Friday, August 27, 2010

School Days

School began this week! It's my last semester of coursework, and I am really excited about the classes I'm taking this year. As far as education courses, I'm taking a methods course and a technology course. Then for English I'm doing one on novels of the 1900s, ancient literature and mythology, grammar, and a research course. The research course is going to be very beneficial, as I'll basically be researching my senior thesis, which I'll write next semester. More about that later, though.

Weekend one and I already have a ton of reading. So's the life of an English major, I guess. The first novel we're reading for the novels course is Dubliners, by James Joyce. It's a collection of fifteen short stories that all relate to one another. So far I've read the first seven. Some of them are really interesting. My favorite so far is The Boarding House. It's about a woman who runs a boarding house with her son and daughter. Her daughter strikes up a relationship with one of the boarders, and when the mother finds out, she confronts the man intending to force him to marry her daughter. It weaves their perspectives together, and tells the story without telling the story. One of Joyce's techniques was to present the story without narration or interpretation, and to let the reader interpret it him or herself. Pretty interesting, but it makes you work for the story. It's certainly not easy reading!

In other book news, I finally got my hands on a copy of Mockingjay, the third book in The Hunger Games trilogy. The local public library got their copy in and, since I requested it, I was first on the list to get it. It was so new the glue on the library cover wasn't dry yet! I haven't cracked it open, since I made a promise to myself I would read for school before reading for fun. But I'm hoping I can knock out my school reading tomorrow and have all day Sunday to indulge in Mockingjay. I can't wait to find out what happens!

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