Review: Sherlock, The Blind Banker

“The Blind Banker” opens with a sequence that proves why Sherlock makes a terrible roommate. It soon proceeds with a classic Holmsian mystery: how could someone get into a high-security bank and leave a cryptic message? How can murders take place in a room locked from the inside? This leads to an adventure surrounding ciphers, smuggling and murder. There’s an awkwardly hilarious fight at a circus (chalk that up as another reason why Sherlock’s a bad roommate- he tags along on first dates).
This episode allows for the relationship of John and Sherlock to develop further and gives Martin Freeman as Watson a lot of material to work with in this installment. His moments of dealing with the domestic side of life and meeting a girl he likes is really endearing to watch. Benedict Cumberbatch also had the opportunity to show the fighting side of Holmes at several moments in this episode (he was a boxer, a sword/cane/riding crop fighter and a bit of a martial artist in the stories). He has several close calls in the episode- mostly unnoticed by poor John standing outside.
A running gag this episode was Sherlock’s going off to investigate and leaving Watson locked out of wherever he’s broken into. Throughout the stories, Watson is often following Sherlock, waiting to be let in on something that inevitably, Sherlock discovered two pages ago. In this episode it also facilitates a case of mistaken identity. A dangerous gang of Chinese smugglers believes that John is Sherlock and puts his new girlfriend, Sarah, in peril.
Call me over-analytical, but the mistaken identity seems symbolic of the way John and Sherlock are fusing into a single unit. To the criminals of London, they may as well be one person because they function together so perfectly. True, Holmes can work on his own, but not as well, and probably not for as long.
Also, Sherlock consulting the vandal doing graffiti art on the gallery and sending him on a mission could be a bit of a throwback to the Baker Street Irregulars (I just finished The Sign of Four this week, so their on my mind- perhaps why I’m making the connection).
Overall, intelligent, entertaining and it left off with a menacing mention of Moriarty lurking nearby.
Gemma Chan (from Doctor Who “The Waters of Mars”) as Soo Lin is a very sympathetic character, one we regret the fate of although we know what it will be. Paul Chequer (Eugene from the “Random Shoes” episode of Torchwood) appears as the detective in charge of the case while Lestrade is engaged elsewhere.
I was a bit disappointed that they had to cut some scenes from within the story again this week to fit the time slot more exactly. Now, will the Region 1 DVDs also be cut up because that always ticks me off- no programming slot to fill, due to an invention called *the internet* we are aware of the cut scenes- just put them on the DVD, seriously.

National Novel Writing Month Preparations

I've realized that I have three major research papers due next month. Ha. I'm going to dedicate myself to doing research for those papers tonight and tomorrow, partly to keep myself from going stir crazy while I wait to start noveling, but also so I don't endanger my academic scholarship by forgetting about them completely.
I must admit, I find it difficult to focus on the satire of Troilus and Cressida and the defamiliarization of Emily Dickinson's poetry while all I want to do is get into ~Mystery Mode~. In fact, I have been quite distracted and found myself spending my yesterday evening reading The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I was also looking over "The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier" because it is one of only two stories written from Holmes' point of view.
Though this may be a cardinal sin of mystery writing because it has been done so many times, my protagonist is a bit Holmesian. Mainly in their method of logic and their tendency toward solitude (with the exception of one close associate), and maybe an odd quirk here or there. I like to believe my character will be interesting and though in some ways similar to Holmes, their own unique and attractive character. One of the major differences is that my character is a 22 year old female. According to Doyle's cannon, Holmes started solving mysteries as an undergraduate student before he decided to become a consulting detective.
I thought it would be interesting to write a story about a similar sort of anti-social genius solving their first case and finding the perfect use for their talent and intellect. I am very excited by this character, she is the kind of figure I would enjoy reading about or watching, which I think is a good place to start. There are also many opportunities to write great banter with such a character.
Here's a challenge I know I will face as I continue working on this story: writing a character smarter than I am. I believe myself to be an intelligent person, but this girl has to be utterly brilliant, it's difficult to stretch the mind and imagine the thoughts of someone smarter than you. That is why Doyle told most of his stories from Watson's perspective I believe.
My plan for the narrative is a third person, semi-omniscient structure. Telling it from the sidekick's point of view would omit several scenes I've plotted that I believe are very important to building my protagonist's journey.

“Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantelpiece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle and rolled back his left shirtcuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction.”

The Sign of Four, chapter 1 paragraph 1

Unlike Sherlock's cocaine and morphine habit, my character lives on coffee and red wine. Probably about the modern equivalent in a social sense- perfectly legal (as the cocaine and morphine were) uppers and downers.
Incidentally, there is a society for female Sherlockians called ASH: Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes (created because the Baker Street Irregulars wouldn't allow female members until 1991). Check out their website here. Now I kind of want to join. Okay, more than kind of.

Now, now, now!

I grow extremely impatient to start my NaNo project. I have outlines, character sketches and am already developing a nervous tick. They say ability to delay gratification is a sign of maturity. For my entire life people have been telling me I'm mature for my age, oh if only they could see me now.
When I sit and think about my story, my knee starts jiggling up and down because I'm so excited. That's a good sign, I wasn't nearly as excited last year. Perhaps it's macabre to be this excited at the prospect of writing about murder, but I just decided who my killer is tonight. That's very exciting. I had chocolate to celebrate and wrote a few more character outlines.
Now that I have the main plot skeleton figured out, I've been adding in fun things, sub-plots other relationships the characters have. There needs to be a hearty amount of *stuff* in my story- I learned that the hard way last year.
Mostly I'm extremely excited about my characters, especially my "hero team" if you will. I'm actually planning the next two books. I know, it's called "getting ahead of yourself," but it's nice to be this excited. I'm not usually this... confident about my stories or this infatuated with my characters. Not to sound snotty, but I've always steered away from anything that could be called 'genre fiction' due to some bad reading experiences. However, I feel a great sense of liberation in having some parameters to gauge my story by, and yet I feel there is a lot I can do to test those parameters and become a better writer through the process.
I'll be honest, I don't even know how to describe the story I wrote last year, except as depressing and convoluted. I have high hopes for my story this year being suspenseful, witty, sexy, and exciting. Much better adjectives.
In two weeks when I start having a novel identity crisis feel free to refer me back to this post. It will be hellish, but I intend to surface from it relatively un-scorched.
I have to go shopping for NaNo supplies this weekend. Yes it does require supplies. Specifically I'll be looking for fake mustaches and a bubble pipe to cheer myself up at low moments. I also need a new robe for those cold nights that turn into morning while I tap furiously on my laptop. Something I've been looking for for a while is a small digital voice recorder to put idea on- I always have a notebook, but when driving or running across campus I'd like to have a recorder for convenience and time efficiency.
I wish you all well in your similar preparations for the '30 days and nights of literary abandon.' If you haven't committed yet this year, what are you waiting for? The worst that could happen is that you don't make 50,000. I had to quit Script Frenzy in April, it was fine, they didn't even beat me much.

Murder and Mayhem

I've decided to write a mystery. That is going to be my NaNo this year. I've never written a mystery before, but after the large amount of Sherlock Holmes stories and multi media I've been consuming, I have diabolical scenarios on the brain. Also, the other night I was creeping around the campus and I realized that a college campus is a perfect setting for a murder mystery. Thus and idea was born.
Most of my stories aren't exactly plot driven- they're usually more like character meditations where stuff happens and there's the occasional metaphor. I think that style works pretty well in the short form, but last year during my NaNo I ran out of plot at about 30,000 words and that was a problem. I had interesting characters, theme and concept, but not enough stuff happening. The perfect way to break out of my habit of writing ~concepts~ instead of ~stories~ is to write in a genre that is especially plot driven. At least that's what I'm hoping.
This may be too optimistic, but I think that if I break through this issue in my writing I could be highly publishable eventually. A lot of modern fiction I read has a lot of stuff happening, but not enough character or theme, I seem to have the opposite problem.
Strangely, though I reveled in the joys of short fiction a lot over the past year, I've returned to poetry lately. At a very young age I fancied myself a poet, but stopped abruptly when I was in high school for several reasons. After that, the more I read poetry, the less I felt I could ever write it and aside from the occasional sonnet, I didn't touch the genre until a few months ago. Now I've been having phrases come to me while driving or taking walks, even sometimes when sitting in class.
In my typical fashion, many are bit gloomy, but some are kind of... nice. I think I'm funnier in person than on the page. I often go a bit dark in morbid in my writing, but in real life I'm the person bantering with anyone willing to spar. One of my professors has suggested I write a series of literary parodies. Perhaps.

Review: Sherlock, A Study in Pink

Finally, finally, finally, Sherlock has made it to the US (though some American viewers found ways of watching it previous to this premiere...), it is being shown as a part of the current Masterpiece Mystery season. The first episode was shown last night and the literary club and I got together to watch it- yes, watching Masterpiece Theatre and drinking tea is our idea of a party, thank you.
In spite of my initial skepticism about a modern Sherlock Holmes, it worked really well. He was a very modern figure, which is probably why the character and stories are still so popular today. Moffat and Gatiss almost seamlessly update all aspects of the setting and methods of Sherlock's deduction. Very clever use of screen text to let the audience glimpse inside Sherlock's thought process, I enjoyed that.
The dialogue was clever, well paced and highly quotable. There were also many references to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories and characters, some of them even a little tongue-in-cheek, acknowledging some of the changes made in the update.
Now on to the shallow part, I know you were all waiting for it: Benedict Cumberbatch is extremely attractive. Sherlock has always been in the realms of literary crush despite his prickly lack of social skills and level of asexuality- something about that gigantic brain of his is extremely attractive. The funny thing is, I've never found Cumberbatch to be particularly attractive in any of his other roles (he tends to play creeps), but while watching Sherlock I realized how amazing his bone structure is, and his hair is lush as well. Now I can't decide who the sexiest Sherlock is: Cumberbatch or Jeremy Brett, it'll be a struggle.
Martin Freeman as Watson is fantastic in the role and also very cute. The two of them have a great working chemistry, making them a believable team. Although there seemed to be a few purposefully "slashy" moments, I will always feel that they are simply the perfect example of best friends. Sherlock doesn't have any friends, so it's an extremely significant relationship for him even without there being a romantic component.
Overall it was a very good start to the series with some good references to the first Holmes and Watson story, "A Study in Scarlet," though it was an original story. Though updated, in many ways I think it was closer to canon than the recent Robert Downey jr. film, though I didn't have the issues with that film that many did.
Next week episode two, "The Blind Banker" will be shown and I'll review that as well.
Oh, and incidentally, if you Google Sherlock's website in the series, "The Science of Deduction" you'll find this. You may also want to check out Dr. John Watson's Blog, if you're feeling very nerdy and fan-ish, which I was.
Once again, a bit of media I import eats my sidebar. Oh well.

Not Another Jane Eyre Movie

2011 is supposed to see the release of another Jane Eyre adaptation. Fortunately talk of one that was supposed to come out around 08/09 starring Ellen Page never amounted to much, but I'm still nervous. After the 2006 Masterpiece series, it seems a little soon. That adaptation was excellent and long enough to fully develop the novel.
The US release date is slotted for March 2011 according to IMDB (and we know they're always accurate about everything....)
Here's the cast and my pithy commentary about them:
Mia Wasikowska (Jane Eyre)- You probably know her as Alice from the recent Alice in Wonderland. She's just turned 21, which puts her close to the age of Jane in the novel. She's very pixie-ish and I just don't see her as Jane, hopefully they'll have her go brunette for the film, a blonde Jane would bother me.


Michael Fassbender (Rochester)- I had no idea who this guy was, until it hit me: 300, he's Irish/German and beautiful. Maybe too beautiful for Rochester. He was also in the recent Inglorius Basterds (yes, that's how it's really spelled).

Jamie Bell(St. John)- 10 years ago he gained fame in Billy Elliot and has done little of note in recent years, excepting perhaps Flags of our Fathers. Apparently Wasikowska studied ballet, so perhaps the two of them can act out their scenes as an interpretive dance. How cracktastic would that be? He's a little pouty for my taste.


Imogen Poots (Blanche)- I enjoyed her in Miss Austen Regrets, but she's also appeared in movies such as 28 Weeks Later. I'm sure she's capable of playing the part, but someday I would like an adaptation that has Blanche look the way she's described in the book- dark hair and eyes. I guess no director believes we can handle a non-blonde being the prettiest girl in town.


Sally Hawkins (Mrs. Reed)- Known to me from the recent (slightly dissapointing) adaptation of Persuasion, she was also in the US released film Happy Go Lucky. I can't imagine her playing such a witchy character, she always seems so nice and happy and meek in all her roles


Judi Dench (Mrs. Fairfax)- I love Judi Dench. I harbor secret dreams that she will one day adopt me. Her sit-com from the 90s As Time Goes By is probably my favorite PBS import. I hope they don't waste her.


Of course I'll go see it, but I will try not to be too excited or too cynical. All that engergy could go into more amazing puzzles.

Raccoon of Triumph

Ta-da! This is my Raccoon of Triumph. It was a challenging 25 peice puzzle for ages 3 and up.
I decided to get rid of my summer blog background, we're getting frost, so I thought it was time for a more sober toned autumnal/winter scheme.

Curmudgeon of the Week

This can be chalked up as another one of my hobbies: misanthropy. I follow a hilarious blog called "The Sassy Curmudgeon" and Una, the blogger extraordinaire, has a series called "Curmudgeon of the Week."
After making a list of annoyances that plagued me over the course of one day ( a Forensic Speech exercise- thanks coach) I submitted it to Una for consideration. Remarkably, I was accepted for this somewhat peculiar honor. You can see my entry here.
There are several things I'd like to add to the list after this latest Forensic Speech Tournament:
Getting up before it's light
Wearing stockings with trousers
$7 salads
Faux-hawks
Pointy witch shoes
Riding in a van full of club music
Being out of fake mustaches
Jerks that make fun of me for liking Jane Austen (she's a brilliant satirist!)
Conflicting suggestions
Dirty Gas Stations
Running out of matches
Itchy sweaters

I'm going to watch PBS for a while and then get to sleep. I might do my Ages 3+ Raccoon puzzle as well. Good times.

Happy Blog-iversary to me....

Today is the anniversary of my first post, cleverly entitled, "Awkward First Blog." I've definitely experienced many changes in my perspective on blogging since that fateful day a year ago.
I celebrated by registering my NaNo for next month, NaNo was the first major project I undertook after starting my blog. At first I was very covert about the whole thing, calling myself a "secret blogger" and not really letting many of my friends or family know about my project to train myself to be a better journalist and writer in general. Now I speak more freely about it and have reached 8 followers as well as a handful of sometimes readers.
What will the next year bring? Both in blogging and life, it's difficult to anticipate. Let's keep it as adventurous as possible.

Budgeting My Time

I've been awkwardly stalled on my Austen and Lawrence reading challenges for the last two months, so I'm gracefully bowing out of them until mid-December when I finish this semester and am not reading for three literature classes.
However, I think I am going to do NaNoWriMo again this year. I had to quit ScriptFrenzy, but there are a few stories I've been sketching out that I really need to push myself to bang out into a solid draft. Knowing myself, I need to write to keep myself balanced (mentally and emotionally) and I haven't been doing it lately. I need to make myself do it because I feel the frustration of unexpressed words building up in me which makes me grumpy and, eventually, depressed.
There are several stories I'm between, not sure which one I'll NaNo- I have a story I wrote a while back but basically completely scrapped, over the sumer I made an outline that restructured it completely and even changed out some characters. There's also my short story, "Target Girl"- I think that could be expanded, as well as a few random ideas I've been kicking around in an abstract way.
Reading is incredibly important and I know I'll never have enough time in my life to read all the great books I ought to- there being created much faster than I can read them and so many were created before my birth- but in the end, I want to write a few great books that are worthy of someone else's overly ambitious reading list.
For a while, books were a great majority of my life and I'm at the point where I'm trying to balance out the time I spend reading with that I spend writing and also the time I spend doing. I think in the end this is a much healthier attitude toward books. I shouldn't only live them.
But, I digress, expect many updates about the story I choose as NaNo gears up.

English Major Tee Shirts

The science department in my college is the dominant area of study in the school. When the college first opened it was especially dedicated to science studies and those are still the most populated programs of study.
Recently the sciences came out with a witty tee shirt that references how much time they spend in labs, so my friend Sacha and I were pondering what witty tee shirt the English department could come up with to combat this and boost morale.
Here were some we came up with:
"I'm not saying I'm perfect, but I'm an English major, so I'm a little more perfect than you."
"I have better taste than that, I'm an English major."

Those were our best, but please leave your own suggestions.
Now, I have to go read about 50 more pages without falling asleep or having my eye balls fall out. This will be a challenge.

My Motto for the Day

This weekend was my first Forensic Speech tournament and I was nervous. I was thrown into one event only this week, so I was very nervous. One off our assistant coaches made us little slips of paper with inspiration quotations and pictures. I don't know if she did this purposely for me, because I'm an Anglophile, but she put "Keep Calm and Carry On" in the corner and it was my motto all tournament.
I knew I wouldn't be coming in top rankings my first time out, in fact I knew in some events I wouldn't even make near the finals, but I kept on. And I made it to finals on two events this weekend.
So, I'm looking to next weekend, hoping that it's only up from here.

Louisa May Alcott

Next semester I may be embarking on a rather exciting project about Louisa May Alcott. Best known for largely autobiographical novel Little Women she also wrote many stories and novels that she like to refer to as "blood and thunder" stories- gothic romantic thrillers under the name A.M. Barnard.
The more I learn about her and her work the more I adore her and become even more excited for the project. Reading accounts of her life and her personal letters makes me feel a very strong connection to her. I'll be very pleased to continue my research.
Her father was an abolitionist and friend of Emerson (Louisa and his daughter were apparently close), Thoreau and many other intellectuals of the time. She was a nurse during some of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War where she was inspired to write Hospital Sketches. Then she contracted Typhoid fever and was dosed with a mercury based medicine that caused vivid and disturbing dreams- perhaps providing inspiration for some of her sensational novels?
Over this winter break I'll be rereading Little Women, I haven't read it since I was twelve. My goal is also to go to Concord MA and visit Orchard House where she lived most of her life and wrote the novel. I have friends that live near Boston, so I'm hoping they might let me couch-surf with them for a few days. I've always wanted to see Boston as well and while I'm there, I'd love to take a day to visit Walden. It would be quite the literary trip and I want to do it in December before I fully embark on this project, but money and the prospect of driving around Massachusetts in the middle of winter may delay me until the spring.
I've also been toying with the idea of writing my own gothic romance in a similar style to hers to get me in the proper mindset.
Maybe I'll post excerpts if it goes well.
Now back to reading Sons and Lovers.

Another Cautionary Tale

This time about archery.
I forgot the leather bracer that I wear over my left arm to protect it from the bow string when it snaps forward and releases the arrow. I was wearing long sleeves so I thought it would be alright.
There are bad ideas, very bad ideas, extremely bad ideas, and 'holy mother... that was a terrible idea'. Clearly, this was the latter. While going through my second quiver of arrows my string hit my arm very seriously. It wasn't so bad until it was struck again, even harder when I started my third quiver.
I had to quit early because I was in so much pain, I kept flinching away from the bow when I went to fire. I was very inaccurate. It wasn't worth continuing, I would either be hurting my arm more or just being totally off.
It's already a little swollen and turning black. Alas.

Incidentally, I read "A Scandal in Bohemia" last night. It's the Sherlock Holmes story where Irene Adler appeared. Funny that one short story has lead to many many spin-offs and paralits featuring her. Moriarty was also only in one novel, but was retrospectively made responsible for some of the events of other stories.
Two weeks until PBS airs the new Sherlock, the campus lit club is hosting a viewing party, we're all going to get together, bring snacks, and watch the frist episode's premiere.

Forensic Speech

Possibly the nerdiest competition in the world, Forensic Speech has nothing to do with science and dead bodies, it is a competitive speaking competition involving informative, persuasive and interpretive speaking.
So a combination of English and an almost element? Of course I joined the college's team. It's a clever way of keeping my theatre scholarship, but it's a lot of hard work. I'm currently piecing together a Program Oral Interpretation or POI. That is where you select various cuttings of poetry, prose and dramatic text that have a similar theme or subject and you build a program that weaves them together. So far I have two poems, one prose and one dramatic piece and I'm trying to find and work in a few more. The whole thing has to run 10 minutes when performed, it's harder to get the timing right than it would seem.
Since I haven't taken my program out to competition yet, I won't say what it's on, but I think it's clever and that some of my texts are original. But, that's what I've been up to lately. My first competition is coming up soon!
Next I'd like to get an After Dinner Speaking piece ready- ADS is an informative or persuasive speech that is performed in a comedic way. I was hoping to have mine ready for my first competition, but it's taking a while to come together. I think I have a good subject and it will be fabulous by the November competition I'm taking it to.
Must go Forensicate now.

From the Pen of Thoreau

We're studying a chapter of Walden tomorrow in my American Literature class, so I'm catching up on my reading. Our hilarious professor had intended us to take a nature walk to the creek for our discussion, but the fact that the creek has over-spilled its banks makes that unlikely. Alas. The transcendentalists would not approve.
I thought I'd share several passages from the chapter "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For" that I found interesting and enjoyable.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Classic Thoreau, sort of a manifesto if you will. Next, Henry David tells us why mail and newspapers are a waste (I wonder how he would feel about text messages and Yahoo! News).

The penny-post is, commonly, and institution through which you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which is so often safely offered in jest. And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned or one vessel wrecked, one one steamboat blown up or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter-we never need read of another. One is enough.

As a student journalist, I must say that I don't believe news is useless, but I get his point.
One more for good measure, one of my favorites:

Let us spend each day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails.

Ironically (as it is my life long quest to find irony and produce it where there is none), some club on campus had baskets of foam fortune cookies (I don't understand either) in the college center this afternoon, each with a slip of paper containing a quotation. The one I grabbed had a quotation by Thoreau about the importance of writing only when the impetus to write is hot upon you. Have you ever noticed that certain things seem to follow you in life? Words, stories, writers that pop up in various people and places that are unconnected to each other. This happens to me all the time, and lately it has been Henry David Thoreau.
I think it's time to officially upgrade him to Literary Crush. He makes me laugh, we could take nature walks, he likes the quiet, but doesn't seem dull- I like him. Although according to the pictures, he probably could have benefitted from a shave to get rid of that mutton chop/beard combination, but he has very soulful eyes. Besides, he's got a great cabin in the woods, and I've always said my ideal man is a rugged nerd. Yeah, this one has promise.

Wonderful and Strange: My Day Out

I had a crappy night last night, so my friend Amy suggested a small adventure today before I went to work. Simply for coffee and then to the book store (where inevitably, my caffine addict companion had another coffee). It cheered me up greatly and salvaged what could have been an utterly desolate day. I couldn't even go to the archery range this morning and work off my righteous anger... anyway...
There are many wonderful and strange things to behold on any trip out no matter how mundane and today was no different.
While waiting for my coffee I saw a woman with a hoard of small children. One little girl broke away from the other children and started noisily kissing an advertisement for the Star Wars Clone Wars cartoon, but that was not the strange part, the oddest element was that she was kissing a picture of Yoda. He is my favorite trickster, but unusual as the object of a little girl's first crush. It made me laugh and I very much enjoyed watching them- especially when their mother realized one of her children was kissing some random item in a public place.
Then at the book store, I saw a woman wearing the most spectacular eye patch I have ever seen. It was covered in a series of small rainbow metallic sparkles. She could rule the high seas if she wanted. Yes, it is unfortunate that she is in need of an eye patch, but she is embracing it and not taking herself too seriously.
Also, at work tonight I saw a man that looks like Mark Twain. That makes this a *Famous Dead Guy Spotting* a rare and monumental occasion.
Not a bad start to October. In spite of the fact that I didn't achieve any of my reading goals for September, I'm not going to beat myself up about it. I'm taking three literature classes, all of which I have alot of readings for- I had to read two Shakespeare plays I have no previous experience with this past month, All's Well That Ends Well and Troilus and Cressida. Both very fascinating by the way. I have few occassions to pleasure read coming up and I intend to finish Sons and Lovers very soon.