Category: Uncategorized

This is a chart made using the Google Charts API (https://developers.google.com/chart/) in order to represent how I gathered all the literary resources necessary for our class.  Now I will do a very brief breakdown of each category.

Sakai –  As displayed by the graph, a majority of our class resources were able to be accessed through Sakai.  This is good because Sakai is as we all know free and easy to access.  The only con I can see is that it is Sakai.

Apple iBooks – My accessing of Pierre through this resource was a personal  choice.  It gave me both a free platform and I did not mind reading the quasi pdf version of Pierre.

Online Resources  – Similarly as displayed by the graph this was another hot resource bed for our class.  It likewise has the similar pro of being free and and easy to access.

YouTube – Another personal choice as again it was free and in my opinion was an improvement to the audible app (I found it to be a bit buggy as far as going forward and back).

Netflix – Possibly my favorite media platform and who doesn’t have Netflix (or some way to get on an account) which basically negates any price negative.

Steam – This platform was only used to play Life is Strange, although in it’s short tenure it has easily elevated itself to my least favorite.  I originally thought price would be my issue with this but I actually ended up getting everything we need for under $5.  My main issue comes with when I play the game, as my laptop sounds like it is going to explode when it tries to run the game.

 

To all the mathematicians out there, like myself, who dread taking that english course for a Gen Ed requirement, here’s some advice to get you through it pain free: Take Literature in the Digital Age! The name of the course itself alludes to the fact that less reading will be required than your average english course at UNC. There’s no shame in admitting that most of us mathematics/statistics majors struggle to enjoy reading a book, touching a book, or even looking at a book. Well what if I told you can succeed in this course without encountering a book once in an extremely cost effective manner (I know how important that is to all college students). And as a stat major myself, what better way to guide a bunch of number fanatics through acquiring the texts for this course with an Excel spreadsheet. Hope you all enjoy exploring literature in the digital age as much as I did!

Excel Guide

questus libris

My project is a presentation I would give to students considering taking English 137! The link is above, enjoy!

 

As you can likely plainly see, my submission for this assignment is done in a format that replicates a podcast. One can easily tell this not a scripted podcast, for there are a lot of awkward pauses and the words do not flow as they would if read from a script. This is one of those casual podcasts where I discuss whatever I feel is important at the time, and tonight, I felt that explaining the mediums through which I consumed the literature of this course was of such importance.

Questus Reviewus

Russian Doll

Russian Doll is a new tv series which debuted on Netflix.  The premise is that a woman named Nadia repeatedly dies after attending her birthday party, and eventually she realizes that someone else is dying with her, and they begin trying to escape this reality together by stopping the loop.  Nadia is a bumbling, grouchy, macho woman.  Many of her deaths are feeble attempts at slapstick comedy, as the writers of this series decided it would be funny to show her snap her neck about seven times due to her inability to walk down stairs, which somewhat clashed with the fact that they were attempting to write her as some sort of badass female character.  Unfortunately this was also undermined by the fact that she fell into the same drain two or three different times because she was dumb and clumsy.  Her constant inability to walk somewhere simple without dying, combined with her brusque personality, and possibly some bad acting make her a very annoying and irritating character.  Many of the characters in the series seem to either be poorly written or acted out, as their personalities change greatly in each episode with little clear progression.  For example, Nadia acts rude for the first two episodes, and then acts very odd and standoffish until the end of the series.  Alan on the other hand (the man she is stuck in the loop with), seems very odd when in scenes with his girlfriend, very awkward around people he doesn’t know, and cool around people he is familiar with.  This happens in nearly every episode until the last two, where he begins acting confident out of nowhere.  This character development seems very choppy to me, and made for an unenjoyable viewing experience.  While the rest of the characters were oddly developed, that is to be expected as they are meant to be slightly effected by our protagonists strange behavior each time they go through the loop.   Overall, the idea behind the series seems like it could be fun, and similar movies such as Live, Die, Repeat with Tom Cruise, and Groundhog Day with Bill Murray carried them out much better than this TV series did, which is unfortunate.  I would think that with the ability and time to flesh out more of the story, a TV series would do a much better job portraying these ideas, not worse.  I believe that the acting and writing killed this TV series for me, but I could understand why someone else may find appeal in a series such as this.

https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aqh6J9LCkl6WkRFsjO4xVDO2EGMT

Follow my journey on how I got my books and what I did in ENGL 137!

#QuestusLibris #Netflix #Steam #Cheap

Click this url to view my treasure map of sources: https://edu.glogster.com/glog/questus-reviewus/3aheqi134p0

 

My English 137 Guide for a Broke College Student

Step 1: Channel inner desire to acquire required texts for the class for as cheap as possible

Step 2: Check Sakai or the class webpage (http://exlibris.web.unc.edu/assigments/) for to links to required short readings for free (“Books and Scrolls,” “Nature of the Book,” “The Printing Press as an Agent of Change,” “The Man of the Crowd,” “Visual Culture and the Word in Poe’s The Man of the Crowd,” “Listening to Audiobooks is Just as Good as Reading,” “The Rise of Speed Listening,” “Games Telling Stories: A Brief Note on Games and Narratives). In addition, videos can be found in the calendar tab on the main website for the class next to the date it needs to be watched by (“The Eagleman Stag,” “Snooze Time,” “Cargo”).

Step 3: Check Project Gutenberg for a free downloadable copy of Herman Melville’s Pierre; Or the Ambiguities

Step 4: Find Night Circus audiobook for free on YouTube

Step 5: Use your own Netflix account (or your ex’s Netflix account, your choice) to watch The OA and Russian Doll

Step 6: Find link to Stranger than Fiction screenplay for free on Sakai

Step 7: Listen to S-Town podcast on the podcast app on iPhones

Step 8: Find someone you know who already owns a download of Life is Strange or buy it off steam when it is on sale

Step 9: Enjoy the course!