Reading Week 2

I had a pretty hard time understanding the Aesthetics and Criticism readings, so I guess I can't write intelligently about them, so I won't even attempt it. I really did enjoy reading chapters 14 and 17 however. I learned, or rather I read about a lot of interesting things that I had never heard of. When we talked about architecture in class, I realized that I need to read things more carefully even, because there were many terms I didn't remember.

I found the architecture chapter particularly fascinating. Whenever my family goes places now, and I'm not driving so I can look at different houses, start spouting off different architectural terms; that's Victorian eclectic, or those are Doric columns. What really surprises me is that my mom knows all of the stuff as well. When I asked her if she knew who painted certain pictures from chapter 14 she knew the answers.

I very much liked the fact that there were pictures of what the book was referring to. I guess I had always thought that the Pantheon looked like the Coliseum, but now that seems completely ridiculous to me, as they are such different structures. Along with the pictures, the diagrams helped me to visualize the general floor plans for the specific architectural eras. It seems like it will be hard for me to tell what time period a specific structure is from unless I have a birds-eye view of it as reference.

I too am curious as to how people such as the Egyptians built such marvelous structures as the pyramids with comparatively primitive resources. I have never been to the pyramids or seen the Parthenon, but just hearing about how intricately designed they are makes me want to go. It's just proof that while machinery helps quite a bit, and speeds the process, it isn't essential to create beauty.