sarah HANNAH gómez

about review policy ftc disclaimer resources pour vous

review policy

ftc disclaimer

resources pour vous

tweet

tumble

pin

read

internets i read

my writing elsewhere

This has definitely been the year of the most change, transition, growing up, getting my ass kicked, learning what’s important to me, freaking out for the first time about my future, etc etc. It’s been a year. Whatever. So are all other years. I don’t really do New Year’s Eve stuff if I can help it–last year I went to dinner with friends and then refused to go to a party, went home, and got a really good night’s sleep, starting at about 10:30pm. It was awesome. This year I’ve conceded to at least partially celebrating, but I never really cared for celebrating holidays much (by never, I mean for the last six or so years), which is why I try not to do stuff for my birthday, Halloween, etc. It’s never as fun or meaningful or what I want it to be anyway, and I don’t like forced sentimentality when random moments that are good or bad or whatever are so much more meaningful anyway.

That said, I do like to keep track of how many books I read in a calendar year; I do my taxes, so I keep track of how much money I make in a calendar year; and between semesters is as good a time as any to reflect on how my life has changed most recently.

So behold: my list of stuff that 2011 was made of. Tomorrow I’ll tell you how many books I managed to finish, and what I plan on doing with my 2012. And then I’ll get back to my normal, Scroogey, unholiday self. Continue reading →

Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)

Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)

Click to print (Opens in new window)

Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

Click to share on StumbleUpon (Opens in new window)

Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)

Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)

Last week I went down to New York for a day and a half to do research for the novel I tell people I’m working on. It was a really illuminating experience for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that I don’t really know what doing research with primary documents entails. For a library school student at a college that boasts a huge archives program, I’ve never really been in an archives, so stepping into Schomburg was new for me. And then I’ve also never done research to write a novel before, not having finished a long narrative work since the novel I wrote when I was 12 (I think it was 54 pages, single spaced, which is actually not all that bad). But I’m in the school of fake it til you make it, so I was all prepared to fake it.

Fake it I did. But I felt rather awkward. The biggest two things I’ve learned in library school thus far are that everyone is excited that you’re in it until you ask working librarians for help/interviews/jobs, and then they stop being interested in you, and also that you can’t work in a library unless you’ve already worked in a library/you can’t know how to use an archives unless you already know how to use it. And that’s exactly what happened at Schomburg–I’m sure it’s not on purpose, but archivists tend to kind of look at you like you’re a jackass for not knowing how to behave in an archives, but really that’s absurd, because it’s not even a library, so it’s not exactly like you learned the proper usage of one back in elementary school. Anyway, I figured it out, got my temporary NYPL card (!), and found out that the sound archives I requested weren’t there yet, but that I could go upstairs and look at the rest of the stuff I wanted. Continue reading →

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 →

the belzhar

february reading in review

what else i’m up to, and where

the walls around us

i accidentally secretly watched the entire twilight saga

« Nov

Jan »

RSS - Posts

RSS - Comments

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 1,402 other followers

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.