Bluestalking Reader

Now even more certain I'm going into the right career...

... because I managed to refrain from ripping this guy's head off.

Jackass: Hi, Lisa! Good to see you again. Here's my latest pile of brochures I'd like you to display in your library. You know, because you're public and you have to serve all your patrons and blah, blah, blah and like some recurring venereal diseases I annoyingly show up once every few months!

Lisa: Hi, Jackass! It's nice to see you again.

Jackass: So, what are you doing lately? What's new?

Lisa: Oh, the usual, I'm in library school....

Jackass: Oh, LIBRARY SCHOOL!! HAHA! Do you really have to go to school for that?

Lisa: Why yes, yes you do...

Jackass: Is it like McDonald's University or something? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Lisa: (Inaudible above Jackass's braying laugh). Actually (said icily) it is a MASTER'S DEGREE.

Jackass: See ya later... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Lisa: Sneezebitemesneeze

Ah, the joys of working with the public.

Can't win for losing

Ah, my dears, it's been a wild and crazy May. Good news is I've finished all my course work for grad school (which I trumpeted a day or three ago). I've gotten one official grade, an A, in the one course I was truly worried about. Still awaiting the official news of grades in the other two courses, but in one of them I've gotten 100 % on every single assignment. Hmmm... Wonder what that means?

I've also had a daughter going through some rough times this month, more than the usual adolescent crapfest, added to all my end of semester fun.

Now, I'm suffering through a virus that's been having its way with the entire family. It offers two days of feeling like death followed by (so far) at least a couple days honking like a goose and sneezing in a manner most uncomely.

But it's spring! Spring! Spring! Which means weeds to pull! Weeds to pull! Weeds to pull!

I've been reading as much as humanly possible, given my life complaints (of which I have many, in case you haven't gathered). Currently I'm laughing my way through Beth Lisick's Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Ten Self-Help Gurus And a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone.

  The reviews all talk about how funny it is, and yes that's true. But it's also very down-to-earth, wise and revealing. It's not quite as "let's analyze my entire self" as Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love (not that I didn't love that one, too), but it's much more acknowledging of the hard work that goes into writing. It's not a cake walk, not is it handed down from on high. It's damn hard work. Lisick admits that, as well as the very real struggle keeping her family's head above water while shelling out the money it took to research the book (including attending various self-help seminars, buying self-help books and at least two phone consultations with self-help gurus and their minions).

Apparently no one handed her a big, fat advance. Not that there's anything wrong with that (pick  me! pick me! wave, wave). But Lisick did her work the hard way, by paying for it herself and hoping to god there'd be a payoff in the end. All that makes me feel gratified saying I BOUGHT THE HARDBACK BOOK AND PAID FULL PRICE. There's another buck or two kickback to Beth.

Aside from all that, hey, I've been pretty idle over here. I spend my days filing my nails, eating bon bons and weeping about my difficult life. The usual.

Dig it!

I am done! I am done! I've submitted my last paper of the spring semester.

I AM DONE!

Pardon my little victory dance, but the relief is huge. Never mind I have more semesters ahead of me. For now I can relax, put my feet up and wait for the grades to be announced. Oh, drat, more dread.

But I'm done!

Youth is wasted on the young.

All the Sad Young Literary Men by Keith Gessen

I can relate to two of the adjectives in the title, at least on some level. I guess it's that third one that leaves me a bit cold. Vanity prevents me saying which one that is. You can guess.

All the Sad Young Literary Men (written by a  man who doesn't believe in commas) is one of those clever novels written by clever young men featuring young, beautiful people undergoing angst of a somewhat vague description. While suffering the pangs of twenty-somethingness (poor things!) they manage to mess up their lives and love relationships, overwhelmed by ennui and lack of self-knowledge. In short, they're young.

I can't really relate to the book very much. Or maybe I should say with the characters. I'm past where they are in life, and their problems aren't so universal that I can identify with them. Their lives are defined by their youth. They haven't lived that much of life yet, and it very often shows in some very shallow, selfish behavior.

The one positive is the book's beautifully written with a couple flashes of wonderful humor. The prose is lovely:

"We hurt one another. We go through life dressing up in new clothes and covering up our true motives. We meet up lightly, we drink rose (sorry, can't do accents apparently - LG) wine, and then we give each other pain.We don't want to! What we want to do, what one really wants to do is put out one's hands - like some dancer, in a trance, just put out one's hands - and touch all the people and tell them: I'm sorry. I love you."

Lovely stuff, just not for me.

NBCC Good Reads List - Spring 2008

Sunday, May 04, 2008
The National Book Critics Circle Announces the Spring 2008 NBCC Good
Reads List

The votes are in, and this weekend the National Book Critics Circle
announces the Spring 2008 NBCC Good Reads list:Recommendations From
NBCC members, award winners and finalists.

The NBCC Good Reads List was created in fall 2007 as an alternative to
the many best sellers lists available, instead offering books being
avidly read and discussed by America’s leading critics and the world’s
most celebrated writers.

Now the NBCC returns with its third seasonal list, assembled by
polling the 825 members of the National Book Critics Circle as well as
former finalists and winners of NBCC book awards. I think of it as is
a freeze frame on book culture today, what critics and authors have
been impressed by at this point in the year.

NBCC award winning and finalist authors who contributed to this list
included finalists Diane Ackerman, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Mary Jo
Bang, Kate Christensen, Louise Erdrich, Gary Giddins, Maureen Howard,
Troy Jollimore, David Leavitt, Julie Phillips, Richard Price, Norman
Rush, Ron Slate, Susan Stewart, Jean Strouse, and Anne Tyler.

NBCC member contributors included book editors and critics for Time,
Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Entertainment Weekly, Bloomberg
News, the Believer, Slate, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post,
the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel, the Hartford Courant, the Seattle Times, the Kansas
City Star, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Cleveland Plain Dealer,
the Newark Star-Ledger, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, American Book Review,
Bookforum, Pleiades, Brooklyn Rail, and the New Republic.

Following is a list of the top vote getters in fiction, nonfiction,
and poetry. Asterisks indicate a tie. Further details, including
fiction and nonfiction longlists and individual poetry
recommendations, will be posted here during the coming weeks.

FICTION

1. Richard Price, LUSH LIFE, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
2. Jhumpa Lahiri, UNACCUSTOMED EARTH, Knopf
3. Steven Millhauser, DANGEROUS LAUGHTER, Knopf
*4. Charles Baxter, THE SOUL THIEF, Pantheon
*4. Peter Carey, HIS ILLEGAL SELF, Knopf
*4. J. M. Coetzee, DIARY OF A BAD YEAR, Viking
*4. James Collins, BEGINNNER’S GREEK, Little, Brown
*4. Brian Hall, FALL OF FROST, Viking
*4. Roxana Robinson, COST, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
*4. Owen Sheers, RESISTANCE, Nan A. Talese: Doubleday

NONFICTION

1. Nicholson Baker, HUMAN SMOKE: THE BEGINNING OF WORLD WAR II, THE
END OF CIVILIZATION, S. & S.
2. Drew Gilpin Faust, THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING: DEATH AND THE
AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, Knopf
3. Mark Harris, PICTURES AT THE REVOLUTION: FIVE MOVIES AND THE BIRTH
OF THE NEW HOLLYWOOD, Penguin Press
4. Honor Moore, THE BISHOP’S DAUGHTER: A MEMOIR, Norton
5. Susan Jacoby, THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON, Pantheon

POETRY

1. Grace Paley, FIDELITY, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
2. Frank Bidart, WATCHING THE SPRING FESTIVAL, Farrar, Straus &
Giroux
3. Eric Gansworth, A HALF-LIFE OF CARDIO-PULMONARY FUNCTION, Syracuse
University Press
4. Marie Howe, THE KINGDOM OF ORDINARY TIME, Norton
5. Robert Pinsky, GULF MUSIC, Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Photo of the Day

It's Officially Sprung

When our crabapple tree comes into bloom spring has officially sprung. I think we can put away the snow boots now. Good lord, I hope I haven't jinxed it. Bloody hell.

I love the Newberry!

So what if my hands are dry from handling a few hundred books? I'm in hog heaven interning at the Newberry Library, where I spent a big chunk of my day reshelving books in Library of Congress call number order.

More good news about the Newberry, the commute adds THREE HOURS to my reading time. Today I worked on a review book as well as John Steinbeck's To a God Unknown. I had time to write in my journal, too. Commuting rules, except for the parking situation. This morning I got the very last parking spot in the lot.

STILL working on end of semester stuff, though I submitted my second to last paper a few minutes ago. Nibbling the nails on this one. It's my one wild card class, the one I'm not really sure about.  We shall see in a couple of weeks.

One more project and I'm done for the semester. Phew!

I'll be back with book reviews, rants and such very soon. I just wanted to say thanks so much for all the kind comments from the other day, when I had my meltdown. Now that everyone knows I take mood stabilizing drugs I think no further explanations are needed re: my odd behavior.

Praise the Lord and pass the anti-depressants...

Sorry about that recent hissy fit

I can be such a whiner sometimes. Sorry about that. I've bounced back to my abnormal self now, and I will be posting more often as soon as I finish up a few things.

Life's not being too kind to me in so many ways. Among other things I have dermatitis on the back of my head (allergic reaction, sorry I know that's gross) and I'm scratching my  head like a madwoman. Really not a very professional look SCRATCH, SCRATCH. But even that's mild compared to what one of my children is going through now. Very UGH, baby.

I've started my Newberry internship! That's a bit of alright, eh? So far I've shelved hundreds of books, putting them in call number order. I'm just thrilled to be there, to smell the smell of books, books, books that pervades the place. SCRATCH, SCRATCH.

I will be back to regular posting very soon. In the meantime please talk amongst yourselves.

I've been frozen

Yes, it's the end of the semester and yes, that's kept me damn busy. But that's not the only reason I haven't been blogging.

I'm having a confidence problem, a real doubt about my ability to write anything worth reading. It started last weekend when I turned in a crappy column. The scary thing is I thought it was okay, but apparently it actually wasn't. I was so bummed I went to bed for the afternoon, sleeping off the depression. I felt a little bettter after I woke up, but the rest of the week went downhill from there.

Come to find out, blogging may actually be the reason my column was crap, because my "blogging style" bleeds over to my column-writing style. Is that a bad thing? Well, I guess if you're trying to write a serious essay it is. Serious essays require a certain caliber of writing, and my column last week didn't cut the proverbial mustard the first time through. Nor the second. Sometime around the third edit it was accepted.

So now I'm left doubting myself. And that feels pretty awful. 

But I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm just letting you know the reasons I've been away for a few days. They may not be quite as lame as you've come to expect.

Oh, and by the way. The Newberry Library in the city offered me an internship for their American Indian collection. Too bad I can't really feel highs anymore or I'd be really ecstatic about that. I'm glad, don't get me wrong. It'll look stellar on the resume. I just wish I could get excited about ANYTHING again.

Happy Birthday (maybe), Mr. Shakespeare

Born April 23 (?) 1564

Sonnet 104

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April pérfumes in three hot Junes burned,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah yet doth beauty, like a dial hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived:
For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred,
Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.