End of a trimester

School's out for . . . Thanksgiving. So this fall I was back behind the plow for the first time in a while. I think it went well. I really enjoyed teaching the lit classes. The best part was how they reacted to the novels. Well, I probably should have steered a few of them away from Brave New World. It's an important book, but not particularly entertaining to many nineteen year olds. However, several of them really enjoyed it. The students who read The Bell Jar responded to it with enthusiasm. I was surprised at how well it held up. Plath's writing style implants the material into your brain with surgical precision. I loved that book the first time I read it, and I was impressed this time as well. I think what I like about the book is that even though she is writing about a fairly horrific time in her life, it is not a grim book. The contemporary fiction I've been reading lately has an unrelenting sort of heaviness, a gloomy misanthropic view. It turns me off--after it depresses the hell out of me. (A notable exception: The Harrowing, a great, scary but well written book that I devoured.)
As for the other two books. I was so glad to get to read Slaughterhouse 5 again. I laughed out loud at the same time that I felt rage for the war machine that destroyed Dresden. And of course, Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Beautiful. This time I really lingered over the part where they really are "watching God"--something in that passage captures such hope and pathos. And the hilarious riffs of the card players! Once the students got past the dialect I think they appreciated the poetry of the book, and of course the love story.