An assortment of reading

Reading for class: 

     From my French Culture class, Returning to Reims: This is a memoir by a gay French author/philosopher about his return back to his hometown after his homophobic father passes away. Thus far I’ve read about half of it and it’s most discussing the history of his very poor working class family, his separation and estrangement from them, and some analysis of class systems in France and in general. It’s not uninteresting though definitely not something I would pick up if I didn’t need to for a class. It’s probably not even something I would’ve found on my own given that it is originally in French. Admittedly it apparently was quite popular in France but alas, I do not live in France. 

     From Intro to Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”: So obviously, this is a Shakespeare play. I’m kind of terrible at reading Shakespeare so that means that any play we read, I also have to read the No Fear Shakespeare translation on Sparknotes to have the best understanding of what is going on. Yes I am a terrible English major. I don’t care. It’s fine. We were supposed to read this over Spring Break but I swear I do not recall being told that so I only read the first act and had a lot of catching up to do. 

Reading the news:

     :(

     I’ve been reading a lot of news. I got frustrated because I couldn’t read anymore articles from the Boston Globe on my phone so I subscribed to it for six months for $1. But I really have to remember to cancel that because apparently it’s like $6 weekly after that, which is absurd. I’ve probably read more news this week than any other reading. That needs to change. 

Reading for fun:

     I only read the first chapter of Percy Jackson but it’s better than nothing. It’s interesting because the last time I read it, I was actually around the age of Percy (like twelve) and now I’m reading it and I’m thinking “Oh my god, a baby. A child. I will protect you, baby Percy.” It’s also different because it’s middle grade so the writing style is much easier and simpler than other things I’ve read more recently, which absolutely does not make it bad, but requires a little adapting to get back into the flow of, I think. 

     I’m still a little torn about what I want to read. I’m now in the middle of The Secret Garden, The Vanishing Stair, Percy Jackson (Book 1), and technically An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. However, I also kind of want to read Station Eleven (reread it actually), Conversations with Friends, Where The Crawdads Sing, and The Kingdom of Back. I can’t make any decisions and the universe is not allowing me to focus on anything for more than four seconds. 

P.S. I will write another post soon about project/online learning things.