a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by TheGreatAbider16
TheGreatAbider16  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: January 21, 2015

Luckily for me, the bulk of the reading is not difficult, but pretty easy. Ten of the novels are for a class on literature for adolescents, which is a requirement for my pre-education-focused degree. The idea, I think, is that I'm going to be using these books in my classroom in a few years, so I have to know them well. The books on that syllabus are: The Perks of being a Wallflower, Speak, Looking for Alaska, Eleanor and Park, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Where Things Come Back, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Graceling, Maus, and Brown Girl Dreaming.

I'm also taking a special topics course centered on empire, ethnicity, and sexuality in U.S. ethnic lit. These reads are tougher: The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, So Far From God by Ana Castillo, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, A Gesture of Life by Chang-rae Lee, Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir by Deborah Miranda, and good ol' Beloved by Toni Morrison (I've already read this one twice).

I've finished my minor in German, but I am also minoring in professional writing, and am taking a course on how to teach writing. The reading (mostly articles taken from journals) is heavy and pretty dense, and also includes The Bedford Writing Guide for Tutors.

Phew, that was an italicizing frenzy! The main problem is that, especially for an English major, I'm a slow reader! I'm not terribly worried; I am confident that I can manage the workload, but it sure is making my eyes tired.





lil  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Ten of the novels are for a class on literature for adolescents
These are fun easy reads - except Maus - not so much fun. Yes, know them well, and there's many many more. If I wasn't so distracted, I'd pick some up and read along with you.

    empire, ethnicity, and sexuality in U.S. ethnic lit.
These books will be challenging. If you can write your essay on a book not on the course, check out

It is a wonderful read and on topic.

I'm interested in how James Baldwin reads today. My two favourite Baldwin books are Giovanni's Room and Another Country. I'm not sure I read The Fire. I've read Junot Diaz's short stories. I'm sure eightbitsamurai has something to say about Oscar Wao. I heard The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a great read. I saw the movie a couple of years ago at TIFF. My friends picked up the book after seeing the movie and said that it was even better.

user-inactivated  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·  

IT'S SO GOOD.

SO FREAKIN GOOD.

I mentioned in IRC that I got to meet Junot Díaz. Stand-up guy, nobody even noticed he was there, waiting to go into his own event. Unfortunately I didn't have my copy of the book on me, or I totally woulda got him to sign it!

TheGreatAbider16  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Excellent! I'm looking forward to it.

TheGreatAbider16  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thanks for the rundown. I'm excited for the class really. I've read The Fire Next Time and Beloved so far. The Fire Next Time is really more like a small collection- a letter and two or three essays. It's whet my appetite and I'd like to read more Baldwin, some fiction next time, but certainly not this semester.

TheGreatAbider16  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It this^^ comment showing up as entirely in italics for Anyone else? Oddly, when I refresh the page, some of the time all of the comments are italicized, sometimes only my entire comment is, and sometimes only the parts that I marked with asterisks are italicized. Weird.

_refugee_  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Only titles are showing up as italicized for me. That is very odd, let's tell mk about this. Please see above, praise Mmmkay.

Oh wait I am seeing what you are seeing. I suspect it may be my earlier comment's fault. But mk - I don't think that asterisks in one comment should cause others to go italicized, and I think that may be what's happening here? Turns out I had a slash before my asterisk on "clinks glass" and it was making like, half of the following comments italics.

mk  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, it's markup bleed. One thing that should be resolved in the big leap we are making soon.

It looks fixed atm for me.

_refugee_  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, you and TheGreatAbider16 , when I realized the problem was a slash in my comment I took it out and it's better now.

TheGreatAbider16  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thanks for checking. It's looking normal now for me for some reason. Only the titles of books are in italics, and everyone else's comments look as they should as well.