As I stated in my opening sentence for my advanced comp class blog, this is the last blog that I "have" to post for this class. However, I may continue to write about different books that I read, as sort of a running commentary for myself. I have such a long "to-read" book list, I'm sure I'll not be short of material to comment on. :)
I have really enjoyed this class. Some of the texts were hard for me to grasp, and consequently I found myself re-reading quite often. I am a fan of Charles Dickens and of Virginia Woolf, so it was nice to have an "excuse" to have read some of their work, which I hadn't previously read. I had started Great Expectations when I was 15, after reading A Tale of Two Cities, but for whatever reason, I never finished it, and it has been on my "to-read" list since then (that's over 10 years!! I know, I know, that's really terrible!)
English is not my major and though I have always wanted to take English classes, they never held precedence on my college courses list (science usually won out). I have read many classics on my own, simply because I was interested in the author or the book; I suppose that interest in literature comes from my Mom, being an English teacher herself. The same goes for writing. She taught my brother and I Shakespeare to memorize when we were kids. My brother was always much better at that than I was, and he had whole scenes memorized when he was only 8 or 9 year old! Needless to say, my brother is a very adept and capable reader and writer and is actually quite well read. When he does write, his writing is some of the best I've seen. You can't tell him that though . . . perhaps while he is in Iraq for the next few months, he'll start writing a bit . . .
Anyway, I have digressed from where I was originally going with this post. I have also really enjoyed reading everyone's discussion responses and was actually rather pleasantly suprised to find people who agreed with my interpretation of a certain text! I also like that everyone had a chance to say what they wanted, whereas in the classroom setting, there are always those intraverts who prefer to remain silent and absorb everything and not return their own feedback.
I may look into taking more lit classes in the future and at the very least getting a hold of some syllabi so I can do some reading on my own. . . . :)
