I Like(d) To Read

It's my fault, I know.

I registered for three literature courses this semester at UCCS (University of Colorado at Colorado Springs), and this just comes with the territory... not to mention a price tag of $200. I know students in the natural sciences who take as good a hit from buying just a single hardcover textbook, but what's neat about being an English major is that you have so much more to show for it.

My dream is to have a semester reading list I could climb. However, the fact that I'll graduate next May leaves me only one more opportunity.

(My other two Fall classes are TV Production and Mass Media, but they don't count. If you've ever taken a Communications course, then you know that textbooks aren't exactly necessary for success, regardless of what the professor would have you believe.)

Anyway, in case you're trying to read what's in the stack, top two books are Dickens' Great Expectations (hurray!) and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (boo! BOO!); no escaping those two titles, so fair enough. Then I've got Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, which also includes some his stories Young Goodman Brown and the Birth-mark (hell yes).

The anthologies in the middle are English and American lit, but the most notable one is on the bottom. That blue monster is a survey of works that run from Beowulf to The Life of Samuel Johnson, and it's the kind of book that you keep around for seemingly endless perusal or if you just want to be a show-off. So needless to say, its value to me is twofold.

These new classes start up a week from today, and at this point I still have that scholarly resolve to read every chapter, story, and essay that my professors throw at me, and then some. I feel like the guy in the Twilight Zone episode who is the last man on Earth with all the books he could ever want.

But the thing is, I can only make good on my resolve to read everything if I either get struck with insomnia or survive nuclear fallout. But if that's the case, then things are lookin' up.