Well, so much for my goal of posting more often in 2009. Perhaps I can manage it next year!

Anyways, I am glad the semester is finally over. It turned out to be much more work than I originally thought it would, but I managed to complete it was a 4.0 average. My course load included:

• The Modern Novel
• English Literature I
• Children’s Literature
• Fantasy and Science Fiction
• American History II

I was prepared for a lot of reading and writing (and boy did I get it), but it was actually quite enjoyable. Since graduating high school (and truthfully sometime before), I hadn’t done much reading (outside of blogs, tutorials, and “coding” books, but this semester for the four English courses alone I read ~75 books and wrote about 31 papers, which seems somewhat high for four fifteen-week courses, but in all actuality was not as bad as one would believe. A number of the texts I read this semester I would highly recommend.

Read in “The Modern Novel:”

• The Stranger – Albert Camus
  The text in  follows the downfall of a stoic man following the death of his mother to his perceived “acceptance” of the meaningless of life and of his coming execution.
• Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
  The text, set during the early twentieth century follows two families, a cliched American family and an Eastern European family of immigrants in and around New York City.  The magic realism (using actual people or events and adding fictional elements to the point where the division between reality and fiction is blurred) of the text illustrates the changing attitudes in America during the era and calls into question the perceived aura of perfection of the era.
• The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
  This text was my favorite (followed by Ragtime), read in “The Modern Novel.”  Morrison’s tragedy follows a young black girl, cast aside due to her skin color and familial circumstances, struggling to find acceptance by attaining the “bluest eyes in the world,” thus embracing society’s ideal portrayal of beauty.
• The Tortilla Curtain – T.C. Boyle
  This text follows two families, one of American descent and one of Mexican Immgrants who following a hit-and-run become entangled in each others lives.  Boyle’s text illustrates the effects of illegal immigration on not only American citizens but also on the illegal immigrants.
• The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles
  This text, I will admit, was probably the hardest vocabulary and allusion-wise but is worth the struggle in the end.  The text set in Nineteenth Century England follows the fall of a man from polite society after a confrontation with the titular “French Lieutenant’s Woman.”  This text is unique as it twists the rules generally associated with a novel.
• Ella Minnow Pea – Mark Dunn
  The last text read in “The Modern Novel,” was a short epistolary (written in letters) novel following a fictional island in which letters, after falling from a statue in the center of town, are outlawed.  The text starts out normally (albeit with a sophisticated vocabulary) and concludes in what can only be compared to a game of Mad Gab.

In Fantasy and Science Fiction I read: Frankenstein, 1984, The Giver, Feed, American Gods and The Golden Compass.  While I did enjoy nearly all of the texts read in this class (Frankenstein in paticular), I did not enjoy them in nearly the same was as I did the texts of “The Modern Novel.”  If for some reason you’re interested in the other texts I’ve read this semester and want to see what I think, check out my BellaBiblio page (This is a work in progress).

On a less academic note, I renewed my interest in the original Spyro The Dragon games, particularly Ripto’s Rage (Gateway to Glimmer) and Year of the Dragon.  I don’t know what it is (perhaps something about the gems…), but I love playing these games–despite the fact that I’ve beaten them both numerous times.

I figured I would give a shout out to Jason Mills who sold me a used copy of Spyro Year of the Dragon.  He was prompt and courteous and I would definitely recommend him to anyone looking for electronics or video game stuff.

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