Author: girl

book challenge 2007 progress report

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At the end of month two, I have faced two major hurdles in my efforts to not buy new books this year, and come over them slightly battered. Vows were meant to be tested, right? Slips are an opportunity to get back on the wagon, right? Right.

In January, I visited Powells for the first time, and managed to limit myself to the purchase of used books (mostly poetry volumes) only. The whole category of previously owned books is an admitted gray area in my challenge: they are new-to-me, and they constitute more books that will need shelves in my home. In terms of managing the numbers of piles of books, then, it doesn’t get me there. In terms of managing the percentage of our budget that flows into book purchases, it improves the situation somewhat, although of course isn’t as good as just not buying anything. I hesitate to invoke that stalwart truism of consumer capitalism, ‘I could have bought even more, so what I did buy is small by comparison.’ Nonetheless, when it comes to visiting the most well-known independent bookstore in the country, I have to say: it could have been worse.

This past week, I smacked head on into my second hurdle, and it gave me a Texas thumpin’. Having chosen to attend an in-store reading, I was unable to resist buying the new book by one of my favorite authors, as I didn’t want to miss the chance to have it signed. In this instance, my vow to not spend money on books was in open conflict with my long-standing vow to purchase the books of authors I want to support when those books come out (rather than as remainders). In the end, the latter won out, and I was similarly unable to resist buying his book analyzing international law using Marxist theory, as I’ve been eager to read it and waiting for the less expensive trade paperback version to become available. And then, well, it became a matter of damage control, and I managed to leave the store with only an additional two books: his collection of stories that I’d not yet picked up, and a book on competitive birdwatching that hooked me in the first pages of the introduction.

Moral of the story: don’t go to bookstores, especially not well-stocked independent ones, and definitely don’t pick up books from the sale rack to leaf through while waiting in line for the loo.

book challenge 2007 progress report

Brown Girl in the Ring, by Nalo Hopkinson

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Breaking quite a dry spell, I read Nalo Hopkinson‘s Brown Girl in the Ring this past week. I did enjoy this book more than The Salt Roads, likely because it was more plot-driven. I didn’t love it; I would have liked to see more character development, and a thickening of the story. I enjoyed it as a quick read, however, I can imagine also enjoying a slower, deeper version of the same story.

I also found myself skimming through the more gory sections of the book, but this is probably a complaint peculiar to me and something that wouldn’t phase most readers my age. Call me a kook, but I’ve discovered that I just don’t enjoy blood, guts, and other kinds of gore. I can deal with violence that serves a narrative, and anything over my finely balanced measure of what counts as ‘serving the story’ will generally put me off a piece. I don’t like being scared gratuitously, and I don’t read books or watch films in the horror genre for that reason (my father could tell you about the time I started to watch Dr. Giggles with some friends, in an effort to defeat my fear of horror with sheer campiness, and how it backfired horribly and I called him to drive across town and follow me back home — I had the other car with me — so that I didn’t risk getting killed by a maniacal physician in the mile or so I had to travel…did I mention, in my car. Yeah. And, I was, like, 20 or something at this point. Not, you know, 12. The end. Postscript: just locating the Wikipedia entry has caused me to start to be totally jumpy in my cozy back room with three sides of windows. Definitely a night to keep my trusty Maglite near at hand. You can start laughing any time now…). Tangentially, this is the main issue I’m currently having with Heroes: I can’t stand the blood of the serial killing, and besides freaking me out, it seems completely unnecessary (both unnecessary to write the story that way, and unnecessary to show every single gruesome death on screen: we know what he does, our brains can slot in the first gory scene when necessary, thankyouverymuch). All the other issues I have with Heroes will have to wait for another time, as they really have no connection to the issues I had with Brown Girl in the Ring whatsoever. Also, the ways in which my struggle to stay engaged with Heroes is strikingly similar to the ambivalence that led me to stop watching Twin Peaks midway through the 2nd season (although, of course, I’ve since seen them all; on laserdisc, even)? Not relevant either.

Truthfully, I didn’t have many issues with Brown Girl in the Ring. It was ok. I didn’t love it, but it was entertaining and it was a nice break from continuing to work my way through Snow. Which I plan to finish and write about at some point.

Brown Girl in the Ring, by Nalo Hopkinson

roasting vegetables

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This week, I roasted vegetables for the first time. One might think that, as a vegetarian for over 10 years, I would have tackled this basic cooking style before now. But I hadn’t; I typically sauté or stew or steam. Truthfully, I never used the oven much for cooking. Baking, yes. Cooking, that I did on the stovetop.

Enter the farm share, and the aforementioned bags and bags of turnips. Lovely little gold and purple turnips. It seemed a shame to boil them and then pour all that vitamin water down the drain. Plus, roasting with olive oil, garlic, and fresh rosemary sounded a lot more appetizing.

The first challenge was finding a suitable dish. I have three rectangular glass/pyrex baking dishes, a round and lidded glass/pyrex casserole dishes, and a square and lidded glass/pyrex casserole dish. I wasn’t keen on using any of these, but we don’t have a roasting pan (since I don’t, well, eat roasts). Then I remembered the terrine we acquired in Switzerland, ten years ago now. It wasn’t exactly right, as we weren’t able to spread the turnips (and chunks of onion, and cloves of garlic) into a single layer, but with checking in and tossing everything around periodically it turned out decently. Some of the turnips were overly soft, but we mixed in two kinds plus larger chunks of rutabaga, so that could have contributed to the uneven result. All in all, tasty enough to repeat.

Coincidentally, we initiated this roasting venture during the same week that I was trotting around to different stores comparing pots and pans. We need to replace our main over-sized frying pan (the nonstick stuff has bitten the dust, as happens), and we’re trying to create a matrix of cost, utility and quality that will guide us to the single most useful replacement pan, but that’s a topic for another day. As a result of all this hanging out in cookware sections, I came across and snapped up three stoneware dishes more suitable for roasting: a rectangular one, a shallow oval one, and a medium-deep oval one (all of which were of discontinued colors or styles or something that led to them being dramatically less expensive).

Tonight, then, we successfully roasted our turnip dinner in less time, with a more even result, in a dish that allowed for all the pieces to stay in a single layer. Huzzah!

roasting vegetables

birds in Oregon

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One of my favorite parts of any trip to a new region is seeing birds I’ve never seen before. My trip to Portland last month was no exception, and I was happy to catch sight of even the common regional birds. I’ve updated my lifelist to include the birds I saw out there, bringing my total of birds seen in North America up to a whopping 104! I’m still working on gathering photos of the European birds, but the list itself is complete.

birds in Oregon

anxiety dream

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When I transitioned totally from student to teacher a few years ago, my standard anxiety dream changed as well. The old student standby of ‘I show up for the first day of classes, only to discover that they have been going on for weeks and I am behind, with only one night to do all of the (math, statistics, science) homework sets,’ only to discover that I can’t read the book because it’s a dream. This last was usually a relief, as it allowed me to wake up and be done with the dream-cramming for the dream-exam in the dream-class that I was doomed to fail.

Later, the teacher version of this dream went something like ‘I show up for class, I’m totally prepared, I’m zipping along, and suddenly the entire class starts rebelling, leading to a near riot.’ The first time I had this dream, I woke up totally perplexed. Why were my students out of control, why? Then I came to recognize it for the place-holder that it was, and didn’t pay much attention. It varied slightly over time, just like the student dream did, but it was always that same basic formula, ending in me abandoning all hope of any kind of pedagogical endeavor and just trying to get out of the classroom.

This week, I had my first not teaching anxiety dream. This is the first February since the 70s that I have not been connected to an educational institution as either student or teacher. In looking back, I did have two autumns away from schools (the first year after college, and the first year we were in DC), but in both of those years I began teaching in some form by February. So, truly, this is the first year I’ve successfully resisted the urge to rush back to an institution of learning in some form.

Thus, the dream: I go to the university where I used to teach, agree to teach several classes, then go to another university in town and beg them to let me teach two literature classes (one on camping as it appears in American literature, and one on fulcrums), all the while figuring out how I’m going to have time to run back to the first university and quit my teaching job before classes actually start…that afternoon. Conflicted much, subconscious? I woke up from that one thinking, ‘Why was I begging for a teaching job, only to decide immediately thereafter to quit it? Why were they going to hire me to teach in the literature department? Why was a class on fulcrums the second most popular literature class after the Shakespeare seminar?’ I’m not sure which of these burning questions was the most perplexing, honestly.

The upshot? I’m torn about breaking my lifetime association with the institutions of education. After this dream experience, though, I’m even more curious to see what new opportunities come along once I successfully resist the siren call of the teaching profession.

anxiety dream