It’s not so much that we’re lazy, or that we’re disaffected or disinclined or dis-anything really, it’s that there so much else to do in the world, and that spending 45 minutes of an hour long book club listening to other women compare the heroines of Tolstoy to the nurturing role of a homemaker, well, let’s just say that I’d have a better time clipping my toenails. Not that I dislike clipping my toenails. I quite enjoy it really. Only I’ve recently mislaid my large clippers, and it’s a pain and a half searching for an object of that size, when it could be anywhere within 1200 square feet.
Excuse. Let me begin again.
So, as Jones says, we’re reading books and talking about them. Only, we do so in the manner in which we see fit. Much the way we live our lives, against the grain. No coffee shop reserved tables for us. No Mr. Darcy (a fine hero) nor Oprah’s seal of approval (a 50% chance of a good read), we’re choosing the books which suit us in our present travels, in our current needs. Often book clubs are begun with the honest intent of reading more, and reading within a community. Some sense of accountability which imposes a sense of guilt on the reader should they not finish their allotted 7 chapters by next meeting. This is a worthy treatment of a club, until the third meeting or so, when you discover that Hilda over there with the head scarf is not an interesting Eastern block refugee, but is rather a throwback to 60s era women’s lib and finds nothing more satisfying than pointing out unremarkable and aggravating gender and sexual theory critiques. Or that Ramon is deeply conflicted with his life as a gay bartender and instead reads all male roles as aggressors and pursuers, even the above mentioned Darcy, which I think we can all agree is the epitome of well wrought hero.
Anyway.
I believe the HBC, as it was so aptly and judiciously named, will bring out the best of all worlds. The sense of community is just a digi-type away, and the allowance of impunity and independence will foster greater removes from normal book club fodder and conversation. Because why do we read? For education, yes, but mostly, for enjoyment. And the best education happens when you enjoy what you are learning. Hopefully with our little HBC, Jones and I (and others as they come) will learn to read for ourselves, and then to translate that into a enjoyment and an education for others. It should not be a reporting on what the book was about, but rather, what did we learn from it? What do we take away from it? How has it changed us, and how can we use that to impact and change those around us? In that sense, I believe our HBC will forge new heights. Because just like the beloved sonnet, we are first given strict parameters and then full fledged freedom.
To begin with an about me: I have a Bachelor’s degree in English Lit, won from the prestigious university of the church of Christ, also known as David Lipscomb U. There’s a novel in there somewhere, but it’ll take a more disciplined wit than I to pour it all out. Post graduate work was done first in the workforce for a small publishing company, and second in the graduate force, in a small classical graduate program. This allowed me to gain a Master’s degree, although as you can see, it did nothing to break me from a bad habit of writing in the passive voice. Post graduate work will soon follow the Master’s, as in August I will begin a PhD program studying Latin American history.
This last sentence may seem trivial, but let me assure you, it is not. Three years of application, two of GRE study, countless hours writing lists of myself, my family, my background, and my future, and to show for it, a 700 word apology on who I am and what I want. I challenge anyone to do that and escape unscathed. At the end of the day, I cannot and will not be able to leave the rubrics of my future in a box. The HBC will be a house for my journey through the cultural and historical significance of slavery, revolution and rebellion. It will also be a burial ground.
I look forward to the coming August. And you should too. Jones and I plan on being here in full glory and with full hearts.
Vive la libertad!
Monday, June 30, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
The Harvard Hundred
So. Now that I've run my mouth about refusing to read anything I don't want to, I'm trying to narrow down what I actually do want to read. Googling "reading lists" turned up some fun results, including the Top 100 Picks from the Harvard Book Store staff.
Word.
And because I really should be studying A&P, but am not because of a headache, and am instead watching The Last King of Scotland for the third time and blogging, I decided, what the heck?, I'll grade myself against the Harvard Hundred while I'm at it. Points awarded as follows:
1 point for each book on the list I've read.
.5 points for each book I've begun but abandoned.
.25 points for each book I own but haven't begun.
90 points and up is always an A in my book.
I will not come close to an A. Here we go:
Ed. Note: I am a complete tool. I can't believe how much of this I haven't read.
Ed. Note the Second: Whatevs. It doesn't matter because either way, James McAvoy's Scottish accent is banging sexy. And you don't have to know how to read to know that.
Word.
And because I really should be studying A&P, but am not because of a headache, and am instead watching The Last King of Scotland for the third time and blogging, I decided, what the heck?, I'll grade myself against the Harvard Hundred while I'm at it. Points awarded as follows:
1 point for each book on the list I've read.
.5 points for each book I've begun but abandoned.
.25 points for each book I own but haven't begun.
90 points and up is always an A in my book.
I will not come close to an A. Here we go:
- A People's History of the United States Zinn: 0
- The Wind Up Bird Chronicle Murakami: 1
- The New York Trilogy Auster: 0
- The Crying of Lot 49 Pynchon: 0
- The Lord of the Rings Tolkien: .5
- Jane Eyre Bronte: .5
- Lolita Nabokov: 1
- Nineteen Eighty-Four Orwell: 1
- One Hundred Years of Solitude Marquez: .5
- The Catcher in the Rye Salinger: 0
- Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky: .25
- On the Road Kerouac: 1
- Alice in Wonderland Carrol: 1
- Brothers Karamozov Dostoevsky: 1
- The Age of Innocence Wharton: 0
- Don Quixote Cervantes: 0
- Perfume Suskind: 0
- Ulysses Joyce: .25
- Anna Karenina Tolstoy: 1
- Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor: .5
- Cry the Beloved Country Paton: 0
- Dracula Stoker: 1
- The Eagles Die Marek: 0
- Emotionally Weird Atkinson: 0
- The Handmaid’s Tale Atwood: 0
- Infinite Jest Wallace: .5
- Kitchen Yoshimoto: 0
- London Fields Amis: 0
- Moise and the World of Reason Williams: 0
- Movie Wars Rosenbaum: 0
- Paradise Lost Milton: 1
- Persuasion Austen: 0
- Tortilla Curtain Boyle: 0
- Visions of Excess Bataille: 0
- Where the Wild Things Are Sendak: 1
- Wild Sheep Chase Murakami: 0
- Beloved Morrison: 1
- Counterfeiters Gide: 0
- The Bell Jar Plath: 1
- Blind Owl Hedayat: 0
- Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe: .5
- The Count of Monte Cristo Dumas: .25
- Dealing With Dragons Wrede: 0
- The Earthsea Trilogy Le Guin: 0
- The Ecology of Fear Davis: 0
- Franny and Zooey Salinger: 0
- History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides: .5
- How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents Alvarez: 0
- Kabuki: Circle of Blood Mack & Jiang: 0
- Of Human Bondage Maugham: 0
- The Satanic Verses Rushdie: 0
- The Sheltering Sky Bowles: 0
- Tristam Shandy Sterne: 0
- Well of Loneliness Hall: 0
- Wicked Pavilion Powell: 0
- Collected Stories of V.S. Pritchett: 0
- War and Peace Tolstoy: .5
- Babel 17 Delany: 0
- Dora Freud: 0
- Empire Falls Russo: .5
- For Whom the Bell Tolls Hemingway: .5
- Girl in Landscape Letham: 0
- Goodbye to All That Graves: 0
- Ham on Rye Bukowski: 0
- Life Like Moore: 0
- Mao II DeLillo: 0
- Random Family Leblanc: 0
- Revolutionary Road Yates: 0
- The Stranger Camus: 0
- Humboldt’s Gift Bellow: 0
- White Noise DeLillo: 1
- Atlas Shrugged Rand: .5
- Bastard Out of Carolina Allison: 0
- Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills Bukowski: 0
- Delta of Venus Nin: 0
- Fast Food Nation Schlosser: 1
- Ficciones Borges: 0
- Go Ask Alice Anonymous: 1
- Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Adams: .5
- Iliad Homer: 1
- On Photography Sontag: 0
- Republic Plato: .5
- Shockproof Sydney Skate Meaker: 0
- Society of the Spectacle Debord: 0
- Strangers in Paradise Moore: 0
- The Sun Also Rises Hemingway: 1
- A Wrinkle In Time L’Engle: 1
- Dubliners Joyce: .25
- The Breakfast of Champions Vonnegut: 0
- No Logo Klein: 1
- Aeneid Virgil: .5
- Ariel Plath: 0
- Charlotte’s Web White: 1
- Curious George Learns the Alphabet Rey: 1
- Enormous Changes at the Last Minute Paley: 0
- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter McCullers: .5
- Henry VIII Shakespeare: 1
- I, Claudius Graves: 0
- The Lost Continent Bryson: 0
- Master and Margarita Bulgakov: 0
Ed. Note: I am a complete tool. I can't believe how much of this I haven't read.
Ed. Note the Second: Whatevs. It doesn't matter because either way, James McAvoy's Scottish accent is banging sexy. And you don't have to know how to read to know that.
Prologue: Jones
So here you have it. Bored on gchat one afternoon, and not very much inclined to do the things our employers pay us to do, Martin & I cooked up the idea for another blog. Both compulsive readers who have on occasion read the same things, and who know others who do as well, we have nonetheless ever been able to get a real live book club up off the ground. The kind where you get together once a month and eat dainty little foodstuffs and drink wine and gab on about this and that.
On the one hand, the discipline it requires is alluring. Having a list! Being held accountable for finishing on time! Knowing where you're going from month to month! All of it, I dig it. But also, you might have to read something you don't want to. I worked in Christian publishing for a few years, and feel I've done my time. If I'm going to read something that is spectacularly crappy, I want to have no one but myself to blame. There's also this: I could, if left to my own devices, come up with more than enough titles to keep me occupied for the rest of my life. And while suggestions from other readers I admire are always taken to heart, I don't, right now, want to spend a year reading things that other people want to read when there is so so much I haven't gotten to myself.
So here's how this gig works: we are going to read the first title together, and then split from there, and we might not ever meet back up again, except for here. If you haven't already figured it out, the first title we'll read is Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. And yes, I'm a little ashamed that I haven't read it yet. Seeing as how I adore him and have a litcrush on him and think he's one of the finest authors ever and want to retrace his every Parisian step and to spend just one evening next to him at a bar, would be too good for this world.
We're not actually going to kick this baby off until August. Why? Because that's when the fall semester starts. And because I'm waiting on an auction to close on a first edition copy of the above and, should I win it, it will have to be shipped from Zimbabwe, which takes a little while. And because it will also take a little while for each of us to come up with a working list of our own. Drafts of which, I'm sure, will appear here.
About me: I have a Bachelor's degree in English Literature & Anthropology, two disciplines I'm sure I'll always consider myself an amateur student of. I entered college as pre-med, interested in, at the ripe age of 17, epidemiology. And while I still find infectious diseases super interesting, I was quickly weeded out of the pre-med flock by organic chem, and fled to the liberal arts. I spent my last semester of college in Prague, studying scriptwriting, creative nonfiction and the literature of the Holocaust. It was equal parts terrible and miraculous.
That was five years ago.
Since college, I've considered master's programs in (wait for it) Literature and Anthropology, as well as creative writing (what does that even mean?), comparative literature, social work and education.
Now, I work for the state in which I live, as an advocate for the elderly, the disabled, military veterans and the low income population (which sadly but typically includes the first three). It's exhausting, heartbreaking, infuriating work. It is also oftentimes unspeakably rewarding. In writing classes (at least in the 7 I sat through in college), an inordinate amount of time is spent talking about finding your voice. It's kind of a shopworn concept. And still, I'm not entirely sure what it means. I wouldn't presume to say I've quote found my own voice yet. Which is or is not interesting in light of what I do these days. As an advocate, I spend my work week being a voice for people who are too sick or too poor or too old or too non-white to have any voice of their own. They get a hold of me somehow, and pull me into the center of their lives, tell me their stories, and then I go forth and I speak for them. To the government, to the pharmaceutical companies, to the insurance industry, to the media. To anyone who will listen and give us half a chance. Sometimes, I am able to secure for them things they need, or demand justice for them, or improve the quality of their lives in some small way. When this happens, they see me as a magician, a miracle worker. They cry and they pray over me and they tell me they love me. And it makes me cry, too. But these small mercies do not happen as frequently as any of us would like. And it's physically painful to have to tell people again and again that there is nothing I can do. That there is nothing anyone can do.
What this has to do with reading is this: I find that I need books more than ever these days. I need the escapism, desperately. I need worlds where there are unlikely and hesitant heroes and terrifyingly powerful adversaries, where everything could be lost, where so much is at stake, but where these plucky little characters make it out alright in the end. I need authors, too, who are kind enough or crazy enough to have written characters who I can relate to. Who are like me in enough but not too many ways. Who can say things that maybe I don't know how to say or am afraid to say. I need authors who can teach me lessons when I'm too proud or too tired to take advice from anyone else.
Put another way, the American philosopher Kenneth Burke once asserted that "stories are equipment for living" and I believe him.
They are also, lest I get too melodramatic or reflective, a great deal of fun.
At the end of the day, I read for pleasure, after all.
And this is where I hope I am able to make a bit of order out of it all. To dress up as a serious, disciplined reader, all that. Or to simply be another person, who in the howling, perverse, indulgent madness and delight that is the blogosphere, fancies she has something to write about things that have already been written.
On the one hand, the discipline it requires is alluring. Having a list! Being held accountable for finishing on time! Knowing where you're going from month to month! All of it, I dig it. But also, you might have to read something you don't want to. I worked in Christian publishing for a few years, and feel I've done my time. If I'm going to read something that is spectacularly crappy, I want to have no one but myself to blame. There's also this: I could, if left to my own devices, come up with more than enough titles to keep me occupied for the rest of my life. And while suggestions from other readers I admire are always taken to heart, I don't, right now, want to spend a year reading things that other people want to read when there is so so much I haven't gotten to myself.
So here's how this gig works: we are going to read the first title together, and then split from there, and we might not ever meet back up again, except for here. If you haven't already figured it out, the first title we'll read is Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. And yes, I'm a little ashamed that I haven't read it yet. Seeing as how I adore him and have a litcrush on him and think he's one of the finest authors ever and want to retrace his every Parisian step and to spend just one evening next to him at a bar, would be too good for this world.
We're not actually going to kick this baby off until August. Why? Because that's when the fall semester starts. And because I'm waiting on an auction to close on a first edition copy of the above and, should I win it, it will have to be shipped from Zimbabwe, which takes a little while. And because it will also take a little while for each of us to come up with a working list of our own. Drafts of which, I'm sure, will appear here.
About me: I have a Bachelor's degree in English Literature & Anthropology, two disciplines I'm sure I'll always consider myself an amateur student of. I entered college as pre-med, interested in, at the ripe age of 17, epidemiology. And while I still find infectious diseases super interesting, I was quickly weeded out of the pre-med flock by organic chem, and fled to the liberal arts. I spent my last semester of college in Prague, studying scriptwriting, creative nonfiction and the literature of the Holocaust. It was equal parts terrible and miraculous.
That was five years ago.
Since college, I've considered master's programs in (wait for it) Literature and Anthropology, as well as creative writing (what does that even mean?), comparative literature, social work and education.
Now, I work for the state in which I live, as an advocate for the elderly, the disabled, military veterans and the low income population (which sadly but typically includes the first three). It's exhausting, heartbreaking, infuriating work. It is also oftentimes unspeakably rewarding. In writing classes (at least in the 7 I sat through in college), an inordinate amount of time is spent talking about finding your voice. It's kind of a shopworn concept. And still, I'm not entirely sure what it means. I wouldn't presume to say I've quote found my own voice yet. Which is or is not interesting in light of what I do these days. As an advocate, I spend my work week being a voice for people who are too sick or too poor or too old or too non-white to have any voice of their own. They get a hold of me somehow, and pull me into the center of their lives, tell me their stories, and then I go forth and I speak for them. To the government, to the pharmaceutical companies, to the insurance industry, to the media. To anyone who will listen and give us half a chance. Sometimes, I am able to secure for them things they need, or demand justice for them, or improve the quality of their lives in some small way. When this happens, they see me as a magician, a miracle worker. They cry and they pray over me and they tell me they love me. And it makes me cry, too. But these small mercies do not happen as frequently as any of us would like. And it's physically painful to have to tell people again and again that there is nothing I can do. That there is nothing anyone can do.
What this has to do with reading is this: I find that I need books more than ever these days. I need the escapism, desperately. I need worlds where there are unlikely and hesitant heroes and terrifyingly powerful adversaries, where everything could be lost, where so much is at stake, but where these plucky little characters make it out alright in the end. I need authors, too, who are kind enough or crazy enough to have written characters who I can relate to. Who are like me in enough but not too many ways. Who can say things that maybe I don't know how to say or am afraid to say. I need authors who can teach me lessons when I'm too proud or too tired to take advice from anyone else.
Put another way, the American philosopher Kenneth Burke once asserted that "stories are equipment for living" and I believe him.
They are also, lest I get too melodramatic or reflective, a great deal of fun.
At the end of the day, I read for pleasure, after all.
And this is where I hope I am able to make a bit of order out of it all. To dress up as a serious, disciplined reader, all that. Or to simply be another person, who in the howling, perverse, indulgent madness and delight that is the blogosphere, fancies she has something to write about things that have already been written.
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