Reading Failures, Starting School, and American Literature

Hi, everyone! I hope you're all enjoying the gorgeous spring weather as much as I am! (I hope your spring weather is gorgeous...) And now, I have some confessions to make.

I would love to say that the reason I've been a bit MIA here on the blog lately is that I've been reading like nobody's business...but unfortunately, I've been doing very little reading at all lately. I've been sick (which may or may not have involved a trip to the emergency room) and out of town visiting family. Basically, life has a mind of its own, as I think we all know.

Also, I did the terrible thing and got Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver out of the library, and naturally got really into it (in my defense, I never expected a book with that particular subject matter to be such a page-turner), so I neglected Germinal more than I anticipated.

Germinal is actually sort of a page-turner too, when I do pick it up, but I'm not sure why. So far, it's not very exciting at all, and the characters are only just starting to be interesting to me. But I ought to admit that there is no way I'm ever going to finish it this month like I planned. However, I do still plan on finishing it...though it might be a little while...

And I haven't even finished Animal, Vegetable, Miracle yet either, but I'm hoping to finish it soon. This month was sort of a big reading fail.

But exciting things are coming up in May for me--I'm going back to school! And will probably be constantly in school from now to next summer. I might regret this next winter, but right now I'm really excited. I was one of those kids whose most exciting day of the year was the first day of school. I've always loved school--new teachers, new books, a little bit smarter and a little bit older. (And also, occasionally, new friends.) And school is still just as exciting to me as it's ever been. (I'm not sure how I'll handle graduation.)



However, it's probably going to change the way this blog works just a little bit. I probably won't jump into every single event, like I have been. (Or maybe I still will, and I'll just be really bad at doing them.) Plus, there's a good chance I won't be reading as many novels. I'll be doing more reading for school than on my own, so my personal goals might be a bit neglected.

But that doesn't mean I won't still be reading fascinating literature! If you don't already know, I'm studying English, so I'll constantly be reading classic lit. But there's a good chance, at least at first, that I'll be reading mostly poetry and short stories. This term I'm taking just one English class: American Literary History. I'll admit literary history classes aren't quite the most exciting thing to me anymore since I've already taken two Brit Lit History classes, but I'm interested to get into the American side of things. But after looking at the syllabus (I haven't actually had the first class yet), it looks like I'm not going to be reading any full-length novels, just poems, short stories, and selections of larger works. So there will be some different material for the ol' blog, but I think it'll be fun to get into some different kinds of works.

Speaking of reading for school, I should mention that as I finish up my last few semesters, my Classics Club list will be doing some changing. (Actually, I've already changed it quite a bit for the classes I've already registered for.) At first, I wanted to keep it the same so I could avoid "cheating," but if the point is to read classics and I'm already reading classics, why shouldn't they count? So after finding out what books I have to buy for classes, I've added them to the list. Right now I'm at 55 books total, and that's where I plan to stay, so I'll likely be replacing some of the books on the list. But I want to keep the number in each time period relatively the same, so I'll try to replace books with similar books. Where possible, I'll try to replace the same author. For example, I'm taking a Shakespeare class summer term, and I'm not sure what plays I'll be reading, so once I find out I'll probably replace the Shakespeare plays I already have. (I certainly hope we'll be reading plays and not just poems...not to knock the poetry, or anything, but you just can't study Shakespeare without reading a single play. In my opinion.)

Anyway, I'm really excited for the big horizons I'll be facing, so see you soon in the land of American literature!