Today's Reading

I'm sitting in on a philosophy class this semester that is taught by one of my colleagues. I'm doing it to gain clarity on some concepts that I need for the dissertation. But as a part of this class, we're reading Plato's Republic, and this will be the first time I've read the whole thing. Can I just say, OMG! The whole censorship thing in Book III is killing me! Really, Socrates? Really? It would all make me laugh if it wasn't so creepy. And, also? So many contradictions! (I'm looking at you here, Plato).

Today in my Brit Lit class, we talked about the "picturesque" as defined by Gilpin, and then we looked at a satirical excerpt from Austen's Northanger Abbey, and then we talked about Mary Shelley's "Swiss Peasant."

Right now I'm prepping Anna Letitia Barbauld for Thursday (we're doing the poems "Washing Day" and "Eighteen Hundred and Eleven").

After that I will prep a couple of articles for tomorrow's composition/argument class on the "spectacle of violence." The articles are companion reading for The Hunger Games.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of the workload, and it keeps me very busy, but at least it's all really, really good stuff. I am lucky to talk about these things for my job. And after I call it a day, I'll crawl into bed to start Foolscap. I finished Instruments of Darkness the night before, and it might be worthy of a review sometime in the future!