April Insanity!

Posted April 2, 2014 by Cristina (Girl in the Pages) in Uncategorized / 3 Comments

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Hey there! This month is going to be one of the busiest of the entire year for me. As most students can relate, April means midterms, and for English majors that means papers galore. So I wanted to do a round-up of what I’ll be reading/writing/posting this month!

The TBR Pile:

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I’m really excited about my upcoming reads! I just finished Scarlet (expect a review soon) and I was lucky enough to get Cress as a gift over spring break. I’m itching to start the third book in the Lunar chronicles series, but I have more pressing library loans on my TBR shelf. I’ve been waiting for my turn on the waitlist for Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl for a few weeks now and I was finally able to pick it up from my local library! I’ve heard so many great things about Eleanor and Park that I wanted to give Rowell a shot, as I haven’t had time yet to read any of Rowell’s works. Fangirl will also be a nice break from the high fantasy YA books I’ve been reading lately.

And then there’s Steinbeck. I haven’t picked up a Steinbeck book since high school, and I wasn’t the biggest fan of the ninth-grade staple Of Mice and Men. Yet East of Eden has been on my TBR list for quite some time, as literally everyone I know has given it a five-star rating and I’m curious about it’s biblical undertones. The perfect opportunity to read it arose this semester for a Bible-as-Literature independent study I’m taking, and I’m going to be writing my final paper on the gender implications of the appropriation of biblical themes in East of Eden. Initially I was really excited about this (and still am), but I didn’t quite realize that the book was over six hundred pages long. I’m normally not daunted by long books, but with a month to read it and produce a large paper, I’m a little nervous.

Speaking of papers…

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This month (tomorrow to be specific) will mark the beginning of actually writing my English Thesis. Now I’ve been doing research for the past two months, but it’s a bit daunting to know that I have a draft of the first five pages due Monday, and by the end of April will need to have most of it completed (ahh!). I know that I shouldn’t be complaining about it at all, because I get to write my thesis on Harry Potter. Lucky girl, right? My department is so awesome and open-minded and really encouraged us to choose anything that we were really passionate about writing. So I figured what was more fitting than choosing the texts that made me a bibliophile to write my capstone on? Yet, even being able to write on something so dear to me seems like a chore when a huge paper is standing between you and your diploma.

My first ARC!

I won my first ARC through Goodreads and am so excited to endeavor into the world of ARCs. I’m being careful not to pursue too many because my TBR pile is already quite large, but I’m excited to dive into this part of the book blogging world. I’ll definitely have a review up before it’s publication date (which is June) and once summer hits I’m hoping to branch out further into the ARC world!

So that’s the craziness that’s pervading my life this month. Papers on papers on papers and trying to fit in as much reading as possible! Have any of you guys read East of Eden? What are your thoughts on Steinbeck? Did you get to use contemporary literature in your college experience, or did your school insist on the canon? Let me know in the comments!

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3 responses to “April Insanity!

    • It’s called “Hungry” it’s a dystopian novel about a society that’s eradicated the need for human dependency on food and has medical substitutes for nutrition instead. Although it’s gotten a lot of trolling on goodreads from people who think the premise is a bit silly, I think the idea of eradicating world hunger and its implications is an interesting topic to explore!

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