Some Christmas Carols

As part of my ongoing thought-experiment concerning digital books versus print books, I read A Christmas Carol on my Dad's Kindle, and--oh, reader, I did not prefer that! As I mentioned in my recent, rather secretive, epic blog post--which I subsequently deleted because it wasn't fit to print (think about that paradoxical pun for a hot second)--research has been done that the act of reading on digital media supports a less-deep/more shallow kind of reading, and I have to agree. While reading, I felt like I was being rushed. I don't like knowing what percent of a book I've read! Why can't I just have page numbers and figure it out myself? In other news, I liked A Christmas Carol a lot. I read it in the fifth grade many moons ago, but I pretty much remembered the basic story line from twenty-one years of Christmastime culture. The book was really good: Victorian, Dickensian (obv), meaty enough to have taste but light enough to finish in a day. I particularly liked the little squibs Dickens included about government. Also, the book is heavy on the spirit of Christmas, something in which I think both Christians and Pagans can find celebration.

I would include an image of the book, but because I read it on a Kindle, there is no accurate representation of which version I read (though I'm sure it was unabridged, unillustrated, and out of copyright--it was free, you see). Here's a song, though--in the spirit of this lovely holiday:

It's not important what you celebrate but rather how. I urge you to consider the various reasons for the season, including but not limited to: the winter solstice, Christ's birth, and Saturnalia. Whatever you celebrate, do it merrily!

God bless us, every one.

Musings as I sit in the Elizabethan section of the library...

I'll say what everyone says: this semester has gone by the fastest yet and things are stressful like whoa. Somehow, though, I keep having this feeling of enlightenment. This feeling is fleeting, however, and is quickly replaced by that sensation you have when you're about 75% certain you're going to puke on your shoes. This back and forth between elation and nausea has been my every class. It's exciting to get paper assignments, but also really stressful because every paper you write is proof of your (in)adequacy as a human being. Here's the final paper breakdown:

U.S. Colonial: 10 pager on Slavery? Virginia? the Caribbean? No assignment for this one yet.

Fantasy and Romance:  10 pages-ish about Harry Potter. Guhhhhh.

Seminar: TWENTY-FIVE PAGES ABOUT BOOKS. Literally, books. The material artifact. As in the codex its very self.

Transnational Family: 15 pages of an analysis on the spectacle of pregnancy, namely through the venues of 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom.




Anyway, I read some books:

Moby Dick by my (and Nathanial Hawthorne's) best friend Herman.

I really liked it because it's slow and long and meaty. The cover art though? Disappointment major. Also, Moby's in the news! I have a lot of things to say about this book, most of which are dorky, so I'll spare you. In sum: if you get an extra 2-3 weeks and read about 100 pages per sitting, you'll get it read. If you don't want to read it, learn about it here.



I also read Good Omens by some combination of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

I had the one with the white cover. This is a beach book, a summer book, a fast read, a chuckle, and some poorly written baby-switching. Oh, and the climax was less than I hoped.



In other news, I think I've decided that I want to go to graduate school for Children's Literature. Yikes! Life decisions.

Happy Friday!

Fantasy, History, and Nonsense

As the semester chugs along and I become increasingly more suicidal (not really, Mom), I've read some books. Don't get excited. They are for the most part officially bad books--we're talking fantasy and history here. Gah-ross. I'm going to sum these books up in five sentences or less. Readysetgo.

First, Lilith by George MacDonald.

I did not pay much attention to this book when we talked about it in class. It's about this guy who leaves the real world and gets stuck in a confusing and gross secondary world filled with cat-ladies and children-like things and skeletons and a Raven-man who is also a librarian (??? I know, right). MacDonald was kind of obsessed with repentance, being a minister, and this theme is definitely a major one in the book. Also: the two main characters are women, and one a huge bitch with a lot of power. Maybe MacDonald was trying to make a comment on women's lib, maybe not. I do not recommend this unless you like fantasy. I would say if you like The Golden Compass (which I personally think should be removed from every library in the world and burned), you'll like this poor excuse for a sermon book.

For the Fantasy and Romance class for which I read Lilith, we just finished The Fellowship of the Ring. I liked it. Probably too much because I didn't write in the book. I feel like that interrupts the story, and ruins a perfectly unwritten-in book (more specifically my Dad's copy from the 1970s).

I first read this in middle school when the movie came out. It was the beginning of my love affair with Viggo Mortensen, also known as Liv Tyler's love interest in the movies and my love interest in real life. Anyway, I didn't really remember it. My favorite parts are the parts about hobbits. I love hobbits and descriptions of them. I could read about Bilbo and Frodo's joint birthday party forever. But that's because my favorite things to read are boring, long books with slow, yet moving plots. Like Jane Eyre. So, I really liked that about this book, not so much the descriptions of land and the geography of a certain Madeupplace, but thanks for trying John Ronald Reuel. The thing about these books is that once you read them, you hold J.R.R. up to be some sort of fantasy god--which he totally is--and most other fantasy books transfigure into cheap and trashy paperback editions of Twilight in your hands before you can even get through the first chapter. Also, this series sort of disintegrates the magic of the Harry Potters. Even the Whomping Willow is borrowed from Tolkien--the freaking Whomping Willow! Though this kind of disappointment is stressful to a psyche built entirely upon Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, I'm still of the camp that remains appreciative of Rowling's work, and doesn't blame her entirely for every coincidental (or not) likeness between the two series. Those pesky tropes.

Third book: The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell.

This book is supposed to be a hip and with-it approach to the history of the Pilgrims. You know, the ones who sailed to the New World in hopes of religious freedom blah blah yada yada? Well, I honestly found this book less interesting than my history textbook for the class. She's funny sometimes, and I chucked and shared bits with the roommates a couple times, but it's just not my cuppa tea. If you're really interested in the Pilgrims, check out Major Problems in American Colonial History, and you won't have to deal with Vowell's "sense of humor" and political agenda.

 Last and definitely least there's this book. I honestly rolled my eyes just then, thinking about it.

I'm telling you, this book is a hipster's dream and my worst nightmare. It has redeeming qualities including that some pages only have a couple words on them and every time the word "house" appears in any language, it's in blue. It's interesting but it tries way too hard to be some sort of newfangled book. It's too long and has multiple fonts. There are stories within the endnotes--the long, long endnotes, some of which are made up. It might be worth reading because it's part of a new theorizing of the book (or something equally as clever or profound). But, it's definitely rated NC-17 for terrifyingness and overt sexual content.




Okay, so I failed at the five sentence thing.

A brief note on the chosen book covers:

I've been trying my best to provide the book covers that are the same as the book I read. Why? Because I judge every book by its cover and so should you. There is no excuse for an ugly book cover anymore, but they still happen. Take Lilith for example, the cover for the one I read was busy, purple, and very unromantic. Look what it could have been:

These would have been so much better to read because they have pretty ladies on the front! Very pre-Raphaelite.

The Primer, Reality Hunger, and the President

I've only read two books since I went back to school: The New England Primer (which, thank-you-very-much, was an answer I got right while watching Jeopardy! two days ago) and Reality Hunger by David Shields. The Primer is pretty self-explanatory: it's an early, intrinsically American textbook, containing ABC pictures and little prayers, etc. Examples:

David Shields' book, is a whole different thing, however. It's...brace yourself...creative. On the whole, I don't love the book and after dissecting it for its (maybe?) true purposes in class, I can't bear to hate it. Basically, Shields is interested in appropriation, collective art, collage, and breaking conventions. He says that he's sick of novels and plays with broad concepts like memory, interpretation, and culture. The most exciting thing about the book is that his bibliography is less than thorough, and he suggests that you cut the pages with the cited sources out on the dotted lines. They actually have dotted lines. Both charming and annoying are the chapter headings which are all letters of the alphabet--one of the few similarities the text shares to the Primer. The chapters are broken into "passages" which range from deep one-liners to extensive lists. I'd recommend borrowing it from the library instead of purchasing your own copy because you might really, really like how he deconstructs the rules of the academic academy. Or, you might think he's a little too pretentious to have so many books on sale.

And on to a semi-unrelated subject: The President.

The president of the United States addressed Congress and the country tonight. Did you watch it? Probably not because Americans seem to have given up on politics. We say politicians are corrupt. We say there's nothing we can do to change things. We say politicians don't use their power to change things. Whatever. I think that is the wrong way to think about the situation, but I'll digress because that isn't what I wanted to talk about. I want to talk about the monumental changes that have taken place in our country since its start. Warning: things are about to get sentimental.

At the start of this country, Europeans justified racism against the indigenous population in part due to their technological "superiority". They justified racism against Africans stolen for slavery in a similar way, even developing a "science" to find whites to be the intellectually superior "race". And I know it took too long for the slaves to be freed. And I know it took too long for African Americans to get the right to vote. And I know it took way to long for schools to be desegregated. But look, the fact that the people of this country elected a black man to be president is something monumental, especially when considering the bigotry, racism, and prejudice that shape the United States today and have shaped the Americas  since the time of Columbus and the Conquistadors.

When I watched the speech tonight I was overcome with emotion because of huge change. You can rant and rave about how Obama hasn't done anything he promised to do or about how politics is a waste of time, but there has been change under the latest president, and it has been a great change in the moral constitution of this country.

Frustrated with politics? Check out this website as hope for the future.

7th semester, etc.

College has started and it's oh-so-bittersweet. I'm taking about 18 credits too many, and auditing a class. But look, I only have one semester left after this and I just can't let college pass me by. In order to complete my 37 various major, minors, and certificates, I'm taking the following:

History:
United States Colonial

Literature:
Junior Seminar
Fantasy and Romance
American Literature to 1860
Childhood's Books (auditing)

Anthropology: 
Transnational Families
Forensic Anthropology

Things I'll be reading include stuff like Roald Dahl's The Witches, Various Harry Potters, Lord of the Rings, David Shield's Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, Moby Dick, and things by various other poets, authors, and idiots.

In other news, I have read almost nothing since my Little House on the Prairie jaunt. It's just: Things have been so busy between putting together our mess of an apartment, going to class, and stealing a desk off the street. And, I am probably the worst English major ever because after reading all day and all night, I don't feel like reading "for pleasure"; I'd rather play Rock Band or go to Hofbrauhaus with the roommates. Judge me all ye readers, article-writers, and English majors, I do not care.

There's also the looming graduate school question. I'm taking the GRE in September (good goo it is September) but besides that I don't know what the next step is. Maybe study children's lit or get my master's in education? Maybe fart around for a year? Yeah, no rush or anything though. It's just my future.

Book Report: Little House

Growing up, I read the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder and was absolutely enchanted. It all started in the third grade when we read Little House in the Big Woods. Our vocabulary words included things like "trundle bed" and "head cheese."  Because I was a little reading addict, I couldn't stop after the first book in the series. I read the next one and the next one, amounting to all all seven of them (I am excluding Farmer Boy of course because it is, after all, about a boy and when I picked it up at age 9(?) found it to be extremely boring). I gobbled them up zealously. Laura was as easy a canvas onto which I could project myself  as Bella Swan is to the younger Millennials of today. Except, Laura has a lot more...personality. She is independent and refreshingly naughty compared to her perfect, fair-haired sister Mary; she is adventurous, smart, witty, and frugal; and, best of all, she does not care if she takes her sun bonnet off and turns as brown as an Indian! Oh, and she also grows into a beautiful young lady and marries the most handsome bachelor in her small prairie town. Just like me.

After finishing the Harry Potter series this summer--and oh my was it refreshingly new and delightful, especially the 5th through 7th books of which I had completely forgotten the plot--I thought that I should use the rest of the empty time I had at work revisiting these books of my childhood. Time well spent, I say. I borrowed the books from the library, the very same library I borrowed them from ten-ish years ago. Whoa. They were just as beautiful as when I was a kid, only now I saw Laura's transformation from little girl in the big Wisconsin woods to a little lady teaching school on the Kansas prairie as something much more nostalgic and tear-jerking. As I read Laura's growing up, I saw mine and that was not something a premenstrual, 21-year-old person on the brink of the Real World was ready for. No, no. Finishing the last two books in the series is heartwarmingly stressful. These Happy Golden Years are full of handsome Almanzo and his big, gentle hands and beautiful horses. I ate up every bit of their courtship, because if I can project myself onto Laura, I have absolutely no problem projecting Jake onto Almanzo. Then, in The First Four Years, which was originally an unpublished journal designed mostly like for non-children, Laura's sweet life with Almanzo proves to be nothing but hardship: a baby born, a baby lost, multiple devastated crops, and a house fire. But despite all that Little House is still beautifully romanticized in my head. How good would I look on a warm summer day in a flowered calico dress, sleeves rolled up, hands kneading bread, with my hair falling loose from its bun? The answer is pretty darn good. These books make my yearning for a farm a little stronger. I want a garden and to be self-sufficient And I wouldn't object to a bonnet, either, lest I freckle!

After finishing the series I felt upset and empty, the usual just-finished-a-series-blues for me. What made it worse was when I Googled and Wikipediaed the real life Ingalls family. I saw pictures of Pa and Ma and Laura and they were so not what my mind's eye had made them out to be. Frustrated and with my heart feeling heavy, I took a nap. Somewhat rejuvenated today, I began a book recommended to me by my delightful friend Hannah, a bookworm like me. Hot off the press, The Wilder Life was surprising available at the local library. Wendy McClure, the author, is so funny, down-to-earth, and basically me that I can hardly stand how good the book is. She does a gorgeous job of summing up the connections we Laura readers have to one another and to little, idealized Laura. Lots of real-life research and smarts happening in this book too. Also, I am happy to note that I got every single one of McClure's references to the books and they were all poignant, hysterical, and deeply rooted in Laura fact. It's an excellent--and I mean truly excellent book. Please, if you know anything at all about Little House, give this book a try. And then we can talk about it. And squee.

On Books and Blogs

Composing a title for my blog was very similar to composing a title for a newspaper article: very hard. Journalism is stupid. That's what I decided second semester freshman year when I got a D on an article for misprinting "Beethoven" instead of "Mozart". Without the mistake, it would have been a C--which is still failing. So, I dropped the class. How is one supposed to sum up an entire something with a simple phrase? I can make a catchy phrase, sure. But I can't represent adequately. Therefore, I'm counting on readers to take the blog into consideration as a whole, rather than a direct interpretation of a silly little title with a cliche little catch phrase. What do you take me for, a politician?

Since in this half hour I've somewhat come to terms with the extraordinary vanity involved with a) blogging, and more so b) considering myself to be a mermaid, I am semi-embarrassed to announce that I am unable to decide upon a single theme. Be ready to encounter topics such as mermaids (duh), books, Weight Watchers, friends, love, Penguins hockey, and scrap-booking. SPOILER: Sometimes I am an old, old woman, sometimes a straight up dude.



A quick word on books:

Books are an all-consuming activity (for me). Comparable to Pinocchio inside the whale. The book is the whale, I am Pinocchio. The book is all-consuming--yum! Several weeks ago, I began a book entitled So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading by Sara Nelson. The author molds a book diary into a hard-stretched metahphor--ick. I would recommend the book in that Nelson's experiences with books are heartwarmingly familiar; however, in one of her earlier chapters she discusses the--what I always felt was a--sin of being unable to let the book take you all the way through to the other cover. Well, Ms. Nelson, I put your book down on page seventy-something, and I'm using your advice as an excuse to not go back. But what is important about Nelson's book is that she freely admits that books are more than just boring words on yellowing pages meant to punish us in school. Books are highly addictive worlds. Books ensnare, and they dominate my emotions. I could be a perfect doll one moment, and then Harry buries Dobby and I won't talk to you for the rest of the week.

Like all girls raised in the 1990s, I have a princess problem. An Ariel, Jasmine princess problem. I love princesses and so does America. Just look at all that Royal Wedding nonsense. Did we not declare our independence? But, I love it. And so do you. And what I love more than cartoon Disney princess is the historical, real deal--give or take some fiction! Phillipa Gregory is one of the best authors in this department. She specializes in English monarchies and oh, does she write some delicious Tudor historical fiction. Though I read The Red Queen before The White Queen, which was very out of order and uncharacteristic of me, the White Queen had my heart. It's all about beautiful and ambitious women (as most of Gregory's books are). Elizabeth Woodville is the most elegant, witchy, and Mother Goddess-inspired queen I've ever encountered. Besides in The Mists of Avalon, I never thought I'd read about a woman so driven, in control, and respected. And the best part is: the book is secretly all about mermaids. Elizabeth and her mother are relatives of Melusina. Come to think of it, I probably am too.

Moral here: You really ought to read anything by Phillipa Gregory. She wrote several novels about the wives of the infamous Henry VIII, including The Constant Princess about Catherine of Aragon. It's pure gold, I tell you. She also wrote The Other Boelyn Girl, which was not my favorite and a much, much worse movie. Ugh, Natalie Portman. Double ugh Scarlett Johanssen.


For a mind-boggling article on the American princess problem, see "What's Wrong with Cinderella" by Peggy Orenstein.