Category Archives: Memes

Wednesday, November 7, 2007 · 6:28 pm

A Post About Me

Many thanks to Charlotte for tagging me for this meme! I need a topic this evening that won’t tax my brain too much, and this is perfect, although I must say, I have been running words through my head all day, trying to come up with ones that fit. Here are the instructions for the meme:

List one fact, word or tidbit that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your first or middle name. You can theme it to your blog or make it general. Then tag one person for each letter of your name.

So here goes:

D: Dogs. I was not always a lover of dogs; it was getting Muttboy that changed me from a person intimidated by them to one who will approach just about any dog to say hello. Muttboy pretty much runs things in our household; his two daily walks and his meals and his snacks and his little rituals like playing in the backyard with Hobgoblin whenever he takes out the garbage give a structure to our days and weeks. How did we ever get by before we got Muttboy? I have no idea. Life must have been very boring.

O: Outdoors. I have not always been an outdoorsy person either; when I was a kid I liked to hike but didn’t do it that often, and generally I preferred to be indoors reading than outdoors playing in the yard or sunbathing or whatever. This hasn’t changed too terribly much. But upon getting older and having a car and a bit more money at my disposal, I started hiking more and took up backpacking, and, of course, began to ride. Now I try to find a balance; I’m still inclined to linger indoors, but I’ve discovered the magic of the world outdoors too.

R: Reading. What is there to say about this one? I don’t really need a justification for my choice of this word, or a description of how I love it. You already know about that.

O: Online. 10, 15 years ago I would have been shocked to learn that I would end up spending so much time online. If you go back far enough, of course, I wouldn’t know what that meant, spending time online, but even as recently as a couple years ago, I had no idea it would become so important to me. But it has — and for the most part, it’s been a very good thing.

T: Trail. I’m rather obsessed with trails, and especially the Appalachian Trail. I haven’t been on it in quite a few months, and I’m eager to go. There’s something magical about a trail that goes on for hundreds and thousands of miles, a trail you can follow for months and not get to the end of, a trail you can live on and that can sustain a whole community of hikers. I fell in love with the Appalachian Trail when I read an article about it in Reader’s Digest as a kid, and my feelings toward it have never changed. Next summer, I’m going backpacking, if it kills me!

H: Hobgoblin. I have no idea what life without Hobgoblin would be like; I can’t even begin to imagine such a thing. We’ve been married over 9 years now and have known each other for 11 years, exactly 1/3 of my life. That’s a pretty big chunk, isn’t it?!

Y: Yankee. Growing up in western New York state, I didn’t think of myself as a Yankee, tending to think that you had to be from New England to qualify, although I did have an interesting conversation when I was much younger with the family of a friend from the south; one family member asked me where I’m from and upon hearing the answer said, “Oh, you’re a Yankee! I’ve known a few good Yankees ….” Now that I live in Connecticut, I most definitely qualify.

W: Woods. I like my civilization, yes, I do, but I like a little wilderness as well. Don’t coop me up too much, or I’ll be longing for escape. Retreating to my book-lined study is a wonderful solace, but I need time out in the woods, time away from buildings and cars and all the fake plasticky things we surround ourselves with.

I’m not going to tag anybody for this meme, but if you’d like to do it, please do!

12 Comments

Filed under Life, Memes

Tuesday, October 16, 2007 · 5:39 pm

Booker news and a meme

Well, I see that McEwan did not win the Booker after all; Anne Enright did, for her book The Gathering. The NYTimes describes it as “a family epic set in England and Ireland, in which a brother’s suicide prompts 39-year-old Veronica Hegarty to probe her family’s troubled, tangled history.” Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

But what I really wanted to post on is a book meme, one I’ve seen floating around for a while and finally feel the time has come to do my own version of it. So here goes:

How many books do you own? I have no idea, actually. If I were to list them on Library Thing, I guess I’d have a number? But I haven’t ever gotten into that site, and so I just don’t know. Hobgoblin and I together have 3 1/2 full, large bookcases in our living room, I have two large bookcases and one small one in my study, and Hobgoblin two large ones and two small ones in his. Plus I have some stacked on the floor and a few more in my office. How many that adds up to I have no idea. Not that many, probably, compared to what some book bloggers have!

Last book you bought? I mooch books so much, I’ve stopped buying books very often; it’s been a long time since I’ve been in a bookstore — too long, in fact. I need to go soon. Amazon tells me (yes, I had to look it up) that the last book I ordered from them is Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic.

Last book someone bought you? Well, the last book someone gave me is Xiaolu Guo’s A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, which Stefanie gave to me for doing well in a contest. I’m not sure how she got it, but does the actual buying matter for the purposes of the meme? I doubt it. Thank you Stefanie!

Last book read? On Chesil Beach, and before that Moon Tiger, by Penelope Lively, and before that, Waverley, by Walter Scott. But if you follow this blog regularly, you know that already.

Five books that mean a lot to me:

1. Believe it or not, Pamela, by Samuel Richardson. This book matters because it’s largely what got me interested in the 18C, this book and other wonderful novels like Robinson Crusoe and Tristram Shandy and The Female Quixote. But Pamela is the weirdest, most fascinating of a weird and fascinating lot. And it’s epistolary! I love epistolary novels. Although I may love epistolary novels because Pamela made me love them. I’m not sure where it began.

2. The Little House on the Prairie series. I could mention a number of young adult books for this meme, but I’ll stick with these ones. It’s a series that utterly captivated me; I read them over and over and over again, I don’t know how many times. I wanted to be Laura Ingalls so badly! I learned to love reading with these books, and I also learned how to read closely and carefully — I wanted to know as much as I could about her life, so I scoured them looking for every significant detail.

3. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. I’ve read this book several times and each time I’m captivated. I read it first for an undergrad class and enjoyed writing a paper on it so much it confirmed my sense that I should go to graduate school. And I used this essay for my grad school applications. It’s the beauty of Woolf’s writing that draws me to it, but even more so, it’s what she says about women and men and communication and language and art — the combination of all these things — that makes me love it.

4. I’m going to be a bit of a copy-cat and use one of Verbivore’s answers: Montaigne’s essays. I haven’t read them all yet, but I’ve read many, and I hope to read and re-read all of them soon. I studied the essay in college and it was a formative experience — I learned to love the genre, and, of course, Montaigne is the master. He writes so openly and courageously and with such curiosity. I love the wandering, meandering style he has, and the way he uses the essay as a means to discover what he thinks, rather than as a means of presenting a conclusions he’s already thought his way to.

5. I can think of a lot of possibilities for this last book, but I can’t settle on one, so I’ll list a few: The Bible (the book that has shaped my life the most, surely); Philip Lopate’s The Art of the Personal Essay (which deepened my love of the essay genre — a truly fabulous book); Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey (a book important to my dissertation); Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (because you know I can’t do a meme like this without mentioning Austen!); Nicholson Baker’s U & I (a book that taught me to love quirky, unclassifiable nonfiction books); and anything by George Eliot (because the Victorian novel is one of my earliest loves and Eliot is my favorite from the time).

9 Comments

Filed under Books, Links, Memes

Wednesday, October 10, 2007 · 5:34 pm

The Five Writing Strengths Meme

I saw this first over at Charlotte’s, and have enjoyed reading her answers and answers from all the other participants.  I’ve felt ambivalently about calling myself a writer, but I do write, so that’s really the end of that question, isn’t it?

1. I write clearly.  To the extent that I have a natural voice — which if I do I don’t have a strong sense of it — I think it’s a clear and simple one.  I would have to work hard to be complex and difficult.  I think that comes through on my blog, but also in my academic writing.  I was never one for densely theoretical, jargon-laden prose.  I suspect my teachers appreciated this.

2. I love to revise and I do it well.  This isn’t the case with blog writing where I don’t revise at all (I’ll edit, but not revise), but certainly is for the academic writing I do.  I remember getting praise from my professors for being one of the few people willing to revise a paper in a serious way, so much so, at times, that I’d end up arguing the opposite of what I originally thought.  When I get readers’ reports back from journals asking for revisions, I cringe at first, and then dive in, and I end up enjoying myself.  I love seeing how a piece can take on a new form and end up much better than what I started with.

3. I want to keep learning about writing.  I teach writing, but I by no means think I’ve figured it all out.  I like reading books that talk about how words and sentences and paragraphs are put together (as in, for example, Francine Prose’s book Reading Like a Writer, even though that particular book was unsatisfying).  I like noticing how great writers work their magic with words. I like finding new ways to explain things to students.

4. I know my limitations and don’t let them bother me.  I’m completely uninterested in writing fiction or poetry, and I accept that about myself.  Instead of beating myself up for not being able to write the things other people can write, I enjoy what it is I can do.  I’m so glad I discovered blogging because it’s a form that has me writing regularly and that I’ve come to love.  Any writing I’m going to do will be of the nonfiction essayistic sort, which, as that’s a sort of writing I love to read, I’m fine with.

5. I am very good at slow, steady production.  In other words, I’m good at the writing process — I don’t write fast, but I can be steady and methodical and can get things done.  This is how I wrote my dissertation while doing tons of teaching and full-time administrative work.  I wrote a little bit each day and eventually all the little bits added up and I was finished.  This has taught me that I don’t need to be afraid of big projects; if I want to take one on, I have the persistence and endurance to finish it.  I think you can see this trait of mine in my blogging — the daily 500-700 word posts suit me just fine.  I’m nothing if not steady and reliable.

You might note that I’ve said little about my writing itself; it’s hard for me characterize it, and so I’ve focused on the way I go about writing.  But it seems to me that how we go about doing something is sometimes just as important as what it is we produce.

9 Comments

Filed under Memes, Writing

Friday, September 28, 2007 · 5:05 pm

A book meme!

Stefanie tagged me for a meme, and how, on a pleasant Friday evening, can I resist such a thing? You’ll find the source of the meme at Kimbooktu.

  1. Hardcover or paperback, and why? Either one. What I really hate are mass market paperbacks. I’ve read a number of people complaining about trade paperbacks and how expensive they are and how they are just a way to make more money, but I’m willing to pay a bit more for a book that falls open easily and has decent font size and margins.
  2. If I were to own a book shop I would call it… Black Dog Books. Hobgoblin and I have discussed this fantasy a number of times and have it all worked out; of course we’d have to name it after Muttboy who would be a shop fixture, and ideally we’d have an adjoining bike shop called Black Dog Bikes.
  3. My favorite quote from a book (mention the title) is… I don’t have one! I’m not a quotation collector.
  4. The author (alive or dead) I would love to have lunch with would be… Jane Austen. We would sit around, sip tea, and make fun of the other customers.
  5. If I was going to a deserted island and could only bring one book, except for the SAS survival guide, it would be… Probably the collected works of Shakespeare or the Bible. I’d want something rich and long and full of things to think about. That’s a boring answer, I’m afraid, but it’s the truth.
  6. I would love someone to invent a bookish gadget that… would allow me to do a word search in every book I’ve got. You can look up words in books online, of course, but what about when I’m reading a regular book and am desperately trying to find a particular passage?
  7. The smell of an old book reminds me of… Hanging out in libraries, studying and doing research. Or hanging out in used book stores trying to decide what I should buy.
  8. If I could be the lead character in a book (mention the title), it would be… Well, right now (my answer to this would change from day to day) I’d kind of like to be Maisie Dobbs from Jacqueline Winspear’s mystery novels. She’s so intelligent and intuitive both; she understands how people work and she’s expert at getting them to reveal their secrets.
  9. The most overestimated book of all time is… The Da Vinci Code. It strikes me that with so many people living on earth right now, and with a decent percentage of them having read and liked the thing, my claim might well be true.
  10. I hate it when a book… gives away too much of the plot, either on the back cover, the inside jacket, or in the introduction. How could publishing people do this?

I’m tagging whoever would like to do this one!

11 Comments

Filed under Books, Memes

Thursday, July 26, 2007 · 5:08 pm

Why I blog

The “why I blog” meme, which Emily tagged me for, is a good subject to take up tonight because I’ve been feeling uninspired by the blog lately, and I’m hoping that by writing about blogging I can get some inspiration and enthusiasm back. I’m as excited as ever to read everybody else’s posts, but often these days when I sit down to write my own, I find that I have no energy for it. I’m sure this is a passing phase, probably caused by my illness, and I’ll get back into it sooner or later.

But this brings me to one reason I blog, not the most important one, definitely, but a reason nonetheless: I like the discipline of it. I like it that I have a pattern of writing 5 or 6 times a week that I’ve kept up for over a year now, and that I do it even when I don’t particularly feel like it. I like it that people are out there who read me and would notice if I stopped and would wonder what happened to me. And I also like it that when I don’t feel like blogging but I sit down to do it anyway, almost always as I write I start to enjoy myself and by the end of the post, I’ve got more energy than I had when I started. Right now, as a matter of fact, I’m feeling better than I was when I started my first paragraph. Riding my bike works this way too; I’m often reluctant to start, but once I get going, I’m happy I did.

There are also book-related reasons I blog, many of which Litlove described in her own response to the meme. I blog because I want a record of the thoughts in my head and my responses to the books I read. I blog because I want to be a part of the book-blogging community I’ve found. I blog because I want to offer other people my book suggestions just as I get suggestions from so many of them. I want to be a better reader and I hope to become so by writing regularly about what I read. I want to take part in book groups, which get me reading things I wouldn’t otherwise.

There’s another reason I blog, which isn’t so high-minded as the previous ones: I like the attention. I’m thrilled when people read my posts, subscribe to my blog feed, leave comments, link to me, pick up on ideas I’ve written about. In person, I’m not an attention-seeker; in fact, I’ll go out of my way to avoid drawing attention to myself. I’m not a particularly good talker, and I’m dreadful at getting people’s attention in large groups. I talk as a teacher, yes, and lots of people pay attention to me in the classroom, but — and maybe this is why I like teaching — they pay me attention automatically, without my having to work for it. Even as a teacher, though, I tend to deflect attention from myself, trying to get students to discuss and debate, for example, or having them work in groups.

So, all that to say, blogging is a way I can get people to pay attention to me without me having to talk. It’s a wonderful thing, I think, that almost everything that goes on online is written (I will almost certainly never do a podcast). I like having the time to think about things before I post or comment or add something to a discussion board. Discussions happen quickly online, but I still have enough time to ponder and reflect.

Okay — much better now! I’m ready to soldier on.

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Filed under Blogging, Memes

Friday, July 6, 2007 · 5:53 pm

Interview meme

The wonderful Litlove has agreed to interview me — thank you! So here it is:

1. I love the way you write about the 18th century; it’s clear how much you appreciate that era. Can you put your finger on what it is about that age of literature that attracts you to it so much? Thank you! I made it through college without taking a course in the 18C and so got to grad school knowing little about it, except for a few things I read in surveys which didn’t interest me. But in grad school I needed a course in the area, and signed up for one called “Women and the Novel,” which covered the 18C century, plus a little bit of the 19C. We read The Princess of Cleves, Moll Flanders, Pamela, The Female Quixote, A Simple Story, Pride and Prejudice and others. I was captivated. I took another 18C novel course the next semester and liked it so much I decided to specialize in the area. So it’s really the novel that pulled me in; I love studying the beginning of the genre — what people wrote when a definition and theoretical understanding of the novel didn’t exist. The 18C feels like the beginning of a lot of things — the novel, biographies, newspapers, the ability of more and more people to make a living writing, contemporary ways of understanding the family, psychological ways of thinking, modern economic structures, and I could go on.

2. I feel I’ve learned so much about bike racing from your site. What made you take up the sport in the first place? Hobgoblin has a lot to with it — he’s the one who encouraged me to begin riding, and the one who picked out my first bike (my first adult bike, that is — I rode around the neighborhood a bit as a child). I got that bike in January, 2000, and I remember taking it out to the parking lot of the school where we taught at the time, which was a safe place where I could get used to being on a bike again away from traffic. It didn’t take me long to pick it up, and I rode regularly from then on, eventually joining a cycling club and going on training rides with a group a couple times a week. Cycling suits me, I think; in high school I was a runner, and I liked the training and the endurance work, but I couldn’t motivate myself to run without a coach making me do it. For me, cycling is more fun than running, so I don’t have to work as hard to get myself outside for a ride. As for what made me move from being a recreational rider to a racer: I got tired of being a spectator at races. It seemed to me that too often it was the men riding and the women watching, and I was annoyed to be such a stereotype. And since I was spending a lot of time at races already, I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal to join in.

3. You’ve changed jobs not so long ago. Tell us what your average day at work is like now, and are you pleased you made the change? I’ve had two different jobs in the last year, but they are similar jobs at similar schools, so the real difference for me was leaving an administrative job last summer to move into the faculty positions I’ve had this year. I am very pleased I made the change. Working as an administrator was okay, and I was able to do some teaching in that job too, but I’m much happier focusing solely on teaching. I know this is a little self-indulgent of me, but I chafe at having to be in the office when there is no work to do, which is what happened in my administrative job. As a faculty member, as long as I show up for class and meetings, I can do my prep work and grading wherever and whenever I please. So — a typical day: I’ve been teaching in the mornings and, unless I have an afternoon meeting, taking time after class to come home and ride my bike. I prepare for class and grade when I’m not riding in the afternoons and on weekends. To be perfectly honest, this is what it’s all about — having a job that gives me enough free time to do what I want.

4. You and the Hobgoblin have such a lovely relationship. What’s your secret? Oh, this is a hard one! The truth is I don’t have a secret. Or maybe the real truth is that Hobgoblin is remarkably patient. I think most people who don’t live with me think I’m a nice person, but I’m often not — Hobgoblin (and my mother) could tell you the real truth, if they wanted to. But Hobgoblin and I have a wonderful time riding together and hiking together and reading together. We like to spend our time in the same way. Neither of us are terribly social, so most evenings you’ll find us up in our studies reading and blogging, on occasion watching a movie. I find it interesting that we don’t tend to read the same books — he’s got his, and I’ve got mine, and although most of them share the same shelves, it’s clear which ones belong to whom. But that keeps things interesting, I suppose — we can’t be exactly alike, after all.

5. If you were stranded on a desert island with two historical figures of your choice, who would you take and why? Another hard one! I suppose I could pick people who might be useful on a desert island — people who could help me build a shelter, maybe, or who could hunt for food. But I’d prefer to think of this is a more idyllic desert island, and so I’ll consider who I’d want for company. First, I’d pick Dorothy Wordsworth, I think, who would be wonderful to go on walks with. We’d explore the entire island, and make observations about the landscape the whole way. And then — I’ll stick to my favorite time period — Samuel Johnson. We’d have scintillating conversations with that great talker once we returned to our camp.

That was fun! Below are the directions; let me know in a comment if you’d like me to interview you.

DIRECTIONS FOR THE INTERVIEW MEME

1. Leave a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. Please make sure I have your email address.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment, asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

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Filed under Life, Memes, Teaching

Wednesday, May 16, 2007 · 6:30 pm

8 things

I’ve been tagged to do the “eight things” meme — tagged twice in fact. Thank you Jenclair and Sylvia! I’m supposed to list eight random things about me — which strikes me as hard since most interesting things about me I’ve already posted about in other similar memes, but I’ll give it a try.

1.  I never eat cereal with milk. I always have it dry — I can’t stand sogginess in food.

2. I have a diamond-shaped birthmark on my thigh, about six inches directly above my knee.   It’s not quite a perfect diamond shape, but it’s very close.

3. I played on the volleyball team in High School, briefly.  It was a disaster.

4. I am committed to never playing a sport that requires coordination ever again.  Yeah, cycling requires a certain amount of coordination, but not the kind you need to catch, kick, throw, hit, etc.  So, no baseball, football, soccer, tennis, golf, volleyball, softball, or basketball for me.  I might consider miniature golf, but only as a joke.

5. I loathe and despise shopping.  I’ll wear the same clothes over and over again until they are almost worn out before I’ll go buy more (and that’s only if I can’t get Hobgoblin to buy something for me, which he often very graciously does).

6. I’m very bad at remembering the names of trees and flowers and other kinds of plants, but I greatly admire people who can remember them.  There is some essential function missing in my brain that would allow me to learn — I have a bad visual memory I guess.

7. Speaking of memory, I’m very good at remembering my students’ names — I pride myself on this — up until the end of the semester.  Once the semester ends, the names disappear from my brain.  If  class ends in December, by January, I’ll remember their faces but the names are gone.

8. I performed in musicals in junior high and high school — including The Wiz, 42nd Street, and Grease.  I was always just in the chorus though, never in a real part.  I was too shy, I can’t act, and I can’t sing well enough to try for a big part.

Okay, here I break the rules, because I can’t think of 8 people who haven’t done this already to tag.  But if there’s someone who hasn’t done this yet, please do!

17 Comments

Filed under Memes

Thursday, March 15, 2007 · 6:17 pm

Some thoughts and a meme

  • I think I may be spending too much time on the internet: the tip of my right index finger is sore, and I think it got that way from too much typing and too much use of the touch pad on my laptop. Yeah, and too much time holding on to a pen to grade papers. That last one must be the culprit. I need to cut back on my grading, not on my internet time.
  • I’m now reading Geoff Dyer’s Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It and I’m enjoying it quite a bit, but I’m also intrigued by his book Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D.H. Lawrence, which has been called “the best book about not writing a book about D.H. Lawrence ever written.” I have very little interest in D.H. Lawrence (well, not quite true. I just don’t really get him. I’m wondering if this will change one day, like I need to reach a certain maturity level or something), but I’m interested in a book about the inability to write about Lawrence. I like books that this, ones that are about the process of doing something or the attempt to do something, or the failure. It’s why I liked Footsteps so much.
  • This also explains why I find Robert Dessaix’s Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev intriguing. (See Dark Orpheus’s post on the subject as well.) I’ve never read Turgenev, although I’ve been meaning to forever, but this book sounds interesting because it’s about Dessaix’s travels to research Turgenev’s life and about his attempts to puzzle out some of the mysteries of Turgenev’s life. Along these same lines, I’m also curious about Janet Malcolm’s Reading Chekhov, which is a mix of biography, criticism, and memoir.
  • I recently got myself a dual-language edition of Rilke’s Duino Elegies, which I’m quite excited about. I studied German a long time ago, and although unfortunately I don’t remember all that much, not having used it in years, I’m looking forward to having the German there so I can at least read at least some of it in the original and can puzzle out words I don’t remember. I’m always meaning to improve my German, although it’s one of those things I never get around to, not having enough to motivate me, I suppose.
  • I have a blog anniversary coming up on Saturday; be sure to check back that day for the chance to win a book I’m giving away in celebration …

And now for the meme. Susan had a great post on theme reading she can do chosen entirely from books she already owns. I can’t resist thinking of the ways I can organize the books I’ve got on hand:

The Virginia Woolf books:

  • Virginia Woolf: In Inner Life, Julia Briggs
  • Moments of Being, Virginia Woolf
  • The Voyage Out, Virginia Woolf

Eighteenth-century books:

  • Roderick Random, Tobias Smollett
  • The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Tobias Smollett
  • Journal of a Plague Year, Daniel Defoe
  • Captain Singleton, Daniel Defoe
  • The Recess, Sophia Lee

Books about walking and travel:

  • The Walk: Notes on a Romantic Image, Jeffrey Robinson
  • The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthieson
  • A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit
  • In Patagonia, Bruce Chatwin
  • Travels into the Interior of Africa, Mungo Park

Books about religion:

  • The Bhagavad Gita
  • The Varities of Religious Experience, William James
  • The Jefferson Bible
  • A Short History of Myth, Karen Armstrong

Essay collections and memoirs:

  • The Oxford Book of Essays
  • Quarrel and Quandary, Cynthia Ozick
  • The White Album, Joan Didion
  • The Amateur: An Independent Life of Letters, Wendy Lesser
  • About Alice, Calvin Trillin

Books for Kate’s Reading Across Borders challenge:

  • Palace Walk, Naguib Mahfouz
  • Soul Mountain, Gao Xingjian
  • Love in a Fallen City, Eileen Chang
  • Hopscotch, Julio Cortazar
  • The Makioka Sisters, Junichiro Tanizaki
  • The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Yukio Mishima

9 Comments

Filed under Books, Lists, Memes

Friday, January 5, 2007 · 9:44 pm

The gender meme

Cross-posted at What We Said

It’s about time that I do Mandarine’s meme; it’s been on my mind for quite a while, but I haven’t been entirely sure I’d have answers to all the categories — I’m still not sure. But I’ve had a couple of conversations with the Hobgoblin lately about some stuff related to gender, specifically, about hearing a LOT of talk at parties and around work about home decoration and repair, a topic that provokes eye-rolling and sighs of boredom from me, and then makes me feel inadequate for not caring a whole lot what my house looks like. I mean, I’m supposed to, aren’t I? Caring about home decoration is part of being a good American consumer and part of being acceptably feminine, isn’t it? Anyway, here’s my attempt:

  • Three things you do that women usually do:
    1. Shave my legs (although I prefer to think I do this because I’m a cyclist, not because I’m a woman. Since, as a cyclist, the Hobgoblin shaves his legs, wouldn’t it be funny if I didn’t? We’d really be messing with gender stereotypes then);
    2. Try to take care of other people’s emotional needs;
    3. Enjoy nice long conversations about feelings.
  • Three things you do that men usually do:
    1. Compete in athletic events;
    2. Feel uncomfortable and out of place in a kitchen;
    3. Pride myself on my big muscles.
  • Three things you do that women usually don’t do:
    1. Let the dishes pile up in the sink without feeling guilty;
    2. Eat a ton without feeling self-conscious about it;
    3. Be willing to get dirty and sweaty on a backpacking trip without thinking about it too much.
  • Three things you do that men usually don’t do:
    1. Cry regularly.
    2. Discuss my feelings openly;
    3. Talk on the phone for lengthy periods.
  • Three things you don’t do that women usually do:
    1. Wear makeup;
    2. Care what my house looks like;
    3. Wear skirts (I will if I have to …).
  • Three things you don’t do that men usually do:
    1. Know anything about car maintenance or repair;
    2. Watch sports on television;
    3. Feel at home in hardware stores.
  • Three things you don’t do that women usually don’t do:
    1. Show my temper in public;
    2. Disagree sharply and assertively with others;
    3. Show competitiveness.
  • Three things you don’t do that men usually don’t do:
    1. Enjoy shopping;
    2. Spend hours on grooming;
    3. Know domestic secrets like fancy ways of removing stains from clothing.

There, I answered everything. That’s an interesting exercise because I can’t help but draw on stereotypes as I answer the questions, but, of course, I’m talking about ways I undermine them too.

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Tuesday, January 2, 2007 · 7:00 am

Kate’s Calvino meme

Today I think I will do Kate’s delightful Calvino meme, taken from If on a winter’s night a traveler.

The Books You’ve Been Planning To Read For Ages: I have lots of these; in fact, some of them are on my list of 13 classics I want to read in 2007. They include Don Quixote, Boswell’s Life of Johnson and William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience. I’ve also wanted to read the complete Montaigne (I’ve read bits and pieces from it) for ages, and The Bhagavad Gita.

The Books You’ve Been Hunting For Years Without Success: I don’t have a specific book to name here, but I have been looking for an essay anthology that’s as good as Phillip Lopate’s The Art of the Personal Essay and a book on religion and spirituality from a personal perspective that’s as good as Diana Eck’s Encountering God.

The Books Dealing with Something You’re Working on at the Moment: Joe Friel’s The Cyclist’s Training Bible and Bartholomae and Petrosky’s Ways of Reading, which I’m going to use in a class this spring.

The Books You Want To Own So They’ll Be Handy Just In Case: Anthologies. Any kind of anthologies — of essays, of 18C poetry, of Victorian prose, of contemporary short stories, whatever. I never know when I might want to consult one of these.

The Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer: Long books — really long books. I don’t like reading really long books when I’m busy as they seem to drag on forever even if they are good and I’m enjoying them. So the summer is the time for books like Don Quixote and Nicholas Basbanes A Gentle Madness, which I’ve got on my TBR shelves.

The Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves: The last two volumes of Proust. I have up through volume 4, but I still need The Captive and The Fugitive, which are in one volume, and Time Regained. Unfortunately, these aren’t available in America in the particuar translation I’ve been reading, the new Penguin one. So I’ll have to switch to another translation — which I won’t do — or order them from England. Disappointingly, the covers of these last two volumes will be different. They would have looked so nice on my shelves, all 6 volumes with matching spines. Sigh.

The Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified: Biographies of obscure people from earlier centuries that on one level I know would bore me from page 75 or so onward, but that I find intriguing in the moment anyway.

These are the questions from Calvino’s novel, but other bloggers have added more:

The Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered: I would find a reading guide such as Clifton Fadiman’s Lifetime Reading Plan and read through his choices — a task that would take forever and would become boring fairly soon but that still sounds appealing to me — if I had more than one life.

Books Read Long Ago That It’s Now Time To Reread: I don’t know if I’ll actually re-read these, but there are some I read in High School or earlier that I’m quite sure I didn’t do justice to, including George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, and Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

Anyone else want to play?

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Saturday, November 25, 2006 · 7:55 pm

Cam’s poetry meme

The Hobgoblin tagged me to do Cam’s poetry meme, so here goes:

1. The first poem I remember reading/hearing/reacting to was…. Surely nursery rhymes were among the earliest. This question makes you think about what a poem is, doesn’t it? I remember nursery rhymes, songs, chants from when I was a kid. I remember reading Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” for school. Oh, yeah, and I remember reading Ogden Nash early on too.

2. I was forced to memorize (name of poem) in school and…….. I wasn’t forced to memorize poems in school until I got to college, and then only one professor required it. That’s quite a shame, really, because there’s no better way to learn about poetry than memorizing it, I think. You get an intimate feel for how a poem works. I memorized W.H. Auden’s poem “Under Sirius.”

3. I read/don’t read poetry because….I read poems because I enjoy it and want to figure out more about how poems work. I only began reading poetry semi-regularly early this year, so I still feel strange calling myself a poetry reader. I read poems when I was in college and shortly after, but then I stopped for a long time. It’s not that I didn’t want to read them, I just never figured out a way to fit them into my life. Now I have a volume I keep on my shelf next to my reading chair, and I read a few poems a week. It’s not much, but it gets me through a book in a couple months.

4. A poem I’m likely to think about when asked about a favorite poem is …….I’d have to name poets rather than poems, as favorite poems don’t come to mind. Favorite poets? Elizabeth Bishop, Mary Oliver, Emily Dickinson.

5. I write/don’t write poetry, but…………..I don’t write poetry, although I can’t say I never will. But I just have no idea how to write one. I mean, what constitutes a poem? What should it be about? I have no idea. And I have little idea, to be honest, about what makes a good poem. As someone who teaches poetry now and then, maybe I shouldn’t admit that, but it’s true. It’s easy to teach older stuff because it’s generally accepted as good, but newer stuff, I have a hard time saying. That’s one reason I’m curious about reading more poems, to get a feel for how they work and what makes a poem great.

6. My experience with reading poetry differs from my experience with reading other types of literature…..I don’t really get poetry. My students sometimes say that and they mean it negatively, but I’m not being negative here. I don’t really think there’s anything to “get” about poetry, actually — that makes it sound like there’s a key or code to understanding it, which there isn’t beyond being familiar with tradition and form. I just mean I find it rather mystifying — and that’s part of what makes it fun.

7. I find poetry….. well, mystifying. In a good way. Sometimes enlightening, often beautiful.

8. The last time I heard poetry….The local coffee shop has an open mic on Wednesday nights and last February they had a day where people could bring their love poetry/erotic poetry to read. A lot of people showed up to read and to listen, and there was a lot of good energy in the room. It was fun.

9. I think poetry is like….Litlove wrote in a comment a while back that a poem is like a dream, and I’ve found that idea useful. I was initially resistant because I generally don’t find dreams and dream interpretations all that interesting, but the analogy does work; a poem often has loosely connected images that fit together in some shadowy half-known way, just as a dream does. A poem can get at truths in that sideways way a dream can.

I tag … whoever wants to do this great meme!

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Friday, November 17, 2006 · 3:06 pm

Early reading meme

Kate’s got a great meme on early reading, and it’s high time I did it.

1. How old were you when you learned to read and who taught you?

A frequent refrain in my answers will be “I don’t remember exactly,” but I’ll do my best. I think I learned to read in kindergarten, when I was five, although apparently I knew my letters much earlier. My dad tells this story about how I was going to school and going to school and going to school until one day I came home and picked up a book and out of the blue began reading. I have a memory of coming home from school and beginning to read out loud to my parents’ delight, so maybe my memory and my dad’s story refer to same thing, although there’s no knowing for sure.

2. Did you own any books as a child? If so, what’s the first one that you remember owning? If not, do you recall any of the first titles that you borrowed from the library?

I have an early memory of owning a copy of Dr. Seuss’s Yertle the Turtle. I’m sure I owned others, but for some reason the huge stack of turtles sticks in my mind. Later I remember owning a complete set of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House on the Prairie books, the ones with the yellow covers that came in a yellow box. My friend had a set of the Little House books with blue covers and a blue box, and I was a little jealous as I liked the blue set better. I remember finding the Betsy-Tacy books in the library, as well as the Louisa May Alcott ones.

3. What’s the first book that you bought with your own money?

I’m not entirely sure. I know I bought Nancy Drew books at some point, though, which I loved very much. But most often I got books from the library or read ones my parents owned. I was a very frequent library visitor as a child.

4. Were you a re-reader as a child? If so, which book did you re-read most often?

I most definitely was a re-reader. An obsessive re-reader, in fact. I practically had the Little House books memorized, as I really wanted to be Laura Ingalls. I re-read the Alcott books, Little Women and the others, including Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom. Also I read the Anne of Green Gables books frequently. I think I re-read Nancy Drew books, and I’m sure I re-read the Betsy-Tacy books.

5. What’s the first adult book that captured your interest and how old were you when you read it?

I don’t have a clear memory of this. But I do remember reading books from my dad’s bookshelves, so the first adult book was likely one of these. I know I read David Copperfield very early, so it’s quite possible Dickens was one of my earliest adult reads. I read Ayn Rand early on (shudder!).

6. Are there children’s books that you passed by as a child that you have learned to love as an adult? Which ones?

I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when I was young, but I didn’t read the rest of the series until I was an adult. I can’t say I learned to love those though. Other children’s or young adult books I’ve read as an adult weren’t published when I was a child, such as the Philip Pullman books and Harry Potter (I’ve read only the first one of these). I somehow never found L.M. Montgomery’s Emily books as a child, and I still haven’t read them as an adult, so I think I’ll seek them out at some point. I never got into the Madeleine L’Engel books as a child, but I suspect I might like them now, so perhaps I should give those a try too.

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Monday, November 13, 2006 · 3:09 pm

Memes

There are two brand new memes out right now that I’d like to do; Kate has one on childhood reading, and Litlove has an “Aspirational Meme” that is designed to get you to think about “what would make life that bit better.” Since this past weekend was a little rough (the Hobgoblin is now safely in Houston visiting his father, and Muttboy and I are left here feeling lonely. Poor Muttboy — there’s nothing sadder than a depressed dog.), I think I’ll go for the aspirational meme first to get myself thinking about how life could possibly change. Here’s the meme:

What part of the past would you bring back if you possibly could?

Summer vacation. I haven’t had a summer vacation — meaning the entire summer off — in a long while, since I’ve had jobs that go year round for the past few years and before that I’ve had the summer “off” but have had things like course papers and dissertations to write. I’d love to have a real summer vacation and have months with nothing to do but whatever I want.

 

What character trait would you alter if you could?

I’d like to be more relaxed. As I’m sitting here typing, I can feel the muscles in my shoulders all tense and tight; I’ve been seeing a chiropractor for a long time about neck and shoulder problems caused by tension, and she tells me ways to stay relaxed, but I just can’t seem to. I’m uptight and anxious an awful lot of the time.

 

Which skill would you like to have the time and energy to really work on?

I’d really like to become a better reader (read more kinds of things, read difficult things, become a better reader by writing more about reading), and I’d really like to become a better cyclist, and I’d also really like to be good at yoga. I suppose this last one is the best answer, since I already do “really work on” the former two. But yoga is the thing that I skip when I run out of time and that means I skip it a lot. And doing more yoga would really help keep me relaxed.

 

Are you money poor, love poor, time poor or freedom poor?

Time poor. I could use more money but I’m usually okay there; I’m not love poor in the least, and I’m not freedom poor, except to the extent that a lack of time and not having tons of money keep me from doing some things I’d like.

 

What element of your partner’s character would you alter if you could?

You know … I’d better stay away from this one. The Hobgoblin is far away from home now and he’s probably not reading my blog from Texas, but he still might read through my archives and find this answer. Maybe I can say that I wish he had a knack for making lots of money? Otherwise, he’s perfect 🙂

 

What three things are you going to do next year that you’ve been meaning to do for ages but never got around to?

Practice yoga regularly. Hike the entire Long Trail (it runs the length of Vermont and will take 3 weeks). Read Don Quixote.

 

If your fairy godmother gave you three wishes, what would you wish for?

Just a little more time, a little more money, and some peace of mind. With too much time on my hands I get depressed, so I only need a little more, and too much money would make my life more complicated, not less so. I can do with tons of peace of mind.

 

What one thing would you change about your living conditions?

While I love my town, I wish I could live in a more open, rural area. I really love the countryside. I also wish this hypothetical place still had the four seasons like my current place does, but was on average 5-10 degrees warmer from November to March. That would be perfect.

 

How could the quality of your free time be improved?

I need to be able to forget about work while I’m not working. I’ve gotten better at compartmentalizing my work and leisure time, but I’d still love to obsess less about work problems and really be able to relax.

 

What change have you made to your life recently that you’re most proud of?

I’ll agree with Litlove on this one — beginning to blog. It’s added so much to my life.

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Thursday, October 26, 2006 · 2:13 pm

Can you guess the book?

I’m stealing this from Dr. Crazy who got it from Anastasia. I’m all about memes these days. They are great when I’m feeling tired and uninspired.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

“His work no longer seemed as inevitable as before. I began to wonder whether originality really shows that great writers are gods, each of them reigning over a kingdom which is his alone, whether misleading appearances might not play a role in this, and whether the differences between their books might not be the result of hard work rather than the expression of a radical difference in essence between distinct personalities.

We went in to dinner. Lying beside my plate was a carnation, its stem wrapped in silver paper.”

Hmmm. I don’t think that’s hard to guess at all, especially if you’re a regular or semi-regular reader of this blog. I could have picked something harder, but I was following direction #5 to the letter, and went for the closest thing. And my chair is right next to my … oh, never mind. Just guess. And then try it for yourself!

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Tuesday, October 24, 2006 · 2:15 pm

5 things you don’t know about me

I’m stealing this meme from Litlove and Charlotte because it looks like a lot of fun. The “you” from “five things you don’t know about me” obviously doesn’t include the Hobgoblin; to come up with five things he doesn’t know about me would be very, very hard. Actually, I may have mentioned some of these things on the blog before or in comments on other blogs, but I can’t remember, so I’m assuming you don’t know them.

1. I’m the oldest of seven children. Sometimes when I tell people that they look at me and say, “Yeah? I’m the youngest of eight,” or “My mother is from a family of 13.” But often they are amazed and want to know if I’m close to my siblings — which I’m not — or if I had to do a lot of babysitting — which I did. Being the oldest of seven children has a lot to do with why I don’t have a child of my own. Not that it wasn’t a good experience, because it was, but I know exactly what it’s like to raise children and I’m not excited by the prospect.

2. I come from a family of very committed evangelical Christians. The other question people ask me when I say I’m the oldest of seven children is whether I’m Catholic or not. No, I’m not Catholic, thank you, and how tactful of you to ask. I’m also no longer Christian, although I don’t tell my parents that. I am very fascinated by Christian subcultures, though, and I love to read about religious history and theology. I’ve become an annoyingly vague “spiritual” type of person, of the sort that would have irritated my younger self to no end.

3. I was an English major in college, which you probably knew or would have guessed, but I was also a German major. I spent a summer in Germany, but never learned the language as well as I should have. I’m pretty good with languages, but I needed more time to get really comfortable with it. And since I haven’t used German since college, I’ve forgotten a ton.

4. I was homeschooled for three years — from 4th-6th grade. This has something to do with coming from an evangelical family — the horrible things kids learn in public schools and all — but I think it also has a lot to do with my mother being a bit bored by the housewife role and wanting a challenge. With a bunch of kids it was kind of hard for her to go to work, but she could take on the task of educating us. I learned a lot in those years, but you can imagine how hard it was to go back to school in 7th grade. There’s a lot of stuff — non-academic stuff — you learn in 4th-6th grade that I had to learn all at once, in a big, awkward rush.

5. I hate potatoes. This is a bit of a problem, as the Hobgoblin is Irish. And he loves potatoes. This is more of a problem for him than for me, as he kindly refrains from cooking potatoes unless he provides me with a rice or bread alternative. Isn’t that nice?

Okay, that was fun. Anyone else want to try?

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Monday, August 14, 2006 · 8:40 pm

Litlove’s meme

From Tales from the Reading Room, here’s a new book meme:

1. First book to leave a lasting impression? I think it would be the Little House on the Prairie series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I read those books so many times I practically had them memorized. I was so fascinated by life on the prairie, I read them looking for every detail I could find that would shed some light on what the Ingalls’ family life was like. And I learned something about independence and resourcefulness from Laura. I liked the quiet confidence the character projected.

2. Which author would you most like to be? That’s tough because so often authors have interesting lives of the sort I wouldn’t want to live through. But I think Jane Austen would be a good choice. There’s something about living a quiet, uneventful, undramatic life, writing works of stunning genius and not making a big deal out of it, that appeals to me.

3. Name the book that has most made you want to visit a place. Bill Bryson’s book A Walk in the Woods, about the Appalachian Trail. Even though he had some terrible times on his hike, the book still makes me want to be on the trail, and to stay on the trail for the months and months it takes to hike the whole thing. Anything I read about the Appalachian Trail makes me want to go there.

4. Which contemporary author will still be read in 100 years time? Of all the questions in this meme, this one has stumped me the most. Perhaps it’s because I’ve read too many books that were immensely popular in their own time, but then fell out of the literary canon. So I think if we could find out the answer to this question, we’d probably we surprised. I’d like for Kazuo Ishiguro to make it.

5. Which book would you recommend to a teenager reluctant to try ‘literature’? In spite of having taught 18-year-olds for quite a few years now, I have absolutely no confidence in any recommendation I could make to a teen who isn’t a big reader. I will say that I read — devoured — Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy recently, and would recommend it to anyone, of any age.

6. Name your best recent literary discovery. Hmmm … Mary Oliver? Jane Hirschfield? Rebecca West? Let’s go with Rebecca West. I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying The Fountain Overflows.

7. Which author’s fictional world would you most like to live in? How about living in the world of Jaspar Fforde’s Thursday Next books? At least people care about literature there. A lot.

8. Name your favorite poet. Right now it would be Mary Oliver. I’m excited to read more though — there’s so much about the poetry world I don’t know.

9. What’s the best nonfiction title you’ve read this year? Elaine Scarry’s On Beauty and Being Just. It’s, well, beautiful. I also liked Alberto Manguel’s A History of Reading very much.

10. Which author do you think is much better than his/her reputation? I’m going to answer this in a different way than the question implies: I think there are a lot of eighteenth-century novelists, particularly women novelists, who are dismissed as being merely “pre-Austen,” but are really great writers and deserve attention. Frances Burney, Elizabeth Inchbald, Mary Hays, and Maria Edgeworth are examples.

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Tuesday, August 1, 2006 · 7:56 pm

One book meme

Stefanie has tagged me with the One Book Meme. So, here goes:

1. One book that changed your life. I’m tempted to write about feminism and Virginia Woolf, and that would be one honest answer, but the really honest answer is the Bible. I could tell my life story, pretty much, by telling you what I thought about the Bible at various times, how I read it, whether I read it, how I interpreted it, my theories of how it should be interpreted. I’m rather annoyed that this is my best answer, but it truly is. Even though I feel very conflicted about the Bible these days, it is kind of cool to have a book as something that didn’t just change my life but shaped it from the very beginning.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once. Robinson Crusoe. What a great story! And weird. Very weird.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island. This one is difficult because if I chose a novel, I might get tired of the story after a while, but if I chose a book of poems or essays (I’d be tempted by the complete Montaigne), I might get tired of the one writer and his/her voice. I might be best off with one of those big anthologies with lots of different genres and writers and time periods. How about the Norton Anthology of English Literature?

4. One book that made you laugh. Well, I laughed yesterday when I was reading Proust’s Swann’s Way. I’m surprised by this, as I thought he’d be all seriousness. But the description of the narrator’s father trying to get Legrandin to admit something he’d rather not, and Legrandin getting all vague and lyrical in response was funny. I think I chuckled quietly for a moment.

5. One book that made you cry. I’ve read Uncle Tom’s Cabin a couple of times, and it doesn’t always make me cry, in fact at times I’ve found it annoying, but when I read it in college I remember lying on my dormroom bed and crying over it. Sometimes that old-fashioned sentimentalism really gets to me.

6. One book that you wish had been written. The entire Absent Classic series. Since this meme is supposed to be about one book, I’m particularly longing for Volume 15. I’m glad to have an excerpt at least.

7. One book you wish had never been written. Ummm … I don’t have any. In the larger perspective of things, in some cases the large, large, large perspective, I’m glad for every book there is. I will say, however, that a book like James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, while I’m glad it was written, will forever taunt me with its difficulty. I like reading difficult books, at times, but that one? That’s one difficult book I’ll probably never read, and that makes me a little unhappy.

8. One book you’re currently reading. Frances Burney’s Journals and Letters. A little at a time before I go to bed every night.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read. The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West. I’m inspired by Susan’s Rebecca West project and by the recommendation of other bloggers. Maybe it will be my next fiction read. If so, it will give me an excuse to go to the bookstore.

10. Now tag five people. I’m going to tag the Hobgoblin, but otherwise, so many people have done this, I’m not sure I can find four others who haven’t. So, if you haven’t done this, and you’d like to, try it out!

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