Let me begin this post by sharing a few anecdotes regarding the feeding habits of the Graduate Student.
Two weeks ago, while my companions and I were on spring break, one of my friends had a birthday. When I got back to Santa Barbara from the Bay Area, as his birthday present, I made him a cake. A Southern Comfort red velvet cake, to be exact. (I've somehow become The Girl Who Bakes With Booze. I don't really know why, but it's fun.) The cake, horrifically decorated (it turns out I'm a much better baker than icer) got sent home with my friend after a get-together. I was overjoyed, and vastly amused, to see him post on Twitter, three days later, that he was eating the last piece of cake for breakfast.
Yesterday was my department's Open House for admitted students. All the brilliant, lucky future scholars who have been accepted to the program were invited to come visit campus, meet professors and current grad students, and be wooed by the fantastic weather (which, by the way, apparently decided to vanish as soon as the event was over). Lunch was served to the prospective students, and was offered to current grad students as well, in order to provide a lunch hour for mingling. Lunch went until 1. I had a graduate seminar that lasted until 12:50. We all knew there was free food. At 12:49 we had our pens back into our book bags, and as soon as the professor ended class we literally elbowed each other out of the way to get down the hall to the free sandwiches. It turns out there were plenty left, but the rush for the free food was only light-hearted because of that. I shudder to think what would have happened had the four of us reached the room only to find fewer than four sandwiches left.
Last night, after the prospective students had been given the official open house, the current grad students treated them to a bit of the non-campus centered life, and we went out for drinks downtown. As the evening went on, a group of us adjourned to the house of one of my colleagues. As he was making drinks for his guests, another colleague opened his refrigerator in search of something to snack on. We all laughed at the sight of a fridge containing eggs, milk, bread, cat medicine, water, and a jar of olives. "This," I said, "is going in my next blog post about the Grad Student Diet."
The Grad Student Diet is not a way to lose weight, or a way to get healthier in some aspect, or to honor particular moral choices. Certainly, those can affect the GSD. Several of my friends and colleagues are vegetarians or vegans, and they manage, with perhaps a bit more ingenuity needed, to commit to the GSD. (On a related note, but a topic that may be explored more fully in another post, as it doesn't quite fit here, I am contemplating making a switch, or at least a shift, towards a vegetarian diet. But more on that another time.) The GSD, above all, favors one type of food: the food that you did not have to pay for. This phenomenon has been noted before; Jorge Cham, in his fabulous comic PhD Comics (Piled Higher and Deeper), has made plenty of note of the grad student drive to find free food. But it bears repeating here, especially since I believe I have at least a few readers who may be unfamiliar with the GSD. The GSD works, in a rather wonderful way, to foster co-operation and community among fellow grad students. I will give you free food now, goes the tacit agreement, and you will then give me free food at some later date. Potlucks, BYO-whatevers, and similar get-togethers all help us feed ourselves and each other at (hopefully) minimal cost.
"Can you get by in Santa Barbara," a prospective student asked yesterday, "on the TA-ship/fellowship you get as a grad student at UCSB?" I'd say the answer is Yes, so long as you have a good community to support your new GSD lifestyle, and so long as you can fully commit to being what I think I'll start calling Freetarian.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Holy Flypaper, Batman! It's a new post!
I am aware that it has been more than six weeks since my last blog post. I feel shameful about it, but I have some pretty good excuses. For one, I caught the nastiest flu bug ever in the middle of February, right before an exciting Medieval Studies conference hosted here at UCSB, which was, in turn, right before a visit from my wonderful mother, all of which took me out of the blogosphere for all of...umm...about a week. Okay, so maybe that's not enough to explain away my six-week absence. Really, all I can offer in the way of explanation is that I had a Tough Quarter.
When I say I had a Tough Quarter, I don't mean I had a super-busy, stressful quarter. In fact, it was closer to the opposite. I took two seminars, one of which was closer to a language class than a literature seminar; for some people, that would probably mean more work and headaches, since we had to do obnoxious things like memorize how many different classes of Old English strong verbs there are, and what they are. (The answer, by the way, is Too Many.) We also had lots of translations, also tough for a lot of people. As I've mentioned before, however, I minored in Latin in undergrad, which means I have a pretty good grasp already of how to translate inflected languages, and translations come fairly easily to me. So, in other words, while I had two seminars full of reading, plus French class in the fall quarter, this past quarter I really only had one seminar, with an average amount of reading, and translations. Which left me with a lot of time on my hands.
Had I been responsible, I could have put that time towards reviewing my Latin in preparation for the language exam; or volunteering somewhere; or going to the gym three days a week. However, I have a propensity towards procrastination and laziness, so I spent the majority of that time bumming around on the internet and cuddling with my cat while watching TV, all of which led to a mind wide open for such existential crises as "Is this really what I should be doing?" "Do I have any idea what I'm doing here?" "Do all of my colleagues know what they're doing, when I don't?" and "Maybe I should just move back to the Bay Area and attend baking school."
The good news is that, by the end of the quarter, I was able to pull myself out of the dungeon of those terrifying thoughts. I do know what I'm doing here, I am not categorically behind all of my colleagues, this is really what I should be doing, and baking should definitely remain simply my hobby. The introspection this quarter was painful at times, but it really did help me get closer to understanding more fully what I really am doing here. Every time I forced myself to actually answer one of those questions, instead of flailing and shoving my head under the pillow, I learned something new about what I'm interested in that I'd never "thought out loud," as it were, before. Now, at the end of this tough quarter, I have a greater sense of what specific goals and interests I have, not to mention a much better idea of how to use any excess of free time I find myself with (ie, Get Out Of The House).
Winter Quarter is nearly done; I've turned in my paper, and my final is tomorrow evening. Thursday, I'm headed back up to the Yay Area to spend a week with some of my nearest and dearest, and then I get to bring one of those dear ones back to SB with me for the last four days of Spring Break! Next quarter looks exciting and busy from where I'm sitting, which is good news, but the even better news is that now I know how to cope with the moments when it's not.
When I say I had a Tough Quarter, I don't mean I had a super-busy, stressful quarter. In fact, it was closer to the opposite. I took two seminars, one of which was closer to a language class than a literature seminar; for some people, that would probably mean more work and headaches, since we had to do obnoxious things like memorize how many different classes of Old English strong verbs there are, and what they are. (The answer, by the way, is Too Many.) We also had lots of translations, also tough for a lot of people. As I've mentioned before, however, I minored in Latin in undergrad, which means I have a pretty good grasp already of how to translate inflected languages, and translations come fairly easily to me. So, in other words, while I had two seminars full of reading, plus French class in the fall quarter, this past quarter I really only had one seminar, with an average amount of reading, and translations. Which left me with a lot of time on my hands.
Had I been responsible, I could have put that time towards reviewing my Latin in preparation for the language exam; or volunteering somewhere; or going to the gym three days a week. However, I have a propensity towards procrastination and laziness, so I spent the majority of that time bumming around on the internet and cuddling with my cat while watching TV, all of which led to a mind wide open for such existential crises as "Is this really what I should be doing?" "Do I have any idea what I'm doing here?" "Do all of my colleagues know what they're doing, when I don't?" and "Maybe I should just move back to the Bay Area and attend baking school."
The good news is that, by the end of the quarter, I was able to pull myself out of the dungeon of those terrifying thoughts. I do know what I'm doing here, I am not categorically behind all of my colleagues, this is really what I should be doing, and baking should definitely remain simply my hobby. The introspection this quarter was painful at times, but it really did help me get closer to understanding more fully what I really am doing here. Every time I forced myself to actually answer one of those questions, instead of flailing and shoving my head under the pillow, I learned something new about what I'm interested in that I'd never "thought out loud," as it were, before. Now, at the end of this tough quarter, I have a greater sense of what specific goals and interests I have, not to mention a much better idea of how to use any excess of free time I find myself with (ie, Get Out Of The House).
Winter Quarter is nearly done; I've turned in my paper, and my final is tomorrow evening. Thursday, I'm headed back up to the Yay Area to spend a week with some of my nearest and dearest, and then I get to bring one of those dear ones back to SB with me for the last four days of Spring Break! Next quarter looks exciting and busy from where I'm sitting, which is good news, but the even better news is that now I know how to cope with the moments when it's not.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Car Crash Dreams and Existential Crises
A promise: Although it doesn't start out that way, this blog post has a happy ending. I swear.
About a month or so ago, I started having particularly vivid dreams of being behind the wheel of my car, realizing too late that I was going far too fast, unintentionally zooming through red lights and making wildly too-wide turns. In each of these dreams, I would have a moment in which I would think to myself, "Wow. I've been having all those dreams about losing control of the car, but now it's actually happening." And each morning, I'd wake up and find myself wondering if the crazy loss of vehicular control had been a dream or a fuzzy memory from the day before. (But given that I haven't found any new dents on my car or had my license taken away and ripped up, I think I'm safe in assuming that these have just been dreams.)
A few weeks ago, I talked about these dreams to a member of my family who makes a living helping people figure out what's going on inside their heads. "I've read that 'losing control of the car' dreams can mean the dreamer feels like he or she is out of control in waking life," I said, "but I just don't feel that way. Is there something else these dreams could be about?" And like any responsible head shrinker, my family member offered a few explanations, gauging my reaction, until we both caught the one that made things click into place for me: "Sometimes dreams like that can mean that everything's going so well in your life, a part of you is ready for the other shoe to drop and for the world to come crumbling down."
Oh. Well, yeah. I mean, as anyone who's been within 10 yards of me in the past four and a half months knows, I've been raving non-stop about how wonderful grad school is, and how much I love being here, and how fabulous the people are, and how good a fit the program is for me, and how beautiful Santa Barbara is, etc., etc., etc. I don't have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times I said, "This is the happiest I've ever been" first quarter. So yes, it seems perfectly reasonable to assume that, given how wonderfully things were going, I might be a bit concerned, even subconsciously, that they were/are about to be very not wonderful. So I felt accomplished, having identified the source of my frightening automobile dreams.
But it turns out that expecting a downturn isn't always a good idea. Because in my anticipation that things were about to get nasty, the existential crisis (I know, how cliche can I get?) hit me. And it went a little like this: Wait a minute. Why do I feel like I'm the only one in this department who doesn't already have a favorite theorist whom I can quote at will? Why haven't I done more reading in my field? Why didn't I go to that huge conference, the biggest conference in my profession? Why don't I get that joke the professor just made? Why can't I understand this heavily theoretical reading? How can I possibly memorize all of the pronouns in Old English? And then, the big one: Is this really what I should be doing?
And so it went for a few days, along with the requisite sleepless nights, headaches, and, of course, additional dreams of losing control of my trusty old Volvo Alice. And then I made a comment about a part of a reading that a classmate hadn't understood quite as well as I had. And then I learned that some of my friends who are the best at theory hadn't read some of my favorite works of literature. And then I remembered how easily translation comes to me, and how much I appreciated the quirks of literature in my field, and by the end of the week, when I found myself giggling like a middle schooler with one of my classmates over Old English vocabulary (did you know that Old English had at least ten different, very specific verbs for how to kill someone? and that they all start with "of-"?), I remembered something my mother used to say: Everyone gets something, but no-one gets everything. No, I don't have a theorist I can pull out of my back pocket yet. But I'm a first year grad student, and that's okay. And no, I haven't read all of the literature in my field yet. Of course, if I had, grad school would seem rather redundant and a waste of time, no? But I can translate like a ... well, like something that translates really well, and the literature I have read I know really well, and the rest....well, the rest will come later.
So, thanks to a week spent with my amazingly talented and flawed (this is a compliment, I swear!) colleagues, in which I remembered that no-one has everything yet, existential crisis number one is solved: Is this really what I should be doing? Hells yes it is!
About a month or so ago, I started having particularly vivid dreams of being behind the wheel of my car, realizing too late that I was going far too fast, unintentionally zooming through red lights and making wildly too-wide turns. In each of these dreams, I would have a moment in which I would think to myself, "Wow. I've been having all those dreams about losing control of the car, but now it's actually happening." And each morning, I'd wake up and find myself wondering if the crazy loss of vehicular control had been a dream or a fuzzy memory from the day before. (But given that I haven't found any new dents on my car or had my license taken away and ripped up, I think I'm safe in assuming that these have just been dreams.)
A few weeks ago, I talked about these dreams to a member of my family who makes a living helping people figure out what's going on inside their heads. "I've read that 'losing control of the car' dreams can mean the dreamer feels like he or she is out of control in waking life," I said, "but I just don't feel that way. Is there something else these dreams could be about?" And like any responsible head shrinker, my family member offered a few explanations, gauging my reaction, until we both caught the one that made things click into place for me: "Sometimes dreams like that can mean that everything's going so well in your life, a part of you is ready for the other shoe to drop and for the world to come crumbling down."
Oh. Well, yeah. I mean, as anyone who's been within 10 yards of me in the past four and a half months knows, I've been raving non-stop about how wonderful grad school is, and how much I love being here, and how fabulous the people are, and how good a fit the program is for me, and how beautiful Santa Barbara is, etc., etc., etc. I don't have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times I said, "This is the happiest I've ever been" first quarter. So yes, it seems perfectly reasonable to assume that, given how wonderfully things were going, I might be a bit concerned, even subconsciously, that they were/are about to be very not wonderful. So I felt accomplished, having identified the source of my frightening automobile dreams.
But it turns out that expecting a downturn isn't always a good idea. Because in my anticipation that things were about to get nasty, the existential crisis (I know, how cliche can I get?) hit me. And it went a little like this: Wait a minute. Why do I feel like I'm the only one in this department who doesn't already have a favorite theorist whom I can quote at will? Why haven't I done more reading in my field? Why didn't I go to that huge conference, the biggest conference in my profession? Why don't I get that joke the professor just made? Why can't I understand this heavily theoretical reading? How can I possibly memorize all of the pronouns in Old English? And then, the big one: Is this really what I should be doing?
And so it went for a few days, along with the requisite sleepless nights, headaches, and, of course, additional dreams of losing control of my trusty old Volvo Alice. And then I made a comment about a part of a reading that a classmate hadn't understood quite as well as I had. And then I learned that some of my friends who are the best at theory hadn't read some of my favorite works of literature. And then I remembered how easily translation comes to me, and how much I appreciated the quirks of literature in my field, and by the end of the week, when I found myself giggling like a middle schooler with one of my classmates over Old English vocabulary (did you know that Old English had at least ten different, very specific verbs for how to kill someone? and that they all start with "of-"?), I remembered something my mother used to say: Everyone gets something, but no-one gets everything. No, I don't have a theorist I can pull out of my back pocket yet. But I'm a first year grad student, and that's okay. And no, I haven't read all of the literature in my field yet. Of course, if I had, grad school would seem rather redundant and a waste of time, no? But I can translate like a ... well, like something that translates really well, and the literature I have read I know really well, and the rest....well, the rest will come later.
So, thanks to a week spent with my amazingly talented and flawed (this is a compliment, I swear!) colleagues, in which I remembered that no-one has everything yet, existential crisis number one is solved: Is this really what I should be doing? Hells yes it is!
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Babies Getting Married
Welcome to 2011, dear readers, and my second quarter of grad school! This quarter seems to be more relaxed than last quarter (knock wood!), which is nice, since I know that next quarter I'll be taking more classes, and from there the stress level will only go up. I have an amazing schedule (I only have class Monday and Wednesday which means, due to this weekend's holiday, that I'm in the middle of a glorious six day weekend!) and a relatively light reading load, which means I can really go in depth into those readings I do have, and take the time to refresh my Latin, which I minored in in college but haven't looked at since May 2009, in hopes of taking my language exam in the spring. At least that's my plan.
Since it's only week two of the quarter and I don't have too much exciting on the school front to discuss yet, I thought I'd talk about something only tangentially related to grad school and career: Babies Getting Married.
Now, when I talk about Babies Getting Married, I'm not referring to actual infants undergoing nuptial ceremonies. I am, however, talking about people my age (I'm less than a quarter century old) tying the knot. I have attended two weddings of my peers and dear, dear friends in the last seven months alone, and I know of several other friends, acquaintances, and former classmates who are engaged or married. All of this has been a little overwhelming for me and my other as-yet-unmarried friends, and one of them coined the term, as she mentioned to me at the last wedding we attended (her second in less than two weeks!) that "Babies need to stop getting married!"
It's not that I have a particular reason for not wanting my friends to get married. In fact, I'm not stressed out or unhappy about any one particular of my friends' marriages. All of my married or engaged friends are wonderful people, and they joy I've been a part of at the weddings I have attended has brought even cynical me to tears. I have no doubts that these marriages will last; they're all unions of adults who made the wonderful decision to commit to sharing their lives with each other. But did you catch the word in the last sentence that has me freaked out about this whole situation? I'll give you a hint: it starts with "a."
What terrifies me about the idea of my friends and other peers getting married is that all of a sudden I'm realizing that people my age are adults. And if they're my age, and they're adults, well...that means I'm an adult. And I'm not sure how to deal with that. Certainly, I've been carrying out adult responsibilities (taking care of a pet, working a job, paying my own rent and bills, cleaning my own dishes, etc.) and enjoying adult privileges (these need not be listed here) for quite some time. But the enormity of the idea of being a full-fledged adult - picking a partner, settling into a career, starting a family, picking the path that the rest of my life is going to follow - is still frightening. And so long as these weddings keep making me face that looming adulthood, I'll keep (loving them and dabbing at my eyes and wishing so many congratulations and good thoughts to my lucky friends but also) making slightly snarky comments about too many Babies Getting Married.
Since it's only week two of the quarter and I don't have too much exciting on the school front to discuss yet, I thought I'd talk about something only tangentially related to grad school and career: Babies Getting Married.
Now, when I talk about Babies Getting Married, I'm not referring to actual infants undergoing nuptial ceremonies. I am, however, talking about people my age (I'm less than a quarter century old) tying the knot. I have attended two weddings of my peers and dear, dear friends in the last seven months alone, and I know of several other friends, acquaintances, and former classmates who are engaged or married. All of this has been a little overwhelming for me and my other as-yet-unmarried friends, and one of them coined the term, as she mentioned to me at the last wedding we attended (her second in less than two weeks!) that "Babies need to stop getting married!"
It's not that I have a particular reason for not wanting my friends to get married. In fact, I'm not stressed out or unhappy about any one particular of my friends' marriages. All of my married or engaged friends are wonderful people, and they joy I've been a part of at the weddings I have attended has brought even cynical me to tears. I have no doubts that these marriages will last; they're all unions of adults who made the wonderful decision to commit to sharing their lives with each other. But did you catch the word in the last sentence that has me freaked out about this whole situation? I'll give you a hint: it starts with "a."
What terrifies me about the idea of my friends and other peers getting married is that all of a sudden I'm realizing that people my age are adults. And if they're my age, and they're adults, well...that means I'm an adult. And I'm not sure how to deal with that. Certainly, I've been carrying out adult responsibilities (taking care of a pet, working a job, paying my own rent and bills, cleaning my own dishes, etc.) and enjoying adult privileges (these need not be listed here) for quite some time. But the enormity of the idea of being a full-fledged adult - picking a partner, settling into a career, starting a family, picking the path that the rest of my life is going to follow - is still frightening. And so long as these weddings keep making me face that looming adulthood, I'll keep (loving them and dabbing at my eyes and wishing so many congratulations and good thoughts to my lucky friends but also) making slightly snarky comments about too many Babies Getting Married.
Friday, December 31, 2010
What Rachel Read in 2010
Back when I used my LiveJournal, I used to post, at the end of the year, a list of all the books I'd read (for pleasure, and for the first time) over the course of the year, with brief summaries/reviews. This, I feel, is a tradition that should translate very well to the form and content of this blog, so, without further ado:
Beloved, Toni Morrison (275 pp.). Oh wow. Haunting, beautiful, moving. I read it almost exactly I year ago so I can't recall much more details, but definitely an outstanding book I could see myself re-reading (not something I do with that many books).
Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison (309 pp.). So hard to read (especially that one climactic scene, which anyone who has read the book will remember with horror and a vague sense of nausea, I'm sure) but so incredibly exciting and relatable and well-written.
Lord of Chaos, A Crown of Swords, The Path of Daggers, Winter's Heart, and Crossroads of Twilight, Robert Jordan (986, 856, 672, 766, and 823 pp., respectively). Those who used to read my old reading lists on LJ will recognize that these are books six through ten of an epic fantasy series (The Wheel of Time) that I started reading in 2008 at the recommendation of a friend. There are three more out that are already published, and a final, fourteenth one planned for release early in 2012. I honestly don't remember much of the first three I read this year, but I know that these middle books feel a bit like the lackluster middle seasons of that great TV show you've loved forever: it's been fabulous before, you have faith that it will be fabulous again, you still love the characters, and, most importantly, you've been with it so long, you just want to see what happens in the end (Season 9 of "Friends," anyone?).
Insecure at Last, Eve Ensler (200 pp.). Borrowed from a friend, this book was fascinating. Eve Ensler is, of course, the playwright responsible for "The Vagina Monologues," and this book dealt with some of the women's issues Eve is best known for, as well as exploring our culture's deep aversion to insecurity or discomfort. Wonderful read.
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (372 pp.). Another loan from a friend (I have pretty awesome friends, don't I?), this was very well done. Once you get past the rather graphic depiction in the first few chapters of the sexual assault and murder of a young girl, the novel becomes a painful, moving account of a family trying to move on. Very well-executed; not an easy or fun book, obviously (the plot makes that difficult) but a worthwhile, enjoyable read.
The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson (350 pp.). I love Bill Bryson. Very, very much. The man is hilarious, insightful, and so appreciative (and therefore communicative) of all the small details surrounding him. He is, of course, best known for his travel books, of which this was one, as he traveled across much of America experiencing small towns. He almost lost my adoration when he declared that he finds the redwood, my state tree and also my favorite tree, to be "an ugly tree," but I decided to forgive him, as, after all, he comes from Iowa ("someone had to," he says).
The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison (160 pp.). Not quite as engaging as Beloved, but moving and mysterious and beautiful and gut-wrenching.
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley (257 pp.). Although they're often lumped together, this book struck me as different and much more frightening than 1984. Orwell's dystopia is a world created by a controlling government and the population that doesn't fight it, but Huxley's is much more a world created by its mindless, apathetic (quite literally unfeeling) populace itself. The fact that this world comes from the inside out, from a populace so invested in wanting to avoid pain at all costs, something that sounds all to familiar, made it that much more frightening.
The Gun Seller, Hugh Laurie (340 pp.). Yes, a book by the guy who plays House. This was hilarious and engaging and a delightful send-up of spy novels. The plot got a little bit confusing for me around the middle or so (how many times can someone be a double/triple/quadruple agent before he himself forgets who he's really working for? [I felt the same way about Snape, btw]), but it didn't detract from being a rollicking good read. I recommend it as a vacation book, or for anyone who wants to read something that will make you feel like you're on vacation.
Troilus and Criseyde, Geoffrey Chaucer (427 pp.). Yeah, that's right. I'm that medievalist who got so bored of reading popular novels in the year between college and grad school that she read Chaucer for fun. You wanna make something of it?
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Gregory Maguire (368 pp.). Gregory Maguire, like Bill Bryson and a few others, is an author I would probably follow to the end of the earth. Luckily, he's never lead me over the edge, and this book too - with a provocative, Dutch retelling of the Cinderella story - was a joy to read.
Paradise, Toni Morrison (318 pp.). More confusing than the other two Morrison books I read this year, slightly less provocative, more plot-driven, not quite as engaging, but definitely pleasurable.
An Acceptable Risk, Robin Cook (404 pp.). Back in May, I drove my then-roommate to a gig in San Jose, performing interviews in the lobby of a hotel. Like a lot of lobbies, this one had books in it left behind by previous visitors, and I picked this one up when I saw that it was a medical thriller involving the Salem Witch Trials. It turned out to be an engaging, but not particularly brilliant book dealing with a specific wheat mold responsible for the plagued girls in the 17th century, and some bizarrely cannibalistic scientists in the 20th. Good summer read.
Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy (408 pp.). Let me begin by saying that Thomas Hardy is one of my favorite authors ever. That being said, I probably was less horrified and traumatized by this book than others might be, just because I'm familiar with Hardy and sort of knew what to expect. As depressing as the book is, it's so fantastically rich with emotion and physical detail that the heart-break it causes is definitely bittersweet.
Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis (251 pp.). My dad bought this for me to read while we were camping, and I loved it. The portrayal of life as a history lecturer at a "red-brick university" in mid-century England was hilarious and not too far removed from the world of humanities academia here and now.
Heart of the Matter, Emily Giffin (368 pp.). I went to visit my grandparents this summer, and this was in my grandmother's stack of books to read. I was putting off reading my heavy Victorian novel (see below) so I picked it up. It was an over-the-top soap opera of a book, but it must have had some merit, otherwise I would have stopped reading it. Can't seem to remember what that merit was, though.
Daniel Deronda, George Eliot (883 pp.). If I could marry a Victorian novel, it would probably be this one. Brooding, thoughtful, magnanimous hero? Check. Flawed, but human slightly-less-significant-heroine? Check. Exploration of a culture never usually talked about in this time period (the Jews)? Check. Love, love, love.
Bloodhound, Tamora Pierce (534 pp.). I think there's only one book of Tammy's that I haven't read since I started reading her books when I was eleven, and that was because it was a spin-off for a character I wasn't that interested in. She may still be writing for an age demographic that I left behind about a decade ago (OMGWTFBBQ how am I so old?!) but her strong, funny female leads always make me smile.
Finding Oz, Evan I Schwartz (315 pp.). This was a fantastic biography of L. Frank Baum, the man behind the book that inspired my favorite movie of all time. Schwartz did a fantastic job of suggesting (rather than imposing, as some others have done) links between Baum's life and his writing, and I learned a great deal about the man and his family (for instance, his mother-in-law was one of the most well-known, radical feminists/suffragettes of the time).
Nicholas Nickleby, Charles Dickens (796 pp.). Again, so much love. Love love love love love. Funny, sweet, all in all one of the most pleasurable books I read all year (and probably the most famous and well-written of them!).
The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins (374, 391, 390 pp.). After Harry Potter wrapped a few years ago, there was an empty slot in the world for really well-written, engaging, frightening, not-at-all-dumbed-down science fiction/fantasy for young adults. And then these books came along to fill that slot. Brava, Suzanne Collins, and brava, Katniss Everdeen.
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (179 pp.). I know - how had I never read this before? I'm not sure, but somehow I hadn't, so I did this year, and I'm glad. I found the second half to be somewhat disjointed from the first, but Bradbury (whose Martian Chronicles I re-read and re-fell in love with while camping with my dad this summer) didn't let me down.
A Wizard of Mars, Diane Duane (550 pp.). Like Tamora Pierce, I've been reading Diane Duane's books for just over a decade now (though Duane is less prolific). Again, I'm outside of the target age range, but I still love Nita and Kit and Dairine and I still love the way Duane has crafted magic as a form of quantum physics, as her teenage wizards deal with things like entropy and the maintenance of energy.
The Mermaid Chair, Sue Monk Kidd (368 pp.). This was the first book I read on my new Kindle (thanks Dad!), based on the recommendation of a friend. I enjoyed it and found it to be well-written, but not as delightful or engaging as The Secret Life of Bees, Kidd's debut novel.
The Wizard Heir, Cinda Williams Chima (480 pp.). I'd heard this young adult novel (part of a trilogy) was a fun fantasy read. I mistakenly started with the second instead of the first book of the series, and whether because of that mistake or just because of the way it's written, I found it totally uncompelling.
I Am Number Four, Pittacus Lore (448 pp.). This young adult science fiction, however, the last book I finished this year, was utterly compelling and engaging. I might even go see the movie starring my beloved Dianna Agron, and I'll probably read the sequel when it comes out.
(So, 32 books and 14,620 pages. Damned good year for reading, I'd say.)
Then, of course, there is the story of The Book I Stopped Reading. This was a big deal for me when it happened last week, because I almost never hate a book so much I don't finish it. But this book, First Stringers by Gerald Weinberg, which I got for free (thank goodness) off of LibraryThing's Early Reviewer list, was so poorly written and edited that I decided watching paint dry, streaming seven episodes in a row of "Veronica Mars," and moving on to a better book (just started Everything Is Illuminated) was a much better use of my time.
I hope you're all (if there are any of you, that is) enjoying the end of this turbulent year and ringing in the new one in flawless style. Bring it on, 2011!
Beloved, Toni Morrison (275 pp.). Oh wow. Haunting, beautiful, moving. I read it almost exactly I year ago so I can't recall much more details, but definitely an outstanding book I could see myself re-reading (not something I do with that many books).
Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison (309 pp.). So hard to read (especially that one climactic scene, which anyone who has read the book will remember with horror and a vague sense of nausea, I'm sure) but so incredibly exciting and relatable and well-written.
Lord of Chaos, A Crown of Swords, The Path of Daggers, Winter's Heart, and Crossroads of Twilight, Robert Jordan (986, 856, 672, 766, and 823 pp., respectively). Those who used to read my old reading lists on LJ will recognize that these are books six through ten of an epic fantasy series (The Wheel of Time) that I started reading in 2008 at the recommendation of a friend. There are three more out that are already published, and a final, fourteenth one planned for release early in 2012. I honestly don't remember much of the first three I read this year, but I know that these middle books feel a bit like the lackluster middle seasons of that great TV show you've loved forever: it's been fabulous before, you have faith that it will be fabulous again, you still love the characters, and, most importantly, you've been with it so long, you just want to see what happens in the end (Season 9 of "Friends," anyone?).
Insecure at Last, Eve Ensler (200 pp.). Borrowed from a friend, this book was fascinating. Eve Ensler is, of course, the playwright responsible for "The Vagina Monologues," and this book dealt with some of the women's issues Eve is best known for, as well as exploring our culture's deep aversion to insecurity or discomfort. Wonderful read.
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (372 pp.). Another loan from a friend (I have pretty awesome friends, don't I?), this was very well done. Once you get past the rather graphic depiction in the first few chapters of the sexual assault and murder of a young girl, the novel becomes a painful, moving account of a family trying to move on. Very well-executed; not an easy or fun book, obviously (the plot makes that difficult) but a worthwhile, enjoyable read.
The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson (350 pp.). I love Bill Bryson. Very, very much. The man is hilarious, insightful, and so appreciative (and therefore communicative) of all the small details surrounding him. He is, of course, best known for his travel books, of which this was one, as he traveled across much of America experiencing small towns. He almost lost my adoration when he declared that he finds the redwood, my state tree and also my favorite tree, to be "an ugly tree," but I decided to forgive him, as, after all, he comes from Iowa ("someone had to," he says).
The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison (160 pp.). Not quite as engaging as Beloved, but moving and mysterious and beautiful and gut-wrenching.
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley (257 pp.). Although they're often lumped together, this book struck me as different and much more frightening than 1984. Orwell's dystopia is a world created by a controlling government and the population that doesn't fight it, but Huxley's is much more a world created by its mindless, apathetic (quite literally unfeeling) populace itself. The fact that this world comes from the inside out, from a populace so invested in wanting to avoid pain at all costs, something that sounds all to familiar, made it that much more frightening.
The Gun Seller, Hugh Laurie (340 pp.). Yes, a book by the guy who plays House. This was hilarious and engaging and a delightful send-up of spy novels. The plot got a little bit confusing for me around the middle or so (how many times can someone be a double/triple/quadruple agent before he himself forgets who he's really working for? [I felt the same way about Snape, btw]), but it didn't detract from being a rollicking good read. I recommend it as a vacation book, or for anyone who wants to read something that will make you feel like you're on vacation.
Troilus and Criseyde, Geoffrey Chaucer (427 pp.). Yeah, that's right. I'm that medievalist who got so bored of reading popular novels in the year between college and grad school that she read Chaucer for fun. You wanna make something of it?
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Gregory Maguire (368 pp.). Gregory Maguire, like Bill Bryson and a few others, is an author I would probably follow to the end of the earth. Luckily, he's never lead me over the edge, and this book too - with a provocative, Dutch retelling of the Cinderella story - was a joy to read.
Paradise, Toni Morrison (318 pp.). More confusing than the other two Morrison books I read this year, slightly less provocative, more plot-driven, not quite as engaging, but definitely pleasurable.
An Acceptable Risk, Robin Cook (404 pp.). Back in May, I drove my then-roommate to a gig in San Jose, performing interviews in the lobby of a hotel. Like a lot of lobbies, this one had books in it left behind by previous visitors, and I picked this one up when I saw that it was a medical thriller involving the Salem Witch Trials. It turned out to be an engaging, but not particularly brilliant book dealing with a specific wheat mold responsible for the plagued girls in the 17th century, and some bizarrely cannibalistic scientists in the 20th. Good summer read.
Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy (408 pp.). Let me begin by saying that Thomas Hardy is one of my favorite authors ever. That being said, I probably was less horrified and traumatized by this book than others might be, just because I'm familiar with Hardy and sort of knew what to expect. As depressing as the book is, it's so fantastically rich with emotion and physical detail that the heart-break it causes is definitely bittersweet.
Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis (251 pp.). My dad bought this for me to read while we were camping, and I loved it. The portrayal of life as a history lecturer at a "red-brick university" in mid-century England was hilarious and not too far removed from the world of humanities academia here and now.
Heart of the Matter, Emily Giffin (368 pp.). I went to visit my grandparents this summer, and this was in my grandmother's stack of books to read. I was putting off reading my heavy Victorian novel (see below) so I picked it up. It was an over-the-top soap opera of a book, but it must have had some merit, otherwise I would have stopped reading it. Can't seem to remember what that merit was, though.
Daniel Deronda, George Eliot (883 pp.). If I could marry a Victorian novel, it would probably be this one. Brooding, thoughtful, magnanimous hero? Check. Flawed, but human slightly-less-significant-heroine? Check. Exploration of a culture never usually talked about in this time period (the Jews)? Check. Love, love, love.
Bloodhound, Tamora Pierce (534 pp.). I think there's only one book of Tammy's that I haven't read since I started reading her books when I was eleven, and that was because it was a spin-off for a character I wasn't that interested in. She may still be writing for an age demographic that I left behind about a decade ago (OMGWTFBBQ how am I so old?!) but her strong, funny female leads always make me smile.
Finding Oz, Evan I Schwartz (315 pp.). This was a fantastic biography of L. Frank Baum, the man behind the book that inspired my favorite movie of all time. Schwartz did a fantastic job of suggesting (rather than imposing, as some others have done) links between Baum's life and his writing, and I learned a great deal about the man and his family (for instance, his mother-in-law was one of the most well-known, radical feminists/suffragettes of the time).
Nicholas Nickleby, Charles Dickens (796 pp.). Again, so much love. Love love love love love. Funny, sweet, all in all one of the most pleasurable books I read all year (and probably the most famous and well-written of them!).
The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins (374, 391, 390 pp.). After Harry Potter wrapped a few years ago, there was an empty slot in the world for really well-written, engaging, frightening, not-at-all-dumbed-down science fiction/fantasy for young adults. And then these books came along to fill that slot. Brava, Suzanne Collins, and brava, Katniss Everdeen.
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (179 pp.). I know - how had I never read this before? I'm not sure, but somehow I hadn't, so I did this year, and I'm glad. I found the second half to be somewhat disjointed from the first, but Bradbury (whose Martian Chronicles I re-read and re-fell in love with while camping with my dad this summer) didn't let me down.
A Wizard of Mars, Diane Duane (550 pp.). Like Tamora Pierce, I've been reading Diane Duane's books for just over a decade now (though Duane is less prolific). Again, I'm outside of the target age range, but I still love Nita and Kit and Dairine and I still love the way Duane has crafted magic as a form of quantum physics, as her teenage wizards deal with things like entropy and the maintenance of energy.
The Mermaid Chair, Sue Monk Kidd (368 pp.). This was the first book I read on my new Kindle (thanks Dad!), based on the recommendation of a friend. I enjoyed it and found it to be well-written, but not as delightful or engaging as The Secret Life of Bees, Kidd's debut novel.
The Wizard Heir, Cinda Williams Chima (480 pp.). I'd heard this young adult novel (part of a trilogy) was a fun fantasy read. I mistakenly started with the second instead of the first book of the series, and whether because of that mistake or just because of the way it's written, I found it totally uncompelling.
I Am Number Four, Pittacus Lore (448 pp.). This young adult science fiction, however, the last book I finished this year, was utterly compelling and engaging. I might even go see the movie starring my beloved Dianna Agron, and I'll probably read the sequel when it comes out.
(So, 32 books and 14,620 pages. Damned good year for reading, I'd say.)
Then, of course, there is the story of The Book I Stopped Reading. This was a big deal for me when it happened last week, because I almost never hate a book so much I don't finish it. But this book, First Stringers by Gerald Weinberg, which I got for free (thank goodness) off of LibraryThing's Early Reviewer list, was so poorly written and edited that I decided watching paint dry, streaming seven episodes in a row of "Veronica Mars," and moving on to a better book (just started Everything Is Illuminated) was a much better use of my time.
I hope you're all (if there are any of you, that is) enjoying the end of this turbulent year and ringing in the new one in flawless style. Bring it on, 2011!
Saturday, December 25, 2010
So this is Christmas, and what have you done?
I am well aware that I am grossly overdue for a blog update. I have quite seriously been meaning to post since I finished my quarter, but that was just over two weeks ago, so vacation has clearly drained me of motivation. But here I am, to offer my readers a happy/merry/enjoyable/tolerable Hanukkah/Christmas/Solstice/Festivus/Kwanzaa/Holiday/whatever it is you celebrate this time of year.
As far as accomplishments go (to answer John and Yoko's question), this whole being done with my first quarter of grad school is rather astounding. I'll admit, for these past few months, I've definitely felt as if, in some way, I wasn't quite a "real" grad student yet: I felt as though I were a probationary grad student, or testing the waters to see if grad school and I were compatible with each other. Now that I've successfully completed an entire quarter, though, I definitely feel like a real grad student - I clearly passed whatever test I was giving myself September through December. As far as my compatibility with my new long-term partner, grad school, I'm fully committed. I may be heading into a dreadfully co-dependent relationship, but oh boy will it be fun and exciting. I have just over a week left of vacation, and although I am enjoying the relaxation and the family and friends, I'm just as excited to be heading back down to Santa Barbara next week to start my second quarter.
I used to do this long, very thoughtful, probing, and sometimes cattiness-inducing end of the year survey on my LiveJournal every year at this time. Looking back over the questions, though, I think I can more effectively summarize 2010 like this: This year, for me and many of my near and dear ones, was a year of upheaval. I was lucky enough that all of my upheaval was for the best: my move to Santa Barbara, my beginning of graduate school (and, consequently, my future career) turned out so very very well. Next year, I hope, will be a bit more stable - I'm aiming for 2011 to be the first year since 2005 without my moving in and/or out of a dorm room or apartment - and (this I know) full of new experiences, new friends, long-time friends and loved ones, and joy. And lots and lots of reading.
Merry, merry, merry, everyone!
As far as accomplishments go (to answer John and Yoko's question), this whole being done with my first quarter of grad school is rather astounding. I'll admit, for these past few months, I've definitely felt as if, in some way, I wasn't quite a "real" grad student yet: I felt as though I were a probationary grad student, or testing the waters to see if grad school and I were compatible with each other. Now that I've successfully completed an entire quarter, though, I definitely feel like a real grad student - I clearly passed whatever test I was giving myself September through December. As far as my compatibility with my new long-term partner, grad school, I'm fully committed. I may be heading into a dreadfully co-dependent relationship, but oh boy will it be fun and exciting. I have just over a week left of vacation, and although I am enjoying the relaxation and the family and friends, I'm just as excited to be heading back down to Santa Barbara next week to start my second quarter.
I used to do this long, very thoughtful, probing, and sometimes cattiness-inducing end of the year survey on my LiveJournal every year at this time. Looking back over the questions, though, I think I can more effectively summarize 2010 like this: This year, for me and many of my near and dear ones, was a year of upheaval. I was lucky enough that all of my upheaval was for the best: my move to Santa Barbara, my beginning of graduate school (and, consequently, my future career) turned out so very very well. Next year, I hope, will be a bit more stable - I'm aiming for 2011 to be the first year since 2005 without my moving in and/or out of a dorm room or apartment - and (this I know) full of new experiences, new friends, long-time friends and loved ones, and joy. And lots and lots of reading.
Merry, merry, merry, everyone!
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Giving Quite a Lot of Thanks
I know I've been grousing for the past week or so - the nasty flu/cold/whatever it was bug that hit me right in the middle of presentation time made me pretty cranky - but now that I'm feeling (mostly) better, I want to re-up (is that an expression? have I just made it an expression?) the mood of the blog with only some of the many many thanks I feel today.
I am thankful for, above all other things in my life right now, the amazing opportunity of being in grad school. This experience is everything I hoped and dreamed it would be, and I am so thankful to be doing it. I am thankful for the wonderful new friends I've made, the brilliant professors I'm working with, and the fascinating books I'm reading and work I'm doing. I'm also thankful to have this amazing experience in one of the world's most beautiful places. The day I moved into my apartment in Santa Barbara, as I was getting suitcases out of my car, I stood in my parking lot and looked at the light the sunset was casting on the mountains just to the east of SB. The color, the air, and the light were all so stunning that I knew I was right where I was supposed to be.
I am thankful for my cat. I know this sounds silly, as she's small and non-verbal and will never read this blog and feel proud to be mentioned, but I am thankful for her small furriness and her cuddles and companionship. I never could have made it through senior year of college without her, and I don't think I'd make it through grad school without her, either.
Speaking of college, I am so thankful for all the wonderful professors I had at my various undergraduate institutions. Without their guidance towards the best authors, the better way to write a paper, and the passion for learning and literature, I wouldn't be in grad school.
I am thankful for my best friends, whether I've known them for nine or four years. (Yeah, you know who you are.) The shoulders to cry on, the smiles to laugh with; the dinner dates, the movie nights, the shopping trips, the phone calls. Everything has kept me sane and happy and looking forward to many more years of friendship.
I am thankful to my family, in particular my parents and grandparents. Without them, I (obviously) literally would not be anywhere, but metaphorically, I wouldn't be where I am. They are my never-ending pep squad, my patrons, my nurses, my chefs, my constructive critics, and my friends.
And, lastly, in true fashion of this blog's "appropriate pretension," as some have called it, I am thankful for my great buddies Chaucer, Shakespeare, Gower, Hardy, Eliot, Dickens, Jonson, et al for leaving me and my colleagues such a wealth of richness to analyze and interpret until our heads explode and our fingers fall off.
I am thankful for, above all other things in my life right now, the amazing opportunity of being in grad school. This experience is everything I hoped and dreamed it would be, and I am so thankful to be doing it. I am thankful for the wonderful new friends I've made, the brilliant professors I'm working with, and the fascinating books I'm reading and work I'm doing. I'm also thankful to have this amazing experience in one of the world's most beautiful places. The day I moved into my apartment in Santa Barbara, as I was getting suitcases out of my car, I stood in my parking lot and looked at the light the sunset was casting on the mountains just to the east of SB. The color, the air, and the light were all so stunning that I knew I was right where I was supposed to be.
I am thankful for my cat. I know this sounds silly, as she's small and non-verbal and will never read this blog and feel proud to be mentioned, but I am thankful for her small furriness and her cuddles and companionship. I never could have made it through senior year of college without her, and I don't think I'd make it through grad school without her, either.
Speaking of college, I am so thankful for all the wonderful professors I had at my various undergraduate institutions. Without their guidance towards the best authors, the better way to write a paper, and the passion for learning and literature, I wouldn't be in grad school.
I am thankful for my best friends, whether I've known them for nine or four years. (Yeah, you know who you are.) The shoulders to cry on, the smiles to laugh with; the dinner dates, the movie nights, the shopping trips, the phone calls. Everything has kept me sane and happy and looking forward to many more years of friendship.
I am thankful to my family, in particular my parents and grandparents. Without them, I (obviously) literally would not be anywhere, but metaphorically, I wouldn't be where I am. They are my never-ending pep squad, my patrons, my nurses, my chefs, my constructive critics, and my friends.
And, lastly, in true fashion of this blog's "appropriate pretension," as some have called it, I am thankful for my great buddies Chaucer, Shakespeare, Gower, Hardy, Eliot, Dickens, Jonson, et al for leaving me and my colleagues such a wealth of richness to analyze and interpret until our heads explode and our fingers fall off.
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