This and That

After reading a lot of old stuff, I'm feeling the need to take a break and read something newer. Over the past couple of months it's been about Shakespeare, Ovid, Balzac, Proust, Forster...I'm tired. So, here is the list of newer novels I'm hoping to read this summer:

Alice Walker's "Color Purple."
Toni Morrison's "Sula."
Nella Larsen's "Quicksand."

They are all written by African-American women, so I think this could make for an interesting study. But, knowing me, I'm probably going to start feeling like reading old, British things again soon after.

Upon writing the above I realized that I just finished E.M. Forster's amazing novel called "A Room with a View." I will write more about it soon.

Quick Update

I'm currently working on Balzac's "Father Goriot," which I'm enjoying immensely. But I think I'm going to have to bring my French lit. studies to an end sooner than I thought, probably right after I'm done with this novel. The reason is that I miss Shakespeare so much. I fancy reading his plays back to back to back and I can hardly wait to get to them. I will have to save the rest of the French works that I planned to read for later.

That's all for today.

French Literature

Usually when I have a lot of time, like during school breaks, I like to come up with some sort of a theme focus my studies on. Somehow French literature is my theme for the beginning of this summer break. I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but it happened unintentionally, and is turning out to be a lot of fun. One of my professors loaned me a copy of Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal" a little while back, which I have been reading ever since. And I just started reading Proust's "Swann's Way," which is the first of his "In Search of Lost Times" series. I went to a friend's going away party two nights ago, and he was giving away some books. One of the books I took was Balzac's "Père Goriot," which is also French. So I decided that I should just spend the next couple of weeks reading these works, as well as some essays by Derrida and Foucault, just to get a solid French experience before I move on.

Also I'm planning to continue studying French this summer. That will start...any day now.

Afterwards I'll be reading a lot of Shakespeare and some 19th century British novels as well as some epic poems. I feel so motivated; hopefully this motivation won't go away too soon.