A few pages later

Winter quarter is officially over. Though bittersweet, I can honestly say that this tired English major is quite relieved. This academic term required more reading than any previous quarters. Possibly more writing, as well.

I was inspired by my friend and fellow English major, Samara, (her amazing blog is here: A Common Girl With Not So Common Dreams...) to make a count of winter term.

Here's how the quarter stacked up:

*Does not include my Contemporary American Lit course reader

• Othello - Shakespeare
• Macbeth - Shakespeare
• King Lear - Shakespeare
• Measure for Measure - Shakespeare
• The Winter's Tale - Shakespeare
• The Tempest - Shakespeare
• "Song of Myself," "The Sleepers," "A Noiseless Patient Spider," "Song of the Open Road" - Walt Whitman
• Selections from Summer of the Lakes, in 1843 - Margaret Fuller
• Beloved - Toni Morrison
• The Book of Daniel - E.L. Doctorow
• Selections from Moby Dick - Herman Melville (which I intend to finish completely)
• The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - Frederick Douglass
• The Armies of the Night - Norman Mailer
• American Pastoral - Philip Roth
• "The Divinity School Address," selections from "Nature," "The American Scholar," "Circles,""The Poet," and "Experience" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• "Civil Disobedience," selections from Walden - Henry David Thoreau
• "Young Goodman Brown," "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," and The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Contemporary American Lit course reader - including, but not limited to: "Chickamauga" by Ambrose Bierce, "Poetics" by Aristotle, "The Historical Text as Literary Artifact" by Hayden White, selections from The New Journalism by Tom Wolfe, "Howl" & "Wichita Vortex Sutra" by Allen Ginsberg, To Stay Alive by Denise Levertov, "Under Erasure" by Barrett Watten, etc. 

I read about 2,693 pages of text this quarter (not including my course reader, which does not have page numbers).

Egads.

Though I enjoyed most of it, my favorites were probably: King Lear, The Book of Daniel, and To Stay Alive. And yes, there was a lot of American lit. I thought I might not enjoy reading/studying American lit, but I was pleasantly surprised. I discovered that I am very interested in literature about American in the 1950s, 60s, & 70s... communism, Vietnam, Cold War and so on. 

I did miss my British lit, but I'm sure studying abroad in London will provide ample compensation. 

As for writing... after compiling all of my writing assignments into one Word document, I arrived at these totals:

• Number of writing assignments: 15
• Estimated total number of pages (single spaced): 25
• Estimated total number of words: 13, 406

And à la Samara, a list of occurrences that cannot be counted: 

• Number of times I exclaimed "What." while reading
• Number of Sherlock references discovered in Shakespeare class
• Number of "I've forgotten how to write" moments
• Number of breath-taking and gorgeous passages read
• Which led to a number of "Nancy, Nancy, listen to this! This is brilliant!" moments
• A similar number of "Nancy, Nancy, listen to this. What on earth is he/she trying to say?" moments (my darling roommate puts up with a lot)
• Number of Shakespeare references discovered in other literature (he's everywhere...)

It's been a very wordy quarter, to say the least.