April 2010

Here is my deceptively impressive Stuff I’ve Been Reading list. Five of the books were less than two hundred pages long, one was a book we read aloud in the car, two were abandoned at the halfway point, and six were rereads.

Brief Encounters with Che Guevara by Ben Fountain. Ben Fountain did a reading at my school, and he autographed my copy of his very excellent short stories.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I do love Jane Austen and hadn’t read this book since my senior year of college.
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn. This was required for my form and theory class.
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Chera’s recommendation was, as usual, impeccable.
Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers. I reread this mystery for the third time and enjoyed it for the first.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis. We read this in the car in preparation for the film at Christmas.
Portuguese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith. Book 1 about Herr Professor von Igelfeld.
The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs by Alexander McCall Smith. Book 2.
At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances by Alexander McCall Smith. Book 3.
American Gods by Neil Gaiman (40%). Someone had warned me that this book was more than a bit risqué: I should have listened.
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. This was required for my modern British fiction class.
Detective Story by Imre Kertész. This was a little mystery with a nice bit of intertextuality.
Noah’s Compass by Anne Tyler. Unfortunately, Anne Tyler’s newest book is not as dear to me as Digging to America.
Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury’s collection of essays encourages the writer to write what she loves.
Changing Places by David Lodge (50%). Several people told me this book was funny, but several people were wrong.
Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters. Book 1 about Amelia Peabody.
The Curse of the Pharaohs by Elizabeth Peters. Book 2.
The Mummy Case by Elizabeth Peters. Book 3.
Walking on Water by Madeleine L’Engle. L’Engle’s meditation on what it means to be a Christian artist is lovely and intelligent.

Lengthier reviews upon request.

April 28

Yesterday before class, one of my professors said, “Who’s tired?” Everyone in the classroom, including herself, confessed to being so. It’s the very-nearly-end of the semester. A better, more rhetorical question might be, “Who’s not tired?”

Then I gave a presentation. I found myself, reluctantly, the last of four presenters, but the result was that I garnered some uncommonly loud applause–born out of relief, I think. My classmates were pleased not with what I’d said but with the fact that they needn’t listen anymore.

Afterwards, we all repaired to a different building across campus to hear a visiting writer read some of his work. He got loud applause too, but for a better reason than I did. There’s a key difference between class and an optional event: the willingness of the audience to attend.

I will be a captive audience again this evening for the penultimate workshop of the semester. This reminds me that I need to review my story revision, which is due on the last day of class. It will be a relief to be completely done. I am in desperate need of a summer. Why, you ask?

I’m tired.

April 27

1. Paper. I’ve finished a good draft of my Katherine Mansfield paper. It clocks in at 19 pages, which is just right. I’ll be polishing it up this week and turning it in on Monday; but the good news is that the hardest part is done.

2. Presentation. Speaking of doneness, after my 15-minute presentation this evening, I’ll be entirely finished with one of my classes. We have to present a writing craft book, and I chose The Art of Time in Fiction by Joan Silber because it’s only 115 pages. I will type up my little spiel this morning and read it this evening and not have to think about this class ever again, unless I feel like it.

3. Peabody, Amelia. I have become wildly addicted to the Amelia Peabody mystery series by Elizabeth Peters. The books are stupendously funny, which is exactly the kind of thing I want to read at the end of the semester. Amelia Peabody has a burning passion for Egyptology and for cleaning up after thefts and murders. I’m on book three and am delighted that there are nineteen total. Oh, the joys of ‘discovering’ a series that’s been around for three decades. Are there any other funny mysteries I should know about?

4. Premeditated. See how my subheadings alliterate? That’s right. I did that on purpose.

April 24

1. iPhone. I got an iPhone, which I’ll be playing with for the next couple of days, so forgive me while I ignore my blog.

2. Paper. I’ve also got a 15-20 page paper, which I’ll be finishing up in the next couple of days, so forgive me while I ignore my blog.

3. Choose Your Own Adventure. You can decide for yourself which is more likely for me to do first.

April 22

This anecdote is the university variation of “You’d rather ask for forgiveness than permission.” I’ve been assisting a class whose instructor has just taken leave for the rest of the semester, and one student thought she might be able to capitalize on the occasion. The professor had given the students a self-tracking chart for them to mark whether they spoke in class and turned in so many writing assignments.

After class on one of the days when the class was taught by a substitute, several students dropped by to ask me where their papers were and what else was due. Among these was a young woman who asked me, pleasantly, “Since I haven’t been speaking very much in class, I’m kind of worried about my grade. What should I do?”

I answered her, pleasantly, “Start now.” (Her smile wavered.) “Every class period from now until the end, you can raise your hand and talk. Otherwise, you’ll remember what the professor said, that if you speak less, you should write more. So turn in extra or extra-long assignments.” I smiled.

She waited. She realized that was my answer. She left.

This student had apparently waited until she thought it was too late to get ‘class participation’ credit to ask what she could do to avoid class participation. Unfortunately for her, I told her to participate in class. Good thing I’m not the one who will give her that portion of the grade, because she really made me irritated. (I mean, what did she want me to say? “It’s okay, I forgive you”?) I’m afraid this is college, my dear, not daycare. You might be able to avoid most of the work, but not all of it, not all.

April 21

1. Grading Again. Here I sit with a stack of sophomore essays. Some are very good, but most are mediocre. There goes my morning…and my afternoon….and tomorrow morning…

2. Good News. On the other hand, I am all but done with one of my classes this semester. We have finished turning in all ten of our four-page response papers (on every one of which I received an A), and the only thing left is a brief presentation on a writing craft book. And the professor does mean brief. She cut people off who exceeded twenty minutes and told those of us remaining to keep ours to fifteen. Which is fine by me.

3. Tea. I need another cup of tea. It will be a busy day. Grading this morning, go to work on campus, go to the library on campus, come home and more grading, dinner, and class this evening until 9:30. Mm, tea.

4. Oh, Before I Forget. Don’t read Changing Places by David Lodge. Over a period of four years, several reading lists and three separate people whose opinions I formerly valued highly told me that it was hilarious, but it wasn’t–though it might have been if this were still 1975, when it was published. I abandoned it before I even reached halfway.

April 18

Three years ago, I bought twelve extra spoons because I was tired of always running out of them. Since then, to justify my action to the teasing of my friends and family, I have always striven to make the additional spoons feel useful. Here’s a chronicle of my spoon usage today.

Spoon #1. I made my first cup of tea and oatmeal with the same spoon.

Spoon #2. I needed a fresh spoon for my second and, later, third cups of tea throughout the morning.

Spoon #3. For lunch, I had tomato soup, which one usually eats with a spoon.

Spoons #4-5. In the afternoon, I made peanut butter cookies, an activity that required one spoon for getting the peanut butter out of the jar and a second, smaller one for scooping the dough out to roll into balls.

Spoon #6. I stirred a quart of instant lemonade.

Spoon #7. Having misplaced Spoon #2, I needed a fresh spoon for my fourth cup of tea.

So there, you mockers. Tell me that my foresight of three years ago was not justified. I even cleaned them all up after myself.