Ew. Updated

So, that cold was indeed a cold, a nice, lingering, crappy cold with all the aches and coughing and up-all-night that comes with it. I finally think tonight might be my last with nighttime cold medicine (knock on wood), and I've gone most of the day without any doses of cold medicine. I don't feel great, probably not even feeling good...but I'll live. And I couldn't have said that Monday or Tuesday.

But one of the only good things about being sick when you have roommates is that it's a total excuse to close yourself into your room and read fun stuff all weekend. Now, remember, my idea of fun stuff right now involves 1,001 Books that You Must Read Before You Die books, which means most of them are pretty serious, even bordering on "dark" reads. I finished Brave New World -- yes, I totally realize that I should have read this one long ago, but, forgive me for I just haven't had the time -- and it is really some fantastic stuff. I thought it was going to be boring like some social commentary stuff, but it really is like reading Orwell. It was really fun comparing Huxley's false utopia with Orwell's in 1964...especially since my edition of Brave New World included a letter from Huxley to Orwell during what seems to be a lengthy correspondence between the two about just how screwed up the world was and what the root causes of the screw-ups were.

I also started and finished a required book for my Issues in World History class: Grain of Wheat by Ngugi. I don't quite know how to put into words just how fantastic this book is. Ngugi weaves his own criticisms of colonial and non-colonial African governing systems with a beautifully tragic story about how one small rural town deals with the Mau Mau uprising and the more politically driven Independence movements. I completely recognize that I'm a total nerd when it comes to these kind of books, but it really is worth the time to work through the sometimes difficult (Ngugi weaves Swahili and Kikuyu words into his writing...in my opinion, it helps the tone of the book, but some people in my class seem to find it distracting. To each his own.) writing to get to the bottom of some of the issues that still stick around in Kenya and other African nations today. Ngugi lived through it and has a first-hand knowledge of this era of Kenyan history, and he weaves his knowledge, experiences, and social commentary into a beautiful book.

I've also started Middlesex by Jeffrey Euginides. I'm definitely having a little bit more trouble getting into this one. It's written as a memoir of a transexual, who was raised a girl but was chemically and hormonally (just not anatomically) a male. To tell you the truth, this is far from my usual reading fare. I like me some traditional literature and historically related novels. But part of my goal in working through the 1,001 books is to stretch myself. I also picked up Crime and Punishment, Casino Royale, Lady Chatterley's Lover, and Trainspotting this weekend. I know, I'm terrible. But there was totally sales happening at the new Books-A-Million in Blacksburg, and I had a coupon, and they're pretty stocked on the cheap 7.99 editions of some of the books on the list. Once I'm back in York, I'll stick to the ones I can get from the library and/or ask for books/gift cards for Christmas so my goal won't be too much of a financial burden. But it really has become a sort of obsession.