Tonight I made my first dinner from my Horse & Buggy produce share. I made wheatberries* with chicken broth, sauteed onions and mushrooms. This was accompanied by roasted butternut squash with a maple syrup and orange juice glaze. I used some of the mixed Asian greens and greenhouse cucumbers to make a salad. Upon this salad I poured homemade balsamic vinaigrette sweetened with some of the leftover glaze. The maple syrup was a gift Nj brought me back from Vermont.

For dessert, I used some of the frozen blackberries to make a kiwi blackberry salad with homemade whipped cream. The whipped cream had just a tiny bit of hazelnut syrup which imbued it with a slight and delicious nuttiness.

* Items in bold are from the CSA.

★★★

I listened to this on my drive down to SC. My friend Rob loves the book and wanted to know why I only gave it 3 stars - what did I not like about it. It wasn't that I didn't like it, I just don't believe in grade inflation.

It worked as a book to listen to in the car because I was exhausted and Alice has scarcely experienced one thing before something else strange has befallen her. It's not a long book (only 112 pages according to Amazon), but there's a lot of adventure.

I think had I read it the first time when I was a kid, I would have liked it more, but as an adult, the shallow plot didn't offer much more than amusement. That's not a bad thing, as it is, in fact, written for children. I imagine that someday I'll read it to my kids and they'll love it.

My grandmother is in the hospital in SC. Until today, I think we all had a lot of faith in the idea that she'd get better. I saw her yesterday and she seemed to be improving. Now they think she is going to die. She's drowning in fluid in her lungs. Her kidneys aren't working. She has some kind of strange anemia with no apparent cause. I think she's really tired. I would be.

I'm scared. I'm scared she's going to die and everyone is going to be really sad, and there will be another big hole in our family. I'm worried about my dad too. In the past 6 months, his best friend died, his chihuahua (who was about 20 years old) died, and now his mom is probably going to die. I'm scared he's going to be so depressed that he's going to give up and die too, and I need him.

They don't know how long she's going to last. Her breathing is rapid and shallow, and my dad doesn't want to leave her. My nephew has school tomorrow and this could go on all night, so my sister wants to go home. She doesn't want my dad to stay overnight because he's not in the best health himself. He's in a wheelchair and he gets tired easily. Sitting in a hospital room all night would probably be bad for him. My sister and I were texting and I stopped answering because I'm not sure what she should do either.

100 Best Novels Board's List

Ulysses by James JoyceThe Great Gatsby by F. Scott FitzgeraldA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James JoyceLolita by Vladimir NabokovBrave New World by Aldous HuxleyThe Sound and the Fury by William FaulknerCatch-22 by Joseph HellerDarkness at Noon by Arthur KoestlerSons and Lovers by D.H. LawrenceThe Grapes of Wrath by John SteinbeckUnder the Volcano by Malcolm LowryThe Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler1984 by George OrwellI, Claudius by Robert GravesTo the Lighthouse by Virginia WoolfAn American Tragedy by Theodore DreiserThe Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullersSlaughterhouse-Five by Kurt VonnegutInvisible Man by Ralph EllisonNative Son by Richard WrightHenderson the Rain King by Saul BellowAppointment in Samarra by John O'HaraU.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos PassosWinesburg, Ohio by Sherwood AndersonA Passage to India by E.M. ForsterThe Wings of the Dove by Henry JamesThe Ambassadors by Henry JamesTender Is the Night by F. Scott FitzgeraldThe Studs Lonigan Trilogy by James T. FarrellThe Good Soldier by Ford Madox FordAnimal Farm by George OrwellThe Golden Bowl by Henry JamesSister Carrie by Theodore DreiserA Handful of Dust by Evelyn WaughAs I Lay Dying by William FaulknerAll the King's Men by Robert Penn WarrenThe Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton WilderHowards End by E.M. ForsterGo Tell It on the Mountain by James BaldwinThe Heart of the Matter by Graham GreeneLord of the Flies by William GoldingDeliverance by James DickeyA Dance to the Music of Time (series) by Anthony PowellPoint Counter Point by Aldous HuxleyThe Sun Also Rises by Ernest HemingwayThe Secret Agent by Joseph ConradNostromo by Joseph ConradThe Rainbow by D.H. LawrenceWomen in Love by D.H. LawrenceTropic of Cancer by Henry MillerThe Naked and the Dead by Norman MailerPortnoy's Complaint by Philip RothPale Fire by Vladimir NabokovLight in August by William FaulknerOn the Road by Jack KerouacThe Maltese Falcon by Dashiell HammettParade's End by Ford Madox FordThe Age of Innocence by Edith WhartonZuleika Dobson by Max BeerbohmThe Moviegoer by Walker PercyDeath Comes for the Archbishop by Willa CatherFrom Here to Eternity by James JonesThe Wapshot Chronicle by John CheeverThe Catcher in the Rye by J.D. SalingerA Clockwork Orange by Anthony BurgessOf Human Bondage by W. Somerset MaughamHeart of Darkness by Joseph ConradMain Street by Sinclair LewisThe House of Mirth by Edith WhartonThe Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence DurrellA High Wind in Jamaica by Richard HughesA House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. NaipaulThe Day of the Locust by Nathanael WestA Farewell to Arms by Ernest HemingwayScoop by Evelyn WaughThe Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel SparkFinnegans Wake by James JoyceKim by Rudyard KiplingA Room With a View by E.M. ForsterBrideshead Revisited by Evelyn WaughThe Adventures of Augie March by Saul BellowAngle of Repose by Wallace StegnerA Bend in the River by V.S. NaipaulThe Death of the Heart by Elizabeth BowenLord Jim by Joseph ConradRagtime by E.L. DoctorowThe Old Wives' Tale by Arnold BennettThe Call of the Wild by Jack LondonLoving by Henry GreenMidnight's Children by Salman RushdieTobacco Road by Erskine CaldwellIronweed by William KennedyThe Magus by John FowlesWide Sargasso Sea by Jean RhysUnder the Net by Iris MurdochSophie's Choice by William StyronThe Sheltering Sky by Paul BowlesThe Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. CainThe Ginger Man by J.P. DonleavyThe Magnificent Ambersons by Booth TarkingtonThe Reader's List

Atlas Shrugged By Ayn RandThe Fountainhead By Ayn RandBattlefield Earth By L. Ron HubbardLord Of The Rings By J.R.R. TolkienTo Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee1984 By George OrwellAnthem By Ayn RandWe The Living By Ayn RandMission Earth By L. Ron HubbardFear By L. Ron HubbardUlysses By James JoyceCatch-22 By Joseph HellerThe Great Gatsby By F. Scott FitzgeraldDune By Frank HerbertThe Moon Is A Harsh Mistress By Robert HeinleinStranger In A Strange Land By Robert HeinleinA Town Like Alice By Nevil ShuteBrave New World By Aldous HuxleyThe Catcher In The Rye By J.D. SalingerAnimal Farm By George OrwellGravity's Rainbow By Thomas PynchonThe Grapes Of Wrath By John SteinbeckSlaughterhouse Five By Kurt VonnegutGone With The Wind By Margaret MitchellLord Of The Flies By William GoldingShane By Jack SchaeferTrustee From The Toolroom By Nevil ShuteA Prayer For Owen Meany By John IrvingThe Stand By Stephen KingThe French Lieutenant's Woman By John FowlesBeloved By Toni MorrisonThe Worm Ouroboros By E.R. EddisonThe Sound And The Fury By William FaulknerLolita By Vladimir NabokovMoonheart By Charles De LintAbsalom, Absalom! By William FaulknerOf Human Bondage By W. Somerset MaughamWise Blood By Flannery O'connorUnder The Volcano By Malcolm LowryFifth Business By Robertson DaviesSomeplace To Be Flying By Charles De LintOn The Road By Jack KerouacHeart Of Darkness By Joseph ConradYarrow By Charles De LintAt The Mountains Of Madness By H.P. LovecraftOne Lonely Night By Mickey SpillaneMemory And Dream By Charles De LintTo The Lighthouse By Virginia WoolfThe Moviegoer By Walker PercyTrader By Charles De LintThe Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy By Douglas AdamsThe Heart Is A Lonely Hunter By Carson MccullersThe Handmaid's Tale By Margaret AtwoodBlood Meridian By Cormac MccarthyA Clockwork Orange By Anthony BurgessOn The Beach By Nevil ShuteA Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man By James JoyceGreenmantle By Charles De LintEnder's Game By Orson Scott CardThe Little Country By Charles De LintThe Recognitions By William GaddisStarship Troopers By Robert HeinleinThe Sun Also Rises By Ernest HemingwayThe World According To Garp By John IrvingSomething Wicked This Way Comes By Ray BradburyThe Haunting Of Hill House By Shirley JacksonAs I Lay Dying By William FaulknerTropic Of Cancer By Henry MillerInvisible Man By Ralph EllisonThe Wood Wife By Terri WindlingThe Magus By John FowlesThe Door Into Summer By Robert HeinleinZen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance By Robert PirsigI, Claudius By Robert GravesThe Call Of The Wild By Jack LondonAt Swim-Two-Birds By Flann O'brienFarenheit 451 By Ray BradburyArrowsmith By Sinclair LewisWatership Down By Richard AdamsNaked Lunch By William S. BurroughsThe Hunt For Red October By Tom ClancyGuilty Pleasures By Laurell K. HamiltonThe Puppet Masters By Robert HeinleinIt By Stephen KingV. By Thomas PynchonDouble Star By Robert HeinleinCitizen Of The Galaxy By Robert HeinleinBrideshead Revisited By Evelyn WaughLight In August By William FaulknerOne Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest By Ken KeseyA Farewell To Arms By Ernest HemingwayThe Sheltering Sky By Paul BowlesSometimes A Great Notion By Ken KeseyMy Antonia By Willa CatherMulengro By Charles De LintSuttree By Cormac MccarthyMythago Wood By Robert HoldstockIllusions By Richard BachThe Cunning Man By Robertson DaviesThe Satanic Verses By Salman Rushdie

Radcliffe's List

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott FitzgeraldThe Catcher in the Rye by J.D. SalingerThe Grapes of Wrath by John SteinbeckTo Kill a Mockingbird by Harper LeeThe Color Purple by ALice WalkerUlysses by James JoyceBeloved by Toni MorrisonThe Lord of the Flies by William Golding1984 by George OrwellThe Sound and the Fury by William FaulknerLolita by Vladmir NabokovOf Mice and Men by John SteinbeckCharlotte's Web by E.B. WhiteA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James JoyceCatch-22 by Joseph HellerBrave New World by Aldus HuxleyAnimal Farm by George OrwellThe Sun Also Rises by Ernest HemingwayAs I Lay Dying by William FaulknerA Farewell to Arms by Ernest HemingwayHeart of Darkness by Joseph ConradWinnie-the-Pooh by A.A. MilneTheir Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale HurstonInvisible Man by Ralph EllisonSong of Solomon by Toni MorrisonGone with the Wind by Margaret MitchellNative Son by Richard WrightOne Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken KeseySlaughterhouse-Five by Kurt VonnegutFor Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest HemingwayOn the Road by Jack KerouacThe Old Man and the Sea by Ernest HemingwayThe Call of the Wild by Jack LondonTo the Lighthouse by Virginia WoolfPortrait of a Lady by Henry JamesGo Tell It on the Mountain by James BaldwinThe World According to Garp by John IrvingAll the King's Men by Robert Penn WarrenA Room with a Veiw by E.M. ForsterThe Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. TolkienSchindler's List by Thomas KeneallyThe Age of Innocence by Edith WhartonThe Fountainhead by Ayn RandFinnegans Wake by James JoyceThe Jungle by Upton SinclairMrs. Dalloway by Virginia WoolfThe Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank BaumLady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. LawrenceA Clockwork Orange by Anthony BurgessThe Awakening by Kate ChopinMy Antonia by Willa CatherHowards End by E.M. ForsterIn Cold Blood by Truman CapoteFranny and Zooey by J.D. SalingerThe Satanic Verses by Salman RushdieJazz by Toni MorrisonSophie's Choice by William StyronAbsalom, Absalom! by William FaulknerA Passage to India by E.M. ForsterEthan Frome by Edith WhartonA Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'ConnerTender is the Night by F. Scott FitzgeraldOrlando by Virginia WoolfSons and Lovers by D.H. LawrenceBonfire of the Vanities by Tom WolfeCat's Cradle by Kurt VonnegutA Separate Peace by John KnowlesLight in August by William FaulknerThe Wings of the Dove by Henry JamesThings Fall Apart by Chinua AchebeRebecca by Daphne du MaurierA Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas AdamsNaked Lunch by William S. BurroughsBrideshead Revisited by Evelyn WaughWomen in Love by D.H. LawrenceLook Homeward, Angel by Thomas WolfeIn Our Time by Ernest HemingwayThe Autobiography of Alice B. Tokias by Gertrude SteinThe Maltese Falcon by Dashiell HammettThe Naked and the Dead by Norman MailerWide Sargasso Sea by Jean RhysWhite Noise by Don DeLilloO Pioneers! by Willa CatherTropic of Cancer by Henry MillerThe War of the Worlds by H.G. WellsLord Jim by Joseph ConradThe Bostonians by Henry JamesAn American Tragedy by Theodore DreiserDeath Comes for the Archbishop by Will CatherThe Wind in the Willows by Kenneth GrahameThis Side of Paradise by F. Scott FitzgeraldAtlas Shrugged by Ayn RandThe French Lieutenant's Woman by John FowlesBabbitt by Sinclair LewisKim by Rudyard KiplingThe Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott FitzgeraldRabbit, Run by John UpdikeWhere Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. ForsterMain Street by Sinclair LewisMidnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

1001 Books to read before I die. Frack.

2000sNever Let Me Go – Kazuo IshiguroSaturday – Ian McEwanOn Beauty – Zadie SmithSlow Man – J.M. CoetzeeAdjunct: An Undigest – Peter MansonThe Sea – John BanvilleThe Red Queen – Margaret DrabbleThe Plot Against America – Philip RothThe Master – Colm TóibínVanishing Point – David MarksonThe Lambs of London – Peter AckroydDining on Stones – Iain SinclairCloud Atlas – David MitchellDrop City – T. Coraghessan BoyleThe Colour – Rose TremainThursbitch – Alan GarnerThe Light of Day – Graham SwiftWhat I Loved – Siri HustvedtThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark HaddonIslands – Dan SleighElizabeth Costello – J.M. CoetzeeLondon Orbital – Iain SinclairFamily Matters – Rohinton MistryFingersmith – Sarah WatersThe Double – José SaramagoEverything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran FoerUnless – Carol ShieldsKafka on the Shore – Haruki MurakamiThe Story of Lucy Gault – William TrevorThat They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahernIn the Forest – Edna O’BrienShroud – John BanvilleMiddlesex – Jeffrey EugenidesYouth – J.M. CoetzeeDead Air – Iain BanksNowhere Man – Aleksandar HemonThe Book of Illusions – Paul AusterGabriel’s Gift – Hanif KureishiAusterlitz – W.G. SebaldPlatform – Michael HouellebecqSchooling – Heather McGowanAtonement – Ian McEwanThe Corrections – Jonathan FranzenDon’t Move – Margaret MazzantiniThe Body Artist – Don DeLilloFury – Salman RushdieAt Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’NeillChoke – Chuck PalahniukLife of Pi – Yann MartelThe Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos LlosaAn Obedient Father – Akhil SharmaThe Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo CoelhoSpring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail KadareWhite Teeth – Zadie SmithThe Heart of Redness – Zakes MdaUnder the Skin – Michel FaberIgnorance – Milan KunderaNineteen Seventy Seven – David PeaceCelestial Harmonies – Péter EsterházyCity of God – E.L. DoctorowHow the Dead Live – Will SelfThe Human Stain – Philip RothThe Blind Assassin – Margaret AtwoodAfter the Quake – Haruki MurakamiSmall Remedies – Shashi DeshpandeSuper-Cannes – J.G. BallardHouse of Leaves – Mark Z. DanielewskiBlonde – Joyce Carol OatesPastoralia – George Saunders1900sTimbuktu – Paul AusterThe Romantics – Pankaj MishraCryptonomicon – Neal StephensonAs If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakuli?Everything You Need – A.L. KennedyFear and Trembling – Amélie NothombThe Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman RushdieDisgrace – J.M. CoetzeeSputnik Sweetheart – Haruki MurakamiElementary Particles – Michel HouellebecqIntimacy – Hanif KureishiAmsterdam – Ian McEwanCloudsplitter – Russell BanksAll Souls Day – Cees NooteboomThe Talk of the Town – Ardal O’HanlonTipping the Velvet – Sarah WatersThe Poisonwood Bible – Barbara KingsolverGlamorama – Bret Easton EllisAnother World – Pat BarkerThe Hours – Michael CunninghamVeronika Decides to Die – Paulo CoelhoMason & Dixon – Thomas PynchonThe God of Small Things – Arundhati RoyMemoirs of a Geisha – Arthur GoldenGreat Apes – Will SelfEnduring Love – Ian McEwanUnderworld – Don DeLilloJack Maggs – Peter CareyThe Life of Insects – Victor PelevinAmerican Pastoral – Philip RothThe Untouchable – John BanvilleSilk – Alessandro BariccoCocaine Nights – J.G. BallardHallucinating Foucault – Patricia DunckerFugitive Pieces – Anne MichaelsThe Ghost Road – Pat BarkerForever a Stranger – Hella HaasseInfinite Jest – David Foster WallaceThe Clay Machine-Gun – Victor PelevinAlias Grace – Margaret AtwoodThe Unconsoled – Kazuo IshiguroMorvern Callar – Alan WarnerThe Information – Martin AmisThe Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman RushdieSabbath’s Theater – Philip RothThe Rings of Saturn – W.G. SebaldThe Reader – Bernhard SchlinkA Fine Balance – Rohinton MistryLove’s Work – Gillian RoseThe End of the Story – Lydia DavisMr. Vertigo – Paul AusterThe Folding Star – Alan HollinghurstWhatever – Michel HouellebecqLand – Park Kyong-niThe Master of Petersburg – J.M. CoetzeeThe Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki MurakamiPereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio TabucchiCity Sister Silver – Jàchym TopolHow Late It Was, How Late – James KelmanCaptain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de BernieresFelicia’s Journey – William TrevorDisappearance – David DabydeenThe Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe TimmThe Shipping News – E. Annie ProulxTrainspotting – Irvine WelshBirdsong – Sebastian FaulksLooking for the Possible Dance – A.L. KennedyOperation Shylock – Philip RothComplicity – Iain BanksOn Love – Alain de BottonWhat a Carve Up! – Jonathan CoeA Suitable Boy – Vikram SethThe Stone Diaries – Carol ShieldsThe Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey EugenidesThe House of Doctor Dee – Peter AckroydThe Robber Bride – Margaret AtwoodThe Emigrants – W.G. SebaldThe Secret History – Donna TarttLife is a Caravanserai – Emine ÖzdamarThe Discovery of Heaven – Harry MulischA Heart So White – Javier MariasPossessing the Secret of Joy – Alice WalkerIndigo – Marina WarnerThe Crow Road – Iain BanksWritten on the Body – Jeanette WintersonJazz – Toni MorrisonThe English Patient – Michael OndaatjeSmilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter HøegThe Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabeBlack Water – Joyce Carol OatesThe Heather Blazing – Colm TóibínAsphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)Black Dogs – Ian McEwanHideous Kinky – Esther FreudArcadia – Jim CraceWild Swans – Jung ChangAmerican Psycho – Bret Easton EllisTime’s Arrow – Martin AmisMao II – Don DeLilloTypical – Padgett PowellRegeneration – Pat BarkerDownriver – Iain SinclairSeñor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de BernieresWise Children – Angela CarterGet Shorty – Elmore LeonardAmongst Women – John McGahernVineland – Thomas PynchonVertigo – W.G. SebaldStone Junction – Jim DodgeThe Music of Chance – Paul AusterThe Things They Carried – Tim O’BrienA Home at the End of the World – Michael CunninghamLike Life – Lorrie MoorePossession – A.S. ByattThe Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif KureishiThe Midnight Examiner – William KotzwinkleA Disaffection – James KelmanSexing the Cherry – Jeanette WintersonMoon Palace – Paul AusterBilly Bathgate – E.L. DoctorowRemains of the Day – Kazuo IshiguroThe Melancholy of Resistance – László KrasznahorkaiThe Temple of My Familiar – Alice WalkerThe Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice GallowayThe History of the Siege of Lisbon – José SaramagoLike Water for Chocolate – Laura EsquivelA Prayer for Owen Meany – John IrvingLondon Fields – Martin AmisThe Book of Evidence – John BanvilleCat’s Eye – Margaret AtwoodFoucault’s Pendulum – Umberto EcoThe Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund WhiteWittgenstein’s Mistress – David MarksonThe Satanic Verses – Salman RushdieThe Swimming-Pool Library – Alan HollinghurstOscar and Lucinda – Peter CareyLibra – Don DeLilloThe Player of Games – Iain M. BanksNervous Conditions – Tsitsi DangarembgaThe Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas AdamsDirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas AdamsThe Radiant Way – Margaret DrabbleThe Afternoon of a Writer – Peter HandkeThe Black Dahlia – James EllroyThe Passion – Jeanette WintersonThe Pigeon – Patrick SüskindThe Child in Time – Ian McEwanCigarettes – Harry MathewsThe Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom WolfeThe New York Trilogy – Paul AusterWorld’s End – T. Coraghessan BoyleEnigma of Arrival – V.S. NaipaulThe Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-raeBeloved – Toni MorrisonAnagrams – Lorrie MooreMatigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong’oMarya – Joyce Carol OatesWatchmen – Alan Moore & David GibbonsThe Old Devils – Kingsley AmisLost Language of Cranes – David LeavittAn Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo IshiguroExtinction – Thomas BernhardFoe – J.M. CoetzeeThe Drowned and the Saved – Primo LeviReasons to Live – Amy HempelThe Parable of the Blind – Gert HofmannLove in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García MárquezOranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette WintersonThe Cider House Rules – John IrvingA Maggot – John FowlesLess Than Zero – Bret Easton EllisContact – Carl SaganThe Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret AtwoodPerfume – Patrick SüskindOld Masters – Thomas BernhardWhite Noise – Don DeLilloQueer – William BurroughsHawksmoor – Peter AckroydLegend – David GemmellDictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavi?The Bus Conductor Hines – James KelmanThe Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José SaramagoThe Lover – Marguerite DurasEmpire of the Sun – J.G. BallardThe Wasp Factory – Iain BanksNights at the Circus – Angela CarterThe Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan KunderaBlood and Guts in High School – Kathy AckerNeuromancer – William GibsonFlaubert’s Parrot – Julian BarnesMoney: A Suicide Note – Martin AmisShame – Salman RushdieWorstward Ho – Samuel BeckettFools of Fortune – William TrevorLa Brava – Elmore LeonardWaterland – Graham SwiftThe Life and Times of Michael K – J.M. CoetzeeThe Diary of Jane Somers – Doris LessingThe Piano Teacher – Elfriede JelinekThe Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo ClausIf Not Now, When? – Primo LeviA Boy’s Own Story – Edmund WhiteThe Color Purple – Alice WalkerWittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas BernhardA Pale View of Hills – Kazuo IshiguroSchindler’s Ark – Thomas KeneallyThe House of the Spirits – Isabel AllendeThe Newton Letter – John BanvilleOn the Black Hill – Bruce ChatwinConcrete – Thomas BernhardThe Names – Don DeLilloRabbit is Rich – John UpdikeLanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair GrayThe Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwanJuly’s People – Nadine GordimerSummer in Baden-Baden – Leonid TsypkinBroken April – Ismail KadareWaiting for the Barbarians – J.M. CoetzeeMidnight’s Children – Salman RushdieRites of Passage – William GoldingRituals – Cees NooteboomConfederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy TooleCity Primeval – Elmore LeonardThe Name of the Rose – Umberto EcoThe Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan KunderaSmiley’s People – John Le CarréShikasta – Doris LessingA Bend in the River – V.S. NaipaulBurger’s Daughter - Nadine GordimerThe Safety Net – Heinrich BöllIf On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo CalvinoThe Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas AdamsThe Cement Garden – Ian McEwanThe World According to Garp – John IrvingLife: A User’s Manual – Georges PerecThe Sea, The Sea – Iris MurdochThe Singapore Grip – J.G. FarrellYes – Thomas BernhardThe Virgin in the Garden – A.S. ByattIn the Heart of the Country – J.M. CoetzeeThe Passion of New Eve – Angela CarterDelta of Venus – Anaïs NinThe Shining – Stephen KingDispatches – Michael HerrPetals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’oSong of Solomon – Toni MorrisonThe Hour of the Star – Clarice LispectorThe Left-Handed Woman – Peter HandkeRatner’s Star – Don DeLilloThe Public Burning – Robert CooverInterview With the Vampire – Anne RiceCutter and Bone – Newton ThornburgAmateurs – Donald BarthelmePatterns of Childhood – Christa WolfAutumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García MárquezW, or the Memory of Childhood – Georges PerecA Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony PowellGrimus – Salman RushdieThe Dead Father – Donald BarthelmeFateless – Imre KertészWillard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard BrautiganHigh Rise – J.G. BallardHumboldt’s Gift – Saul BellowDead Babies – Martin AmisCorrection – Thomas BernhardRagtime – E.L. DoctorowThe Fan Man – William KotzwinkleDusklands – J.M. CoetzeeThe Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich BöllTinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le CarréBreakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.Fear of Flying – Erica JongA Question of Power – Bessie HeadThe Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. FarrellThe Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo CalvinoCrash – J.G. BallardThe Honorary Consul – Graham GreeneGravity’s Rainbow – Thomas PynchonThe Black Prince – Iris MurdochSula – Toni MorrisonInvisible Cities – Italo CalvinoThe Breast – Philip RothThe Summer Book – Tove JanssonG – John BergerSurfacing – Margaret AtwoodHouse Mother Normal – B.S. JohnsonIn A Free State – V.S. NaipaulThe Book of Daniel – E.L. DoctorowFear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. ThompsonGroup Portrait With Lady – Heinrich BöllThe Wild Boys – William BurroughsRabbit Redux – John UpdikeThe Sea of Fertility – Yukio MishimaThe Driver’s Seat – Muriel SparkThe Ogre – Michael TournierThe Bluest Eye – Toni MorrisonGoalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter HandkeI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya AngelouMercier et Camier – Samuel BeckettTroubles – J.G. FarrellJahrestage – Uwe JohnsonThe Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. BallardTent of Miracles – Jorge AmadoPricksongs and Descants – Robert CooverBlind Man With a Pistol – Chester HinesSlaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John FowlesThe Green Man – Kingsley AmisPortnoy’s Complaint – Philip RothThe Godfather – Mario PuzoAda – Vladimir NabokovThem – Joyce Carol OatesA Void/Avoid – Georges PerecEva Trout – Elizabeth BowenMyra Breckinridge – Gore VidalThe Nice and the Good – Iris MurdochBelle du Seigneur – Albert CohenCancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich SolzhenitsynThe First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. ClarkeDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. DickDark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm LowryThe German Lesson – Siegfried LenzIn Watermelon Sugar – Richard BrautiganA Kestrel for a Knave – Barry HinesThe Quest for Christa T. – Christa WolfChocky – John WyndhamThe Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom WolfeThe Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas LlosaOne Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García MárquezThe Master and Margarita – Mikhail BulgakovPilgrimage – Dorothy RichardsonThe Joke – Milan KunderaNo Laughing Matter – Angus WilsonThe Third Policeman – Flann O’BrienA Man Asleep – Georges PerecThe Birds Fall Down – Rebecca WestTrawl – B.S. JohnsonIn Cold Blood – Truman CapoteThe Magus – John FowlesThe Vice-Consul – Marguerite DurasWide Sargasso Sea – Jean RhysGiles Goat-Boy – John BarthThe Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas PynchonThings – Georges PerecThe River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong’oAugust is a Wicked Month – Edna O’BrienGod Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt VonnegutEverything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’ConnorThe Passion According to G.H. – Clarice LispectorSometimes a Great Notion – Ken KeseyCome Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald BartholmeAlbert Angelo – B.S. JohnsonArrow of God – Chinua AchebeThe Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite DurasHerzog – Saul BellowV. – Thomas PynchonCat’s Cradle – Kurt VonnegutThe Graduate – Charles WebbManon des Sources – Marcel PagnolThe Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le CarréThe Girls of Slender Means – Muriel SparkInside Mr. Enderby – Anthony BurgessThe Bell Jar – Sylvia PlathOne Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich SolzhenitsynThe Collector – John FowlesOne Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken KeseyA Clockwork Orange – Anthony BurgessPale Fire – Vladimir NabokovThe Drowned World – J.G. BallardThe Golden Notebook – Doris LessingLabyrinths – Jorg Luis BorgesGirl With Green Eyes – Edna O’BrienThe Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio BassaniStranger in a Strange Land – Robert HeinleinFranny and Zooey – J.D. SalingerA Severed Head – Iris MurdochFaces in the Water – Janet FrameSolaris – Stanislaw LemCat and Mouse – Günter GrassThe Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel SparkCatch-22 – Joseph HellerThe Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’ConnorHow It Is – Samuel BeckettOur Ancestors – Italo CalvinoThe Country Girls – Edna O’BrienTo Kill a Mockingbird – Harper LeeRabbit, Run – John UpdikePromise at Dawn – Romain GaryCider With Rosie – Laurie LeeBilly Liar – Keith WaterhouseNaked Lunch – William BurroughsThe Tin Drum – Günter GrassAbsolute Beginners – Colin MacInnesHenderson the Rain King – Saul BellowMemento Mori – Muriel SparkBilliards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich BöllBreakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman CapoteThe Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di LampedusaPluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo OeA Town Like Alice – Nevil ShuteThe Bitter Glass – Eilís DillonThings Fall Apart – Chinua AchebeSaturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan SillitoeMrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris – Paul GallicoBorstal Boy – Brendan BehanThe End of the Road – John BarthThe Once and Future King – T.H. WhiteThe Bell – Iris MurdochJealousy – Alain Robbe-GrilletVoss – Patrick WhiteThe Midwich Cuckoos – John WyndhamBlue Noon – Georges BatailleHomo Faber – Max FrischOn the Road – Jack KerouacPnin – Vladimir NabokovDoctor Zhivago – Boris PasternakThe Wonderful “O” – James ThurberJustine – Lawrence DurrellGiovanni’s Room – James BaldwinThe Lonely Londoners – Sam SelvonThe Roots of Heaven – Romain GarySeize the Day – Saul BellowThe Floating Opera – John BarthThe Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. TolkienThe Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia HighsmithLolita – Vladimir NabokovA World of Love – Elizabeth BowenThe Trusting and the Maimed – James PlunkettThe Quiet American – Graham GreeneThe Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos KazantzákisThe Recognitions – William GaddisThe Ragazzi – Pier Paulo PasoliniBonjour Tristesse – Françoise SaganI’m Not Stiller – Max FrischSelf Condemned – Wyndham LewisThe Story of O – Pauline RéageA Ghost at Noon – Alberto MoraviaLord of the Flies – William GoldingUnder the Net – Iris MurdochThe Go-Between – L.P. HartleyThe Long Goodbye – Raymond ChandlerThe Unnamable – Samuel BeckettWatt – Samuel BeckettLucky Jim – Kingsley AmisJunkie – William BurroughsThe Adventures of Augie March – Saul BellowGo Tell It on the Mountain – James BaldwinCasino Royale – Ian FlemingThe Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich DürrenmattInvisible Man – Ralph EllisonThe Old Man and the Sea – Ernest HemingwayWise Blood – Flannery O’ConnorThe Killer Inside Me – Jim ThompsonMemoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite YourcenarMalone Dies – Samuel BeckettDay of the Triffids – John WyndhamFoundation – Isaac AsimovThe Opposing Shore – Julien GracqThe Catcher in the Rye – J.D. SalingerThe Rebel – Albert CamusMolloy – Samuel BeckettThe End of the Affair – Graham GreeneThe Abbot C – Georges BatailleThe Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio PazThe Third Man – Graham GreeneThe 13 Clocks – James ThurberGormenghast – Mervyn PeakeThe Grass is Singing – Doris LessingI, Robot – Isaac AsimovThe Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare PaveseThe Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon VestdijkLove in a Cold Climate – Nancy MitfordThe Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor SergeThe Heat of the Day – Elizabeth BowenKingdom of This World – Alejo CarpentierThe Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson AlgrenNineteen Eighty-Four – George OrwellAll About H. Hatterr – G.V. DesaniDisobedience – Alberto MoraviaDeath Sentence – Maurice BlanchotThe Heart of the Matter – Graham GreeneCry, the Beloved Country – Alan PatonDoctor Faustus – Thomas MannThe Victim – Saul BellowExercises in Style – Raymond QueneauIf This Is a Man – Primo LeviUnder the Volcano – Malcolm LowryThe Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo CalvinoThe Plague – Albert CamusBack – Henry GreenTitus Groan – Mervyn PeakeThe Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andri?Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn WaughAnimal Farm – George OrwellCannery Row – John SteinbeckThe Pursuit of Love – Nancy MitfordLoving – Henry GreenArcanum 17 – André BretonChrist Stopped at Eboli – Carlo LeviThe Razor’s Edge – William Somerset MaughamTransit – Anna SeghersFicciones – Jorge Luis BorgesDangling Man – Saul BellowThe Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-ExupéryCaught – Henry GreenThe Glass Bead Game – Herman HesseEmbers – Sandor MaraiGo Down, Moses – William FaulknerThe Outsider – Albert CamusIn Sicily – Elio VittoriniThe Poor Mouth – Flann O’BrienThe Living and the Dead – Patrick WhiteHangover Square – Patrick HamiltonBetween the Acts – Virginia WoolfThe Hamlet – William FaulknerFarewell My Lovely – Raymond ChandlerFor Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest HemingwayNative Son – Richard WrightThe Power and the Glory – Graham GreeneThe Tartar Steppe – Dino BuzzatiParty Going – Henry GreenThe Grapes of Wrath – John SteinbeckFinnegans Wake – James JoyceAt Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’BrienComing Up for Air – George OrwellGoodbye to Berlin – Christopher IsherwoodTropic of Capricorn – Henry MillerGood Morning, Midnight – Jean RhysThe Big Sleep – Raymond ChandlerAfter the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend WarnerMiss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred WatsonNausea – Jean-Paul SartreRebecca – Daphne du MaurierCause for Alarm – Eric AmblerBrighton Rock – Graham GreeneU.S.A. – John Dos PassosMurphy – Samuel BeckettOf Mice and Men – John SteinbeckTheir Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale HurstonThe Hobbit – J.R.R. TolkienThe Years – Virginia WoolfIn Parenthesis – David JonesThe Revenge for Love – Wyndham LewisOut of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen)To Have and Have Not – Ernest HemingwaySummer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend WarnerEyeless in Gaza – Aldous HuxleyThe Thinking Reed – Rebecca WestGone With the Wind – Margaret MitchellKeep the Aspidistra Flying – George OrwellWild Harbour – Ian MacPhersonAbsalom, Absalom! – William FaulknerAt the Mountains of Madness – H.P. LovecraftNightwood – Djuna BarnesIndependent People – Halldór LaxnessAuto-da-Fé – Elias CanettiThe Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher IsherwoodThey Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoyThe House in Paris – Elizabeth BowenEngland Made Me – Graham GreeneBurmese Days – George OrwellThe Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. SayersThreepenny Novel – Bertolt BrechtNovel With Cocaine – M. AgeyevThe Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. CainTropic of Cancer – Henry MillerA Handful of Dust – Evelyn WaughTender is the Night – F. Scott FitzgeraldThank You, Jeeves – P.G. WodehouseCall it Sleep – Henry RothMiss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael WestMurder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. SayersThe Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude SteinTestament of Youth – Vera BrittainA Day Off – Storm JamesonThe Man Without Qualities – Robert MusilA Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic GibbonJourney to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand CélineBrave New World – Aldous HuxleyCold Comfort Farm – Stella GibbonsTo the North – Elizabeth BowenThe Thin Man – Dashiell HammettThe Radetzky March – Joseph RothThe Waves – Virginia WoolfThe Glass Key – Dashiell HammettCakes and Ale – W. Somerset MaughamThe Apes of God – Wyndham LewisHer Privates We – Frederic ManningVile Bodies – Evelyn WaughThe Maltese Falcon – Dashiell HammettHebdomeros – Giorgio de ChiricoPassing – Nella LarsenA Farewell to Arms – Ernest HemingwayRed Harvest – Dashiell HammettLiving – Henry GreenThe Time of Indifference – Alberto MoraviaAll Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria RemarqueBerlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred DöblinThe Last September – Elizabeth BowenHarriet Hume – Rebecca WestThe Sound and the Fury – William FaulknerLes Enfants Terribles – Jean CocteauLook Homeward, Angel – Thomas WolfeStory of the Eye – Georges BatailleOrlando – Virginia WoolfLady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. LawrenceThe Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe HallThe Childermass – Wyndham LewisQuartet – Jean RhysDecline and Fall – Evelyn WaughQuicksand – Nella LarsenParade’s End – Ford Madox FordNadja – André BretonSteppenwolf – Herman HesseRemembrance of Things Past – Marcel ProustTo The Lighthouse – Virginia WoolfTarka the Otter – Henry WilliamsonAmerika – Franz KafkaThe Sun Also Rises – Ernest HemingwayBlindness – Henry GreenThe Castle – Franz KafkaThe Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav HašekThe Plumed Serpent – D.H. LawrenceOne, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi PirandelloThe Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha ChristieThe Making of Americans – Gertrude SteinManhattan Transfer – John Dos PassosMrs. Dalloway – Virginia WoolfThe Great Gatsby – F. Scott FitzgeraldThe Counterfeiters – André GideThe Trial – Franz KafkaThe Artamonov Business – Maxim GorkyThe Professor’s House – Willa CatherBilly Budd, Foretopman – Herman MelvilleThe Green Hat – Michael ArlenThe Magic Mountain – Thomas MannWe – Yevgeny ZamyatinA Passage to India – E.M. ForsterThe Devil in the Flesh – Raymond RadiguetZeno’s Conscience – Italo SvevoCane – Jean ToomerAntic Hay – Aldous HuxleyAmok – Stefan ZweigThe Garden Party – Katherine MansfieldThe Enormous Room – E.E. CummingsJacob’s Room – Virginia WoolfSiddhartha – Herman HesseThe Glimpses of the Moon – Edith WhartonLife and Death of Harriett Frean – May SinclairThe Last Days of Humanity – Karl KrausAaron’s Rod – D.H. LawrenceBabbitt – Sinclair LewisUlysses – James JoyceThe Fox – D.H. LawrenceCrome Yellow – Aldous HuxleyThe Age of Innocence – Edith WhartonMain Street – Sinclair LewisWomen in Love – D.H. LawrenceNight and Day – Virginia WoolfTarr – Wyndham LewisThe Return of the Soldier – Rebecca WestThe Shadow Line – Joseph ConradSummer – Edith WhartonGrowth of the Soil – Knut HamsenBunner Sisters – Edith WhartonA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James JoyceUnder Fire – Henri BarbusseRashomon – Akutagawa RyunosukeThe Good Soldier – Ford Madox FordThe Voyage Out – Virginia WoolfOf Human Bondage – William Somerset MaughamThe Rainbow – D.H. LawrenceThe Thirty-Nine Steps – John BuchanKokoro – Natsume SosekiLocus Solus – Raymond RousselRosshalde – Herman HesseTarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice BurroughsThe Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert TressellSons and Lovers – D.H. LawrenceDeath in Venice – Thomas MannThe Charwoman’s Daughter – James StephensEthan Frome – Edith WhartonFantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre SouvestreHowards End – E.M. ForsterImpressions of Africa – Raymond RousselThree Lives – Gertrude SteinMartin Eden – Jack LondonStrait is the Gate – André GideTono-Bungay – H.G. WellsThe Inferno – Henri BarbusseA Room With a View – E.M. ForsterThe Iron Heel – Jack LondonThe Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold BennettThe House on the Borderland – William Hope HodgsonMother – Maxim GorkyThe Secret Agent – Joseph ConradThe Jungle – Upton SinclairYoung Törless – Robert MusilThe Forsyte Sage – John GalsworthyThe House of Mirth – Edith WhartonProfessor Unrat – Heinrich MannWhere Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. ForsterNostromo – Joseph ConradHadrian the Seventh – Frederick RolfeThe Golden Bowl – Henry JamesThe Ambassadors – Henry JamesThe Riddle of the Sands – Erskine ChildersThe Immoralist – André GideThe Wings of the Dove – Henry JamesHeart of Darkness – Joseph ConradThe Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan DoyleBuddenbrooks – Thomas MannKim – Rudyard KiplingSister Carrie – Theodore DreiserLord Jim – Joseph Conrad1800sSome Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and RossThe Stechlin – Theodore FontaneThe Awakening – Kate ChopinThe Turn of the Screw – Henry JamesThe War of the Worlds – H.G. WellsThe Invisible Man – H.G. WellsWhat Maisie Knew – Henry JamesFruits of the Earth – André GideDracula – Bram StokerQuo Vadis – Henryk SienkiewiczThe Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. WellsThe Time Machine – H.G. WellsEffi Briest – Theodore FontaneJude the Obscure – Thomas HardyThe Real Charlotte – Somerville and RossThe Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins GilmanBorn in Exile – George GissingDiary of a Nobody – George & Weedon GrossmithThe Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan DoyleNews from Nowhere – William MorrisNew Grub Street – George GissingGösta Berling’s Saga – Selma LagerlöfTess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas HardyThe Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar WildeThe Kreutzer Sonata – Leo TolstoyLa Bête Humaine – Émile ZolaBy the Open Sea – August StrindbergHunger – Knut HamsunThe Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis StevensonPierre and Jean – Guy de MaupassantFortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez GaldésThe People of Hemsö – August StrindbergThe Woodlanders – Thomas HardyShe – H. Rider HaggardThe Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis StevensonThe Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas HardyKidnapped – Robert Louis StevensonKing Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider HaggardGerminal – Émile ZolaThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark TwainBel-Ami – Guy de MaupassantMarius the Epicurean – Walter PaterAgainst the Grain – Joris-Karl HuysmansThe Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo TolstoyA Woman’s Life – Guy de MaupassantTreasure Island – Robert Louis StevensonThe House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni VergaThe Portrait of a Lady – Henry JamesBouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave FlaubertBen-Hur – Lew WallaceNana – Émile ZolaThe Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor DostoevskyThe Red Room – August StrindbergReturn of the Native – Thomas HardyAnna Karenina – Leo TolstoyDrunkard – Émile ZolaVirgin Soil – Ivan TurgenevDaniel Deronda – George EliotThe Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas HardyThe Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave FlaubertFar from the Madding Crowd – Thomas HardyThe Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai LeskovAround the World in Eighty Days – Jules VerneIn a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le FanuThe Devils – Fyodor DostoevskyErewhon – Samuel ButlerSpring Torrents – Ivan TurgenevMiddlemarch – George EliotThrough the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis CarrollKing Lear of the Steppes – Ivan TurgenevHe Knew He Was Right – Anthony TrollopeWar and Peace – Leo TolstoySentimental Education – Gustave FlaubertPhineas Finn – Anthony TrollopeMaldoror – Comte de LautréaumontThe Idiot – Fyodor DostoevskyThe Moonstone – Wilkie CollinsLittle Women – Louisa May AlcottThérèse Raquin – Émile ZolaThe Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony TrollopeJourney to the Centre of the Earth – Jules VerneCrime and Punishment – Fyodor DostoevskyAlice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis CarrollOur Mutual Friend – Charles DickensUncle Silas – Sheridan Le FanuNotes from the Underground – Fyodor DostoevskyThe Water-Babies – Charles KingsleyLes Misérables – Victor HugoFathers and Sons – Ivan TurgenevSilas Marner – George EliotGreat Expectations – Charles DickensOn the Eve – Ivan TurgenevCastle Richmond – Anthony TrollopeThe Mill on the Floss – George EliotThe Woman in White – Wilkie CollinsThe Marble Faun – Nathaniel HawthorneMax Havelaar – MultatuliA Tale of Two Cities – Charles DickensOblomovka – Ivan GoncharovAdam Bede – George EliotMadame Bovary – Gustave FlaubertNorth and South – Elizabeth GaskellHard Times – Charles DickensWalden – Henry David ThoreauBleak House – Charles DickensVillette – Charlotte BrontëCranford – Elizabeth GaskellUncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher StoweThe Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel HawthorneThe House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel HawthorneMoby-Dick – Herman MelvilleThe Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel HawthorneDavid Copperfield – Charles DickensShirley – Charlotte BrontëMary Barton – Elizabeth GaskellThe Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne BrontëWuthering Heights – Emily BrontëAgnes Grey – Anne BrontëJane Eyre – Charlotte BrontëVanity Fair – William Makepeace ThackerayThe Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre DumasLa Reine Margot – Alexandre DumasThe Three Musketeers – Alexandre DumasThe Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan PoeMartin Chuzzlewit – Charles DickensThe Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan PoeLost Illusions – Honoré de BalzacA Christmas Carol – Charles DickensDead Souls – Nikolay GogolThe Charterhouse of Parma – StendhalThe Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan PoeThe Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles DickensOliver Twist – Charles DickensThe Nose – Nikolay GogolLe Père Goriot – Honoré de BalzacEugénie Grandet – Honoré de BalzacThe Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor HugoThe Red and the Black – StendhalThe Betrothed – Alessandro ManzoniLast of the Mohicans – James Fenimore CooperThe Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James HoggThe Albigenses – Charles Robert MaturinMelmoth the Wanderer – Charles Robert MaturinThe Monastery – Sir Walter ScottIvanhoe – Sir Walter ScottFrankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft ShelleyNorthanger Abbey – Jane AustenPersuasion – Jane AustenOrmond – Maria EdgeworthRob Roy – Sir Walter ScottEmma – Jane AustenMansfield Park – Jane AustenPride and Prejudice – Jane AustenThe Absentee – Maria EdgeworthSense and Sensibility – Jane AustenElective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von GoetheCastle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth1700sHyperion – Friedrich HölderlinThe Nun – Denis DiderotCamilla – Fanny BurneyThe Monk – M.G. LewisWilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von GoetheThe Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann RadcliffeThe Interesting Narrative – Olaudah EquianoThe Adventures of Caleb Williams – William GodwinJustine – Marquis de SadeVathek – William BeckfordThe 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de SadeCecilia – Fanny BurneyConfessions – Jean-Jacques RousseauDangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de LaclosReveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques RousseauEvelina – Fanny BurneyThe Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von GoetheHumphrey Clinker – Tobias George SmollettThe Man of Feeling – Henry MackenzieA Sentimental Journey – Laurence SterneTristram Shandy – Laurence SterneThe Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver GoldsmithThe Castle of Otranto – Horace WalpoleÉmile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques RousseauRameau’s Nephew – Denis DiderotJulie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques RousseauRasselas – Samuel JohnsonCandide – VoltaireThe Female Quixote – Charlotte LennoxAmelia – Henry FieldingPeregrine Pickle – Tobias George SmollettFanny Hill – John ClelandTom Jones – Henry FieldingRoderick Random – Tobias George SmollettClarissa – Samuel RichardsonPamela – Samuel RichardsonJacques the Fatalist – Denis DiderotMemoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. SwiftJoseph Andrews – Henry FieldingA Modest Proposal – Jonathan SwiftGulliver’s Travels – Jonathan SwiftRoxana – Daniel DefoeMoll Flanders – Daniel DefoeLove in Excess – Eliza HaywoodRobinson Crusoe – Daniel DefoeA Tale of a Tub – Jonathan SwiftPre-1700Oroonoko – Aphra BehnThe Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La FayetteThe Pilgrim’s Progress – John BunyanDon Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes SaavedraThe Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas NasheEuphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John LylyGargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise RabelaisThe Thousand and One Nights – AnonymousThe Golden Ass – Lucius ApuleiusAithiopika – HeliodorusChaireas and Kallirhoe – CharitonMetamorphoses – OvidAesop’s Fables – Aesopus

First day of the year means new reading challenges! I did better last year than my blog indicates. So my goal for this year is not to read more, but rather to actually follow through with writing about what I read (so writing challenge really?). What's life without something to work toward, even if it's just to be a little happier. Writing makes me happy. I should do more of it. I'm biting off more than I can chew again, but who cares? It's fun.

I love dystopian novels. Like a lot. Reading 5 of these for the Asocial level won't be hard; I probably read 15 (the next level) last year, but didn't write about them. I'm aiming small. 5!

Another one I really enjoyed last year, but didn't write about as much as I should have. I'm signing up for medium again - 2 from each continent. 14 books, here I come!

I don't know a damned thing about World War I really, so I'm going in! I'm going for Dip with 1-3 books. I figure that's about as much as I can handle. If I read more, a miracle!

They don't have a 2012 challenge posted yet, but I really enjoyed this one last year. It made me think about who is writing the books I read, which is something we should all think about more. Are we just reading things that reinforce our own experience of the world? Level 2 last year was 4-6 books, so I'm aiming for that again this year.

I call this challenge from last year my Mulligan. I have 2 unread books on my shelf right now and I really want to read 1Q84, so I think I'm covered.

This was so much fun last year. I'm going with Pastry Chef, 4-8 books!

Challenges that have nothing to do with 2012

I decided that I also want to commit some other long-term goals I've had to bloggery. 1001 Books to read before you die, and the Modern Library Top 100s (as well as the accompany Radcliffe's list) because why the hell not? When I'm sitting around thinking, oh, I have nothing to read, I will have plenty to read. Plenty. Also, I'm an idiot.

This statement is sadly true. I wish it wasn't. I'm not sure what to do about it. My mom is gone, and that makes me furious. My family has little money and we're not really as close as many other families, and that makes me furious, too. And my dad is limited in a way that makes me feel lots of different things.

He hoards things in his bedroom. My sister thinks it's because he has very little that he has control over, so he holds on to what he has. This includes things it doesn't make sense to hoard, like shampoo and conditioner. He won't let my sister take them to the bathroom when his are empty; he makes her buy more.

On Thursday my sister went into his room and saw that he'd taken some Christmas cards from the large pile in the living room. They were lying on his bedside table, neatly stacked, each one signed with my dad's shaky left hand. Much the way swearing is a remaining reflex of speech, his signature, signed in his non-dominant hand, is a vestige of his written skills, an anomaly. Beneath them she found some money and she realized he meant to put the money in the cards as Christmas gifts - we assumed member's of my dad's extended family, but couldn't be sure. He had addressed the envelopes, but the result in each case was his own name, a skipping record repeating the last few words of a song you know by heart.

The next day he pulled my sister into his room and pantomimed the necessity for her to get change for the bills while she was in town. On Christmas Eve, he rolled his wheelchair into the living room, and I helped him put the cards in our stockings because it turned out that the cards were for us. He was confused when I couldn't figure out which envelope went in whose stocking - to him he had labeled them quite clearly.

That night as we emptied our stockings, we opened his cards and each of us got $10 with the exception of Keegan, to whom he had slipped an extra $5. He looked happy that we were happy, grateful for what he could do.

I do appreciate it. That's what Christmas is supposed to be - each of us doing what we can for each other to try to express how much we love each other and appreciate the gift that is knowing the other person. But it's a kind of bittersweet appreciation for my family. What we can do for each other isn't much, and in many ways it's a reduced version of what we've been able to do for each other in the past. Christmas feels horribly incomplete without my mom there, as though we're all still trying to figure out how to talk to each other without her acting as interpreter. We limp along as best we can, our crutch the incredibly deep love we have for each other.

If we have to be dependent upon something to make our family gatherings possible, I'm glad it's love, as that seems to be the one emotion we have for each other that resists whatever tide of dysfunction is currently rising or ebbing. This, oddly, might explain why my mother's absence is as surprising as ever - because our love for her is as present and strong as ever. It's like a thick, heavy rope pulled taut between us and her. The rope is still there, held by some unseen force where she used to be. When we're all together, the tug of her feels the strongest and it's confusing that she isn't actually there, smiling as we open gifts, hugging us with her soft cheek pressing against ours, her baby powder smell filling our noses. How could she not actually be there when her presence is felt so strongly? Death, so fundamental to life, is horribly confusing.

When I started writing this, I wasn't sure why I was so angry. Why anger of all emotions? Sadness would seem to make more sense, or perhaps longing, or loss? And what I come up with is anger - I think because my sadness tinges the happiness I feel when I'm at home, and I resent that. I want to enjoy what we have, not feel sad for what we don't have.

When my mom died, I felt completely lost and totally incapable of figuring out what to do next, but I had no doubts about what to do first. Oddly enough, I knew I needed a journal and a little black dress. The first was where I was going to write down all my memories about my mom so that I wouldn't lose them. The second was to wear when I gave her eulogy. When times are hard, I like to look awesome. It makes me feel more put together than I really am, and I knew I'd need all the help I could get to make it through the memorial service.

That's neither here nor there. Right after my mom died, I wrote in the journal a lot, as many of the good things as I could remember. And then I put it aside for a while. And now I've picked it up again. Except now I'm writing down all the things I left out before. Things that in the past I've had a hard time talking about, much less committing to paper. But the last time I picked up the journal, I realized there were all these things in there that'd I'd forgotten, as though I put them on paper for safekeeping and I didn't have to hold onto them anymore. They were there in case I needed them, but the burden of carrying them wasn't on me anymore. Shockingly enough, that works for the bad stuff too.

So now I'm writing down all the rest, the hard times, and the moments that I won't put on the internet. I don't want to think about them anymore, and I'm hoping that if I put them on paper, I won't have to think about them anymore. I can put them there for safekeeping.

Meringues are easy to make - you just need patience and preferably a standing mixer because then it does all the work and you just have to show up at the end to sprinkle in confectioners sugar like fairy dust. So, my recipe:

Ingredients

2 egg whites

1 tsp. vanilla extract (or any other extract)

1/8 tsp. cream of tartar

1/8 tsp. salt

3/4 cup confectioners sugar (1/4 cup more on hand)

Couple handfuls chocolate chips (or nuts or coconut or peppermint)

Here's what you do with them:

1. Separate the egg whites from the yolks fresh from the fridge because cold eggs separate easiest. However, if you start beating the whites right away, they really don't do their best work. Let the whites sit for about 30 minutes to give them time to get to room temperature. Use a metal or glass bowl and be sure that it's as clean as humanly possible. Any traces of oil or grease and you can beat those things to death and they'll never foam the way you want them to.

2. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

3. Line your baking sheets with parchment paper.

4. No need to combine the dry ingredients, but I do so now's a good time to measure that stuff.

5. Once at room temperature, put the eggs in the standing mixer, turn it aaaalllllllll the way up and then back away.

6. When you get a good frothy foam, add the extract.

7. Once you have soft peaks forming, start adding the sugar, a tablespoon or so at a time. The eggs will start to thicken even more and they should be really glossy. Sometimes mine will get to the point where they are shiny and they're going and going and I have lovely soft peaks, but they just will not form a stiff peak. In those cases, I just add a little more sugar and that tends to do it. Do not be impatient.

8. Remove from the mixer and fold in any add-ins. Be gentle with the egg whites.

9. Spoon one sticky teaspoon sized dollop at a time onto the cookie sheet. I can double this recipe and fit all the cookies onto two large sheets. They all need to go into the oven at once. Meringue won't wait.

10. Cook at 300 for 30 minutes. I like to switch the 2 cookie sheets on the shelves at the 15 minute mark so that one batch doesn't brown under the broiler more than the other.

11. Decrease the heat to 225 and cook for another 30 minutes. At this point, you're drying the center more than you're actually cooking them.

12. Take them out, move them to a cooling rack, and let them cool.

13. Put them in something airtight because otherwise they will wilt and not be as crispy and delicious as you'd like.

A few additional notes:

- When they say don't make these on a humid day, they mean it. They won't ever form good peaks and they will be gooey before you can get them out of the oven and into some kind of container.

- Any combination of extract and add-in is awesome here - go nuts! If you're adding in something with some moisture like nuts or coconut, I like to toast them a little first bc I think it really brings out the flavor and it keeps you from getting little steam pockets in the meringue that make it harder for them to dry. Some things I've tried:

- almond extract and crunched slivered almonds

- pistachio extract with pistachio bits

- plain vanilla

- vanilla extract with chocolate chips (I use the minis.)

- coffee extract with chocolate chips - coffee extract, not coffee.

- coconut extract with coconut

- orange extract with zest - this is one of my favorites.

- peppermint extract with pieces of candy cane - A warning here. If you use the whole tsp of peppermint extract, the peppermint flavor will be STRONG. I prefer using part vanilla extract and part peppermint. It mellows it down a little.

A combination I read about and want to try - rose cardamom. It sounds ridiculously delicious.

Tonight's meringues:

Crappy picture courtesy of iPad. Seriously, my phone takes better pictures.

Last night I hosted an Alie & Georgia cocktail birthday party. We went from 8 to 2 and tried 8 different cocktails. There was also ice cream cake and a hookah bc, well, I throw good parties, and Jeremy deserves nothing less. There would have been a fire pit, but something, something sleet.

The fact that we only got to try 8 means there can be more Alie & Georgia parties in future bc there are so many left! I would have included more pictures, but we were, uh, too distracted to take them.

And now, a review:

Drunken Donuts

Our first cocktail of the evening, I decided to serve these as little shots with a Spudnut garnish bc they are 2 parts alcohol to 1 part coffee. They contain staggering quantities of espresso vodka, coffee liqueur, and chocolate liqueur. A shot was about as much as you need, despite the recommended serving of a mug! of the stuff. This was our first hint that Alie & Georgia must be lushes with liver related super powers. On a side note, these were my first Spudnuts and they were delicious.



Thai Iced Tea

Also served as shots because they are essentially Thai tea infused vodka and evaporated milk. You can add in water if you want something less potent. I would highly recommend it, not because the vodka was too strong (the evaporated milk does wonders here), but bc the tea flavor in the vodka itself is so potent. I'd drink this again, but I don't think it was a big hit overall.

Peanut Butter and JealousWe fully expected this to be awful bc when Normajean first made it, it tasted a lot like Robitussin. It turns out the peanut butter on the rim of the glass is the key. Do yourself a favor and be generous - you really need a little bit in every sip. Otherwise the sugar content is going to make you vomit long before the alcohol does. Also, this drink comes with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich garnish! (This led to the discovery that Natasha is freaked out by sandwiches. I didn't even know that was a thing. Is that a thing?)

Bloody Bacon and CheeseLaura was afraid this was going to be disgusting. She could not have been more wrong. It was delicious. A nice spicy take on the Bloody Mary with bacon on the rim!, and a tiny grilled cheese sandwich garnish. These really were amazing. I want all future Bloody Marys to come this way and all future Bloody Marys in my house will be prepared in this fashion. Screw celery. I hate celery. No more celery!

Less is S'moresJeremy got to buy a creme brulee torch for these. And I had plastic cocktail cups, so uh, yeah, you can imagine how that went. Well, actually it went better than that. He only melted a hole through one glass. Laura took a drink and noticed the hole that was luckily on the other side of the glass. She brought it back into the kitchen, she and Jeremy and I discussed this at length, and then she took another drink. With the hole not positioned well. This was a moment of hilarious confusion and without even thinking I just stuck my cupped hand in the stream of deliciousness and caught it. Then I drank it.

Note the torching accident. We like to call this Less is S'mores with a side of carcinogens.

Anyway, back to the drink. This was amazing. The glass was rimmed in chocolate syrup and then dipped in smashed up graham crackers. Then there was torched marshmallow on top, so really, how could you go wrong here? You can't, that's how.

Bonus Beverage

At this point in the evening, we left Normajean, Laura, and Jeremy alone in the kitchen for too long, and they came up with this:

Why yes, those are hollowed out marshmallows with some kind of alcohol in them. We were "drinking" these directly off the tray as marshmallows don't actually have much structural integrity as glassware. Go figure. However, I think this was totally in the Alie & Georgia spirit.

Beer Float Cocktail

Make these. Drink them, but take a hint from Kestrel and make it with really good beer. I can't remember what she said this was, but it was so caramely and amazing. A beer float is a truly spectacular idea. Why doesn't more beer come with ice cream in it?

Nuggetini

This drink has a bad reputation and that is stupid because this was ridiculously delicious. I mean seriously, probably my favorite drink of the whole night. It's chocolate milkshake, plus vanilla vodka. I rebaked the nuggets in the oven, which actually improved them like whoa, and the barbecue sauce rim was amazing. Seriously, it sounds gross, but it was terrific. They should start serving these at McDonald's.

Zombie Gut Punch

So... this was terrible, through no fault of Vijay or Morgan. This was just too damned sweet and I think it may have been too late in the evening for so much sugar. Plus, there's no garnish. Anything with that much sugar needs a garnish. It should be a requirement. A valiant attempt at a cocktail, but really, don't drink this. You won't like it.

No, I did not finish the Tough Mudder. Let's just get that awkward moment over with. However, we did about half of it, and then I couldn't bend my knees without crying. Before that, we engaged in a some outlandish behavior.

We trudged up a ski slope I wouldn't ski down. The hardcore kids were trudging too, so booyah. We ran across some hay bales. It was really fun.We jumped into, dunked under, and had to have people help us out of an industrial sized garbage can full of ice water. That was the dumbest thing I've ever done, hands down. I remember coming out the other side of the dunk, seeing someone, and saying, "How do I get out?" but I was talk-ing real-ly slow-ly. I think I froze my brain.We went over a rope fence, and Nj was first. This was after the ice water and she couldn't really feel her feet, so she was scared to go over. On the other side, there were two shirtless beautiful Crossfitting men, so in a stunning statement of motivation, I said, "No matter what happens Normajean, hot men will catch you!" So she flings her leg over, almost falls, and one of the previously described hotties catches her butt, to which she responds, "Thank you, hot man" We are two totally smooth ladies.I went down a big slip and slide according to plan, landed in the giant mud puddle on my feet, and then went over the slippery wall one leg at a time, landing in a smaller mud puddle on my head. Then I cackled, a lot, because it was ridiculous.Then I couldn't walk anymore, so they had to come pick me up in a a golf cart on steroids. And then when I wasn't moving anymore, but I was still soaking wet, I basically got mild hypothermia. Then Normajean showed up with my clothes and I showered in the emergency outdoor shower that only has 3 walls so that they can basically back the ambulance into it when some skiing idiot really does have hypothermia. Nj and I took turns and held emergency blankets up to form a fourth wall. It was lovely. Especially the moment in which I was dry and put on warm clothes. That particular moment was wonderful. Finally, we did all of this surrounded by people wearing costumes. Tutus; T-shirts with the cast of It's Always Sunny; people dressed as the prisoners from Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?; star-spangled shorts and suspenders; and my favorite, a girl with a personalized shirt that said, "I immediately regret this decision." That pretty much sums it up. I'm glad we did it. I'm not sorry we didn't finish - I might have died. We did more than a Warrior Dash, and less than a Tough Mudder, so we've decided that makes us Tough Warriors. Good enough for now.

Back in April, Sociological Images posted about some amazing graphics that very nicely show the level of economic inequality there is in the US.

At the time, I glanced over them briefly - it was a lot of stuff I'd seen / read about before, so I didn't get too blown away. However, given the OWS protests, something made me go back and look at the post more carefully, and I was surprised that the first sentence reveals that the source of the data for these images is The Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality. I was fascinated to learn that such a thing exists and it's a resource worth checking out if you want to know more about these issues than you're getting from the mainstream media, or if you need to explain to someone else what these are. Many of the statistics that OWS protestors are citing have either been generated by the center or are from there originally and there are a ton of additional resources there, including, but not limited to:Quick links to 20 facts everyone should know about poverty and inequality in graphic form bc hey, everyone likes picturesA couple of quizzes you can take to test your own knowledge about these issuesViewing or subscribing to Pathways, their free PDF publicationLinks to relevant news itemsA whule slew of more specific pages on a long list of issues ranging from food chide to implicit bias.

And finally, buried under the Get Involved tab, they essentially address the biggest criticism that I've heard about the OWS movement thus far: no one seems to know what the hell these people really want. The Stanford center's website has two pages addressing two levels of specificity. One is Bold Visions, which is the level at which I think the movement is currently operating, and while it's good to have big goals, I think a lack of specificity is preventing many people from taking them seriously. The other section is Pragmatic Proposals and deals with specific ways these issues could be addressed with personal action and with policy, thereby answering this criticism. It makes me wonder why these specific policies aren't being discussed more and makes me wonder if they will be in future.

If you want to bone up on what these suggestions are before they become news, you can do so with the help of Stanford. I know I'm going to.

I almost never used to wear make-up, and I'll admit to being conflicted about using it now. On the one hand, it's fun and makes me feel girly and I like the way it makes me look. Also, it's necessary to any kind of adorable 40s/50s look, of which I'm a fan. On the other hand, I live in fear of getting to the point where I'm more comfortable with my face with makeup than without. The embracing of a kind of artificial, post-war, exaggerated feature beauty brings with it its own set of questions.

However, given all that, I still gain a perverse amount of joy from watching the Jane Marie How to Be a Girl videos. Her attitude is hilarious and I think I like them bc she seems to be saying, "I'm doing this crap and it's fun and if you want to do it too, that's cool, but if you don't, that is also cool. Also, playing with colored eyeshadow is fun and you can put almost anything on your face, and if you work it, people won't think you're crazy." Or maybe I'm just reading into it what I hope she's saying. One of my favorite examples is the eyeshadow trilogy.

And another favorite blog, Jezebel, has a feature called Worth It, in which they endorse totally useful products that they have not received for free and actually use. They recommend all kinds of crap, but a lot of the initial posts were about beauty products and I am super thrilled that I use a whole crap ton of the things they recommend, such as my favorite moisturizer. I'm sure there's some mental in-grouping happening here - Oh, I use the same stuff, so I'm cool like them. But also, having come late to the makeup game, I've tried lots of different products without a lot of youthful brand loyalty. It's nice to know that I've manages to end up using products on my face that don't suck. It's like confirmation that I'm doing this whole thing right.

And, a final note. Jane Marie often mentions her highlighter and how much she loves it, and I always thought that was silly, except then I bought one. Specifically this one:

It's from Smashbox and I bought the pearl one. It's subtle, yet gives me this little glow that is amazing. Even when I'm tired, which is often. It's probably the most expensive single product I've bought to put on my face ever ($32 from Ulta), but it blends really smoothly and doesn't make me look like a clown, so I can safely say that when this one runs out, I'll be buying another.

Swiffer used to have a series of Wet Jet commercials in which a sad mop romantically (and vaguely stalkerishly) pursued a woman who just loves to mop. So, like every other cleaning commercial the person cleaning is a woman, which is pretty standardly sexist, but now we have introduced a weird wooing dynamic into how we choose our cleaning products.

And now the new commercials have personified dirt, mud, dust, etc. as women who are waiting to be picked up by a Swiffer product. They've been left behind y other cleaning products and are now just waiting around in cracks and crevices for love to come find them. Once again, the Swiffer product is the hero, the romantic champion, the alpha male of cleaning products.

It makes me never want to buy another Swiffer product ever again.

I haven't written much lately and it's been because I've been thinking a lot but about things I didn't really want to share with the internet. I have been thinking about possibility and self-limitation. While definitely not the impetus, there's a You Are Not So Smart article about the Benjamin Franklin Effect in which you ask someone for a favor and it makes them like you even if they didn't before. Like most things on You Are Not So Smart, it's about mental limitations, our own and others'.

Which leads to a pre-revelation: I'm 30 and I'm still not really sure what I want to do with my life. There's not revelatory because I'm not sure I've ever known what I want to do with my LIFE, but the big difference is that I used to feel like no matter what I actually did, not knowing made me a failure. I mentally backed myself into a tiny little corner where the only options were what I'm doing (i.e. a life) or one path to a PhD and being qualified for exactly two jobs (i.e. a career). But really there are so many options other than that, but for as long as I could remember I have been so focused on finding the right thing that I've never really thought about life as this thing that is MINE, something that can be anything I want. My therapist and I decided that my next big step is to give myself time to think about this without coming to a conclusion and without having a panic attack. (Seriously, I had a panic attack at breakfast the other day thinking about this.)

It took a divorce to teach me that relationships didn't have to be a certain way, and only now am I learning this about life as a whole. I just never gave myself permission to think about it, and I don't know why. And oddly enough, You Are Not So Smart is delightful and universal. We are not so smart. And we are not so special.

Lots of people don't know what they want to do with their lives. Lots of people are mixed up. Lots of people choose something that isn't the pinnacle of everything. Lots of people come from complicated families, screw up and have to learn from their mistakes, have parents that have died. We are not so smart, and we are not so special.

I'm really grateful to my parents for telling me every day as a kid that I was special, that I could do anything that I wanted, that I needed to do something important. All that made me be better than I would be otherwise. Unfortunately, it also made me feel like the only way to not fail was to be special and amazing every second of every day. It's a big burden, and maybe I'm just not that special. Maybe I don't want to be.

Someone yesterday asked me what I wanted when it comes to all this love business. I wrote the following. It seemed like the kind of thing I'd want to hold on to.

I can tell you what I want, and then what would happen in some fantasy land version of the world.

I fret about things, about making people happy. I want someone who I make happy by just being myself, someone I can be nice to. Someone who will be nice to me. Someone who I can look out for and they'll look out for me. I want to be important to someone who I like enough that they're also important to me. I want someone I can respect for their values, intelligence, ambition, and good sense. I want someone to negotiate a life with. I want someone who doesn't think their preferences are more important than mine and is therefore willing to explain their desires to me while also being willing to listen to what I want. I want to have kids with someone. I want them to be open to the idea of taking said children on amazing globe-hopping adventures. It would make me very happy to have someone who would consider being a foster parent with me because I think people should live according to their values and I love children and there are lots of them who need love. I want someone to talk about books and music with, someone who can teach me things but will take my recommendations seriously enough to check them out, even if they don't like them. I want someone to grow with, someone to learn about, someone to learn about me.

It used to be easy to find people I wanted to spend time with because I just thought everyone was amazing and interesting. I don't think that anymore, and sometimes that makes me sad, but I also think that I have a better idea about what I'm looking for, and that can't be a bad thing. I used to look for someone who I thought had all these qualities that I admired that were so different from me, and then I realized that I want to be that person. Someone who can fix things and make things and bake bread and go camping. It would be nice to have someone to do some of those things with, but not all of them. I'm not looking for another version of myself.

Those are the things that matter to me. In some sort of ideal world, I'd meet someone and just be swept away by them, by how amazing they are and they'd think I'm amazing and it would be so easy, but I'm a little tired of that rollercoaster if the truth be told. You get swept away and then reality hits and it's never as good as you imagine it could be. I want someone to love, not someone to fantasize about. All of this is not to say that I don't want passion because I do. I can't imagine being with someone who didn't make me tingle all over and feel nervous and challenge me and excite me. Life would be so boring without that, but I think I'm past the point where that all by itself is enough.

I got all excited about this girl, rocking her bodacious bod in light of American Apparel's condescending and insulting call for plus size lady models. And then today, I was all happy with Rolling Stone for an excellent article about voting, and this is the bullshit I see:

I get it! He's supposed to regret it because she's fat. Right, right, obviously. Fuck you, stupid product I'd never use anyway. As my friend Becky said, "She should regret it because he's a douchebag."

Normajean and I were mermaids this weekend. Here's a preview of the edited images. The talented Guillermo Ubilla did the picture taking and editing. Normajean did makeup and many of the props/jewelry. I made the costumes and was responsible for hair. The full edited set will, at some point, be posted on Guillermo's blog, which is, I think, moving here soon.

When last we left our heroine, she was waiting for her bread to rise. Rawr. After 2 hours, the dough had expanded into this somewhat gooey mess:

I took that, split it into four small balls, and sprinkling generously with flour, you sort of fold the edges in on itself a bunch of times. The dough at this point was a little fragile. I pulled on one of the balls a little too vigorously and broke the dough on the outside, but it seemed fine. These go onto oiled baking sheets, where you let them sit and rise for another 2 hours.

Pre rising:

Then into the oven. Halfway through you get to open the oven, releasing the smell of HEAVEN ON EARTH, so that you can brush them with olive oil and sprinkle them with rosemary and kosher salt. After a scant 20 minutes of baking, you take them out and you, well I, have bread.

I would have taken a picture of the bread when I sliced it, but the first boule disappeared fairly quickly into my gaping maw. (Sexy mental image, yeah?) The bread has a nice pervasive hint of rosemary, and the crust is reasonably crisp with a nice tender inside. I would like a crust with a bit more structure - I'm a big fan of the rustic breads where you can peel out the inside of the bread and you're left with a crust like a melon rind. This bread was superb with a little seasoned olive oil for dipping. I think I'll definitely try the recipe again, tweaked to get a thicker crust and more resilient texture. I don't know much about bread science yet, but that's the point of this venture. Try this, read that, try this again but slightly differently. Expect more bread posts, since I intend to fully document this little journey into gluten gluttony.

If I had known how satisfying this whole process would be, I'd have done it a lot sooner. I remember liking baking bread in Nicaragua, but I haven't really done it since I've been back, so I've decided it's the fall of bread. It will also have to be the fall of the gym, but that's okay, as I've discovered that doing things with my hands and body is about the best thing for my overactive mind.

I used this recipe: Almost-Famous Rosemary Bread, because I love rosemary bread, no special cookware was required, and the "makes 4 small loaves" meant it would be easy to give some away.

The ingredients:

Your first step is to let the yeast get started doing its thing. Yeast is, well, amazing. You give it some sugar, a little warm water and it starts respiring and the next thing you know you have CO2 foam and rising bread. I had a conversation with someone yesterday and it was apparent they'd never seen yeast. This is what yeast looks like:

You add water and sugar and it looks gross:

In about 5 minutes, if your yeast is good, i.e. not dead, it will get all frothy:

This yeast magic is explained in my favorite yeast video ever. There's a British accent, microscope shots, beer talk, and chemical formulas. Go watch it. Trust me, you'll like it.

Once your yeast is going, you can add the rest of the ingredients. This is fairly straightforward, but a word about flour. A lot of bread recipes (baking recipes in general actually) will provide measurements by weight because dry ingredients tend to pack down and then it's easy to measure by volume correctly but still end up with amounts that are wrong. If your recipe calls for measuring ingredients by volume, you should sift your flour because otherwise you scoop packed flour and there are likely lumps and you end up with more flour than you should. For example, here's my flour. See the packing. Yeah, you want to avoid that.

I don't have a sifter, so I used a whisk instead. I scooped the required 2 1/2 cups flour into another large bowl, and whisked it. Whiskery:

The flour should look fluffy. Then scoop that, leveling the top of each scoop with the back of a knife. I ended up with a significant amount of extra flour that I put back in my flour canister.

Once all your ingredients are snugly in a bowl together, stir them until a loose dough forms. Mine was quite sticky at this point, but I knew a lot more flour would get incorporated during the kneading process so I didn't worry about it too much.

Then you turn that out onto a countertop that you've dusted with flour. Keep kneading until it's elastic. It should fight back a little. As I said, it was sticky at first. Just keep dusting it lightly with flour, and by it I mean the counter, the bread, and your hands. I didn't want to get bits of bread goo in my flour canister, so I grabbed a big handful of flour, put it in the dough bowl, and kept pulling from that. I actually thought this dough came together really quickly. There's not a lot of water in this dough (a cup total), and very little sugar. The stuff we made in Nicaragua was a much more processed, soft crusted kind of bread and kneading it took for.ev.er. This only took about the 10 minutes promised in the recipe.

Tuck in all the edges so you have a nice little ball, and place it in a large oiled bowl, and wait for it to rise the first time.

Celebrate your yeast feast by doing the dishes or some laundry or something. Might I recommend a mimosa? Me, I'm blogging about baking bread. Stay tuned for Part 2.

The next time I decide vacations aren't important, I need to find this post and read it. Five days of beach camping has set me to rights in a way that I could not have anticipated. Part of it was the truly wonderful group of people I had the good fortune to be camping with, who made all the other things possible.

We were at First Landing State Park, which is on the bay and lovely. We had mimosas, coffee, bacon and eggs for breakfast, assorted delicious things for lunch, and grilled things for dinner. Burgers, hot dogs, bratwurst, beans, veggies, smores. I felt like I was eating happiness. Normally the feelings I eat are less positive.

There were some games, the beach every day, sand burying, mud throwing, a bamboo and towel lean-to - even dolphins. Yes, dolphins. And we were there for the earthquake, lying in the low wet sand and it turned into jello under us.

At night we sang around the campfire, talked through whatever ailed us, and then slept under the stars.

I feel like I found my self again. The trip was amazing, but these people were special. They were so positive and supportive of each other and of me. Each person was interesting and unusual and contributed something different to our vacation. And I felt like I contributed. I had something to offer and it's amazing how good that felt all by itself.

I also didn't shower for 5 days, wore no make-up, wore shorts and let my legs breathe, and wore cargo shorts and a madras button up for days. Forgetting about the unimportant things let me focus on the important ones for a few days. I need to remember to take vacations.

I think this may have something to do with my general failure as a person, but anyway... I was working my way through the July-August Utne Reader, and I have to say that it never fails to make me think, which is, I guess, the point of reading it. I'm not done yet, but I have some thoughts. Really, one thought, two articles. I express ire at the first one here.

The first, which is simpler to explain, is about to Matt Sutherland's Spirituality and Health article, "You're Grounded: Connecting with the earth can cure chronic pain - and stop insomnia." I don't generally read Spirituality and Health, as I feel that it is filled with woo, but the Utne is an aggregator, so you get all kinds, which I usually like. However, I am very angry at this article.

The general premise is that Clint Ober discovered that we are exposed to electromagnetic fields (EMFs), and that the only appliances that do not create these fields are grounded appliances. He claims that if you sleep on a mattress that is grounded, it protects you from these EMFs, thereby reducing insomnia and improving chronic pain.

The title, which suggests that there is some kind of evidence upon which it is fair to base a statement about "curing" something. Modern medicine is not that great at curing anything, primarily because things come back and then you're a terrible person for saying you've cured something when you haven't. Th evidence upon which this is based are the anecdotal claims of a man named Clint Ober, and one blind (only he knew who got what mattress, supposedly) study he did with 60 random people he rounded up. We don't know anything about the conditions of that study, what medical problems the people had, how they got put into the different groups, etc. The only results reported in this article are the results from the treatment, i.e. the grounded pads, so we can't compare them to the results of the control to assess placebo effect, which one would imagine to be quite high in a sleep study where people just had to say whether or not they felt better rested. From what I can tell, the language of curing is Sutherland's, not Ober's.

Additionally, Sutherland makes it sound like the scientific establishment is a big mean bully just picking on poor Clint Ober. "When Ober took the question to prominent sleep researchers in California, they laughed him out the door." I'm sure it happened exactly like that. They probably called people out to the lobby so there would be as many people laughing as possible. And this is the kicker, "Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Earthing is the silence surrounding it." No, that's not remarkable. It's not remarkable at all. It's fringe science.

I actually think there might be something to it. Research has found that there are some small links between electromagnetic fields and cancer, and the World Health Organization recently classified cell phones as "possibly carcinogenic to humans," the radiation dangers of which had until recently been almost entirely dismissed by mainstream science. Science changes its mind given new evidence, so it's entirely possible that EMF may have some connection to chronic pain and insomnia that we have not yet discovered. However, none of this research is mentioned in the article.

It is not presented as a new idea that has potential, but rather as a cure that is being ignored by science. To me that seems like incredibly irresponsible reporting. I'm disappointed in Utne because there is good alternative science reporting out there. Reporting that addresses new ideas with the appropriate skepticism. Reporting that is fair to both established science and the person with the new idea. How are people supposed to separate this kind of reporting from science writing of much higher quality when it's all billed as the "best of the alternative press?" Who are they supposed to trust?

I write about my mom a lot, primarily because of how close we were and because it's easier to write about someone who you know can't read what you're writing. Also, my relationship with my dad has always been... complicated.

Yesterday I was scrubbing a grill and baking ribs and doing yard work and I had one of those moments when I thought my mom might be really proud of me. She gave me a kind of independence that lets me believe I can do just about anything that I can Google instructions for. And I also realized that being perpetually single is made infinitely easier by having had a mother who made it clear that I don't need a man to clean the gutters.

Today I've been thinking about the ways having my dad in particular made me who I am. I'm watching baseball, which I love because of him. I played softball specifically so that we'd have something to talk about other than fishing. He and mom are both responsible for my ability to fix things, for my belief in the power of a screwdrive, socket set, and duck tape.

He taught me to work hard even when it's hard, and to believe in my own power to change my life, to have something different, even when what I choose is not what he would have chosen for me. He taught me about regret and the importance of family.

I learned how to throw a shrimp net, put a boat into the water and take it out again without drowning your pickup truck, and cure a ham from him. He taught me how to pluck a chicken that I raised and killed. In the case of a zombie apocalypse, he has perhaps singlehandedly made me capable of survival.

And I'm thinking of all my friends who've lost their dads today. On Mother's Day, I'm so sad and honestly, pretty resentful. I'm jealous of your mommas, of your ability to call them or not, to take them for granted. I have no idea if my friends whose dads have died are as petty as me, but as I told my friend Richard today, I'm never sure how I feel about an afterlife. I'm an atheist, which means I don't think there is one, at least not one where our consciousness survives, but I falter when it comes to my mom. I can't imagine a world where she just doesn't exist at all, so I let this little belief slide by, that somehow she knows I love her, whatever that means. Your dads know you love them, too.

★★★★

Loved it. I read The Girl Who Stopped Swimming and felt kind of meh about it, but this book won a number of awards, so I decided to give Joshilyn Jackson another try. I'm so glad I did. The characters in this book are so incredibly real, so real that the whole time I was reading the book, I kept imagining the characters as people I know. I couldn't help myself. In one particular instance, it's a bit painful, but more on that later.

Our heroine, Nonny Frett is between things, in about as many ways as you can imagine. She's not quite divorced, but definitely not single. She travels back and forth on a regular basis between where she lives in Athens and Between, where her family lives. She loves Fisher, her great-niece like a mother, but hasn't really stepped up to be like a parent to her. I identified with Nonny so strongly. She's so torn between all these different places and things and parts of herself, ideas about who she could be. All this is brought to a head by the most central division in her life - the fact that she is not a Frett by birth. Well, she is a Frett by birth, but her momma was a Crabtree.

The Fretts and the Crabtrees have a longstanding feud, in which the Fretts have the money and the law on their side, and the Crabtrees have a meanness and a will to survive. Hazel Crabtree, Nonny's mother, shows up one night on Bernese Frett's front door, bursting at the belly. Hazel doesn't want Nonny, but Stacia Frett does and once they see Hazel somewhat safely through childbirth (a handgun is involved), the Frett's decide to steal Nonny. That's how she becomes a Frett, and the Crabtrees, especially Ona Crabtree (Hazel's mother), won't ever forget it.

That's just the beginning of the cast of characters in Between, and each one is so alive that in the novel none of them ever gets lost in the shuffle. They're complicated characters, too. Bernese for example is loyal, stubborn, loving, smart, and fairly treacherous. She is the Frett most in opposition to Ona Crabtree, even though she's not Nonny's mother; Stacia is. Let's just say Bernese reminded me of a family member of mine who shall not be named.

Ona reminded me of my mother. We were poor (are poor), and I'm pretty sure the only reason I didn't have any brothers or cousins in jail was because I didn't have any brothers or boy cousins. The physical description of Ona was like my mother - thin, scrawny even, and Jackson describes her as grasping, clutching. She meant it in a bad way, like it was too much for her, but my mom had this way about her, like she was always holding on a little too tight. I think I'm probably the same way. So for me, there was something inherently lovable about Ona, even before Nonny realizes that. In the same way, when she's still got Bernese bathed in a white light, I already felt like she was too much like some of the people from back home. Too sanctimonious, too proud.

This book that I enjoyed very much counts toward the 100+ Challenge, and the Southern Challenge.

★

Why is chick lit so annoying? Why are books aimed at women or about women usually about them coming into themselves or of themselves or with themselves or any of these things in the company of other women in such a way that you are immediately supposed to feel a camaraderie with every other woman over how awesome women are? That's why I don't normally read this stuff.

I think I have a healthy appreciation for female friendships - I'm not very good at making them, so when I have them, I try to treasure them. And I also have an incredible respect for the self-journey, the one you have to go through to grow up. However, how hard is it to write a book in which a woman is just a person that stuff happens to? In books about men, they go on adventures, and at no point in the book does the man stop to think, Am I awakening? No, because he's awake. While thinking of his friends, does he stop to ponder, Dude, I am so happy to be here and a part of this awesome brotherhood who help me be the best dude I can be? Probably not. He just does stuff, and is stuff, and when things happen to him and he does feel the need to be introspective, he gets to think about things that aren't him. He gets to think about religion or politics or adventure or bravery or whatever he wants to. He can think about his journey into manhood if he wants, but he's not obligated. Why is it so hard to write a book or (and perhaps this is the real issue) publish a book about a female protagonist who is not engaged in a quest of self-discovery. Maybe I'm a lady and I'd like to discover something else.

Needless to say, I did not care for The Mermaid Chair. I read it because I was surprised by Secret Life of Bees, also by SMK. I wish I'd just stuck with that one.

The main character Jessie is whiny and generally shitty. She has some very basic discontent about her life, which she doesn't express to her husband. Then she goes off to a Carolina sea island (the only part I did like), whereupon she falls in love with a monk, I suspect precisely because of how little risk is potentially involved in falling in love with a monk. Plus, it's exciting, right? Then she paints a lot, things that are supposed to be deep and meaningful, but in this way she doesn't understand yet. Apparently Jessie is not very smart.

All the potentially interesting bits are glossed over. The book begins with Jessie finding out her mother has purposefully chopped off her finger with a meat cleaver, and yet once Jessie gets to the island, she spends very little time trying to unravel this mystery or even trying to talk to her mother. We eventually find out what led her mother to do such a crazy thing, and it's dealt with in a couple of pages, spic and span, when really it's the kind of thing you find out and it totally changes your life.

Almost as if to highlight how ridiculous Jessie is, her love interest Whit is struggling with the big questions, like if his life has any meaning and how God works. In Kidd's world, Whit gets to think about the universe, Jessie only thinks about herself. On top of everything, Jessie and Whit spend a lot of, ahem, alone time together, and never once do they discuss these big questions of his. Nope. She's screwing a monk and she never stops to ask, "So how do you feel about God?"

Finally, Jessie keeps going on and on about finding herself, and wanting to be independent, but she literally falls for Brother Thomas (aka Whit), the day she arrives on the island. The very day. Dear Jessie, that is not alone. I hated that aspect of the story.

I watched Eat, Pray, Love a couple weeks ago. I was expecting to be annoyed with the movie, but I was completely surprised. Julia Roberts is the star, and I don't remember her character's name, but it doesn't matter. Anyway, JR goes on this quest, and first she eats. She feeds her soul and her body, and sure, she's lonely in Italy. She struggles with being single in a city of lovers. You can see how bittersweet it is for her to be surrounded by friends who are all paired up. But she makes it clear that this is about how to be alone. Then she prays. Once again, she struggles, but in a sense, when she stops trying to find herself, and she starts trying to find something larger, that's when just being herself stops being so damned hard. Finally, there's love. I wonder how we'd feel about quest parts 1 & 2 if she hadn't ended up with Javier Bardem, but whatever. My favorite part of the entire movie was when Javier is trying to get her to take this leap of faith with him, and she runs away. She's talking to her spiritual advisor yogi dude, and she says, "I couldn't keep my balance." That's real. She found her independence, her way to live her life without the necessity of a man, and when love came along, she was terrified of losing everything she'd fought for.

Now contrast that with Jessie. So really it's not hard to see where the plot here falls short. The only slight redemption is that Kidd acknowledges it at one point. Hugh (the jilted husband) is a psychiatrist (cliche), and he's in his study and there's this passage:

Over and over he'd come across the same idea - not the least bit unfamiliar to him - that when a person was in need of cataclysmic change, of a whole new center in the personality, for instance, his or her psyche would induce an infatuation, en erotic attachment, an intense falling-in-love. p.279So at least Kidd understands that Whit isn't meant to be love, he's meant to be a catalyst for Jessie. But somehow that doesn't make it any better. Just because this is how people do it doesn't mean it's the best way. I'd rather see someone fight it out with themselves than be swept along on some current of "love," letting it do the work they're too afraid to do themselves.

This counts toward the 100+ Challenge and the Southern Challenge. I guess it also counts toward the Page to Screen, but I have absolutely no intention of watching the made for TV movie, so I'm not counting it there.

The books I've read that fulfill the Southern Lit Challenge:

The Mermaid Chair - Sue Monk KiddBetween, Georgia - Joshilyn Jackson

★★★★

I couldn't understand what the big deal is about this book, right up until I read it, that is. People who love it, really love it. Now I'm one of them.

Yes, the characters are rabbits, and that might lead you to believe it's a children's book. Assume that, and you miss out on some really amazing fiction.

By making the characters rabbits, Adams has the option of giving them their own history and mythology. It also makes it somewhat magical, in that it forces us to think about what other layers of existence are occurring alongside our own. However, having rabbits as heroes and villains doesn't limit the story in any way.

The rabbits are real characters from the very beginning. There are leaders and followers, bullies and friends, prophets and warriors. Some rabbits are as ingenious as others are stupid. Throughout the book (which comes in at a healthy 476 pages), you really start to identify with the characters. I think Bigwig ended up being my favorite. He was brave and true and loyal, but smart enough to understand the big picture when he needed to.

I thought the rabbit mythology was incredibly interesting. The fact that there were stories within the story really drove home important stories are. Reading it again, that's an odd sentence, but let me explain. When the rabbits were afraid or needed guidance, when they were meeting other warrens, or even just when they were passing time, they'd tell stories of their history, of their gods and their ancestors. The stories themselves were helpful, but the act of storytelling itself was incredibly important. It was a communal activity. The stories were oral and shared. Oddly enough, it made me sad while I was reading the book because of course, I was enjoying it alone. We've lost a lot of communal storytelling, where a lot of people hear a story at once and then they can talk about it.

My nephew is coming to stay in a few weeks, and I'm going to hold on to this book to read it to him before bed. Even if we only get part of the way through, I think my sister would finish it with him when he got home. It's probably a little too hard for him to read by himself, but that's okay. Interestingly, in the prologue, Richard Adams talks about how people were a little distressed by the "adult themes" present in the book. Some parts really are quite dark. He brushes it off, and says that kids know what the world looks like. I agree.

This counts toward the 100+ Challenge, Chunkster Challenge, and Page to Screen Challenge*.

I was trying to watch the movie before I wrote about this. I got halfway through and fell asleep one night. I decided to go ahead and write it up, and then revise the post once I've finished the movie.

★★

It's not that it was bad - it just wasn't much of anything. It's reasonably witty and entertaining. The satire of zombies seeking "human" rights, is clever, but Zombies doesn't really delve into anything deep enough to be more than a quick light read.

This counts toward the 100+ Challenge.

When I was married to Olivier, I was really unhappy. Depressed, unsure of who I was, not sure how to find out, in over my head doing things that were unsatisfying and leading to dead ends and more places I didn't want to be. I was miserable, and only part of it had to do with Olivier. We'd get in these fights, and he'd say, "Why can't you just be happy?" His voice was pleading, laden with confusion and anguish. As my husband, he thought it was his job to make me happy, and if I wasn't, then surely it was all his fault. Our marriage was part of the problem, but it was symptom, not cause. I had a lot to figure out.

I'm much happier now. Even when I hate my job, there's value in what I do and what I'm learning. My family always seems to be on the brink of disaster and I often feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders, like if I let the tension out, I wouldn't know how to pick everything back up again. But I also don't cry every day now, and I feel like I'm better at being me. I've embraced a lot of the things I used to dislike about myself and learned how to reign them in or use them for good (mostly), and I feel like I'm doing a pretty good adult impression, even if I do fuck up royally every now and again.

I asked a friend tonight, "What am I doing wrong?" because of course, in my mind, when you identify a problem, you pick it apart, try to understand it, then make an informed choice. Yes, it's trying to apply logic to emotion, etc., but all the progress I've made above is due to this desire to FIX IT, so I've decided it's one of those things about myself I'm going to accept and try to use judiciously. But back to the central quandary: Are there other things about me I could work on? (Of course, but you know, I need a priority list...) Are they things I just choose to accept about myself and live with the consequences or are they things I really want to change?

The friend's advice: You are a do-er, and maybe you need to be more of a be-er. Just be happy. I know you're happy, but I also know that something's always bothering you.

Hearing this made me shut down. It was like this wall went up on all sides. Because how awful is it to hear the same thing about yourself at 30 that you heard over and over at 24? Especially when you know you're so much happier and more satisfied with your life? What do I have to do to prove to people that I'm happy? Never be sad? Never mind anything? Never express any of the negative feelings I have about anything? Sometimes that's how it feels. It's that same feeling I used to have when I believed that I had to be perfect on the outside, that I had to be happy all the time or people wouldn't like me. I kept it all inside and I was miserable.

I have discovered though, that people like happy people, and I think even when I'm happy, I'm not happy enough. I am apparently a miserable, grumpy human being, and sometimes I want to never leave the house again and never try to engage with people and never make a friend or flirt with a boy because ultimately I'm just a miserable person who everyone will get sick of dealing with, and then I'll still be alone, but this time it will be completely my fault because I'm JUST NOT HAPPY ENOUGH. Even in a lesser sense, it kind of confirms for me that if I let people see who I really am, they won't like me because me is not simple and happy and I have real problems goddammit. But really, why subject other people to me? Why should you, the entire world, have to deal with my curmudgeonliness, my stubborn determination to root out the smallest possible annoyances?

I dunno. I kind of think I'm interesting. And I kind of think I get things done. And I also think that I have lot's of other redeeming qualities. But somehow it always comes back to, Why can't you just be happy? How happy is happy enough? And happy enough for who? Happy enough for me or happy enough for other people?

Tonight I'm thinking of human children as small animals raised in the packs we call families who eventually grow up and set out on their own. They seek out new territory, interact with members of strange other packs, meet potential mates, and start new packs of their own. In this respect, I feel like I've gone feral. I have friends and in that sense I have a pack of my own, but it's more like I have my own territory (my house) and we venture into common social areas to visit and provide emotional respite. I forget what it's like to have people living in close proximity to me, in my territory. I forget how satisfying it is to let your guard down, to learn and teach from each other, to provide the type of companionship that only time and familiarity make possible. When I visit our family's territory, curl up with a pack member or two, and we take the time to lick each other's metaphorical wounds, I realize how much I miss it.

Today was a great day. I got here before lunch and my dad and I sat under the big pecan tree in our front yard and waved to everyone as they drove home from church. We had the opportunity to politely decline some Jehovah's witnesses and we listened to old timey music on Pandora. My dad sang along, something that feels like a miracle, even to someone who doesn't believe in the miraculous. Keegan and I made lunch together, and I realized how easy it is to fall into a back and forth with a kid. He served as my guide to how things are done around here (I haven't lived here in 14 years, so sometimes I really don't know), telling me how Dad liked his hot dogs and where the apple corer was. I supervised his use of the stove and taught him how to spread mayonnaise. I've never really thought about how scooping and spreading something so squishy is actually a challenge in dexterity if you've never done it before. Obviously he mastered it easily, but doing something with him reminds me of how much we all have to learn about the world and how it works and how to make it work for us. It also helps that he's just so damned awesome. Whatever you ask of him, he does, so while you're handling one task, he'll handle whatever bits and pieces you can give him.

Dad, Keegan, and I took a long walk, decked out in hats and coated in sunscreen. Keegan rode his bike in front of us, scouting the territory and reporting back, I pushed my dad in his chair, and my dad carried the enormous container of ice water we took along to keep us all from collapsing. We spent the time following deer tracks and looking at water in creeks and listening to birds and just generally enjoying being alive in such a beautiful place. At one point we watched a small mother and her fawn cross the road in front of us. We were talking the whole time, but she didn't seem frightened of us at all, just calm and quiet. We also managed to get my dad stuck a few times, which amused my nephew to no end. It turns out that when you get stuck in a patch of sand, the best thing to do is just back the hell out. The small wheels on the front of the wheelchair are no help at all.

We all took a nice afternoon nap, enjoyed a delicious meal my sister and Kevin made, and then Keegan I drew hopscotch grids and played. We do this occasionally, and he never remembers the layout of the grid, but today he did it right the first time all by himself. His first grid was a little jankie, so I showed him some tricks for squaring things up and making sure you don't go all sideways. His second grid was pretty kickass. He's also gotten a lot better at the game. We added a second stone tonight, so I guess you could say we're level II hopscotch players. Now he's cleaned up, with all the sunblock and dirt washed off, and reading before bedtime. I can hear the Stuart Little coming from his bedroom, his little kid voice alternating between a clear stream of words and a mumble, backing up, starting and stopping. It's like you can hear his brain working. He's in there learning to read right now. It's incredible.

I'm not saying all this because I think whoever's reading this cares. I'm writing it all so I won't forget, so I remember to appreciate it when I'm not here. So I don't forget that while I'm not with them, I'm missing all this growing up and growing older. It's also just amazing to me that somehow living by itself can sometimes be so satisfying. Nothing incredible happened today, no crazy good news, nothing extreme, just a good, simple, joyful day spent in the company of people I love who love me back. I spoke to a friend of mine at Art Bar last night, and we had a conversation about this, how when you run into someone you haven't seen in a while, they ask how you are, and you say, "Fine," and then there's nothing else to say. It feels odd, but the good times in life are often simple. He got new tires on his car, I got a new lawn mower. We decided to not feel pressured to deliver on big news. We are living in the moments between the moments and we are happy.

This is to keep track of my Foodie Book Challenge. I'm supposed to read 7-9 books.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake - Aimee Bender

★★★★

I loved it. Love, love, loved it. The narrator, a girl named Rose, can taste the emotions in food. Any book that starts with an usual idea like will have to try hard to screw it up. Aimee Bender does the opposite. She turns it into a tremendous story, not just of Rose, but of her entire family. Her brother and father, who have their own strange powers, her sort of love story with her brother's best friend, her mother's affair. The central fantastical premise becomes a lens through which the story of an otherwise normal family is told.

The writing is lively, the characters are sympathetic, and the story moves at a pace fast enough to keep you interested. I also like that you root for Rose, not because she's special, but because she's likable.

One of my favorite parts of the book was when she discovers her ability, she performs a series of experiments to find out if what she's experiencing is real. She tests foods. She learns about the different flavors of individual foods (factory processed vs. farm grown) and about the feelings of the preparers. It was a really interesting perspective. It was almost like we have a first person limited narrator, but she gains a certain omniscience by her ability.

Aimee Bender wrote some other books, and they're definitely on my reading list.

This book addresses the Foodie Challenge, and the 100+ Challenge.

★★★★

I'm a sucker for any book by a Deborah (my momma's name). Even so, I'm happy to be hooked on this series. It reminds me of the Outlander series somewhat. There's time travel. There's fantasy. There's romance.

The supporting characters are interesting, too. The vampire characters have a kind of world weariness that I've always imagined people who've been alive for hundreds of years must have. The witches are regular people, and the fact that there's a lesbian couple doesn't get any more attention than it deserves, which is refreshing.

This book counts toward the 100+ Challenge, and the Chunkster Challenge.

This post is to keep track of the Haruki Murakami Reading Challenge. I'm on the hook for 3 books.

After Dark - Haruki Murakami

★★

Nothing spectacular here. It was a quick, fun, easy read. I liked that Marcy ended up starting her own business, but that was about the only positive I could find in terms of messages about women in general.

I hated that in order for Marcy to be happy, she had to end up with a different Mr. Right. But even so, whatever, that's fine. The worst was that she met him, slept with him, and they broke up. Then later she ran into him again, "but this time [she] didn't jump straight into bed with him." I can only presume that her holding out was the secret to her relationship success this time around. Well, okay. See also: gross.

It wasn't painful to read, but it definitely reminded me why I don't normally read this kind of stuff.

This counts toward the 100+ Reading Challenge.

★★★

The first Murakami I read was A Wild Sheep Chase, and I really, really, really didn't like it. It just seemed absolutely ridiculous to me. I've revisited it, and it's still not my favorite. However, I think I get more about what he's going for now. He's used a similar technique in all the novels of his I've read: he has two worlds, one that is real and "normal" and another that is surreal and otherworldly. The other world is not imaginary, but rather a realm that we don't usually get to see. In After Dark, the imaginary world is one in which Eri Asai is asleep and we are somehow watching her sleep. Well, more specifically, we are watching someone watch her sleep. I had kind of a problem with the way he set this scene. We're supposed to be almost like a camera on a boom, whizzing around the space, changing angles. I think he does this to make the situation seem stranger and more foreign than it is, but to me it just felt overplayed. Describing the scene would have been plenty weird for me. I wonder if this is one of those situations where something is lost in translation. The language is so direct and straightforward, yet these additional layers are built in to make it less direct, less straightforward. As usual, I found something deeply identifiable about Murakami's characters. Eri and Mari Asai are both believable individuals and believable siblings. The characters' behavior always make perfect sense, even when they find themselves in truly odd situations. I think that's difficult to do, even more so because the characters are often unlikable. Unlikable, yet believable. Not my favorite Murakami, not my least favorite either.

★★★

My relationship with Mr. Palahniuk's work can be summed up by the word ambiguous. I always like what I read by him, and I think his books are interesting, but I'm also never sure if I'm finding anything new in them. I feel like sometimes there's too much craziness, the characters are too far out there, for me to really identify with what's happening. I'll have to think about this some more. I'll get back to you.

In Lullaby, the main character is a reporter who is investigating SIDs deaths, and because he is a good little reporter, he notes everything about the scene, down to the book each person had read to their child before bed. His journalistic OCD ends up unlocking the secret to the deaths, which is that the book of children's poetry contains a culling song, a lullaby that actually ends up killing the person to whom it's directed. The reporter, Carl Streator, can't stop thinking about the poem in that way that whatever you least want to occupy your mind suddenly does, and he becomes a kind of unintentional serial killer, with people dropping dead all around him when he just thinks the poem in their direction. He decides to go on a kind of quest, destroying every copy of the book. In the process, he meets Helen Hoover Boyle, a real estate agent who sells and resells haunted houses; Helen's assistant Mona; and Mona's boyfriend Oyster, who runs fake lawsuit / PR nightmare scams on businesses he finds morally objectionable. There's the quest where Carl tries to get it under control, and eventually a grimoire (the original source of the culling song) gets discovered, and Mona and Oyster go on a magic fueled spree while Carl and Helen (sort of) track them across the country. You know, your average CP plotline.

The whole book is about power, and what you should do with it. When they realize they're not only looking for all the copies of the book in order to destroy them, but also the grimoire which likely contains all sorts of other spells too, the characters are divided as to what to do with it - should they keep it? Use it? Destroy it? What can go wrong? Who can benefit? Who's to decide? Interesting, but not groundbreaking, I think. More interesting were the other ways the characters had power, like Helen knowing about the hauntings, setting up her clients like a spider waiting to pounce. There are lots of these tiny little situations where the characters know something not everyone else does, and they have to decide what they should do with that information. Does it give them license to act or not? For example, there's a bookshop with multiple copies of the book of poems (and therefore the culling song). The books are lost somewhere inside the store, so rather than laboriously look for them, Helen and Oyster burn the place down. Are they right? Did the end justify the means?

The moral quandary that kept me thinking the longest is Helen's method of coping with her life and death power. You see, she also has memorized the culling song, having lost her own family to its powers. Carl wants to know how she manages to not go around killing people willy nilly, and the answer is that she kills in a controlled way. She vents her frustration and anger and desire to exercise her power on a daily basis by killing people who deserve it, dictators and murderers and other riff raff that her questionable morality decides it's okay to do away with. This was fascinating to me, not that she was venting in that way, doing the thing she can talk herself into justifying, but rather that once you have a power, once you can do something, you have to do it. That there's no way to just walk away, that you must use it. Do we see this in other places? Do you have to do something just because you can?

I cheated a little on this write-up because I gave the book away to someone before I wrote this review, so I had to look up the characters' full names. Wikipedia gave me a little backstory that was actually pretty interesting. He wrote Lullaby while he was trying to decide if he should recommend that the man who shot his dad and his dad's girlfriend be sentenced to death for said crimes. It was his way of mulling out the questions about death and who gets to decide who dies and how we should and shouldn't use power. The guy was sentenced to the death penalty, but it doesn't say how Chuck came down on the issue.

This counts toward my 100+ Challenge.

Post to keep track of Page to Screen Reading Challenge books:

Watership Down - Richard Adams

Parents, don't dress your girls like tramps

My friend posted this on her FB page and commented, "This makes me want to drink heavily. Did I miss this by having boys??"

I'm having a hard time figuring out what she finds objectionable in particular, so I'll just make a list:

Could it be the possible damage that could be caused by dressing / allowing your children to dress in contextually inappropriate ways? Perhaps it is the blatant slut shaming that's happening in this article, in which he uses the words tramp and whore to talk about why these clothes are inappropriate, thereby implying that an adult woman dressed in the same way would deserve these labels. I don't know, maybe it's the irony that we live in a culture where we will defend the rights of little boys to wear dresses and have pink toenails (justifiably so) in the face of those who would freak the fuck out about it, but that he's commenting on this little girl's appearance in the same way. "I don't approve of how you look and here's my reason why and in the meantime I will say rude things to you so that you will pay attention to my point." - "Hear that, ya little tramp? Oh yeah, and parents, this is really directed at you. A line needs to be drawn in which we don't let our little boys dress like girls, I mean girls dress like whores, I mean I'm an asshole. Wait."Maybe it's the sentence, "What adult who wants a daughter to grow up with high self-esteem would even consider purchasing such items?" because of all the assumptions that go into it. The assumptions that an adult woman wearing the same clothes has no self-esteem. That the little girl's outfit is an indication that this girl is receiving shitty parenting over all. That what this little girl is wearing is her salient characteristic, much like the parallel assumption we make about adult women.It could be it's the paternalistic tone of this bullshit: "Or maybe I'm just a concerned parent worried about little girls like the one I saw at the airport." He talks about his son in the article, but specifically about his pants being low, not about a characteristic that distinguishes men from boys, which is ostensibly his protest to her outfit - its age inappropriateness. So really, is he a concerned parent (which is a label I've read before when people want to disapprove of someone else's parenting, see boys in dresses) or is a concerned man? So yeah, this whole things just pissed me off. Also, I think it's interesting that he was in 2009 he won the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation award for online journalism was a 2008/10 honoree of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. Wouldn't someone who seems to get the idea of not talking shit about people realize why this is so poorly done?

Yes, I get your point. Sexualization of young girls is potentially damaging. Yes, I agree with that, but is there any world where this is the best way to address the issue?

A final thought - much like when the little boy wore the dress to school and none of the other kids cared, I have to wonder if this is fundamentally an adult problem? Little girls don't know what sexy means, this d00d makes the valid point that they are dressing like adults they see, whether it be Rihanna or their own parents. They're mimicking. Perhaps the problem isn't in dressing little girls like adults, it's that we pass judgment on the way women dress at all, regardless of what judgement you're passing. When little boys dress like men, it's either cute (little dudes in suits) or it's completely unnoticeable because those are just their, uh, clothes. But when little girls dress like women, or should I say a certain kind of women (I'd really say idea of womanhood), there is a problem. What does that mean?

At a class today on cost transfers (don't worry about it), without fail research administrators (department admin staff) are referred to as she, while principal investigators (faculty) are referred to as he, both by the instructor and by my fellow students. So I guess that means I'm in the right job,  what with my lady parts and all.

Post to keep rack of Gender Identity & Expression Challenge books:

Middlesex - Jeffrey Eudenides (fiction)

Post to keep track of Chunkster Challenge books:

Middlesex - Jeffrey Eudenides (529 pages)

★★★★★

I loved this book. I liked how thought-provoking it was, but also just that it was a tremendous story.*

A little background: our narrator is named Cal (formerly Calliope^), and we know this from the very beginning, so I'm not giving anything away (although there are some definite spoilers below). The important thing is how Cal gets from beginning to end, a tale that puts the journey front and center. I loved how on many levels it is such a typical coming of age story even as our character deals with something that fundamentally affects his gender, a facet of ourselves most of us never even realize we take for granted.

^ I will refer to Calliope/Cal throughout this post based on what gender s/he had at the point in the story when the events in question occur, so expect some name flipping.

I think Eugenides crafts certain elements of the story to help ground Cal's experiences, to keep him from feeling too alien and unidentifiable. It's helpful, but I wonder at times if it is too heavy handed. For example, when Calliope begins to have a sexual relationship with the Object, there are pieces of text designed specifically to remind us that their sexual entanglement is both strange and entirely typical.

So that was our love affair. Wordless, blinkered, a nighttime thing, a dream thing. There were reasons on my side for this as well. Whatever it was that I was was best revealed slowly, in flattering light. Which meant not much light at all. Besides, that's the way it goes in adolescence. You try things out in the dark. You get drunk or stoned and extemporize. Think back to your backseats, your pup tents, your beach bonfire parties. ... It's a kind of fugue state anyway, early sex. Before the routine sets in, or the love. Back when groping is largely anonymous. Sandbox sex. p. 386I like that this text is in there, that Cal (telling us the story as an adult) addresses the reader, asking us to recall our own experiences and then compare them with what we're reading. But I also wonder what it means that this is necessary. Is it Cal's attempt to force "normalcy" (and therefore somehow validate?) what is fundamentally a unique coming of age story? Or is Eugenides' trying to make Cal's tale relatable to the reader? A little of both? In either case, what does it mean that this type of justification needs to be there? That we are potentially made uncomfortable by the need for a space that accommodates an intersex person?

I actually think that this passage made Cal's story seem more unusual because it highlighted it. The aspect of the text that made it universal for me was that the sex in question is hot. It's written with passion and detail and captures the emotional turmoil of first sexual encounters. It's erotic without being exotic.

There's another aspect of this story that at first seems unrelated to the above, but give me a second. Eugenides doesn't start our story with Cal, he starts the story with his paternal grandparents who, it turns out, are siblings. This part of the story is told ostensibly because we are tracing the gene that led to Cal's intersexuality, a recessive gene that is highly unlikely to ever be expressed without the interference of inbreeding. I wondered about this while I was reading because it's unnecessary. The inbreeding that actually resulted in Cal's condition was a result of his parents being first cousins. The fact that his paternal grandparents were siblings is irrelevant, as only one of them needed to pass on the gene that would produce his alpha-5-reductase deficiency. The other copy he received from his mother. So I kept wondering, why start there? Why begin so long before you need to? The answer is so obvious that I'm a little embarassed it took me a while to figure it out - because it's an epic, stupid. Because it is, in a sense, a very ordinary (and therefore extraordinary) family, immigrant, American tale.

His grandparents' romance has a magical feel to it. They fall in love in Greece, in a tiny village on top of a mountain. There is Desdemona's emotional connection to the silkworms, her attempts to dress up the only other marriagable women in the village to appeal to her brother to much comedic effect. It's very much like a fairy tale with a dark twist. Their flight to the United States allows their rebirth from siblings to married couple and they hope to forget their transgression, but it is in a sense revisited upon them in their own emotional dysfunctionality and in the intersexuality of Cal. His own story, his transformation from female to male, is a mirror of the story of Greeks becoming Americans, of the past giving way to the present.

We see this theme repeatedly, not the least of which is in Desdemona's spoon, which she uses to predict the sex of each new progeny. She predicts that Cal will be a boy, but her son rejects this, saying they are having a girl. How does he know? Because "It's science, Ma" (p. 6). The old way of understanding the world has been replaced with the new way, but is it better? Does Dr. Luce really represent the best we can do? I hope not. (It's also interesting that Desdemona & her spoon were genetically right.)

Finally, I spend a lot of time thinking about authors' choices about their stories and characters. I find it fascinating that Cal says he never felt uncomfortable being a girl.

Unlike other so-called male pseudo-hermaphrodites who have been written about in the press, I never felt out of place being a girl. I still don't feel entirely at home among men. Desire made me cross over to the other side, desire and the facticity of my body. (p. 479) I wonder why Eugenides chose to make Cal unusual in this respect. Is it because he wants Cal's journey to remain in close parallel with the immigrant tale in which we can be both comfortable and uncomfortable in our new land and in the place we come from? I also wondered if it's possible that more "pseudo-hermaphrodites" feel like Cal than we know. I wonder if saying this, that he could have lived out his life either way, is even more transgressive than being intersex in the first place. We shy away from anything that could be used to bolster the "it's a choice" argument in conversations about gender and sexuality / sexual preference as though those types of arguments have any validity to begin with. It shouldn't matter if it's a choice because it would still be none of your damned business. Regardless of that, we tow the line of biology because it's a weapon we can use to fight against those who would deny the rights of individuals because of their particular biology / choice combo. Writing Cal this way makes us ask ourselves more questions about him and about our own assumptions than we might otherwise.

Which made me wonder just how much we take for granted in constructing and reading characters who are more traditionally male and female. How many assumptions do we make when we decide that someone is male or female? How many possibilities are closed off?

Ultimately, I liked this book because each time I put it down, my mind was racing, thinking about the characters, their lives, their personalities. They felt so real, so interesting, and yet so much larger than life. It's the kind of book I'll read again 3 years from now and enjoy just as much, if not more.

* As always, these are my thoughts on the book, and it's obvious that there are many more informed things out there written by people with degrees and stuff. I feel the need to reiterate this because it won a Pulitzer, for cripes' sake.

Followup: After writing this, I looked at a review someone wrote - I can't even remember where, and they said that the only part of the book they didn't like was Cal's time as a runaway, when he was working in the club and living with Zora because it was dark and didn't seem to fit the good humor and warmth of the rest of the story. I think they're wrong, but for a couple of reasons. First, I found Calliope's time in the boarding school as incredibly tense and uncomfortable to read, so I don't think this was the only part of the book that was a bit darker. Second, I'm sure none of us really enjoys the fact that intersex individuals are treated as freaks, etc., but it felt like a very realistic part of Cal's trajectory. Additionally, Cal's relationship with Zora was incredibly warm and caring. Interesting that people find that part of the book inherently dark/distressing/dirty. I've been reading a lot of blogs about sex work/ers lately, and I think the characterization of this as a "dark" part of the book has more to do with setting and people's assumptions about that setting than the actual tone or plot of that portion of the novel.

Yesterday we were walking around New Orleans' neighborhoods, Audobon Park, the French Quarter. It's odd to be in a place that you know was visited by such devastation only six years ago. We place such a high premium on survivorship in our society and I'm here in a city seemingly dedicated to revelry,* and everything you see that was here before 2005, people included, is a survivor. It conjures a kind of awe that is quickly forgotten, gilded over with Mardi Gras beads and drive through daiquiri bars.

But really, is this so unusual? Aren't we all survivors of something? Who hasn't lived through a tragedy of some kind, a loss, a misfortune, an event that threatened to tear your world apart? It's an amazing aspect of the entire human existence that we forget, overlook in the day to day. It's interesting that the very indicator of survival, the ability to go on with your day-to-day life, means forgetting that there are things to survive in the first place.

After suffering the agony of sitting next to a woman on a plane who popped her gum for the two and a half hours from Charlotte to New Orleans, I made it to the Big Easy. My cab driver needed the assistance of my GPS to get us to Jessica's house, but whatevs. This city is a maze, and I made it in one piece, so cheers to that!

Yesterday Jess and I hung out at the house in the morning before getting shrimp po boys from the equivalent of the local bodega/deli. We ate these while strolling through her neighborhood, no mean feat let me tell you. I dropped a shrimp at one point and felt something much like self-loathing.

Her cubicle at the law library has walls that a very tall person could reach over, but made of something designed to look like very lawyerly dark cherry wood. The door locks and the room is larger than my office. I now have a theory about how people inhabit a space because while she has made minimal effort to personalize the room, it still feels a lot like her office in NY.

We continued trekking onward toward Audobon Park where we did some high quality geocaching. Don't laugh, it's awesome. We saw about a thousand turtles, which we fed (as well as a nesting duck). Jessica also witnessed some duck rape, although I was lucky enough to miss that, as I was rummaging through some bushes in search of a geocache. We then took a shortcut across the golf course, which is supposedly allowed as long as you stay on the path and don't get in the way of the golf carts. It was a lovely long walk, and I was infinitely impressed with Audobon Park. It's quite enormous and well-maintained. The pedestrian loop around the park has walking, running, and biking "lanes" and there are emergency call boxes and dog poop bag dispensers scattered around. There are also lots of benches and gazebos should you just want to sit around in the shade or sun or any combination thereof.

Then, pupusas for dinner (which were stupid good), and a trip to 12 Bar, "New Orleans' comedy living room." This was the most awkward comedy watching experience of my life. The back of the bar really is like a living room, with couches and chairs arranged around a microphone, so the comedians can look you in the eye. When they first started the only 3 people there who weren't performers or bartenders were Jessica, Sean, and me. Luckily my friend Alex (who was randomly stuck here to a flight snafu) and eventually some other couples showed up, but at first I felt that skin crawling sensation that makes me leave the room when I watch It's Always Sunny.

No real take-homes from all this, I just want to remember what an awesome low-key day it was and how much I love New Orleans. This would be a lovely place to live.

For photographic evidence, check out the FB album.

Yes kids, I'm drunk. And in vino veritas. I may even turn off comments for this post as I know ya love me and you'll be all supportive and whatnot. Thing is, I realized tonight, walking home alone, stubbornly alone, how truly alone I am. How truly alone we all are. How I am likely to die alone, more so than most, simply bc I'm kind of a weird girl. It's fine. It is what it is, but every now and then, when I'm three sheets to the wind, it really pisses me off.  How unfair life is, how random, how twisted and sick and in control of all of us it is. Dear Life, Drunk Denise says to hell with you.

I was talking to someone the other night, someone who used to be married and isn't anymore. I'm almost at an age where, sadly, my own divorce is less interesting novelty and more shared experience. The CDC tells me that when women get married between 20-24 (I was 23), the likelihood of divorce after 72* months is 19%. That was according to data gathered in 1995. I wonder if the rates are even higher now.

It was interesting how he spoke about marriage and life after marriage. He said, "I was very happily married." I find that sentence both beautiful and tragic. Because really, how many people say, "we" are happily married, all the while forgetting that each of us is a universe unto ourselves, an entire separate reality? Even after the confrontation and the loss, our own reality is slow to change. He still thinks of himself as part of a pair, but his other half is missing.

My marriage having ended long ago, I'm not sure I remember what it feels like to be part of a pair. Sometimes I think I long for an idea that's mostly fantasy and a nostalgia for something my senses remember but my mind has forgotten. The familiar smell of someone else on your pillow, the warmth of a shared shower, the embrace of forgiveness after a fight, the moment you realize you don't have to try to remember their favorite song, biggest pet peeve, most cherished memory. When someone else feels like home.

I long for that on days like today, days when I come home and my roommate has been out of town for 4 weeks and Spencerificus seems tiny and entirely unable to help me fill all the empty space in this house. I sit on the porch and watch the neighbors with their kids, working in their yards, and I feel content, but there's a nagging emptiness that never seems to go away.

Anyone who knows me, anyone who's read just about anything I've ever written, you know that a huge part of my life is about family and what family means and fighting to feel comfortable being alone with myself when the idea of family is elusive. And even though I'm kind of sad about this sometimes, lonely, I think I'm at the point where I'm as solitary as I want to be. I don't want to get more comfortable with being alone. I like the hope.

My friend, the divorced person of mystery, said he has a spot in his life that someone walked away from and he's always wondering about a new person's relationship to that spot. Spot is such a specific term. I don't have a spot, I have a space. It's a much more general concept. However, the desire is fundamentally the same. We tend to be so ashamed of this kind of thing, of longing, of loneliness. But how can something so fundamental be shameful?

I have a space in my life. Someday someone will fill it, and as Cary Ann Hearst sings, "We'll be together every day and night. We'll have a miserable life." I don't want to forget to be excited about the possibility of hanging my heart on someone's barbed wire fence.

* I'm 29 now, married at 23, so 29 yo - 23 yo = 6 x 12 = 72 months.

Not much to say about this one. I really like T.C. Boyle, but I'm used to reading things of his that are a little weirder. He tends to take normal situations and twist one thing about them and then see what the effect might be. That's how non-Euclidean geometry works - you change one thing, like saying parallel lines can intersect once, and then you see how it changes everything else about the system. T.C. Boyle does that with life. In this book, one of the characters is deaf, and it profoundly changes the way she interacts with the other characters, but there's nothing supernatural about the strangeness of this novel.

I liked that it didn't end the way I thought it would - it was a bit more unusual than that, which I appreciated.

It was also funny because as soon as I read this, I heard T.C. Boyle on NPR and the next day read an article by him in Smithsonian. It's like meeting someone in a small town and then you see them everywhere. I'm sure T.C. and I will meet again.

This book was so deliciously good, and I've hesitated writing about it because I'm conflicted about a few things. I've thought about the book repeatedly in the past couple weeks, and had two great conversations with people about it. That's more than I think about most books I read, so in that sense, the book is a smashing success.

Little Bee is a Nigerian refugee in England who has survived through her mastery of language, and Chris Cleave has written her in a voice that rings so true* it's like you can hear her speaking. I have no idea what intelligent Nigerian refugees actually sound like, so I guess I'm trusting Mr. Cleave quite a bit here, but regardless, I loved her. When she is the narrator, the story moves along briskly with a steady stream of observations, imaginations, and remembrances. A couple of examples of things I loved:

How I would love to be a British pound. A pound is free to travel to safety, and we are free to watch it go. This is the human triumph. This is called, globalization. (p 2)And another:

On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived. (p 9)One more:

I felt my heart take off lightly like a butterfly and I thought, yes, this is it, something has survived in me, something that does not need to run anymore, because it is worth more than all the money in the world and its currency, its true home, is the living. And not just the living in this particular country or in that particular country, but the secret, irresistible heart of the living. I smiled back at Charlie and I knew that the hopes of this whole human world would fit inside one soul. This is a good trick. This is called, globalization. (p 264)The themes of globalization, money, privilege, nationalism, and home run throughout the book, and when Little Bee talks about how the flag of all refugees all over the world would be the same featureless gray, you understand how alone she is and yet also part of a community of thousands.

The alternating narrator is Sarah, an English woman who is not unlikable, and turns out to be a rather extraordinary person. The problem is that she's just not as interesting a voice as Little Bee, and I think that if she'd been the sole narrator, I probably wouldn't have liked the book at all. She's kind of dry, a little stiff. Almost uncomfortable. She's much harder to identify with.

This is the major point of ambivalence I have about the book. Chris Cleave is a British white guy and therefore culturally closer to Sarah (and me?) than to Little Bee, and so I wonder what it means that I liked Little Bee so much. Do I like her or do I like the idea of her as depicted by other white people? Because of course her wisdom, her cleverness, her personality, are all really Chris Cleave. They're who he thinks she is. How can I trust that? How much truth is there?

I talked about this book with Diana and she helped me see a few things that I think contributed to my dislike of Sarah. I couldn't figure it out before, and I think it's because of her arrogance, and how closely she held onto her naivety. At one point she did something really incredible for Little Bee, something that reveals her to be a different kind of person than we originally think she is. Then, in the second half of the book, she pretty much undoes it completely. It's almost as though even with first hand knowledge, she still can't wrap her mind around the horror of what's happening in Nigeria, the fundamental truth of Little Bee's story. In that way, she acts as a stand-in for us, the reader. Even if we do dramatic things or make sacrifices, some part of us finds it all hard to believe. We cling to our ignorance; we don't make real changes. Maybe it's Sarah as a reflection of myself that I actually dislike.

We went to a conference last week on higher education pedagogy and I was lucky enough to attend a couple of great sessions on student writing and collaborative writing. While at the collaborative writing session, I realized that if my life were a pie chart sans sleep, 60% of my waking hours would be spent thinking about or doing some kind of writing activity. I didn't intend for that to be the case, but I find that now that I'm in it, I rather like the way my relationship with the written word is shaping up. I began to contemplate authorship more generally, but some brief background on all the writing before I get into that, as I think it's easy to not realize all the different kinds of writing we do every day.

Professionally, the research group I'm part of just sent off a great paper on advisor / graduate student co-authoring, and there are more papers in the works on that topic. Another large project I'm working on examines plagiarism in graduate students - what it looks like and what the explanations might be. As part of this study of graduate student writing, I'm hoping to get a first author publication out of it that focuses on my take on what we're seeing. Last week, I worked with some engineers on a grant proposal, my first one where I had to contribute original text and ideas (that was a big deal btw). I'm also sitting in on a grant writing class, for which I'm putting together an entire grant all on my own about an idea that could be my future PhD dissertation about science blogging, another kind of writing. So I spend my professional days thinking about other peoples' writing and then doing a lot of writing of my own.

Personally, I've been working on this book for a while and I have this blog. I think it's easy to discount blogging as a form of writing, but I think a lot about what ends up here, and there's research that says writing is thinking, that the writing process forces you to organize your thoughts and make meaning of your experiences. I do a lot of that here, summarizing and contextualizing my life. The book is a whole other kind of writing, where I get to spin a tale and think about writing style. I'm always reading and I find that I respond to a certain writing quality, a kind of simplicity that I'd like to emulate in my own fiction, even if fiction isn't my forte.

Now back to authorship...

While sitting in the session on collaborative writing in student groups using wikis, I began to think about all the different kinds of writing I do. How some of it is collaborative, how some of it is not, and how much of it falls along a spectrum from entirely sole-authored to entirely collaborative, in which I think my own contributions and those of my collaborators become eventually indistinguishable. All these different writing tasks require different skills, and some of them we teach well to students and some of them we do not.

Students do a lot of single authorship writing in school - we want to know what they know. How well students end up being able to write individually is something I still question (remember the plagiarism project?), but I know that they don't write well in groups. I'm not sure if I still write well in groups.

But a fundamental question I've been tossing around is what it means to be an author in the first place. This has a very specific meaning in academic writing in which you are or are not a named author on a written work. However, in a larger way, what must you contribute to a piece in order to be an author vs. an editor vs. a kind of adaptor and gatherer of information?

We accept that writing original text is authorship - I'm the author of this blog and I'm going to be the first author of the paper I'm writing on plagiarism, which means I will generate a lot of the basic text as well as the overall thrust and direction of the paper. However, a lot of blogs are more like information aggregators. They're bringing together information from all over the web to say something new. So how much of something new do you have to contribute before you're an author? I've also worked on academic papers where I've written very little original text, but I've read many iterations of the paper, contributed ideas and textual changes and helped significantly shape the paper to address our eventual audience. Even though I probably wrote nothing larger than a sentence here and there, I would still say I'm an author of that work.

At what point did I become comfortable with this much more amorphous idea of authorship? And oddly enough, academically, I'm much more comfortable now with non-sole-authored academic writing. This plagiarism paper will be the first major academic work that I'm taking the lead on in our group, and I find that I'm terrified of trying to pull together a cohesive package of ideas that flow and build an argument. Up until now, others have primarily done the driving, and perhaps I have been backseat driving a bit. Now I have to take the wheel on something, and I'm quite nervous.

The oddest thing about this is that my own progression (and the progression of the grad students I'm studying) is one in which you start out contributing in a small way to a larger work, and over time you contribute more and more of yourself until you're eventually ready to be a first-author, to take the lead. It's a kind of apprenticeship model. We don't teach K-16 students how to write that way at all. There is such a focus on single authored writing that I don't think students even realize that most of what you write after graduation involves a team effort.

Not sure where all this is leading, but I think it's a good framework for thinking of my own progression as a writer. You're not just a good "writer," you're a good writer or a bad writer in different contexts. It's a wide set of skills and rather than just being frustrated when it seems like it's not going well, it would be more productive to think of it as a range of skills, each of which needs to be developed and honed.

I'm an author in progress.