Reading is Sexy

Hugo House offers reading classes. Did you know that? Some people still haven’t heard the good news, so I wanted to make sure. These are classes for all you folks out there who buy paperback classics faster than you can read them, and for the English majors who dorked out on Lit seminars and reading lists. Our reading classes are like the ones you took in college, except no grades, no cruel 30-page research papers and no 8 a.m. meeting times. Just a classroom full of students who, like you, enjoy reading good books.

You could dissect the dark side of the American dream in The Power of Blackness with Chris Harris and get familiar with Hawthorne and Melville. Or find out how a 400-year-old play about murder and power transcends age, gender and society with Dickey Nesenger in Hamlet: The Real Story.

Jeff Encke’s trio on Menippean satire continues...wait a minute—what the heck is Menippean satire? I’ve been writing about it all year, and I just realized I don’t really know. Wikipedia says, “Menippean satire is a term broadly used to refer to prose satires that are rhapsodic in nature, combining many different targets of ridicule into a fragmented satiric narrative similar to a novel.” Okay, now I feel gypped. How did I get an English degree without taking a class in something that sounds as fun as that? Anyway, the final third of Encke’s trio will focus on modern Menippean satire, including readings from Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando,” Samuel Beckett’s “Watt” and a few short stories from Jorge Luis Borges and Donald Barthelme.

And finally, there’s Hot Chicks of 19th and 20th Century Lit. The name says it all, but in case you’re wondering who teacher Rebecca Agiewich considers a hot lit chick, try Eudora Welty, Willa Cather, Flannery O’Connor and Carson McCullers. Can I get some love for Edith Wharton too?

Polish your reading glasses, and click here to sign up.

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