Tag Archives: books

trials of mediation

Posted on January 15, 2012 | 1 Comment

I’m emotionally over Facebook–by which I mean I am no longer invested in it as somewhere I can express my identity and personality. I used to spend hours cultivating the perfect biographical statement, interests and favorites, and group memberships, but now it’s turned into a virtual version of my apartment on its worst days–namely, full of clutter and crap that might express me, but not in any sort of coherent or favorable way. Anything I find interesting–quotes, links, videos, gets posted in a place that I’d ideally like to keep for photographs and messages to and from friends that I can’t see in person. The one day I connected my Twitter account to my Facebook, such a barrage of crap that was probably rather interesting on a feed cluttered up my Timeline that I just couldn’t stand how it looked, nor could I find a message from a friend that I was looking for.

In the fall I deleted Facebook from my bookmarks, and it remains gone. That makes me visit it a lot less often than I used to, and aside from article-link-posting binges, I don’t really do anything on Facebook except play Words With Friends (I love/hate you for that, Zoraida!). I don’t plan on quitting, but it’s no longer a place that works for the way I want to use media and mediation to send messages or create the virtual costume of myself. I don’t like who I am when I spend hours on Facebook, wistfully clicking through pictures of guys I used to like or girls who used to make fun of me, nor do I like how my profile page looks like, littered with shit I find interesting and want other people to find interesting about me. I don’t know why I held out on Twitter for so long, because it’s more my thing. Continue reading →

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compartmentalize, ignore, or hate outright?

Posted on January 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

I just started reading Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares, which is the first of his three seminal works on the acting process. I decided to read it when I saw a friend reading it to work on her acting career; I’m reading it because I have enjoyed acting when I’ve done it, also because I have found acting difficult when done right, and also because I thought it might be an interesting approach to writing. I think for that third thing to work, I might end up reading all three of his books, not just this one.

But I got it from the library in Tucson, which means I have to finish reading it by Tuesday night, as I leave Wednesday morning. I had trouble getting it from the Boston library. It’s quite interesting so far–somewhat fiction, somewhat like a diary, rather than just “Hi, let me teach you some shit about acting.” I think writers’ guides could take a note from that approach. But now that I’ve trained myself to be critical about fucking everything ever, I’m having trouble getting through it, and so I’m only on page 10.

This is partly because, at least for the kind of reader and thinker I am, this is a book that demands to be read with a notebook at your side for jotting down quotes you want to remember, activities you want to try, or ideas you come up with. It is not a book for bathtub reading, which is what I thought when I decided to Blanche DuBois out and take a bath this morning. Continue reading →

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ummm, except i did sort of sign up for a quantitative challenge

Posted on January 2, 2012 | Leave a comment

I am so bad at doing what I say I’m going to do, especially if what I say I’m going to do is be less busy or committed to things. I signed up for the Fifty Fifty challenge, which is to read 50 books and watch 50 films in 2012. I liked it as soon as I saw it, because I’ve been relying heavily on episodic television, and while a lot of it is good, also a lot of it is bad, so it’s about time I taught myself to watch narratives that take longer than 43 minutes to unfold, and to watch things in full screen without zipping around to a bunch of other open tabs. Television is something I multitask at, but I’d like to watch films again to remind myself to focus.

One of the recommendations at Fifty Fifty is to come up with majors and minors (i.e. follow the work of a specific director, actor, or writer; read books set in a certain country or written in a certain time period, etc) or other thematic lists to guide your reading and watching. Aside from having a to-read list, I can’t really plan exactly what I’ll read because I am so moody about it, but I have some general ideas that I’ll work on making more specific as the year goes on.

Books for school won’t count towards this total. Also, per the rules of the game, rereads and re-watches don’t count. Continue reading →

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bloggish resolutions

Posted on January 1, 2012 | 2 Comments

This year I made myself some non-specific, qualitative-rather-than-quantitative resolutions that will probably become clear as I continue blogging. But as far as this blog is concerned, I plan to focus it more and have more consistent “columns” and themes. I’ll continue doing my informal research updates on biracial literature, but I’ll also be using that reading for actual academic research that I hope to present at a conference or two and then turn into a paper. I’ll write here more consistently, but not at the expense of the stuff I should be writing–namely school stuff and the novel(s). Finally, I’ll keep better track of my reading not just numerically but qualitatively, writing more, privately and publicly, about what I’m reading, why I chose to read it, what it’s meaning to me, and how it relates to my schooling, my creative projects, my intellectual pursuits, or just my general enjoyment/interest. Like Nick Hornby did in The Believer, I also want to keep track monthly of books I buy, books I borrow/check out from the library, and books I read, as well as magazines and journal articles that I read, and do a beginning and end of month roundup of those things.

Also, more extra media stuff. I’m trying to remember how to have a vocabulary for discussing music, another important part of my life, in the same way I discuss literature. Should be interesting, not to mention relevant to one of my novel(s).

BUT, since it’s always fun to be a little quantitative when you can rub your awesomeness in other people’s faces, I did decide to make an infographic of what I read this year. Continue reading →

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new worlds: cinder, worldbuilding, and current ya sci fi

Posted on December 16, 2011 | Leave a comment

I want to talk about worldbuilding in sci fi and dystopia. And just the qualities of sci fi itself. Lately it’s my favorite genre of television, but I can’t quite figure out why. It’s pretty elementary to identify social fears and how they transfer into imagined technological advances, but that’s part of what makes it such an ever-relevant genre. There are always new societal fears and scapegoats and advances and changes that lend themselves well to commentary in the form of fantastical re-imaginings. But when too much sci fi or dystopia comes out during the same era, especially when that era is also characterized by fast, serial publishing, hyper-commodification of literature, and technology-dominated culture, it ends up all the same and ends up being derivative of itself, rather than clever or astute.

I know I’m kind of writing my own dystopia right now, but I’m satisfied that it’s more speculative than outright sci fi dystopia, and I think it’s fairly different from a lot of other YA dystopia. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be better, but we’ll see how it goes when it’s done. But in the meantime, I still want to read in my one of my favorite genres, and I get disappointed when it all starts to be the same old story: society controls teens as far as who they marry, and some plucky young girl decides that that’s not right. Touchscreens run everything, people have silly names, and daily life is controlled by a faceless, totalitarian government. Obviously that’s the hallmark of most sci fi because it’s the fear of most societies, but the plots are starting to run so similar that it’s dull as doornails. Not even the execution of the same old ideas is unique anymore. Continue reading →

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biracial literature #4: not making racial identity the whole story

Posted on December 15, 2011 | 2 Comments

The Whole Story of Half a Girl (Veera Hiranandani) is one of the better titles for these books, I think. Especially for a middle grade novel. This novel focuses on the life of Sonia Nadhamuni, a sixth grader who is half Indian and half Jewish, and whose father has just lost his job, forcing her and her sister to leave their private community school for regular public school. Like in any good middle school story, Sonia has to navigate the shark-infested waters of popularity, friendship, and academics, and she of course makes iffy choices along the way. She joins a cheerleading team, has to decide whether to sit with the black girl who likes books and writing like her or sit with the popular kids who exoticize her, and has to deal with being the formerly rich girl who now goes to public school. Continue reading →

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i’m inspired!

Posted on December 8, 2011 | Leave a comment

I read a lot of books, period, and lately I read a lot of food books. So I don’t think I’m being too cavalier when I say that this is the BEST food book I’ve read all year. The Kitchen Counter Cooking School (Kathleen Flinn) is a memoir cum cookbook that is just like taking cooking lessons without paying the exorbitant fees, and without being the awkward, food allergy-challenged person in the room.

I do not lie. First of all, Flinn is just really good at putting together a narrative, so the book is highly readable. That’s why it functions so well as a lesson, too–she’s a good teacher, well trained, who knows how to put together a lesson so that it’s engaging and understandable. The book follows her and her friend as they find nine women (not all female on purpose, but interesting sociologically nonetheless) and take it upon themselves to teach them to cook. And so they do, focusing each lesson on things that real people actually want to eat, are capable of cooking, and can afford to eat regularly, such as chicken and bread. Turning each lesson into a narrative chapter, Flinn offers you a lesson, too, not to mention teaches you things about the US food system, the economics of cooking and buying groceries, and tricks to understanding how to use spices and herbs. I now understand that “flavor profile” isn’t just a pretentious chef word but also something that will make my own cooking more interesting and more cohesive. Continue reading →

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how and why i shelve

Posted on November 21, 2011 | 2 Comments

I shelve my books; I don’t just put them on shelves. And I know that I’m somewhat unique among even scholars and book lovers, because I have seen plenty of English professors, avid reader friends, and writers who are happy with their disorganized bookshelves. But my books are organized, which I think speaks to my natural affinity towards librarianship and also to my bibliophilia.

The two big wooden shelves are fiction. All fiction, no matter whom it was written for, whether it’s speculative, realist, surrealist, science, fantasy. If it’s a story that was made up, it’s here. I love stories, and this is obviously the biggest part of my collection. I don’t distinguish between subgenres or audience because I think that tends to demean them, and there is merit in all types of fiction. It all just goes on these shelves, alphabetically according to last name. The shelves you can’t see because they are blocked by the chaise are filled with old magazines, piano and choral music, and tons of binders of my own writing, literary magazines, and photocopies of readings I’ve done for class, workshops, and more. Continue reading →

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everything’s archie, except not

Posted on November 16, 2011 | 2 Comments

I’m in the middle of reading a fabulous book, The Ecstasy of Influence by Jonathan Lethem. I already can’t wait to finish it so that I can write my review, but I also don’t want it to stop, so I keep putting it down and picking up magazines or Anthony Bourdain memoirs (un-put-down-able, really) every few pages. Right now Lethem’s riffing on comic books, a topic which usually bores me, because I’ve never cared about superheroes. I didn’t read comics as a kid, nor do I read them now, and I’ve only seen two or three superhero movies in the last ten years. Actually, no, I can count them. Four. The first two Spider-man reboots, and the Christian Bale Batman movies, because, well, it’s Christian Fucking Bale.

So I was sitting on the T thinking while reading, and then I remembered that I actually spent two or three years really into one comic book series (technically it’s like twelve different series, but they’re all the same): Archie. My best friend in elementary school and I were going to the pumpkin patch with her moms, and since it was a long drive to Willcox, she handed me a comic book (I’m still wondering why I hadn’t brought a book of my own–that’s so unlike me, even eight-year-old me). I was a little confused, because I had never even read the Sunday newspaper comics, but after I accustomed myself to reading panels instead of prose, I was fairly hooked.

It’s not that big of a stretch, I guess. It was about teenagers, oooh, exotic! And they did quaint, small town things like ride bicycles without getting hit by cars and went to the Chocklit Shoppe after school. Basically it was all my dreams of Americana life wrapped into convenient sitcom characters who never evolved. Comics, I’m realizing, are like television, and actually, that may be why I was drawn to them. Either that, or reading Archie so much drew me to television and movie writing as that secret thing I want to do more than public library service and literacy. But, err, I still really want to do that, and I’m not dropping out of school. K? Continue reading →

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maybe this year a haul-iday?

Posted on November 5, 2011 | 49 Comments

Chronicle Books, that awesome publisher from San Francisco, is once again having a Happy Haul-idays giveaway, where you pick up to $500 worth of books from them you’d like, blog about them, and then hopefully win them. Someone who comments on your post will win them as well.

This year, they’ve added something even more awesome to the prize, which is another $500 worth of books, this time to the charity of your choice. It’s hard to decide who I would want to get $500 of awesomeness, because so many organizations could use it, but I think I would have to go with the Tucson High School Library. I didn’t go to THS, but I did participate in multiple summer programs there when I was in elementary and middle school, and now my father is a teacher there. All last year, after he informed me that they couldn’t afford to buy any new books AT ALL for the library, I started taking my magazines and ARCs and other discards from my personal library (which, if you know me, is a lot, given my many subscriptions, the book reviews I write, and my terribly expensive habit of buying lots of books) there, rather than to the used bookstore. I just sent some materials to THS c/o my dad from the AASL conference, and I would love it if they could get some new books, too. I think it’s especially important now, given Tucson Unified School District’s precarious position in the Arizona political climate, that THS be given the chance to buy really good materials for their students, since their really good classes are being illegally declared illegal. What’s more, since THS is an arts magnet, Chronicle’s great list of art and media books would be excellent as support for the curriculum and the individual needs of the students.

THS will get to choose their own books, but here’s what I would do with $500 from Chronicle. Continue reading →

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