Start of School

While for some people, the start of school may mean that they suddenly have no time to read, for me it means that I have no time to do anything but read. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but it does get draining to intelligently read approximately 150 pages a night... and write papers on said reading. This semester is by far my most intense reading load. By December 18, I will have read at least 45 books and countless articles. I'm putting the estimate in at 5,000 pages of reading and about 100 pages of writing for the semester. Luckily I'm really excited about it all.

That being said, I probably won't have much time to update this blog. I'm taking The Bible as Literature (Great class! Take it from Steve Walker if you can!), American Literature from 1960-Present, 21st Century American Literature, and Literature for Adolescents. If you want to hear more about what I'm reading for my Literature for Adolescents class, you'll have to join Goodreads. I'm required to write reviews of the books I read for that class on there, so I mostly likely won't write about them here (especially since I have to read 2 books a week for that class!!). I'll try to update though when I finish a book for one of my American Lit. classes though.

I just finished The March, by E.L. Doctorow for my 21st Century American Lit. class. The best thing about this book, is that I didn't feel like I was reading a required book. Although I might not have picked this up off the shelf, there's a reason my professor chose it. He wants to expose us to books that will become classics (or at least that he hopes will become classics) and give us a chance to do some of the first writing on these texts. This was a very interesting look at Sherman's march through the South during the Civil War. One of the things that stuck me the most throughout this book was the question of morals.

Written after 9/11, this book talks a lot about the ethics of total war. Is it fair to kill civilians and destroy their property in order to beat your enemy? Everyone would say "absolutely not" if they were asked this in relation to terrorists. Most Americans believe that terrorism is wrong--even to the point of being cowardly. But how do you feel when you think about that question in terms of Sherman's march or the atomic bombs? They ended wars, but at what cost? Tens of thousands of civilians were killed and made homeless during these events... was winning a war worth the cost? Can it ever be worth the cost? I'm not saying that I condemn the United States for using either of these tactics in order to bring wars to a close. In fact, I have the utmost faith that the Presidents who ordered these things or allowed them to happen made the right choice and save the country and the world a lot of misery. It's just something to think about as our world gets more and more embroiled in wars and conflicts and as we get involved in the world around us.