By: Fatima Ahmed Summer reading as an English major can be a tough field to navigate. Personally, I feel completely unable to read for mere pleasure anymore. That can be a problem. Ironically, the love of books that actually got me to sign up for an English major is slowly waning because of it. Whereas I once used to dive into multiple books a week, nowadays I find it exhausting to read for even an hour a day. The excitement and the curiosity are diminishing. This, of course, scares me to death.

ROFL (Reviewing Our Favourite Literature) is a blog series intended to help you get to know the mysterious faces behind the UBC English Students’ Association. All the execs will share their favourite book or author and this week we are introducing Javier. Like Sir James Augustus Henry Murray—polyglot, philologer, lexicographer, and primary editor of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary—Javier Ibáñez is a human being. Additional accomplishments include serving as President of the English Students’ Association, being a fourth-year student in the English Honours program, and having been named Best Editor of The Garden Statuary, an honour that he just made up. Last summer I decided that I would remedy what…

ROFL (Reviewing Our Favourite Literature) is a blog series intended to help you get to know the mysterious faces behind the UBC English Students’ Association. All the execs will share their favourite book or author and this week we are introducing Sara. She is a second-year undergraduate student in the English Honours program and the social coordinator for the English Students’ Association. “Yeah, so things have fallen apart.” Of the many reasons to read Miriam Toews’s writing, her ability to create characters is the one that I usually quote as I try to cram The Flying Troutmans down the throats of anyone unfortunate enough to be in my vicinity. It is nearly impossible…

ROFL (Reviewing Our Favourite Literature) is a blog series intended to help you get to know the mysterious faces behind the UBC English Students’ Association. All the execs will share their favourite book or author and this week we are introducing our blog manager, Emily. She is a third-year undergraduate student in the Honours English and is also an editor for The Garden Statuary.  In my Grade 12 yearbook the write-ups from the graduating students ranged from Dr. Seuss quotes to heartfelt messages for loved ones. And then there was mine, which went something like this: “Giraffes are so tall because their ancestors ate the top branches of trees. The shorter Giraffes could…

By Fatima Ahmed While doing research for a term paper last week, I discovered that there is no term for the opposite of dramatic irony. Just a reminder, dramatic irony is when the audience knows something that the characters do not. There is no word to describe when the characters know something and do not tell the audience. You see, this bothered me. It seems so obvious. Create a term for when the character doesn’t tell the audience something important, something they should know (to clarify, I’m talking about first person or certain third person narrators). Of course I’m not saying that a character has the obligation to divulge every…

We are pleased to introduce our newest blogger: Callie Hitchcock.  “Hello everyone my name is Callie and I am pleased to be a new blogger for ESA! I am currently undergoing my third year of an English Literature major with a Creative Writing minor, and I have always loved to read and discover new poetry.” Philip Larkin creeps up on you. The Collected Poems sits quietly on your shelf for a while. Its soft beige cover doesn’t shout at you when you go about your day. Sooner or later you become drawn to its seeming simplicity. When you open it up you see short poems and think you are in…

We are happy to introduce our new blogger: Fatima Ahmed Source: Zoitz: a capricious webcomic (http://www.zoitz.com/archives/38)             We’ve all heard the jokes and we’ve all seen the memes. English majors can’t do anything but work at McDonald’s or Starbucks for a living. We are a group of the most uselessly educated students and a dispensable resource. Our thoughts, ideas and input is so extremely worthless that we will all be inevitably unsuccessful. Well, that makes me feel swell. No, it makes me really angry. I don’t like the way people squish their eyebrows in disappointment at me when I tell them what I study. I don’t like how all I…

GREETINGS again, groggy readers. This edition is brought to you by indignation, annoyance, and paralyzing disappointment. Only one of you wrote to me. How dare you not have problems! I know you are all curled into a tight little ball right now, rocking your poor mind out of its mold-filled pickle jars. I’ll say! If this is true and you can provide evidence (polaroids would be perfect, and if not, hire a lithographer), I guess I’ll forgive your negligence. And now I’m stuck talking about feelings. What madness is this? Well as per usual I am ever professional. Enjoy yourselves, or if not, eat moldy pickles. Dear Bloody Mary Snippets,…

GREETINGS bedraggled readers—if you are perusing this column right now you are most likely single, as Valentine’s Day has passed without any possibility that the enchanting secret beloved you have pined for since first year will remember to reply to your Facebook message. You are clicking the refresh button over and over while reading “A Softer World” and “Letters of Note” with at least 20 other tabs open, rather than in a bedroom, coffee shop, or somewhere outdoors hidden cozily beneath an umbrella with that said beloved. Why you wrote that little poem for him or her in thinking he or she will find your line-breaks meaningful, you haven’t the…

Lauren Milden graduated from UBC with a double major in English and French. She completed a law degree at Wolfson College, Cambridge, before joining the London-based political lobbying and media relations company, PLMR, in 2011. We interviewed Lauren in October about her past undergraduate experiences and current work. After double majoring in English and French at UBC, you completed your law degree at Cambridge and are now working in political lobbying and media relations in the U.K. Can you describe a bit about what led you to where you are now? Were there any central motivations? Any defining choices or experiences?   After setting myself up for five potential majors during…

by Rachel Robinson In the wilds of an English degree, it can be frustrating – perhaps even futile – finding time to read things which are not assigned in class. The same could occasionally be said about things which are assigned, but that’s a different story, no pun intended! Nevertheless, if you are feeling the need for some Unstructured Book Appreciation, check out C.S. Lewis’ (Yes, he of Narnia fame) Space Trilogy- especially Perelandra. Perelandra or Voyage to Venus as earlier editions are called, was published a year after Lewis’ Preface to Paradise Lost came out. Those who have studied Milton will see many similarities between the two works. The…