whether or not the book should be censored – she stands unequivocally against it – but whether or not Huckleberry Finn should be taught in high schools in the first place.


"Jane Eyre" Chapters 1 - 4


      For a class on Victorian Literature, I am again reading through Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece Jane Eyre.  For this post, I am focusing on the first four chapters of the novel, representing Jane’s time at Gateshead with the Reed family and her mistreatment there.  In particular, I want to briefly discuss the liminality of the novel and the action of thresholds in these first four chapters.