Cataloging

Hey, I bet you think I mean Looking at Catalogues! Nope. I mean it in the boring sense. I mean, here are the books that I've read over the semester, my rating of them (out of 10, of course), and a short review. Thus I will be able to look back on what I read, because I tend to forget pretty quickly.

20th Century British and Irish Studies: Virginia Woolf, Pacifism, and Feminism

Mrs. Dalloway Probably my personal favorite of Woolf's novels. (9/10)
To The Lighthouse Another great one, though some of the characters seemed too stilted at times. (8/10)
A Room of One's Own The better of Woolf's feminist essays. (8/10)
Three Guineas The worse of Woolf's feminist essays. (4/10)
The Years Beautifully written but incredibly long. (7/10)

20th Century Studies: Postmodernism

A Postmodern Reader I honestly think that if it weren't for the philosophy crap, Postmodernism would generally seem like an okay idea. (5/10)
A Wild Sheep Chase Interesting at first, but the story became so uninteresting and hard to believe that in the end I didn't care about the stupid hypnotic religion cult sheep. (4/10)
Midnight's Children Magical Realism! Eastern Theology! Noses! (8/10)
Mao II Tended to dry out after the first half, but pretty interesting, engaging, and easy to get into. (7/10)

Shakespeare and the Renaissance

Hamlet Um, well, it's Hamlet. Best play ever written. Not really, but pretty flawless. (9/10)
Twelfth Night Very fun and clever, one of my favorite Shakespeares and possibly my favorite comedy. (9/10)
Henry V Okay, yes, it's great. But the speeches are too long-winded and the stereotypes are annoying. (6/10)
Titus Andronicus So me saying that I'm sort of in love with this play will make me come off as an awful person; because it's not so greatly written and it's full of rape, dismemberment, and people pies. But....yes, I'm sort of in love with it. (7/10)
The Merchant of Venice Ugh. No redeeming characters. Awful take on society. I don't even see how it can count as a comedy, while most of the scenes are tense. Not really that great, you guys. (5/10)
The Winter's Tale A sweet, sweet beauty of a play, that desires a good filmed adaptation. (7/10)

Metaphor and Thought
Arcadia Oh Tom Stoppard, you're soooo clever. Still, was a lot of fun to read, though the philosophical doscourse can get carried away at times. (7/10)


My other class was Grammar, and there weren't any deep readings in that. So hey, all in all it seemed like a pretty nice semester! I'll leave you with a short excerpt from my final project for Virginia Woolf class, an experimental journal (here I'm trying to fiddle with stream-of-consciousness):

now it is silent, though not completely. a truck from the construction site had been whining constantly in a low and insipid tone for nearly an hour, and the person living above me (who i do not know were i to encounter them in an elevator) has stopped doing what sounded to be bouncing a basketball continuously while i was trying to nap. even so, it is never silent here--a car skids outside, the elevator climbs smooth and well-oiled, a door slams, someone cooks in the kitchen. i would cover my ears, but then would be berated by the noise of my own blood. i tried to take a shower, just now, but the truck's whirr followed me even there. now clean and sitting on my bed, i can revel in the silence that is really less-noise around me. it seems impossible to me. october commands silence. i don't know how i stand it.

there is one place in the world where i know it is silent. my grandfather's farm in stony ford, california. to get to the nearest town takes an hour's drive through the gentle hills spotted with cows and horses and jackrabbits and families of quail. trees top the hills like many-branched candelabra. in most months it is hot beyond belief, but at least there is silent, walking down to my grandfather's pond, or sitting, as my mother did when she visited him years ago when she was younger than me, on the top of the hill behind the house he built himself, watching the world retire again and the air punctured with cicadas. and that place has a silence you notice-even on the quietest days in the suburbs where i grew up there is still the din of voices and cars and the buzz of electricity. but not at stony ford. no, there it is a waving peace, letting your ears suddenly realize that there is empty and beautiful air around them. it is like so many people say about the country: "a guy can really breathe out here".
here, i'm afraid, there is no (or very little) room to breath. the molecules of carbon expelled from the mouth must immediately fight with falling pieces of steel and pounding slabs of wood, boiling water and mutters and groans and bangs and booms and crashes and creaks. the walls whistle and pop.


I really like "the molecules of carbon expelled from the mouth must immediately fight with falling pieces of steel and pounding slabs of wood, boiling water and mutters and groans and bangs and booms and crashes and creaks." part. I'm proud of that.