Books & Other Fetish Objects

I remember back when I was growing up and it was a big deal if you had a hard cover book versus a paperback one. Now it seems that hard cover books are in the same category as paperback books. In today’s society, it’s all about books you can read on a Nook or articles that can be found online. In the first paragraph of James Gleick’s article Books and Other Fetish Objects, he describes how he “got a thrill […] when the librarian brought him the first, oldest notebook of Isaac Newton.”  The way he described himself reacting towards this hard copy reading, is the same way people react when they achieve a new reading on their Nook. Personally, I prefer reading things that are in a hard copy form. If I have to read something that is online, I will print it out and read it that way. Otherwise, I get distracted and end up doing everything but reading the article.

The way our society is going, there is always something new being put out on the market. And if not’s something new, there’s something being tweaked and added onto the next big technological device. Pretty soon, libraries and book stores will be a thing of the past. In my hometown, there was a Border’s that was going out of business and selling their entire inventory for dirt cheap prices. I can only imagine it is because of the new reading devices that people can use now. The only way people will have books in their homes is if they have had them for years—before the digital takeover.

Wikkity Wikkity Wack

The first time I started using Wikipedia was in the 9^th grade for my science fair project. I was getting all of this information thinking that it came from a legit source. Unfortunately, when I got my paper back, my teacher had written that my information had to come from 9 different reliable sources, not the same one (back then I didn’t really know the difference). Needless to say, I was a little confused but as the years went by I understood why teachers don’t want their students to use Wikipedia. This article pretty much confirms everything that they ever thought about this website. In the first paragraph of the piece it says that “Ewan MacDonald posted a single sentence about the station at 11 PM, local time; over the next twenty-four hours, the entry was edited more than four hundred times, by dozens of people.”  Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information. Also in the article, it says that “anyone with internet access can create a Wikipedia entry or edit an existing one.” To test out this theory, one time last semester in my English 1102 class, we went to Wikipedia and searched for KSU. We then edited the article to make it say that the university had one of the best football programs in Georgia. Forty-eight hours later, it had been corrected. All this to say, when I research, I use Wikipedia to get me started. Then, once I have some background information, I then go to more reliable databases such as Galileo.

Pygmalion: Act 3

I really enjoyed reading Act 3! It was entertaining and made me laugh as well as do a little thinking. I think that Shaw did a really good job of drawing the reader in with all of the events that took place within a period of six months. In the act, I really enjoyed reading the scene between Mrs. Higgins and her son as well as Colonel Pickering. I thought that this was a classic example of “mothers know best”. Throughout the last few lines of the scene, both Higgins and Pickering were rambling on and on about how Eliza was making such good progress and that she is starting to become a lady with each new lesson. All the while, Mrs. Higgins is saying that they are pretty much excited for the idea of Eliza turning into a lady. In one of her lines, she says “you certainly are a pretty pair of babies, playing with your live doll” (65). Not only did this line make me laugh, but it also made me think a little bit. This metaphor does a great job of putting the excitement of Higgins and Pickering in perspective for me. They truly are like little kids playing with a new toy; trying ever so hard to do what they tell it to do. And that’s exactly what Eliza is doing; acting as a puppet for these two men.  However, these two upper class men can’t see that they are being blinded by their own fantasies. And when Mrs. Higgins tries to tell them this, they just brush her off and leave her alone in her study. This brings forth her outburst at the end of the scene screaming “men! Men!! Men!!” (68).