lunabee34

1. Fiona placed fifth in the nation for extemporaneous poetry composition at the National Beta Club Convention Elementary Division. We are so proud of her!!!

2. I have already started to get glorious birthday presents. My SIL got me some elegant stationery from a shop in her hometown, amejisuto got me a gorgeous purple quill with ink stand and a journal to record the books I've read, and misbegotten sent me an Etsy gift card which I have used to buy some earrings. Our honeymoon was a cruise that left out of New Orleans, and Josh bought me a gorgeous garnet bead necklace and earrings set at the Riverwalk while we were waiting to board. But somewhere along the way, I lost one of the earrings, so I got some beaded hoops that are a perfect match! Thanks to everyone!

3. I've been rereading some books I've kept since childhood that Fiona has outgrown so that I can say goodbye to them.

( children's books )


The New Poetic by C.K. Stead

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I know very little about W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot and very little about modernism, so this was very informative for me. I also like the author's writing style; for a book of literary criticism written in the 60s, it's very readable with clearly cited sources.

And then the author loses me in the last two chapters where he explains in-depth Eliot's theory of writing poetry and whether or not he thinks Eliot accomplishes it in specific poems. Some of it is just that I don't like Eliot, and some of it is that his ideas about the poetry writing process are incredibly opaque and bizarre to me.



View all my reviews

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book is so good. Atwood captures the cruelties of adolescence in disturbing and moving ways.

I think that what I enjoy the most about this novel (besides Atwood's always beautiful prose) is that the narrator always feels herself separate from other girls and then women; she feels more comfortable with boys and then men and feels contemptuous of many women. Throughout the course of the novel, though, she comes to realize that many, if not most, of her assumptions about about the other women she's known in her life have been flawed.



View all my reviews

Charles Portis: Collected Works (LOA #369): Norwood / True Grit / The Dog of the South / Masters of Atlantis / Gringos / Stories & Other Writings by Charles Portis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This was a gift, and I expected that I wouldn't enjoy it very much. I don't have much patience for a lot of twentieth-century, white, male, American authors; I'm deeply disinterested in the kind of masculinity Hemingway is peddling, for example. As a Southerner, I'm also really weary of nostalgia/apologia for a South I don't miss at all, and I expected Portis to deliver on both those scores.

I'm happy to say that I was very wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed this collection, and Portis has become one of my favorite novelists. Contrary to my expectations, one of Portis's main projects over his body of work is to subvert stereotypical ideas of masculinity in really surprising ways. For example, in Norwood, the protagonist is this sweetly goofy guy who bumbles cluelessly through life being kind and generous to everyone around him and being taken in by con men but who manages to come out all right in the end. In True Grit, the character with true grit is a 14 year old girl, and the two men in the book are a drunken sad sack and a braggart. Dog of the South features a protagonist who makes confident pronouncements that are stupidly, obviously wrong and who gets hung up on irrelevant minutiae but who is confidently assured of his intellectual superiority.

Portis is also incredibly funny, just laugh-out-loud funny. Masters of Atlantis is a satire about a guy who inadvertently starts a cult. The whole thing is a con, but he's a total believer. It's very funny, but also very prescient commentary about the way conspiracy theories work.

I think my favorite is Gringos. This novel is the most realistic of the bunch and the darkest. It's still funny, but not in a satirical or absurdist way like the others (well, True Grit is not very funny). I don't want to spoil the plot, but I will say it involves debunking ancient astronaut theorists.



View all my reviews

Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is violent and gory, which I don't mind but may not be everyone's cup of tea. No one is raped on page, but rape is a constant threat, which gets a bit tedious after awhile. I also get weary of the focus on lust and sexual perversion (while understanding that it makes sense for the plot and themes of the book).

Those caveats aside, this was a quick and entertaining read for me. I especially enjoyed the ending--and I do mean the very, very end, like the last handful of paragraphs--which are a lovely moment of grace in a novel that does not contain many moments I would call lovely given that it is set during an epidemic of the Black Death.



View all my reviews

Revelator by Daryl Gregory

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I really, really like this book.

Explaining why without spoiling plot details of the novel is impossible. What I can say is that the sense of place is incredible, the characters are deftly drawn (even those who only briefly appear), and the story blends genres in really interesting and unexpected ways. This is a novel about family and religion and belonging and choices, and it tells the story of those things with the old, familiar songs but also a fresh melody that made this a page turner for me.



View all my reviews

Bid the Vassal Soar: Interpretive Essays on the Life and Poetry of Phillis Wheatley by Merle A. Richmond

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


I get why Richmond pairs Wheatley and Horton; she's the first African American female poet and he the first African American male poet published in the US and they were once published together in a single collection.

But OMG, this is the most obnoxious book of criticism I've read in a good long while, and it brings absolutely nothing of value to our understanding of Wheatley.

In Richmond's estimation, Wheatley has no genuine selfhood as opposed to Horton's genuine, black selfhood; Wheatley's experiences aren't authentic, black experiences as opposed to Horton's genuine, black experiences; Wheatley's poetry is no good as opposed to Horton's; and Wheatley's education and accomplishments are somehow meaningless compared to Horton's because they were facilitated by her white enslavers rather than being self-taught. Richmond writes about Wheatley as if she has zero interiority at all. It's really, really gross.



View all my reviews

Folle-Farine by Ouida

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book is so kinky, and I wish we could go back in time and ask Ouida to what degree the novel is a deliberate, conscious exploration of kinkiness and what exactly she's intending to argue with that exploration if so.

I reread this in preparation for my presentation on Ouida's treatment of birds in her nonfiction essays because it's probably the novel in which the protagonist is most closely identified with birds and the novel which has the most protracted scenes that deal with birds (just in case someone asked me to elaborate on the way in which her arguments manifest in the fiction).

Additional themes include: principles and aesthetics of Romanticism, sadomasochism, the eroticism of self-sacrifice and self-abnegation, silence (both self- and externally-imposed), scathing critiques of Christianity (with some very startling passages in which the female protagonist allies herself with the devil), commentary on art and the role of the artist, sexuality and asexuality, morality.

This is an astonishing and interesting book and nothing at all like what anyone imagines when they hear the phrase Victorian novel.



View all my reviews

It's come to my attention that I've posted six times this year, and five of those were in January. So, ah, hi! :)

I've had some very good news in the last couple of weeks. I've been promoted to Professor. *takes a bow*

And last night I won the Excellence in Service Award for my institution. For those of you not in academia, this award recognizes service to the institution (things like serving on committees), service to the community (community outreach and projects, etc.), and service to the profession (leadership positions in professional organizations, editorial positions on journals, etc.)--and I am highly active in all three areas. Super, super prestigious thing at our institution; I am very honored. I also exceeded expectations on all areas of my annual evaluation. So, hurray, me!

In other good news, I got an email from a guy in California whose mother had died and left behind a shelf of books by Ouida. He'd been googling to figure out who might want them and came upon my name. So, Frank in California gifted me a box of books by Ouida that his mother bought in Bury St. Edmunds, Ouida's birthplace, in the 80s. They arrived earlier this week. What an unexpected and deeply kind act of generosity. I am so grateful.

Here's what I've reading since we last spoke:

( badly researched religious book my mom gave me )

( Victorian literary criticism )

( Judy Blume )

( MISC )

( Poetry )

( Memoir )

( Literary Criticism )

And the rest:

Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning by Susan D. Blum

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I am convinced by the evidence that grading causes problems (it's not objective, it demotivates students, it doesn't truly measure learning--it doesn't account for the student who comes into the course writing A material and learns nothing or for the student who comes into the course writing F material and improves to a D, and a whole host of other issues).

I am not necessarily convinced that dispensing with grades solves those problems.

This book certainly gives me a great deal to think about and some good idea for how to adjust self- and peer-assessment exercises; I am all about the metacognition in my classes.



View all my reviews

The Massarenes by Ouida

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is such a fantastic book; I reread it for a conference presentation I'm giving this week, and I had forgotten how witty and funny it is. I think I will teach this book next time I teach an upper division level course; unlike many of her other books, it has very little French and other languages mixed in which makes reading easier for the students. The plot is also riveting--the nouveau riche Massarenes attempting to break into upper class society with the help of the scheming Lady Kenilworth--and truly suspenseful. It's perfect for a discussion of 19th-century class issues.



View all my reviews

Songbroken by Heather Osborne

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I don't think I can recommend this highly enough.

I don't want to spoil any of the plot, so I'll say very little about that here; instead I'll just note that the character work and the world building is so well done and interesting. I would happily read a billion stories set in this universe.

This novel also hits me right in all the feels. I spent most of it really emotionally moved at the depictions of people who are frustrated at their inability to live as their authentic selves.



View all my reviews

The Limits of Critique by Rita Felski

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Oh, wow. This book is fantastic. I don't know that I agree with all of Felski's conclusions, but I absolutely agree with her assessment that some more fruitful way of approaching art than negativity and suspicion must exist. Her concept of postcritical reading is fascinating.



View all my reviews

( my notes on the book and not so much a coherent essay )

1. I am signed up for Yuletide! Here is my letter. <3

2. We had a very wee ant-cident immediately following all that rain last week. I am certain it is because the water was literally almost a Feefers deep out by the road, and they were just scrambling to survive, but we lived on some sort of haunted anthill at our old house where we were constantly being invaded by demonic ant warriors, and even though this ant-cident probably involved like twenty ants total, I had a traumatic flashback to those troubling times. *crosses fingers against future incursions*

3. We randomly picked a Netflix kid movie to watch and ended up with Vivo. It was super cute (but definitely tugs at the heartstrings; contains one of the major AO3 archive warnings if you see what I mean). I didn't realize until it was over that Lin-Manuel Miranda had written the music and was the voice actor of the main character. Very, very catchy music.

4.

Marriage and Late-Victorian Dramatists by Mary Christian

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Utterly fantastic. Extremely readable and well researched academic prose. Accessible to the layman.

My favorite chaper is the concluding chapter about Elizabeth Robins's suffrage play; Robins is a fascinating person--actor, writer, activist. I knew a little about her as a writer, but I didn't know that she had anonymously written a play in which a woman commits infanticide because her son is born with physical deformities (and the play was apparently received more favorably than I would have imagined).

Highly recommended.



View all my reviews

1. Conference presentation today. It's hosted by D2L, our online learning management system. Wish me luck! It's a short format. If I can't manage to talk for approximately 6 minutes about a thing I'm already doing, I should have my professor card revoked. LOL The only thing I'm low key anxious about is actually getting into the presentation venue; it's through Zoom, and I've used Zoom, and I've got the invite code, but that's the only point where something could go wrong.

2. I am feeling better re: the topamax. The stomach problems have resolved, hooray! (which means the weight loss has also probably resolved since it seems to have been based almost entirely on shitting my brains out and feeling slightly nauseated LOL) The weird tingling hasn't gone away entirely but is much less pronounced and almost never in my lips anymore, hooray. I feel much less stupid, drugged, and confused although I haven't quite decided if I am completely satisfied with where I am. Josh has reminded me that I need to actually be at this dose for long enough to acclimate before I go down to 50 mgs or reject it entirely. Compounding the issue, I have been struggling with brain fog and occasional clumsiness because of my autoimmune for years now (searching for the right word, forgetfulness, etc when I never used to do that previously), so I am having a little trouble teasing out what is me just being me and what is this drug making me dumber. LOL I mean when I was at 100 mgs and Josh and I stood in the kitchen and had a protracted conversation about a spoon that I literally could not understand and which was like an episode from a sitcom the Surrealists never wrote, I had no trouble identifying that that was indeed a Problem with These Medicines. And the next day I decreased the dosage. We'll see what happens; just wish this all was not going to bleed over into the beginning of the semester. Point of interest: when I went from 100 back down to 75, for two days I had this bizarre back of the head, almost at the base of the skull, headache at the end of the day that was almost certainly some kind of withdrawal symptom because I have never had a headache that felt like that before, and the timing was just too on the nose. This drug better make it so I never have a migraine ever again OMG. I am more than a little pissed that my neuro just so blithely prescribed it and did not explain how big of a deal taking it was going to be. Also LOLing a bit that this is the drug that is just available willynilly and the other one I'm taking is the controlled substance. Medicine in this country makes no sense.

3.

Writing For Their Lives: the Modernist Women, 1910 - 1940 by Gillian E. Hanscombe

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is really interesting. I knew very little biographical information about these women before reading this book, and I've only read the poetry/fiction of a handful of them (Barnes's Nightwood, Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Loy's Feminist Manifesto, and a handful of various poems). I come away from my reading fascinated by the web of relationships among these women (and the men in their orbit), keen to read some of the novels mentioned here, and saddened by the number of them who died too young or else who died elderly but in poverty and as recluses.

(Also, OMG, I just cannot get into Gertrude Stein's writing. I very much like The Autobiography, but everything else is just nails on a chalkboard to me. All that repetition. Oh the tedium! I rather fear I am not much of a fan of Modernism which I suppose is appropriate given my predilection for the Victorians. LOL)



View all my reviews

Oh, my friends, is there anything more ludicrous than the marginalia of an eighteen-year-old reading The Sorrows of Young Werther? *dies laughing at myself*

( Rereading my own shelves )

( Robert Lowell poems, Elaine Showalter, Chi's Sweet Home, Martin Guerre, The Graduate )

1. *courtesy of china_shop; we're starting an office poster empire with this slogan LOL Seriously, this applies to all my health and food issues. I feel seen!

2. One of the garage doors broke because, of course, it did BUT they came out and fixed it the day we called, and now it is under warranty again, so that's good.

3. Today on my walk, a hawk flew low down to the ground ahead of me and landed in a bush on the side of the road. It let me get up close to it and look at it for awhile before it took off. In other nature news, my MeeMaw sent me a card with a black-capped chickadee on it. :)

4. I have been moving more! I got 10K steps yesterday and am on track to do that today as well. And I'm not in terrible pain! Just normal pain. This is very exciting.

5. I had lunch out with my new friend/colleague again, and we went shopping. It felt so normal. And weird to be normal. But really, really nice. And I discovered that Barnes and Nobles is carrying Leuchturrm1917 journals for the same price as Amazon and JetPens, and they had several Palomino Blackwing pencil/journal combos. Nice.

6. I got two cards from misbegotten this week. One says, "Be as kind to yourself as you are to others" which made me tear up (it's going on the corkboard behind my computer in the office where I can see it often), and the other is of a French poster.

7. So much reading! This is how I know that I'm doing okay. :) ( 2 Amelia Bedelia books, A. S. Byatt literary criticism, Victorian literary criticism )

Thanks to my enablers, executrix and misbegotten, for sponsoring today's post.

The Dream Life of Citizens: Late Victorian Novels and the Fantasy of the State by Zarena Aslami

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I have learned that I am completely disinterested in fantasies of the state. LOL But I have been reminded that I need to read Sarah Grand's fiction (I've only read some of her nonfiction articles on social issues).



View all my reviews

Dearly: New Poems by Margaret Atwood

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Atwood is, as usual, phenomenal. If I could only have one poet to read ever again, it would be her.

Themes include aging, the end of life, looking back to the past, grief over her partner's death, gendered violence, pollution, climate change, writing, the natural world--so, many of the themes her work generally engages.

By the end of the collection, my heart is so full. These are poems written by a woman in her 80s who knows that more of her life is behind her than ahead of her, and that unflinching look at aging and the approach of mortality is rendered in Atwood's wry, blackly funny, and sharply witty tone.

Standouts for me include "Souvenirs" (a poem about writing), "Cicadas" (a poem about grabbing onto joy with both hands because life is fleeting), "Cassandra Considers Declining the Gift" (always going to love her takes on myth and the fairy tale), "Zombie" (a poem about poetry), "The Aliens Arrive" (very reminiscent of "Happy Endings" which is possibly my favorite of her poems), and "Fatal Light Awareness" (about bird death due to light pollution).

She will always and forever be the gold standard to which I hold myself when I write poetry, the impossibly high bar I'm hoping to attain.



View all my reviews

The First Woman Doctor: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D. by Rachel Baker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I knew the vague outlines of Blackwell's story but none of the specifics. She was a truly extraordinary and determined woman; kiddo was amazed at all the opportunities women were denied not so very long ago and at Blackwell's courage in defying conventions. I am grateful to the trailblazers like her who have made our 21st century lives so much more equal than they might have been.

This book is old and contains outdated gendered language and terms for people of color. I just changed it as I was reading it aloud (authoress? no thanks LOL).



View all my reviews