Hello all!
My name is Dalia Currie, I am a second-year student and I’m thinking of pursuing CRWR and SOCI in my remaining years. I enjoy writing and reading, plays and short stories mostly. In my personal time, besides writing, I like to roller-skate at the skatepark, hang out with my cat and dog, watch movies (I watched Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind last night), and play the mobile game HayDay with my boyfriend. Honestly, the physical act of holding a book makes me feel very quaint and calm and like life isn’t a chaotic mess, but sometimes I find the actual task of reading so painfully tedious that my eyes refuse to focus on anything. Nonetheless, I am excited to read some of these pieces (although I think I will only be aiming for an A-). This afternoon I went to the Koerner basement to borrow a copy of Swann’s Way for the first reading. The only English copy they had was this beat-up old version that had been salvaged with duck tape. I had a great time in the library. I had to go to the basement and there were shelves that were moved with cranks! I will probably read more that I know about all the books down there! Something interesting that was discussed during the lecture was how translation is a tricky thing. I found that some of the digital texts I tried at first had very different translations when comparing the to each other. One text was actually shorter and used much more simple language. I wonder if it carries the same meaning that other longer and more difficult-to-read versions do? Because people are all getting the books themselves, I wonder how our versions will vary within the class. Maybe this is something that will be relevant during discussion days, or maybe not. In the lecture when talking about what the romance world is and how it is not actually a geographical place, I started thinking about Montreal and how in a way we are a romance-speaking country. Most Canadians speak some French. I speak some French, enough in fact to read some of Swann’s Way in the original language and pick up on how the translation is wonky, but I have never thought much of the Romance World or Canada’s place in it. I think it’s interesting what the language has to do with an RMST course, my understanding is that it is both nothing and everything. I am looking forward to cracking into the readings and (hopefully) completing my contract.
My question is do you use bookmarks? Do you make or buy them? Or do you just fold over the corner?