(no subject)

This is what happens when I’m bored. 

I discover through the Internet Anagram Server on the “English with obscure words” setting that my first and last names are an anagram for

Redbelly Kettle

(which is much better than my maiden name, which anagrams to Bleakly Burker).

So if I ever need to name a hillbilly or a brewery, I’m set.

On the other hand, anagramming your name is a pretty sad way to kill half an hour.  Clearly I need to start reading a new book.

If you want to kill time too, post your new favorite alias as a comment!

February 11

Apparently Dove dark chocolates thinks I am not a genuine person.  This is what the foil lining told me–

Be free.  Be happy.  Be you.

and–

Feel free to be yourself.

Does this worry anyone else?  Just a little bit?

Other than the sad truth that I am eating chocolate at my desk, there are two ways to tell that I’m very busy at the moment.  One is that my desk has also become my dining table: I have a mug, a cup, a bowl of half-finished soup, two plates, two spoons, and an empty container of yogurt keeping my computer company.

The other way to know I’m busy is that my dining table has not dishes but books on it:  four novels in various stages of being read and six nonfiction reference books for my preface, along with eight to ten photocopied articles, a folder of my homework, and a folder of my grading.

Maybe more chocolates are called for.

June 21

I’ve been reading and writing, and I haven’t gone away yet, though I will, shortly, to Oklahoma for a while.  Until August.  But I’ll still blog.  Maybe.

I’m about ready to give up the Amelia Peabody series, which I’ve been reading for two months, but which has gone drastically downhill.  It’s such a shame!  I enjoyed the hilarity for the first few, but the three most recent have been decidedly lacking in quality.  Maybe I’ll give it one more book.  Because I’m generous like that.  But just in case, do you have any ideas for an alternate default series?  Light, easy, and fun, with plenty of books in the series already, and possibly a mystery?  (Don’t say Agatha Christie.  I’ve already been there.  Twice.)

I’m also working on a guest post for the American Literary Review blog, to which I’ll post a link when it goes up on Wednesday.  It’s about Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth.  It’s a good book, far better than my post about it.

I read somewhere that you should avoid beginning most of your sentences or paragraphs with “I,” because that’s egotistical and, ultimately, uninteresting.

I guess I’m egotistical.  Which I wouldn’t mind, if I could be this guy.

Anton Ego

Dear Graduate School

Dear Graduate School,

I’m afraid that you have been spending too much time perpetuating your own myth.  You laboriously teach me to write pseudo-critical essays rapidly, and then you give me a timed test in which I must write not one but two pseudo-critical essays as a sign that I am a successful graduate student.  But under what circumstances other than graduate school would I ever need to write eleven pages of air in three and a half hours?  (In any case, speed is a preposterous component of composition.)  Nevertheless, I thank you for validating my growing suspicion that my writing skills are becoming honed for nothing more than bowing to your conventions.

Sincerely,

A Casualty of the Cause

Egoizing

I have written thirty thousand (30,000) words since the beginning of the month.

I just thought I’d mention it.

Jane Austen and God

I’m packing to move on Tuesday – the reality has finally set in – and I am not particularly looking forward to moving my thirty-two boxes of books down three flights of stairs and up three flights of stairs.  The occasion to pack, however, has provided me the opportunity to refamiliarize myself with my inventory, to get a sense, if you will, of my own tastes.

I estimate that between my husband and I we’ve got about 10 boxes of fiction, 3 boxes of mass market-sized series, 5 boxes of reference, 1 box of comics and graphic novels, 5 boxes of modern fiction and military history, 4 boxes of ancient history and philosophy, 1 box of Tolkien and Lewis, and assorted others, including the following:

“WRITING REF 2.” This box contains the second half of my collection of books about writing.  A couple of memoirs have sneaked in, C.S. Lewis and Anne Fadiman, and as soon as I unpack, I’m going to read Ray Bradbury’s Zen and the Art of Writing, which I’d completely forgotten I owned.

“QP SFF.” This box contains hardback and trade paperback books of science fiction and fantasy. Authors include Neil Gaiman (whose autograph is hanging above my desk: thanks, Sarah), Orson Scott Card, S.M. Stirling, and Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces, which I also have yet to read.

“UKL & BARD.” This box contains at least twenty books written by Ursula K. Le Guin, including some of her nonfiction, such as The Language of the Night.  It also contains my desk copies of the Shakespeare class that I will be assisting this fall.  I recently read “The Winter’s Tale” for the first time, and enjoyed it very much.

“J.A. & GOD.” This box contains all of my Jane Austen, about whom I wrote my undergraduate thesis, as well as about five Bibles (NIV, KJV, NASB, NLT Bible in 90 Days, etc.).  Did I actually read the Bible in ninety days?  Of course not.  If I recall aright, I caved in Numbers.  I have, however, read Emma at least six times.

And there, folks, is a fair assessment of my interests and values.  Creative writing, science fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and God.

Alarming

Such is my lust for books that I must curb my desires as much as I can: on my Amazon.com Wishlist, I permit myself no more than seventy-five items – that’s three pages’ worth of books I really, really want – and I have reached seventy three (73).

Not to be an alarmist, but someone needs to buy me something. Or else I’ll have to begin making the difficult decisions of which ones to pare off in order to accommodate the new.  But how can I remove, for instance, Wide Sargasso Sea, a novel by Jean Rhys that not only has pretty cover art, but is a literary response to Jane Eyre that was reputedly decades in the making?  Or The Klingon Hamlet (because Shakespeare really was a Klingon: he didn’t even hide his forehead ridges)?  The truth is, I would like to own them both.  As well as Mimesis, and John Updike‘s Rabbit novels, and Longitude by Dava Sobel, and…

This is why I called my list “Miscellanea.”  It reflects the condition of my mind.