Hermione Granger

I am in a relationship with the libraries here. I simply cannot get enough. Every shelf, every bound work, down to each page, and each line is made up of phrases masterfully woven together and crafted to express the utmost in eloquence of human thought. The power of the written word never ceases to amaze me.

The Bodleian library is the main research library of Oxford. The Bod is a legal depository library, which means it is mandated by law to receive a copy of every book published in the UK. There are almost 21 miles of underground storage that run below Oxford for the Bodlian, so the city is quite literally founded upon academics.

My favorite place to read so far has been the Radcliff camera. It is a completely circular building, of which the top floor opens up into a huge domed ceiling. I love being in this library, though I have been overwhelmed with the obvious fact that there is so much in the world I don’t know.

Sadly there is no way I will ever be able to scratch the surface of the amount of reading I would want to do, but I did vow to myself that from now on I need to stop wasting valuable time watching TV when I could be reading. Thank you Hermione Granger.

On that note, I am barely containing my excitement that many Oxford sites have been used as scenes in Harry Potter. So I’m basically attending Hogwarts…so cool! So far I’ve seen what was used as the Great Hall, the infirmary, a few staircase scenes, and other random snippets of architecture that obviously inspired scenes in Harry Potter.

Don’t worry though family, I am actually studying notable works of literature! My primary tutorial is 19^th century novels (first of which will be on A Tale of Two Cities), and my secondary tutorial will be on Shakespeare (first of which will be a comparative look at Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer’s Night Dream). I haven’t technically started either of these yet, but I have my first primary meeting this Tuesday and my first secondary meeting on the 27^th. The workload is intimidating to say the least, but I am interested in the reading I have done so far, and eager to learn through fire.

Week 1…successful!