What Stuck... Scanning, reading, and flipping pages

Wow... I read SO many stories that weren't assigned, I'm thinking I lost a little bit of time to actually DO the assignments... Oh well. I read and scanned through the Odyssey segments ( cause i really loved that poem in high school), and read an excerpt from the speech of one of Penelope's suitors after Odysseus comes home. I also read Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, which I have read before and didnt like in context to the real Odyssey, but I decided to give it another go... and ya.. I still don't like it. It doesn't personify the entire feeling of longing for home that the Odyssey did, instead it had Odysseus wanting to see the world more, even though he was now old.. Anyway.. i wont get into an argument about that. That's for another time. I also read some of the Little Red Riding Hood stories, which included the original Little Red Cap by The Brothers Grimm. I didn't finish all of them however, once i realized how many other stories realted to that topic there were. After more scanning, I came across Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie. (Finding Neverland, Disney's version of Peter Pan, and Hook happen to be a few of my favorite movies of all time..) I haven't read the original play version in the text yet, I'm saving that till i have more time, but I did read and exerpt from The Little White Bird, which goes on to explain why Peter Pan could no longer go home to his mother.. it gave great insight as to why Peter had to stay in Neverland with his band of Lost Boys.

I also read a number of random poems, though the one that sticks in my mind the most, and maybe hit me the deepest (maybe because I'm a woman), is a poem of the same name by Nikki Giovanni. It just struck me as a very liberating poem, one of a woman finding freedom from a seemingly suffocating relationship. Or maybe it touched me because I myself can relate to it, as so can many other women in teh world. I love the ending, it says: she decided to become/a woman/and though he still refused/ to be a man/ she decided it was all/ right.