Packing, Moving...Moved!

Hey all! So to hell with taking a while to decide things, I just decided to pack up and move my blog (if only the apartment would be so easy).

Here's the new address:

http://loosebaggymonster.wordpress.com

Let me know what you think! (unless you have something mean to say, and then please keep it to yourself). I'm still tinkering with things, but it's a start. I feel refreshed already!

I've been thinking....which is always dangerous

So....the upcoming apartment move has got me thinking about moving the blog as well to wordpress. It's an idea that I've been toying with for quite some time now (I know, I know, I've only had a blog for six months, how long could I have been thinking about it? But for those who know me, six months is a very long time to think about a decision). Any thoughts? Too much of a pain? I kind of like the idea of a fresh start.

Oh, I am a Nerd

You know you're a nerd when you are giddy with excitement because of this:


Yes, it's the new translation of Tolstoy's War and Peace by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky and it's due to be published on October 16th (they are some of my favorite translators). And I'm going to pre-order it. It's all I could do to restrain myself from jumping up and down and clapping like a giddy idiot. Just another sign that grad school is the place for me!

Time for another challenge

I've noticed that since I wimped out on my previous book challenges, the blog has been tougher for some reason. So what the hell, time to throw all caution to the wind and....join another challenge!!! So here goes, I'm throwing my cap into the ring again:

Unread Authors Challenge
September 2007 through February 2008

Pour of Tor over at Sycorax Pine has come up with this one, and here are the "rules":

1) In this time, read six books by authors you have never read before. If you would like to read more in this time frame, go for it!

2) You are welcome to approach the Challenge in any of several different ways. You can choose one or two (or 3-5) unread authors and read several of their works, or you can choose six neglected (by you) writers and read a book apiece by them. Authors of fiction, non-fiction, genre fiction, graphic novels/comics, drama, and poetry are all welcome inclusions, although the individual works you choose should be book length. I will leave the definition of "book length" to your discretion, but in my mind a full length play or epic poem would certainly count, as would collections of shorter works.

3) Anytime before the start of the Challenge (September 1, 2007), write a blog entry that links back to this post and lists the authors and works you have chosen. You should feel free to change this list as you go along, or list "alternates," as I have below.

One of the reasons I'm interested by this challenge is that all but a few books that I have in mind (on my initial list) come from my very own bookshelves. So here they are (subject to change of course):

1. Naguib Mahfouz: Either Palace Walk or Children of the Alley
2. Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms
3. Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea
4. Amos Oz: Tale of Love and Darkness
5. D.H. Lawrence: Lady Chatterley's Lover
6. Ellen Wood: East Lynne
   

But, because I know I'm terrible at making lists and sticking to them, here is a list of alternates (oh, how I love making lists!):

• Penelope Fitzgerald: either The Bookshop or The Blue Flower
  
• E.M. Forster: A Passage to India, Where Angels Fear to Tread, or Howard's End
  
• Julian Barnes: Flaubert's Parrot or Arthur and George
• W.G. Sebald: Austerlitz
• Saul Bellow: The Adventures of Augie March
• Paula Fox: Desperate Characters
• Katherine Mansfield: Stories
• Thomas Hardy: Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Return of the Native, or Jude the Obscure
• William T. Vollmann: Europe Central
  

Ok, I'm stopping for now because the list could go on and on and on. I'm going to have to stretch before this reading marathon!

Fantastic Friday

I was feeling a bit grumpy after work this morning (what else is new?) so I stopped by my local bookstore on the way home. A trip to the bookstore is always good therapy, despite the fact that it was extraordinarily busy this afternoon with teenagers (no offense against teenagers, but I'm looking forward to the school year when my mid-day perusal of the stacks is not interrupted by "Shut up! He said that?! Oh my God!" every five minutes). After a few minutes walking around I was feeling quite refreshed. However, I've been plagued with a debilitating case of amnesia every time I step through a bookstore's doors. Mere steps from the register, however, my brain began to work again, I remembered what I was interested in and went to retrieve it.

I recently finished Lucasta Miller's The Brontë Myth, a study of the various scholarly examinations and biographies that have been written about the Brontës, beginning with Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë. I'm fascinated by autobiographies and biographies in general, as they often tell us more about the person writing the biography than they do about the subject in question. I came away from Miller's book with the increasingly persistent need to read Gaskell's apparently gossipy, mistaken, and (I suspect) thoroughly fun attempt to write about Charlotte Brontë. So you see, I had to get it, because I need to go straight to the source in order to make up my own mind. It's all about being a good scholar. Have I mentioned that I'm terribly good at rationalizing things? In addition, having read Gaskell's North and South a few months ago, I decided to pick up Wives and Daughters (I was already there, so I might as well, right?).

Unfortunately, the only available edition of Wives and Daughters was a Barnes & Noble Classic, which normally isn't a problem, but this time....well, for whatever reason, B&N decided that it had to have an atrociously pink cover (we're not talking muted shades here--neon is more like it). It bears a disastrous likeness to the costume I wore when I was a youthful ballet dancer performing the "Waltz of the Flowers" in our annual staging of the Nutcracker. An unpleasant combination of neon pink and green, the costume made me look nothing like a flower (particularly as it clashed with my red hair, egads!) but it did traumatize me for years. Pink and I have never truly come to terms with one another since. So--long digression aside--I can truly say that this is one book that did not entice me because of its cover, shallow book-buying person that I am.

In knitting news, I was rather late to the gate when it came to signing up for the Mystery Stole 3 knit-along, so I was ecstatic when I finished clue #1 yesterday. Number 3 came out today, so if I'm a good little knitter I should be able to catch up. However, my yarn's evil plans for taking over all of my time (and space in the living room) might be foiled by the beautiful weather, the need to go to a farmer's market and see wonderful fruits and vegetables, and the mountain of books that are also threatening to do bodily damage to the person unwary enough to walk past the bookcases and teetering piles. Oh yeah, and there is that pesky little problem of needing to pack for the move.

But for now, it's time to spend a little time with my newly-acquired friend Elizabeth Gaskell, even if she is dressed in a shockingly pink frock....

Heh. Damned if you do, damned if you don't....

You're Catch-22!

by Joseph Heller

Incredibly witty and funny, you have a taste for irony in all that you
see. It seems that life has put you in perpetually untenable situations, and your sense
of humor is all that gets you through them. These experiences have also made you an
ardent pacifist, though you present your message with tongue sewn into cheek. You
could coin a phrase that replaces the word "paradox" for millions of
people.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Back from a brief break

Ok, I've decided that my blogging break is over more or less. Unfortunately, not much has been happening to blog about. My parents visited over July 4th which was nice, and this week my mother-in-law is in town (so blogging might be sporadic at best for a bit yet). And after that? Well, having cleaned up the apartment a bit this weekend, we realized that we have some serious cleaning/packing in our immediate future. So what do I do instead? I join the "mystery stole" knitting group online rather than do any sort of activity that might resemble work in the slightest (or reading for that matter). It extends over a roughly 7 week period in which we get a "clue" each week consisting of the next chart. If all goes well, I will have finished a lace stole by the end of the summer! I'm a little shocked at the very idea that I might actually finish something, so I'm not going to hold my breath. I am quite proud of the fact that I have almost finished the first clue, so if I manage to squeeze in some knitting time this week I might be able to catch up with everyone else (I missed the first week and a half more or less). But I was insanely excited to find that I had everything I needed already. I have achieved a level of comfort in my knitting stash when I can pull yarn out on a whim. Hooray!

So my goal this week will be to take some pics to share while hanging out with my mom-in-law, and generally avoiding the boxes that are just waiting to be taped up and filled.

Sadly, I don't have an acquisitions list for this week: our local library is closed on Sundays and after going to an "art in the park" festival in the morning, we missed our chance on Saturday. I feel strangely bereft without my weekly library visit... But there is plenty of reading in my future without a visit. I have to get through some of the books on my TBR list, and I would like to get a start on Dante's Inferno for the Summer Poetry Challenge. Perhaps I'll make a weekly reading goal. It would require another list, which is always great fun and makes me feel like I've accomplished something even when I haven't. But perhaps I'll save that for another post.

library love

Yesterday I had to do a bit of research for a professor of mine, and as I wandered through the stacks on the fifth floor of my university's hideously ugly library, I realized: I feel at home.  I love that feeling.  Like a well-used neural pathway, my trips to the library invariably take me to the  literature section and I find myself just wandering up and down the stacks, not really looking for anything, just taking in the feeling of comfort exuding from the spines of books I will most likely never have time to read.  It's always a good thing when I start to feel territorial about "my section" in the library.  My only question: why are so many libraries on college campuses so ugly?  Why can't they all look more like this:

This was the reading room at my last university.  It was a veritable cathedral of learning.  I loved this room.  And to get there you climbed this:

You could almost feel yourself getting smarter.  Such a beautiful building.

Ahhh, libraries.

Speaking of which, I've mentioned how much I love my little, friendly local public library branch, and today was no exception.  The librarian was actually disappointed that I had no books on hold today!  I broke even today as I returned four and picked up four (not bad).  So here's this week's haul:

• Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (I've had numerous recommendations with this book, so I had to get this one).
• Christine Falls by Benjamin Black (aka John Banville)
• Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
• The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope
• Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters by Linda Hunt Beckman
• The Complete Novels and Selected Writings of Amy Levy edited by Melvyn New
• Israel at Vanity Fair: Jews and Judaism in the Writings of W.M. Thackeray by S.S. Prawer
• Disraeli: The Victorian Dandy Who Became Prime Minister by Christopher Hibbert
• The Victorians by A.N. Wilson
• Nina Balatka by Anthony Trollope
• Vanity Fair by W. M. Thackeray
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (I needed a different edition)
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (again, a different edition)
• The Portrait by Iain Pears (I've wanted to read this one for a while)

That should tide me over for a bit!

can it be? a...book update? (gasp)

I've been in a funk lately, and seriously considering going on a blogging break, but now that the horrible humidity of the past few days is dissipating, things are looking a little better. I don't mind heat (that much, if it's dry heat), but humidity and I don't get along. We never have. I've lived in a humid-summer climate for 24 of my 30 (almost 31) years, and I still don't like it. It wouldn't have been so bad yesterday if I would have been allowed to lounge in my boxers and t-shirt (not a picture I will inflict on the world), but as (un)luck would have it: the person who was going to rent our apartment fell through, news that my landlord told me a mere 20 minutes before he was showing the place to someone else. 20 minutes to throw on jeans and clean up (again). Sigh. I just want my privacy back. I don't like that I have to be constantly waiting for someone to show up to see the place. Perhaps if our landlord would finish the apartment he wouldn't have as much trouble renting the damn place out again. I mean, we have bare bulbs hanging in the bathroom (that's really kind of a hallway, it's strange), no water in the second bathroom, open electrical outlets, you name it. We're not quite sure what the hell he's been doing all year since we moved in (and the first 2 months we lived in one room because the kitchen and bedrooms weren't "finished"). He comes over and starts sawing something (loudly) at 11 at night, but we see no evidence that work is actually being done anywhere in the house. Only one month to go, and luckily, my parents and my mother-in-law are visiting over the next two weeks, so that takes my mind of my annoying landlord.

Ok, rant over. Because it was too hot to think too much or do too much, I actually finished reading two of my library books this week! Both were mysteries (summer reading = mysteries for me), and both were sort of "academic" mysteries, for lack of a better word. The first was the fourth book of Sarah Stewart Taylor's series featuring Sweeney St. George, a professor of art history who specializes in funerary art forms. I quite like this series, and although I had figured out the "whodunit" aspect midway through, I still enjoyed the book. In this volume, Sweeney is in charge of a museum exhibit of funerary art, including Egyptian burial jewelry, Victorian death daguerreotypes, etc. When she attempts to track down a piece of jewelry that she wants to add to the exhibit, it's discovered to be missing, and the last person to examine it was a talented undergraduate studying Egyptian art...20 years ago. Moreover, the student had been present during a museum robbery, and apparently killed herself a few weeks later. Sweeney is intrigued by the young girl's death, and when a murder happens during the opening night of the exhibit, she can't help but think that the two are connected. Sleuthing, relationship trouble, etc. ensues. Overall, I find Sweeney to be an interesting character, hence my interest in finishing the book even though the mystery was not one that I felt was overly difficult to solve. And although the book can take on a "lecturing" tone occasionally, it wasn't enough to bother me. My one gripe? At one point, Sweeney discovers some poetry written by the dead student 20 years ago, and in my opinion, does a piss poor job with close reading. I didn't think the underlying meaning of the poem was that difficult to grasp, but Sweeney, who is an art historian (and, I would expect, capable of reading between the lines when it comes to pieces of art) completely overlooked the blatant message. That aside, it's good summer reading, and a nice counterpoint to the literary criticism I've been reading as well.

I'll save my review on Mark Mills' The Savage Garden for another post (gotta space them out here). For now, it's back to "work."

Weekly book binge

Because Apparent Dip is out of town for another week, I was forced to endure the humiliation of returning an ungodly amount of books to the library all on my own. Usually I take the cowardly approach and have him return them for me. Luckily, the librarian who is usually staffing the desk wasn't there, so there was a bit of anonymity involved. So I felt a bit less guilty as I proceeded to check out 7 more books. Victory is mine however, as I returned 11! So here are this week's acquisitions:

• Still as Death by Sarah Stewart Taylor (an academic mystery series I like)
• The Savage Garden by Mark Mills (another academic mystery I've been intrigued by)
• Generations of Winter by Vassily Aksyonov (described by a distrustful blurb as the 20th century equivalent of War and Peace.  As it is significantly smaller than a door stop, I'll have to see about that.)
• Ragtime in Simla by Barbara Cleverly (another mystery set during the British Raj--I remember being ambivalent about the first one, but we'll see)
• Khrushchev's Cold War by Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali (this is the second time I'm checking it out, so I hope I can actually get to it this time)
• The Ghost Orchid by Carol Goodman (Danielle mentioned Goodman here and I thought I would give her a shot)
• The Seduction of Water by Carol Goodman (see above)
• Dante's Inferno translated by Robert and Jean Hollander (for the Summer Poetry Challenge)
• Paradise Lost by John Milton
• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (I've read everything by Austen except Northanger Abbey but I have a monstrous one-volume collection and I prefer individual volumes so I thought I would pick this one up)
• At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays by Anne Fadiman (I'm a fan of Fadiman and couldn't resist her new essay collection)

I've already finished Still as Death, although reading a murder mystery is perhaps not the wisest tactic for someone who tends to jump at shadows when alone.  Will I ever learn?  Evidently not as I'm on a mystery/thriller kick, evidence that my summer slump has set in.  I had plans, plans, and even more plans for what I would be reading this summer and, well...let's just say I'm not.  Reading that is.  Unless it's a mystery. However, I'm allowing myself to take this little mental vacation until my most recent order of books arrives sometime this week.  I've ordered the novels I'll be reading in one of my fall courses, so I'm going to make a concerted effort to get started on them a bit early.  Particularly as the rest of my summer seems to be increasingly busy and I would like to accomplish something.

Besides, I've found that I often need the break that reading a fun book or two a day can give me.  It gets me back into the swing of things and my mind is more inclined to settle down to a loose baggy Victorian monster.

So bring on the insomnia-inducing mysteries!