No, Really, I Am an American

Every time I go to the bookstore in this country, I’m baffled by the fact that their classics section consists of all Penguin Classics.

I did a little research and discovered that Penguin is part of Pearson. For those of you who don’t speak publishing or educational publishing, this company puts out Prentice-Hall material. My respect for Penguin Classics has just gone up by like a lot, I would even put it up there with Norton Criticals.

Chris O may disagree with me on this, but I remember going to IATE and being absolutely taken with Prentice-Hall material. Their representatives alone were a selling point; they didn’t brush us off once they learned we were student teachers, but rather gave us MORE material because of it. Prentice-Hall’s text books seemed superior to McGraw-Hill or Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, two of the other major names out there IIRC.

Definitely respecting the Penguin Classics.

I kinda wish I had taken Dr. Justice’s publishing class now. It’s the ONLY class of hers I didn’t take. (Heck, I even thought about taking Drama a second time if anything to take a class with her again — of course, the independent study worked out just as well, if not better.) I do remember my Prose class with her and her advice about selecting books.

“Check the publishers, then you’ll know the quality.” Take a reputable university’s edition over a publisher you’ve never heard of; if academic, check out the author’s own educational resume, too.

Oxford, Norton, heck even Barnes and Noble turns out some great stuff. (We used a Barnes and Noble edition over the Norton for our reading of Frankenstein — go figure.)

All of this leads to the fact that I blew $25 on books today.

I’m so weak.

I don’t know what’s possessed me lately, but after work these past two nights I’ve had this desire to be social. Tuesday night was for obvious reasons — it was the 4th of July and I have never not celebrated it in the company of friends.

This year’s Fourth was a not so fireworksy, but it was definitely fun. After work, Anna, Phil, and I bought drinks and sat in one of the courtyards by OCAT (where the Nova building is located). We geeked out over comics and conversations that friends have, waiting for Mike to join us. It started to rain, so we relocated to Royal Host. Sitting at the table, eating fries, and laughing together reminded me of nights at Denny’s.

Last night we went to Mike’s and played us some SoulCaliber III — wicked cool game!!

Yeah, these are summer nights.