Reading Day

There are nights when I go on holiday. Last night, the holiday was Reading Day. I discovered that the university library gave me access to a ton of books online. I pulled up an alphabetical list of authors. Opened up some books at random. Some were rather underwhelming, so I moved on. Underwhelming books are a net positive, because they make you appreciate the really good ones more.

Around 11pm or Midnight, I started reading Jane Eyre. I took a break at 5 in the morning, when my eyes were getting rather annoyed. Woke up six hours later, pulled a bowl of muesli and yogurt into bed, and started reading again. My boyfriend sustained me with food throughout the day, and I finished the book by 5pm.

I suppose there should be a caveat here that this is really not how I go about being a math grad student. I swear I don't spend most of my days in bed reading books.

Jane Eyre was very interesting. It was kind of Dickensian, though not as bleak. Jane Eyre is an orphan raised by relatives who hate her, and who send her to a cruel boarding school. So it starts out a bit like David Copperfield. But then in Jane Eyre half her school dies, good people swoop in, and conditions improve. Whereas in David Copperfield things stay bad for a long time. The two books were actually published just 3 years apart.

Also the main character, Jane Eyre, is a strong woman. She stands up for herself and doesn't let anyone toy with her.

(I never used to care whether female characters were strong or not. Weak women in books and movies never used to bother me. But recently I was watching an old Doctor Who episode, and the Doctor's companion was the most pathetic person, ever. She was all like, "Oh no! We're going to die! Hold me, I can't look!" Why would you ever want to travel with someone like that? I mean, would you go camping in the woods with someone who didn't like trees? It's the same thing.)

But back to that point. It's interesting how being a strong woman in 1850 is different from being a strong woman in 2012. At some point Jane is basically invited to move in with the guy she's in love with (erm, "as husband and wife.") And she refuses because it would make her vulnerable to his whim. It's the gender imbalance thing they had back in the day. Nowadays, you move in with your boyfriend in part because it's less of a commitment. It's the thing that independent women do instead of getting married right away. It's interesting how much our very personal decisions are influenced by society, which is full of a bunch of strangers.

So yes. I had rather an unexpectedly literary day today. Tomorrow I shall make up for it by burying myself in facts and figures (and theorems, lemmas, definitions, etc.) But now I'll go to bed at this very reasonable hour of midnight, and perhaps have literary dreams.