Not a review:

I've been super-busy with school, and with finals coming up, so I've not been writing any reviews.  However, I've been re-reading 1984 for a class, and I've come to realize how different my perception of it has changed from six years ago.  I found it brilliant the first time, mostly taking in Winston Smith's hatred for Big Brother, mostly through his writing.  Now that I'm re-reading it, I'm starting to realize the significance of the rebellion he and Julia enact through sex. It's funny how these things surface when you give something a second try.  Anyway, if you've not read 1984, it's definitely something "everyone should read at least once," according to my high school librarian, because I think that everyone can take away at least one thing from reading it.  It'll probably be a good novel to breeze through this winter break.  Anyway, thanks for reading!

Semi-obscure reads

I present to you a rather strange list; it's a list compiled of works that my profs sometimes reference, that I have not heard of, nor do I think I will ever read in my lifetime, because they are simply so obscure that their unpopularity deters me from reading them.

-Oroonoko (Aphra Behn)
-Melmoth the Wanderer (Charles Maturin)--fun fact: he was the great-uncle of Oscar Wilde.
-The Monk (Matthew Lewis)
-Pamela, and Clarissa (Samuel Richardson)
-Walden (Henry David Thoreau)--well, you've probably heard of this one
-Nostromo (Joseph Conrad)

And here are some that I wouldn't have read on my own accord, but were forced upon me:
-Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (Thomas De Quincey)--twice!
-The Last Man (Mary Shelley)--a long, boring, and sort of unimaginative read about the future that really is what 19th c. England would look like if everyone wanted to be an engineer.
-Fifth Business (Robertson Davies)--not to knock Canadian Lit, but this book had the most unappealing protagonist ever.
-Caleb Williams (William Godwin)
-The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton)--it wasn't that bad, but it wasn't that good, either.  Not my style, I guess.
-Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe)--I think I would enjoy this if I re-read it.  I had to read it for an AP Literature class when I was seventeen and it drove me insane because I didn't get it the first time.

A common misconception shared by all professors/teachers is something like the bystander effect:  They assume that someone else has already taught a famous work, so they offer to teach a less popular one (ex: teaching The Last Man as opposed to Frankenstein), much like in the bystander effect, no one will take action because they assume that someone else will.  So here I am, studying these less-than-famous works because my profs all assume that I've been taught the more famous ones (Pride and Prejudice, Dracula, The Great Gatsby, to name a few), when in fact, I haven't.