i went hiking! i went on a mitoc trip to the white mountains. we climbed mt. eisenhower and then went down to mt. pierce:
i haven’t been doing too many other notable things otherwise. a youtuber that i follow is doing a series this month with daily videos, so watching the newest installment each morning has now become part of my morning routine.
i also read dan simmon’s hyperion this week! it’s a soft sci-fi novel that plays with the style of the canterbury tales and incorporates a lot of intertextuality. i enjoyed the world building and the way the characters’ stories gradually intertwine into a cohesive plot. i just checked out the sequel today and am looking forward to reading it.
it’s nice to be able to read long-form writing, as i spend most of my time reading web articles nowadays. i would like to read more books, however. i don’t really know any solid evidence in favor of reading books as opposed to shorter pieces of writing, but i feel like concentrating on a longer piece of writing for a longer period of time is beneficial to my english skills.
hyperion had several snippets of poetry in it that i struggled to understand. i get the feeling that my poetry-reading skills have declined since high school, though maybe it’s because i didn’t try as hard.
in general, i’m scared that my literature skills are rusting now that i’m at mit. none of the hass classes i took my first year particularly involved literary analysis (maybe the greek philosophy class did, but i took that class on 100% pnr mode). although these blogs are meant to be lighthearted and casual, i still worry that they lack the level of literary depth other bloggers reach (i’m mainly comparing my blogs to the mit admissions blogs).
thus, i’m trying to read more books by reading whatever books i can keep reading. i’ve found that i can’t read consistently if the book i’m trying to read can’t hook me in. unfortunately, this means i have a hard time reading many of the “classics” since they require a lot of work, and i don’t always have the energy to parse prose. i think i mainly need to find literary books that i’m interested in. hyperion fits this criteria due to its artistic depth, but i should avoid books that are both captivating and not worth reading.
i’m not entirely sure where non-fiction fits into all of this; a lot of my technical reading comes from online articles. i don’t necessarily need to have a deep understanding of everything, but there are some topics that i should go more in depth into.
based on all of this, it’s probably worth investing time into regularly exploring books to read and maintaining a list of books i’m interested in. i do currently have a list, but it contains a lot of titles that i’m not all that excited about. having a queue of books will probably also be motivating!
lyricist 