Spring Term!

I spent my Spring Break receiving a Wilderness First Responder certification, and wow do I feel prepared. I hope I never have to use many of the skills I learned, but at least I'll have them if I ever need them. Furthermore, this level of training is recognized by some employers, so it could come in handy for jobs too. I was most surprised to learn the Cunningham technique for shoulder reduction, which seems to be a lot less painful and invasive than expected.
Week 1 is over, and Spring Term is fully in swing. I've declared an English major, in one of the most anti-climactic button-pushing experiences of my life. My courses are going to keep me very busy this term: The City in American Literature, Les Sept Pêchés Mortels, African Literature in English, Advanced Tai Chi, and Windows on the Good Life (Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream this term). So far, I've already finished three books for my courses: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Romeo and Juliet, and Jean Cocteau's La machine infernale, as well as being about halfway through with Dreiser's Sister Carrie, so I guess I'm going to accomplish a lot of reading this trimester.

I recently finished reading Moonglow, and I really enjoyed it. Oddly, it kept reminding me of Maus--perhaps because of the mentions of WWII, Judaism, and the exploration of family relationships within the books, although Moonglow never goes into the kind of detail about the Holocaust that Maus does, which makes sense, because the people in Moonglow didn't have the same experiences as the ones in Maus. I'm adding one of Michael Chabon's other books, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, to my reading list, so maybe some day I will finally get around to reading that too.I've only just begun Zadie Smith's Swing Time, perhaps one-sixth of the way in, and it also promises to be a very enjoyable read.