Just mailed the absolute final version of my thesis to my advisor for submittal to the Graduate School. "Getting on Nicely in the Dark: The Perils and Rewards of Annotating Ulysses," 72 pages long and most importantly, DONE.
(the post title is one of the last lines of Leopold Bloom's part of Ulysses)(modified for gender :-)
Showing posts with label Ulysses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ulysses. Show all posts
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
a long, meandering post about video games and poetry. At least it's not about Christmas.
Just by chance--because believe me, this was the last thing on our minds when we were planning our family--we have a kid on either side of the video game divide. When Nell was young, there were plenty of people that had Playstations or Nintendos, but there were also plenty more people who didn't. It was unremarkable that we didn't have a game station at our house and didn't want one. But by the time MadMax came along (he is seven years younger than Nell), the world had changed. (cue: I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. Much that once was is lost.)(If you got that, you are totally my friend.)(not that you aren't anyway, if you're here reading this nonsense.)
Anyway. We finally gave in and bought a PS2 six or seven years ago when none of MadMax's friends would come to our house anymore because there was "nothing to do." I still remember the exact moment I gave in. It was after two of his friends sat on our couch for nearly an hour muttering under their breath how boring it was at our house. Finally they came up to me--over an hour before their parents were due to pick them up--and politely said that they were ready to go home and could I take them, please?
Now, I am not opposed to video games in general. In fact, I lost about six months of my life in the mid-80s to a game that I think was called MineDigger, although when I googled it just now, the current version is so far removed from that old 2-color maze game that it makes me wonder if I'm remembering the right name. And Tetris. Oh my word, did I play Tetris by the hour. It made my little OCD heart happy. Even today I'm sure if I downloaded Tetris to my iPhone I'd play it by the hour.
So I get it-- the entertainment value of something that is both relaxing and mentally stimulating at the same time. I'm not going to preach here. In fact, now that they can play each other online, talking away over their headsets, you can't even really accuse them of being the old sterotypical anti-social loner gamers who lose touch with other human beings. MadMax talks to his friends way more now over that headset than he did when he would have had to pick up the phone and call.
I'm just struck by how different the world is going to be by the time these kids get to be the ones who are running things-- maybe forty or fifty years from now. They are so used to the intense mental/visual stimulation that the online world provides. I can see how it would be hard to unplug. If you've been in a world of color, light, noise, action, and intense scenarios, of course reading a book is going to seem unbearably boring. I think more and more of our world is going to take place online. It might even be kind of fun-- imagine online banking where your avatar walks into a bank and speaks with a virtual teller. Matrix, here we come.
I'm not sure it's a bad thing. Did you know that two hundred years ago, novels were seen as the downfall of civilization? No one had the patience for poetry anymore, no one valued the slow, careful reading that poetry required. Novels were going to be the demise of all that is good in the world.
And they were one sign of the demise of a particular kind of civilization, but there have been some pretty dang fine, sophisticated novels written since then. Then the movies came along, and that was going to be the end of civilization, and then television, and now video games. And yet who hasn't marveled at the artistry of a really good film, or the intelligence in a snappy, smart, funny round of dialogue in a well-written TV show?
Sure, it's not the same thing as sitting down with Hemingway or Tolstoy, but is it the demise of civilization? Or is it just new? I haven't played any of the current crop of video games, but I suspect that there is some true creative, artistic merit in what is being done in some of them--and I suspect that more is to come.
Which makes me wonder about the value of having spent the last year+ of my life working on a thesis about Ulysses. It's 600-ish pages (depending on which edition you buy) of densely written, complex prose that is brilliantly, intensely mind-blowing. But first of all you have to read it, which is no simple task. And I can tell you from experience that you don't really start to get it until you've read it two or three times. I finished my third reading last summer, and I've barely begun to comprehend it. I'd really like to read it again, but who has the time?
I made time because it was the perfect thesis project for me-- allowing me to combine my techie-side and my literary side. But is anyone going to read Ulysses a hundred years from now? Hardly anyone reads it now. It's far too heavy for any but the most determined of readers. I think that kind of complex novel writing is going the way of the dodo bird, the same way long, epic poems did. There's Infinite Jest, I suppose, but I wonder how many people actually read the whole thing. Probably not as many as say they did. I confess I didn't finish it. It just didn't hold my interest. (although I've always thought that someday I would go back and try again.)
Whoa. off-track. Anyway. Has anyone outside of a classroom read the entirety of Milton's Paradise Lost in the past hundred years? or Keats' Endymion? Or even in a classroom? I only had to read excerpts of either of them. Is that such a bad thing? I listened to a clip that a friend of mine posted on Facebook yesterday (the youtube link is here) about the way education has changed in the past hundred years. It's long (11 minutes*), but interesting if you have the time. He (Sir Kenneth Robinson) makes the point that traditionally, a large component of being an educated person was familiarity with certain literary and artistic works, the Canon of Western Civilization.
But that no longer seems necessary or useful nowadays. With the explosion of resources available in the twenty-first century, it's just impossible to be familiar with everything, and any attempt to create a list of what everyone "should" know will by definition be slanted toward someone's prejudice about what is worth knowing. Works by dead white males? Women? transgender? racial/ethnic perspectives? The only way to be all-inclusive is to create a list that's too long to be of any use.
In a way it makes me sad. I remember a couple of years ago, Nell and I walked into a gallery at the Seattle Art Museum. On the wall in front of us was a contemporary painting that I had never seen before, but I immediately knew that it was Europa and the Bull, one of the more standard tropes of Greek mythology. Which was confirmed when we walked up to it and the name of it was, sure enough, "Europa and the Bull." Nell had no idea. I felt a small moment of loss, because I loved mythology, and I'd like for her to have the same experience. But did she need to know to appreciate the painting? I think not, because clearly it was a woman with a bull, and the implications are there whether or not you know about the myth.
This is getting way too long. Not sure that I even really have a point to make. Just thinking.
*And even that is a sign of the times-- eleven minutes would have been considered short not too many years ago.
Anyway. We finally gave in and bought a PS2 six or seven years ago when none of MadMax's friends would come to our house anymore because there was "nothing to do." I still remember the exact moment I gave in. It was after two of his friends sat on our couch for nearly an hour muttering under their breath how boring it was at our house. Finally they came up to me--over an hour before their parents were due to pick them up--and politely said that they were ready to go home and could I take them, please?
Now, I am not opposed to video games in general. In fact, I lost about six months of my life in the mid-80s to a game that I think was called MineDigger, although when I googled it just now, the current version is so far removed from that old 2-color maze game that it makes me wonder if I'm remembering the right name. And Tetris. Oh my word, did I play Tetris by the hour. It made my little OCD heart happy. Even today I'm sure if I downloaded Tetris to my iPhone I'd play it by the hour.
So I get it-- the entertainment value of something that is both relaxing and mentally stimulating at the same time. I'm not going to preach here. In fact, now that they can play each other online, talking away over their headsets, you can't even really accuse them of being the old sterotypical anti-social loner gamers who lose touch with other human beings. MadMax talks to his friends way more now over that headset than he did when he would have had to pick up the phone and call.
I'm just struck by how different the world is going to be by the time these kids get to be the ones who are running things-- maybe forty or fifty years from now. They are so used to the intense mental/visual stimulation that the online world provides. I can see how it would be hard to unplug. If you've been in a world of color, light, noise, action, and intense scenarios, of course reading a book is going to seem unbearably boring. I think more and more of our world is going to take place online. It might even be kind of fun-- imagine online banking where your avatar walks into a bank and speaks with a virtual teller. Matrix, here we come.
I'm not sure it's a bad thing. Did you know that two hundred years ago, novels were seen as the downfall of civilization? No one had the patience for poetry anymore, no one valued the slow, careful reading that poetry required. Novels were going to be the demise of all that is good in the world.
And they were one sign of the demise of a particular kind of civilization, but there have been some pretty dang fine, sophisticated novels written since then. Then the movies came along, and that was going to be the end of civilization, and then television, and now video games. And yet who hasn't marveled at the artistry of a really good film, or the intelligence in a snappy, smart, funny round of dialogue in a well-written TV show?
Sure, it's not the same thing as sitting down with Hemingway or Tolstoy, but is it the demise of civilization? Or is it just new? I haven't played any of the current crop of video games, but I suspect that there is some true creative, artistic merit in what is being done in some of them--and I suspect that more is to come.
Which makes me wonder about the value of having spent the last year+ of my life working on a thesis about Ulysses. It's 600-ish pages (depending on which edition you buy) of densely written, complex prose that is brilliantly, intensely mind-blowing. But first of all you have to read it, which is no simple task. And I can tell you from experience that you don't really start to get it until you've read it two or three times. I finished my third reading last summer, and I've barely begun to comprehend it. I'd really like to read it again, but who has the time?
I made time because it was the perfect thesis project for me-- allowing me to combine my techie-side and my literary side. But is anyone going to read Ulysses a hundred years from now? Hardly anyone reads it now. It's far too heavy for any but the most determined of readers. I think that kind of complex novel writing is going the way of the dodo bird, the same way long, epic poems did. There's Infinite Jest, I suppose, but I wonder how many people actually read the whole thing. Probably not as many as say they did. I confess I didn't finish it. It just didn't hold my interest. (although I've always thought that someday I would go back and try again.)
Whoa. off-track. Anyway. Has anyone outside of a classroom read the entirety of Milton's Paradise Lost in the past hundred years? or Keats' Endymion? Or even in a classroom? I only had to read excerpts of either of them. Is that such a bad thing? I listened to a clip that a friend of mine posted on Facebook yesterday (the youtube link is here) about the way education has changed in the past hundred years. It's long (11 minutes*), but interesting if you have the time. He (Sir Kenneth Robinson) makes the point that traditionally, a large component of being an educated person was familiarity with certain literary and artistic works, the Canon of Western Civilization.
But that no longer seems necessary or useful nowadays. With the explosion of resources available in the twenty-first century, it's just impossible to be familiar with everything, and any attempt to create a list of what everyone "should" know will by definition be slanted toward someone's prejudice about what is worth knowing. Works by dead white males? Women? transgender? racial/ethnic perspectives? The only way to be all-inclusive is to create a list that's too long to be of any use.
In a way it makes me sad. I remember a couple of years ago, Nell and I walked into a gallery at the Seattle Art Museum. On the wall in front of us was a contemporary painting that I had never seen before, but I immediately knew that it was Europa and the Bull, one of the more standard tropes of Greek mythology. Which was confirmed when we walked up to it and the name of it was, sure enough, "Europa and the Bull." Nell had no idea. I felt a small moment of loss, because I loved mythology, and I'd like for her to have the same experience. But did she need to know to appreciate the painting? I think not, because clearly it was a woman with a bull, and the implications are there whether or not you know about the myth.
This is getting way too long. Not sure that I even really have a point to make. Just thinking.
*And even that is a sign of the times-- eleven minutes would have been considered short not too many years ago.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
to annotate or not to annotate, that is the question
OK, I am shamelessly borrowing an idea from Kate George (whose excellent blog is here). My thesis project involves annotating (writing explanatory notes for) an online version of James Joyce's Ulysses. So when you're reading along and you come to a character name or an allusion to a work of
literature, etc, you can click on it and a window pops up with an
explanation. We have the text of the book up on a website, and my thesis advisor has already written notes for the first two chapters. I'm supposed to write a few more, plus create a "cast of characters" page to help the reader keep track of all the dozens of characters.
Here is where I need some input. Ulysses is an enormously complex book, and most readers need some help with understanding it. But on the other hand, annotations can be intrusive and irritating when you're trying to read. At the moment, we have it set up so that text with an annotation is a different color font, so you know you can click on it to see a note. You can turn the annotations on or off. Having them off is great for readers who want to just go without being distracted by different colors of text, but on the other hand, then you don't know what's annotated and what's not.
So first of all, feel free to comment in general on the idea of reading a book online. More specifically, if you were reading a complicated e-book with lots of historical allusions and a large cast of characters, how would you want the annotations to be presented? pop-up window? link to a separate page that opens in a new tab? something that shows up (like a tool-tip) when you hover over a word or name? Also, more generally: what kinds of help would you want? what would you not want?
You can comment anonymously, so even if you usually just lurk I'd love to hear what you think.
Here is where I need some input. Ulysses is an enormously complex book, and most readers need some help with understanding it. But on the other hand, annotations can be intrusive and irritating when you're trying to read. At the moment, we have it set up so that text with an annotation is a different color font, so you know you can click on it to see a note. You can turn the annotations on or off. Having them off is great for readers who want to just go without being distracted by different colors of text, but on the other hand, then you don't know what's annotated and what's not.
So first of all, feel free to comment in general on the idea of reading a book online. More specifically, if you were reading a complicated e-book with lots of historical allusions and a large cast of characters, how would you want the annotations to be presented? pop-up window? link to a separate page that opens in a new tab? something that shows up (like a tool-tip) when you hover over a word or name? Also, more generally: what kinds of help would you want? what would you not want?
You can comment anonymously, so even if you usually just lurk I'd love to hear what you think.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Riffday: the last sardine of summer
The anniversary of my dad's death was at the beginning of the summer. I almost missed it, because we were traveling that day and were in and out of airports and planes and rental cars. But that afternoon my sister texted me a picture of her kids grouped around the gravesite-- they had gone for a visit in honor of the day. There's been a lot of water under the bridge, so to speak, in the year since my dad died. Lots of processing and thinking and letting go of things, and that picture brought on another round. This weekend I wrote a long, angry post while we were out at the lake, well out of internet range. My reaction to writing it was so strong I couldn't sit still after I typed it. Nausea, sweats, chills. I had no idea I still had that much in me. But in the end, I decided not to post it. There's just no point-- without the context of the 49 years of history I had with him, it would have sounded silly. I guess I just needed to write it. Rest in peace, Dad. We both deserve it.
My thesis is coming along. Not nearly as far as I would like-- I had hoped to have it about half done by the end of July-- but progress is being made. Part of what's slowing me down is re-reading the book (Ulysses by James Joyce). Finally, the third time through, I can read it without constantly checking secondary materials to figure out what is going on. In fact, this time it makes so much sense that I'm having a hard time figuring out why I found it so opaque before. What can you say about a book that takes three readings to be able to follow? I still can't decide whether I think it's worth the effort. But it is turning into a great thesis project.
We had some friends over for dinner tonight and the menu was just one disaster after another-- at least, at some point in the afternoon each part had been a disaster. But oddly enough, they all turned out great. Dessert was supposed to be Key Lime pie, because I needed to use up some of these eggs, and Key Lime pie would have required six. But I came home from the store with Key Lemon juice instead of Key Lime juice. I didn't even know there was such a thing. And I would have just made Key Lemon pie, but the bottle doesn't have the recipe on it, and I forgot to get sweetened condensed milk, etc. It was one of those days.
So I decided to make brownies instead and I found a recipe that used EIGHT eggs. Because apparently that is the only reason to cook at the moment: to use up eggs. I managed to get together enough chocolate by combining about a third of a bag of Nestle's semi-sweet chocolate chips, half a bar of Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate, and a bag of Ghirardelli chocolate chips. but then I got further into it and realized I didn't have enough sugar. So I had to substitute powdered sugar. Whatever. It must have worked, because the brownies were heavenly. Almost like a dense chocolate mousse. And never to be repeated, because there's no way I could reproduce all the little things I had to do to make the recipe work with what I had on hand. They will just live on in my memory.
Let's see, what else. It is a bit smoky here, but not too bad. Although we do have one forest fire not too far away, apparently the smoke is being blown in from out of state. Some years it gets so bad that by the end of August you can smell smoke inside the house. But not yet this year. School starts two weeks from tomorrow for me, and two days after that for MadMax. We are not looking forward to it. Or at least, we aren't looking forward to being back on a schedule. If he were totally honest, I think MadMax would admit to being a little bit excited about starting high school. and I would admit that I'm really looking forward to the one class I'm taking this fall-- Teaching Young Adult Literature. But we're still pretending like we wish summer went on forever.
And wasn't this a wide-ranging post, but I needed to get something up before I got completely out of the habit of posting. Hope you had a good weekend, and bring it on, Monday. Oh, and everybody wave at Nell, who is in New Zealand. She reads here, so if enough of you say hi, maybe she will leave a comment (finally!) and tell us what it's like.
My thesis is coming along. Not nearly as far as I would like-- I had hoped to have it about half done by the end of July-- but progress is being made. Part of what's slowing me down is re-reading the book (Ulysses by James Joyce). Finally, the third time through, I can read it without constantly checking secondary materials to figure out what is going on. In fact, this time it makes so much sense that I'm having a hard time figuring out why I found it so opaque before. What can you say about a book that takes three readings to be able to follow? I still can't decide whether I think it's worth the effort. But it is turning into a great thesis project.
We had some friends over for dinner tonight and the menu was just one disaster after another-- at least, at some point in the afternoon each part had been a disaster. But oddly enough, they all turned out great. Dessert was supposed to be Key Lime pie, because I needed to use up some of these eggs, and Key Lime pie would have required six. But I came home from the store with Key Lemon juice instead of Key Lime juice. I didn't even know there was such a thing. And I would have just made Key Lemon pie, but the bottle doesn't have the recipe on it, and I forgot to get sweetened condensed milk, etc. It was one of those days.
So I decided to make brownies instead and I found a recipe that used EIGHT eggs. Because apparently that is the only reason to cook at the moment: to use up eggs. I managed to get together enough chocolate by combining about a third of a bag of Nestle's semi-sweet chocolate chips, half a bar of Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate, and a bag of Ghirardelli chocolate chips. but then I got further into it and realized I didn't have enough sugar. So I had to substitute powdered sugar. Whatever. It must have worked, because the brownies were heavenly. Almost like a dense chocolate mousse. And never to be repeated, because there's no way I could reproduce all the little things I had to do to make the recipe work with what I had on hand. They will just live on in my memory.
Let's see, what else. It is a bit smoky here, but not too bad. Although we do have one forest fire not too far away, apparently the smoke is being blown in from out of state. Some years it gets so bad that by the end of August you can smell smoke inside the house. But not yet this year. School starts two weeks from tomorrow for me, and two days after that for MadMax. We are not looking forward to it. Or at least, we aren't looking forward to being back on a schedule. If he were totally honest, I think MadMax would admit to being a little bit excited about starting high school. and I would admit that I'm really looking forward to the one class I'm taking this fall-- Teaching Young Adult Literature. But we're still pretending like we wish summer went on forever.
And wasn't this a wide-ranging post, but I needed to get something up before I got completely out of the habit of posting. Hope you had a good weekend, and bring it on, Monday. Oh, and everybody wave at Nell, who is in New Zealand. She reads here, so if enough of you say hi, maybe she will leave a comment (finally!) and tell us what it's like.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
riffday: homeless, ulysses and jigsaw puzzles
Well, I'm posting every day but I'm not sure it counts since this week has been mostly filler posts. here's another one, and after Nell goes back to Seattle tomorrow maybe I will have time for something more interesting. We closed on the sale of our house yesterday, but for some reason the title company wouldn't let us do both closings on the same day, so the closing for the purchase of the new house isn't until Monday. We are temporarily renters and not homeowners. We are also--for the weekend-- the richest we've ever been, because technically speaking we have the proceeds of the sale of this house but haven't bought the new one yet. Woo-hoo!! Maybe we'll go to Starbucks and get a vente to celebrate.
Part of what I've been working on with Ulysses is a hypermedia (web) version of Ulysses. Eventually it will have annotations, maps, audio, etc. It's very cool. Have I talked about this before? I'd give you the link, but I don't want them to be able to link back here to my blog, so it will have to wait. Anyway, my part of it has been preparing the text so that it can be displayed in HTML. I did the first 12 episodes during my independent study last spring, and two more over the summer. The fifteenth episode, Circe, is 150 pages long, far longer than any of the other episodes. I've worked on it off and on all semester and finally finished it yesterday. PHEW. It was a bugger.
The thing about Ulysses is that even though it's not exactly fun to read the first time (although it has its moments), if you read it again, you start to get hooked. It's like a puzzle. If you're a jigsaw puzzle fan, and I am, if you see a puzzle set out on a table, you go over and start to look it over, and then you put one piece in while you're still standing there looking at it, and then maybe you find another one, and before you know it, you're sitting down and utterly absorbed. It's one of my favorite winter activities.
oh, wait I was talking about Ulysses. Anyway. Apparently I've got the bug. The more you read it and work on it, the more the more aware you are of all the connections and the detail and the more you are in awe of what Joyce did. It's an amazing book.
Another day down. This NaBloPoMo thing is going to end just in time for me to bury myself in papers. I'm working on them already, but I haven't quite hit the panic stage.
Part of what I've been working on with Ulysses is a hypermedia (web) version of Ulysses. Eventually it will have annotations, maps, audio, etc. It's very cool. Have I talked about this before? I'd give you the link, but I don't want them to be able to link back here to my blog, so it will have to wait. Anyway, my part of it has been preparing the text so that it can be displayed in HTML. I did the first 12 episodes during my independent study last spring, and two more over the summer. The fifteenth episode, Circe, is 150 pages long, far longer than any of the other episodes. I've worked on it off and on all semester and finally finished it yesterday. PHEW. It was a bugger.
The thing about Ulysses is that even though it's not exactly fun to read the first time (although it has its moments), if you read it again, you start to get hooked. It's like a puzzle. If you're a jigsaw puzzle fan, and I am, if you see a puzzle set out on a table, you go over and start to look it over, and then you put one piece in while you're still standing there looking at it, and then maybe you find another one, and before you know it, you're sitting down and utterly absorbed. It's one of my favorite winter activities.
oh, wait I was talking about Ulysses. Anyway. Apparently I've got the bug. The more you read it and work on it, the more the more aware you are of all the connections and the detail and the more you are in awe of what Joyce did. It's an amazing book.
Another day down. This NaBloPoMo thing is going to end just in time for me to bury myself in papers. I'm working on them already, but I haven't quite hit the panic stage.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
gratitude ulysses style
I'm thankful that Nell will be home in a few hours and is staying until Sunday I'm thankful that MadMax is out of school today and keeping me company I'm thankful that even though Dean is working tomorrow he will be home in time for dinner and even if an emergency keeps him away he is doing good work and providing food for our table and a roof over our heads I'm thankful for the bits of snow that are still hanging around but also thankful that we had some rain that washed most of it away because dang it is depressing to have snow continuously from mid-November until March intermittent snow is better I'm thankful that the test I took yesterday is over and wasn't as bad as I was expecting and my prospectus was e-mailed this morning and although I have to study this weekend I have no deadlines for three more weeks I'm thankful for my mom and my sisters and their families and that I will talk to them sometime this weekend and I'm so grateful for the lessons I've learned from my dad's passing even though I'm sometimes sad that he is gone and I'm grateful for his second wife and her strength and laughter I'm so so thankful we were able to spend a week in the Czech Republic and Germany and that Nell was able to be there for three months and I'm thankful that the cat is sleeping behind me and making small happy noises in her sleep and that the glucosamine supplements we've been giving the dog seem to be helping her with her arthritis so that she doesn't cry anymore when she's coming down the stairs in the morning and I'm happy that our neighbors asked us to take care of their dogs while they are gone so that we have motivation to go out for walks this weekend even though the weather is gray and cold but not snowing and I'm so so so thankful that I don't have to go shopping on Friday and that I can stay home and build a fire in the fireplace and read a book until I feel guilty about not studying and I'm thankful for apple pie and cranberry relish and grape salad and mashed potatoes and gravy and pumpkin pie and stuffing and sparkling cider and chocolate pecan pie and turkey even though it's not my favorite part of the meal and sweet potatoes and cherry pie and the relish tray and green beans which I secretly wish I could still have in the good old cream soup casserole but must fix more elegantly since we are eating with foodie friends and walnut cranberry pie and teeccino and hot chocolate and I'm grateful that there are four different kids movies that we could go see this weekend even though MadMax thinks he is too old for kid movies and I may have to bribe him to go with me and I'm thankful that we are closing on the sale of our house on Friday afternoon and on the purchase of the new one on Monday at noon so that we can get started on the renovations and so Dean can quit worrying that the deal is going to fall through and I'm so grateful that even though I was the only one that wanted to move when we first started down this path two years ago that we found a place that Dean and MadMax are actually more excited about than I am and we are all happy that this is happening and I'm grateful that Nell will get to see it this weekend since the whole thing happened so fast that she still hasn't been there and I'm thankful that there are more episodes of Big Bang Theory and Nigella and Mythbusters to watch this weekend and that it is plenty warm in our house and I'm grateful for our church and our pastor and his wife and kids and our new associate pastor and her husband who just moved here from a town about 30 miles from where I graduated from high school and I'm thankful that I live in the United States even though I'm worried sick about us right now and I'm thankful that we live in a country where the two main parties can disagree so fiercely that they can't even negotiate an agreement under pressure but no one feels strongly enough to call in a suicide bomber or to pull out a gun and solve the problem with violence and that's something even though maybe not much and I'm thankful that the Republican debates have been so depressing because it's the only chance we have that our lackluster president will get re-elected and I'm thankful that I get to drive through some of the most beautiful scenery in the country twice a week on a commute that I let people think is draining and boring although sometimes it really is and I'm thankful that at the age of 50 I can still beat my brain into learning new things although it sure as hell is harder than it used to be and I'm grateful for my three professors this semester who have been interesting and inspiring and dedicated worthwhile human beings and I'm grateful for my blog friends that check in here and who share their lives with me in their blogs and I'm grateful that there are writers in the world who go through the ordeal of producing books that I can't wait to read and I'm grateful that I have a car that is mostly reliable although now that I've said that I should knock on wood and I'm thankful that our furnace works and that in spite of the occasional headache I'm pretty healthy for a dang 50-year-old and I'm not even going to mention my loved ones' health because I don't want to risk and I'm thankful that I have friends to meet with for coffee and that AC will still be around for a few more years of coffee dates and maybe for a very long time and did I mention pie?
Saturday, April 30, 2011
March/April 2011 reading report
Mennonite in a Little Black Dress- Rhoda Janzen. First of all, let me say that I love the name Rhoda, even though (or maybe because) I have a vague recollection of a song about a Rhoda from grade school. OK, that's out of the way. I enjoyed her book. It was laugh out loud funny at times. It's a memoir sort of along the lines of Eat Pray Love, except way snarkier, less spiritual, and she doesn't travel to exotic locales. (But other than that, it's just the same!) Her husband leaves her for a man he met on gay.com, and not long after that she is in a very serious car accident. So she goes back to live with her Mennonite parents to recuperate after many years of not being a Mennonite. There are obvious parallels with my past, although we weren't Mennonites. But my dad's family is German and Baptist, and there are plenty of similarities. Enough that some of her descriptions of her youth made me smile and get a little misty-eyed. But good lord, is she snarky. Sometimes it's really funny. But other times it borders on being cruel. Oddly, her nearly-cruel moments are reserved not for the Mennonites, but for the sartorially challenged. God forbid you should have the temerity to wear a fleece vest in her presence. I'm not sure I would want to be her friend, I don't think I'd measure up. I own four fleece vests. -smirk- But I did enjoy her book. Recommended.
The Fortune Quilt- Lani Diane Rich. I'm slowly working my way through Lani/Lucy's books, savoring them. She's a terrific writer. The three I've read were alike in at least one respect: once I got into them, it was impossible to put them down. I read the first chapter of this one before bed one night, then sat down with it about 10:30 the next night intending to read for half an hour or so. At 1:30 I finished it. I could not stop. It's very compelling. It's about a young woman in her late twenties who loses her job and her (male) best friend all in the same week. And then her mother, who disappeared 17 years earlier, shows up. The plotline where she is trying to find resolution with her mother is also a major theme of one of the others of Lani's I've read, Little Ray of Sunshine. About the only complaint I have about this book is that Sunshine does it better. (Well, and that I liked the best friend better than the hero, but taste in heroes is always subjective--there have been other romances I've liked where I didn't particularly care for the hero--so she gets a pass on that. And Will was growing on me by the end, anyway.) If I'd read Fortune Quilt first I'd have no complaints. But after reading Little Ray of Sunshine, this one just doesn't have the same complexity/depth of resolution. Good book, though. I'm definitely taking one of Lani/Lucy's books with me on my next plane flight. The flight would fly by. (ark, ark)
For school: Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion. Yup, still working my way through Jane Austen. Emma, I think, is my favorite of all of them. The main character, surprisingly enough named Emma, is so perfectly drawn, and the resolution of all her little schemes is so beautifully done, it's hard not to just gape in awe at the writing. There's one argument (discussion) between Emma and Mr. Knightley, where they are discussing Knightley's judgment of another person's character, and Emma's judgment of Knightley, that we ended up discussing for over an hour in class--just because there was so much packed into that two-page section. Another reason I love it is because of the movie Clueless, which has to be one of the best-ever adaptations of a classical work to modern times. And another reason I love it is because in at least one way-- her arrogant, youthful assumption that she knows everything she needs to know, and way more than anyone else around her-- Emma reminds me of me at that age. And yet even though she's such a horrible snob, you can't help but love her. It's such a great book. And even though she learns the error of her ways by the end of the book, Knightley makes the most touching declaration of having loved her through the whole thing. *sigh* *gush*
Mansfield Park is, I think, the least likable of all of JA's work. Fanny, the heroine, is not a woman to interest a contemporary reader. She's sickly, shy, retiring, and easily embarrassed; but even worse, she seems-- at least on first reading-- to be a priggish, moralistic prude. But you know, this was my second time reading it, and I found her to be a much more sympathetic character this time. She is so thoroughly herself. She has a very clear and consistently-drawn character that makes her bearable, even when you're rolling your eyes at her timidity. A closer reading reveals her to be not so much a prude as completely loyal to the people whose opinion she values. If you could divest the word "pure" of its overtones of moral perfectionism, I think you could say she is 'pure in heart.' Not because her heart is faultless, but because reading about her is like looking into a pool of clear, still water. I think. But maybe I'm over-reading. Anyway. If you're not an Austen fan, this one is definitely not going to change your mind.
Persuasion. This one is quite different than JA's others-- or at least, as different as one romance novel can be from another. Anne, the heroine, is older-- in her late twenties. She has loved the same man all along. She fell in love early but turned him down on the advice of her mentor because he was a young, penniless, unproven naval officer. When he comes back eight years later, he must get over his hurt, and she must figure out how to reach through all the social barriers that separate them to let him know how she feels. And another major difference--she doesn't end up with the big house, as the heroine of all her other novels do. It's a great story, in some ways far more modern than any of her other work.
Ulysses. I read it (click on the link for the long, tortured tale of my progress). The whole dang thing, and since I'm taking an independent study on it, I'm reading it again. It's difficult and brilliant, bawdy and sublime, but mostly it's long. the first time reading it is a 650-page exercise in delayed gratification. You just don't know what is happening much of the time. But the second time through (and I'm less than halfway at the moment) is an entirely different matter. Since you know what's going to happen later, you can see how everything fits together. Is it a great novel? yes. absolutely. Is it the best novel of the twentieth century, as so many have claimed? Well, I'd have to say no, because I don't see how you can claim that a novel that only a very few have actually read is the greatest novel of the 20th century. Gatsby or The Sun Also Rises or The Color Purple or To Kill a Mockingbird or or or. Recommended? yes, if you enjoy a challenge, and if you take it on, I'd add: read it twice. It's an entirely different (and better) experience the second time through.
Audiobooks-- I'll make this quick since I've already gone on and on here.
Cotillion- Georgette Heyer. I love Heyer. I've read or listened to three now (so I can tell you its pronounced "hay-er"), and I'm working my way through a fourth when I'm in the car. She's terrific. Here's the thing about Cotillion. If you've read many romance novels, you know their main drawback: you know the ending almost before you start. You know that the heroine and the male protagonist are going to end up together. The interest lies in how that is accomplished. But in Cotillion, honest to Pete, about halfway through you're not sure how it's going to end. She has several little twists up her sleeve that put the whole thing in question. I'm not giving it away, and if you think you might want to read it, don't read the back cover or the reviews on Amazon, just plunge in. Another thing to get used to with Heyer is all the exclamation points. They're wearisome, and that's one of the best reasons to listen to her stuff as an audiobook. But well worth it. Highly recommended. I loved this one.
and you're thinking, I thought she was going to make it short. sorry.
Bet Me- Jennifer Crusie. I've read it at least half a dozen times, but it was on sale on Audible a couple of weeks ago, so I thought it would be fun to hear it. And it was. I'm a skimmer, so I often miss details. With an audiobook, you hear every word, and you realize how brilliant Crusie is at dialogue and amusing little details. It is a tribute to her skill that I can say I love this book, even though it has my least favorite plotline-- the whole thing would be resolved if the hero and heroine just sat down and talked. And it's especially irritating because they do sit down and talk, many times, but just never about the right thing. But I still really enjoyed listening to this and was many times driving down the road laughing hysterically all by myself in the car. Great book. If you haven't read it, go straight out and get either the print or audio version right now.
The Fortune Quilt- Lani Diane Rich. I'm slowly working my way through Lani/Lucy's books, savoring them. She's a terrific writer. The three I've read were alike in at least one respect: once I got into them, it was impossible to put them down. I read the first chapter of this one before bed one night, then sat down with it about 10:30 the next night intending to read for half an hour or so. At 1:30 I finished it. I could not stop. It's very compelling. It's about a young woman in her late twenties who loses her job and her (male) best friend all in the same week. And then her mother, who disappeared 17 years earlier, shows up. The plotline where she is trying to find resolution with her mother is also a major theme of one of the others of Lani's I've read, Little Ray of Sunshine. About the only complaint I have about this book is that Sunshine does it better. (Well, and that I liked the best friend better than the hero, but taste in heroes is always subjective--there have been other romances I've liked where I didn't particularly care for the hero--so she gets a pass on that. And Will was growing on me by the end, anyway.) If I'd read Fortune Quilt first I'd have no complaints. But after reading Little Ray of Sunshine, this one just doesn't have the same complexity/depth of resolution. Good book, though. I'm definitely taking one of Lani/Lucy's books with me on my next plane flight. The flight would fly by. (ark, ark)
For school: Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion. Yup, still working my way through Jane Austen. Emma, I think, is my favorite of all of them. The main character, surprisingly enough named Emma, is so perfectly drawn, and the resolution of all her little schemes is so beautifully done, it's hard not to just gape in awe at the writing. There's one argument (discussion) between Emma and Mr. Knightley, where they are discussing Knightley's judgment of another person's character, and Emma's judgment of Knightley, that we ended up discussing for over an hour in class--just because there was so much packed into that two-page section. Another reason I love it is because of the movie Clueless, which has to be one of the best-ever adaptations of a classical work to modern times. And another reason I love it is because in at least one way-- her arrogant, youthful assumption that she knows everything she needs to know, and way more than anyone else around her-- Emma reminds me of me at that age. And yet even though she's such a horrible snob, you can't help but love her. It's such a great book. And even though she learns the error of her ways by the end of the book, Knightley makes the most touching declaration of having loved her through the whole thing. *sigh* *gush*
Mansfield Park is, I think, the least likable of all of JA's work. Fanny, the heroine, is not a woman to interest a contemporary reader. She's sickly, shy, retiring, and easily embarrassed; but even worse, she seems-- at least on first reading-- to be a priggish, moralistic prude. But you know, this was my second time reading it, and I found her to be a much more sympathetic character this time. She is so thoroughly herself. She has a very clear and consistently-drawn character that makes her bearable, even when you're rolling your eyes at her timidity. A closer reading reveals her to be not so much a prude as completely loyal to the people whose opinion she values. If you could divest the word "pure" of its overtones of moral perfectionism, I think you could say she is 'pure in heart.' Not because her heart is faultless, but because reading about her is like looking into a pool of clear, still water. I think. But maybe I'm over-reading. Anyway. If you're not an Austen fan, this one is definitely not going to change your mind.
Persuasion. This one is quite different than JA's others-- or at least, as different as one romance novel can be from another. Anne, the heroine, is older-- in her late twenties. She has loved the same man all along. She fell in love early but turned him down on the advice of her mentor because he was a young, penniless, unproven naval officer. When he comes back eight years later, he must get over his hurt, and she must figure out how to reach through all the social barriers that separate them to let him know how she feels. And another major difference--she doesn't end up with the big house, as the heroine of all her other novels do. It's a great story, in some ways far more modern than any of her other work.
Ulysses. I read it (click on the link for the long, tortured tale of my progress). The whole dang thing, and since I'm taking an independent study on it, I'm reading it again. It's difficult and brilliant, bawdy and sublime, but mostly it's long. the first time reading it is a 650-page exercise in delayed gratification. You just don't know what is happening much of the time. But the second time through (and I'm less than halfway at the moment) is an entirely different matter. Since you know what's going to happen later, you can see how everything fits together. Is it a great novel? yes. absolutely. Is it the best novel of the twentieth century, as so many have claimed? Well, I'd have to say no, because I don't see how you can claim that a novel that only a very few have actually read is the greatest novel of the 20th century. Gatsby or The Sun Also Rises or The Color Purple or To Kill a Mockingbird or or or. Recommended? yes, if you enjoy a challenge, and if you take it on, I'd add: read it twice. It's an entirely different (and better) experience the second time through.
Audiobooks-- I'll make this quick since I've already gone on and on here.
Cotillion- Georgette Heyer. I love Heyer. I've read or listened to three now (so I can tell you its pronounced "hay-er"), and I'm working my way through a fourth when I'm in the car. She's terrific. Here's the thing about Cotillion. If you've read many romance novels, you know their main drawback: you know the ending almost before you start. You know that the heroine and the male protagonist are going to end up together. The interest lies in how that is accomplished. But in Cotillion, honest to Pete, about halfway through you're not sure how it's going to end. She has several little twists up her sleeve that put the whole thing in question. I'm not giving it away, and if you think you might want to read it, don't read the back cover or the reviews on Amazon, just plunge in. Another thing to get used to with Heyer is all the exclamation points. They're wearisome, and that's one of the best reasons to listen to her stuff as an audiobook. But well worth it. Highly recommended. I loved this one.
and you're thinking, I thought she was going to make it short. sorry.
Bet Me- Jennifer Crusie. I've read it at least half a dozen times, but it was on sale on Audible a couple of weeks ago, so I thought it would be fun to hear it. And it was. I'm a skimmer, so I often miss details. With an audiobook, you hear every word, and you realize how brilliant Crusie is at dialogue and amusing little details. It is a tribute to her skill that I can say I love this book, even though it has my least favorite plotline-- the whole thing would be resolved if the hero and heroine just sat down and talked. And it's especially irritating because they do sit down and talk, many times, but just never about the right thing. But I still really enjoyed listening to this and was many times driving down the road laughing hysterically all by myself in the car. Great book. If you haven't read it, go straight out and get either the print or audio version right now.
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
aaaaaand it's done
I finished it! finally! the last chapter (of Ulysses) is about 40 pages with no punctuation, all told from the point of view of Bloom's wife. It actually wasn't as hard to read as I thought it would be. yay! *happy dance*
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Reading Report: Feb 2011
March 6th it is, and I'm just now posting the reading report. It's been that kind of week. I've been buried in academic reading, so you may not get any good recommendations, but here 'tis.
Jane Austen-- Lady Susan, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice. It's like Nirvana, yes? Oh, damn, I have to read Sense and Sensibility this weekend. Poor me. Lady Susan, which I'd never even heard of before this semester, is an early novel, written in epistolary style (i.e., the whole thing is letters that the characters write back and forth to each other). It has an extremely rushed ending, but other than that, it is surprisingly good for an Austen novel you've never heard of, and in some ways funnier than her later stuff. And it's short. Worth picking up if they have it at your library and you need a quick snarky read. Northanger Abbey is a parody of the popular romances of the time. I found it the most tedious read of the ones we've done so far, but it still had some great moments. I suspect it would be funnier if I had read Castle of Otranto or Mysteries of Udolpho (which were the popular romances of Austen's time), but I haven't, and I didn't have time. I already wrote about S&S, and P&P... well. It's brilliant. There was a thread on Facebook recently between a friend of mine and a bunch of her other friends about how they'd never been able to get through it and they couldn't understand why everyone loves it so much. I don't understand how you couldn't. It's not exactly a quick read, especially not at first while you're getting used to her slower pace. And unfortunately, she has a habit of leaving out the scenes that turn into the best scenes in the movies (In the movie of S&S, when Emma Thompson totally loses it when Hugh Grant comes back? (which has to be one of the most brilliantly acted scenes ever) Not in the book. Not kidding. the Emma Thompson character is so overcome with emotion that she runs out of the room before she can break down.) So I suppose if you saw the movie first and then tried to read the book, you'd be disappointed. But I'm not. I adore these books.
OK. I think I've gushed enough over Austen.
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. I read this when it came out twenty-ish years ago and thought it was way too depressing and didn't particularly care for it. But I had to read it for my FemLitCrit class this semester and loved it this time. It's definitely not a feel-good, cheerful novel-- it's about a young woman who has been convicted of a grisly murder, and the psychiatrist who tries to cure her of her amnesia so she can remember what happened. But it's far from the dark, despairing novel that I remembered. I'm not sure why I read it that way twenty years ago. In fact, probably my main objection to it this time is that it ends a little too neatly. I can't say anything more than that without spoilers. Highly recommended.
Ulysses update. Yes, I'm still reading it. It goes on and on and on. It's basically the story of one day in the lives of two men, Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. During the day, Stephen has various deep conversations with different people and ends up drinking with medical student friends at a maternity hospital. Bloom, who has spent the day going to a funeral, eating lunch, and masturbating on the beach as he watches a beautiful young woman, has also been avoiding going home to his wife, whose lover has been to the house during the afternoon. Bloom goes to the maternity hospital to check on a woman he knows who is delivering there and ends up sitting with Stephen and his friends as they get progressively more drunk--although Bloom himself imbibes very little. Bloom, feeling protective of Stephen, follows him to the red light district of Dublin, where there is a long, astonishingly inventive dream sequence that takes place in a brothel. Now Bloom and Stephen are sitting in a cheap coffee house. Bloom is hoping Stephen will sober up a little, and he is still avoiding going home and avoiding even thinking about what happened during the afternoon. It's brilliantly done, but it isn't easy to read, and I can't possibly recommend it. You'd kill me. But if you're determined to read it, let me know and I'll let you know my strategy (for what it's worth, which may not be much). It involves two commentaries, a paraphrase, a dictionary, and the book itself.
And on a more fun note: (sorry, this is getting long).
Dream a Little Dream, Susan Elizabeth Phillips. I've read enough SEP novels to know that I almost never like the way they begin and the way they end, but the in-betweens are good enough that I keep reading them. This time, I figured I could get the setup off the back cover, so I started reading on about page 75, which worked really well. The story is about Rachel Stone, who is the widow of a corrupt televangelist. She returns with her young son to the small town where they lived, where almost everyone hates her for the way her husband (and by implication, her) fleeced them out of all kinds of money. She is so broke that she and her son are living in her car. She has to find the last bit of her husband's fortune, which she's convinced is hidden in the house where they lived. Their house has been sold, and Gabe Bonner, a widower who has unwillingly hired her to help him renovate an old drive-in movie theater, just happens to be the caretaker of the house.
There is also a secondary romance between Gabe's brother, a local pastor, and his church secretary. As with most of Phillips' novels, the secondary romance is almost more interesting than the primary one, although in this case it may have meant more to me because of my background. The brother-pastor is questioning his faith, and has an ongoing conversation in his head with God, in the persons of Clint Eastwood, Oprah, and somebody else whom I'm forgetting. It's a little weird, but I thought it worked pretty well, and his moment of resolving his faith--although hardly an in-depth analysis of faith issues-- worked well enough that I could buy it. It will remind you of The Shack, if you've read that, except that it is about a gazillion times more believable than The Shack was, partly because rather than stretching the metaphor till it breaks, Phillips lets it be a low-key, not-too-serious sideline to the main story.
But where the story really got me is the relationship between Gabe and Rachel's son. I was sobbing by the time they got it resolved. I thought it was beautifully done, and believable. And that's where I should have stopped reading. Because once again Phillips managed to write an ending that all but ruined the book for me. I could go on and on about what bugged me about it-- tantalizing details that are thrown out and then dumped without resolution, a tacked-on crisis that serves no purpose, big moments that fizzle (after a long, tense night, Gabe's brother volunteers to keep the kid so Rachel and Gabe can go home and talk things out. So what do they do? in the next scene, Rachel is TAKING A NAP and Gabe is out working in the yard). When they finally do have their big talk, Rachel insists that Gabe talk about how much better she is than his dead first wife. Not kidding. Suffice it to say, yuck. Now that it's been a couple of weeks since I read it, I will say that the middle 300 pages is good enough that I'd still say it's worth reading, especially if little niggling details don't bother you as much as they bother me. But if you talked to me the day after I read it, I would have told you to burn it. Next time I may not only skip the first 75 pages, but also stop reading 50 pages before the end.
Jane Austen-- Lady Susan, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice. It's like Nirvana, yes? Oh, damn, I have to read Sense and Sensibility this weekend. Poor me. Lady Susan, which I'd never even heard of before this semester, is an early novel, written in epistolary style (i.e., the whole thing is letters that the characters write back and forth to each other). It has an extremely rushed ending, but other than that, it is surprisingly good for an Austen novel you've never heard of, and in some ways funnier than her later stuff. And it's short. Worth picking up if they have it at your library and you need a quick snarky read. Northanger Abbey is a parody of the popular romances of the time. I found it the most tedious read of the ones we've done so far, but it still had some great moments. I suspect it would be funnier if I had read Castle of Otranto or Mysteries of Udolpho (which were the popular romances of Austen's time), but I haven't, and I didn't have time. I already wrote about S&S, and P&P... well. It's brilliant. There was a thread on Facebook recently between a friend of mine and a bunch of her other friends about how they'd never been able to get through it and they couldn't understand why everyone loves it so much. I don't understand how you couldn't. It's not exactly a quick read, especially not at first while you're getting used to her slower pace. And unfortunately, she has a habit of leaving out the scenes that turn into the best scenes in the movies (In the movie of S&S, when Emma Thompson totally loses it when Hugh Grant comes back? (which has to be one of the most brilliantly acted scenes ever) Not in the book. Not kidding. the Emma Thompson character is so overcome with emotion that she runs out of the room before she can break down.) So I suppose if you saw the movie first and then tried to read the book, you'd be disappointed. But I'm not. I adore these books.
OK. I think I've gushed enough over Austen.
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. I read this when it came out twenty-ish years ago and thought it was way too depressing and didn't particularly care for it. But I had to read it for my FemLitCrit class this semester and loved it this time. It's definitely not a feel-good, cheerful novel-- it's about a young woman who has been convicted of a grisly murder, and the psychiatrist who tries to cure her of her amnesia so she can remember what happened. But it's far from the dark, despairing novel that I remembered. I'm not sure why I read it that way twenty years ago. In fact, probably my main objection to it this time is that it ends a little too neatly. I can't say anything more than that without spoilers. Highly recommended.
Ulysses update. Yes, I'm still reading it. It goes on and on and on. It's basically the story of one day in the lives of two men, Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. During the day, Stephen has various deep conversations with different people and ends up drinking with medical student friends at a maternity hospital. Bloom, who has spent the day going to a funeral, eating lunch, and masturbating on the beach as he watches a beautiful young woman, has also been avoiding going home to his wife, whose lover has been to the house during the afternoon. Bloom goes to the maternity hospital to check on a woman he knows who is delivering there and ends up sitting with Stephen and his friends as they get progressively more drunk--although Bloom himself imbibes very little. Bloom, feeling protective of Stephen, follows him to the red light district of Dublin, where there is a long, astonishingly inventive dream sequence that takes place in a brothel. Now Bloom and Stephen are sitting in a cheap coffee house. Bloom is hoping Stephen will sober up a little, and he is still avoiding going home and avoiding even thinking about what happened during the afternoon. It's brilliantly done, but it isn't easy to read, and I can't possibly recommend it. You'd kill me. But if you're determined to read it, let me know and I'll let you know my strategy (for what it's worth, which may not be much). It involves two commentaries, a paraphrase, a dictionary, and the book itself.
And on a more fun note: (sorry, this is getting long).
Dream a Little Dream, Susan Elizabeth Phillips. I've read enough SEP novels to know that I almost never like the way they begin and the way they end, but the in-betweens are good enough that I keep reading them. This time, I figured I could get the setup off the back cover, so I started reading on about page 75, which worked really well. The story is about Rachel Stone, who is the widow of a corrupt televangelist. She returns with her young son to the small town where they lived, where almost everyone hates her for the way her husband (and by implication, her) fleeced them out of all kinds of money. She is so broke that she and her son are living in her car. She has to find the last bit of her husband's fortune, which she's convinced is hidden in the house where they lived. Their house has been sold, and Gabe Bonner, a widower who has unwillingly hired her to help him renovate an old drive-in movie theater, just happens to be the caretaker of the house.
There is also a secondary romance between Gabe's brother, a local pastor, and his church secretary. As with most of Phillips' novels, the secondary romance is almost more interesting than the primary one, although in this case it may have meant more to me because of my background. The brother-pastor is questioning his faith, and has an ongoing conversation in his head with God, in the persons of Clint Eastwood, Oprah, and somebody else whom I'm forgetting. It's a little weird, but I thought it worked pretty well, and his moment of resolving his faith--although hardly an in-depth analysis of faith issues-- worked well enough that I could buy it. It will remind you of The Shack, if you've read that, except that it is about a gazillion times more believable than The Shack was, partly because rather than stretching the metaphor till it breaks, Phillips lets it be a low-key, not-too-serious sideline to the main story.
But where the story really got me is the relationship between Gabe and Rachel's son. I was sobbing by the time they got it resolved. I thought it was beautifully done, and believable. And that's where I should have stopped reading. Because once again Phillips managed to write an ending that all but ruined the book for me. I could go on and on about what bugged me about it-- tantalizing details that are thrown out and then dumped without resolution, a tacked-on crisis that serves no purpose, big moments that fizzle (after a long, tense night, Gabe's brother volunteers to keep the kid so Rachel and Gabe can go home and talk things out. So what do they do? in the next scene, Rachel is TAKING A NAP and Gabe is out working in the yard). When they finally do have their big talk, Rachel insists that Gabe talk about how much better she is than his dead first wife. Not kidding. Suffice it to say, yuck. Now that it's been a couple of weeks since I read it, I will say that the middle 300 pages is good enough that I'd still say it's worth reading, especially if little niggling details don't bother you as much as they bother me. But if you talked to me the day after I read it, I would have told you to burn it. Next time I may not only skip the first 75 pages, but also stop reading 50 pages before the end.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
thanks, I needed that
Hi, y'all. Hope everyone had a good week. Mine wasn't particularly pleasant, but restful and just what I needed. It is the bane of my existence to be both an utter blockhead about social skills and also hyper-sensitive. So I get my feelings hurt and have no one to blame but myself because I've caused my own problems. Sometimes I just have to go off and lick my wounds. By Saturday, a lot of rest and the passage of time had worked their usual magic and things are pretty much back to normal. This didn't involve any of you, of course, just one of those things.
I didn't spend a lot of time on Ulysses, but I did get through chapter 8. Which means I need to summarize 5-8 sometime soon. I don't know if any of the rest of you are doing this, but it's helping me to type out summaries so I'm going to keep doing it. I thought I would start putting them in separate posts, clearly marked, so you can easily avoid if not interested.
I met with the professor for my independent study on Thursday and got a little bit better idea of what we're doing. It looks like I'm going to spend the next couple of weeks doing a crash course on Javascript and maybe a little Flash, which makes me more happy than I can tell you. It just feels so much more manageable than theory at the moment. Only a few of you have been around for more than a year, so you missed the two semesters of Java programming I took at our community college right before I got the crazy idea to finish my master's, and I've worked with HTML, XHTML and CSS before. So this feels like homecoming, like picking up something familiar. Unfortunately Java is only marginally related to Javascript, but still the language of coding is not entirely foreign to me.
There are a few other things knocking around in my head, but I'll save them for tomorrow.
I didn't spend a lot of time on Ulysses, but I did get through chapter 8. Which means I need to summarize 5-8 sometime soon. I don't know if any of the rest of you are doing this, but it's helping me to type out summaries so I'm going to keep doing it. I thought I would start putting them in separate posts, clearly marked, so you can easily avoid if not interested.
I met with the professor for my independent study on Thursday and got a little bit better idea of what we're doing. It looks like I'm going to spend the next couple of weeks doing a crash course on Javascript and maybe a little Flash, which makes me more happy than I can tell you. It just feels so much more manageable than theory at the moment. Only a few of you have been around for more than a year, so you missed the two semesters of Java programming I took at our community college right before I got the crazy idea to finish my master's, and I've worked with HTML, XHTML and CSS before. So this feels like homecoming, like picking up something familiar. Unfortunately Java is only marginally related to Javascript, but still the language of coding is not entirely foreign to me.
There are a few other things knocking around in my head, but I'll save them for tomorrow.
Friday, January 14, 2011
the zyrtec clouded mind
I finished Ulysses chapter five yesterday and made it through about half of chapter six today. Will finish six and summarize both tomorrow (I hope). Six seems to be considerably longer than the others have been, or maybe it is just that I'm starting to get bogged down. You can't ever pick up any speed while reading Ulysses because you have to pay attention to the actual words as you read. Or at least I do. So it goes pretty slowly-- it takes me about two hours to get through a twenty page chapter, which would take twenty minutes in a more "normal" novel. It hasn't helped any that I'm a zyrtec zombie today. I've still had lingering headaches this week (not nearly as bad as last week), which I don't think are from caffeine withdrawal, so I thought it might be allergies and took a zyrtec this morning. It helped with the headache, but I've been so sleepy all day I'm not sure I'll take another one. I just want to go to bed and sleep for ten hours. Since dh is working and MadMax is at a sleepover, maybe I will.
A few more thoughts on eReaders (which I found out is the generic term for all of the digital reading devices. The Sony I have is just a Sony Reader). Or maybe this is just about digital books in general. I'm wondering as the shift to e-publishing becomes more widespread, how will I know what to read? I sure as heck haven't liked every published book I've ever read, so the fact that a book has been traditionally published is no guarantee. But a book that has gone through the usual process has a) been edited and b) presumably been selected in preference to many others that are similar, giving it some stamp of quality. Whereas the books that I've read that were self-published, or e-published without going through a traditional publisher, were (with some major exceptions) lower in quality. They had grammatical errors, typesetting errors, or were just poorly written.
But you know, that's where we're going, so there's no point in whining about it. I know too many writers, good writers, who are having a near impossible time getting their work published, and they're all thinking about e-publishing (my mom, for example). Why shouldn't they? Sure, the holy grail is to get an agent and a 3-book contract, but it's not happening for many of them.
So what does this mean for me as a reader? It means it's going to be a lot harder to find the books I want to read. Even if traditional publishing was a guarantee of quality, you can't immediately tell if a book has gone through the traditional publishing channels anymore. Already--even several years ago-- I've ordered books from Amazon and had no idea until I sat down and started reading that they were self-published--some of them are so poorly edited and badly written that it is quite evident practically from the first page. But as non-traditionally published books become more common, better writers, writers who write very high quality stuff, are going to start publishing that way. Which will mean that the number of books to choose from is going to skyrocket.
Thankfully since I'm not a writer, I don't have to worry about the opposite end of the problem, which is how are they going to compete with the big publishing houses to get the word out about their books. I just have to worry about how I'm going to find good books, however they have been published. In the long run, I suppose my methods won't be all that different than what I do now. I read reviews on Amazon, I've found the blogs of readers with similar tastes. I don't think there's ever going to be anyone who has exactly the same taste as me, but I've found people who match up enough that I get good recommendations.
if this makes no sense, blame it on the zyrtec. writing it bored me to death, but let's blame that on the zyrtec, too. Did you even notice that I changed the typeface? I was editing the other day, and even with my cheaters on I couldn't make out the i's and the l's in "responsibilities" when it was in Arial. I decided I need serifs. Let me know if you have any trouble viewing it.
A few more thoughts on eReaders (which I found out is the generic term for all of the digital reading devices. The Sony I have is just a Sony Reader). Or maybe this is just about digital books in general. I'm wondering as the shift to e-publishing becomes more widespread, how will I know what to read? I sure as heck haven't liked every published book I've ever read, so the fact that a book has been traditionally published is no guarantee. But a book that has gone through the usual process has a) been edited and b) presumably been selected in preference to many others that are similar, giving it some stamp of quality. Whereas the books that I've read that were self-published, or e-published without going through a traditional publisher, were (with some major exceptions) lower in quality. They had grammatical errors, typesetting errors, or were just poorly written.
But you know, that's where we're going, so there's no point in whining about it. I know too many writers, good writers, who are having a near impossible time getting their work published, and they're all thinking about e-publishing (my mom, for example). Why shouldn't they? Sure, the holy grail is to get an agent and a 3-book contract, but it's not happening for many of them.
So what does this mean for me as a reader? It means it's going to be a lot harder to find the books I want to read. Even if traditional publishing was a guarantee of quality, you can't immediately tell if a book has gone through the traditional publishing channels anymore. Already--even several years ago-- I've ordered books from Amazon and had no idea until I sat down and started reading that they were self-published--some of them are so poorly edited and badly written that it is quite evident practically from the first page. But as non-traditionally published books become more common, better writers, writers who write very high quality stuff, are going to start publishing that way. Which will mean that the number of books to choose from is going to skyrocket.
Thankfully since I'm not a writer, I don't have to worry about the opposite end of the problem, which is how are they going to compete with the big publishing houses to get the word out about their books. I just have to worry about how I'm going to find good books, however they have been published. In the long run, I suppose my methods won't be all that different than what I do now. I read reviews on Amazon, I've found the blogs of readers with similar tastes. I don't think there's ever going to be anyone who has exactly the same taste as me, but I've found people who match up enough that I get good recommendations.
if this makes no sense, blame it on the zyrtec. writing it bored me to death, but let's blame that on the zyrtec, too. Did you even notice that I changed the typeface? I was editing the other day, and even with my cheaters on I couldn't make out the i's and the l's in "responsibilities" when it was in Arial. I decided I need serifs. Let me know if you have any trouble viewing it.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Ulysses, chapters three and four
In the third chapter, Stephen is walking along the beach. That's pretty much all the action, but he thinks about all kinds of things, and you get to try and figure out from one sentence to the next, sometimes from one word to the next, what he's thinking about. The opening words of the chapter: "Ineluctable modality of the visible." They're never really precisely explained, although you begin to get some idea of what he's talking about because in the next paragraph he moves on the ineluctable modality of the audible. He's thinking about perception, how we perceive things, and the unknowable contrast between appearance and reality. Sometimes it's interesting, sometimes it's not. He sees two midwives walking along the beach, carrying a sack, which he thinks must contain a stillbirth. He thinks about his own birth, and his mother, and conception-- the moment of his own conception, and the immaculate conception. There's a long bit about his time in Paris. He sees a dog and its owners. The dog sniffs a dog carcass that is lying in the surf. Then he takes a piss and picks his nose. Honestly, I missed the piss until it was mentioned in the commentaries. I had to go back through the chapter to find it, and I'm still not entirely sure I've got the right spot. Here's my best guess: "In long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed full, covering greengoldenly lagoons of sand, rising, flowing." Could be piss, if you ask me. The whole thing is like that, and sometimes you can follow it, and sometimes you can't. But picking his nose is obvious: "He laid the dry snot picked from his nostril on a ledge of rock, carefully. For the rest let look who will."
It's quite lovely sometimes, although you're not entirely sure what he means. Try this, his thoughts either while he's scribbling poetry on the back of Mr. Deasy's letter, or right after he's finished, I'm not sure which: "His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till the farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness shining in the brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds. Me sits there with his augur's rod of ash, in borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid sea, unbeheld, in violet night walking beneath a reign of uncouth stars. I throw this ended shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it back. Endless, would it be mine, form of my form? Who watches me here? Who ever anywhere will read these written words?"
Chapter Three ends the part where Stephen is the point-of-view character. And by the way, Joyce didn't call them chapters, or number them-- that's all been added by commentators. The only division Joyce made was to divide the whole thing into three parts, and what the commentators call "chapter three" or "episode three" ends the first part. Chapter four starts part II, and we move on to Leopold Bloom.
While the style continues to be stream-of-consciousness, it's (so far) much easier to follow. Bloom is fixing breakfast for his wife Molly and his cat. He's quite sweet about the cat, which (at least for me) makes him an immediately sympathetic character. When he realizes there is nothing for his own breakfast, he decides to go to the butcher's. He realizes he doesn't have his key, but he would have to go back into the bedroom and wake up Molly to get it, so he pulls the door mostly shut and goes on to the butcher's. (a key again!) He enjoys the warmth of the sun. He's wearing black for a funeral later in the day, and he notices how much the sun's warmth is magnified by the black clothes. At the butcher shop, he stands in line behind a woman neighbor, and notices her hips. He hopes he can walk home behind her and watch her walk. At home, he fixes his breakfast, takes the mail up to his wife (which includes a letter from Blazes, who--according to the commentary--will become her lover), and brings his own letter from his daughter Milly back down to read while he eats his breakfast. Then-- there's no way to say this politely, sorry-- he goes out to the outhouse and takes a dump. The, um, product isn't described in detail, but the process is. He is happy with his regularity, shall we say. He reads the paper while he's there, then tears off half of a prize-winning story to wipe. He checks to make sure that his pants are still clean, since he still has to go to the funeral.
the style in this chapter is quite different. Bloom thinks in much shorter phrases, that come at you more abruptly. he thinks about his daughter's ripening sexuality: "O well: she knows how to mind herself. But if not? No, nothing has happened. Of course it might. Wait in any case till it does. A wild piece of goods. Her slim legs running up the staircase. Destiny. Ripening now. Vain: very." Quite a change from Stephen's long abstract thoughts, that twine around from one subject to the next. with both of them, though, the reading experience is the same. You understand five or six lines, and then there's five or six (or twenty) lines that are incomprehensible, and then suddenly you pick up the thread again and there's another five or six lines you understand. I can see why you have to read this several times before you start to get it.
To back up a bit: this next semester, I'm taking a seminar on Jane Austen and ... wait for it... the History of Feminist Theory. Sorry about that, because if you follow along here you know you're going to have to live through it with me. As if I haven't already typed enough about that. But it's a very small department, and there weren't very many graduate classes being offered next semester. And given my driving schedule, there really were only those two classes that would work. But we're supposed to take three courses per semester, which left me in a bit of a dilemma. So I started poking around looking for something interesting to do for an independent study, and came upon one of the professors I had last year who is working on Ulysses. I e-mailed him, he agreed, and voila. But I need to get Ulysses read for the first time before the semester starts so I can be of some use to him. I'm sure I'll have to read it at least once more before I can even begin to comprehend it, and who knows what else he'll assign me to read. I'm looking forward to that more than either of the regular classes.
It's quite lovely sometimes, although you're not entirely sure what he means. Try this, his thoughts either while he's scribbling poetry on the back of Mr. Deasy's letter, or right after he's finished, I'm not sure which: "His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till the farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness shining in the brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds. Me sits there with his augur's rod of ash, in borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid sea, unbeheld, in violet night walking beneath a reign of uncouth stars. I throw this ended shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it back. Endless, would it be mine, form of my form? Who watches me here? Who ever anywhere will read these written words?"
Chapter Three ends the part where Stephen is the point-of-view character. And by the way, Joyce didn't call them chapters, or number them-- that's all been added by commentators. The only division Joyce made was to divide the whole thing into three parts, and what the commentators call "chapter three" or "episode three" ends the first part. Chapter four starts part II, and we move on to Leopold Bloom.
While the style continues to be stream-of-consciousness, it's (so far) much easier to follow. Bloom is fixing breakfast for his wife Molly and his cat. He's quite sweet about the cat, which (at least for me) makes him an immediately sympathetic character. When he realizes there is nothing for his own breakfast, he decides to go to the butcher's. He realizes he doesn't have his key, but he would have to go back into the bedroom and wake up Molly to get it, so he pulls the door mostly shut and goes on to the butcher's. (a key again!) He enjoys the warmth of the sun. He's wearing black for a funeral later in the day, and he notices how much the sun's warmth is magnified by the black clothes. At the butcher shop, he stands in line behind a woman neighbor, and notices her hips. He hopes he can walk home behind her and watch her walk. At home, he fixes his breakfast, takes the mail up to his wife (which includes a letter from Blazes, who--according to the commentary--will become her lover), and brings his own letter from his daughter Milly back down to read while he eats his breakfast. Then-- there's no way to say this politely, sorry-- he goes out to the outhouse and takes a dump. The, um, product isn't described in detail, but the process is. He is happy with his regularity, shall we say. He reads the paper while he's there, then tears off half of a prize-winning story to wipe. He checks to make sure that his pants are still clean, since he still has to go to the funeral.
the style in this chapter is quite different. Bloom thinks in much shorter phrases, that come at you more abruptly. he thinks about his daughter's ripening sexuality: "O well: she knows how to mind herself. But if not? No, nothing has happened. Of course it might. Wait in any case till it does. A wild piece of goods. Her slim legs running up the staircase. Destiny. Ripening now. Vain: very." Quite a change from Stephen's long abstract thoughts, that twine around from one subject to the next. with both of them, though, the reading experience is the same. You understand five or six lines, and then there's five or six (or twenty) lines that are incomprehensible, and then suddenly you pick up the thread again and there's another five or six lines you understand. I can see why you have to read this several times before you start to get it.
To back up a bit: this next semester, I'm taking a seminar on Jane Austen and ... wait for it... the History of Feminist Theory. Sorry about that, because if you follow along here you know you're going to have to live through it with me. As if I haven't already typed enough about that. But it's a very small department, and there weren't very many graduate classes being offered next semester. And given my driving schedule, there really were only those two classes that would work. But we're supposed to take three courses per semester, which left me in a bit of a dilemma. So I started poking around looking for something interesting to do for an independent study, and came upon one of the professors I had last year who is working on Ulysses. I e-mailed him, he agreed, and voila. But I need to get Ulysses read for the first time before the semester starts so I can be of some use to him. I'm sure I'll have to read it at least once more before I can even begin to comprehend it, and who knows what else he'll assign me to read. I'm looking forward to that more than either of the regular classes.
Friday, January 07, 2011
Ulysses, chapter two
This will be quick because I didn't get much sleep last night and I want to go to bed. So Chapter Two starts off with no transition-- we are in a classroom, and Stephen is teaching spoiled, wealthy boys about Pyrrhus, the Greek king who won battles while sustaining such heavy losses that the term Pyrrhic victory comes from his name. Stephen isn't exactly paying attention, and neither are the boys. In between his questions and theirs, his mind wanders on all kinds of topics, sometimes coming back to his mother's death. One boy starts to recite Milton's poem Lycidas, but instead of doing it from memory, he is cheating so blatantly that Stephen calls him on it, but he doesn't seem very mad. The boys leave to play hockey. Before they go Stephen asks them a riddle, which no one (including the reader) really understands.
Stephen stays behind with one of them who needs help on his math homework. He isn't a particularly appealing kid, but Stephen helps himself be patient by imagining the kid's mom and the positive quality of mother love. Then Stephen goes to Mr. Deasy's office, who is him employer. Mr. Deasy pays him and Stephen must sit and listen as he lectures him on how to live within his means, how the jews are responsible for the downfall of england, how women are responsible for original sin, etc. Then Mr. Deasy makes him sit and wait while he finishes a letter to the editor about cattle diseases that he wants published in newspapers-- Stephen knows some of the editors. So Stephen says he will see what he can do.
Stephen stays behind with one of them who needs help on his math homework. He isn't a particularly appealing kid, but Stephen helps himself be patient by imagining the kid's mom and the positive quality of mother love. Then Stephen goes to Mr. Deasy's office, who is him employer. Mr. Deasy pays him and Stephen must sit and listen as he lectures him on how to live within his means, how the jews are responsible for the downfall of england, how women are responsible for original sin, etc. Then Mr. Deasy makes him sit and wait while he finishes a letter to the editor about cattle diseases that he wants published in newspapers-- Stephen knows some of the editors. So Stephen says he will see what he can do.
Thursday, January 06, 2011
after Chapter Two
OK, go ahead and laugh. :-) I just finished chapter two, and I think chapter one must be the free space in Ulysses bingo. It is going to be just as obscure and difficult as I had heard. But maybe more fun along the way than I expected. More tomorrow after I have a chance to read the commentaries.
Ulysses, Agnes, hot flashes and withdrawal
So after reading the first chapter of Ulysses and two commentaries on it, I have to say: who knew? it is funny. And entertaining. It isn't anything at all like what I was expecting. You definitely have to exercise suspension of understanding (to warp a phrase)-- there are things that are incomprehensible and that aren't explained anywhere in the first chapter. But if you just plow through those and keep going, it's really good. You could knock me down with a feather. I've been dreading this for years, and it's really not that bad. So far, it is the story of three graduate students, living in a tower that they rent from the government, ribbing each other while they shave, eat breakfast, and go down to the river to bathe. Well, actually, it's mainly Mulligan that does the teasing, but still-- it's a scene that anyone who ever lived with roommates in an apartment in their twenties will immediately understand. In the course of the chapter, Stephen, the serious, introverted one who is still reeling from the death of his mother, decides that even though he's the one that's been paying the rent, he can no longer live there. So he hands over the key at the end of the chapter. That's about all that happens, but it's really well done.
It takes place on June 16, 1904. If you hang out with English major types you know that Ulysses takes place in Dublin in the space of a single day, and June 16th is the day, although it's not stated anywhere in the first chapter. (I think I would have been able to tell you it was in June, but I'm not sure if I would have known the 16th and definitely not the year. Got that from the commentaries.) I read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as a sophomore in college (Ulysses is the sequel to Portrait), and understood it not one whit until the professor went through it with us. I guess that's what I was expecting this time, too. I'm not sure if the difference is just that I'm 25 years older now or something else, but so far, so good.
If you're reading along, here are the helpful things I gleaned from the commentaries. The Latin phrases are all from the Catholic mass-- the first one, at the very start, is the first line of the mass as the priest and acolytes approach the altar, and the whole scene, with Mulligan carrying the shaving bowl and shaving implements, is a parody of a Catholic mass. The second one, later on, is a line from the last rites and is in reference to the death of Stephen's mother. I think there is another one, too, but I don't remember it at the moment so we'll assume it's not particularly important. The lines about Fergus that Stephen recites to his mother in a flashback are from Yeats, an Irish poet. The lines that Mulligan recites as he's jumping in the water are blasphemous nonsense of his own composition. Ireland, as you probably already know, is extremely Catholic, and (according to the commentaries) the examination of the influence of Catholicism and the interaction between belief and unbelief is one of the central themes of the Ulysses.
So we're off. I'm actually way more excited about this with the first chapter done than I was before.
I am almost always reading some kind of genre fiction at the same time that I am reading my academic stuff. It keeps me sane. This time it is time for my annual ritual re-reading of Agnes and the Hitman, one of my all-time favorite books, a book I'd recommend to anyone. My spouse, of course, isn't a big fan of romance* novels, but of the (probably) couple hundred I've read, I've handed him only two--and Agnes was one of them (the other was Lord Perfect, but that's another post). Anyway. It interests and amuses me how often there is interplay between the genre fiction I'm reading and the more serious stuff. This time, there is a key that becomes significant in the first chapter of Ulysses, and apparently later on there will be a Keyes Tower that becomes significant. And by page 4 of Agnes you find out that it takes place in Keyes, SC. A little thing, but it made me smile.
I'm feeling better today, not because I'm done with withdrawal (see previous post), but because I finally gave in and took more drugs. My usual migraine treatment is one Maxalt (thank God for Maxalt) and half of a 5 mg percocet. Usually that's all it takes. but caffeine withdrawal is one tough mother and today, a couple of hours after the original dose, I took the other half of the percocet. This is day five. If I'd had any idea how bad withdrawal was going to be this time, I would never have let it go this long. I was barely having any caffeine the last week or so, just enough so that I wouldn't go through withdrawal while we were on vacation (half a cup of coffee, or a Dr. Pepper). I just didn't think it would be this bad.
Excuses, excuses. I'm weak, what can I say? It's difficult being a mere mortal and living with my spouse, who has near perfect self control. If he found out that caffeine or some other substance was a problem for him, said substance would never cross his lips again. Three or four years ago he decided it wasn't healthy for him to drink soft drinks, and as far as I know, he hasn't had so much as a sip since. But I'm not quite that good at it. It takes me many tries to rid myself of my vices, probably infinitely many. In fact, that is my new year's resolution for this year, and instead of an entire post on it, I'll just give you the one sentence version: keep starting over. I know what I need to do, I know the issues I'm working on and the ways I want to treat myself more kindly, more healthily, and more .... grown-up-ly? But I keep screwing up. So the idea for this year is to keep starting over, keep getting back on the bandwagon. Not to let failure de-rail me. I guess that was more than one sentence.
Whoa. what else can I fit in this post? One of the main things I was going to write about hasn't even appeared yet, which was my trip to the pharmacy on Tuesday to get more Maxalt. But this one is plenty long enough, so I will save that one for another day. And in case you're wondering about the hot flashes of the title, that was just because when I sat down to type, I had to open the door to the deck, which is practically at my right elbow, even though it is about 25 degrees outside because I am so fricking hot. Internal combustion is my middle name these days. It's too bad we can't harness the energy of all these hot flashes my friends and I are having because it would pretty much solve the energy crisis.
And that's it for today.
* Agnes is definitely not your typical romance novel--it's more of romantic suspense, or something like that--but it's sold in the romance novel section at Borders. And also in the literary fiction section. It sort of has a split personality. My favorite.
It takes place on June 16, 1904. If you hang out with English major types you know that Ulysses takes place in Dublin in the space of a single day, and June 16th is the day, although it's not stated anywhere in the first chapter. (I think I would have been able to tell you it was in June, but I'm not sure if I would have known the 16th and definitely not the year. Got that from the commentaries.) I read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as a sophomore in college (Ulysses is the sequel to Portrait), and understood it not one whit until the professor went through it with us. I guess that's what I was expecting this time, too. I'm not sure if the difference is just that I'm 25 years older now or something else, but so far, so good.
If you're reading along, here are the helpful things I gleaned from the commentaries. The Latin phrases are all from the Catholic mass-- the first one, at the very start, is the first line of the mass as the priest and acolytes approach the altar, and the whole scene, with Mulligan carrying the shaving bowl and shaving implements, is a parody of a Catholic mass. The second one, later on, is a line from the last rites and is in reference to the death of Stephen's mother. I think there is another one, too, but I don't remember it at the moment so we'll assume it's not particularly important. The lines about Fergus that Stephen recites to his mother in a flashback are from Yeats, an Irish poet. The lines that Mulligan recites as he's jumping in the water are blasphemous nonsense of his own composition. Ireland, as you probably already know, is extremely Catholic, and (according to the commentaries) the examination of the influence of Catholicism and the interaction between belief and unbelief is one of the central themes of the Ulysses.
So we're off. I'm actually way more excited about this with the first chapter done than I was before.
I am almost always reading some kind of genre fiction at the same time that I am reading my academic stuff. It keeps me sane. This time it is time for my annual ritual re-reading of Agnes and the Hitman, one of my all-time favorite books, a book I'd recommend to anyone. My spouse, of course, isn't a big fan of romance* novels, but of the (probably) couple hundred I've read, I've handed him only two--and Agnes was one of them (the other was Lord Perfect, but that's another post). Anyway. It interests and amuses me how often there is interplay between the genre fiction I'm reading and the more serious stuff. This time, there is a key that becomes significant in the first chapter of Ulysses, and apparently later on there will be a Keyes Tower that becomes significant. And by page 4 of Agnes you find out that it takes place in Keyes, SC. A little thing, but it made me smile.
I'm feeling better today, not because I'm done with withdrawal (see previous post), but because I finally gave in and took more drugs. My usual migraine treatment is one Maxalt (thank God for Maxalt) and half of a 5 mg percocet. Usually that's all it takes. but caffeine withdrawal is one tough mother and today, a couple of hours after the original dose, I took the other half of the percocet. This is day five. If I'd had any idea how bad withdrawal was going to be this time, I would never have let it go this long. I was barely having any caffeine the last week or so, just enough so that I wouldn't go through withdrawal while we were on vacation (half a cup of coffee, or a Dr. Pepper). I just didn't think it would be this bad.
Excuses, excuses. I'm weak, what can I say? It's difficult being a mere mortal and living with my spouse, who has near perfect self control. If he found out that caffeine or some other substance was a problem for him, said substance would never cross his lips again. Three or four years ago he decided it wasn't healthy for him to drink soft drinks, and as far as I know, he hasn't had so much as a sip since. But I'm not quite that good at it. It takes me many tries to rid myself of my vices, probably infinitely many. In fact, that is my new year's resolution for this year, and instead of an entire post on it, I'll just give you the one sentence version: keep starting over. I know what I need to do, I know the issues I'm working on and the ways I want to treat myself more kindly, more healthily, and more .... grown-up-ly? But I keep screwing up. So the idea for this year is to keep starting over, keep getting back on the bandwagon. Not to let failure de-rail me. I guess that was more than one sentence.
Whoa. what else can I fit in this post? One of the main things I was going to write about hasn't even appeared yet, which was my trip to the pharmacy on Tuesday to get more Maxalt. But this one is plenty long enough, so I will save that one for another day. And in case you're wondering about the hot flashes of the title, that was just because when I sat down to type, I had to open the door to the deck, which is practically at my right elbow, even though it is about 25 degrees outside because I am so fricking hot. Internal combustion is my middle name these days. It's too bad we can't harness the energy of all these hot flashes my friends and I are having because it would pretty much solve the energy crisis.
And that's it for today.
* Agnes is definitely not your typical romance novel--it's more of romantic suspense, or something like that--but it's sold in the romance novel section at Borders. And also in the literary fiction section. It sort of has a split personality. My favorite.
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
Ulysses-- only because I have to
I have to read Ulysses (the James Joyce one) for one of my classes (more about that later). So I'm starting tomorrow. Just thought I'd let you know on the off chance that you want to read it along with me. I have two reader's guides and I'm reading a synopsis of the Iliad and the Odyssey today, so will post what I can to be helpful. this is also a warning if you're not interested, because that's likely to be what I'm posting about for a couple of weeks.
I just got the grade back on one of my papers from last semester, a B-, the lowest grade I've ever made on a paper. It was the third paper, the one that had the least amount of effort put into it because I was working on the other two. It deserved a B-, so I can't complain. But I'm still feeling a little yucky about it. I got an A on the first one, and I haven't seen the second one yet-- haven't been down to UTown since the semester ended, and I'm not going till next week. (the one I got today was e-mailed to me).
And I'm also feeling physically awful-- I let myself get re-addicted to caffeine at the end of the semester (too many nights in a row of four hours sleep) and I'm weaning myself off of it again. Well, I guess "weaning" isn't the right word, because I stopped cold turkey on Sunday. It is pretty miserable, but not as bad as the first time.
whine whine whine. Today is one of those days where I have to remind myself to extend unconditional positive regard to myself.
I just got the grade back on one of my papers from last semester, a B-, the lowest grade I've ever made on a paper. It was the third paper, the one that had the least amount of effort put into it because I was working on the other two. It deserved a B-, so I can't complain. But I'm still feeling a little yucky about it. I got an A on the first one, and I haven't seen the second one yet-- haven't been down to UTown since the semester ended, and I'm not going till next week. (the one I got today was e-mailed to me).
And I'm also feeling physically awful-- I let myself get re-addicted to caffeine at the end of the semester (too many nights in a row of four hours sleep) and I'm weaning myself off of it again. Well, I guess "weaning" isn't the right word, because I stopped cold turkey on Sunday. It is pretty miserable, but not as bad as the first time.
whine whine whine. Today is one of those days where I have to remind myself to extend unconditional positive regard to myself.
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