Personal Blogs

This month has been challenging for a whole host of personal reasons (which I’m not going to be going into). Amidst my personal challenges, I did manage to get away for a two week break, which much needed. During those two weeks I went cycling, tried to do some swimming (I’m not good at swimming) and do some reading for A334.

One of the first things I managed to do was to finish an audio book of Pride and Prejudice. I feel as if I did rush listening to it, since there are bits of the story that I don’t quite grasp, but I do appreciate that there were all kinds of shenanigans happening in Brighton.

I was given a lovely gift for my birthday: a text called Will in the World, by critic Stephen Greenblatt. You could say I devoured it in a couple of sittings. I don’t read many biographies, but when I do, I really enjoy them. This text is what you might call a biography that extensively draws upon Shakespeare’s plays. I really liked it.

I managed to find a BBC Radio 3 production of The Spanish Tragedy, which I listened to whilst reading the recommended course text. The radio production was abridged, which meant that I regularly got lost. I have no idea (yet) what to make of it, but I quite liked what I read, and what I listened to. I have yet to make any notes, or to buy any extensive amounts of stationary to facilitate the making of my notes.

Next up was reading though a version of The Country Wife by William Wycherley. I got completely lost and had no idea what was going on. The most I understood was that there was some cross dressing going on. I’m hoping the module materials (when I got stuck into them) will help me to figure it all out.

Before my holiday, I managed to download a copy of Gulliver’s Travels by Swift. Although I think there is a bit of guidance from the module team about which books to focus on, I found myself reading the whole text. Whilst reading, I remembered a recent television documentary which caused quite a sensation (BBC culture website). Whilst reading Gulliver’s Travels, I remembered of the tone of the documentary, and how its enthusiasm and energy reminded me of Swift’s writing.

What I really loved about Gulliver’s Travels was his summary of academia; there was a lot that I could recognise. A real surprise was that the text has something to say about generative AI, which can be found in his description of something called The Engine (Wikipedia). All this took me on a short journey to Swift’s Wikipedia biography, which was fascinating.

Two texts that I did want to delve into (but didn’t have the time) was The Turkish Embassy Letters (but I had forgotten that there wasn’t a Project Guttenberg version I could download to my Kindle), and the Arabian Nights’ stories.

Since I had watched a production of As You Like It and Julius Caesar before travelling away, I next gave these plays a read. It was interesting reading these plays almost back to back; a contrast between light and dark. Shakespeare really ratchets up the tension in Julius Caesar a bit at a time. I don’t think I would have been able to get as much out of reading the plays if I hadn’t seen two really good productions.

I did have a plan to read Hamlet on a very long train ride, but I found that I had run out of mental energy.

One of the other things that I did was download an audio book version of Persuasion. I think I got up until chapter 5 before losing track of what was going on. I have some very long drives ahead of me in forthcoming months, so I’m sure I’ll be able to find the time, but I might restrict myself to just the bits I need to read for the module materials.

Another thing that I managed to do is to briefly look through the blocks. I have mixed feelings about the poetry in the second block, and was mildly shocked at some of the more racy verses that we have in store a bit later on.

A few days after getting back from my holiday, I finally found my way to the module website, where I started to look at the module guide. I was surprised by the bit that said there was 40% of our weekly study time is going to be spent on independent study. There was also a mention of (potentially) using a blog too. This is going to be interesting.

Perhaps my time spent reading Greenblatt was time very well spent.

I’m worried about one thing: the need to find both the quiet and the time to study everything. I’m in a situation where I can’t get “quiet time” easily, since there’s such a lot going on. Reflecting on this, my approach might well be to get up early in the morning.

My next steps: continue to read the module guide, watch some of the module videos, and start to find my way around the module website.