At the Library Again

In the over two years I've spent at Cornell, I have not studied at the library once. Over the summer, however, I did make use of the library to fill my free time by borrowing a number of books to read for fun. Apologies to more sensitive readers for using the f word.

Unfortunately, my experience was that the Cornell library system did not have every book I searched for. I guess the books I was looking for must have been extremely obscure or wildly unpopular. Probably both.

I got my book recommendations from online lists I stumbled upon and out of the books I managed to hunt down at Olin Library, I didn't hate any of them, but some were definitely better than others. Some of my favorites:

2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke) – I read the whole Odyssey series, but the first book was the best. I enjoyed the whole series, but if you’re not a big science fiction fan and/or don’t have time to read an entire series, at least read the first one. Although the movie shows up on multiple “Most Confusing Movies of All Time” lists (yes, I do spend too much time looking up random stuff on the internet), I didn't think the book was confusing at all.

Discworld, Terry Pratchett – There’s an entire series of Discworld books, and this summer I read the first two, The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. If The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (one of my favorite books) is science fiction humor, the Discworld books are fantasy humor. There was adventure, weird characters in a strange world, and utter ridiculousness.

Our Town, Thornton Wilder – The last play I read was The Importance of Being Earnest, in the spring of my junior year of high school. So it’s been awhile. I really liked the descriptions of life in a small New England town, probably because I did most of my growing up in a small-ish New England town.

Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell – Along with Brave New World and We (Yevgeny Zamyatin), Nineteen Eighty-Four is considered one of the most influential dystopian works. I have not read We, but I ended up liking Nineteen Eighty-Four more than Brave New World. There wasn't any particular glaring failure of Brave New World; I just like Nineteen Eighty-Four better overall.

It was a good summer in terms of books (and overall) and one of the reasons I wrote this post is because I forgot a picture in the last summer reading post I did. What trip to the library is complete without some penguins?

You know you’re a Cornell student when . . .

I’m back on campus for another thrilling year of the ChemE life. To kick things off, here’s how you know you’re a Cornell student:

- any distance less than a mile is “a quick walk”
- it’s perfectly normal to have a clock tower, a dairy, a thirty-foot climbing wall, and a 4,000 acre garden right on campus
- all. the. hills.
- you have a deep distaste of crimson

You know you’re an engineer when . . .
- you can’t remember the last time you were on the arts quad
- you know all your Greek letters but you've never taken a language class
- when you write lab reports, there are more words that spellcheck thinks are spelled incorrectly than words it recognizes
- you either have a prelim every week for ten weeks straight or three prelims in six days twice a semester
- you mentally draw free body diagrams/analyze chemical reactions/explain real life using things you learned in class that didn't seem relevant at the time

You know you’re a ChemE when . . .
- when you say Olin, you always mean Olin Hall, not Olin Library
- two hour recitations and prelims are normal (apparently, other majors don’t have weekly two hour recitations and normal prelims are one and a half hours)
- for fun, you complain about problem sets, non-engineering majors, writing, liberal studies classes, the temperature in Olin, the lines in the only all-you-can-eat dining hall on Central Campus, and the color of the sky, among other things
- you’ve been in Olin past midnight