When I was in my twenties, like many people, I huffed and puffed that I didn't need church to be in a relationship with God. Now I'm not so sure I believe in God, but for the most part I'm OK with church. Or at least, I'm OK with our church, and I think there are a pretty good percentage of churches that are like ours. They're not perfect. There are things about ours that I don't like. My spouse is on session right now (meaning he is one of the Elders, or leaders, of the church), and the bad thing about that is that you hear a lot more about the things you don't like than you would if you just showed up for church on Sunday mornings. But generally speaking, our church is doing the kinds of things I think a church should be doing-- actively participating in the community, doing our best to help people that need help, puzzling over what it means to have faith. My life is enriched by being a part of a community of people that comes together to support each other in their faith (or lack thereof, I suppose, might be more appropriate in my case)
But one of the things I've never liked about our church is its exclusion of members of the GLBT community (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons) from positions of leadership. It's a PC-USA church (which is one of the varieties of Presbyterian), and the language of the Book of Order (which is sort of like the constitution for PC-USA churches) states that candidates for ordination must "live...within the covenant of marriage between a man and woman...or chastity in singleness." And since in PC-USA churches pastors, elders, and deacons are ordained, that means not just that there are no GLBT Presbyterian pastors, but also none can serve as Elders or Deacons, the positions of lay leadership in the church. (Women have been able to be ordained in the Presbyterian church since at least the 1950s, and we have many female elders and deacons, and also a woman lay pastor.)
It's for this reason that although I've attended our church for 18 years now, I've never officially joined as a member. It's a technicality, I know. We volunteer at our church, we attend services on average 1-2 times per month, we give them money. It's kind of lame to say that I'm protesting their stand on gay ordination by refusing to join-- especially since probably not that many people realize that I'm not a member, and the ones that do probably don't know that this is why I refused to join. But there it is. Although there are many, many churches in our town, there are only a few that even allow ordination of women, so when we moved here, we didn't have many choices.
Last July, the PC-USA General Assembly voted to change the wording of the Book of Order to allow gays/lesbians to be ordained-- actually, what they did was remove the words about marriage and singleness. They've done this before, but approval by the General Assembly must be followed by ratification in a certain number of presbyteries (regions), just like a certain number of states must ratify any amendments to the U.S. constitution. None of the previous efforts made it past this stage. So we're all waiting to see what happens this time. I am cautiously optimistic. And I told our pastor that if it passed, I'd join. At this late date, the idea makes me smile. We'll see.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
procrastination gyration
I'm writing a paper again, and it's due tomorrow, so I think I can assure you that this will be brief. It's the first paper I've written since the one that went so badly at the end of last semester, so I'm feeling a little intimidated. And especially because it's for the same professor-- whom I like very much, I have no complaints about her. I'm just intimidated by her red pen, so to speak.
The encouraging thing is that the system that I had worked out by the end of last semester for getting a paper together is working really well. The depressing thing is that I can't understand why it always comes down to the last minute. Why do I do this to myself? I very consciously set out not to do it this this time. I set aside the entire weekend to work on this paper exactly so that I wouldn't end up at 9:15 the night before it was due with two or three hours of work still in front of me. But here I am. There's something about my brain, about the part of my brain that blurts out words to be typed into a paper, that just refuses to function until the proverbial gun is held to my head and I have to do it.
This paper is only has to be 7 pages or so, so it's not as huge a thing as it was at the end of last semester, when I had three twenty-page papers to finish in the space of ten days. If I had one of them done a week ahead of time, it would have made all the difference in the world, but I just couldn't make myself sit down and do it. I think it's dread. Actually, I know it's dread. I'm just not sure exactly what it is that I dread. That the paper will be horrible? that I'll make a bad grade? that I won't like what I've written? maybe all of the above. But I really, really need to get it figured out before the end of the semester. I only have two 20-page papers to write this time, plus a 10-page report of work for my independent study, but that's enough.
Do you procrastinate? Do you have any tricks you can share that you use to get yourself to work ahead?
The encouraging thing is that the system that I had worked out by the end of last semester for getting a paper together is working really well. The depressing thing is that I can't understand why it always comes down to the last minute. Why do I do this to myself? I very consciously set out not to do it this this time. I set aside the entire weekend to work on this paper exactly so that I wouldn't end up at 9:15 the night before it was due with two or three hours of work still in front of me. But here I am. There's something about my brain, about the part of my brain that blurts out words to be typed into a paper, that just refuses to function until the proverbial gun is held to my head and I have to do it.
This paper is only has to be 7 pages or so, so it's not as huge a thing as it was at the end of last semester, when I had three twenty-page papers to finish in the space of ten days. If I had one of them done a week ahead of time, it would have made all the difference in the world, but I just couldn't make myself sit down and do it. I think it's dread. Actually, I know it's dread. I'm just not sure exactly what it is that I dread. That the paper will be horrible? that I'll make a bad grade? that I won't like what I've written? maybe all of the above. But I really, really need to get it figured out before the end of the semester. I only have two 20-page papers to write this time, plus a 10-page report of work for my independent study, but that's enough.
Do you procrastinate? Do you have any tricks you can share that you use to get yourself to work ahead?
in which AB does not finish what she attempted to start
A long time ago, not long after I started blogging, I wrote a post about the idea of sin. I had recently talked to a friend of mine, who is not at all religious in the conventional sense of the word, about how much she hated to attend regular church services because of the emphasis on sin, a concept she had no patience with. So the post I wrote back in 2005 was basically a defense of the idea of sin, and the way I looked at it in my life. At the time I wrote it, I thought it was the best post I'd written up to that point, and for a long time when I told someone about my blog, that was the post I would send them as an example of the kinds of things I was writing about.
But I went to the Ash Wednesday service at our church this last week, and I discovered to my surprise that my understanding of sin has changed. I should maybe detour for a minute here and talk about why I still go to church. I haven't written much about religion or spirituality recently because not much has changed. The post I wrote last summer-- in which I talked about how I both believe and don't believe at the same time-- still pretty much covers how I think today. I've grown used to the feeling now, the oxymoronic believe/don't believe combination. It makes complete sense to me on an intuitive level. But when I try to put it into words, it becomes stupidly complex. It starts to sound like double-speak, like talking out both sides of my mouth. So I've taken the easy way out and just not written much about it recently.
But it's still something I think about all the time. Daily. An online acquaintance of mine calls it being a Spiritual Atheist. I hesitate to use the term myself, because the word "Atheist"--although it certainly applies to some of my opinions-- conjures up a response in other people that has nothing to do with what I mean. "Agnostic" still comes the closest I think-- not in the popular sense of the word, which seems to be "don't care enough to have an opinion," but in the literal sense of the word ("a- gnostic," can't know or don't know): I believe in certain experiences that I've had that could be described as spiritual, but I don't know how to define exactly what they "mean."
Sheesh. I really didn't mean to get off on this. I guess that's what happens when you don't post about something for months and months-- you have a lot of catching up to do. So if I'm an agnostic, or a Spiritual Atheist, or an oxyMoron ;-), why do I still go to church? Well, honestly, the short answer is: because if I don't go for three or four Sundays, I miss it. We're not the most regular attenders. We're certainly not there every week. But if it gets to be more than three weeks, I start to yearn for it. There's something about sitting in the sanctuary, a space dedicated to the acknowledgment of something vastly outside our piddly little selves, that is meaningful to me. It would work for me to just go in to the sanctuary when it was empty and sit for awhile by myself, but I find it more effective and more meaningful when I'm there with the music and the readings, sharing the experience with others. They may not be of the same opinions as me, but we're united at some level in spirit. It's centering and restorative for me. (That's the "short" answer-- the long answer is in the second half of this post).
I haven't even come close to talking about the issue I originally sat down to type about. But it's late and my brain is about to shut off, and as I've been typing, I've thought of several more directions this could go. So maybe this will be another two- or three- parter. More later. Probably not till Wednesday at least, though.
But I went to the Ash Wednesday service at our church this last week, and I discovered to my surprise that my understanding of sin has changed. I should maybe detour for a minute here and talk about why I still go to church. I haven't written much about religion or spirituality recently because not much has changed. The post I wrote last summer-- in which I talked about how I both believe and don't believe at the same time-- still pretty much covers how I think today. I've grown used to the feeling now, the oxymoronic believe/don't believe combination. It makes complete sense to me on an intuitive level. But when I try to put it into words, it becomes stupidly complex. It starts to sound like double-speak, like talking out both sides of my mouth. So I've taken the easy way out and just not written much about it recently.
But it's still something I think about all the time. Daily. An online acquaintance of mine calls it being a Spiritual Atheist. I hesitate to use the term myself, because the word "Atheist"--although it certainly applies to some of my opinions-- conjures up a response in other people that has nothing to do with what I mean. "Agnostic" still comes the closest I think-- not in the popular sense of the word, which seems to be "don't care enough to have an opinion," but in the literal sense of the word ("a- gnostic," can't know or don't know): I believe in certain experiences that I've had that could be described as spiritual, but I don't know how to define exactly what they "mean."
Sheesh. I really didn't mean to get off on this. I guess that's what happens when you don't post about something for months and months-- you have a lot of catching up to do. So if I'm an agnostic, or a Spiritual Atheist, or an oxyMoron ;-), why do I still go to church? Well, honestly, the short answer is: because if I don't go for three or four Sundays, I miss it. We're not the most regular attenders. We're certainly not there every week. But if it gets to be more than three weeks, I start to yearn for it. There's something about sitting in the sanctuary, a space dedicated to the acknowledgment of something vastly outside our piddly little selves, that is meaningful to me. It would work for me to just go in to the sanctuary when it was empty and sit for awhile by myself, but I find it more effective and more meaningful when I'm there with the music and the readings, sharing the experience with others. They may not be of the same opinions as me, but we're united at some level in spirit. It's centering and restorative for me. (That's the "short" answer-- the long answer is in the second half of this post).
I haven't even come close to talking about the issue I originally sat down to type about. But it's late and my brain is about to shut off, and as I've been typing, I've thought of several more directions this could go. So maybe this will be another two- or three- parter. More later. Probably not till Wednesday at least, though.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
the jig is up, the news is out, they finally found me
The insanity of what I'm doing-- driving 500+ miles per week, at almost 50 years old, to take classes with a bunch of kids many of whom are less than half my age, so that I *might* be able to get a job that I'm not even sure I will like-- is always apparent to me. But more so at some moments than others, and never more so than today, when I raced around (as usual) getting ready to go this morning, popped a couple of advil and a magnesium to ward off a headache and a couple of zinc to head off yet another cold, dropped my son off at school and drove two+ hours to UTown, walked the mile from the free parking lot to the building where my class is, sat down at an empty table to finish reading the last three pages of our reading assignment that I just could not hold my eyes open for at 12:30 last night, and then walked up the stairs for class only to find out it was cancelled.
And oddly, I'm back into the student mindset enough that I couldn't help but feel a leap of happiness-- even more strongly than the frustration. Woot! No class! So here I am, in the student center, writing a blog post, because I cannot get right back in the car and drive home. On Thursdays I only have one class, and that was it. Even on the days when I actually have the class, I can't make myself drive straight home. I usually hang out in the student center or the bookstore for an hour or so, then go to the bagel place (no good bagels in our town), then head home around 2:00 or so.
So let's see if I can think of something interesting to say. Hmmmmm... the long-stewing half-written post with further thoughts on feminism? a summing up of why some people think Ulysses is the greatest novel of the twentieth century? (which I never felt I could write before because I hadn't actually read it)(but NOW I HAVE!! yay!). an update on the plans to visit our daughter in Prague in June? (we bought the tickets!! woo-hoo! but there's a long complicated story involved, including an explanation of the Schengen area, which might just bore you to tears). An update on the audiobooks I've been listening to? (to which I've listened?) a rant about how as soon as the temperature rises above 40 degrees around here, they start working on the roads? (with no warning, suddenly there was a five minute construction stop about halfway here).
Oh, I know-- I never told you about DH's 50th birthday party. It was a couple of weeks ago. His best friend--whom we met in 1984, and who went through many years of professional training with dh, then spent a few years living in the Southwest, and now lives across the street from us with his wife and three kids--was born exactly one day before DH. So his wife (the subject of this post) and I usually plan something together for their birthdays, and since this year was the big five-oh, we had been pondering the occasion for quite awhile. At one point we were going to take a trip. then we were going to rent a condo up on the ski slopes and have an après-ski party. But shortage of funds nixed both those plans, so we ended up deciding to just have a party. We invited about 80 people and I'm pretty sure there were at least 65 people there.
It was a lot of fun, even for me, the anti-social one. DH had a ball. The party wasn't a surprise, but I bought a plane ticket home for dear daughter, and that was a surprise, which was fun. We had it at their house, which made my life much simpler. If you aren't a party person yourself, DH's BFF's wife is the perfect person to give a party with, because she is amazingly awesome and did about 75% of the work. My contributions were a) the invitations, which were way cool if I do say so myself; b) to clean up our house and provide kid-friendly food so all the kids could hang out at our place while the adults were across the street; and c) to come up with an iPod playlist for the party music. b) ended up being something of a bust because the kids didn't want to be across the street, they wanted to be at the party. So we ended up with a clean house and a bunch of kid food out of that one. And c) the iPod playlist was useless because it was so noisy I never even plugged my iPod in. So a) the invitations were pretty much my only contribution.
But putting the playlist together was like a trip right back to high school. DH and I had pretty different taste in music back then (we didn't know each other yet, we met our jr year in college)-- he liked Kansas, REO Speedwagon, Styx and Journey; I liked... oh, dear, am I going to admit to this in public? all the pop stuff-- Elton John, Chicago, Earth Wind & Fire, Ohio Players (Rollercoaster! of Love!), and.... Barry Manilow. I can still sing all the way through on "Weekend in New England" (although now I crack up when I get to "with YOU there's a HEAVEN, so earth AIN'T SO BAAAAD!!") When I was in college I retroactively changed my taste in 70s music to Led Zeppelin, the Stones, and Clapton, but at the time I even liked Olivia Newton-John. It shames me to remember, and I can't believe I just told you.
So anyway. I listen to the Stones and LedZep and Clapton all the time, but I hadn't listened to all that other stuff in a very long time. So my new 70s playlist has been on near constant rotation while I'm driving. Lorelei let's live together, and can't smile without you, and if you leave me now and so HERE I AM with OPEN ARMS hoping you'll see what your love means to me.... Ah, the good old days. Just kind of makes you want to grab somebody and sway gently under a disco light while plastered to each other's sweaty bodies , doesn't it? (Those weren't on the party playlist, of course, because they aren't exactly party music, not like *ahem* YMCA and Sisters Sledge.)
And oddly, I'm back into the student mindset enough that I couldn't help but feel a leap of happiness-- even more strongly than the frustration. Woot! No class! So here I am, in the student center, writing a blog post, because I cannot get right back in the car and drive home. On Thursdays I only have one class, and that was it. Even on the days when I actually have the class, I can't make myself drive straight home. I usually hang out in the student center or the bookstore for an hour or so, then go to the bagel place (no good bagels in our town), then head home around 2:00 or so.
So let's see if I can think of something interesting to say. Hmmmmm... the long-stewing half-written post with further thoughts on feminism? a summing up of why some people think Ulysses is the greatest novel of the twentieth century? (which I never felt I could write before because I hadn't actually read it)(but NOW I HAVE!! yay!). an update on the plans to visit our daughter in Prague in June? (we bought the tickets!! woo-hoo! but there's a long complicated story involved, including an explanation of the Schengen area, which might just bore you to tears). An update on the audiobooks I've been listening to? (to which I've listened?) a rant about how as soon as the temperature rises above 40 degrees around here, they start working on the roads? (with no warning, suddenly there was a five minute construction stop about halfway here).
Oh, I know-- I never told you about DH's 50th birthday party. It was a couple of weeks ago. His best friend--whom we met in 1984, and who went through many years of professional training with dh, then spent a few years living in the Southwest, and now lives across the street from us with his wife and three kids--was born exactly one day before DH. So his wife (the subject of this post) and I usually plan something together for their birthdays, and since this year was the big five-oh, we had been pondering the occasion for quite awhile. At one point we were going to take a trip. then we were going to rent a condo up on the ski slopes and have an après-ski party. But shortage of funds nixed both those plans, so we ended up deciding to just have a party. We invited about 80 people and I'm pretty sure there were at least 65 people there.
It was a lot of fun, even for me, the anti-social one. DH had a ball. The party wasn't a surprise, but I bought a plane ticket home for dear daughter, and that was a surprise, which was fun. We had it at their house, which made my life much simpler. If you aren't a party person yourself, DH's BFF's wife is the perfect person to give a party with, because she is amazingly awesome and did about 75% of the work. My contributions were a) the invitations, which were way cool if I do say so myself; b) to clean up our house and provide kid-friendly food so all the kids could hang out at our place while the adults were across the street; and c) to come up with an iPod playlist for the party music. b) ended up being something of a bust because the kids didn't want to be across the street, they wanted to be at the party. So we ended up with a clean house and a bunch of kid food out of that one. And c) the iPod playlist was useless because it was so noisy I never even plugged my iPod in. So a) the invitations were pretty much my only contribution.
But putting the playlist together was like a trip right back to high school. DH and I had pretty different taste in music back then (we didn't know each other yet, we met our jr year in college)-- he liked Kansas, REO Speedwagon, Styx and Journey; I liked... oh, dear, am I going to admit to this in public? all the pop stuff-- Elton John, Chicago, Earth Wind & Fire, Ohio Players (Rollercoaster! of Love!), and.... Barry Manilow. I can still sing all the way through on "Weekend in New England" (although now I crack up when I get to "with YOU there's a HEAVEN, so earth AIN'T SO BAAAAD!!") When I was in college I retroactively changed my taste in 70s music to Led Zeppelin, the Stones, and Clapton, but at the time I even liked Olivia Newton-John. It shames me to remember, and I can't believe I just told you.
So anyway. I listen to the Stones and LedZep and Clapton all the time, but I hadn't listened to all that other stuff in a very long time. So my new 70s playlist has been on near constant rotation while I'm driving. Lorelei let's live together, and can't smile without you, and if you leave me now and so HERE I AM with OPEN ARMS hoping you'll see what your love means to me.... Ah, the good old days. Just kind of makes you want to grab somebody and sway gently under a disco light while plastered to each other's sweaty bodies , doesn't it? (Those weren't on the party playlist, of course, because they aren't exactly party music, not like *ahem* YMCA and Sisters Sledge.)
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.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
case in point
Rant ahead. you've been warned.
See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. I'm involved in a project right now in which I am the new person on the team. For some silly reason, I assumed that we're all equals (we're all volunteers, no one is getting paid), so when it came time to decide what direction we're going, I stated my opinion. I made it clear I was willing to do whatever the team decided, but I said what I thought we should do. They decided to go with another guy's idea, which is fine. I've been in this situation at work before, and I know from experience that I will be fine with this, and I will work just as hard for his idea as I would have for mine.
But it turns out that I managed to offend this guy, the one who's idea we're using. I guess I didn't pussyfoot enough. I didn't add in enough groveling qualifiers when I stated my opinion. I thought we were adults here, I thought I could state my opinion, which was clearly labeled as my opinion, without having to add a bunch of bogus crap like "This is probably a dumb idea, but I think we should..." or "You all know way more about this than I do, but maybe we should consider..."
That kind of stuff just doesn't occur to me. We're having a team discussion, why can't I just say what I think? But somehow, entirely without meaning to do it, I come across as domineering. I really don't get this, because that is not AT ALL what my intent was. I thought I was saying what I thought.
One of my favorite moments in all of the genre fiction I've ever read is in Mr. Impossible. The heroine is a total brainiac, but it's Victorian England, so she has to pretend to be dumb and get her brother to present all her ideas so that people won't think she's smart. The hero finally figures this out, and also figures out that all these years, she's had to squash herself in order to be socially acceptable. So there's this moment where he tells her something to the effect of, "You're not too strong for me. I'm not intimidated by you." It completely melted me. That's how I feel-- not that I'm such a genius (she spoke something like six languages and was a scholar in Ancient Egyptian what-have-you)(I'm proving my intelligence here by using technical terms like "what-have-you")-- but I feel like I have to sit on myself all the time just so that I can be acceptable.
Ha. You wondered where the dilemma I've been discussing recently came from. Actually, I was, too. :-) I guess now we know. There's got to be a happy medium here somewhere, but it appears that I haven't found it yet.
See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. I'm involved in a project right now in which I am the new person on the team. For some silly reason, I assumed that we're all equals (we're all volunteers, no one is getting paid), so when it came time to decide what direction we're going, I stated my opinion. I made it clear I was willing to do whatever the team decided, but I said what I thought we should do. They decided to go with another guy's idea, which is fine. I've been in this situation at work before, and I know from experience that I will be fine with this, and I will work just as hard for his idea as I would have for mine.
But it turns out that I managed to offend this guy, the one who's idea we're using. I guess I didn't pussyfoot enough. I didn't add in enough groveling qualifiers when I stated my opinion. I thought we were adults here, I thought I could state my opinion, which was clearly labeled as my opinion, without having to add a bunch of bogus crap like "This is probably a dumb idea, but I think we should..." or "You all know way more about this than I do, but maybe we should consider..."
That kind of stuff just doesn't occur to me. We're having a team discussion, why can't I just say what I think? But somehow, entirely without meaning to do it, I come across as domineering. I really don't get this, because that is not AT ALL what my intent was. I thought I was saying what I thought.
One of my favorite moments in all of the genre fiction I've ever read is in Mr. Impossible. The heroine is a total brainiac, but it's Victorian England, so she has to pretend to be dumb and get her brother to present all her ideas so that people won't think she's smart. The hero finally figures this out, and also figures out that all these years, she's had to squash herself in order to be socially acceptable. So there's this moment where he tells her something to the effect of, "You're not too strong for me. I'm not intimidated by you." It completely melted me. That's how I feel-- not that I'm such a genius (she spoke something like six languages and was a scholar in Ancient Egyptian what-have-you)(I'm proving my intelligence here by using technical terms like "what-have-you")-- but I feel like I have to sit on myself all the time just so that I can be acceptable.
Ha. You wondered where the dilemma I've been discussing recently came from. Actually, I was, too. :-) I guess now we know. There's got to be a happy medium here somewhere, but it appears that I haven't found it yet.
Friday, February 25, 2011
blog thoughts
You may have noticed that I haven't been posting regularly lately. I think I finally figured it out tonight. I have certain blogs of friends (many of whom I've never met) that I read regularly, and those blogs have enriched my life immeasurably. But after I joined twitter a few months ago, I started reading the blogs of many writers and agents and editors. They're thought-provoking, and I learned plenty. But they are full of advice about what your blog "should" be like--have a regular posting schedule, keep your paragraphs short, etc. And they are aimed at people who are trying to market themselves and their work.
Which is not what this blog is about. This blog is about me needing to type things out so that I can figure them out. It's how I deal with things. I put it out here in the hopes that someone else will want to read it (and I am eternally grateful to those of you that do), but even if no one reads it, it is still worth doing for me. For the three of you who have been here since the start way back when, you know I've been intermittently ambivalent about having a blog from the getgo, but this most recent bout of not posting was different-- it was more about feeling anxious that my blog didn't match up to some other arbitrary set of expectations of what a blog "should" be.
So... all that to say, I think I will stop reading the blog advice blogs and go back to just doing my own thing. Which means, for one thing, I have long paragraphs that are hard to read on a computer monitor, and for that I apologize, but it just seems to be the way things come out of my brain. I will try to remember to break them up a little. (This one is short, yes?) And I am going to stop looking at the stats page, which has occasionally caused me heartburn trying to figure out what people want. (OK, paragraph not so short anymore.)
And since I'm sitting here meandering anyway, I will tell you about Sense and Sensibility, which is the novel we just finished in my Austen seminar. Tony Tanner, who is one of my favorite critics-- I used his stuff in my Shakespeare class last semester, too-- wrote a really terrific introduction to an earlier edition of S&S that is re-printed in the back of the current Penguin edition. He talks about how S&S, like all Austen's novels, is about how the individual rubs up against society's expectations. Unlike some of the more idealistic criticism written about Austen, he is a realist, or maybe it's pragmatism. Rather than lambasting society of the time for its stifling pressures, he recognizes that functional adulthood requires being able to meet your own needs while you navigate what society expects of you. You can't just do whatever you want to do all the time. It would lead to anarchy, chaos. You have to find the balance point between what you want to do and what is socially acceptable, and that is-- for Austen and maybe for all of us--what it means to grow up. (is this sounding familiar? I guess I've been thinking about this for several weeks without realizing it.)
Depending on your personality, that balance point can be all over the place, but it's there somewhere. So of course I've been thinking about the way this works for me, too. I don't have a very socially acceptable personality if I just act on impulse. In Meyers-Briggs terms, I'm an INTP, and that "T" means that I tend to act from thinking rather than from feeling. I can be quite mean or heartless or dismissive without even realizing that I'm doing it-- I say something that makes logical sense, or is "true," and then don't understand why other people are put off by it. So when someone tells me to just be myself, it's advice I take with a grain of salt. It requires "constant vigilance" on my part to not be someone who is just unlikable. Because if I wait a minute, even just a split second, and let the first impulse pass, I can react out of compassion and kindness, rather than that hard-edged intellect. But then sometimes I need that first impulse, because it's my snarky self, my skeptic self. Balance. It always seems to come back to balance.
wow, this has really been all over the place. I wonder if it makes a lick of sense. I think I will wait to publish it until tomorrow morning so I can read it again. I was going to talk about my theory about why Tony Tanner has been relegated to the back of the book, but I think I will hold off on that till another time since it would be yet another entirely different direction, and we've already covered plenty of ground here.
in other news: I'm putting the posts from Introverts Week back up-- those were some of the ones that got axed from too much time spent looking at the stats page.
Which is not what this blog is about. This blog is about me needing to type things out so that I can figure them out. It's how I deal with things. I put it out here in the hopes that someone else will want to read it (and I am eternally grateful to those of you that do), but even if no one reads it, it is still worth doing for me. For the three of you who have been here since the start way back when, you know I've been intermittently ambivalent about having a blog from the getgo, but this most recent bout of not posting was different-- it was more about feeling anxious that my blog didn't match up to some other arbitrary set of expectations of what a blog "should" be.
So... all that to say, I think I will stop reading the blog advice blogs and go back to just doing my own thing. Which means, for one thing, I have long paragraphs that are hard to read on a computer monitor, and for that I apologize, but it just seems to be the way things come out of my brain. I will try to remember to break them up a little. (This one is short, yes?) And I am going to stop looking at the stats page, which has occasionally caused me heartburn trying to figure out what people want. (OK, paragraph not so short anymore.)
And since I'm sitting here meandering anyway, I will tell you about Sense and Sensibility, which is the novel we just finished in my Austen seminar. Tony Tanner, who is one of my favorite critics-- I used his stuff in my Shakespeare class last semester, too-- wrote a really terrific introduction to an earlier edition of S&S that is re-printed in the back of the current Penguin edition. He talks about how S&S, like all Austen's novels, is about how the individual rubs up against society's expectations. Unlike some of the more idealistic criticism written about Austen, he is a realist, or maybe it's pragmatism. Rather than lambasting society of the time for its stifling pressures, he recognizes that functional adulthood requires being able to meet your own needs while you navigate what society expects of you. You can't just do whatever you want to do all the time. It would lead to anarchy, chaos. You have to find the balance point between what you want to do and what is socially acceptable, and that is-- for Austen and maybe for all of us--what it means to grow up. (is this sounding familiar? I guess I've been thinking about this for several weeks without realizing it.)
Depending on your personality, that balance point can be all over the place, but it's there somewhere. So of course I've been thinking about the way this works for me, too. I don't have a very socially acceptable personality if I just act on impulse. In Meyers-Briggs terms, I'm an INTP, and that "T" means that I tend to act from thinking rather than from feeling. I can be quite mean or heartless or dismissive without even realizing that I'm doing it-- I say something that makes logical sense, or is "true," and then don't understand why other people are put off by it. So when someone tells me to just be myself, it's advice I take with a grain of salt. It requires "constant vigilance" on my part to not be someone who is just unlikable. Because if I wait a minute, even just a split second, and let the first impulse pass, I can react out of compassion and kindness, rather than that hard-edged intellect. But then sometimes I need that first impulse, because it's my snarky self, my skeptic self. Balance. It always seems to come back to balance.
wow, this has really been all over the place. I wonder if it makes a lick of sense. I think I will wait to publish it until tomorrow morning so I can read it again. I was going to talk about my theory about why Tony Tanner has been relegated to the back of the book, but I think I will hold off on that till another time since it would be yet another entirely different direction, and we've already covered plenty of ground here.
in other news: I'm putting the posts from Introverts Week back up-- those were some of the ones that got axed from too much time spent looking at the stats page.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
I'm thinking about getting one of those timers for our modem, the kind that turn your lights off and on when you're on vacation. Because I sit down to type a post, but then I get distracted reading e-mail, other people's blogs, checking twitter and facebook, and by the time I'm done with that a) an hour (or more) has gone by, and b) I've forgotten what I was going to say. And it was important today, dammit. If I could just remember what it was........ oh, well, if it was really important it will come back. But if I had one of those timers, the internet could be turned off in the morning (when I'm home alone and can think about things) without my actually having to exert any self-control. Then it could magically turn back on in the afternoon when MadMax gets home and desperately must play Runescape at exactly this second.
that's all. oh, well, here is one more thing. I think I am going to stop asking the questions at the end of the post. I only started doing it about a month ago, because I was trying to get y'all to say something (*cough*). But it isn't working (except for a few of you, thank you, Julie and the others). I don't know why you're such a quiet bunch, but it's OK. I can tell by the stats page that you're out there, and I guess that's all that matters.
that's all. oh, well, here is one more thing. I think I am going to stop asking the questions at the end of the post. I only started doing it about a month ago, because I was trying to get y'all to say something (*cough*). But it isn't working (except for a few of you, thank you, Julie and the others). I don't know why you're such a quiet bunch, but it's OK. I can tell by the stats page that you're out there, and I guess that's all that matters.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Opinions, Opinions
(this was written last week but I didn't publish it until today-- I am, thank God, finally over the cold that is mentioned.)
Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts. E. B. White said that, but although I couldn't find the date he said it, it must have been before 1985 when he died. I think 25 years ago that maybe it was easier to believe that you could get the facts, that you could base your opinions on something solid, real. That it was possible to be Right about something, and that your opponents were Wrong. I find it a lot harder to think that way today. I don't think I have any opinions that I'm 100% sure are Correct.
There was a great brouhaha in a certain section of the blogosphere this past week because an author--and since I'd never heard of her before this week, I'm not going to link to her blog or name her--wrote a blog post in which she objected to a negative review of her book by another blogger, a review which she (the author) had apparently requested by sending them a review copy. It was written as a warning to other authors to be careful where you send review copies of your book, because you may not like the results. If she had left it at that, it would have been fine-- in fact, it is undoubtedly good advice. but she named names and went on and on until she sounded, honestly, like a whiner. So your book gets a bad review. Suck it up, honey.
At one point during the day I read it, which I believe was the day after she posted it, she had dozens and dozens of angry bloggers taking her to task for suggesting that they should not be able state their opinions about her book.
I didn't follow all the links, and I didn't read the original review that caused the whole thing, so I can't comment on it much. but since I so recently posted about blogging book reviews, it has made me think quite a bit about opinions. About how heated up we get over our own opinions and the opinions of others. I drove by a house today with a six-foot hand-painted sign out in front that said "Impeach Obama." I knew someone who seriously considered moving to Canada when Bush Jr. was elected. I know people who believe their children will be permanently warped if one of their teachers is gay. I know people who think that you are frivolous and uneducated if you use plastic grocery bags.
Sometimes it just makes me want to toss the whole thing and have no opinions at all. (which is an opinion. I know, I know.) Maybe because I was raised to have such strong opinions about so many things, and I did. I believed. But by the time I was 30, I didn't. And now that I'm nearly 50, I believe differently than I did at 30. I understand something about the mutability of beliefs and opinions. It's hard for me to take my opinions very seriously.
I do have them. I've got this nasty cold, and I indulged myself by letting myself sit on the couch all afternoon and read a novel. It was a really intriguing novel, and it was going so well, until it had a truly terrible ending. It ruined my day. I spent half an hour after I finished it composing a blog review in my head in which I described in detail all the reasons why it was such a terrible ending. It was satisfying. It felt almost like revenge, because I felt betrayed by that author. To write a book that was so good, so emotionally true that she had me in tears at page 300, but then by page 385 to have botched it so badly that I just wanted to throw it away. I wished I hadn't read it.
But even as I wrote that post in my head, I knew I wouldn't publish it. It's just my opinion. Is it worth it? If that author has a Google flag turned on that sends her a link when a blogger mentions her name or one of her books, do I really want her to read all the reasons I hated that ending? Part of me thinks, Well, yeah, I kind of do. But part of me thinks of that other poor author this week, who unwittingly stepped into a minefield. People she'd never heard of before wrote long, scathing comments. Her friends came to defend her. I'm sure she was horrified.
I had something slightly similar happen to me. I wrote a negative book review last summer in a different blog, back when I had two blogs. I started the second blog as a lark, a place where I could anonymously write snarky reviews of books that had disappointed me. It had never occurred to me that people would actually read it. I seem to only have a couple dozen readers of this blog, and that one got even less traffic. But somehow that one review, the one in which I was particularly negative, must have gotten picked up somehow by someone. I don't know who, because no one ever commented on it. but months after I quit posting to that blog, that one post was still getting half a dozen hits per week (sometimes more). I finally just deleted the entire blog, because it bothered me that I didn't know what was going on. (me? control freak? noooo.) Maybe someone was using it as an example of how not to review a book. Or to make someone else feel bad. Or whatever. I don't know because no one ever said anything to me.
I wrote this post last week, but never published it because of the complete irony of writing an opinionated post about the dangers of opinions. But that says it right there-- you can't not have them. Just promise not to take me too seriously.
Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts. E. B. White said that, but although I couldn't find the date he said it, it must have been before 1985 when he died. I think 25 years ago that maybe it was easier to believe that you could get the facts, that you could base your opinions on something solid, real. That it was possible to be Right about something, and that your opponents were Wrong. I find it a lot harder to think that way today. I don't think I have any opinions that I'm 100% sure are Correct.
There was a great brouhaha in a certain section of the blogosphere this past week because an author--and since I'd never heard of her before this week, I'm not going to link to her blog or name her--wrote a blog post in which she objected to a negative review of her book by another blogger, a review which she (the author) had apparently requested by sending them a review copy. It was written as a warning to other authors to be careful where you send review copies of your book, because you may not like the results. If she had left it at that, it would have been fine-- in fact, it is undoubtedly good advice. but she named names and went on and on until she sounded, honestly, like a whiner. So your book gets a bad review. Suck it up, honey.
At one point during the day I read it, which I believe was the day after she posted it, she had dozens and dozens of angry bloggers taking her to task for suggesting that they should not be able state their opinions about her book.
I didn't follow all the links, and I didn't read the original review that caused the whole thing, so I can't comment on it much. but since I so recently posted about blogging book reviews, it has made me think quite a bit about opinions. About how heated up we get over our own opinions and the opinions of others. I drove by a house today with a six-foot hand-painted sign out in front that said "Impeach Obama." I knew someone who seriously considered moving to Canada when Bush Jr. was elected. I know people who believe their children will be permanently warped if one of their teachers is gay. I know people who think that you are frivolous and uneducated if you use plastic grocery bags.
Sometimes it just makes me want to toss the whole thing and have no opinions at all. (which is an opinion. I know, I know.) Maybe because I was raised to have such strong opinions about so many things, and I did. I believed. But by the time I was 30, I didn't. And now that I'm nearly 50, I believe differently than I did at 30. I understand something about the mutability of beliefs and opinions. It's hard for me to take my opinions very seriously.
I do have them. I've got this nasty cold, and I indulged myself by letting myself sit on the couch all afternoon and read a novel. It was a really intriguing novel, and it was going so well, until it had a truly terrible ending. It ruined my day. I spent half an hour after I finished it composing a blog review in my head in which I described in detail all the reasons why it was such a terrible ending. It was satisfying. It felt almost like revenge, because I felt betrayed by that author. To write a book that was so good, so emotionally true that she had me in tears at page 300, but then by page 385 to have botched it so badly that I just wanted to throw it away. I wished I hadn't read it.
But even as I wrote that post in my head, I knew I wouldn't publish it. It's just my opinion. Is it worth it? If that author has a Google flag turned on that sends her a link when a blogger mentions her name or one of her books, do I really want her to read all the reasons I hated that ending? Part of me thinks, Well, yeah, I kind of do. But part of me thinks of that other poor author this week, who unwittingly stepped into a minefield. People she'd never heard of before wrote long, scathing comments. Her friends came to defend her. I'm sure she was horrified.
I had something slightly similar happen to me. I wrote a negative book review last summer in a different blog, back when I had two blogs. I started the second blog as a lark, a place where I could anonymously write snarky reviews of books that had disappointed me. It had never occurred to me that people would actually read it. I seem to only have a couple dozen readers of this blog, and that one got even less traffic. But somehow that one review, the one in which I was particularly negative, must have gotten picked up somehow by someone. I don't know who, because no one ever commented on it. but months after I quit posting to that blog, that one post was still getting half a dozen hits per week (sometimes more). I finally just deleted the entire blog, because it bothered me that I didn't know what was going on. (me? control freak? noooo.) Maybe someone was using it as an example of how not to review a book. Or to make someone else feel bad. Or whatever. I don't know because no one ever said anything to me.
I wrote this post last week, but never published it because of the complete irony of writing an opinionated post about the dangers of opinions. But that says it right there-- you can't not have them. Just promise not to take me too seriously.
Monday, February 14, 2011
short takes
Dh read in a magazine this week that there is a woman who has been sitting in front of the White House every day for the past thirty years to protest nuclear proliferation. We were both stunned. Thirty years! She is missing her life. Life is meant to be lived. Is there any idea, any opinion that is worth giving that up?
Kindess, a topic that keeps cropping up on several of the blogs I follow. It is important to be kind-- a friend of mine told me once that is the sum total of her moral code. It's not a bad one. I've been learning recently, though, that there is a difference between being kind and being a doormat. Being kind is an intentional act, a decision to respond in a certain way because of who you are, or who you want to be. Being a doormat is letting other people do what they want because it's easier than arguing. Someone creases the fender of your car and you decide to let it go and not make them pay. You're being a doormat if you're doing it because you just don't have the energy to argue with them. You're being kind if you do it out of generosity, out of compassion. What do you think? does that make sense? that is a relatively new thought for me, so I haven't figured it all the way out yet.
I'm getting better. I'm still sick, but the cough is much improved, and as long as I keep taking advil, I seem to do OK. But I'm not doing well enough to sit here for 45 minutes today, so I think that is all.
Kindess, a topic that keeps cropping up on several of the blogs I follow. It is important to be kind-- a friend of mine told me once that is the sum total of her moral code. It's not a bad one. I've been learning recently, though, that there is a difference between being kind and being a doormat. Being kind is an intentional act, a decision to respond in a certain way because of who you are, or who you want to be. Being a doormat is letting other people do what they want because it's easier than arguing. Someone creases the fender of your car and you decide to let it go and not make them pay. You're being a doormat if you're doing it because you just don't have the energy to argue with them. You're being kind if you do it out of generosity, out of compassion. What do you think? does that make sense? that is a relatively new thought for me, so I haven't figured it all the way out yet.
I'm getting better. I'm still sick, but the cough is much improved, and as long as I keep taking advil, I seem to do OK. But I'm not doing well enough to sit here for 45 minutes today, so I think that is all.
Friday, February 11, 2011
cough cough, some *cough* updates, cough, and the big reveal
Sickness reigns at our house. Dh has had a truly nasty Cough for well over a week. Bad enough that I've slept in the guest room several nights, which always makes me feel a bit like I'm deserting him, but one of us should be getting some sleep. Then yesterday, I could feel it coming on, and by this afternoon, The Cough had taken up residence. I've always been of the belief that the more you cough, the more you cough-- you irritate your throat, and it gets worse and worse. So I try really hard not to cough. To the point where tears are starting to stream down my cheeks.
But this one is well beyond that-- it doesn't even begin to be controllable. The only thing that helps is continuous sucking on a cough drop. I've been through more than a dozen of them since it started this afternoon. I went to Target after dinner and bought four different kinds so I can do my own personal test. If there's a clear winner, I'll let you know. Also stocked up on NyQuil. The only good thing about being sick is you get to take NyQuil, which makes you sleep like the dead. That's my plan as soon as I'm done typing here: take a NyQuil and go to bed.
But the good news: no headache since Whinesday. Yay! So no more whining in this post.
School update:
I'm still reading Ulysses. I got behind on the chapter summaries (I'm up to chapter 11 now, but I think the last chapter summary I posted was 4), and it feels a little overwhelming to catch up. But it continues to be interesting, in a maddeningly difficult, brilliant, occasionally mind-blowing kind of way. I'm meeting with my professor next week and will perhaps have more to say after that.
The Jane Austen class is better than expected. I really didn't want to take it, because I adore Jane Austen, and if there's anything that will turn you off of a favorite author, it's reading everything she's written right in a row and studying it intensely. But so far, it has been surprisingly interesting. I'm not surprised at all that I love her work, but because the professor, who has a somewhat dry delivery, shall we say, has come up with some really interesting perspectives. Plus, there are only four of us in the class, and now that we're three weeks in and relaxing a little, the discussions are quite good.
Feminist Theory is also interesting. I'm trying not to post about it continually, because if you were reading along last year, you know I'm completely capable of that. Dead horse doesn't even begin to cover it. But there are some interesting things to say, and at least one blog post is half written. Maybe next week.
You know how neurotic I am about privacy. But it's getting better. I'm on Twitter with my real name, because I figure what the heck, everyone else is. And it has been fine, which has loosened me up a little. I've even been a little embarrassed recently to post comments on blogs where I'm logged into my gmail account, because it shows up as Aunt BeaN, and out of context, that looks beyond odd. So I figured out tonight how to change it so even when I'm logged in to my gmail account, it shows up with my name. I've been using it on non-blogger blogs for awhile now, so I think you all know this, but for those of you who don't know, it's Barb. So if you see BarbN as a commenter on your blog, it's just me, finally figuring out how to change my username. :-)
Have a great weekend.
But this one is well beyond that-- it doesn't even begin to be controllable. The only thing that helps is continuous sucking on a cough drop. I've been through more than a dozen of them since it started this afternoon. I went to Target after dinner and bought four different kinds so I can do my own personal test. If there's a clear winner, I'll let you know. Also stocked up on NyQuil. The only good thing about being sick is you get to take NyQuil, which makes you sleep like the dead. That's my plan as soon as I'm done typing here: take a NyQuil and go to bed.
But the good news: no headache since Whinesday. Yay! So no more whining in this post.
School update:
I'm still reading Ulysses. I got behind on the chapter summaries (I'm up to chapter 11 now, but I think the last chapter summary I posted was 4), and it feels a little overwhelming to catch up. But it continues to be interesting, in a maddeningly difficult, brilliant, occasionally mind-blowing kind of way. I'm meeting with my professor next week and will perhaps have more to say after that.
The Jane Austen class is better than expected. I really didn't want to take it, because I adore Jane Austen, and if there's anything that will turn you off of a favorite author, it's reading everything she's written right in a row and studying it intensely. But so far, it has been surprisingly interesting. I'm not surprised at all that I love her work, but because the professor, who has a somewhat dry delivery, shall we say, has come up with some really interesting perspectives. Plus, there are only four of us in the class, and now that we're three weeks in and relaxing a little, the discussions are quite good.
Feminist Theory is also interesting. I'm trying not to post about it continually, because if you were reading along last year, you know I'm completely capable of that. Dead horse doesn't even begin to cover it. But there are some interesting things to say, and at least one blog post is half written. Maybe next week.
You know how neurotic I am about privacy. But it's getting better. I'm on Twitter with my real name, because I figure what the heck, everyone else is. And it has been fine, which has loosened me up a little. I've even been a little embarrassed recently to post comments on blogs where I'm logged into my gmail account, because it shows up as Aunt BeaN, and out of context, that looks beyond odd. So I figured out tonight how to change it so even when I'm logged in to my gmail account, it shows up with my name. I've been using it on non-blogger blogs for awhile now, so I think you all know this, but for those of you who don't know, it's Barb. So if you see BarbN as a commenter on your blog, it's just me, finally figuring out how to change my username. :-)
Have a great weekend.
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Whinesday
I'm whining today. If you're not in the mood, you're excused, because Lord knows I don't like to listen to people whine.
My head. My damn head. Maybe I should just stop right there and click publish.
I am so damn tired of the unending headache. I was doing pretty well last fall-- only two or three headaches a month until mid-December. But ever since, I've pretty much had a headache. at first, I was treating them as migraines and taking the migraine meds. And that works. But when it gets to be three weeks in a row with a daily headache, and then three or four days of feeling good, and then another three weeks.... well, first of all, it sucks. But secondly, I run out of drugs, and Maxalt is dang expensive. My insurance will cover 12 a month with a manageable co-pay, but after that, they're about $30 each.
I only take half of a percocet (2.5 mg) with the maxalt, so my supply of 30 which I got last November is still OK. but that's another problem. I do worry, you know. About taking percocet. On the positive side, it makes the Maxalt work faster and better, and I've been taking it long enough that there are practically no side effects-- about half an hour after I take it, I start feeling warm and fuzzy inside and think, Oh! the percocet's kicking in. But it doesn't make me sleepy or affect my judgment or make it so I can't drive.
but you know, it's an addictive drug. The state where I live is 3rd in the nation for prescription drug abuse, so the pharmacists are suspicious. and they should be. It's a huge problem around here. And the poor physicians who have to deal with it-- as one told me, a big part of the legitimate good they can do in the world is pain relief. But they can also be sitting ducks for unscrupulous people who put on a good act and then go sell it for $5 or $10 a pill at a bar somewhere.
When I talk to a doctor and tell them what I take, they practically laugh at me. 2.5 mg per headache (I rarely take more because too much makes me nauseated) is such small change compared to what people with true chronic pain take that it is amusing to them. but on the other hand, it is an addictive drug. When I'm feeling good, I have no desire to take it. It never crosses my mind. So I think I'm OK. But when it's been two weeks in a row of daily migraines, it's a little scary. Do I just want the drugs? Am I making up the headaches so I can get the warm fuzzy?
So then I think, maybe I should just tough it out. Which is where I am right now. Four days out of the last five, I've had a bad headache. Migraine? just a headache? probably just a bad headache, because I haven't thrown up. One day I took the drugs and they did their usual magic, but the other days, I've just chomped down advil and tylenol and magnesium and lived with it. Usually by late afternoon it starts backing off.
(My three guy readers should tune out now). I'm pretty sure it will get better when I get done with you-know-what. Last year I had two cycles (Feb and Oct), and so far none this year. I think I'm getting close. And when I've gone long enough without a cycle, I start to feel great. But it sure isn't happening right now. Right now I just want to slam my head against a brick wall because I think it would feel better than this. Maybe I should take the drugs.
My head. My damn head. Maybe I should just stop right there and click publish.
I am so damn tired of the unending headache. I was doing pretty well last fall-- only two or three headaches a month until mid-December. But ever since, I've pretty much had a headache. at first, I was treating them as migraines and taking the migraine meds. And that works. But when it gets to be three weeks in a row with a daily headache, and then three or four days of feeling good, and then another three weeks.... well, first of all, it sucks. But secondly, I run out of drugs, and Maxalt is dang expensive. My insurance will cover 12 a month with a manageable co-pay, but after that, they're about $30 each.
I only take half of a percocet (2.5 mg) with the maxalt, so my supply of 30 which I got last November is still OK. but that's another problem. I do worry, you know. About taking percocet. On the positive side, it makes the Maxalt work faster and better, and I've been taking it long enough that there are practically no side effects-- about half an hour after I take it, I start feeling warm and fuzzy inside and think, Oh! the percocet's kicking in. But it doesn't make me sleepy or affect my judgment or make it so I can't drive.
but you know, it's an addictive drug. The state where I live is 3rd in the nation for prescription drug abuse, so the pharmacists are suspicious. and they should be. It's a huge problem around here. And the poor physicians who have to deal with it-- as one told me, a big part of the legitimate good they can do in the world is pain relief. But they can also be sitting ducks for unscrupulous people who put on a good act and then go sell it for $5 or $10 a pill at a bar somewhere.
When I talk to a doctor and tell them what I take, they practically laugh at me. 2.5 mg per headache (I rarely take more because too much makes me nauseated) is such small change compared to what people with true chronic pain take that it is amusing to them. but on the other hand, it is an addictive drug. When I'm feeling good, I have no desire to take it. It never crosses my mind. So I think I'm OK. But when it's been two weeks in a row of daily migraines, it's a little scary. Do I just want the drugs? Am I making up the headaches so I can get the warm fuzzy?
So then I think, maybe I should just tough it out. Which is where I am right now. Four days out of the last five, I've had a bad headache. Migraine? just a headache? probably just a bad headache, because I haven't thrown up. One day I took the drugs and they did their usual magic, but the other days, I've just chomped down advil and tylenol and magnesium and lived with it. Usually by late afternoon it starts backing off.
(My three guy readers should tune out now). I'm pretty sure it will get better when I get done with you-know-what. Last year I had two cycles (Feb and Oct), and so far none this year. I think I'm getting close. And when I've gone long enough without a cycle, I start to feel great. But it sure isn't happening right now. Right now I just want to slam my head against a brick wall because I think it would feel better than this. Maybe I should take the drugs.
Sunday, February 06, 2011
disappearing act
(The third of three posts devoted to Introverts' Week, always a fan favorite)
I've noticed for the past couple of months that I always have my jaw clenched tightly. I catch myself doing it, and "make myself relax" (which seems like a bit of an oxymoron-- forced relaxation), but ten minutes later I'll find I'm doing it again. Now that I've been working on this for awhile, I'm realizing that it's not just my jaw. It's my neck and shoulders, maybe even my entire upper body. I seem to always be tense.
What am I so tense about? I was thinking about that this morning while I was stretching out, trying to just let go of all my tension, and see what was causing it. what's underneath all that? Some of it seems to be generalized control-freak middle-aged woman, trying to force life to be what I want it to be instead of what I've got. But another, perhaps bigger part of it, is a deep-seated fear that if I let go, I'll disappear. I'll fade out of view, and no one will even notice that I'm gone. It's mostly irrational, because if I disappeared, there are quite a few people who would notice, and at least a few of them would genuinely miss me-- dh and my kids, at least; my sisters, a number of my friends.
It goes back to a real cause, though. I was a quiet kid, and I lived in a high-stress household-- one narcissistic parent and one codependent parent. Neither one of them had the time or energy to distinguish between their three kids. We were just "the girls," and since I didn't have much personality (or at least not much of the kind that gets you noticed), I tended to just fade into the background. It was so much easier for everybody if I did, and since I'm pretty introverted by nature and I spent a lot of time reading anyway, it worked pretty well.
I say all that, by the way, as statement of how it was, but without much heat or rancor, which makes me very happy. Ten or fifteen years ago, if I made those statements, they would have been accompanied by a great deal of angst and outrage that my parents treated me so badly. but at this late date, it just is what it is. I lived through it. I certainly know many, many people who had worse childhoods than I did. My parents aren't bad people. I love my mom very much, and my dad and I have made a truce so that we can appreciate each other (although it works best from a distance). And time has passed. It was all so long ago, and my mom has been there for me time and time again as an adult, no matter what her limitations were when we were young.
So I don't mean that to sound like a big pity party. It's just something I find I need to deal with, even at this late date. My mom wanted three polished little socialites who would help her maintain her standing in the slippery social minefield of the small town where we lived, but instead she got an athlete (my older sister), a nerdy geek who was more interested in science fiction than clothes (me), and a friendly extrovert who could care less about social standing (my younger sister). My dad can't see anything beyond the end of his nose, so he never noticed us, period, as individuals--unless we made him look good, or unless he was blistering us with his icy wrath (intentional mixed metaphor there). It's no wonder this is a problem for me.
and it still happens. People forget about me fairly often. Sometimes I like it. In fact, a lot of the time I like it. I'm not good at complicated social interactions, and keeping my life simple and narrowed down to a a few friends and loved ones suits me just fine. But it rankles sometimes, and sometimes it's painful. I sat next to a woman at a baby shower for two hours one time and thought that we connected pretty well, but when I ran into her at the athletic club a few days later, she didn't remember me. I sat across the table from a woman at a small dinner party one New Year's Eve (there were six of us all together), and ran into her two weeks later and she didn't remember me at all. We sat across from each other for three hours.
Of course, things like that aren't just about me. I know more about those women now, and neither of them is particularly observant of the people around her, or particularly interested in friendships that don't further her social goals. So I don't consider either of them to be a loss. but still it is a strange thing how often I disappear even in situations where I'm trying to engage.
so what would happen if I just let go? If I just assumed that I matter, without having to worry about it? I'm working on finding that out.
I've noticed for the past couple of months that I always have my jaw clenched tightly. I catch myself doing it, and "make myself relax" (which seems like a bit of an oxymoron-- forced relaxation), but ten minutes later I'll find I'm doing it again. Now that I've been working on this for awhile, I'm realizing that it's not just my jaw. It's my neck and shoulders, maybe even my entire upper body. I seem to always be tense.
What am I so tense about? I was thinking about that this morning while I was stretching out, trying to just let go of all my tension, and see what was causing it. what's underneath all that? Some of it seems to be generalized control-freak middle-aged woman, trying to force life to be what I want it to be instead of what I've got. But another, perhaps bigger part of it, is a deep-seated fear that if I let go, I'll disappear. I'll fade out of view, and no one will even notice that I'm gone. It's mostly irrational, because if I disappeared, there are quite a few people who would notice, and at least a few of them would genuinely miss me-- dh and my kids, at least; my sisters, a number of my friends.
It goes back to a real cause, though. I was a quiet kid, and I lived in a high-stress household-- one narcissistic parent and one codependent parent. Neither one of them had the time or energy to distinguish between their three kids. We were just "the girls," and since I didn't have much personality (or at least not much of the kind that gets you noticed), I tended to just fade into the background. It was so much easier for everybody if I did, and since I'm pretty introverted by nature and I spent a lot of time reading anyway, it worked pretty well.
I say all that, by the way, as statement of how it was, but without much heat or rancor, which makes me very happy. Ten or fifteen years ago, if I made those statements, they would have been accompanied by a great deal of angst and outrage that my parents treated me so badly. but at this late date, it just is what it is. I lived through it. I certainly know many, many people who had worse childhoods than I did. My parents aren't bad people. I love my mom very much, and my dad and I have made a truce so that we can appreciate each other (although it works best from a distance). And time has passed. It was all so long ago, and my mom has been there for me time and time again as an adult, no matter what her limitations were when we were young.
So I don't mean that to sound like a big pity party. It's just something I find I need to deal with, even at this late date. My mom wanted three polished little socialites who would help her maintain her standing in the slippery social minefield of the small town where we lived, but instead she got an athlete (my older sister), a nerdy geek who was more interested in science fiction than clothes (me), and a friendly extrovert who could care less about social standing (my younger sister). My dad can't see anything beyond the end of his nose, so he never noticed us, period, as individuals--unless we made him look good, or unless he was blistering us with his icy wrath (intentional mixed metaphor there). It's no wonder this is a problem for me.
and it still happens. People forget about me fairly often. Sometimes I like it. In fact, a lot of the time I like it. I'm not good at complicated social interactions, and keeping my life simple and narrowed down to a a few friends and loved ones suits me just fine. But it rankles sometimes, and sometimes it's painful. I sat next to a woman at a baby shower for two hours one time and thought that we connected pretty well, but when I ran into her at the athletic club a few days later, she didn't remember me. I sat across the table from a woman at a small dinner party one New Year's Eve (there were six of us all together), and ran into her two weeks later and she didn't remember me at all. We sat across from each other for three hours.
Of course, things like that aren't just about me. I know more about those women now, and neither of them is particularly observant of the people around her, or particularly interested in friendships that don't further her social goals. So I don't consider either of them to be a loss. but still it is a strange thing how often I disappear even in situations where I'm trying to engage.
so what would happen if I just let go? If I just assumed that I matter, without having to worry about it? I'm working on finding that out.
Saturday, February 05, 2011
just shy of tomorrow
Years ago I read an article about shyness. This seems to be my theme for this week. Oh, the excitement-- it's Introverts' Week at AB3! In which we will all sit around, read our books, and have nothing to say!
Anyway. The article. It was about shyness in children, and it pointed out that there are two different kinds of shy kids. One is quiet and enjoys spending time alone, but is also peaceful and calm, and will look you in the eye when she talks to you. The other is anxious, nervous, and afraid. She may duck her head in embarrassment if you try to talk to her, or stare fixedly at the ground.
There's no question in my mind that I'm honestly an introvert. I took one of those Meyers-Briggs tests in my twenties, and I was over the 90th percentile for introversion. I took another one about a month ago, and was in the upper 80th percentile. But I'm afraid I have more in common with that second shy kid than with the first. I forgot about that article for years, but since I started working on this "erasing myself" thing, it has come to mind. A few years ago, I had this vision of myself, with my secret blog (because literally only about two people knew about the first blog) and my fear that I would get hurt if I revealed myself to anyone-- I was like a little mole, scurrying around in the background, occasionally coming above ground but mostly staying underground, trying so hard not to be noticed.
But you know, that's more than a little unfair: doing my level best to make it hard to know me, and then expecting people to push through that to find me. Bad strategy. So I've been working on changing the way I handle myself. Yes, I'm shy and I'm introverted, and I thrive on lots of time by myself, and I'd rather communicate with you through e-mail than in person. But too much alone time and I start to go flat, like a balloon losing its helium. I'm letting go of fear (or trying to), and pushing myself to connect more often with people I care about.
One of the changes I made was telling people about this blog. It used to make me so nervous, but finally last year I started just mentioning it casually now and then, and you know what? Nobody cares. Or, rather, almost nobody cares. For some reason I thought if I told people about it, they would rush right home, pull it up on the screen, and read every post forever after. But in all the times that I've mentioned it to someone, only one or two people have actually followed up and read it. The big scary one was telling my family about it, but that turned out to be a non-issue. One of my sisters checked it a few times, but other than that, I don't think they really care. Which is such a huge relief for me-- now they know about it, I'm not keeping it a secret, but none of them ever reads it, so I don't have to worry about it. Cool. My philosophy now is that the people who might be interested will find it without me worrying about it.
I think there was a point to this but I can't remember what it was. Introverts week may have one more post tomorrow.
P.S. (added the next day) It occurs to me that I may be giving the wrong impression for those who don't know me irl. I am shy and somewhat reserved, but I have friends, I go out and do things, I'm fairly active in our community and volunteer many places-- or at least, I did before I went back to school and ran out of time. My son has his friends over and I joke with them. I have a group of four or five women I meet with regularly for coffee. But at the same time, all the stuff in the last few posts is true. They're both sides of me. Just didn't want you to think that I sit at home in a closet being weirdly withdrawn.
Anyway. The article. It was about shyness in children, and it pointed out that there are two different kinds of shy kids. One is quiet and enjoys spending time alone, but is also peaceful and calm, and will look you in the eye when she talks to you. The other is anxious, nervous, and afraid. She may duck her head in embarrassment if you try to talk to her, or stare fixedly at the ground.
There's no question in my mind that I'm honestly an introvert. I took one of those Meyers-Briggs tests in my twenties, and I was over the 90th percentile for introversion. I took another one about a month ago, and was in the upper 80th percentile. But I'm afraid I have more in common with that second shy kid than with the first. I forgot about that article for years, but since I started working on this "erasing myself" thing, it has come to mind. A few years ago, I had this vision of myself, with my secret blog (because literally only about two people knew about the first blog) and my fear that I would get hurt if I revealed myself to anyone-- I was like a little mole, scurrying around in the background, occasionally coming above ground but mostly staying underground, trying so hard not to be noticed.
But you know, that's more than a little unfair: doing my level best to make it hard to know me, and then expecting people to push through that to find me. Bad strategy. So I've been working on changing the way I handle myself. Yes, I'm shy and I'm introverted, and I thrive on lots of time by myself, and I'd rather communicate with you through e-mail than in person. But too much alone time and I start to go flat, like a balloon losing its helium. I'm letting go of fear (or trying to), and pushing myself to connect more often with people I care about.
One of the changes I made was telling people about this blog. It used to make me so nervous, but finally last year I started just mentioning it casually now and then, and you know what? Nobody cares. Or, rather, almost nobody cares. For some reason I thought if I told people about it, they would rush right home, pull it up on the screen, and read every post forever after. But in all the times that I've mentioned it to someone, only one or two people have actually followed up and read it. The big scary one was telling my family about it, but that turned out to be a non-issue. One of my sisters checked it a few times, but other than that, I don't think they really care. Which is such a huge relief for me-- now they know about it, I'm not keeping it a secret, but none of them ever reads it, so I don't have to worry about it. Cool. My philosophy now is that the people who might be interested will find it without me worrying about it.
I think there was a point to this but I can't remember what it was. Introverts week may have one more post tomorrow.
P.S. (added the next day) It occurs to me that I may be giving the wrong impression for those who don't know me irl. I am shy and somewhat reserved, but I have friends, I go out and do things, I'm fairly active in our community and volunteer many places-- or at least, I did before I went back to school and ran out of time. My son has his friends over and I joke with them. I have a group of four or five women I meet with regularly for coffee. But at the same time, all the stuff in the last few posts is true. They're both sides of me. Just didn't want you to think that I sit at home in a closet being weirdly withdrawn.
Friday, February 04, 2011
coping strategies
I saw a therapist for a couple of years not long after we moved here-- so probably 14 or 15 years ago or so-- who thought so differently than me that she was highly effective. One of the best things I learned from her was the idea of coping strategies. We talked about the ways I had learned to handle the difficulties of growing up in my childhood home (which was not horrible, just garden variety stuff), and how those skills, those coping strategies, could be used to my benefit now.
For example. I am not a big fan of confrontation. I have a hard time thinking quickly in an emotionally intense situation, so I become tongue-tied. Plus, as I've said before, I'm pretty hyper-sensitive, and the heightened emotions around confrontations were scary to me as a child (and sometimes still are). So I learned the skill of avoidance. If dad was mad, avoid him. If mom disapproved of something I was doing, avoid her and do it anyway, although never to the point where I would then have to have a confrontation about it.
Before this therapist--we'll call her June--I thought of that as a bad thing. Common wisdom says that you should always meet your challenges head on, right? But June said, you're good at avoidance. It's worked for you in the past. Play to your strengths. How can we make it into a conscious strategy, something that works for you instead of against you? Rather than seeing it as a bad thing, see it as one of several tools that you have to handle a confrontation.
What works about avoidance? For one thing, if you let something go for a few hours or days without confrontation, it often clears up with the passage of time anyway. For another, if I avoid confrontation right in the thick of my emotions, I have time to think about what I want to say so I don't become tongue-tied. The bad part about avoidance? if you carry it too far, it gets out of hand. If you avoid too long, people don't realize you're upset or mad about something when you are. There is a point where it becomes lying by omission.
Another example. Over the past couple of years, I've become aware of how the habit of effacing myself -- which I mentioned on Wednesday-- has become self-destructive. For a long time, it didn't seem that way to me. I'm pretty introverted anyway, and it just makes life flow along so much more easily when you try not to bother people. But there comes a point where no one knows who you are because you've so thoroughly erased yourself. I think I had reached that point a few years ago. I've been working on it.
Today I've been trying to re-cast it as June would have. In my childhood home and with my personality, erasing myself, disappearing, was an excellent coping strategy. There was a lot of very complex emotional stuff floating around in our house. With my hyper-sensitivity and also being pretty dang bad at handling complex interactions with other people, disappearing worked really well. Being able to fly under the radar, to ghost myself and disappear, made all the crap a lot easier to handle.
So what still works about disappearing? it gives me a break, for one thing. All those exhausting complicated social interactions overwhelm me sometimes, and the ability to disappear--for a few minutes or a few days-- gives me a chance to revive, refresh. But other than that, I think it mostly works against me now. It's not honest. And it's lonely. Recognizing that I'm an introvert is one thing, but shutting myself off is another. Ha-- that's another post that's floating around in my head, so maybe I'll stop there and finish this up next week. Have a great weekend.
For example. I am not a big fan of confrontation. I have a hard time thinking quickly in an emotionally intense situation, so I become tongue-tied. Plus, as I've said before, I'm pretty hyper-sensitive, and the heightened emotions around confrontations were scary to me as a child (and sometimes still are). So I learned the skill of avoidance. If dad was mad, avoid him. If mom disapproved of something I was doing, avoid her and do it anyway, although never to the point where I would then have to have a confrontation about it.
Before this therapist--we'll call her June--I thought of that as a bad thing. Common wisdom says that you should always meet your challenges head on, right? But June said, you're good at avoidance. It's worked for you in the past. Play to your strengths. How can we make it into a conscious strategy, something that works for you instead of against you? Rather than seeing it as a bad thing, see it as one of several tools that you have to handle a confrontation.
What works about avoidance? For one thing, if you let something go for a few hours or days without confrontation, it often clears up with the passage of time anyway. For another, if I avoid confrontation right in the thick of my emotions, I have time to think about what I want to say so I don't become tongue-tied. The bad part about avoidance? if you carry it too far, it gets out of hand. If you avoid too long, people don't realize you're upset or mad about something when you are. There is a point where it becomes lying by omission.
Another example. Over the past couple of years, I've become aware of how the habit of effacing myself -- which I mentioned on Wednesday-- has become self-destructive. For a long time, it didn't seem that way to me. I'm pretty introverted anyway, and it just makes life flow along so much more easily when you try not to bother people. But there comes a point where no one knows who you are because you've so thoroughly erased yourself. I think I had reached that point a few years ago. I've been working on it.
Today I've been trying to re-cast it as June would have. In my childhood home and with my personality, erasing myself, disappearing, was an excellent coping strategy. There was a lot of very complex emotional stuff floating around in our house. With my hyper-sensitivity and also being pretty dang bad at handling complex interactions with other people, disappearing worked really well. Being able to fly under the radar, to ghost myself and disappear, made all the crap a lot easier to handle.
So what still works about disappearing? it gives me a break, for one thing. All those exhausting complicated social interactions overwhelm me sometimes, and the ability to disappear--for a few minutes or a few days-- gives me a chance to revive, refresh. But other than that, I think it mostly works against me now. It's not honest. And it's lonely. Recognizing that I'm an introvert is one thing, but shutting myself off is another. Ha-- that's another post that's floating around in my head, so maybe I'll stop there and finish this up next week. Have a great weekend.
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
January reading report: just one book, and endings
The only book I'm reporting on that I read in January is The Grand Sophy, by Georgette Heyer. (Not because it's the only one I read, but because I haven't finished any of the other ones yet.) Georgette Heyer is the grande-dame of romantic fiction. Her books were published in the 40s and 50s, and I've heard about her for years, but I'd never read one. She's old school-- no explicit sex here. But she has a reputation for writing funny dialogue and engaging characters.
So I picked this one up somewhere, and loved it. Slight qualification: I ended up loving it. About halfway through, I was ready to throw it out the window, because the heroine grated on me. There is a type of heroine who is utterly determined to do what she wants no matter what impact it has one anyone around her. "Headstrong," they used to call it. Opinionated, bossy, self-confident, even narcissistic at times. But also interesting, intelligent, and large-hearted. I thought it was a recent development, because there are a number of examples from books that have been published in the last five years, and I chalked it up to all those young women who were raised in the 70s and 80s in the height of the second wave of feminism and who are now adults. But Sophy is exactly that kind of heroine, and this novel was published in 1950. So I was wrong. But it just seems so silly to me, and selfish, to think that you should be able to do whatever you want without considering the people around you.
Granted, I was raised the other way, by a sweet mom who was well coached in the art of effacing herself and who was only too happy to pass her knowledge on to me. It's something I'm working on, and I'm getting pretty damn good at figuring out what I want to do and making sure my needs get met. But it's silly and selfish to think that has no impact on the people around me. It's a balancing act-- my needs and my loved ones' needs, and sometimes it's difficult to figure out. And sometimes it's easy.
Am I rambling? So. When Sophy insists on her right to do whatever the heck she wants to do regardless of the effect on the people around her, it just seems immature and pig-headed to me. Not to mention historically inaccurate, because at that time (I have no idea what the actual time period of the novel is, but it seems to be a Regency romance, so let's say early nineteenth century) some of the things that Sophy does would have had profound social repercussions for herself and her family. She was really irritating that way. But there are two things that redeem The Grand Sophy: one is that Sophy is often right, and the one time that she is egregiously not right, she does apologize. And two: this book has a nearly perfect ending. And that is so rare. For that alone I would give it both thumbs and all my fingers and toes way up. I can't tell you how many books I've read that fascinated me, only to be spoiled by a rotten ending. (Smilla's Sense of Snow, anyone?) It must be enormously difficult to write a really satisfying ending.
but this one has it. Sophy sets up the most ridiculous and meddlesome of all her schemes (fittingly enough, since it's the climax), and Charles, the hero, completely gets it. He understands exactly what she's doing and why. The way it's set up is pretty subtle, but enormously satisfying. Highly recommended.
So I picked this one up somewhere, and loved it. Slight qualification: I ended up loving it. About halfway through, I was ready to throw it out the window, because the heroine grated on me. There is a type of heroine who is utterly determined to do what she wants no matter what impact it has one anyone around her. "Headstrong," they used to call it. Opinionated, bossy, self-confident, even narcissistic at times. But also interesting, intelligent, and large-hearted. I thought it was a recent development, because there are a number of examples from books that have been published in the last five years, and I chalked it up to all those young women who were raised in the 70s and 80s in the height of the second wave of feminism and who are now adults. But Sophy is exactly that kind of heroine, and this novel was published in 1950. So I was wrong. But it just seems so silly to me, and selfish, to think that you should be able to do whatever you want without considering the people around you.
Granted, I was raised the other way, by a sweet mom who was well coached in the art of effacing herself and who was only too happy to pass her knowledge on to me. It's something I'm working on, and I'm getting pretty damn good at figuring out what I want to do and making sure my needs get met. But it's silly and selfish to think that has no impact on the people around me. It's a balancing act-- my needs and my loved ones' needs, and sometimes it's difficult to figure out. And sometimes it's easy.
Am I rambling? So. When Sophy insists on her right to do whatever the heck she wants to do regardless of the effect on the people around her, it just seems immature and pig-headed to me. Not to mention historically inaccurate, because at that time (I have no idea what the actual time period of the novel is, but it seems to be a Regency romance, so let's say early nineteenth century) some of the things that Sophy does would have had profound social repercussions for herself and her family. She was really irritating that way. But there are two things that redeem The Grand Sophy: one is that Sophy is often right, and the one time that she is egregiously not right, she does apologize. And two: this book has a nearly perfect ending. And that is so rare. For that alone I would give it both thumbs and all my fingers and toes way up. I can't tell you how many books I've read that fascinated me, only to be spoiled by a rotten ending. (Smilla's Sense of Snow, anyone?) It must be enormously difficult to write a really satisfying ending.
but this one has it. Sophy sets up the most ridiculous and meddlesome of all her schemes (fittingly enough, since it's the climax), and Charles, the hero, completely gets it. He understands exactly what she's doing and why. The way it's set up is pretty subtle, but enormously satisfying. Highly recommended.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Riffday: cleaning, unplugged week, and frigidity
Yesterday my mind was teeming with ideas for blog posts. I dutifully jotted them down so I would have ideas in the future when it was MWF. But of course now none of them appeals to me. So I will just riff and see where this goes. Maybe Mondays will be Riffday.
We're cleaning here. We don't clean well together. We have different ideas of what clean means. If we each cleaned the bathroom, Dh would leave it with the counters clear of clutter, no dirty clothes on the floor, and each towel hung or folded up in its correct place. But he wouldn't notice that there was still toothpaste in the sink, or that that yucky orange-y slime was accumulating under the shampoo bottle in the shower. I would leave the sink and the chrome fixtures sparkling, the tile in the shower gleaming, the grout scrubbed down, but there would still be eight different kinds of hair product, three face lotions and two types of toner ranged around the sink, and I might not notice that my pajamas were still on the floor next to the shower. (and to be entirely honest, it would probably only happen about once a month.) You see the problem.
After twenty-six years, we've learned to appreciate each other, but we haven't learned to clean well together. (I used the bathroom as an example, but in 26 years I don't think we've ever cleaned a bathroom together. It was just a theoretical example.) What works best, in my opinion, is for him to do his thing first, and then I come along after him and do mine. Minimum of fuss, end result=whatever we cleaned is the kind of clean that works for both of us. You'll have to ask him what works best in his opinion. This is not something we discuss well.
So maybe you can predict that tensions have been a little high the last few days. But-- that 26 years again-- we've kind of figured out how to manage this. He lets me gripe at him for getting all snooty about how much neater he is than I am, and I acknowledge that he really is neater than I am and don't add under my breath "eventhoughitsreallyjustadifferentkindofneat." And we're still married, so it must work OK.
Key change. (we're riffing here, remember?) We tried out "unplugged" week around here last week. We borrowed the idea from our neighbors. One week out of the month, no XBox. Computer time is limited (for the kiddo) to fifteen minutes so that he can check his e-mail and Facebook. No TV shows--although we do allow movies. Since he's seen all the movies we own, he doesn't get sucked into them that much, and also there are no commercials, which drive me crazy. So MadMax spent the week learning how to tie knots while working his way through the Harry Potter movies, also did a little reading, ran errands with me, etc. He and his dad went skiing on Saturday. I liked it. He didn't seem to mind it as much as we thought he would. Success.
Bridge. After a couple of weeks of what amounts to "mild" winter weather (for us), we're back in the deep freeze again. It was -4 when we got up this morning, and it's supposed to get down to -12 tonight. The payoff is that we finally get blue sky and sunshine. That's always the way around here-- it's reasonable winter temps and cloudy/overcast, or it's bitterly cold and perfectly clear. It was nice to see the sun, but I hate those below zero temps.
What do you call the recap after the bridge? Third verse? we haven't had a chorus yet. I don't know. I borrowed the language without really knowing what I was talking about. Oh, gee, really? Well, on that note (ark), here's something you didn't know about me (well, unless you're one of the half dozen readers that I know irl): I play the flute. I love it. I don't do it often enough. There are few things as soothing to me as pulling out my flute and playing through some of my old pieces.
So what about you? any musicians out there? what do you play? do you sing?
We're cleaning here. We don't clean well together. We have different ideas of what clean means. If we each cleaned the bathroom, Dh would leave it with the counters clear of clutter, no dirty clothes on the floor, and each towel hung or folded up in its correct place. But he wouldn't notice that there was still toothpaste in the sink, or that that yucky orange-y slime was accumulating under the shampoo bottle in the shower. I would leave the sink and the chrome fixtures sparkling, the tile in the shower gleaming, the grout scrubbed down, but there would still be eight different kinds of hair product, three face lotions and two types of toner ranged around the sink, and I might not notice that my pajamas were still on the floor next to the shower. (and to be entirely honest, it would probably only happen about once a month.) You see the problem.
After twenty-six years, we've learned to appreciate each other, but we haven't learned to clean well together. (I used the bathroom as an example, but in 26 years I don't think we've ever cleaned a bathroom together. It was just a theoretical example.) What works best, in my opinion, is for him to do his thing first, and then I come along after him and do mine. Minimum of fuss, end result=whatever we cleaned is the kind of clean that works for both of us. You'll have to ask him what works best in his opinion. This is not something we discuss well.
So maybe you can predict that tensions have been a little high the last few days. But-- that 26 years again-- we've kind of figured out how to manage this. He lets me gripe at him for getting all snooty about how much neater he is than I am, and I acknowledge that he really is neater than I am and don't add under my breath "eventhoughitsreallyjustadifferentkindofneat." And we're still married, so it must work OK.
Key change. (we're riffing here, remember?) We tried out "unplugged" week around here last week. We borrowed the idea from our neighbors. One week out of the month, no XBox. Computer time is limited (for the kiddo) to fifteen minutes so that he can check his e-mail and Facebook. No TV shows--although we do allow movies. Since he's seen all the movies we own, he doesn't get sucked into them that much, and also there are no commercials, which drive me crazy. So MadMax spent the week learning how to tie knots while working his way through the Harry Potter movies, also did a little reading, ran errands with me, etc. He and his dad went skiing on Saturday. I liked it. He didn't seem to mind it as much as we thought he would. Success.
Bridge. After a couple of weeks of what amounts to "mild" winter weather (for us), we're back in the deep freeze again. It was -4 when we got up this morning, and it's supposed to get down to -12 tonight. The payoff is that we finally get blue sky and sunshine. That's always the way around here-- it's reasonable winter temps and cloudy/overcast, or it's bitterly cold and perfectly clear. It was nice to see the sun, but I hate those below zero temps.
What do you call the recap after the bridge? Third verse? we haven't had a chorus yet. I don't know. I borrowed the language without really knowing what I was talking about. Oh, gee, really? Well, on that note (ark), here's something you didn't know about me (well, unless you're one of the half dozen readers that I know irl): I play the flute. I love it. I don't do it often enough. There are few things as soothing to me as pulling out my flute and playing through some of my old pieces.
So what about you? any musicians out there? what do you play? do you sing?
Friday, January 28, 2011
new semester, new classes, and audiobooks
Classes started this week. They were surprisingly good. As has been true every semester since I started driving down to UTown, my choices were dictated less by what I wanted to take than by my driving schedule, so I wasn't really looking forward to them. But, as has also been true the other semesters, I think they will end up being interesting anyway. But ohmygod do I have a lot of reading to do. *AB quails before the thought*
Starting The Drive again reminded me about audiobooks. I neglected audiobooks when I did my post about the books I enjoyed reading last year because I completely forgot about them. It doesn't feel like reading when you're listening, or at least not to me. But I depend (heavily) on audiobooks to keep me sane during my interminable time in the car, so I almost always have one in progress.
My requirements for audiobooks are a little different than for regular reading, though, so take these with a grain of salt. I spend a lot of time in the car on the days I'm headed to UTown, but not so much on the other days. So I don't want an audiobook that I'm so sucked into that I end up listening to it around the house after I get home. In other words, I want something entertaining, but not too entertaining. Also, I've found that a good narrator makes a mediocre book interesting. All three of the ones that come to mind from last year are books that I'm sure I would not have liked if I'd read them in print. But with a good narrator doing voices and inflection and bringing the story to life, I'm hooked, even though the book itself isn't all that great. So the three I remember are David Rosenfelt's Open and Shut, the first in a series of books about a nutty lawyer in New York City who solves impossible crimes; Julia Quinn's It's In His Kiss; and ...oh, I'm really embarrassed to admit this... Robyn Carr's Whispering Rock.
I'm a so-so fan of Quinn's. I've read half a dozen of her books in print, and only one or two of them are ones that I thoroughly enjoyed--but they were good enough that I keep trying others of hers just in case. Her heroes often have a subtly condescending, isn't-she-cute attitude toward the heroine that just grates on me. But either the hero of It's in His Kiss isn't that bad, or the narrator (Simon Prebble, who is terrific) more than made up for it, because I really did enjoy this one. The plot kind of wanders around in a way that would have made me crazy if I'd read it in print, but while driving, stopping for gas, getting something to eat, not listening for a couple of days, etc, I lost track of that and just went along for the ride. It was great. And Robyn Carr...honestly, it's like listening to a soap opera. Everybody in her little town is perfect, even their flaws are perfect. but you know, soap operas can be addictive, and it was just what I needed for the drive last fall. I'd be utterly hooked while I was listening, and then forget all about it when I was out of the car. Perfect. apparently there are 8 or 9 in that series (Virgin River, I think it's called), so if I ever am in the mood for another one, they're just out there waiting.
The only one I can recommend unequivocably is House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, narrated by Eleanor Bron. It's a great book and a great narrator (make sure you get the right narrator, because there are several different versions on audible). Bron's delivery is crisp and elegant, but subdued in a way that reflects all the stuff that's going on under the surface of that repressive New York society. Although as I've said before, it's a great book because it so accurately describes a particular time and place, not because you'll like it or any of the characters.
So what audiobooks and/or narrators have you enjoyed? any recommendations for me?
Starting The Drive again reminded me about audiobooks. I neglected audiobooks when I did my post about the books I enjoyed reading last year because I completely forgot about them. It doesn't feel like reading when you're listening, or at least not to me. But I depend (heavily) on audiobooks to keep me sane during my interminable time in the car, so I almost always have one in progress.
My requirements for audiobooks are a little different than for regular reading, though, so take these with a grain of salt. I spend a lot of time in the car on the days I'm headed to UTown, but not so much on the other days. So I don't want an audiobook that I'm so sucked into that I end up listening to it around the house after I get home. In other words, I want something entertaining, but not too entertaining. Also, I've found that a good narrator makes a mediocre book interesting. All three of the ones that come to mind from last year are books that I'm sure I would not have liked if I'd read them in print. But with a good narrator doing voices and inflection and bringing the story to life, I'm hooked, even though the book itself isn't all that great. So the three I remember are David Rosenfelt's Open and Shut, the first in a series of books about a nutty lawyer in New York City who solves impossible crimes; Julia Quinn's It's In His Kiss; and ...oh, I'm really embarrassed to admit this... Robyn Carr's Whispering Rock.
I'm a so-so fan of Quinn's. I've read half a dozen of her books in print, and only one or two of them are ones that I thoroughly enjoyed--but they were good enough that I keep trying others of hers just in case. Her heroes often have a subtly condescending, isn't-she-cute attitude toward the heroine that just grates on me. But either the hero of It's in His Kiss isn't that bad, or the narrator (Simon Prebble, who is terrific) more than made up for it, because I really did enjoy this one. The plot kind of wanders around in a way that would have made me crazy if I'd read it in print, but while driving, stopping for gas, getting something to eat, not listening for a couple of days, etc, I lost track of that and just went along for the ride. It was great. And Robyn Carr...honestly, it's like listening to a soap opera. Everybody in her little town is perfect, even their flaws are perfect. but you know, soap operas can be addictive, and it was just what I needed for the drive last fall. I'd be utterly hooked while I was listening, and then forget all about it when I was out of the car. Perfect. apparently there are 8 or 9 in that series (Virgin River, I think it's called), so if I ever am in the mood for another one, they're just out there waiting.
The only one I can recommend unequivocably is House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, narrated by Eleanor Bron. It's a great book and a great narrator (make sure you get the right narrator, because there are several different versions on audible). Bron's delivery is crisp and elegant, but subdued in a way that reflects all the stuff that's going on under the surface of that repressive New York society. Although as I've said before, it's a great book because it so accurately describes a particular time and place, not because you'll like it or any of the characters.
So what audiobooks and/or narrators have you enjoyed? any recommendations for me?
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
um, the act in romance novels
I just realized that it's Wednesday! I'm supposed to blog today! (still not used to this) Since I still have a couple of hours of reading to do for class tomorrow, I'm pulling this one out, which I wrote a couple of weeks ago but never posted. Let me know what you think. I didn't post it before because I was worried it would be controversial and I hate controversy, but I'm up against the wall here, so here it is.
So you already know Agnes and the Hitman is one of my all-time favorite books. Usually with genre fiction I feel the need to say it is "one of my favorite plane reads" or "perfect for the beach," but I'll just go ahead and crawl right out on a limb here and say that Agnes is one of my favorite books. Period. So I have handed it to friends occasionally, friends who don't usually read genre fiction, thinking it would convert them.
(**warning: spoilers ahead** but only from the first hundred pages-- there are no spoilers about the ending. But if you like to go into books completely blind, you should stop now.)
So, I hand Agnes to them and assure them that this is a really good book, even if it is a mass market paperback. And so far, none of them (except my spouse) has agreed with me, and I think I know why: because they find the angry sex scene to be offensive. About a hundred pages in, Agnes--who has problems with controlling her temper anyway-- is deservedly furious with her jerky fiance' Taylor when she finds out he is already married. Not only that, he lied to her about his marital status in order to swindle her out of the house they own together. She's so furious that she has a hard time controlling herself, and she ends up exorcising her anger by having really, um, vigorous sex with Shane, the hero (and he's a really good hero, one of my all-time favorites), whom she has known for about 24 hours.
If you're a regular reader of contemporary romance novels or chick lit, this is nothing too far out of the ordinary. Well, maybe a little out of the ordinary, since I have yet to read another book with a similarly angry scene, but the idea of sleeping with a guy soon after you meet him is certainly nothing new, especially when it is accompanied (as it is here) with post-sex confusion ("I can't believe I just slept with a guy I barely know").
But if you don't read these kinds of books very often, it's a little shocking. Obviously, I don't think that-- I love this book, remember? so don't mix me up with them. (Oddly, the one thing that bugged me about that book (she slings boiling fruit in the face of a guy attempting to break in to her house and then whacks him with a frying pan) doesn't seem to bother anybody else.) I'm just trying to explain how people who don't read romance novels think, because I think it has a lot to do with why romance novels are looked down on by literary types. Crusie and Mayer aren't even close to the most explicit writers out there-- in fact, their lovemaking scenes are pretty classy. I've read some where a single act can go on for ten or twelve pages. I start to get bored.
I've only been reading romance novels for a couple of years. Before that, although I read sci-fi and mysteries, I completely disdained romances, with the same kind of attitude these friends of mine have. When I started reading them a couple of years ago, I can remember practically dropping one of the first ones and looking at it in shock: "You can buy this at Target?" because it felt like I was reading pornography. There's a reason people call it "female porn," as much as that offends romance writers.
In fact, several months ago, the phrase "female porn" was mentioned in connection with romance novels on a romance writer's blog I frequent and it caused a mini-firestorm among the other romance writers there. The writers were outraged that someone considered their carefully plotted and choreographed sex scenes to be porn, since they are often the most difficult scenes to write.
But I think they were missing the point. Yes, the scenes can be beautifully written. Yes, they can reveal a great deal about the characters. But the fact remains, if you don't normally read romance novels, and then you pick one up, the detailed, fantasized sex is astonishing. Jaw-dropping. Book-dropping. I thought: You mean you can just walk into a store a buy this stuff? Wow.
So, what about you? Did you find the sex scenes surprising when you first read a romance novel? (if you have, and if you haven't try Agnes. Seriously.) And on a slightly different note, what romance novels do you hand to friends if you're trying to convert them to reading romances?
So you already know Agnes and the Hitman is one of my all-time favorite books. Usually with genre fiction I feel the need to say it is "one of my favorite plane reads" or "perfect for the beach," but I'll just go ahead and crawl right out on a limb here and say that Agnes is one of my favorite books. Period. So I have handed it to friends occasionally, friends who don't usually read genre fiction, thinking it would convert them.
(**warning: spoilers ahead** but only from the first hundred pages-- there are no spoilers about the ending. But if you like to go into books completely blind, you should stop now.)
So, I hand Agnes to them and assure them that this is a really good book, even if it is a mass market paperback. And so far, none of them (except my spouse) has agreed with me, and I think I know why: because they find the angry sex scene to be offensive. About a hundred pages in, Agnes--who has problems with controlling her temper anyway-- is deservedly furious with her jerky fiance' Taylor when she finds out he is already married. Not only that, he lied to her about his marital status in order to swindle her out of the house they own together. She's so furious that she has a hard time controlling herself, and she ends up exorcising her anger by having really, um, vigorous sex with Shane, the hero (and he's a really good hero, one of my all-time favorites), whom she has known for about 24 hours.
If you're a regular reader of contemporary romance novels or chick lit, this is nothing too far out of the ordinary. Well, maybe a little out of the ordinary, since I have yet to read another book with a similarly angry scene, but the idea of sleeping with a guy soon after you meet him is certainly nothing new, especially when it is accompanied (as it is here) with post-sex confusion ("I can't believe I just slept with a guy I barely know").
But if you don't read these kinds of books very often, it's a little shocking. Obviously, I don't think that-- I love this book, remember? so don't mix me up with them. (Oddly, the one thing that bugged me about that book (she slings boiling fruit in the face of a guy attempting to break in to her house and then whacks him with a frying pan) doesn't seem to bother anybody else.) I'm just trying to explain how people who don't read romance novels think, because I think it has a lot to do with why romance novels are looked down on by literary types. Crusie and Mayer aren't even close to the most explicit writers out there-- in fact, their lovemaking scenes are pretty classy. I've read some where a single act can go on for ten or twelve pages. I start to get bored.
I've only been reading romance novels for a couple of years. Before that, although I read sci-fi and mysteries, I completely disdained romances, with the same kind of attitude these friends of mine have. When I started reading them a couple of years ago, I can remember practically dropping one of the first ones and looking at it in shock: "You can buy this at Target?" because it felt like I was reading pornography. There's a reason people call it "female porn," as much as that offends romance writers.
In fact, several months ago, the phrase "female porn" was mentioned in connection with romance novels on a romance writer's blog I frequent and it caused a mini-firestorm among the other romance writers there. The writers were outraged that someone considered their carefully plotted and choreographed sex scenes to be porn, since they are often the most difficult scenes to write.
But I think they were missing the point. Yes, the scenes can be beautifully written. Yes, they can reveal a great deal about the characters. But the fact remains, if you don't normally read romance novels, and then you pick one up, the detailed, fantasized sex is astonishing. Jaw-dropping. Book-dropping. I thought: You mean you can just walk into a store a buy this stuff? Wow.
So, what about you? Did you find the sex scenes surprising when you first read a romance novel? (if you have, and if you haven't try Agnes. Seriously.) And on a slightly different note, what romance novels do you hand to friends if you're trying to convert them to reading romances?
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