Reading Review Week

So far this semester I have liked Narayan's Ramayana the best. I liked it most because it had Thataka's story in it, which is what gave me part of the idea for my storybook. I wasn't as in to Buck's version because it was really hard for me to get past that I'd already read everything that was happening in Narayan's version (except for a few different and expanded stories). I liked that it expanded on things like the beginning and Rama exhiling Sita, but I think that maybe the parts that really overlap should be excluded from the reading. I really liked that we got to read from the myth/folklore untextbook (though I don't have any reading diaries over this because I was having a rough time and didn't do any of my homework for a while, though I did do the readings eventually). I think it would be good to have more of these stories in place of the reading you would take out if you eliminated some of Buck's version or only read Buck's version instead of starting off with Narayan's version (then have a story in the untextbook that told Thataka's story since Buck doesn't tell it).

For the notetaking part, I've found that it works best for me to just pick my favorite part of the reading and do an in depth breakdown of it in my notes so that I can then use that story in my storytelling; so I do use my reading diary in connection with my storytelling assignment. The reading diaries do help me to recall what's been going on in that time period, except when I haven't done them because life was falling apart.

So far, I haven't done much extra reading for my storybook except a few wikipedia pages. I do read a lot for pleasure - it's one of my favorite things to do actually - but this reading is not really what I like to do usually, though it's not boring or anything. This class doesn't really overlap with any of my other classes because classes like literature and history I took ages ago since I'm about to graduate. All that I have left are psychology courses and one biology course.

The only suggestion I have about improving the reading in this class is what I mentioned in the first paragraph: that I'd like the idea of having only one or the other of the Ramayana stories (preferably keep Buck's because it's more detailed) and then having short excerpts from the other book that detail stories that aren't included in the one you keep (like Thataka's story if you kept Buck). In place of this loss, it would be nice to have a lot more required reading in the other things about India that come from the untextbook. I would recommend to new students that they always do the reading at least two days before the post is due (or at least start it) because fifty pages is a lot to cover in one evening of work.

Here is an image from an earlier post. I picked this image because I really enjoyed the story behind it and I liked writing about it in my reading diary and I thought this image really embodied that story well.

Image Source: Wikipedia. Vishnu on Garuda.