First week back to online uni & literature classes📚

[Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] so [Laughter] hi guys welcome back to another weekly vlog um today's monday it's a little bit in the afternoon i think it's about 1 30. i have class in about an hour which is kind of what i've spent most of the morning doing not really filming too much but i'm really excited because it's my first class of the semester of the year and i'm really excited to see how this goes like i mentioned last week i'm pretty um nervous and scared it is all online the zoom thing in the zoom lifestyle is definitely something i haven't been a part of during any of this pandemic so i guess i'm about to get my initiation because it is zoom lectures and stuff but i'm really interested to see what this first one's going to be about it'll probably be a bit shorter just because it's the first one i imagine we'll go over the syllabus and all of that but i'm just really excited to finally have um this week with you guys of my first week and to have school content back because i've missed it so much um so we're gonna see how it goes i'm probably just gonna awkwardly like i'm not gonna like look at this because i can't i can't really look at screens it's um my brain doesn't do well with that so i'm probably just gonna have it off to the side and awkwardly listen but that's okay anyway i wanted to update you guys on a few quick reading updates before i get into class i think i want to make a little something to eat before i jump in because i like i said i don't know how long it's going to be so um i finished part one of childhood boyhood youth i finished childhood i guess the first movement um a couple days ago so i'm gonna be starting boyhood today which i'm really excited about because it's going so well if you're reading this with carolyn and i for the dickens uh versus tolstoy book club definitely let me know how it's going for you i'm adoring it and i'm still reading the furies for the dark academics book club i'm now 127 pages through i think i said good things about this last last vlog but honestly now that i'm a little bit more of the ways through i'm not really like gripped i just don't care i'm finding it kind of hard to keep picking back up because i'm finding it very slow a little bit boring and dry if i'm being honest um nothing's really grabbing my attention or making me care too much about anything and uh all the stuff that's gone down up until the 127 page mark hasn't really been anything that's really captivated me or made me super interested to continue this book which is upsetting so i don't know we've been having construction all all day as well so hi that is my update on the furies um i'll get back to you hopefully before class [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] so [Music] so [Music] all right hi so it's around five o'clock now class is well over um it went all right except for at the beginning um my prof was like okay can you all like turn on your cameras introduce yourselves give us a little icebreaker tell us a little bit about yourself i was like absolutely not there's no way it's not happening so i left i um i zoomed out of the zoom call yeah there was just there's absolutely no way there's like 40 people in that in that class in the call and the whatever and i was like i'm not getting up here and introducing myself um and saying these things to 40 people even though i can clearly speak to thousands of you hello so yeah that was fine um but other than that like when i came back we talked a little bit about um the victorian period a little bit about history today yeah we talked a little bit about just the victorian period and the history and context for this course a little bit which is going to be interesting and then one thing my prof said which is cool that we're going to do in this class which like i haven't really done in any of my other classes is to look at the response to the text like of the day like the public's response the audience's response how that ties into what like readers themselves and not just like the content of the novel or whatever piece of poetry or writing it is but how like how they received the text and what it might have done or accomplished in their own lives because a lot of this course does look at the individual and very famously like basically the whole sentiment of that one line from david copperfield which she actually talked about a little bit um am i to be the hero of my own life so that's kind of like the whole focus but that's just really cool because that's not something i've had the opportunity to do to like study the text impact on the audience of the time which i think is so interesting and it's just like a whole new world because obviously mostly in english classes we look at kind of like our own responses to it and what we can pull out of it but trying to i guess put yourself in someone of the victorian period put yourselves in their shoes and see how they would have reacted to it or what it might have elicited or done for them is so compelling to me so that's just really cool and i think that's gonna be great but yeah that's enough on that i think right now i'm gonna actually sit down and read my first few steps into boyhood which is i guess the second movement of this trilogy and i'm really really excited i know carolyn is absolutely loving it so that is that i know i talked a little bit about the furies but i'm actually also reading still a conjuring of light not impressed at all really not impressed i have a lot of rants i could go on about a conjuring of light but it's fine i'm also reading another really short um novel i guess it's called gachar gotcha and it's by schombag i think um basically it follows a family it's set in india and we basically follow them going from being very poor not having a lot of money to having complete and great success and being very well off and kind of seeing how this changing monetary status affects their family status and their family dynamic and how their lives change when they receive this whole influx of money and a very successful business in their lives and stuff like that so the first book we're going to be reading in class though is jane eyre which i really need to get on so that's my other mission for tonight is to find a good audiobook copy of it because i did order it it's not here yet and i am going to need an audiobook copy beside it anyway so i'm going to see where i can find one i'll let you know what or i guess where i end up listening to it on but um yeah for right now i'm gonna sit down read some of tolstoy and then i will get back to you all right hi so it's a little bit later changed into my pjs it's pretty much just been dark in here all day but maybe tomorrow a little bit of sun will shine our way i don't know i did go for a walk as well but i do have some book mail to show you guys i'm very excited two of these are gifts and then one of them i purchased for school because it's on our syllabus so i guess i'll show you that one first i think this is actually the last novel we're going to be getting to so i won't be reading it really anytime soon but it's jude the obscure by thomas hardy definitely not a very fun or uplifting or happy read at all it's been called one of the saddest and most distressing victorian novels of all time everyone i know who's read it has had like very sad times reading this book um i don't know too much about it other than that we are following jude who is poor and working class and he longs to study at a university but he is rebuffed and trapped in a loveless marriage he falls in love with his unconventional cousin sue and their refusal to marry when free to do so confirms the rejection of and by the world around them um this is hardy's last novel as well it says it's the most controversial um so it should be really interesting to read it was published 1895 and that's all i can tell you about it like i said i don't really know too much about what goes down here other than just knowing that it's an extremely sad time so that is the first one i got i am a little bit running out of room on my shelves so i'm gonna have to do some more rearranging tonight i feel like i rearrange my bookshelves almost every day now but it's lots of fun this next one is actually from carolyn she got me this for christmas and it just arrived and that is oliver twist by charles dickens it's in the beautiful penguin english library edition i absolutely love this color so much it's kind of like the color of my bedroom at home actually i really like this beige but it's also got clocks all over it but this is a dickens that i didn't have and it is on our schedule for the dickens versus tolstoy the great debate book club for 2021 i don't know what month we're reading this in but i'm not sure i know it's 20 21 though so that's really exciting carolyn thank you so much oh my gosh i absolutely adore it i love it that is oliver twist and then this next one is actually from mary from mary among stories she got me volume three of sailor moon um i'm just so excited about this i absolutely adore um sailor moon i'm on volume two right now i haven't started it but um now that i've got volume three as well i'm just so excited to continue this manga and i would really like to pick it back up again soon because i was literally just so happy reading um the first one i read it over the summer and it was just such a good time i absolutely adore this series so much so continuing it this year is definitely a goal so mary thank you so much we both adore sailor moon um and yeah i got her like a sailor moon mug for christmas as well so we just inadvertently gifted each other sailor moon gifts as well but those are the books i got i am actually oh i can actually show you now it's right here this is the other print i don't know did i show you this last time i don't think so this is the other print that i got hopefully you can see it okay by abigail larson um i have like the print board here so i'm gonna try and hang it up again and do a little bit of a better job with the command strips and just see if it doesn't fall down again but um i absolutely adore it so much so i'm gonna hang this up right now and then i might try editing some more of my videos i think i'm gonna try working on my december wrap up and yeah okay so it's around i think eight something right now um but i just finished gaucher culture and it was so good i'll probably talk about it tomorrow but i'm now very sleepy and i want an audiobook to keep me company for the rest of the night so i'm gonna pull out the audio the books of the audiobooks that i have and then i'm gonna pick one so um the first one i have is white noise by don delillo i don't really have a good idea of what this is about but that's the first one i have it does seem like quite the heavy read honestly i know it's a classic or modern classic whatever so that's one um it does sound quite depressing i know it's about consumerism i believe it's quite is it about po is it postmodern i don't really know um and it's about an airborne toxic event and all of this stuff so it sounds quite harrowing honestly but the next one i have is where are you the ocean at the end of the lane by neil gaiman i read a lot of neil gaiman in 2020 i don't know if i'm super interested in reading another one of his right now although this one is quite short and i'll probably be able to finish that one up quite quickly it's about this guy who goes back to his family home for a funeral and the little pond at the end of the road that his best friend when he was little convinced him was an actual ocean so oh i also have the egyptologist in which i wanted to get to this is about an endyptologist surprise surprise um that's all i know but i have that one on audiobook as well um i have the city of brass i've been wanting to read the city of brass for years um lucy got me this like not this christmas but last last christmas so i am quite keen to read it although it is like a 20 hour long audiobook and i'm currently in the middle of a really long audio book so i don't know i don't know but i really really want to read this one um i also have a court of thorns and roses i've been on quite like the romance um kick recently just because like it's just super light easy fun there's not a lot of consequence or you know brain work i need to do and it's honestly just been nice to have when things like aren't going well i don't really want super something super heavy in my life so we have a court of mist and fury did i say gore thrones and roses i don't remember this one might be one that i choose this is a three body problem um very famous sci-fi and i would love to get into it so honestly i'm kind of leaning towards this one right now and was there another one i had in i can't really i don't i don't think so i think those are my choices one two three four five six okay i don't know i don't know okay i think i'm not super feeling [Music] the egyptologist right now um and i also just finished a romance and this one's really long and i kind of forget what happens in the first one so no um [Music] oh my goodness i kind of want to read city of brass or the three body problem oh my gosh okay probably not white noise honestly not right now just because it seems quite heavy and down but out of these three oh my gosh why is it so hard why is it so hard okay i think that's actually got to be a three body problem because it's a nice middle ground and like length and i'm really looking forward to a sci-fi um and i've heard this one's absolutely phenomenal so i think we're gonna go with three body problem oh my goodness i'm excited [Music] hi welcome to tuesday now um i don't know i'm feeling so sad right now just feeling so sad um so i thought a good distraction would be to come on and talk about books um so that's what we're gonna do i'm gonna complain a little bit for a few seconds about conjuring of light by v.e schwab it's the third book in the trilogy right so you feel like she'd close it off with some dramatic huge wonderful complicated intense deep plot and like character development and all this stuff but like it's just so elementary and it feels so juvenile because like the plot structure is literally just like something bad happens and then it's that quite big trope where they're like we must now go on a mini adventure in the middle of this fantasy plot to get an item that we need to combat the bad and then we're gonna go back and defeat the bad with this item um obviously the book's not over so i'm not sure if that's what's gonna happen but like act two where we're at right now that's literally all this book has been it's also a book that i literally feel like i could have skipped eight hours into the audiobook the audiobook i think is 20 hours no 18. i could have skipped eight hours into the book and still been fine in terms of like knowing what's going on knowing the plot understanding everything which is a really bad feeling to have it's like a feeling of wasted time wasted effort and i'm just like why did you waste so much time like the book is way too long for what the plot is and like she could have made it so interesting but like i said the villain is just so underwhelming the plot is so underwhelming and i'm so sad that this is the resolution and the last book that we're getting in this series so yeah pretty disappointed about that but um last night i did manage to finish i think i told you guys yeah because i picked out a new book i finished gastric culture so good it was such a little book but it really like had so much in it that you don't know is really in the book until you get to the ending because like throughout the whole thing until pretty much the last two chapters i was like yeah this was pretty good it's very nicely written very like easy very conversational um the writing isn't anything super complicated it's like a very easy to fall into just everyday kind of writing and i was like this is pretty good i'm enjoying it i'm enjoying the issues that are brought up because it's all about how money um and receiving and getting this whole new influx of cash changes a person and changes families like i was saying but then you get to the end and you realize that like there was so much more there um that the ending on earth is and just like you get to the ending and you're kind of like what like wait a second like you don't think it should end there and then it does and it's really devastating um so then you like just go back and re-evaluate your whole take on the story and what you thought it was about and what's going on in it and it was brilliant i absolutely loved books i do that gasha gosher has an ending that like i'm just such a big fan of those kinds of endings in books so really really good um i do have two other books here um okay which one should we start with maybe let's start with furies i've read a little bit more of this today i'm on page 140. yeah still just not super impressed with it if i'm being honest one thing that i see in almost every single dark academia book that i read and i'm really not a fan of because i find these particular scenes so boring is that in every dark academia book there has to be a party or like a whole number of parties obviously i know we're at college or university or at a school and like that's what happens but like there aren't so many students who don't go to parties who don't engage in parties or who don't have that kind of life but it's just in like every single dark academia novel i read the parties are always the same it's the same kind of dialogue the same kind of things that happen at these um school parties and i'm just like either like insert a party scene or something and do something different with it or just don't do it at all because i i think it's just a personal taste i just really hate reading about scenes where they're at parties because it just feels so mundane so boring i know exactly what's gonna happen and it's just the whole same thing that always happens and the furies had one of those scenes that took quite a while and i'm like well why like i don't know like the secret history has so many if we were villains had so many um ninth house had a lot and i'm just like we just i just don't like them i think it's like i said a personal choice but i just find them so hard to get through because i'm like i literally just don't care but overall in general that is how i'm kind of feeling about this one i can't put my finger on what it is i don't like about this book i'm just not i just don't know it's just i'm not loving it it's not a new favorite for sure i don't i don't know i don't know what it is maybe i'll have an answer but for right now i don't i'm not super loving it honestly however i did start the three body problem how can it be so good when i'm literally 20 pages through i don't know it's just so good like it's so good already i don't know if i said what this is about but it said during the chinese cultural revolution which like i got about 10 pages through this last night on the audiobook and i was like okay wait i think what i want to do first is go and listen to a whole bunch of videos on youtube about historians and different lectures and stuff talking about the cultural revolution because in my mind i really had basically honestly no concept of what it was about or why it happened or who the players were or anything like that that went on in the revolution and then after i'd listened to a whole bunch of these videos i came back and started listening to this again because it like just read a lot easier for me when i knew kind of what the layout of the revolution was and everything like that so basically is it 1966 or 7 when this book begins i think it's 67 yeah there's a secret military base and they establish contact first contact with aliens and the aliens are like wow you guys have a nice looking planet it would be a shame if we came and borrowed it for a little while so then we have earth divide into two factions one who wants to welcome the aliens and one who doesn't want them um in in their planet at all on earth at all so that's kind of what this is about but it's just gonna be like i can already tell it's just gonna be such a mind-blowing wonderfully done sci-fi and i'm so looking forward to reading this one so unfortunately i'm trying to finish ooh what is that unfortunately i'm trying to finish be schwab's book first and the furies i've been listening to like an hour of it every day just so i can get through it um i have to go listen to a little bit more in this now but the three body problem is definitely the one i'm most excited to read i'm really glad i picked it because really really good it's really good that being said i do also need to start jane eyre i think today because um we're talking about it tomorrow in class and i need to have obviously our first lecture was yesterday but i just i've really forgotten like the pace at which they push you to read stuff and like have things read for class and just the whole pace and i guess planning of the course so that's what i'm gonna go do right now um i guess is start jane eyre [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] hi guys welcome to wednesday i just got back from a very nice walk it's a beautiful day today finally there's sun there's sunshine um but right now i'm gonna have some lunch and then i'm gonna have a nap before class because i'm very tired my class is a bit later today and it's a bit of a shorter one so yeah all right hi so it is 3 15 now i'm just about to get into class i made a cup of english breakfast tea with some vanilla soy milk and yeah i'm feeling a little bit just really tired i have a huge headache right now but um my prof doesn't like record lectures so you have to go to them live which apparently i've heard isn't something most people choose to do but there it is um i did actually find this copy of jane eyre on my shelf i completely forgot that i had it this is the really old penguin edition it's almost like unreadable because the text is so small and like i said i did order it another physical copy but it's not here yet i did manage to find an audio book of it so i'm not really sure what we're going to be talking about today in terms of jane eyre and i'm still only um on chapter one i should mention i have read it before so like i'm not like i know what happens in the story it's just the finer details and obviously the writing and a lot of the nitty-gritty stuff that is probably in here that i need to refresh myself on so um i'm okay plot wise and just knowing the basics i just don't really know what we're gonna be talking about and i'm excited to find out i didn't really go into it last week but some of the bad news i received meant that i'm actually only now enrolled in one course which is the one i'm obviously taking right now the 19th century fiction course so this is kind of it for me right now and as it is i'm not sure how it's gonna go um yeah i think i talked mostly about it in last week's vlog it was a very long one um but i am only in one class right now so that's kind of my situation unfortunately um so i'm gonna get into class right now and then i have a whole bunch of things i want to do to try to be a bit more productive today so that is what i'm going to try to do do you like my wait can you see my shirt it says muffins for puffins i just really like it [Music] anyway [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] all right hi so i've just finished class um it's over for the week basically today we actually didn't get to jane here because um my prof took too much time basically just going over it was basically just a history lesson again today so we talked about queen victoria a lot like her life um what kind of a ruler and woman she was what areas of society she supported what areas of like philosophy or feminism or anything like that which she didn't unfortunately and then we talked about like the huge changes in technology architecture construction um travel geography and like obviously the reach and expansion of the british empire during queen victoria's reign which actually really scarily um i didn't know this covered one-fifth of um earth's landmass by the end of her reign um so and then we talked a little bit about poverty and the different classes in victorian society and um really cool things like the great exhibition in the 1850s i think and obviously marbles like the crystal palace and stuff which was so cool and then we finished it off by talking about um victoria's kind of withdrawal from public life after the death of her mother and husband and how people's views changed towards her basically throughout her whole life not really in favor of her as a queen and then at the end as kind of like a grandmotherly figure and stuff like that so that is what we talked about um in class i absolutely love this notebook it's got i think i think these are all alpacas alpacas alpacas all over it um i really like it anyway so class is over definitely now that i've officially finished like one full week of online school i guess which was obviously only two days it feels like a very exhausting experience actually even though like obviously you're at home you're not going anywhere you're sitting at your own desk but it just feels so strange and really exhausting being in this atmosphere it's also very hard to maintain motivation even though i've literally had two classes like you just kind of sit there and get distracted or you look longingly at your couch or you think like what is four steps away from me the kitchen what is in the kitchen snacks it just feels like a constant battle to like really pay attention and listen to the professor and like take notes and like maintain discipline because like you're you're alone you know obviously i'm sure this is experience this is an experience that like so many people um have had but i'm just discovering for myself now how like how much i don't like it how much i don't like online school um which is a shame but obviously i would much prefer to be on campus and in class and in person and doing all the things that um we can't do right now so um yeah unfortunately also i think yesterday they announced that like we're in lockdown right now i think we've we've been in lockdown since december 26th but now um starting tomorrow i think what is it called a state of emergency i think it's called so basically we've been told that um we're not supposed to leave our homes except for essential purposes like the grocery store or to go for exercise so yeah um it honestly doesn't really affect me too much and i'm just mostly just kind of sad and worried for other people and obviously like the situation in general because it is getting quite um bad here and yeah it just kind of feels if like i don't know it just feels so weird and kind of scary do you know what i mean so yeah that's just been something that i mean obviously it's a situation that would induce anxiety and probably pretty much anyone but that's just been um a new thing this week so yeah um i do need to go get groceries tomorrow though so that's what i'm gonna be doing and obviously i'll continue to go for walks because today was just so nice um to get out of the house and like feel the sunshine on my face for a few minutes was literally so nice so anyway i'm going to go do the dishes right now and then i don't know all the vines fell off my bookshelf so maybe i'll fix that but um i might listen to a little bit of the three body problem after because it's just so good i'm loving it so much so i'm really excited to continue that so that is that hi guys so it is friday night now um i think it's almost 10 o'clock and i was just about to get into bed but i thought before i did i would share um some last-minute reading updates close off this vlog and i also have a mini last minute book haul i guess to show you because i got some book mail today where my textbooks came along with just a few other random um books to show you so i thought i would just start with my reading updates okay so the first thing is that i was just reading more of tolstoy i actually finished boyhood because it's like the shortest movement of the trilogy and now i'm into youth which is the longest movement so i'm now 230 pages through but i've just been absolutely like tapping it so much i have so many thoughts so i guess watch out for my vlog i've been debating splitting it up between the three parts and kind of having three vlogs um or maybe just two since boyhood is so short i would kind of make probably boyhood and youth a separate vlog so let me know what you prefer because i have a lot of footage i spent so much time today writing down some thoughts and obviously picking up points for the debate and stuff like that so i'm really really excited about this one definitely let me know like your in-depth thoughts in the comments or um just how you're enjoying this book i'm steadily growing to dislike nikolenka our protagonist just as he develops throughout boyhood and youth i'm finding also that my general enjoyment of this novel is diminishing as we kind of drive further and further away from childhood so i'm also not really enjoying my time in the furies by katie lowe i'm 256 pages through i'm almost done i think i'm going to be finishing this one up in the next few days but i just really hate absolutely every single person in this book which is kind of a little bit of the point but i'm also just not really enjoying it um a lot of it so far has taken really long to kind of get going the end and the few chapters i just read is really good at creating suspense though because there's a mystery in this book there's murder and um it's just it's really making me want to see how it ends and what happens but that's basically the only feeling i really felt from it other than kind of just disgust and disappointment in every single character because there's so much about toxic friendships our four girls that we're following have a really unhealthy relationship with each other and different ones between the four of them i'm kind of looking forward to reading a dark academia that doesn't focus so heavily and so much on the influence that teachers in these positions can have just because i've purely read so many of them at this point that it feels a little bit tedious to me okay that brings me to my first book mail this first one is for school i've been talking about it all week my copy of jane eyre finally arrived it's the really really nice penguin english library edition um i love it it's a lot chunkier than the really old one i have and it's really nice because my eyes can actually see the individual letters on these pages which is good this next one i found in my po box so thank you too much too much yup it's nighttime i'm sleepy thank you so much this came with a really really nice note from lucas and it says emma i'm so glad you've tried brazilian literature i'd love to say more about this great opus i've sent you and give you some pointers though i've run though i ran out of characters in joy from lucas so thank you so much um i have a work from machado chassis on my shelves i have the alienist and other stories which is a fairly recent edition but i've been meaning to try out this one so much i'm so interested in this one this is the posthumous memoirs of bras kubas do i pronounce the s's i think so yeah this sounds this sounds so crazy and like exactly the kind of book i want to read it says the ghost of a decadent and disagreeable aristocrat decides to write his memoir he dedicates it to the worms gnawing at his corpse and in 160 brief chapters tells of his failed romances and half-hearted political ambitions serves up hare brain philosophies and complains and complains with gusto from the depths of his grave i'm just so interested to see what like the memoir is like from a ghost who like dedicates it to the worms gnawing at his corpse i just think it's gonna be so interesting i love this cover as well oh my gosh um i'm so excited i don't know if i should start with this or start with the alienist i don't know now but thank you thank you lucas thank you so so much um i'm incredibly excited to have this on my shelf okay and then this last one i was actually on a walk today um this afternoon and i found this in the little public publishing public library you know those little library boxes um i guess a little community library they're always so cute and nicely decorated but um it's a book i've been meaning to get for a long time and i literally like opened the door of the little box and it was staring me in the face it's brideshead revisited by evelyn wahl i believe is how you pronounce it um i believe this is dark uh kind of a dark academia as well yes honestly i don't know really too much about brides had revisited other than that i think we're following our protagonist as he goes back to the school where he attended with a bunch of his friends and like some stuff happens the back says it's like uh comments upon a time and a society i don't know i'm just really happy to have this copy of it i love it so much as well so yeah this is one of the ones that i always see on lists of like dark academia books or books about schools or um i don't know if it's a tragedy but i always see it on this list of like dark academia stuff so that is the last one i got in this little mini book haul so thank you so much for watching this weekly vlog um i'm interested to see what next week holds because we will be starting jane eyre proper um in class also let me know if you guys prefer more like reading vlog vlog content or more like uni vlog content um and like school and studying and all of that stuff or if you just like the best of both worlds um because i guess that's kind of what this vlog has been but yeah anyway i am going to go to sleep and i will see you guys very soon in my next video um yeah okay ciao good night [Music]

Channel: * e m m i e *

Views: 49,847

Rating: 4.9724245 out of 5

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Id: yl4cmv3uyTo

Length: 45min 24sec (2724 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 17 2021