The WHCC summer schedule is up and I've been reviewing it with an eye towards knocking off two more General Education Requirements. Can you guess what hideous phenomena has cropped up again? That's right. Of the six classes in the entire schedule which would fulfill the GERs I need, three are scheduled for Mondays and Wednesdays at 7pm, and three are scheduled too early for me to get to. Summer semester is short so I had intended getting two of the big survey courses out of the way with minimal pain. Too bad for me.
For my main course I think I'll have to abjure Cultural Anthropology and Intro to Sociology, both of which sound quite interesting, in favor of the less promising Intro to Philosophy. I took philosophy in high school and found it so unspeakably boring that I cut class constantly to go sing with the choir instead. I worry that it'll be dry this time around as well, but after all, it's only eight weeks of torment instead of eighteen should the dryness persist.
I'd considered taking a second class in something non-GER related. Unfortunately, there's not one class that would fit both my schedule and my interests. Crumbs. Maybe I'll take up an improving course of reading, a la Beth, and fill in some of those pesky gaps in my education.
But not the classics. I've read a ton of the classics, and mostly they bored the pants off me, which is not necessarily because I have the brain of a mollusk. You can have William Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, D.H. Lawrence, Henry James, Thomas Hardy; I have read at least one complete novel by all of them and I will never willingly read another. I can't for the life of me enjoy Tom Robbins, John Irving, Philip Roth, or Frank McCourt. Spare me anyone who lovingly details the oppressive privileged lives of the middle classes or revels in depictions of degradation and squalor. Do you remember the putative 100 Best Novels of the 20th century? There isn't anything on that list that I haven't read but want to with the sole exception of Edith Wharton. However, since I loathe James I'm not sure Wharton's going to be up my alley, either.
What I'd like to read is some of the classic science fiction novels I've never gotten around to by Pohl, Kornbluth, early Heinlein, Brown, Blish, Zelazny, anything from the 40's to the 60's. This is not to say I've never read the above authors, but mostly I've read their short stories. I've read extensively in the sf canon from the 70's onwards, including loads of feminist science fiction by preference. Jessie recently posted her summer reading list of essential feminist sf to which I would add Suzy McKee Charnas to complete the old school writers, and Maureen McHugh, Raphael Carter, Pat Cadigan, and Stephen Leigh as representational of 90's feminist sf. She mentioned all my other favorites.
So maybe I'll do that. Maybe I'll go to the library and the used bookstores and find some of those great old books. It'll be fun to spend a summer with my head in another time and place when the men were tough, the rocketships were bulky, and space was full of advertising.
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