My 19th C. Brit Lit class is now reading Hardy’s Return of the Native and Bleak House by Charles Dickens. And I have finally figured out that if I bring my laptop to campus, I can just turn it on and hook up with the wifi. This college thing is kinda cool.

I’m liking both these latest books. It’s odd, we’ve done nothing but read major classics, yet I’d read none of them. Maybe somebody should put a moratorium on new writing until we can all just Milton-ize and get caught up.

My reading list so far:
Emma by Jane Austen
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

Then two more, including a Sherlock Holmes mystery. If you want to catch up on your classics, I can heartily say it’s a great idea, but you might give the Trollope a pass.

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Nobody goes to class on Fridays at USC. For example, this was 19th century British lit on Friday last week.

This is Taper Hall. There are lots of English classes here, and the English department is on the 4th floor. It’s cozy, if you’re nostalgic for soviet-era architecture.

Someone tacked on this modernist detail at one end of the building.
Inspired, maybe. It makes Taper Hall look almost classy, at least at
this end.

Except that someone else stuck this kinda classical guy onto the wall. Someone who was a bit cranky about the modernist white pillars. Who likes their oversize relief naked, male, and emasculated.

One of the hallowed halls of Taper. It bears no, I repeat no, resemblance to an institution for the criminally insane.

For about half a second I actually worried about what to wear. If I’d be the only one taking notes on paper. What I’d say if I got called on. After parking, I wondered how I ended up walking down The Row, the same chilling fraternity/sorority tableau it was way back when. I would like to say that 28 semesters’ absence makes everything different at college, but the changes are minor: there’s a 2-story white colonial in the front yard of my freshman dorm and Sorority Rush is now called Panhellenic Recruitment. Otherwise things are the same ? the bookstore doesn’t have the required reading, a class with a promising syllabus is disappointing, a part-time lecturer falls short, freshmen cause massive hallway traffic jams without realizing there are back stairs. I’m hoping day two will have some surprises ? like maybe the freshmen will begin to learn how to get around.