Land of Lakes and Volcanoes

first CSA dinner

2012-01-27T21:13:00.001-05:00

Tonight I made my first dinner from my Horse & Buggy produce share. I made wheatberries* with chicken broth, sauteed onions and mushrooms. This was accompanied by roasted butternut squash with a maple syrup and orange juice glaze. I used some of the mixed Asian greens and greenhouse cucumbers to make a salad. Upon this salad I poured homemade balsamic vinaigrette sweetened with some of the leftover glaze. The maple syrup was a gift Nj brought me back from Vermont.

For dessert, I used some of the frozen blackberries to make a kiwi blackberry salad with homemade whipped cream. The whipped cream had just a tiny bit of hazelnut syrup which imbued it with a slight and delicious nuttiness.

* Items in bold are from the CSA.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

2012-01-14T21:22:00.000-05:00

★★★
I listened to this on my drive down to SC. My friend Rob loves the book and wanted to know why I only gave it 3 stars - what did I not like about it. It wasn't that I didn't like it, I just don't believe in grade inflation.

It worked as a book to listen to in the car because I was exhausted and Alice has scarcely experienced one thing before something else strange has befallen her. It's not a long book (only 112 pages according to Amazon), but there's a lot of adventure.

I think had I read it the first time when I was a kid, I would have liked it more, but as an adult, the shallow plot didn't offer much more than amusement. That's not a bad thing, as it is, in fact, written for children. I imagine that someday I'll read it to my kids and they'll love it.

We're not getting any better at losing people.

2012-01-10T20:27:00.001-05:00

My grandmother is in the hospital in SC. Until today, I think we all had a lot of faith in the idea that she'd get better. I saw her yesterday and she seemed to be improving. Now they think she is going to die. She's drowning in fluid in her lungs. Her kidneys aren't working. She has some kind of strange anemia with no apparent cause. I think she's really tired. I would be.

I'm scared. I'm scared she's going to die and everyone is going to be really sad, and there will be another big hole in our family. I'm worried about my dad too. In the past 6 months, his best friend died, his chihuahua (who was about 20 years old) died, and now his mom is probably going to die. I'm scared he's going to be so depressed that he's going to give up and die too, and I need him.

They don't know how long she's going to last. Her breathing is rapid and shallow, and my dad doesn't want to leave her. My nephew has school tomorrow and this could go on all night, so my sister wants to go home. She doesn't want my dad to stay overnight because he's not in the best health himself. He's in a wheelchair and he gets tired easily. Sitting in a hospital room all night would probably be bad for him. My sister and I were texting and I stopped answering because I'm not sure what she should do either.

Twice a Fool

2012-01-01T12:58:00.002-05:00

100 Best Novels Board's List

Ulysses by James Joyce
~~The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald~~
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
1984 by George Orwell
I, Claudius by Robert Graves
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Native Son by Richard Wright
Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow
Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara
U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
The Ambassadors by Henry James
Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Studs Lonigan Trilogy by James T. Farrell
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
~~Animal Farm by George Orwell~~
The Golden Bowl by Henry James
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
Howards End by E.M. Forster
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Deliverance by James Dickey
A Dance to the Music of Time (series) by Anthony Powell
Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley
~~The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway~~
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence
Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
~~Light in August by William Faulkner~~
~~On the Road by Jack Kerouac~~
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
From Here to Eternity by James Jones
The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell
A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
A Room With a View by E.M. Forster
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul
The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
~~Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow~~
The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
Loving by Henry Green
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell
Ironweed by William Kennedy
The Magus by John Fowles
~~Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys~~
Under the Net by Iris Murdoch
Sophie's Choice by William Styron
The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
~~The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain~~
The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy
The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

The Reader's List

Atlas Shrugged By Ayn Rand
The Fountainhead By Ayn Rand
Battlefield Earth By L. Ron Hubbard
Lord Of The Rings By J.R.R. Tolkien
To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee
1984 By George Orwell
Anthem By Ayn Rand
We The Living By Ayn Rand
Mission Earth By L. Ron Hubbard
Fear By L. Ron Hubbard
Ulysses By James Joyce
Catch-22 By Joseph Heller
~~The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald~~
Dune By Frank Herbert
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress By Robert Heinlein
Stranger In A Strange Land By Robert Heinlein
A Town Like Alice By Nevil Shute
Brave New World By Aldous Huxley
~~The Catcher In The Rye By J.D. Salinger~~
~~Animal Farm By George Orwell~~
Gravity's Rainbow By Thomas Pynchon
The Grapes Of Wrath By John Steinbeck
Slaughterhouse Five By Kurt Vonnegut
Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitchell
Lord Of The Flies By William Golding
Shane By Jack Schaefer
Trustee From The Toolroom By Nevil Shute
~~A Prayer For Owen Meany By John Irving~~
The Stand By Stephen King
The French Lieutenant's Woman By John Fowles
~~Beloved By Toni Morrison~~
The Worm Ouroboros By E.R. Eddison
The Sound And The Fury By William Faulkner
Lolita By Vladimir Nabokov
Moonheart By Charles De Lint
Absalom, Absalom! By William Faulkner
Of Human Bondage By W. Somerset Maugham
~~Wise Blood By Flannery O'connor~~
Under The Volcano By Malcolm Lowry
Fifth Business By Robertson Davies
Someplace To Be Flying By Charles De Lint
~~On The Road By Jack Kerouac~~
Heart Of Darkness By Joseph Conrad
Yarrow By Charles De Lint
At The Mountains Of Madness By H.P. Lovecraft
One Lonely Night By Mickey Spillane
Memory And Dream By Charles De Lint
To The Lighthouse By Virginia Woolf
The Moviegoer By Walker Percy
Trader By Charles De Lint
~~The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy By Douglas Adams~~
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter By Carson Mccullers
~~The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood~~
Blood Meridian By Cormac Mccarthy
A Clockwork Orange By Anthony Burgess
On The Beach By Nevil Shute
A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man By James Joyce
Greenmantle By Charles De Lint
Ender's Game By Orson Scott Card
The Little Country By Charles De Lint
The Recognitions By William Gaddis
Starship Troopers By Robert Heinlein
~~The Sun Also Rises By Ernest Hemingway~~
~~The World According To Garp By John Irving~~
Something Wicked This Way Comes By Ray Bradbury
The Haunting Of Hill House By Shirley Jackson
As I Lay Dying By William Faulkner
Tropic Of Cancer By Henry Miller
Invisible Man By Ralph Ellison
The Wood Wife By Terri Windling
The Magus By John Fowles
The Door Into Summer By Robert Heinlein
Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance By Robert Pirsig
I, Claudius By Robert Graves
The Call Of The Wild By Jack London
At Swim-Two-Birds By Flann O'brien
~~Farenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury~~
Arrowsmith By Sinclair Lewis
~~Watership Down By Richard Adams~~
Naked Lunch By William S. Burroughs
The Hunt For Red October By Tom Clancy
Guilty Pleasures By Laurell K. Hamilton
The Puppet Masters By Robert Heinlein
It By Stephen King
V. By Thomas Pynchon
Double Star By Robert Heinlein
Citizen Of The Galaxy By Robert Heinlein
Brideshead Revisited By Evelyn Waugh
~~Light In August By William Faulkner~~
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest By Ken Kesey
A Farewell To Arms By Ernest Hemingway
The Sheltering Sky By Paul Bowles
Sometimes A Great Notion By Ken Kesey
My Antonia By Willa Cather
Mulengro By Charles De Lint
Suttree By Cormac Mccarthy
Mythago Wood By Robert Holdstock
Illusions By Richard Bach
The Cunning Man By Robertson Davies
The Satanic Verses By Salman Rushdie

Radcliffe's List

~~The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald~~
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Color Purple by ALice Walker
Ulysses by James Joyce
~~Beloved by Toni Morrison~~
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
1984 by George Orwell
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
~~Charlotte's Web by E.B. White~~
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Brave New World by Aldus Huxley
~~Animal Farm by George Orwell~~
~~The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway~~
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
~~Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston~~
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Native Son by Richard Wright
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
~~For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway~~
~~On the Road by Jack Kerouac~~
~~The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway~~
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
~~The World According to Garp by John Irving~~
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
A Room with a Veiw by E.M. Forster
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
~~Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf~~
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
~~The Awakening by Kate Chopin~~
My Antonia by Willa Cather
Howards End by E.M. Forster
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Jazz by Toni Morrison
Sophie's Choice by William Styron
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Conner
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
~~Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut~~
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Light in August by William Faulkner
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
~~Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe~~
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
~~A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams~~
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
The Autobiography of Alice B. Tokias by Gertrude Stein
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
~~Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys~~
White Noise by Don DeLillo
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
The Bostonians by Henry James
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Will Cather
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

I'm an Idiot

2012-01-01T12:19:00.002-05:00

1001 Books to read before I die. Frack.

2000s
~~Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro~~
Saturday – Ian McEwan
On Beauty – Zadie Smith
Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee
Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
The Sea – John Banville
The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
The Master – Colm Tóibín
Vanishing Point – David Markson
The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd
Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
The Colour – Rose Tremain
Thursbitch – Alan Garner
The Light of Day – Graham Swift
What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
~~The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon~~
Islands – Dan Sleigh
Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
The Double – José Saramago
Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
Unless – Carol Shields
Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor
That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern
In the Forest – Edna O’Brien
Shroud – John Banville
~~Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides~~
Youth – J.M. Coetzee
Dead Air – Iain Banks
Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon
The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi
Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald
Platform – Michael Houellebecq
Schooling – Heather McGowan
~~Atonement – Ian McEwan~~
The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini
The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
Fury – Salman Rushdie
At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill
Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa
An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma
The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho
Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare
White Teeth – Zadie Smith
The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda
Under the Skin – Michel Faber
Ignorance – Milan Kundera
Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace
Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy
City of God – E.L. Doctorow
How the Dead Live – Will Self
The Human Stain – Philip Roth
The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande
Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard
House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates
Pastoralia – George Saunders
1900s
Timbuktu – Paul Auster
The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra
Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakuli?
Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy
Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb
The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie
Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee
Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq
Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks
All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom
The Talk of the Town – Ardal O’Hanlon
Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis
Another World – Pat Barker
The Hours – Michael Cunningham
Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho
Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
~~Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden~~
Great Apes – Will Self
Enduring Love – Ian McEwan
Underworld – Don DeLillo
Jack Maggs – Peter Carey
The Life of Insects – Victor Pelevin
American Pastoral – Philip Roth
The Untouchable – John Banville
Silk – Alessandro Baricco
Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard
Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker
Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
The Ghost Road – Pat Barker
Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse
Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
The Clay Machine-Gun – Victor Pelevin
Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro
Morvern Callar – Alan Warner
The Information – Martin Amis
The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie
Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth
The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald
~~The Reader – Bernhard Schlink~~
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
Love’s Work – Gillian Rose
The End of the Story – Lydia Davis
Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster
The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst
Whatever – Michel Houellebecq
Land – Park Kyong-ni
The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
Pereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio Tabucchi
City Sister Silver – Jàchym Topol
How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor
Disappearance – David Dabydeen
The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm
The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
Looking for the Possible Dance – A.L. Kennedy
Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
Complicity – Iain Banks
On Love – Alain de Botton
What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd
The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood
The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Özdamar
The Discovery of Heaven – Harry Mulisch
A Heart So White – Javier Marias
Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker
Indigo – Marina Warner
The Crow Road – Iain Banks
Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson
Jazz – Toni Morrison
The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg
The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe
Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates
The Heather Blazing – Colm Tóibín
Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
Black Dogs – Ian McEwan
Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud
Arcadia – Jim Crace
Wild Swans – Jung Chang
American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis
Mao II – Don DeLillo
Typical – Padgett Powell
Regeneration – Pat Barker
Downriver – Iain Sinclair
Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres
Wise Children – Angela Carter
Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard
Amongst Women – John McGahern
Vineland – Thomas Pynchon
Vertigo – W.G. Sebald
Stone Junction – Jim Dodge
The Music of Chance – Paul Auster
The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham
Like Life – Lorrie Moore
Possession – A.S. Byatt
The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi
The Midnight Examiner – William Kotzwinkle
A Disaffection – James Kelman
Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
Moon Palace – Paul Auster
Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow
Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker
The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway
The History of the Siege of Lisbon – José Saramago
Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
~~A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving~~
London Fields – Martin Amis
The Book of Evidence – John Banville
Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood
Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
The Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund White
Wittgenstein’s Mistress – David Markson
The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst
Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
Libra – Don DeLillo
The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga
The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams
The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble
The Afternoon of a Writer – Peter Handke
The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy
The Passion – Jeanette Winterson
The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind
The Child in Time – Ian McEwan
Cigarettes – Harry Mathews
The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
World’s End – T. Coraghessan Boyle
Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul
The Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-rae
Beloved – Toni Morrison
Anagrams – Lorrie Moore
Matigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
Marya – Joyce Carol Oates
Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons
The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis
Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt
An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro
Extinction – Thomas Bernhard
Foe – J.M. Coetzee
The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi
Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel
The Parable of the Blind – Gert Hofmann
Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
The Cider House Rules – John Irving
A Maggot – John Fowles
Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
Contact – Carl Sagan
~~The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood~~
Perfume – Patrick Süskind
Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard
White Noise – Don DeLillo
Queer – William Burroughs
Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd
Legend – David Gemmell
Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavi?
The Bus Conductor Hines – James Kelman
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago
The Lover – Marguerite Duras
Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
Blood and Guts in High School – Kathy Acker
Neuromancer – William Gibson
Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis
Shame – Salman Rushdie
Worstward Ho – Samuel Beckett
Fools of Fortune – William Trevor
La Brava – Elmore Leonard
Waterland – Graham Swift
The Life and Times of Michael K – J.M. Coetzee
The Diary of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing
The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek
The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus
If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi
A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro
Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
The Newton Letter – John Banville
On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin
Concrete – Thomas Bernhard
The Names – Don DeLillo
Rabbit is Rich – John Updike
Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray
The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
July’s People – Nadine Gordimer
Summer in Baden-Baden – Leonid Tsypkin
Broken April – Ismail Kadare
Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
Rites of Passage – William Golding
Rituals – Cees Nooteboom
Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
City Primeval – Elmore Leonard
The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera
Smiley’s People – John Le Carré
Shikasta – Doris Lessing
A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul
Burger’s Daughter - Nadine Gordimer
The Safety Net – Heinrich Böll
If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino
~~The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams~~
The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
~~The World According to Garp – John Irving~~
Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec
The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch
The Singapore Grip – J.G. Farrell
Yes – Thomas Bernhard
The Virgin in the Garden – A.S. Byatt
In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee
The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter
Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin
The Shining – Stephen King
Dispatches – Michael Herr
Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector
The Left-Handed Woman – Peter Handke
Ratner’s Star – Don DeLillo
The Public Burning – Robert Coover
Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
Cutter and Bone – Newton Thornburg
Amateurs – Donald Barthelme
Patterns of Childhood – Christa Wolf
Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García Márquez
W, or the Memory of Childhood – Georges Perec
A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell
Grimus – Salman Rushdie
The Dead Father – Donald Barthelme
Fateless – Imre Kertész
Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan
High Rise – J.G. Ballard
Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow
Dead Babies – Martin Amis
Correction – Thomas Bernhard
~~Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow~~
The Fan Man – William Kotzwinkle
Dusklands – J.M. Coetzee
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich Böll
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré
~~Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.~~
Fear of Flying – Erica Jong
A Question of Power – Bessie Head
The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell
The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino
Crash – J.G. Ballard
The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene
Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
The Black Prince – Iris Murdoch
Sula – Toni Morrison
Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
The Breast – Philip Roth
The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
G – John Berger
Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson
In A Free State – V.S. Naipaul
The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
Group Portrait With Lady – Heinrich Böll
The Wild Boys – William Burroughs
Rabbit Redux – John Updike
The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima
The Driver’s Seat – Muriel Spark
The Ogre – Michael Tournier
~~The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison~~
Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett
Troubles – J.G. Farrell
Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson
The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard
Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado
Pricksongs and Descants – Robert Coover
Blind Man With a Pistol – Chester Hines
Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles
The Green Man – Kingsley Amis
Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth
The Godfather – Mario Puzo
Ada – Vladimir Nabokov
Them – Joyce Carol Oates
A Void/Avoid – Georges Perec
Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen
Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal
The Nice and the Good – Iris Murdoch
Belle du Seigneur – Albert Cohen
Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm Lowry
The German Lesson – Siegfried Lenz
In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan
A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines
The Quest for Christa T. – Christa Wolf
Chocky – John Wyndham
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
The Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas Llosa
~~One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez~~
The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
Pilgrimage – Dorothy Richardson
The Joke – Milan Kundera
No Laughing Matter – Angus Wilson
The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien
A Man Asleep – Georges Perec
The Birds Fall Down – Rebecca West
Trawl – B.S. Johnson
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
The Magus – John Fowles
The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras
~~Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys~~
Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth
The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
Things – Georges Perec
The River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
August is a Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor
The Passion According to G.H. – Clarice Lispector
Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey
Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald Bartholme
Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson
Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe
The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite Duras
Herzog – Saul Bellow
V. – Thomas Pynchon
~~Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut~~
The Graduate – Charles Webb
Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré
The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
The Collector – John Fowles
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard
The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges
Girl With Green Eyes – Edna O’Brien
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani
Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch
Faces in the Water – Janet Frame
Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’Connor
How It Is – Samuel Beckett
Our Ancestors – Italo Calvino
The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Rabbit, Run – John Updike
Promise at Dawn – Romain Gary
Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee
Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse
Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
The Tin Drum – Günter Grass
Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes
Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow
Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll
Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo Oe
A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
The Bitter Glass – Eilís Dillon
Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe
Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico
Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan
The End of the Road – John Barth
The Once and Future King – T.H. White
The Bell – Iris Murdoch
Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet
Voss – Patrick White
The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham
Blue Noon – Georges Bataille
Homo Faber – Max Frisch
~~On the Road – Jack Kerouac~~
Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov
Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
The Wonderful “O” – James Thurber
Justine – Lawrence Durrell
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon
The Roots of Heaven – Romain Gary
Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
The Floating Opera – John Barth
The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen
The Trusting and the Maimed – James Plunkett
The Quiet American – Graham Greene
The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis
The Recognitions – William Gaddis
The Ragazzi – Pier Paulo Pasolini
Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan
I’m Not Stiller – Max Frisch
Self Condemned – Wyndham Lewis
The Story of O – Pauline Réage
A Ghost at Noon – Alberto Moravia
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley
The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler
The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett
Watt – Samuel Beckett
Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
Junkie – William Burroughs
The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
Casino Royale – Ian Fleming
The Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
~~Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor~~
The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson
Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar
Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett
Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
Foundation – Isaac Asimov
The Opposing Shore – Julien Gracq
~~The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger~~
The Rebel – Albert Camus
Molloy – Samuel Beckett
The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
The Abbot C – Georges Bataille
The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz
The Third Man – Graham Greene
The 13 Clocks – James Thurber
Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake
The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
The Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare Pavese
The Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon Vestdijk
Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge
The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen
Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier
The Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren
Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani
Disobedience – Alberto Moravia
Death Sentence – Maurice Blanchot
The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene
Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
The Victim – Saul Bellow
Exercises in Style – Raymond Queneau
If This Is a Man – Primo Levi
Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino
The Plague – Albert Camus
Back – Henry Green
Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
The Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andri?
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
~~Animal Farm – George Orwell~~
Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
Loving – Henry Green
Arcanum 17 – André Breton
Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi
The Razor’s Edge – William Somerset Maugham
Transit – Anna Seghers
Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges
Dangling Man – Saul Bellow
The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Caught – Henry Green
The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse
Embers – Sandor Marai
Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner
The Outsider – Albert Camus
In Sicily – Elio Vittorini
The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien
The Living and the Dead – Patrick White
Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf
The Hamlet – William Faulkner
Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
~~For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway~~
Native Son – Richard Wright
The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene
The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
Party Going – Henry Green
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien
Coming Up for Air – George Orwell
Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood
Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys
The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend Warner
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson
Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler
Brighton Rock – Graham Greene
U.S.A. – John Dos Passos
Murphy – Samuel Beckett
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
~~Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston~~
The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Years – Virginia Woolf
In Parenthesis – David Jones
The Revenge for Love – Wyndham Lewis
Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen)
To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway
Summer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend Warner
Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley
The Thinking Reed – Rebecca West
Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell
Wild Harbour – Ian MacPherson
Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner
At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
Nightwood – Djuna Barnes
Independent People – Halldór Laxness
Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti
The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy
The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
England Made Me – Graham Greene
Burmese Days – George Orwell
The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers
Threepenny Novel – Bertolt Brecht
Novel With Cocaine – M. Ageyev
~~The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain~~
Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
Call it Sleep – Henry Roth
Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West
Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein
Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain
A Day Off – Storm Jameson
The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
To the North – Elizabeth Bowen
The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth
The Waves – Virginia Woolf
The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
The Apes of God – Wyndham Lewis
Her Privates We – Frederic Manning
Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh
The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
Hebdomeros – Giorgio de Chirico
Passing – Nella Larsen
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett
Living – Henry Green
The Time of Indifference – Alberto Moravia
All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin
The Last September – Elizabeth Bowen
Harriet Hume – Rebecca West
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
Les Enfants Terribles – Jean Cocteau
Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
Story of the Eye – Georges Bataille
Orlando – Virginia Woolf
Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall
The Childermass – Wyndham Lewis
Quartet – Jean Rhys
Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh
Quicksand – Nella Larsen
Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford
Nadja – André Breton
Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust
To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson
Amerika – Franz Kafka
~~The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway~~
Blindness – Henry Green
The Castle – Franz Kafka
The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek
The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence
One, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi Pirandello
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
The Making of Americans – Gertrude Stein
Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos
~~Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf~~
~~The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald~~
The Counterfeiters – André Gide
The Trial – Franz Kafka
The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky
The Professor’s House – Willa Cather
Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
The Green Hat – Michael Arlen
The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet
Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo
Cane – Jean Toomer
Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley
Amok – Stefan Zweig
The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield
The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings
Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf
~~Siddhartha – Herman Hesse~~
The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton
Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair
The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus
Aaron’s Rod – D.H. Lawrence
Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Fox – D.H. Lawrence
Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
Main Street – Sinclair Lewis
Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
Night and Day – Virginia Woolf
Tarr – Wyndham Lewis
The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad
Summer – Edith Wharton
Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen
Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
Under Fire – Henri Barbusse
Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke
The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf
Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham
The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan
Kokoro – Natsume Soseki
Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel
Rosshalde – Herman Hesse
Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell
Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
The Charwoman’s Daughter – James Stephens
Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
Howards End – E.M. Forster
Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel
Three Lives – Gertrude Stein
Martin Eden – Jack London
Strait is the Gate – André Gide
Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells
The Inferno – Henri Barbusse
A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
The Iron Heel – Jack London
The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett
The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
Mother – Maxim Gorky
The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
Young Törless – Robert Musil
The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy
The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann
Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster
Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe
The Golden Bowl – Henry James
The Ambassadors – Henry James
The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers
The Immoralist – André Gide
The Wings of the Dove – Henry James
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
Kim – Rudyard Kipling
Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad
1800s
Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross
The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane
The Awakening – Kate Chopin
The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
What Maisie Knew – Henry James
Fruits of the Earth – André Gide
Dracula – Bram Stoker
Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz
The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross
The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Born in Exile – George Gissing
Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
News from Nowhere – William Morris
New Grub Street – George Gissing
Gösta Berling’s Saga – Selma Lagerlöf
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy
La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola
By the Open Sea – August Strindberg
Hunger – Knut Hamsun
The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson
Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant
Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés
The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg
The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy
She – H. Rider Haggard
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
Germinal – Émile Zola
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant
Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater
Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans
The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant
Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
The House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga
The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert
Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace
Nana – Émile Zola
The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Red Room – August Strindberg
Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
~~Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy~~
Drunkard – Émile Zola
Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev
Daniel Deronda – George Eliot
The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy
The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert
Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov
Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu
The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Erewhon – Samuel Butler
Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev
He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope
Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont
The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola
The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope
Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
~~Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll~~
Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley
Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev
Silas Marner – George Eliot
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev
Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope
The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Max Havelaar – Multatuli
A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov
Adam Bede – George Eliot
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
Hard Times – Charles Dickens
Walden – Henry David Thoreau
Bleak House – Charles Dickens
Villette – Charlotte Brontë
Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe
The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
~~The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne~~
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Shirley – Charlotte Brontë
Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë
Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens
The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol
The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal
The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
The Nose – Nikolay Gogol
Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac
The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
The Red and the Black – Stendhal
The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg
The Albigenses – Charles Robert Maturin
Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Robert Maturin
The Monastery – Sir Walter Scott
Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
Persuasion – Jane Austen
Ormond – Maria Edgeworth
Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott
Emma – Jane Austen
Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Absentee – Maria Edgeworth
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
Elective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Castle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth
1700s
Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin
The Nun – Denis Diderot
Camilla – Fanny Burney
The Monk – M.G. Lewis
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano
The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin
Justine – Marquis de Sade
Vathek – William Beckford
The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade
Cecilia – Fanny Burney
Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Evelina – Fanny Burney
The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett
The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie
A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne
Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith
The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot
Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
Candide – Voltaire
The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox
Amelia – Henry Fielding
Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett
Fanny Hill – John Cleland
Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett
Clarissa – Samuel Richardson
Pamela – Samuel Richardson
Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot
Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift
Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
Roxana – Daniel Defoe
Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood
Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift
Pre-1700
Oroonoko – Aphra Behn
The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette
The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe
Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyly
Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous
The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius
Aithiopika – Heliodorus
Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton
Metamorphoses – Ovid
Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus

2012 Reading Challenges

2012-01-01T12:06:00.001-05:00

First day of the year means new reading challenges! I did better last year than my blog indicates. So my goal for this year is not to read more, but rather to actually follow through with writing about what I read (so writing challenge really?). What's life without something to work toward, even if it's just to be a little happier. Writing makes me happy. I should do more of it. I'm biting off more than I can chew again, but who cares? It's fun.

I love dystopian novels. Like a lot. Reading 5 of these for the Asocial level won't be hard; I probably read 15 (the next level) last year, but didn't write about them. I'm aiming small. 5!

Another one I really enjoyed last year, but didn't write about as much as I should have. I'm signing up for medium again - 2 from each continent. 14 books, here I come!

I don't know a damned thing about World War I really, so I'm going in! I'm going for Dip with 1-3 books. I figure that's about as much as I can handle. If I read more, a miracle!

They don't have a 2012 challenge posted yet, but I really enjoyed this one last year. It made me think about who is writing the books I read, which is something we should all think about more. Are we just reading things that reinforce our own experience of the world? Level 2 last year was 4-6 books, so I'm aiming for that again this year.

I call this challenge from last year my Mulligan. I have 2 unread books on my shelf right now and I really want to read 1Q84, so I think I'm covered.

This was so much fun last year. I'm going with Pastry Chef, 4-8 books!

Challenges that have nothing to do with 2012
I decided that I also want to commit some other long-term goals I've had to bloggery. 1001 Books to read before you die, and the Modern Library Top 100s (as well as the accompany Radcliffe's list) because why the hell not? When I'm sitting around thinking, oh, I have nothing to read, I will have plenty to read. Plenty. Also, I'm an idiot.

Christmas makes me angry.

2011-12-28T20:03:00.001-05:00

This statement is sadly true. I wish it wasn't. I'm not sure what to do about it. My mom is gone, and that makes me furious. My family has little money and we're not really as close as many other families, and that makes me furious, too. And my dad is limited in a way that makes me feel lots of different things.

He hoards things in his bedroom. My sister thinks it's because he has very little that he has control over, so he holds on to what he has. This includes things it doesn't make sense to hoard, like shampoo and conditioner. He won't let my sister take them to the bathroom when his are empty; he makes her buy more.

On Thursday my sister went into his room and saw that he'd taken some Christmas cards from the large pile in the living room. They were lying on his bedside table, neatly stacked, each one signed with my dad's shaky left hand. Much the way swearing is a remaining reflex of speech, his signature, signed in his non-dominant hand, is a vestige of his written skills, an anomaly. Beneath them she found some money and she realized he meant to put the money in the cards as Christmas gifts - we assumed member's of my dad's extended family, but couldn't be sure. He had addressed the envelopes, but the result in each case was his own name, a skipping record repeating the last few words of a song you know by heart.

The next day he pulled my sister into his room and pantomimed the necessity for her to get change for the bills while she was in town. On Christmas Eve, he rolled his wheelchair into the living room, and I helped him put the cards in our stockings because it turned out that the cards were for us. He was confused when I couldn't figure out which envelope went in whose stocking - to him he had labeled them quite clearly.

That night as we emptied our stockings, we opened his cards and each of us got $10 with the exception of Keegan, to whom he had slipped an extra $5. He looked happy that we were happy, grateful for what he could do.

I do appreciate it. That's what Christmas is supposed to be - each of us doing what we can for each other to try to express how much we love each other and appreciate the gift that is knowing the other person. But it's a kind of bittersweet appreciation for my family. What we can do for each other isn't much, and in many ways it's a reduced version of what we've been able to do for each other in the past. Christmas feels horribly incomplete without my mom there, as though we're all still trying to figure out how to talk to each other without her acting as interpreter. We limp along as best we can, our crutch the incredibly deep love we have for each other.

If we have to be dependent upon something to make our family gatherings possible, I'm glad it's love, as that seems to be the one emotion we have for each other that resists whatever tide of dysfunction is currently rising or ebbing. This, oddly, might explain why my mother's absence is as surprising as ever - because our love for her is as present and strong as ever. It's like a thick, heavy rope pulled taut between us and her. The rope is still there, held by some unseen force where she used to be. When we're all together, the tug of her feels the strongest and it's confusing that she isn't actually there, smiling as we open gifts, hugging us with her soft cheek pressing against ours, her baby powder smell filling our noses. How could she not actually be there when her presence is felt so strongly? Death, so fundamental to life, is horribly confusing.

When I started writing this, I wasn't sure why I was so angry. Why anger of all emotions? Sadness would seem to make more sense, or perhaps longing, or loss? And what I come up with is anger - I think because my sadness tinges the happiness I feel when I'm at home, and I resent that. I want to enjoy what we have, not feel sad for what we don't have.

Familius Interruptus

2011-12-14T15:33:00.000-05:00

When my mom died, I felt completely lost and totally incapable of figuring out what to do next, but I had no doubts about what to do first. Oddly enough, I knew I needed a journal and a little black dress. The first was where I was going to write down all my memories about my mom so that I wouldn't lose them. The second was to wear when I gave her eulogy. When times are hard, I like to look awesome. It makes me feel more put together than I really am, and I knew I'd need all the help I could get to make it through the memorial service.

That's neither here nor there. Right after my mom died, I wrote in the journal a lot, as many of the good things as I could remember. And then I put it aside for a while. And now I've picked it up again. Except now I'm writing down all the things I left out before. Things that in the past I've had a hard time talking about, much less committing to paper. But the last time I picked up the journal, I realized there were all these things in there that'd I'd forgotten, as though I put them on paper for safekeeping and I didn't have to hold onto them anymore. They were there in case I needed them, but the burden of carrying them wasn't on me anymore. Shockingly enough, that works for the bad stuff too.

So now I'm writing down all the rest, the hard times, and the moments that I won't put on the internet. I don't want to think about them anymore, and I'm hoping that if I put them on paper, I won't have to think about them anymore. I can put them there for safekeeping.

Baking season has begun!

2011-11-24T22:18:00.000-05:00

Meringues are easy to make - you just need patience and preferably a standing mixer because then it does all the work and you just have to show up at the end to sprinkle in confectioners sugar like fairy dust. So, my recipe:

Ingredients
2 egg whites
1 tsp. vanilla extract (or any other extract)
1/8 tsp. cream of tartar
1/8 tsp. salt
3/4 cup confectioners sugar (1/4 cup more on hand)
Couple handfuls chocolate chips (or nuts or coconut or peppermint)

Here's what you do with them:
1. Separate the egg whites from the yolks fresh from the fridge because cold eggs separate easiest. However, if you start beating the whites right away, they really don't do their best work. Let the whites sit for about 30 minutes to give them time to get to room temperature. Use a metal or glass bowl and be sure that it's as clean as humanly possible. Any traces of oil or grease and you can beat those things to death and they'll never foam the way you want them to.
2. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.
3. Line your baking sheets with parchment paper.
4. No need to combine the dry ingredients, but I do so now's a good time to measure that stuff.
5. Once at room temperature, put the eggs in the standing mixer, turn it aaaalllllllll the way up and then back away.
6. When you get a good frothy foam, add the extract.
7. Once you have soft peaks forming, start adding the sugar, a tablespoon or so at a time. The eggs will start to thicken even more and they should be really glossy. Sometimes mine will get to the point where they are shiny and they're going and going and I have lovely soft peaks, but they just will not form a stiff peak. In those cases, I just add a little more sugar and that tends to do it. Do not be impatient.
8. Remove from the mixer and fold in any add-ins. Be gentle with the egg whites.
9. Spoon one sticky teaspoon sized dollop at a time onto the cookie sheet. I can double this recipe and fit all the cookies onto two large sheets. They all need to go into the oven at once. Meringue won't wait.
10. Cook at 300 for 30 minutes. I like to switch the 2 cookie sheets on the shelves at the 15 minute mark so that one batch doesn't brown under the broiler more than the other.
11. Decrease the heat to 225 and cook for another 30 minutes. At this point, you're drying the center more than you're actually cooking them.
12. Take them out, move them to a cooling rack, and let them cool.
13. Put them in something airtight because otherwise they will wilt and not be as crispy and delicious as you'd like.

A few additional notes:

- When they say don't make these on a humid day, they mean it. They won't ever form good peaks and they will be gooey before you can get them out of the oven and into some kind of container.
- Any combination of extract and add-in is awesome here - go nuts! If you're adding in something with some moisture like nuts or coconut, I like to toast them a little first bc I think it really brings out the flavor and it keeps you from getting little steam pockets in the meringue that make it harder for them to dry. Some things I've tried:
- almond extract and crunched slivered almonds
- pistachio extract with pistachio bits
- plain vanilla
- vanilla extract with chocolate chips (I use the minis.)
- coffee extract with chocolate chips - coffee extract, not coffee.
- coconut extract with coconut
- orange extract with zest - this is one of my favorites.
- peppermint extract with pieces of candy cane - A warning here. If you use the whole tsp of peppermint extract, the peppermint flavor will be STRONG. I prefer using part vanilla extract and part peppermint. It mellows it down a little.

A combination I read about and want to try - rose cardamom. It sounds ridiculously delicious.

Tonight's meringues:

Crappy picture courtesy of iPad. Seriously, my phone takes better pictures.

Alie & Georgia are lushes.

2011-10-29T15:35:00.000-04:00

Last night I hosted an Alie & Georgia cocktail birthday party. We went from 8 to 2 and tried 8 different cocktails. There was also ice cream cake and a hookah bc, well, I throw good parties, and Jeremy deserves nothing less. There would have been a fire pit, but something, something sleet.

The fact that we only got to try 8 means there can be more Alie & Georgia parties in future bc there are so many left! I would have included more pictures, but we were, uh, too distracted to take them.

And now, a review:

Drunken Donuts
Our first cocktail of the evening, I decided to serve these as little shots with a Spudnut garnish bc they are 2 parts alcohol to 1 part coffee. They contain staggering quantities of espresso vodka, coffee liqueur, and chocolate liqueur. A shot was about as much as you need, despite the recommended serving of a mug! of the stuff. This was our first hint that Alie & Georgia must be lushes with liver related super powers. On a side note, these were my first Spudnuts and they were delicious.

Thai Iced Tea
Also served as shots because they are essentially Thai tea infused vodka and evaporated milk. You can add in water if you want something less potent. I would highly recommend it, not because the vodka was too strong (the evaporated milk does wonders here), but bc the tea flavor in the vodka itself is so potent. I'd drink this again, but I don't think it was a big hit overall.

Peanut Butter and Jealous

We fully expected this to be awful bc when Normajean first made it, it tasted a lot like Robitussin. It turns out the peanut butter on the rim of the glass is the key. Do yourself a favor and be generous - you really need a little bit in every sip. Otherwise the sugar content is going to make you vomit long before the alcohol does. Also, this drink comes with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich garnish! (This led to the discovery that Natasha is freaked out by sandwiches. I didn't even know that was a thing. Is that a thing?)

Bloody Bacon and Cheese

Laura was afraid this was going to be disgusting. She could not have been more wrong. It was delicious. A nice spicy take on the Bloody Mary with bacon on the rim!, and a tiny grilled cheese sandwich garnish. These really were amazing. I want all future Bloody Marys to come this way and all future Bloody Marys in my house will be prepared in this fashion. Screw celery. I hate celery. No more celery!

Less is S'mores

Jeremy got to buy a creme brulee torch for these. And I had plastic cocktail cups, so uh, yeah, you can imagine how that went. Well, actually it went better than that. He only melted a hole through one glass. Laura took a drink and noticed the hole that was luckily on the other side of the glass. She brought it back into the kitchen, she and Jeremy and I discussed this at length, and then she took another drink. With the hole not positioned well. This was a moment of hilarious confusion and without even thinking I just stuck my cupped hand in the stream of deliciousness and caught it. Then I drank it.

Note the torching accident. We like to call this Less is S'mores with a side of carcinogens.

Anyway, back to the drink. This was amazing. The glass was rimmed in chocolate syrup and then dipped in smashed up graham crackers. Then there was torched marshmallow on top, so really, how could you go wrong here? You can't, that's how.

Bonus Beverage
At this point in the evening, we left Normajean, Laura, and Jeremy alone in the kitchen for too long, and they came up with this:

Why yes, those are hollowed out marshmallows with some kind of alcohol in them. We were "drinking" these directly off the tray as marshmallows don't actually have much structural integrity as glassware. Go figure. However, I think this was totally in the Alie & Georgia spirit.

Beer Float Cocktail
Make these. Drink them, but take a hint from Kestrel and make it with really good beer. I can't remember what she said this was, but it was so caramely and amazing. A beer float is a truly spectacular idea. Why doesn't more beer come with ice cream in it?

Nuggetini
This drink has a bad reputation and that is stupid because this was ridiculously delicious. I mean seriously, probably my favorite drink of the whole night. It's chocolate milkshake, plus vanilla vodka. I rebaked the nuggets in the oven, which actually improved them like whoa, and the barbecue sauce rim was amazing. Seriously, it sounds gross, but it was terrific. They should start serving these at McDonald's.

Zombie Gut Punch
So... this was terrible, through no fault of Vijay or Morgan. This was just too damned sweet and I think it may have been too late in the evening for so much sugar. Plus, there's no garnish. Anything with that much sugar needs a garnish. It should be a requirement. A valiant attempt at a cocktail, but really, don't drink this. You won't like it.

Tough Warriors?

2011-10-24T22:47:00.001-04:00

No, I did not finish the Tough Mudder. Let's just get that awkward moment over with. However, we did about half of it, and then I couldn't bend my knees without crying. Before that, we engaged in a some outlandish behavior.

We trudged up a ski slope I wouldn't ski down. The hardcore kids were trudging too, so booyah.
We ran across some hay bales. It was really fun.
We jumped into, dunked under, and had to have people help us out of an industrial sized garbage can full of ice water. That was the dumbest thing I've ever done, hands down. I remember coming out the other side of the dunk, seeing someone, and saying, "How do I get out?" but I was talk-ing real-ly slow-ly. I think I froze my brain.
We went over a rope fence, and Nj was first. This was after the ice water and she couldn't really feel her feet, so she was scared to go over. On the other side, there were two shirtless beautiful Crossfitting men, so in a stunning statement of motivation, I said, "No matter what happens Normajean, hot men will catch you!" So she flings her leg over, almost falls, and one of the previously described hotties catches her butt, to which she responds, "Thank you, hot man." We are two totally smooth ladies.
I went down a big slip and slide according to plan, landed in the giant mud puddle on my feet, and then went over the slippery wall one leg at a time, landing in a smaller mud puddle on my head. Then I cackled, a lot, because it was ridiculous.
Then I couldn't walk anymore, so they had to come pick me up in a a golf cart on steroids. And then when I wasn't moving anymore, but I was still soaking wet, I got mild hypothermia. Then Normajean showed up with my clothes and I showered in the emergency outdoor shower that only has 3 walls so that they can basically back the ambulance into it when some skiing idiot really does have hypothermia. Nj and I took turns and held emergency blankets up to form a fourth wall. It was lovely. Especially the moment in which I was dry and put on warm clothes. That particular moment was wonderful.
Finally, we did all of this surrounded by people wearing costumes. Tutus; T-shirts with the cast of It's Always Sunny; people dressed as the prisoners from Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?; star-spangled shorts and suspenders; and my favorite, a girl with a personalized shirt that said, "I immediately regret this decision." That pretty much sums it up.

I'm glad we did it. I'm not sorry we didn't finish - I might have died. We did more than a Warrior Dash, and less than a Tough Mudder, so we've decided that makes us Tough Warriors. Good enough for now.

Stanford believes in the 99%.

2011-10-24T21:47:00.001-04:00

Back in April, Sociological Images posted about some amazing graphics that very nicely show the level of economic inequality there is in the US.

At the time, I glanced over them briefly - it was a lot of stuff I'd seen / read about before, so I didn't get too blown away. However, given the OWS protests, something made me go back and look at the post more carefully, and I was surprised that the first sentence reveals that the source of the data for these images is The Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality. I was fascinated to learn that such a thing exists and it's a resource worth checking out if you want to know more about these issues than you're getting from the mainstream media, or if you need to explain to someone else what these are. Many of the statistics that OWS protestors are citing have either been generated by the center or are from there originally and there are a ton of additional resources there, including, but not limited to:

Quick links to 20 facts everyone should know about poverty and inequality in graphic form bc hey, everyone likes pictures
A couple of quizzes you can take to test your own knowledge about these issues
Viewing or subscribing to Pathways, their free PDF publication
Links to relevant news items
A whule slew of more specific pages on a long list of issues ranging from food chide to implicit bias.

And finally, buried under the Get Involved tab, they essentially address the biggest criticism that I've heard about the OWS movement thus far: no one seems to know what the hell these people really want. The Stanford center's website has two pages addressing two levels of specificity. One is Bold Visions, which is the level at which I think the movement is currently operating, and while it's good to have big goals, I think a lack of specificity is preventing many people from taking them seriously. The other section is Pragmatic Proposals and deals with specific ways these issues could be addressed with personal action and with policy, thereby answering this criticism. It makes me wonder why these specific policies aren't being discussed more and makes me wonder if they will be in future.

If you want to bone up on what these suggestions are before they become news, you can do so with the help of Stanford. I know I'm going to.

How To Be a Girl, sort of

2011-10-20T12:56:00.001-04:00

I almost never used to wear make-up, and I'll admit to being conflicted about using it now. On the one hand, it's fun and makes me feel girly and I like the way it makes me look. Also, it's necessary to any kind of adorable 40s/50s look, of which I'm a fan. On the other hand, I live in fear of getting to the point where I'm more comfortable with my face with makeup than without. The embracing of a kind of artificial, post-war, exaggerated feature beauty brings with it its own set of questions.

However, given all that, I still gain a perverse amount of joy from watching the Jane Marie How to Be a Girl videos. Her attitude is hilarious and I think I like them bc she seems to be saying, "I'm doing this crap and it's fun and if you want to do it too, that's cool, but if you don't, that is also cool. Also, playing with colored eyeshadow is fun and you can put almost anything on your face, and if you work it, people won't think you're crazy." Or maybe I'm just reading into it what I hope she's saying. One of my favorite examples is the eyeshadow trilogy.

And another favorite blog, Jezebel, has a feature called Worth It, in which they endorse totally useful products that they have not received for free and actually use. They recommend all kinds of crap, but a lot of the initial posts were about beauty products and I am super thrilled that I use a whole crap ton of the things they recommend, such as my favorite moisturizer. I'm sure there's some mental in-grouping happening here - Oh, I use the same stuff, so I'm cool like them. But also, having come late to the makeup game, I've tried lots of different products without a lot of youthful brand loyalty. It's nice to know that I've manages to end up using products on my face that don't suck. It's like confirmation that I'm doing this whole thing right.

And, a final note. Jane Marie often mentions her highlighter and how much she loves it, and I always thought that was silly, except then I bought one. Specifically this one:

It's from Smashbox and I bought the pearl one. It's subtle, yet gives me this little glow that is amazing. Even when I'm tired, which is often. It's probably the most expensive single product I've bought to put on my face ever ($32 from Ulta), but it blends really smoothly and doesn't make me look like a clown, so I can safely say that when this one runs out, I'll be buying another.

Swiffer commercials are sexist in a new fun way.

2011-10-14T17:03:00.000-04:00

Swiffer used to have a series of Wet Jet commercials in which a sad mop romantically (and vaguely stalkerishly) pursued a woman who just loves to mop. So, like every other cleaning commercial the person cleaning is a woman, which is pretty standardly sexist, but now we have introduced a weird wooing dynamic into how we choose our cleaning products.

And now the new commercials have personified dirt, mud, dust, etc. as women who are waiting to be picked up by a Swiffer product. They've been left behind y other cleaning products and are now just waiting around in cracks and crevices for love to come find them. Once again, the Swiffer product is the hero, the romantic champion, the alpha male of cleaning products.

It makes me never want to buy another Swiffer product ever again.

You Are Not So Special

2011-10-12T20:23:00.000-04:00

I haven't written much lately and it's been because I've been thinking a lot but about things I didn't really want to share with the internet. I have been thinking about possibility and self-limitation. While definitely not the impetus, there's a You Are Not So Smart article about the Benjamin Franklin Effect in which you ask someone for a favor and it makes them like you even if they didn't before. Like most things on You Are Not So Smart, it's about mental limitations, our own and others'.

Which leads to a pre-revelation: I'm 30 and I'm still not really sure what I want to do with my life. There's not revelatory because I'm not sure I've ever known what I want to do with my LIFE, but the big difference is that I used to feel like no matter what I actually did, not knowing made me a failure. I mentally backed myself into a tiny little corner where the only options were what I'm doing (i.e. a life) or one path to a PhD and being qualified for exactly two jobs (i.e. a career). But really there are so many options other than that, but for as long as I could remember I have been so focused on finding the right thing that I've never really thought about life as this thing that is MINE, something that can be anything I want. My therapist and I decided that my next big step is to give myself time to think about this without coming to a conclusion and without having a panic attack. (Seriously, I had a panic attack at breakfast the other day thinking about this.)

It took a divorce to teach me that relationships didn't have to be a certain way, and only now am I learning this about life as a whole. I just never gave myself permission to think about it, and I don't know why. And oddly enough, You Are Not So Smart is delightful and universal. We are not so smart. And we are not so special.

Lots of people don't know what they want to do with their lives. Lots of people are mixed up. Lots of people choose something that isn't the pinnacle of everything. Lots of people come from complicated families, screw up and have to learn from their mistakes, have parents that have died. We are not so smart, and we are not so special.

I'm really grateful to my parents for telling me every day as a kid that I was special, that I could do anything that I wanted, that I needed to do something important. All that made me be better than I would be otherwise. Unfortunately, it also made me feel like the only way to not fail was to be special and amazing every second of every day. It's a big burden, and maybe I'm just not that special. Maybe I don't want to be.

A Modern Lover's Manifesto

2011-09-13T11:35:00.000-04:00

Someone yesterday asked me what I wanted when it comes to all this love business. I wrote the following. It seemed like the kind of thing I'd want to hold on to.

I can tell you what I want, and then what would happen in some fantasy land version of the world.

I fret about things, about making people happy. I want someone who I make happy by just being myself, someone I can be nice to. Someone who will be nice to me. Someone who I can look out for and they'll look out for me. I want to be important to someone who I like enough that they're also important to me. I want someone I can respect for their values, intelligence, ambition, and good sense. I want someone to negotiate a life with. I want someone who doesn't think their preferences are more important than mine and is therefore willing to explain their desires to me while also being willing to listen to what I want. I want to have kids with someone. I want them to be open to the idea of taking said children on amazing globe-hopping adventures. It would make me very happy to have someone who would consider being a foster parent with me because I think people should live according to their values and I love children and there are lots of them who need love. I want someone to talk about books and music with, someone who can teach me things but will take my recommendations seriously enough to check them out, even if they don't like them. I want someone to grow with, someone to learn about, someone to learn about me.

It used to be easy to find people I wanted to spend time with because I just thought everyone was amazing and interesting. I don't think that anymore, and sometimes that makes me sad, but I also think that I have a better idea about what I'm looking for, and that can't be a bad thing. I used to look for someone who I thought had all these qualities that I admired that were so different from me, and then I realized that I want to be that person. Someone who can fix things and make things and bake bread and go camping. It would be nice to have someone to do some of those things with, but not all of them. I'm not looking for another version of myself.

Those are the things that matter to me. In some sort of ideal world, I'd meet someone and just be swept away by them, by how amazing they are and they'd think I'm amazing and it would be so easy, but I'm a little tired of that rollercoaster if the truth be told. You get swept away and then reality hits and it's never as good as you imagine it could be. I want someone to love, not someone to fantasize about. All of this is not to say that I don't want passion because I do. I can't imagine being with someone who didn't make me tingle all over and feel nervous and challenge me and excite me. Life would be so boring without that, but I think I'm past the point where that all by itself is enough.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

2011-09-12T13:24:00.000-04:00

I got all excited about this girl, rocking her bodacious bod in light of American Apparel's condescending and insulting call for plus size lady models. And then today, I was all happy with Rolling Stone for an excellent article about voting, and this is the bullshit I see:

I get it! He's supposed to regret it because she's fat. Right, right, obviously. Fuck you, stupid product I'd never use anyway. As my friend Becky said, "She should regret it because he's a douchebag."

Mermaiding

2011-09-12T13:20:00.000-04:00

Normajean and I were mermaids this weekend. Here's a preview of the edited images. The talented Guillermo Ubilla did the picture taking and editing. Normajean did makeup and many of the props/jewelry. I made the costumes and was responsible for hair. The full edited set will, at some point, be posted on Guillermo's blog, which is, I think, moving here soon.

I have breaded. Part 2

2011-08-27T16:56:00.000-04:00

When last we left our heroine, she was waiting for her bread to rise. Rawr. After 2 hours, the dough had expanded into this somewhat gooey mess:

I took that, split it into four small balls, and sprinkling generously with flour, you sort of fold the edges in on itself a bunch of times. The dough at this point was a little fragile. I pulled on one of the balls a little too vigorously and broke the dough on the outside, but it seemed fine. These go onto oiled baking sheets, where you let them sit and rise for another 2 hours.
Pre rising:

Then into the oven. Halfway through you get to open the oven, releasing the smell of HEAVEN ON EARTH, so that you can brush them with olive oil and sprinkle them with rosemary and kosher salt. After a scant 20 minutes of baking, you take them out and you, well I, have bread.

I would have taken a picture of the bread when I sliced it, but the first boule disappeared fairly quickly into my gaping maw. (Sexy mental image, yeah?) The bread has a nice pervasive hint of rosemary, and the crust is reasonably crisp with a nice tender inside. I would like a crust with a bit more structure - I'm a big fan of the rustic breads where you can peel out the inside of the bread and you're left with a crust like a melon rind. This bread was superb with a little seasoned olive oil for dipping. I think I'll definitely try the recipe again, tweaked to get a thicker crust and more resilient texture. I don't know much about bread science yet, but that's the point of this venture. Try this, read that, try this again but slightly differently. Expect more bread posts, since I intend to fully document this little journey into gluten gluttony.

I have breaded. Part 1.

2011-08-27T12:45:00.001-04:00

If I had known how satisfying this whole process would be, I'd have done it a lot sooner. I remember liking baking bread in Nicaragua, but I haven't really done it since I've been back, so I've decided it's the fall of bread. It will also have to be the fall of the gym, but that's okay, as I've discovered that doing things with my hands and body is about the best thing for my overactive mind.

I used this recipe: Almost-Famous Rosemary Bread, because I love rosemary bread, no special cookware was required, and the "makes 4 small loaves" meant it would be easy to give some away.

The ingredients:

Your first step is to let the yeast get started doing its thing. Yeast is, well, amazing. You give it some sugar, a little warm water and it starts respiring and the next thing you know you have CO2 foam and rising bread. I had a conversation with someone yesterday and it was apparent they'd never seen yeast. This is what yeast looks like:

You add water and sugar and it looks gross:

In about 5 minutes, if your yeast is good, i.e. not dead, it will get all frothy:

This yeast magic is explained in my favorite yeast video ever. There's a British accent, microscope shots, beer talk, and chemical formulas. Go watch it. Trust me, you'll like it.

Once your yeast is going, you can add the rest of the ingredients. This is fairly straightforward, but a word about flour. A lot of bread recipes (baking recipes in general actually) will provide measurements by weight because dry ingredients tend to pack down and then it's easy to measure by volume correctly but still end up with amounts that are wrong. If your recipe calls for measuring ingredients by volume, you should sift your flour because otherwise you scoop packed flour and there are likely lumps and you end up with more flour than you should. For example, here's my flour. See the packing. Yeah, you want to avoid that.

I don't have a sifter, so I used a whisk instead. I scooped the required 2 1/2 cups flour into another large bowl, and whisked it. Whiskery:

The flour should look fluffy. Then scoop that, leveling the top of each scoop with the back of a knife. I ended up with a significant amount of extra flour that I put back in my flour canister.

Once all your ingredients are snugly in a bowl together, stir them until a loose dough forms. Mine was quite sticky at this point, but I knew a lot more flour would get incorporated during the kneading process so I didn't worry about it too much.

Then you turn that out onto a countertop that you've dusted with flour. Keep kneading until it's elastic. It should fight back a little. As I said, it was sticky at first. Just keep dusting it lightly with flour, and by it I mean the counter, the bread, and your hands. I didn't want to get bits of bread goo in my flour canister, so I grabbed a big handful of flour, put it in the dough bowl, and kept pulling from that. I actually thought this dough came together really quickly. There's not a lot of water in this dough (a cup total), and very little sugar. The stuff we made in Nicaragua was a much more processed, soft crusted kind of bread and kneading it took for.ev.er. This only took about the 10 minutes promised in the recipe.

Tuck in all the edges so you have a nice little ball, and place it in a large oiled bowl, and wait for it to rise the first time.

Celebrate your yeast feast by doing the dishes or some laundry or something. Might I recommend a mimosa? Me, I'm blogging about baking bread. Stay tuned for Part 2.

My first vacation in 3 years. I need more vacations.

2011-08-25T13:15:00.000-04:00

The next time I decide vacations aren't important, I need to find this post and read it. Five days of beach camping has set me to rights in a way that I could not have anticipated. Part of it was the truly wonderful group of people I had the good fortune to be camping with, who made all the other things possible.

We were at First Landing State Park, which is on the bay and lovely. We had mimosas, coffee, bacon and eggs for breakfast, assorted delicious things for lunch, and grilled things for dinner. Burgers, hot dogs, bratwurst, beans, veggies, smores. I felt like I was eating happiness. Normally the feelings I eat are less positive.

There were some games, the beach every day, sand burying, mud throwing, a bamboo and towel lean-to - even dolphins. Yes, dolphins. And we were there for the earthquake, lying in the low wet sand and it turned into jello under us.

At night we sang around the campfire, talked through whatever ailed us, and then slept under the stars.

I feel like I found my self again. The trip was amazing, but these people were special. They were so positive and supportive of each other and of me. Each person was interesting and unusual and contributed something different to our vacation. And I felt like I contributed. I had something to offer and it's amazing how good that felt all by itself.

I also didn't shower for 5 days, wore no make-up, wore shorts and let my legs breathe, and wore cargo shorts and a madras button up for days. Forgetting about the unimportant things let me focus on the important ones for a few days. I need to remember to take vacations.

Why am I reading magazines when I should be reading books?

2011-07-03T11:28:00.000-04:00

I think this may have something to do with my general failure as a person, but anyway... I was working my way through the July-August Utne Reader, and I have to say that it never fails to make me think, which is, I guess, the point of reading it. I'm not done yet, but I have some thoughts. Really, one thought, two articles. I express ire at the first one here.

The first, which is simpler to explain, is about to Matt Sutherland's Spirituality and Health article, "You're Grounded: Connecting with the earth can cure chronic pain - and stop insomnia." I don't generally read Spirituality and Health, as I feel that it is filled with woo, but the Utne is an aggregator, so you get all kinds, which I usually like. However, I am very angry at this article.

The general premise is that Clint Ober discovered that we are exposed to electromagnetic fields (EMFs), and that the only appliances that do not create these fields are grounded appliances. He claims that if you sleep on a mattress that is grounded, it protects you from these EMFs, thereby reducing insomnia and improving chronic pain.

The title, which suggests that there is some kind of evidence upon which it is fair to base a statement about "curing" something. Modern medicine is not that great at curing anything, primarily because things come back and then you're a terrible person for saying you've cured something when you haven't. Th evidence upon which this is based are the anecdotal claims of a man named Clint Ober, and one blind (only he knew who got what mattress, supposedly) study he did with 60 random people he rounded up. We don't know anything about the conditions of that study, what medical problems the people had, how they got put into the different groups, etc. The only results reported in this article are the results from the treatment, i.e. the grounded pads, so we can't compare them to the results of the control to assess placebo effect, which one would imagine to be quite high in a sleep study where people just had to say whether or not they felt better rested. From what I can tell, the language of curing is Sutherland's, not Ober's.

Additionally, Sutherland makes it sound like the scientific establishment is a big mean bully just picking on poor Clint Ober. "When Ober took the question to prominent sleep researchers in California, they laughed him out the door." I'm sure it happened exactly like that. They probably called people out to the lobby so there would be as many people laughing as possible. And this is the kicker, "Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Earthing is the silence surrounding it." No, that's not remarkable. It's not remarkable at all. It's fringe science.

I actually think there might be something to it. Research has found that there are some small links between electromagnetic fields and cancer, and the World Health Organization recently classified cell phones as "possibly carcinogenic to humans," the radiation dangers of which had until recently been almost entirely dismissed by mainstream science. Science changes its mind given new evidence, so it's entirely possible that EMF may have some connection to chronic pain and insomnia that we have not yet discovered. However, none of this research is mentioned in the article.

It is not presented as a new idea that has potential, but rather as a cure that is being ignored by science. To me that seems like incredibly irresponsible reporting. I'm disappointed in Utne because there is good alternative science reporting out there. Reporting that addresses new ideas with the appropriate skepticism. Reporting that is fair to both established science and the person with the new idea. How are people supposed to separate this kind of reporting from science writing of much higher quality when it's all billed as the "best of the alternative press?" Who are they supposed to trust?

Even Google wants you to call your dad.

2011-06-19T17:42:00.000-04:00

I write about my mom a lot, primarily because of how close we were and because it's easier to write about someone who you know can't read what you're writing. Also, my relationship with my dad has always been... complicated.

Yesterday I was scrubbing a grill and baking ribs and doing yard work and I had one of those moments when I thought my mom might be really proud of me. She gave me a kind of independence that lets me believe I can do just about anything that I can Google instructions for. And I also realized that being perpetually single is made infinitely easier by having had a mother who made it clear that I don't need a man to clean the gutters.

Today I've been thinking about the ways having my dad in particular made me who I am. I'm watching baseball, which I love because of him. I played softball specifically so that we'd have something to talk about other than fishing. He and mom are both responsible for my ability to fix things, for my belief in the power of a screwdrive, socket set, and duck tape.

He taught me to work hard even when it's hard, and to believe in my own power to change my life, to have something different, even when what I choose is not what he would have chosen for me. He taught me about regret and the importance of family.

I learned how to throw a shrimp net, put a boat into the water and take it out again without drowning your pickup truck, and cure a ham from him. He taught me how to pluck a chicken that I raised and killed. In the case of a zombie apocalypse, he has perhaps singlehandedly made me capable of survival.

And I'm thinking of all my friends who've lost their dads today. On Mother's Day, I'm so sad and honestly, pretty resentful. I'm jealous of your mommas, of your ability to call them or not, to take them for granted. I have no idea if my friends whose dads have died are as petty as me, but as I told my friend Richard today, I'm never sure how I feel about an afterlife. I'm an atheist, which means I don't think there is one, at least not one where our consciousness survives, but I falter when it comes to my mom. I can't imagine a world where she just doesn't exist at all, so I let this little belief slide by, that somehow she knows I love her, whatever that means. Your dads know you love them, too.

Between, Georgia - Joshilyn Jackson

2011-06-15T20:06:00.000-04:00

★★★★
Loved it. I read The Girl Who Stopped Swimming and felt kind of meh about it, but this book won a number of awards, so I decided to give Joshilyn Jackson another try. I'm so glad I did. The characters in this book are so incredibly real, so real that the whole time I was reading the book, I kept imagining the characters as people I know. I couldn't help myself. In one particular instance, it's a bit painful, but more on that later.

Our heroine, Nonny Frett is between things, in about as many ways as you can imagine. She's not quite divorced, but definitely not single. She travels back and forth on a regular basis between where she lives in Athens and Between, where her family lives. She loves Fisher, her great-niece like a mother, but hasn't really stepped up to be like a parent to her. I identified with Nonny so strongly. She's so torn between all these different places and things and parts of herself, ideas about who she could be. All this is brought to a head by the most central division in her life - the fact that she is not a Frett by birth. Well, she is a Frett by birth, but her momma was a Crabtree.

The Fretts and the Crabtrees have a longstanding feud, in which the Fretts have the money and the law on their side, and the Crabtrees have a meanness and a will to survive. Hazel Crabtree, Nonny's mother, shows up one night on Bernese Frett's front door, bursting at the belly. Hazel doesn't want Nonny, but Stacia Frett does and once they see Hazel somewhat safely through childbirth (a handgun is involved), the Frett's decide to steal Nonny. That's how she becomes a Frett, and the Crabtrees, especially Ona Crabtree (Hazel's mother), won't ever forget it.

That's just the beginning of the cast of characters in Between, and each one is so alive that in the novel none of them ever gets lost in the shuffle. They're complicated characters, too. Bernese for example is loyal, stubborn, loving, smart, and fairly treacherous. She is the Frett most in opposition to Ona Crabtree, even though she's not Nonny's mother; Stacia is. Let's just say Bernese reminded me of a family member of mine who shall not be named.

Ona reminded me of my mother. We were poor (are poor), and I'm pretty sure the only reason I didn't have any brothers or cousins in jail was because I didn't have any brothers or boy cousins. The physical description of Ona was like my mother - thin, scrawny even, and Jackson describes her as grasping, clutching. She meant it in a bad way, like it was too much for her, but my mom had this way about her, like she was always holding on a little too tight. I think I'm probably the same way. So for me, there was something inherently lovable about Ona, even before Nonny realizes that. In the same way, when she's still got Bernese bathed in a white light, I already felt like she was too much like some of the people from back home. Too sanctimonious, too proud.

This book that I enjoyed very much counts toward the 100+ Challenge, and the Southern Challenge.

The Mermaid Chair - Sue Monk Kidd

2011-06-15T18:07:00.000-04:00

★
Why is chick lit so annoying? Why are books aimed at women or about women usually about them coming into themselves or of themselves or with themselves or any of these things in the company of other women in such a way that you are immediately supposed to feel a camaraderie with every other woman over how awesome women are? That's why I don't normally read this stuff.

I think I have a healthy appreciation for female friendships - I'm not very good at making them, so when I have them, I try to treasure them. And I also have an incredible respect for the self-journey, the one you have to go through to grow up. However, how hard is it to write a book in which a woman is just a person that stuff happens to? In books about men, they go on adventures, and at no point in the book does the man stop to think, Am I awakening? No, because he's awake. While thinking of his friends, does he stop to ponder, Dude, I am so happy to be here and a part of this awesome brotherhood who help me be the best dude I can be? Probably not. He just does stuff, and is stuff, and when things happen to him and he does feel the need to be introspective, he gets to think about things that aren't him. He gets to think about religion or politics or adventure or bravery or whatever he wants to. He can think about his journey into manhood if he wants, but he's not obligated. Why is it so hard to write a book or (and perhaps this is the real issue) publish a book about a female protagonist who is not engaged in a quest of self-discovery. Maybe I'm a lady and I'd like to discover something else.

Needless to say, I did not care for The Mermaid Chair. I read it because I was surprised by Secret Life of Bees, also by SMK. I wish I'd just stuck with that one.

The main character Jessie is whiny and generally shitty. She has some very basic discontent about her life, which she doesn't express to her husband. Then she goes off to a Carolina sea island (the only part I did like), whereupon she falls in love with a monk, I suspect precisely because of how little risk is potentially involved in falling in love with a monk. Plus, it's exciting, right? Then she paints a lot, things that are supposed to be deep and meaningful, but in this way she doesn't understand yet. Apparently Jessie is not very smart.

All the potentially interesting bits are glossed over. The book begins with Jessie finding out her mother has purposefully chopped off her finger with a meat cleaver, and yet once Jessie gets to the island, she spends very little time trying to unravel this mystery or even trying to talk to her mother. We eventually find out what led her mother to do such a crazy thing, and it's dealt with in a couple of pages, spic and span, when really it's the kind of thing you find out and it totally changes your life.

Almost as if to highlight how ridiculous Jessie is, her love interest Whit is struggling with the big questions, like if his life has any meaning and how God works. In Kidd's world, Whit gets to think about the universe, Jessie only thinks about herself. On top of everything, Jessie and Whit spend a lot of, ahem, alone time together, and never once do they discuss these big questions of his. Nope. She's screwing a monk and she never stops to ask, "So how do you feel about God?"

Finally, Jessie keeps going on and on about finding herself, and wanting to be independent, but she literally falls for Brother Thomas (aka Whit), the day she arrives on the island. The very day. Dear Jessie, that is not alone. I hated that aspect of the story.

I watched Eat, Pray, Love a couple weeks ago. I was expecting to be annoyed with the movie, but I was completely surprised. Julia Roberts is the star, and I don't remember her character's name, but it doesn't matter. Anyway, JR goes on this quest, and first she eats. She feeds her soul and her body, and sure, she's lonely in Italy. She struggles with being single in a city of lovers. You can see how bittersweet it is for her to be surrounded by friends who are all paired up. But she makes it clear that this is about how to be alone. Then she prays. Once again, she struggles, but in a sense, when she stops trying to find herself, and she starts trying to find something larger, that's when just being herself stops being so damned hard. Finally, there's love. I wonder how we'd feel about quest parts 1 & 2 if she hadn't ended up with Javier Bardem, but whatever. My favorite part of the entire movie was when Javier is trying to get her to take this leap of faith with him, and she runs away. She's talking to her spiritual advisor yogi dude, and she says, "I couldn't keep my balance." That's real. She found her independence, her way to live her life without the necessity of a man, and when love came along, she was terrified of losing everything she'd fought for.

Now contrast that with Jessie. So really it's not hard to see where the plot here falls short. The only slight redemption is that Kidd acknowledges it at one point. Hugh (the jilted husband) is a psychiatrist (cliche), and he's in his study and there's this passage:

Over and over he'd come across the same idea - not the least bit unfamiliar to him - that when a person was in need of cataclysmic change, of a whole new center in the personality, for instance, his or her psyche would induce an infatuation, en erotic attachment, an intense falling-in-love. p.279

So at least Kidd understands that Whit isn't meant to be love, he's meant to be a catalyst for Jessie. But somehow that doesn't make it any better. Just because this is how people do it doesn't mean it's the best way. I'd rather see someone fight it out with themselves than be swept along on some current of "love," letting it do the work they're too afraid to do themselves.

This counts toward the 100+ Challenge and the Southern Challenge. I guess it also counts toward the Page to Screen, but I have absolutely no intention of watching the made for TV movie, so I'm not counting it there.

Southern Literature Challenge

2011-06-15T18:01:00.003-04:00

The books I've read that fulfill the Southern Lit Challenge:

Watership Down - Richard Adams

2011-06-13T13:36:00.001-04:00

★★★★
I couldn't understand what the big deal is about this book, right up until I read it, that is. People who love it, really love it. Now I'm one of them.

Yes, the characters are rabbits, and that might lead you to believe it's a children's book. Assume that, and you miss out on some really amazing fiction.

By making the characters rabbits, Adams has the option of giving them their own history and mythology. It also makes it somewhat magical, in that it forces us to think about what other layers of existence are occurring alongside our own. However, having rabbits as heroes and villains doesn't limit the story in any way.

The rabbits are real characters from the very beginning. There are leaders and followers, bullies and friends, prophets and warriors. Some rabbits are as ingenious as others are stupid. Throughout the book (which comes in at a healthy 476 pages), you really start to identify with the characters. I think Bigwig ended up being my favorite. He was brave and true and loyal, but smart enough to understand the big picture when he needed to.

I thought the rabbit mythology was incredibly interesting. The fact that there were stories within the story really drove home important stories are. Reading it again, that's an odd sentence, but let me explain. When the rabbits were afraid or needed guidance, when they were meeting other warrens, or even just when they were passing time, they'd tell stories of their history, of their gods and their ancestors. The stories themselves were helpful, but the act of storytelling itself was incredibly important. It was a communal activity. The stories were oral and shared. Oddly enough, it made me sad while I was reading the book because of course, I was enjoying it alone. We've lost a lot of communal storytelling, where a lot of people hear a story at once and then they can talk about it.

My nephew is coming to stay in a few weeks, and I'm going to hold on to this book to read it to him before bed. Even if we only get part of the way through, I think my sister would finish it with him when he got home. It's probably a little too hard for him to read by himself, but that's okay. Interestingly, in the prologue, Richard Adams talks about how people were a little distressed by the "adult themes" present in the book. Some parts really are quite dark. He brushes it off, and says that kids know what the world looks like. I agree.

This counts toward the 100+ Challenge, Chunkster Challenge, and Page to Screen Challenge*.

I was trying to watch the movie before I wrote about this. I got halfway through and fell asleep one night. I decided to go ahead and write it up, and then revise the post once I've finished the movie.

Breathers: A Zombie's Lament - S. G. Browne

2011-06-13T12:56:00.002-04:00

★★
It's not that it was bad - it just wasn't much of anything. It's reasonably witty and entertaining. The satire of zombies seeking "human" rights, is clever, but Zombies doesn't really delve into anything deep enough to be more than a quick light read.

This counts toward the 100+ Challenge.

Refrain

2011-05-26T01:10:00.002-04:00

When I was married to Olivier, I was really unhappy. Depressed, unsure of who I was, not sure how to find out, in over my head doing things that were unsatisfying and leading to dead ends and more places I didn't want to be. I was miserable, and only part of it had to do with Olivier. We'd get in these fights, and he'd say, "Why can't you just be happy?" His voice was pleading, laden with confusion and anguish. As my husband, he thought it was his job to make me happy, and if I wasn't, then surely it was all his fault. Our marriage was part of the problem, but it was symptom, not cause. I had a lot to figure out.

I'm much happier now. Even when I hate my job, there's value in what I do and what I'm learning. My family always seems to be on the brink of disaster and I often feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders, like if I let the tension out, I wouldn't know how to pick everything back up again. But I also don't cry every day now, and I feel like I'm better at being me. I've embraced a lot of the things I used to dislike about myself and learned how to reign them in or use them for good (mostly), and I feel like I'm doing a pretty good adult impression, even if I do fuck up royally every now and again.

I asked a friend tonight, "What am I doing wrong?" because of course, in my mind, when you identify a problem, you pick it apart, try to understand it, then make an informed choice. Yes, it's trying to apply logic to emotion, etc., but all the progress I've made above is due to this desire to FIX IT, so I've decided it's one of those things about myself I'm going to accept and try to use judiciously. But back to the central quandary: Are there other things about me I could work on? (Of course, but you know, I need a priority list...) Are they things I just choose to accept about myself and live with the consequences or are they things I really want to change?

The friend's advice: You are a do-er, and maybe you need to be more of a be-er. Just be happy. I know you're happy, but I also know that something's always bothering you.

Hearing this made me shut down. It was like this wall went up on all sides. Because how awful is it to hear the same thing about yourself at 30 that you heard over and over at 24? Especially when you know you're so much happier and more satisfied with your life? What do I have to do to prove to people that I'm happy? Never be sad? Never mind anything? Never express any of the negative feelings I have about anything? Sometimes that's how it feels. It's that same feeling I used to have when I believed that I had to be perfect on the outside, that I had to be happy all the time or people wouldn't like me. I kept it all inside and I was miserable.

I have discovered though, that people like happy people, and I think even when I'm happy, I'm not happy enough. I am apparently a miserable, grumpy human being, and sometimes I want to never leave the house again and never try to engage with people and never make a friend or flirt with a boy because ultimately I'm just a miserable person who everyone will get sick of dealing with, and then I'll still be alone, but this time it will be completely my fault because I'm JUST NOT HAPPY ENOUGH. Even in a lesser sense, it kind of confirms for me that if I let people see who I really am, they won't like me because me is not simple and happy and I have real problems goddammit. But really, why subject other people to me? Why should you, the entire world, have to deal with my curmudgeonliness, my stubborn determination to root out the smallest possible annoyances?

I dunno. I kind of think I'm interesting. And I kind of think I get things done. And I also think that I have lot's of other redeeming qualities. But somehow it always comes back to, Why can't you just be happy? How happy is happy enough? And happy enough for who? Happy enough for me or happy enough for other people?

Being Feral is Overrated

2011-05-22T20:53:00.001-04:00

Tonight I'm thinking of human children as small animals raised in the packs we call families who eventually grow up and set out on their own. They seek out new territory, interact with members of strange other packs, meet potential mates, and start new packs of their own. In this respect, I feel like I've gone feral. I have friends and in that sense I have a pack of my own, but it's more like I have my own territory (my house) and we venture into common social areas to visit and provide emotional respite. I forget what it's like to have people living in close proximity to me, in my territory. I forget how satisfying it is to let your guard down, to learn and teach from each other, to provide the type of companionship that only time and familiarity make possible. When I visit our family's territory, curl up with a pack member or two, and we take the time to lick each other's metaphorical wounds, I realize how much I miss it.

Today was a great day. I got here before lunch and my dad and I sat under the big pecan tree in our front yard and waved to everyone as they drove home from church. We had the opportunity to politely decline some Jehovah's witnesses and we listened to old timey music on Pandora. My dad sang along, something that feels like a miracle, even to someone who doesn't believe in the miraculous. Keegan and I made lunch together, and I realized how easy it is to fall into a back and forth with a kid. He served as my guide to how things are done around here (I haven't lived here in 14 years, so sometimes I really don't know), telling me how Dad likes his hot dogs and where the apple corer was. I supervised his use of the stove and taught him how to spread mayonnaise. I've never really thought about how scooping and spreading something so squishy is actually a challenge in dexterity if you've never done it before. Obviously he mastered it easily, but doing something with him reminds me of how much we all have to learn about the world and how it works and how to make it work for us. It also helps that he's just so damned awesome. Whatever you ask of him, he does, so while you're handling one task, he'll handle whatever bits and pieces you can give him.

Dad, Keegan, and I took a long walk, decked out in hats and coated in sunscreen. Keegan rode his bike in front of us, scouting the territory and reporting back, I pushed my dad in his chair, and my dad carried the enormous container of ice water we took along to keep us all from collapsing. We spent the time following deer tracks and looking at water in creeks and listening to birds and just generally enjoying being alive in such a beautiful place. At one point we watched a small mother and her fawn cross the road in front of us. We were talking the whole time, but she didn't seem frightened of us at all, just calm and quiet. We also managed to get my dad stuck a few times, which amused my nephew to no end. It turns out that when you get stuck in a patch of sand, the best thing to do is just back the hell out. The small wheels on the front of the wheelchair are no help at all.

We all took a nice afternoon nap, enjoyed a delicious meal my sister and Kevin made, and then Keegan I drew hopscotch grids and played. We do this occasionally, and he never remembers the layout of the grid, but today he did it right the first time all by himself. His first grid was a little jankie, so I showed him some tricks for squaring things up and making sure you don't go all sideways. His second grid was pretty kickass. He's also gotten a lot better at the game. We added a second stone tonight, so I guess you could say we're level II hopscotch players. Now he's cleaned up, with all the sunblock and dirt washed off, and reading before bedtime. I can hear the Stuart Little coming from his bedroom, his little kid voice alternating between a clear stream of words and a mumble, backing up, starting and stopping. It's like you can hear his brain working. He's in there learning to read right now. It's incredible.

I'm not saying all this because I think whoever's reading this cares. I'm writing it all so I won't forget, so I remember to appreciate it when I'm not here. So I don't forget that while I'm not with them, I'm missing all this growing up and growing older. It's also just amazing to me that somehow living by itself can sometimes be so satisfying. Nothing incredible happened today, no crazy good news, nothing extreme, just a good, simple, joyful day spent in the company of people I love who love me back. I spoke to a friend of mine at Art Bar last night, and we had a conversation about this, how when you run into someone you haven't seen in a while, they ask how you are, and you say, "Fine," and then there's nothing else to say. It feels odd, but the good times in life are often simple. He got new tires on his car, I got a new lawn mower. We decided to not feel pressured to deliver on big news. We are living in the moments between the moments and we are happy.

Foodie Challenge

2011-05-17T23:00:00.001-04:00

This is to keep track of my Foodie Book Challenge. I'm supposed to read 7-9 books.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake - Aimee Bender

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake - Aimee Bender

2011-05-17T22:57:00.002-04:00

★★★★

I loved it. Love, love, loved it. The narrator, a girl named Rose, can taste the emotions in food. Any book that starts with an usual idea like will have to try hard to screw it up. Aimee Bender does the opposite. She turns it into a tremendous story, not just of Rose, but of her entire family. Her brother and father, who have their own strange powers, her sort of love story with her brother's best friend, her mother's affair. The central fantastical premise becomes a lens through which the story of an otherwise normal family is told.

The writing is lively, the characters are sympathetic, and the story moves at a pace fast enough to keep you interested. I also like that you root for Rose, not because she's special, but because she's likable.

One of my favorite parts of the book was when she discovers her ability, she performs a series of experiments to find out if what she's experiencing is real. She tests foods. She learns about the different flavors of individual foods (factory processed vs. farm grown) and about the feelings of the preparers. It was a really interesting perspective. It was almost like we have a first person limited narrator, but she gains a certain omniscience by her ability.

Aimee Bender wrote some other books, and they're definitely on my reading list.

This book addresses the Foodie Challenge, and the 100+ Challenge.

A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness

2011-05-17T21:05:00.002-04:00

★★★★
I'm a sucker for any book by a Deborah (my momma's name). Even so, I'm happy to be hooked on this series. It reminds me of the Outlander series somewhat. There's time travel. There's fantasy. There's romance.

The supporting characters are interesting, too. The vampire characters have a kind of world weariness that I've always imagined people who've been alive for hundreds of years must have. The witches are regular people, and the fact that there's a lesbian couple doesn't get any more attention than it deserves, which is refreshing.

This book counts toward the 100+ Challenge, and the Chunkster Challenge.

Haruki Murakami Challenge

2011-05-17T20:25:00.002-04:00

This post is to keep track of the Haruki Murakami Reading Challenge. I'm on the hook for 3 books.

After Dark - Haruki Murakami

Hedge Fund Wives - Tatiana Boncompagni

2011-05-17T20:09:00.003-04:00

★★

Nothing spectacular here. It was a quick, fun, easy read. I liked that Marcy ended up starting her own business, but that was about the only positive I could find in terms of messages about women in general.

I hated that in order for Marcy to be happy, she had to end up with a different Mr. Right. But even so, whatever, that's fine. The worst was that she met him, slept with him, and they broke up. Then later she ran into him again, "but this time [she] didn't jump straight into bed with him." I can only presume that her holding out was the secret to her relationship success this time around. Well, okay. See also: gross.

It wasn't painful to read, but it definitely reminded me why I don't normally read this kind of stuff.

This counts toward the 100+ Reading Challenge.

After Dark - Haruki Murakami

2011-05-17T19:56:00.006-04:00

★★★

The first Murakami I read was A Wild Sheep Chase, and I really, really, really didn't like it. It just seemed absolutely ridiculous to me. I've revisited it, and it's still not my favorite. However, I think I get more about what he's going for now. He's used a similar technique in all the novels of his I've read: he has two worlds, one that is real and "normal" and another that is surreal and otherworldly. The other world is not imaginary, but rather a realm that we don't usually get to see.

In After Dark, the imaginary world is one in which Eri Asai is asleep and we are somehow watching her sleep. Well, more specifically, we are watching someone watch her sleep. I had kind of a problem with the way he set this scene. We're supposed to be almost like a camera on a boom, whizzing around the space, changing angles. I think he does this to make the situation seem stranger and more foreign than it is, but to me it just felt overplayed. Describing the scene would have been plenty weird for me. I wonder if this is one of those situations where something is lost in translation. The language is so direct and straightforward, yet these additional layers are built in to make it less direct, less straightforward.

As usual, I found something deeply identifiable about Murakami's characters. Eri and Mari Asai are both believable individuals and believable siblings. The characters' behavior always make perfect sense, even when they find themselves in truly odd situations. I think that's difficult to do, even more so because the characters are often unlikable. Unlikable, yet believable.

Not my favorite Murakami, not my least favorite either.
This counts toward the 100+ Challenge, and the Haruki Murakami Challenge.

Lullaby - Chuck Palahniuk

2011-04-27T11:32:00.003-04:00

★★★

My relationship with Mr. Palahniuk's work can be summed up by the word ambiguous. I always like what I read by him, and I think his books are interesting, but I'm also never sure if I'm finding anything new in them. I feel like sometimes there's too much craziness, the characters are too far out there, for me to really identify with what's happening. I'll have to think about this some more. I'll get back to you.

In Lullaby, the main character is a reporter who is investigating SIDs deaths, and because he is a good little reporter, he notes everything about the scene, down to the book each person had read to their child before bed. His journalistic OCD ends up unlocking the secret to the deaths, which is that the book of children's poetry contains a culling song, a lullaby that actually ends up killing the person to whom it's directed. The reporter, Carl Streator, can't stop thinking about the poem in that way that whatever you least want to occupy your mind suddenly does, and he becomes a kind of unintentional serial killer, with people dropping dead all around him when he just thinks the poem in their direction. He decides to go on a kind of quest, destroying every copy of the book. In the process, he meets Helen Hoover Boyle, a real estate agent who sells and resells haunted houses; Helen's assistant Mona; and Mona's boyfriend Oyster, who runs fake lawsuit / PR nightmare scams on businesses he finds morally objectionable. There's the quest where Carl tries to get it under control, and eventually a grimoire (the original source of the culling song) gets discovered, and Mona and Oyster go on a magic fueled spree while Carl and Helen (sort of) track them across the country. You know, your average CP plotline.

The whole book is about power, and what you should do with it. When they realize they're not only looking for all the copies of the book in order to destroy them, but also the grimoire which likely contains all sorts of other spells too, the characters are divided as to what to do with it - should they keep it? Use it? Destroy it? What can go wrong? Who can benefit? Who's to decide? Interesting, but not groundbreaking, I think. More interesting were the other ways the characters had power, like Helen knowing about the hauntings, setting up her clients like a spider waiting to pounce. There are lots of these tiny little situations where the characters know something not everyone else does, and they have to decide what they should do with that information. Does it give them license to act or not? For example, there's a bookshop with multiple copies of the book of poems (and therefore the culling song). The books are lost somewhere inside the store, so rather than laboriously look for them, Helen and Oyster burn the place down. Are they right? Did the end justify the means?

The moral quandary that kept me thinking the longest is Helen's method of coping with her life and death power. You see, she also has memorized the culling song, having lost her own family to its powers. Carl wants to know how she manages to not go around killing people willy nilly, and the answer is that she kills in a controlled way. She vents her frustration and anger and desire to exercise her power on a daily basis by killing people who deserve it, dictators and murderers and other riff raff that her questionable morality decides it's okay to do away with. This was fascinating to me, not that she was venting in that way, doing the thing she can talk herself into justifying, but rather that once you have a power, once you can do something, you have to do it. That there's no way to just walk away, that you must use it. Do we see this in other places? Do you have to do something just because you can?

I cheated a little on this write-up because I gave the book away to someone before I wrote this review, so I had to look up the characters' full names. Wikipedia gave me a little backstory that was actually pretty interesting. He wrote Lullaby while he was trying to decide if he should recommend that the man who shot his dad and his dad's girlfriend be sentenced to death for said crimes. It was his way of mulling out the questions about death and who gets to decide who dies and how we should and shouldn't use power. The guy was sentenced to the death penalty, but it doesn't say how Chuck came down on the issue.

This counts toward my 100+ Challenge.

Page to Screen Reading Challenge

2011-04-24T12:15:00.002-04:00

Post to keep track of Page to Screen Reading Challenge books:

Watership Down - Richard Adams
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

Can we put this in the wtf pile?

2011-04-20T14:50:00.003-04:00

Parents, don't dress your girls like tramps

My friend posted this on her FB page and commented, "This makes me want to drink heavily. Did I miss this by having boys??"

I'm having a hard time figuring out what she finds objectionable in particular, so I'll just make a list:

Could it be the possible damage that could be caused by dressing / allowing your children to dress in contextually inappropriate ways?
Perhaps it is the blatant slut shaming that's happening in this article, in which he uses the words tramp and whore to talk about why these clothes are inappropriate, thereby implying that an adult woman dressed in the same way would deserve these labels.
I don't know, maybe it's the irony that we live in a culture where we will defend the rights of little boys to wear dresses and have pink toenails (justifiably so) in the face of those who would freak the fuck out about it, but that he's commenting on this little girl's appearance in the same way. "I don't approve of how you look and here's my reason why and in the meantime I will say rude things to you so that you will pay attention to my point." - "Hear that, ya little tramp? Oh yeah, and parents, this is really directed at you. A line needs to be drawn in which we don't let our little boys dress like girls, I mean girls dress like whores, I mean I'm an asshole. Wait."
Maybe it's the sentence, "What adult who wants a daughter to grow up with high self-esteem would even consider purchasing such items?" because of all the assumptions that go into it. The assumptions that an adult woman wearing the same clothes has no self-esteem. That the little girl's outfit is an indication that this girl is receiving shitty parenting over all. That what this little girl is wearing is her salient characteristic, much like the parallel assumption we make about adult women.
It could be it's the paternalistic tone of this bullshit: "Or maybe I'm just a concerned parent worried about little girls like the one I saw at the airport." He talks about his son in the article, but specifically about his pants being low, not about a characteristic that distinguishes men from boys, which is ostensibly his protest to her outfit - its age inappropriateness. So really, is he a concerned parent (which is a label I've read before when people want to disapprove of someone else's parenting, see boys in dresses) or is he a concerned man?

So yeah, this whole things just pissed me off. Also, I think it's interesting that in 2009 he won the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation award for online journalism and was a 2008/10 honoree of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. Wouldn't someone who seems to get the idea of not talking shit about people realize why this is so poorly done?

Yes, I get your point. Sexualization of young girls is potentially damaging. Yes, I agree with that, but is there any world where this is the best way to address the issue?

A final thought - much like when the little boy wore the dress to school and none of the other kids cared, I have to wonder if this is fundamentally an adult problem? Little girls don't know what sexy means, this d00d makes the valid point that they are dressing like adults they see, whether it be Rihanna or their own parents. They're mimicking. Perhaps the problem isn't in dressing little girls like adults, it's that we pass judgment on the way women dress at all, regardless of what judgement you're passing. When little boys dress like men, it's either cute (little dudes in suits) or it's completely unnoticeable because those are just their, uh, clothes. But when little girls dress like women, or should I say a certain kind of women (I'd really say idea of womanhood), there is a problem. What does that mean?

Pronouns in Academia

2011-04-20T10:22:00.001-04:00

At a class today on cost transfers (don't worry about it), without fail research administrators (department admin staff) are referred to as she, while principal investigators (faculty) are referred to as he, both by the instructor and by my fellow students. So I guess that means I'm in the right job, what with my lady parts and all.

Gender Identity & Expression Challenge - 2011

2011-04-16T21:37:00.001-04:00

Post to keep rack of Gender Identity & Expression Challenge books:

Middlesex - Jeffrey Eudenides (fiction)

Chunkster Challenge - 2011

2011-04-16T21:33:00.004-04:00

Post to keep track of Chunkster Challenge books:

Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

2011-04-15T15:25:00.002-04:00

★★★★★
I loved this book. I liked how thought-provoking it was, but also just that it was a tremendous story.*

A little background: our narrator is named Cal (formerly Calliope^), and we know this from the very beginning, so I'm not giving anything away (although there are some definite spoilers below). The important thing is how Cal gets from beginning to end, a tale that puts the journey front and center. I loved how on many levels it is such a typical coming of age story even as our character deals with something that fundamentally affects his gender, a facet of ourselves most of us never even realize we take for granted.

^ I will refer to Calliope/Cal throughout this post based on what gender s/he had at the point in the story when the events in question occur, so expect some name flipping.

I think Eugenides crafts certain elements of the story to help ground Cal's experiences, to keep him from feeling too alien and unidentifiable. It's helpful, but I wonder at times if it is too heavy handed. For example, when Calliope begins to have a sexual relationship with the Object, there are pieces of text designed specifically to remind us that their sexual entanglement is both strange and entirely typical.

So that was our love affair. Wordless, blinkered, a nighttime thing, a dream thing. There were reasons on my side for this as well. Whatever it was that I was was best revealed slowly, in flattering light. Which meant not much light at all. Besides, that's the way it goes in adolescence. You try things out in the dark. You get drunk or stoned and extemporize. Think back to your backseats, your pup tents, your beach bonfire parties. ... It's a kind of fugue state anyway, early sex. Before the routine sets in, or the love. Back when groping is largely anonymous. Sandbox sex. p. 386

I like that this text is in there, that Cal (telling us the story as an adult) addresses the reader, asking us to recall our own experiences and then compare them with what we're reading. But I also wonder what it means that this is necessary. Is it Cal's attempt to force "normalcy" (and therefore somehow validate?) what is fundamentally a unique coming of age story? Or is Eugenides' trying to make Cal's tale relatable to the reader? A little of both? In either case, what does it mean that this type of justification needs to be there? That we are potentially made uncomfortable by the need for a space that accommodates an intersex person?

I actually think that this passage made Cal's story seem more unusual because it highlighted it. The aspect of the text that made it universal for me was that the sex in question is hot. It's written with passion and detail and captures the emotional turmoil of first sexual encounters. It's erotic without being exotic.

There's another aspect of this story that at first seems unrelated to the above, but give me a second. Eugenides doesn't start our story with Cal, he starts the story with his paternal grandparents who, it turns out, are siblings. This part of the story is told ostensibly because we are tracing the gene that led to Cal's intersexuality, a recessive gene that is highly unlikely to ever be expressed without the interference of inbreeding. I wondered about this while I was reading because it's unnecessary. The inbreeding that actually resulted in Cal's condition was a result of his parents being first cousins. The fact that his paternal grandparents were siblings is irrelevant, as only one of them needed to pass on the gene that would produce his alpha-5-reductase deficiency. The other copy he received from his mother. So I kept wondering, why start there? Why begin so long before you need to? The answer is so obvious that I'm a little embarassed it took me a while to figure it out - because it's an epic, stupid. Because it is, in a sense, a very ordinary (and therefore extraordinary) family, immigrant, American tale.

His grandparents' romance has a magical feel to it. They fall in love in Greece, in a tiny village on top of a mountain. There is Desdemona's emotional connection to the silkworms, her attempts to dress up the only other marriagable women in the village to appeal to her brother to much comedic effect. It's very much like a fairy tale with a dark twist. Their flight to the United States allows their rebirth from siblings to married couple and they hope to forget their transgression, but it is in a sense revisited upon them in their own emotional dysfunctionality and in the intersexuality of Cal. His own story, his transformation from female to male, is a mirror of the story of Greeks becoming Americans, of the past giving way to the present.

We see this theme repeatedly, not the least of which is in Desdemona's spoon, which she uses to predict the sex of each new progeny. She predicts that Cal will be a boy, but her son rejects this, saying they are having a girl. How does he know? Because "It's science, Ma" (p. 6). The old way of understanding the world has been replaced with the new way, but is it better? Does Dr. Luce really represent the best we can do? I hope not. (It's also interesting that Desdemona & her spoon were genetically right.)

Finally, I spend a lot of time thinking about authors' choices about their stories and characters. I find it fascinating that Cal says he never felt uncomfortable being a girl.

Unlike other so-called male pseudo-hermaphrodites who have been written about in the press, I never felt out of place being a girl. I still don't feel entirely at home among men. Desire made me cross over to the other side, desire and the facticity of my body. (p. 479)

I wonder why Eugenides chose to make Cal unusual in this respect. Is it because he wants Cal's journey to remain in close parallel with the immigrant tale in which we can be both comfortable and uncomfortable in our new land and in the place we come from? I also wondered if it's possible that more "pseudo-hermaphrodites" feel like Cal than we know. I wonder if saying this, that he could have lived out his life either way, is even more transgressive than being intersex in the first place. We shy away from anything that could be used to bolster the "it's a choice" argument in conversations about gender and sexuality / sexual preference as though those types of arguments have any validity to begin with. It shouldn't matter if it's a choice because it would still be none of your damned business. Regardless of that, we tow the line of biology because it's a weapon we can use to fight against those who would deny the rights of individuals because of their particular biology / choice combo. Writing Cal this way makes us ask ourselves more questions about him and about our own assumptions than we might otherwise.

Which made me wonder just how much we take for granted in constructing and reading characters who are more traditionally male and female. How many assumptions do we make when we decide that someone is male or female? How many possibilities are closed off?

Ultimately, I liked this book because each time I put it down, my mind was racing, thinking about the characters, their lives, their personalities. They felt so real, so interesting, and yet so much larger than life. It's the kind of book I'll read again 3 years from now and enjoy just as much, if not more.

* As always, these are my thoughts on the book, and it's obvious that there are many more informed things out there written by people with degrees and stuff. I feel the need to reiterate this because it won a Pulitzer, for cripes' sake.

Followup: After writing this, I looked at a review someone wrote - I can't even remember where, and they said that the only part of the book they didn't like was Cal's time as a runaway, when he was working in the club and living with Zora because it was dark and didn't seem to fit the good humor and warmth of the rest of the story. I think they're wrong, but for a couple of reasons. First, I found Calliope's time in the boarding school as incredibly tense and uncomfortable to read, so I don't think this was the only part of the book that was a bit darker. Second, I'm sure none of us really enjoys the fact that intersex individuals are treated as freaks, etc., but it felt like a very realistic part of Cal's trajectory. Additionally, Cal's relationship with Zora was incredibly warm and caring. Interesting that people find that part of the book inherently dark/distressing/dirty. I've been reading a lot of blogs about sex work/ers lately, and I think the characterization of this as a "dark" part of the book has more to do with setting and people's assumptions about that setting than the actual tone or plot of that portion of the novel.

* This counts toward the Gender Identity & Expression Challenge, Chunkster Challenge, and 100+ Challenge.

Survivorship.

2011-04-06T15:48:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we were walking around New Orleans' neighborhoods, Audobon Park, the French Quarter. It's odd to be in a place that you know was visited by such devastation only six years ago. We place such a high premium on survivorship in our society and I'm here in a city seemingly dedicated to revelry,* and everything you see that was here before 2005, people included, is a survivor. It conjures a kind of awe that is quickly forgotten, gilded over with Mardi Gras beads and drive through daiquiri bars.

But really, is this so unusual? Aren't we all survivors of something? Who hasn't lived through a tragedy of some kind, a loss, a misfortune, an event that threatened to tear your world apart? It's an amazing aspect of the entire human existence that we forget, overlook in the day to day. It's interesting that the very indicator of survival, the ability to go on with your day-to-day life, means forgetting that there are things to survive in the first place.

Nawlins: Part 1

2011-04-06T15:29:00.000-04:00

After suffering the agony of sitting next to a woman on a plane who popped her gum for the two and a half hours from Charlotte to New Orleans, I made it to the Big Easy. My cab driver needed the assistance of my GPS to get us to Jessica's house, but whatevs. This city is a maze, and I made it in one piece, so cheers to that!

Yesterday Jess and I hung out at the house in the morning before getting shrimp po boys from the equivalent of the local bodega/deli. We ate these while strolling through her neighborhood, no mean feat let me tell you. I dropped a shrimp at one point and felt something much like self-loathing.

Her cubicle at the law library has walls that a very tall person could reach over, but made of something designed to look like very lawyerly dark cherry wood. The door locks and the room is larger than my office. I now have a theory about how people inhabit a space because while she has made minimal effort to personalize the room, it still feels a lot like her office in NY.

We continued trekking onward toward Audobon Park where we did some high quality geocaching. Don't laugh, it's awesome. We saw about a thousand turtles, which we fed (as well as a nesting duck). Jessica also witnessed some duck rape, although I was lucky enough to miss that, as I was rummaging through some bushes in search of a geocache. We then took a shortcut across the golf course, which is supposedly allowed as long as you stay on the path and don't get in the way of the golf carts. It was a lovely long walk, and I was infinitely impressed with Audobon Park. It's quite enormous and well-maintained. The pedestrian loop around the park has walking, running, and biking "lanes" and there are emergency call boxes and dog poop bag dispensers scattered around. There are also lots of benches and gazebos should you just want to sit around in the shade or sun or any combination thereof.

Then, pupusas for dinner (which were stupid good), and a trip to 12 Bar, "New Orleans' comedy living room." This was the most awkward comedy watching experience of my life. The back of the bar really is like a living room, with couches and chairs arranged around a microphone, so the comedians can look you in the eye. When they first started the only 3 people there who weren't performers or bartenders were Jessica, Sean, and me. Luckily my friend Alex (who was randomly stuck here to a flight snafu) and eventually some other couples showed up, but at first I felt that skin crawling sensation that makes me leave the room when I watch It's Always Sunny.

No real take-homes from all this, I just want to remember what an awesome low-key day it was and how much I love New Orleans. This would be a lovely place to live.

For photographic evidence, check out the FB album.

Acceptance or something like it

2011-03-31T01:47:00.001-04:00

Yes kids, I'm drunk. And in vino veritas. I may even turn off comments for this post as I know ya love me and you'll be all supportive and whatnot.

Thing is, I realized tonight, walking home alone, stubbornly alone, how truly alone I am. How truly alone we all are. How I am likely to die alone, more so than most, simply bc I'm kind of a weird girl. It's fine. It is what it is, but every now and then, when I'm three sheets to the wind, it really pisses me off. How unfair life is, how random, how twisted and sick and in control of all of us it is.

Dear Life, Drunk Denise says to hell with you.

I'll sing the high, baby, you sing the low.

2011-03-21T21:20:00.000-04:00

I was talking to someone the other night, someone who used to be married and isn't anymore. I'm almost at an age where, sadly, my own divorce is less interesting novelty and more shared experience. The CDC tells me that when women get married between 20-24 (I was 23), the likelihood of divorce after 72* months is 19%. That was according to data gathered in 1995. I wonder if the rates are even higher now.

It was interesting how he spoke about marriage and life after marriage. He said, "I was very happily married." I find that sentence both beautiful and tragic. Because really, how many people say, "we" are happily married, all the while forgetting that each of us is a universe unto ourselves, an entire separate reality? Even after the confrontation and the loss, our own reality is slow to change. He still thinks of himself as part of a pair, but his other half is missing.

My marriage having ended long ago, I'm not sure I remember what it feels like to be part of a pair. Sometimes I think I long for an idea that's mostly fantasy and a nostalgia for something my senses remember but my mind has forgotten. The familiar smell of someone else on your pillow, the warmth of a shared shower, the embrace of forgiveness after a fight, the moment you realize you don't have to try to remember their favorite song, biggest pet peeve, most cherished memory. When someone else feels like home.

I long for that on days like today, days when I come home and my roommate has been out of town for 4 weeks and Spencerificus seems tiny and entirely unable to help me fill all the empty space in this house. I sit on the porch and watch the neighbors with their kids, working in their yards, and I feel content, but there's a nagging emptiness that never seems to go away.

Anyone who knows me, anyone who's read just about anything I've ever written, you know that a huge part of my life is about family and what family means and fighting to feel comfortable being alone with myself when the idea of family is elusive. And even though I'm kind of sad about this sometimes, lonely, I think I'm at the point where I'm as solitary as I want to be. I don't want to get more comfortable with being alone. I like the hope.

My friend, the divorced person of mystery, said he has a spot in his life that someone walked away from and he's always wondering about a new person's relationship to that spot. Spot is such a specific term. I don't have a spot, I have a space. It's a much more general concept. However, the desire is fundamentally the same. We tend to be so ashamed of this kind of thing, of longing, of loneliness. But how can something so fundamental be shameful?

I have a space in my life. Someday someone will fill it, and as Cary Ann Hearst sings, "We'll be together every day and night. We'll have a miserable life." I don't want to forget to be excited about the possibility of hanging my heart on someone's barbed wire fence.

* I'm 29 now, married at 23, so 29 yo - 23 yo = 6 x 12 = 72 months.

Talk Talk - T.C. Boyle

2011-03-05T22:44:00.002-05:00

★★★
Not much to say about this one. I really like T.C. Boyle, but I'm used to reading things of his that are a little weirder. He tends to take normal situations and twist one thing about them and then see what the effect might be. That's how non-Euclidean geometry works - you change one thing, like saying parallel lines can intersect once, and then you see how it changes everything else about the system. T.C. Boyle does that with life. In this book, one of the characters is deaf, and it profoundly changes the way she interacts with the other characters, but there's nothing supernatural about the strangeness of this novel.

I liked that it didn't end the way I thought it would - it was a bit more unusual than that, which I appreciated.

It was also funny because as soon as I read this, I heard T.C. Boyle on NPR and the next day read an article by him in Smithsonian. It's like meeting someone in a small town and then you see them everywhere. I'm sure T.C. and I will meet again.

This counts toward my 100+ Challenge.

Little Bee - Chris Cleave

2011-03-04T16:47:00.005-05:00

★★★★
This book was so deliciously good, and I've hesitated writing about it because I'm conflicted about a few things. I've thought about the book repeatedly in the past couple weeks, and had two great conversations with people about it. That's more than I think about most books I read, so in that sense, the book is a smashing success.

Little Bee is a Nigerian refugee in England who has survived through her mastery of language, and Chris Cleave has written her in a voice that rings so true* it's like you can hear her speaking. I have no idea what intelligent Nigerian refugees actually sound like, so I guess I'm trusting Mr. Cleave quite a bit here, but regardless, I loved her. When she is the narrator, the story moves along briskly with a steady stream of observations, imaginations, and remembrances. A couple of examples of things I loved:

How I would love to be a British pound. A pound is free to travel to safety, and we are free to watch it go. This is the human triumph. This is called, globalization. (p 2)

And another:

On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived. (p 9)

One more:

I felt my heart take off lightly like a butterfly and I thought, yes, this is it, something has survived in me, something that does not need to run anymore, because it is worth more than all the money in the world and its currency, its true home, is the living. And not just the living in this particular country or in that particular country, but the secret, irresistible heart of the living. I smiled back at Charlie and I knew that the hopes of this whole human world would fit inside one soul. This is a good trick. This is called, globalization. (p 264)

The themes of globalization, money, privilege, nationalism, and home run throughout the book, and when Little Bee talks about how the flag of all refugees all over the world would be the same featureless gray, you understand how alone she is and yet also part of a community of thousands.

The alternating narrator is Sarah, an English woman who is not unlikable, and turns out to be a rather extraordinary person. The problem is that she's just not as interesting a voice as Little Bee, and I think that if she'd been the sole narrator, I probably wouldn't have liked the book at all. She's kind of dry, a little stiff. Almost uncomfortable. She's much harder to identify with.

This is the major point of ambivalence I have about the book. Chris Cleave is a British white guy and therefore culturally closer to Sarah (and me?) than to Little Bee, and so I wonder what it means that I liked Little Bee so much. Do I like her or do I like the idea of her as depicted by other white people? Because of course her wisdom, her cleverness, her personality, are all really Chris Cleave. They're who he thinks she is. How can I trust that? How much truth is there?

I talked about this book with Diana and she helped me see a few things that I think contributed to my dislike of Sarah. I couldn't figure it out before, and I think it's because of her arrogance, and how closely she held onto her naivety. At one point she did something really incredible for Little Bee, something that reveals her to be a different kind of person than we originally think she is. Then, in the second half of the book, she pretty much undoes it completely. It's almost as though even with first hand knowledge, she still can't wrap her mind around the horror of what's happening in Nigeria, the fundamental truth of Little Bee's story. In that way, she acts as a stand-in for us, the reader. Even if we do dramatic things or make sacrifices, some part of us finds it all hard to believe. We cling to our ignorance; we don't make real changes. Maybe it's Sarah as a reflection of myself that I actually dislike.

This counts toward my 100+ Challenge.

You write, I write, we write.

2011-02-14T10:15:00.000-05:00

We went to a conference last week on higher education pedagogy and I was lucky enough to attend a couple of great sessions on student writing and collaborative writing. While at the collaborative writing session, I realized that if my life were a pie chart sans sleep, 60% of my waking hours would be spent thinking about or doing some kind of writing activity. I didn't intend for that to be the case, but I find that now that I'm in it, I rather like the way my relationship with the written word is shaping up. I began to contemplate authorship more generally, but some brief background on all the writing before I get into that, as I think it's easy to not realize all the different kinds of writing we do every day.

Professionally, the research group I'm part of just sent off a great paper on advisor / graduate student co-authoring, and there are more papers in the works on that topic. Another large project I'm working on examines plagiarism in graduate students - what it looks like and what the explanations might be. As part of this study of graduate student writing, I'm hoping to get a first author publication out of it that focuses on my take on what we're seeing. Last week, I worked with some engineers on a grant proposal, my first one where I had to contribute original text and ideas (that was a big deal btw). I'm also sitting in on a grant writing class, for which I'm putting together an entire grant all on my own about an idea that could be my future PhD dissertation about science blogging, another kind of writing. So I spend my professional days thinking about other peoples' writing and then doing a lot of writing of my own.

Personally, I've been working on this book for a while and I have this blog. I think it's easy to discount blogging as a form of writing, but I think a lot about what ends up here, and there's research that says writing is thinking, that the writing process forces you to organize your thoughts and make meaning of your experiences. I do a lot of that here, summarizing and contextualizing my life. The book is a whole other kind of writing, where I get to spin a tale and think about writing style. I'm always reading and I find that I respond to a certain writing quality, a kind of simplicity that I'd like to emulate in my own fiction, even if fiction isn't my forte.

Now back to authorship...

While sitting in the session on collaborative writing in student groups using wikis, I began to think about all the different kinds of writing I do. How some of it is collaborative, how some of it is not, and how much of it falls along a spectrum from entirely sole-authored to entirely collaborative, in which I think my own contributions and those of my collaborators become eventually indistinguishable. All these different writing tasks require different skills, and some of them we teach well to students and some of them we do not.

Students do a lot of single authorship writing in school - we want to know what they know. How well students end up being able to write individually is something I still question (remember the plagiarism project?), but I know that they don't write well in groups. I'm not sure if I still write well in groups.

But a fundamental question I've been tossing around is what it means to be an author in the first place. This has a very specific meaning in academic writing in which you are or are not a named author on a written work. However, in a larger way, what must you contribute to a piece in order to be an author vs. an editor vs. a kind of adaptor and gatherer of information?

We accept that writing original text is authorship - I'm the author of this blog and I'm going to be the first author of the paper I'm writing on plagiarism, which means I will generate a lot of the basic text as well as the overall thrust and direction of the paper. However, a lot of blogs are more like information aggregators. They're bringing together information from all over the web to say something new. So how much of something new do you have to contribute before you're an author? I've also worked on academic papers where I've written very little original text, but I've read many iterations of the paper, contributed ideas and textual changes and helped significantly shape the paper to address our eventual audience. Even though I probably wrote nothing larger than a sentence here and there, I would still say I'm an author of that work.

At what point did I become comfortable with this much more amorphous idea of authorship? And oddly enough, academically, I'm much more comfortable now with non-sole-authored academic writing. This plagiarism paper will be the first major academic work that I'm taking the lead on in our group, and I find that I'm terrified of trying to pull together a cohesive package of ideas that flow and build an argument. Up until now, others have primarily done the driving, and perhaps I have been backseat driving a bit. Now I have to take the wheel on something, and I'm quite nervous.

The oddest thing about this is that my own progression (and the progression of the grad students I'm studying) is one in which you start out contributing in a small way to a larger work, and over time you contribute more and more of yourself until you're eventually ready to be a first-author, to take the lead. It's a kind of apprenticeship model. We don't teach K-16 students how to write that way at all. There is such a focus on single authored writing that I don't think students even realize that most of what you write after graduation involves a team effort.

Not sure where all this is leading, but I think it's a good framework for thinking of my own progression as a writer. You're not just a good "writer," you're a good writer or a bad writer in different contexts. It's a wide set of skills and rather than just being frustrated when it seems like it's not going well, it would be more productive to think of it as a range of skills, each of which needs to be developed and honed.

I'm an author in progress.

Addendum.

2011-02-13T16:45:00.000-05:00

I'm still thinking, but some truth while it's on my mind. Twice this weekend people were kind of shitty to me, and twice this weekend, I didn't do anything to deserve it. I would say the opposite actually, which is why this has the potential to sting and destroy what has otherwise been a terrific couple days. When you treat people well, you expect to be treated well. There's a tendency to self-blame.

But here's the thing. The single best thing you can do for yourself is remember that bad behavior is the responsibility of the person who did it. It's not my fault these people did what they did, it's theirs. Now if I let them do it again, then I get to blame me. But not until then.

Which leads to the other reason you might self-blame for someone else being a jerk. There's this sense that people need to be on their guard and protect themselves and if someone hurts you, it's because you made this mistake in trusting them not to. I think on some level that's true. That's why you don't get into the car with strangers - it's unlikely they'd kill you, but the consequence if they do is pretty high. Probably you shouldn't fall in love with a stranger for the same reason. I've had some broken hearts that have felt like death. But are the risks of extending friendship as high? I hope not.

I know someone who is a Deny, Allow kind of person, who is kind of mean to everyone, until they decide for some reason that you're all right. I think most people are more Allow, Deny. You let people in somewhat, you extend the metaphorical hand of friendship, and when that person fucks it up in some way, you take that hand back before they can slap it again. I've never been good at that. I always feel bad, like I don't deserve to take my hand back, so it just keeps getting pummeled while I smile at the person doing the pummeling.

So I guess what I have figured out, but only really had cause to think about in a clear way today, was that I choose to be Allow, Deny, and there's inherent risk there, but if you remember it's a risk and adjust your behavior accordingly, the world has a lot of potential for all kinds of connections. If you remember that you're not responsible for other peoples' behavior, the risk is minimized even more. You just take it for what it is and move forward, smarter about how to deal with that particular person.

All I can think about with this is the GRE, oddly enough. The first questions on the GRE count the most. They give you a middle of the road question, and if you get it wrong, they bracket you and ask you a question in the lower range. Each question or couple of questions is more and more specifically targeted until they can pinpoint your final score. Plus: scores are supposedly more specific and a better indicator of skill. Minus: the first questions when you're nervous count more. Maybe making human connections is more like that than we realize. The first couple interactions matter a lot - they bracket you. Then with each interaction, you learn more about where that friendship leads. But just because you get some questions wrong, that doesn't mean the test is over, but unless you want to keep slipping, you gotta get the next ones right.

I was sittin, waitin, wishin.

2011-02-13T09:35:00.001-05:00

Someone told me the other night that I there for them, that I was a good listener. Oddly enough, this made me want to punch something. Yeah...

I seem to be the same person to a lot of people, and I'm trying to figure out what this means, if it means anything. This ties in somehow with my idea that most of the things that happen to a person aren't really about the person, they're about persona. We meet people, we don't have the time or inclination to really get to know them, so we decide on their most salient characteristics and use that as shorthand. Everything else we assume based on who we are and what we think about the world. I often find this very comforting because it means that when someone does something asinine in your general direction, really, it's probably not about you.

However, the consequence of this is one of occasional loneliness because if you're "blunt", people assume they know you. They assume they do, but they really don't. They know one or two things about you. They know that you're candid about the things you choose to share and if you're a good listener on top of that, they assume they don't need to ask questions. You start to become a reflection of them. I think I'm fine with this usually because to me, that's their way of demonstrating that I don't need to reveal more of myself. But sometimes you get a little tired of being the human prop in other peoples' drama.

Sometimes people do ask questions and offer something that resembles reciprocal friendship, and those are the ones you keep, the ones who realize that people exist as entities outside their own heads. Please note at that this point, there are some people that I am missing with a sharp little pain in my heart because I am lucky enough to know a lot of people like this, but I can't be with most of them right now.

I was pretty much finished venting about this, when last night, someone called me a catalyst. In case you don't remember your high school biology, a catalyst lowers the reaction energy of a reaction so that the molecules involved can do their thing more easily. This means that they make things happen faster, and sometimes they let reactions happen that wouldn't be able to take place otherwise. They are not used up in the reaction, and they can facilitate many iterations of the same reaction before they get sick of the bullshit and stop working. For the visually minded, I provide a diagram:

I don't buy into this idea at all because of course, people do change me, and I'd like to think that sometimes I matter to them and change them back. It was just an interesting thing to hear, that someone thinks my life looks like this. This idea that in some way I'm there to make things happen for other people. Maybe we all think that about each other in some sense? I find that a little depressing.

But there's another interpretation of this, I think, which is that I am, perhaps, largely unaffected by other peoples' drama and constant changing craziness. I can buy into this idea, but I can't manage to turn the metaphor around completely because no matter how you spin it, the catalyst only exists because the other people already do.

Still thinkin.

Act, don't react.

2011-02-10T21:15:00.002-05:00

Once upon a time...

2011-02-10T20:34:00.000-05:00

A girl met a boy in a bar. They may have been drinking. They may have exchanged phone numbers. It's a little fuzzy.

Boy meets girl again. They kind of remember meeting the first time, but not really. I told you, it's a little fuzzy.

Either way, they get along really well. Girl gives boy her phone number and never hears from him again.

Girl now suspects that she is listed in his phone as something odd.

You can't cut knitting.

2011-01-24T01:57:00.000-05:00

Generally I try to choose knitting projects where I need to master one new skill at a time. I've learned cables, increasing and decreasing, short rows, continental and European knitting. I've also successfully modified a rather complicated pattern so that I could add in a specialty rib stitch where a simple rib was called for. I felt very proud of this, which indicates that I am a nerd with no life. C'est ma vie.

However, I am breaking my rule to start on a project I've really wanted to do for a while. It's a kit from KnitPicks for a laptop case. Should I manage to not screw this up, it will look something like this:

This requires that I knit in the round, read a chart, and do stranded colorwork, all of which is new for me. Should I actually manage to finish it, it's also going to require steeking, where you cut. the. damned. knitting, which is craaaaazy.

Steeking. Pure madness.

I may use it as a laptop bag, or maybe I'll turn it into a pillow or a purse. Either way, it's getting steeked, just so I can do it. Then I'm going to make the sweater that the Knitting Harpy is hacking to bits above b/c it's absolutely gorgeous.

I awesomify things.

2011-01-22T16:00:00.000-05:00

I had one of these:

That's awesome because it had popcorn in it, and I like popcorn. However, it's not exactly the kind of thing you'd keep around the house year round, now is it? Even though you can imagine it would have lots of uses, most of which involve holding things. (This isn't my tin, as I didn't take a pre picture, but mine had puppies and Santas on it.)

I also had some of this:

The colors are lovely, but what exactly do you do with such a thing? It's not really garment appropriate, and I didn't have enough to make a blanket.

But, when I put the two together, I got this:

I started at the bottom where there's a little metal lip, and just wrapped up the side. I put a thin layer of Mod Podge underneath occasionally to anchor it, and attached the beginning and end of the yarn with some hot glue. Then I sealed the whole thing to give it some stability and keep it from getting too dirty since it will be on the floor. I didn't bother to do the lid, since I'm going to be using it as my new office garbage can.

I like the way the variegation in the yarn creates darker and lighter patches. I have some other Christmas tins lying around and I like the way this turned out so much, I think I'm going to repeat the experiment with other tin/yarn combinations.

Things that go bump in the night.

2011-01-21T11:29:00.000-05:00

That was the title of the email I got from The Rumpus today, and it's apropos, as I also had a rough night. I dreamed about my mom. Before I went to bed ThisMoiThisMoi posted on Twitter, "Today I turn 27. The same age my mother was when she had me. Now the universe will explode." I retweeted and responded with, "My mom was 27 when she had me and I was 27 when she died. Somehow the universe didn't explode."

Not because I was trying to be a downer or anything, but because it's true. It feels like the universe should have exploded when she died, or at least collapsed in on itself, but somehow it didn't. I also just know what she means. When my mom died I wasn't a mother or a daughter anymore at the same age when my mother was both. I felt unmoored and without purpose.

Then last night I dreamt about her, a few times I'm sure because I woke up a lot, but I only remember the first time. I don't know what was happening, but at the end of the dream we hugged. I was certain that she was real. I could feel the soft papery skin of her cheek against mine and the pucker of her lips as she kissed the little hollow where my dimple forms. I could feel her chin digging into the outer edge of the back of my neck because it always seemed like she was trying to wrap herself around me when she hugged me, protecting me from the world with her body. I could smell her too.

My mom was depressed for a long time, even though I didn't realize that at the time, and she smoked, and at the end she'd been sick and a lot less mobile. Her smell was a combination of stale cigarette smoke, her soap, and whatever you conjure up when you imagine dusty sunlight in a sewing room. She was like a house that hadn't been aired yet for spring, holding tight to all the aromas of winter. I have no idea how to describe how comforting that smell was, but it was the smell of all my memories.

And in my dream, I knew that it was really happening, that by some miracle I was getting to hug her again. Then I woke up and it wasn't real, and I cried myself back to sleep.

I wonder if there will come a time when this sort of thing happens, and instead of it making me sad, it feels comforting? I hope so.

100+ Challenge - 2011

2011-01-10T23:28:00.020-05:00

Post to keep track of 100+ Challenge books:

To the White Sea - James Dickey
Little Bee - Chris Cleave
Talk Talk - T.C. Boyle
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
After Dark - Haruki Murakami
Lullaby - Chuck Palahniuk
Hedge Fund Wives - Tatiana Boncompagni
Watership Down - Richard Adams
A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake - Aimee Bender
Between, Georgia - Joshilyn Jackson
Breathers: A Zombie's Lament - S. G. Browne
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins
The Mermaid Chair - Sue Monk Kidd

To the White Sea - James Dickey

2011-01-10T23:22:00.002-05:00

★★★★
This isn't so much a review as a bunch of the stuff I thought about while reading this. Expect that this year, as I have 100+ books to read, and I'm already behind.

First, I loved this book. I was completely entranced by the lead character, a GI named Muldrow who gets shot down over Tokyo during World War II. I've been really into war novels lately, but I hadn't read one of the "trek through enemy territory" variety yet. Muldrow is a weird guy, a fact established from the very beginning, but I found his reactions throughout the story really fascinating, and while I think they probably were unusual, he didn't seem particularly mad to me. I mention that word, "mad" in particular, because all the comments on the book cover are about "outland craziness" and "snow, murder, madness, and war." I'll give you all those descriptors except mad.

Yes, getting shot down in Tokyo and deciding to head North because it's what you know, rather than trying to get yourself rescued is probably strange, but Muldrow's a strange guy. He is, at heart, a survivalist, and he knows that in the North he'll be able to survive (he grew up in isolated northern Alaska). Yeah, he kills some people on the way, but then again he is in enemy territory, surrounded by people who would kill him, so if we say he is mad for killing these people, that seems less of an indictment of this character, and more of an indictment of war in general, which I'm fine with. He also indulges in extended fantasies about Alaska, the land, the snow, the animals and he often pretends to be them in order to take on their attributes such as the stealthiness of the fisher marten or the camouflage capabilities of the hare. Once again, that seems totemic, and not crazy.

Given all that, I liked that while Muldrow engaged in some odd behavior, at each stage his actions seemed like a logical extension of who he was as a person and the extreme circumstances he was in. And I'm glad, because it made the book believable. The ultimate caveat, of course, is that we find out later that he killed some poor girl from Kansas even when he was back in Alaska, and well, there's just no cause for killing good Kansans.

I thought a lot about On the Road while reading this. The tale of the solitary trek on a road through enemy territory with the idea that at the end there's a promised land of safety is a common storyline. I see the palatability of setting it as a post-apocalyptic story instead of a war story - the protagonist in a post-apocalypse story is an unabashedly "good" survivor, battling zombies or some other corrupted form of human. Any taking of "life" that has to happen is okay, and you get to really focus on the inner struggle of said protagonist without any ambiguities as to their value. Placing the story in a war setting makes the story much less black and white. The "enemy" is real people, many of whom may seem more noble than our hero. I like the war story better because it forces you to think, to deal with the fact that real life is gray and complicated.

Finally, I've never read Deliverance, maybe I will for my Southern Lit challenge, but based on this book, James Dickey was an excellent storyteller. For me, a good story has two key elements - a good plot (good meaning a wide variety of things) and appropriate kinds of detail to sell it. In To the White Sea, that detail was about Alaska. In many cases, the descriptions of Alaska and its wildlife were much more vivid than those of Japan, an effect that is meant to echo Muldrow's own experience in which he is, in his mind, in Alaska, his safe place, in order to survive Japan, the hostile place that he's only passing through. To whatever purpose, the prose made Alaska seem beautiful and wild and I think really captured a feeling of not just what the place was like, but what it was like from the inside.

This counts toward my 100+ Challenge.

Where's your head at?

2011-01-08T12:37:00.003-05:00

I've been freaking out about work this week as well as about my inability to follow through on some person goals (not related to New Year's at all) and it's been affecting my sleep. Hasn't helped that I've been sick. Last night it showed up in the form of dreams. I don't remember all of them, but I know there was a series of weird dreams in which I was somehow not up to the task presented to me.

In the last dream, I had a baby, but I was away all day, and in the evening I was meeting my mom and we were going out of town overnight and she had left the baby with someone. I had kind of forgotten I had the baby and when I remembered, I was immediately terrified that she hadn't eaten, that I had abandoned her, and that my mom for some reason had forgotten her as well. I demanded that she take me to see the baby, and while we were traveling to where the baby was, I started thinking about why the baby wasn't with me, and how if I'd been breastfeeding, this never could have happened. I instantly knew that for some reason I couldn't breastfeed, and I remembered how this was always something that was really important to me, and I had a sudden rush of guilt and sadness at not being able to do this thing that was so important* and how maybe I'd hurt my baby because of it. The alarm woke me up before we got to the baby.

I don't remember ever dreaming about having a baby before, and what an odd way for my mind to manifest my feelings of inadequacy. It is physical, at least, and I've been doing a lot of thinking about how people manipulate themselves physically for various purposes.

The kick-off was Russell Brand posting a picture of Katy Perry on Twitter and then removing it. She's sans make-up, making a funny face, and in bad lighting. She looks bad. Most people would, regardless of gender, we're just used to seeing women all faked up. I'm guilty of it too. I've started wearing more make-up the last few years, and it used to feel like dress up, but I was totally comfortable wandering around the world, going to work without it. Now if I'm not wearing it, I look in the mirror and think I look bad. My norm has changed. While I do think I look "better" in pictures and whatnot these days, I don't know how I feel about warping my own sense of myself.

But back to Katy Perry. It's stupid that people are 1) saying how incredibly different she looks b/c duh, and 2) commenting on how awful it is that this picture got out and how she should be mad at Russell Brand. I like the before and afters, it's further proof of how fake it all is. A little groundtruthing never hurt anyone. So, the goods:

This is an unflattering picture of a real person.

This is a picture of a fake person.

Which reminded me of Super Kawaii Mama's tutorials for everyday glam make-up. I love her look (her in general really), but this is her everyday look and it takes her 2 10-minute videos to explain what she does, and while I don't think she's altering her appearance as much as a celebrity like Katy Perry, she uses 13 different products. Video 1 is below, and this is Video 2. I should reiterate that I've seen these before because I'm a huge fan of hers.

I think I love her because while she is embracing an aesthetic that does require a lot of work, it's at least unique, and it's taking inspiration from a vintage era and then making it your own. What I find especially distressing is when the goal is for everyone to just look the same, such as in this collection of Asian women before and after make-up. The hair, make-up, styling, and camera angle is creepily consistent across the collection. Found this through Jezebel.

All this while the discussion of Natalie Portman thinkin she was gonna die during the filming of Black Swan. Although sometimes dudes do crazy stuff to their bodies too:

Taken from /Film.

So yeah, while I should be doing other stuff, all this is swimming around in my head.

*I know some women can't or choose not to breastfeed for many reasons. This is not a criticism of them, merely an accounting of my dream.

2011 Reading Challenges

2011-01-01T18:50:00.001-05:00

On the first day of this new year, I am pulling together the reading challenges in which I want to participate. There are so many that sound interesting that I'm not doing, particularly a bunch of them that are regional authors, which I'm trying to cover with my Global Reading Challenge. I've chosen a bunch of them, but the problem won't be reading quantity, but more like reading strategy. I read 3 or 4 books a week and most of these challenges allow crossovers, so I see no problems reading enough books, merely reading the right books and then, perhaps more challenging, writing about them, which some challenges require, and some only suggest. Either way, it's a neat way to prioritize reading for the coming year.

The Challenges in Which I Shall Participate
Southern Literature Challenge - I've never read enough Southern Lit, and while some of the newer stuff is truly awful, I'd like to explore some older books. It's any book set in the South by a Southern author. I shall aim for level 4, which is 4 books, and will probably pull at least 2 from the Best Southern Literature list at GoodReads, but I haven't picked them yet.

PoC Reading Challenge - Read books by Persons of Color. Once again, kind of an easy one because I usually end up doing this anyway, but I like the idea of a public declaration that these are good reads. Also, this forces me to blog about them. The blog hosting the challenge has a great reading list to pull from. I haven't pulled yet. I like the idea of being able to choose stuff as I go. Level 4 is 10-15 books by PoC.

Page to Screen Reading Challenge - Books that have been turned into TV shows or movies. Level 1 is 5 books, and I think that's my aim, although I might be able to do Level 2, which is 10.

Chunkster Challenge - Now I'm stretching. To be a Chubby Chunkster (the basic level), you have to read 4 books of 450 pages or more. I think that's all I can handle.

Gender Identity & Expression Challenge - I'm going for Pink here, which is 5 books that deal positively with gender identity and expression. Not sure why Pink is 5 and Blue is 1, but whatevs.

Haruki Murakami - I have 3 books of his to read just on my shelf, so if I read those alone, that gets me to Sheep Man level. Done and done.

Global Reading Challenge - I'm super excited about this one. I'm going for Medium, which is 2 novels from each inhabited continent, plus a "7th continent" which can be anything. I think I might try books by island authors.

Global Reading Challenge

Foodie's Reading Challenge - Epicurean (7 to 9 books) and they can be anything about FOOD! I'mma kill this one.

War Through the Generations - This year the theme is the Civil War and to Dip, you just need 3-5 with U.S. Civil War as the primary or secondary theme. I figure this can overlap somewhat with my Southern Lit challenge.

Finally, a couple of overarching ones:
2011 Year of Reading - A different theme each month to spice it up and keep me from getting complacent.

100+ Reading Challenge - 2 books a week? I can do that!

Some moping and the 2011 that already exists in my mind.

2010-12-24T17:22:00.000-05:00

I used to cry a lot, like a really really lot. For large periods of my life, I cried at least once a day. I'm not going to get into specifics about what times of my life were the "worst" since what was going on in my life wasn't responsible for the tears. It was like I was a cup that was full of water and any little thing would just make me overflow, and the only way I knew to deal with things was to cry. Difficult conversations with people would start the waterworks, and I'd keep talking, since I thought that was just my reaction to any kind of emotional stress and just try to convince whoever I was talking to that that particular conversation wasn't responsible. And I was right. I wasn't crying about that little conversation, I was crying about all of it. It took a divorce (accepting that I could be imperfect and still loved), Nicaragua (learning that I could make things happen when I really wanted), and my mom's death (finally dealing with many, many things) to stop the tears in a mostly permanent way. I like my life, and I have enough emotional reserves that when something stressful happens, my tea cup is nowhere near to overflowing.

I still cry, obviously, when things are really terrible. I also cry at the holidays. I cry because my dad is unhappy. I cry because my sister is unhappy and spreads that around to everyone else. I cry because I miss my mom, although she was always unhappy, too. I cry because sometimes the world is an awful, ugly place and some people are luckier than others, and I somehow manage to be one of the lucky ones and one of the unlucky ones at the same time, and all the things I'm unlucky about I can't control and that makes me feel helpless and angry. I cry because you can't control other people and that makes me angry because you see other people making mistakes and there's nothing you can do about it. This picking your battles bullshit is just that sometimes, bullshit. And hiding your head in the sand and pretending it doesn't exist isn't an option because that would make you a bad aunt and a bad sister and a bad daughter and I don't want to be a bad anything. Sometimes I hate everything, and there's nothing to do but cry about it.

Now, 2011. I can't do anything about this crap, but there are many things I do have control over. I don't like resolutions, but I like to give years a title and then try to live up to them. I did okay with this past year, and now I have a title for 2011. 2011: Year in Which I Do Not Discuss My Love Life. It might sound stupid, but I think if people talk about things, it allows them to fixate on those topics. I don't want to think about this anymore. I don't want to fixate on it. I want to think about other stuff, like climbing mountains, knitting my first sweater, finally learning to play the guitar, publishing my first 1st-author paper, and finding a place in Charlottesville to go salsa dancing.

So today sucks, I'mma cry about it, and then I'm going to make some additional awesome positive changes.

why I like volunteering enough to actually post something (even though it doesn't count toward my nanowrimo count)

2010-11-08T20:57:00.000-05:00

I've been volunteering at Reading For the Blind & Dyslexic (RFB&D) for a few months now, and I love it. I felt crummy last Monday, so I didn't go and I went this past Saturday, and then again tonight. Even with everything else going on, I love my time there.

I get to read interesting things - Saturday it was an anthology of modern African literature, and then tonight it was a book about skepticism and Christianity. And I love the singularity of purpose that it entails. I love going into that little booth, cellphone on silent, with one thing to do. No emails popping up, no boss on the phone, just one thing.

Short but sweet, and there it is. Back to NaNoWriMo.

Love the Way You Lie

2010-10-05T21:48:00.000-04:00

My awareness of pop culture has clearly fallen off because I heard "Love the Way You Lie" for the first time on Friday (thank you Jimmy Fallon), and I really liked it. Then another friend posted the video and I loved that, too. Before Googling, and getting the answer from the internet, I thought about watching Rihanna & Eminem singing a song about a violent relationship, and well, I have thoughts.

Before these thoughts, a disclaimer: I've never been in a physically violent relationship. I watched my parents, whose relationship was emotionally violent and on rare occasions physically violent. I would characterize our childhood home as emotionally abusive, both to adults and us kids. As an adult, I've been in one relationship that was extremely passionate, both in good times and bad. It was the kind of relationship I could imagine easily devolving, and it scared me. When I watched this video, that's the relationship I thought of. So I don't know what it's like to be in an abusive relationship. I don't know what it's like to go from that to watching this video. I can only speak for me.

Now, returning to my relationship experience, it leads me to make a distinction between what I perceive as two different types of abusive relationships. There are relationships that devolved, but where both partners are violent. The desire to inflict violence upon one's partner is wrong, regardless of direction (male --> female or female --> male). Based on what I've read about this video, some people believe that the woman is always the victim, and I won't deny that when there is relationship violence, and a woman gets hurt, she's a victim, automatically, hands down, no argument. The connotation however, is that the man in these situations cannot be a victim as well. I disagree. When you watch the video, imagine the roles reversed. Her violence is less extreme than his (I'll get back to that in a minute), but no more acceptable because of that. The partners here appear to be locked in a cycle of mutual violence. Returning to the imbalance in their violence, that's a consequence of the inherent physical differences between male and female. When a man punches a wall, or hits someone, or shoves someone, it is by default more violent. The urges aren't inherently different, but the outcome is. The woman becomes the victim, regardless of how the violence begins. The kind of passion that begets this kind of violence is attractive. It's exciting and thrilling, to both partners, until it goes too far. That's the kind of relationship I think was being depicted here.

The other type of violent relationship is one where the pathological goal of the abuser is to control their partner by whatever means necessary, regardless of whether or not the other person has the same desire.

I want to say, clearly and strongly, that the fact that I think the violence begins differently in these two types of relationships DOES NOT IN ANY WAY EXCUSE THE VIOLENCE. I am NOT victim blaming. In the first situation, a woman does not deserve to be abused just because she chose to be in the relationship in the first place. Choosing passion is not the same as choosing violence. It's just not, and I think that's where my real problem with this whole situation lies - in our complete inability to deal with 2 facts that we think are contradictory. Either she chose, or she's a victim.

People have such a problem with Rihanna singing this song, and I just feel like people need to get off her damned back. Why can't we accept nuance? Why must we say that if a woman chooses a relationship that turns bad, she chose a bad relationship? No, she didn't. So much of what I read is either, "She made her bed, let her lie in it" or "The woman is the VICTIM and she's helpless and didn't know what she was doing with herself." I hate that those are our only two choices. Women can have agency and still be victimized. A woman can choose to be in a relationship, a good one or a bad one, and at some point that choice can be taken away from her, either physically or psychologically. Both things can be true simultaneously. We don't know what happened to Rihanna, or what Eminem did to whoever. We know what made the headlines, and how she chooses to deal with it is her business. She can be a victim, and still decide to make this video.

I see really terrible parallels here with the kind of reactions people have to rape victims. The only way we can seem to "accept" rape is if the woman is "perfect" and "innocent" and "virtuous." God forbid she was out drinking, or was wearing provocative clothing, or walking alone, or doing anything else that we can possibly use to excuse what happened to her. Women can make those choices without wanting some asshole to rape them. Wearing a skirt is not an invitation to rape, and nothing a woman does is ever an excuse for domestic violence. I loathe these black and white viewpoints, and I think they are actually really counterproductive. Just because a situation isn't black and white, that doesn't mean there's no right and wrong. We need to be able to see a situation accurately, give women their due, and still offer them our protection when they need it.

When academic politics get personal

2010-09-27T09:58:00.000-04:00

Bill Ayers has been a teacher at U of Illinois since 1987, and Christopher Kennedy just urged the university board to reject his emeritus status because he intends to "vote against conferring the honorific title of our university to a man whose body of work includes a book dedicated in part to the man who murdered my father, Robert F. Kennedy. There can be no place in a democracy to celebrate political assassinations or to honor those who do so."

The professor already has the vote of confidence of the university by being hired there in the first place. I guess I had a little more belief in Camelot than I thought because I'm really disappointed to see this from a Kennedy.

When Emeritus Isn't Automatic from Inside Higher Ed

Some I'm sending today.

2010-09-25T12:19:00.000-04:00

I heart postcards!

2010-09-25T09:43:00.003-04:00

I got some goodies lately.

Story in 12 words, courtesy of Australia.

From someone else in the US. I love it!

Who even knows the national symbol of Singapore is a Merlion??

Metacognitive me.

2010-09-23T13:39:00.000-04:00

I'm having an emotionally strange day in which I feel like there are two very distinct versions of me. First, there's the me that's feeling uncaccountably sad.

Contributing factors:
   I'm single. I maybe could go out with someone, but I'm not emotionally ready to do that and even if I was, I don't think this person would be a good fit for me. I refuse to date or fall in love with anyone else who isn't good enough for me, or just plain isn't good to me. I foresee being single for a while. Even people with convictions get lonely.
   I recently hung out with the person who I could probably date. I've tried to be clear about that not happening, but I worry that it's not, so I'm a little uncomfortable all the time, and instead of it being a good time, it just makes me sad because I know this person is lonely too, and I don't want to contribute to that.
   A friend from middle school just posted all these pictures from her honeymoon, and I'm so happy for her. I am also jealous. Her husband looks like Christopher Gorham and they take amazing photographs together and apart, and mostly they are just laughing a lot, and I want someone to laugh with. In order to laugh, you have to be comfortable, safe, and happy. In another's company. In their love.
   I miss a thing I used to have that didn't work out and might not have anyway. I still miss it.

I feel nostalgic for something I've never had, and how do you deal with that? How do you deal with wanting something that you have very little control over?

So there's that me - the one feeling all that. And then there's the second me, the one who is watching the first me feel all that and thinking, "What in the world is wrong with you??" Because my life is pretty damned good just now. I like my job (!!). I'm making friends and have friends in the center already. Charlottesville is growing on me a little, and I'm getting involved with things here. I love my house. I'm doing everything I can to get my finances in order. My ducks are in a very happy row. So second me is looking at first me, thinking, "Cheer up, sad panda!" and wondering why all the good things can't keep me from feeling sad.

She wore blue velvet.

2010-09-19T16:10:00.001-04:00

I've been randomly picking things off my Netflix instant queue, added at some time or another because it was on a list or some blog I read commented on it. It is an odd assortment of films that don't really seem to follow any rhyme or reason. Hence, in the middle of this beautiful almost fall day, I ended up watching Blue Velvet.

My fiction class last semester, Monsieur Woody Jones, and this random dart Netflixing have somehow added up to a recent introduction to film noire, a genre I really haven't enjoyed previously. I'm not sure I'd say I enjoy it now, but I have been intrigued by the portrayal of women in these films. Blue Velvet was released in 1986, and I'll admit I don't know much about the film history of that period. Older classics and modern films I'm pretty familiar with, but in general I seemed to have skipped over much of the 80s.

Because I don't know much about film from the 80s, I don't know much about how women were commonly portrayed during this time, but a quick IMDB search shows that of the 10 top films from that year, three of them had leading female characters who I would consider positive or strong (Aliens, Pretty in Pink, Labyrinth), and two had characters with more redeeming qualities than those in Blue Velvet (Top Gun, Nine 1/2 Weeks). Sigourney Weaver kicks serious ass throughout the Aliens series, Molly Ringwald is her own person even if she makes the wrong choice (What can I say? I love Duckie), and Jennifer Connelly conquers even imaginary creatures in Labyrinth. In Top Gun, Kelly McGillis has got more smarts than anyone else in the movie, and even though I hate Kim Basinger's character in Nine 1/2 Weeks, at least she walks away in the end. The women in Blue Velvet stand out here. Is this because film noire doesn't have room for female characters other than the Virgin and the Whore? I haven't seen enough yet to know, but I'm curious.

Isabella Rossellini manages to be sexy and sensual here, despite the awful gigantic 80s hair she's forced to sport throughout the film. She's older, more experienced. She seduces Jeffrey (played by a young Kyle MacLachlan), even as she's being brutally victimized by Frank and is worried about her kidnapped husband and son. In fact, she forces her sexuality onto Jeffrey - when she catches him spying on her from the closet, she makes him undress at knife point. This takes place in her entirely pink apartment, from the walls to the leather sofa. It's like a giant vulva in there. Her hair is black and she wears a lot of make-up, not always while working at the nightclub where she's a singer, although not a very good one. In case you missed all this symbolism, we see her naked twice in the film, once after having been raped and beaten. Laura Dern's character never shows so much as cleavage. We get it, she's a Whore. Even while being victimized, her role is to provoke the downfall and temptation of our lead (always male) character.

Alternatively, we have the Virgin. Laura Dern plays the detective's daughter, a high school senior (!), a blonde haired, blue eyed girl who dresses like the 80s teenage version of a schoolmarm. She does get to wear a strapless dress once, but it's got a floral print, so it probably doesn't count. She has almost no sexuality at all. When Jeffrey tries to kiss her in the diner, she asks him not to, and when they kiss again at the dance, it's sanctioned by their just-moments-before declarations of love. They have known each other for about a week, but it's love, so I guess kissing's okay. In contrast with Rossellini's apartment, we see Dern's bedroom once, and while there is the obligatory pink, it is present as an accent, a ruffled accent. Her sexuality is childlike, couched in innocence and love.

Jeffrey has a choice to make here. When he finds an ear in the field behind his neighborhood, his curiosity sets him down a path on which he discovers a dark hidden world he never knew existed all around him. At first, Dern is complicit in the investigation, but then she begins to encourage Jeffrey to give it up when she feels he is getting in too deeply and wants him to turn over what he's found to her father, the representation of authority and the keeper of the status quo. She does this, even though Jeffrey is hiding quite a bit from her, protecting her from the seedier details of his new knowledge as well as his own involvement in what's playing out. He refuses to quit his investigation, returning to the seductive embrace of Rossellini and it's only once he gets the crap kicked out of him that he feels any kind of inclination to follow Dern's advice.

Rossellini represents the dark, the tarnished, the damaged, the hidden. If you head down that path, you end up like Frank (a terrifying Dennis Hopper) or Ben (an eerie Dean Stockwell), crazy and dangerous. Dern represents the light, the clean, and the new. If you choose what she represents instead, you get a house and a family, as evidenced by the closing scene where he and Dern are having lunch with both their families.

(I find it interesting that the whole reason Jeffrey came home in the first place was because his father had a near-fatal stroke. Frank ends up dead in the movie, but perhaps Lynch is trying to say that it all turns out that way no matter what choice you make?)

The female characters as written are played to perfection by these actresses, but what's with these roles in the first place? I return to my previous question - is there a place in film noire for more three-dimensional women? Any good examples out there? Are their equivalent male roles?

My momma didn't raise no assistant.

2010-09-13T11:33:00.000-04:00

Today via email, for the first time, I was referred to as David's "assistant." Yes, I know that my title is Research Assistant, but my business card title is Project Manager. And I do research and work for the center, and yes, I suppose I assist David. I have met and come to rely on a number of assistants, administrative and otherwise, in the past couple weeks. They are some of the hardest working people here, and I deeply respect what they do and how underappreciated they are. And yet, today, I felt my entire body stiffen. My parents did not raise me to be someone else's assistant.

I think this just hit me at a vulnerable time. I've been watching my boss carefully lately. He's fairly young to have the amount of academic responsibility he has, and I'm going to soak it all up like a sponge. I'm also going to learn about university finances and I'm sure one day that will come in handy too. And in the past couple years I've started to feel much more confidently about my path. I didn't go to grad school right away because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I think that was a great decision.

When I do make it back to grad school in a couple years, I'm going to be bringing all this great life and academic experience with me. I'm going to be motivated and invested and used to making more than dirt and therefore ready to get in and get it done. I know this. That is my plan. I'm working toward that plan every day I'm here.

And then someone called me David's assistant, in writing, where somehow it seemed more permanent perhaps, and the feeling that I have sometimes, that maybe I've waited too long, pokes me in the kidneys. I want to work for NSF or NOAA, and bright shiny up-and-comers work for them. They get internships when they're 12 and get young innovator awards. It doesn't matter what amazing things I do, I won't ever get a young innovator award because by the time I get there, I won't be young anymore.

Have I waited too long? Have I missed my window? Am I spending my best brain years making someone else look good?

In a sense, all this doubt is pointless. I couldn't have done it any better; I'm sure of that. And even if I could have, I can't go back now. All I can do is press onward, but I wish someone could tell me Yes, there's still hope, keep going, or No, it's too late. Settle in there and make the best of it. And I know I can still be an academic, which honestly, compared to the rest of the world's problems makes this whole blog post fall under the "whiny first world bitch" category. But I don't want to work at some tiny college in the middle of nowhere teaching English for Engineers. I want to study interesting things and talk to people who might actually be able to effect change. Will anyone listen to someone who didn't get their degree until they were 35?

** After re-reading this, it still just sounds so bitchy and prideful. I suppose pride is part of it, probably a lot of it, and if it's true, there's no sense denying it. But it also sounds so disrespectful to "assistanthood", which I don't know what to do about. I value what they do. The amount of stuff they have to remember and juggle and make work is incredible. It's just not for me.

Why do I get so lonely, when there really ain't nothin wrong?

2010-09-11T13:09:00.000-04:00

Joe Purdy is inducing melancholia today, the kind that comes on quiet afternoons when I'm alone here. Today I realized I've been here long enough that I needed to dust the bookshelves. In my mind, and occasionally in conversation, I still refer to Columbia as home. I'm settling here, but it still doesn't feel like home. It feels like this house is home, but it's just in a neighborhood that's very far from the town I live in.

It's been a whirlwind few weeks. My job officially started, and I'm learning all about how university finances work. It's a lot of stuff I never thought I'd know or even need to know, about how grant funds work, how hard it is sometimes to just buy a stapler, and how many different kinds of funds there are and what you can and cannot do with each one. It turns out to all be distressingly complicated. It's my job though now, and I knew that coming here. On the bright side, I like knowing how things work, and I'm getting to learn a lot of things that most professors don't know, so when I go back to grad school and become one, I'm going to have an advantage on this front. It does require a lot of training though. This coming week alone, I'm taking two and a half days of training - Intro to University Business Administration, Internal Audits, Purchasing 1, and Purchasing 2. Yes, it takes 2 classes to learn how to buy stuff. Then in October, there's another class I have to take to get a purchasing card. Oh yeah, and eventually I will take Grants Reconciliation, which is like learning how to balance your checkbook, but it's all our grants instead.

Trying to balance all that with my research responsibilities has been the difficult part. I learned how to put together an NSF annual report this week - how the FastLane interface works, all the things that have to be submitted, etc. I had to drop everything else I was working on, but it felt really satisfying when it was done, and it's one of those things most people don't learn until they have an NSF grant and have to do it for that grant. Once again, I'm learning things that are really going to come in handy later.

Socially, I'm still finding out where I belong here. I went to the Cville Skeptics get-together yesterday and I think that will be a good group of people. The UU Fellowship is good, and I'm meeting people at work finally. But I'm lonely. I miss my friends, I miss my family, I miss my familiar places.

I did find the take-away creperie though, so that's promising... Today is also the Top of the Hops beer festival, which I won tickets to, so Laura and I are going together, and then after that is Symphony Under the Stars, a free concert put on by UVa. Tomorrow is a quiet, be at home work day.

Thinking of my Dad today

2010-09-02T12:45:00.000-04:00

Snow

by George Bilgere

A heavy snow, and men my age
  all over the city
are having heart attacks in their driveways,

dropping their nice new shovels
  with the ergonomic handles
that finally did them no good.

Gray-headed men who meant no harm,
  who abided by the rules and worked hard
for modest rewards, are slipping

softly from their mortgages,
  falling out of their marriages.
How gracefully they swoon—

that lovely, old-fashioned word—
  from dinner parties, grandkids,
vacations in Florida.

They should have known better
  than to shovel snow at their age.
If only they'd heeded

the sensible advice of their wives
  and hired a snow-removal service.
But there's more to life

than merely being sensible. Sometimes
  a man must take up his shovel
and head out alone into the snow.

from the Writer's Almanac

Productive anticipation & why I go to church in the first place

2010-08-29T13:50:00.000-04:00

This week has been a terror. One thing after another going dismally and me spinning my wheels, trying to get somewhere where I may not even be wanted. There has been some upheaval at work and the state of Virginia seems dead set against letting me get a driver's license. I keep telling myself that in a couple months, none of these problems will even exist, and worrying about them is just an additional waste of my time.

Today at the UU, the theme was productive anticipation: looking forward to something, but being an active participant in that process. So rather than just battening down the hatches in light of everything that's been happening and just waiting on things to settle down, it made me realize I also need to be doing everything I can do to make sure I'm going to land on my feet when the earth stops moving. It helped me reset some of my expectations, both for my situation, and for myself.

All this prompted me to think about why I even go there in the first place. I mean, I'm an atheist after all. It does seem counterintuitive. There's community and fellowship, people who care about each other, support, ritual. There's also that church helps you be better. I don't mean the whole teaching you how to be a moral person thing, because I strongly feel that if you have to be taught how to be moral by your religion, you probably have bigger problems. I mean it's a place to be reminded of how to live your life well in the face of all the everyday things that are coming at you. The last two times at the UU the focus has been on being part of a community and productive anticipation. These aren't lessons in doctrine, or even moral teachings, but rather reminders about stuff I'd want to do anyway if I didn't forget because of all the other stuff that's going on.

And I'm an impatient person. I like to rush into things, dive in, make things happen NOW. The thing about something that only happens once a week is that you have to take it easy, be patient, slow down. It's a marathon, not a sprint, blah blah blah. It's a mental respite.

On a totally unrelated note, I was up by 8 on Saturday and Sunday this weekend. The weekend days are a lot longer when you're not out until 3AM the night before. I like that. I wish I didn't miss having somewhere to be until 3 so much.

No, you're pathetic.

2010-08-25T23:07:00.000-04:00

On my drive back up from SC this last time, I was listening to old CDs, and Virtute the Cat Explains her Departure came up in the rotation. I adore that song, but it makes me cry every single time. It is sad and beautiful and deep somehow. I believe the word I'm looking for is pathos, a word that gets a bad rap these days.

I think it's actually a pretty great word, a useful word to describe an essential part of the human experience. Pathos is defined as a quality that arouses compassion, pity, or sorrow. When I think about pathos, I think most about sorrow, the kind of sorrow that's universal. Same root as empathy, sympathy, apathy, and pathetic. I wish pathetic had retained more of its original meaning of being moving, stirring, or affecting. I need a word that means that without sounding well, pathetic, because I feel this all the time. I enjoy feeling this (in balance with other things), but I especially love when something touches me, makes me feel this, makes me feel like someone else has felt this.

For me, this so often comes from music, and that identification is so important, so universal, and one of its most powerful forms is pathos. The sense that the world is a sad place, and that the sadness is both more and less tragic because it is inevitable. The story of Virtute the cat sounds like the saddest breakup song ever. He sings, "I can't remember the sound that you found for me" and every loss I've ever felt overwhelms me. That sense, not only of loss, but of being lost, of knowing there was a place you belonged, and you wandered away from it, and now it's lost. In this case, it's all the worse because she's a cat. A human should know better, should remember, should find their way back, but she can't. She's a cat. And then you feel like a cat because sometimes you can't help it, you can't know better, can't find your way back. Then you realize you don't know what you want to go back to because you can't remember it. That's pathos.

UU, no you

2010-08-15T13:44:00.001-04:00

I actually made it to the UU (Unitarian Universalist) 10 AM service this morning. That would be miraculous for me on a Sunday, except that I spent this Friday and Saturday nights rather quietly.

Anyway, I'm not about pimping any particular religion, which is why I like the UUs. The fellowship seems really active here, and I'm looking forward to getting involved. I may even become a member here. I don't really have an organized post on this, just a few things I want to share.

I can't find anything I disagree with in the 7 UU principles:

The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregation and in society at large;
The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

And the sources of inspiration in a service can come from anywhere. I love that. For example:

Today's words of dedication:

From unreality, lead me to Reality.
From darkness, lead me unto Light.
From death, lead me to Immortality.

The Upanishads

The call to worship was a reading from Martha Graham:

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivated you. Keep the channel open. ... Nor artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive.

The reading came from Genesis today, and the sermon drew heavily on Jewish and Quaker traditions. I just like that when I leave, I feel like I was part of something positive.

First Impressions: The Good Update

2010-08-14T15:03:00.000-04:00

Pictures of the modern houses:

First Impressions: The Good

2010-08-13T11:50:00.000-04:00

I've been here a good solid week, and I think my first impressions are solidifying. I admit there's space for change, but they're first impressions, so here's some stuff I like.

1. Parks (not particularly Rec) - Cville has great parks and public pools, and lots of them. They're building and Aquatic and Fitness Center that's set to open this fall, and I hope the membership prices are reasonable (please see the upcoming post on The Bad). There are 2 parks within walking distance of our house, one that has a pool and another with walking trails along the river.

2. Randomness - This town is a crazy hodge podge of neighborhoods and commercial stuff. It's a true college town with the university bleeding all over the place and most people in some way affiliated with The Grape, as I have taken to calling it. Belmont has houses everywhere, and then a corner with 3 restaurants (including Belmont BBQ) and a little store. Near our house, it looks like you're in the center of residential nowhere, and then suddenly up pops this plaza with BeerRun, delicious PadThai, and the Cville Market. Then you're surrounded by houses again just as quickly.

Not even the residential neighborhoods are consistent. Our house is relatively new, but surrounded by older houses, duplexes, and some patio homes. And then, 3 blocks away, past the cemetery (yep), there's a neighborhood of new "modern" homes. Tall with strange angles or wrapped metal roofs, 2 story windows and concrete detailing. Somehow it just seems to fit in this mixed up place. I'll try to post some pictures of these houses because they really are quite incredible.

3. Music & Arts - The Charlottesville Pavilion has a killer schedule this fall: Lyle Lovett, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Damien Marley & Nas, The Black Keys, and the local music scene has a great rep as well. Since I don't really know any go-ey out-ey people yet, I'm still just liking this theoretically, but I have high hopes here. There's also a lot of theater which I can't afford just now, and museums and galleries. The UVa Art Museum is brand new or incredibly renovated or something, and most of the museums around town are free. There's also one of the biggest Aboriginal art collections in the country just outside of town (also free!).

There is also a wonderful radio station of the kind I have been dreaming of my entire life. WNRN is seriously rocking my world. You can listen to it online or on your iphone too. Just sayin'.

4. Environmental awareness - Putting the recycling program into action has been difficult b/c it's new and so much is recyclable. It's amazing. Even stuff they won't pick up curbside, you can save and take to one of the recycling centers.

A big focus of this awareness is agriculture. There are tons of farms and vineyards around Cville, and on Labor Day there's a farm tour where 18 farms have special events and open houses for people to come out and see what they're up to. I'm volunteering that morning so that we get a free car pass, and I can still check out a few other places in the afternoon. There are 2 regular farmers' markets, one in the park next to my house on Wednesdays, and one less than 10 minutes away on Saturday morning. I'm going to be very sad when winter arrives and I have to shop at the supermarket again.

5. Beer, wine and food - I've been to 3 bars so far, and every one of them has had more beers on tap than your average SC bar. This means they're cheaper, which is awesome. You can't throw a rock without hitting a wine bar/restaurant, especially around the downtown mall. The wine isn't cheap (see The Bad), but there are places to suit a variety of budgets, and you can take wine tours and go to tastings at many of the local vineyards. There's also a ciderworks that I intend to visit during the farm tour.

There's a lot of variety when it comes to food, with good Italian, French, Asian, and Mexican restaurants. Locals only uses local ingredients, and restaurants are often scattered throughout neighborhoods, so a decent bite is never far away. I also saw an Indian market out on 29, so I think there may be a good Indian place or two hiding around here somewhere. Oh yeah, and I have heard rumors of South African. I don't even know what that would mean, so you know I'm going to try it.

6. History - Yeah, I don't really know about this yet, but there's a lot of it lying around. Thomas Jefferson designed the older parts of UVa, including The Rotunda (yeah, they capitalize the Thes) and the pavilions. Monticello is just SE of here. Clustered near there are the Michie Tavern, an authentic 18th century "dining experience" and Ash Lawn-Highland, home to James Monroe. Montpelier was James Madison's house, and it's about 30 mi north of Monticello. Teddy Roosevelt had a house and some land here in Albemarle county, and the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum is in Staunton, a small town a stone's throw away that also has a great Shakespearean theater.

7. It's beautiful here. It really is. The hills, the Shenandoah National Park that I haven't gone to yet, but can see in the distance. UVa is so lovely and I keep calling The Lawn the Horseshoe accidentally, which makes people right uppity. The downtown mall is a great place to hang out and you can eat or stroll around as you will.

The Bad and The Ugly to follow. Hopefully I'll get some pictures of some of this up in the next day or two.

Chronickel

2010-08-09T11:42:00.000-04:00

I was telling crazy family stories the other day, and I decided to start putting them up there, randomly, as they occur to me in little bits and pieces. My sister lived with my parents for a lot longer than I did, so it's highly likely that she knows more info about this stuff. Because I'm intrigued by the way family stories change as they get passed around, I'm going to post my version, ask my sister for her input, and then add any revisions. Please accept that many of these stories are things I learned when I was a kid, and so I make no claims to historical accuracy. Names will occasionally be changed to protect the less than innocent.

So, first story: at some point in my mother's youth, she was engaged to a lion tamer. I have no idea when this happened, if it was before or after my half-sister, if she really meant to marry the guy or if it was some kind of lark. They didn't get married, but I don't know why. The only evidence I have for the truthfulness of this tale is that my mother told me about it, and once showed me a picture of said lion tamer in the ring with his lions, and it had a personal message written on the picture saying he loved her. He had a handlebar mustache.

Welcome to Charlottesville!

2010-08-09T11:30:00.000-04:00

Well, I live here now:

It’s a nice house, and I’ve settled in about as well as I can until I get an infusion of cash from my gainful employment, which isn’t feeling particularly gainful right now… As evidence of my ability to set up house in a new place, I present to you my living room:

That little painting in the corner to the left is from Australia and was a gift from my undergraduate research advisor. The female figure with the shock of red hair is a Dre Lopez original. I wish I could say it was me, but alas, it’s not. The small print to the left of it was a gift from Mr. Sammy Lopez. And that square urn on top of the left bookshelf – well, that’s my momma.

To all the Dominion Power customer service reps who I know are reading this, please take note of the bookshelves full of books, and the lack of television. I haven’t felt any overwhelming urges to kill myself yet due to boredom, so I think I’m probably doing okay.

I also have a refrigerator with food in it, and cabinets full of dishes. There’s still a few bare spots on the walls, but I anticipate filling those up with new yummy art. We need some shelves for the kitchen, and I have to find a desk and a futon for the guest room. Oh yeah, and my roommate doesn’t get here until Wednesday, so I’m really tempted to do yoga in her gigantic empty bedroom.

I’m still in the phase where I feel like a snail who’s not yet poking its head out. I’ve been setting the house up and trying to get a little safe place that felt home-ish, and I’ve succeeded, but I haven’t really explored much of Charlottesville yet. Because of that, it doesn’t really feel like I live here yet, it just feels like I moved really, really far across town. I miss my people though.