Today is President's day, and I have the day off work, but my husband doesn't, so I've turned this day into a glorious, do-what-I-want day off for myself. I cleaned the house and pugs yesterday, so I can afford to be lazy today. I started off by sleeping in till 8:30, then went to an exercise class at 9:30 this morning, did a little sweaty grocery shopping for the meal I will prepare later (salmon, rice, veggies), shoveled a little show, took a hot shower, then snuggled up on the couch with the pugs to finish up season 6 of 'Desperate Housewives' on Netflix. Soon, I will prepare a snack, watch a little Oprah, start dinner. My husband will come home, and we'll eat and chat, and then I'll go off to my second exercise class at 7:30, then home for a hot bath, and to bed.
Is this how housewives live? I cannot imagine having all of this time to myself! I don't even have kids, yet I feel guilty somehow, it's an embarrassment of riches. The least I can do is prepare a nice dinner for my poor husband, who had to work today. I feel very lucky and happy that I have a nice warm house, clean pugs in my lap, and the internet to bring me shows to waste my time with. Oh, and a job that gave me today off with pay.
Maybe those housewives on that popular tv show would have been a bit less desperate if they had stayed in and watched tv more, instead of getting involved in each other's business all the time. That show is beyond ridiculous, and I know that the housewives who do the things they do and look the way they look while doing them are few and far between. Laziness is the key to staying out of trouble! In fact, I may go and take a little nap soon...feeling sleepy from my busy morning.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Long-time indie rock and pop fan discovers the joys of rap music. Film at 11.
So in the past few weeks, I have 'discovered' rap. That's right, rap. A friend gave me a copy of the newest Kanye West album, and ever since, I have found myself increasingly interested, not only in his music, but in his persona.
I confess I have always dismissed rap out-of-hand as 'not for me' until listening to this album. It is completely different from any music I have listened to, ever, and I think that's part of the appeal. It doesn't hurt that Kanye's style is a bit more accessible than other rappers I've heard bits and pieces of. He has a keen sense of melody and storytelling, which I always appreciate.
I've been consuming music at an alarmingly jaded rate these past few years, and my enjoyment of indie rock and the like has waned because of it. Lately, I have been more into pop music, especially dance music, ever since I started going to Zumba (I know how it sounds, but my sister-in-law teaches it, and it ain't your grandma's Zumba). The dance music is definitely linked to the escape I get when I dance in my hip-hop Zumba class, but the rap, well, the rap is providing a very different form of escape for me.
Oh, I know how it looks, and I'm a little self-conscious about it. I am a mid-30s, middle class white girl from the South who works a white-collar job, who drives around downtown Schenectady in her Elantra with the doors locked (locking my doors upon entry is a habit I picked up when living in New Orleans), with rap beats emanating from my car. I know, it's completely absurd. What could I possibly get from listening to a music that was not intended for me in any shape or form, that doesn't speak to my reality or my race or my here and now? I think I just answered that in formulating the question, but I'll attempt to explain further.
I am fascinated by this music because it is so brazenly honest and in your face, and I suspect that is what draws many so-called white people to rap music. There is no pretense, no protocol, no curse words to shy away from, no Ps and Qs to mind, no feelings to worry about hurting. Kanye appears to say exactly what is on his mind, but does so in a way that can be goofy, charming, brilliant, and downright nasty by turns. It is fresh and intriguing to my old ears that have listened to years upon years of structured, guitar-driven, thoughtful, melodic, witty, depressing, esoteric rock and pop music in their lifetime. When I turn on Kanye and that attitude starts flowing, it's a welcome relief after putting up with other people's bullshit all day long.
I'm still fairly new, but so far his early albums seem to revolve around black-centric issues, it's true, but the subjects are very relatable no matter what your race--heartbreak, loving your mother, other people's expectations (or lack thereof), working shit jobs for no money, escapism, and the like. His new one--well, the misogyny and prevalent mentions of pussy I at times find off-putting (I can't listen to that song 'Blame Game, ever), but musically it is very complex and interesting.
We will see how far my new interest in rap extends. This might be a fixation on Kanye West specifically, or it could expand to other rappers. Only time will tell, and I can be a fickle bitch.
I confess I have always dismissed rap out-of-hand as 'not for me' until listening to this album. It is completely different from any music I have listened to, ever, and I think that's part of the appeal. It doesn't hurt that Kanye's style is a bit more accessible than other rappers I've heard bits and pieces of. He has a keen sense of melody and storytelling, which I always appreciate.
I've been consuming music at an alarmingly jaded rate these past few years, and my enjoyment of indie rock and the like has waned because of it. Lately, I have been more into pop music, especially dance music, ever since I started going to Zumba (I know how it sounds, but my sister-in-law teaches it, and it ain't your grandma's Zumba). The dance music is definitely linked to the escape I get when I dance in my hip-hop Zumba class, but the rap, well, the rap is providing a very different form of escape for me.
Oh, I know how it looks, and I'm a little self-conscious about it. I am a mid-30s, middle class white girl from the South who works a white-collar job, who drives around downtown Schenectady in her Elantra with the doors locked (locking my doors upon entry is a habit I picked up when living in New Orleans), with rap beats emanating from my car. I know, it's completely absurd. What could I possibly get from listening to a music that was not intended for me in any shape or form, that doesn't speak to my reality or my race or my here and now? I think I just answered that in formulating the question, but I'll attempt to explain further.
I am fascinated by this music because it is so brazenly honest and in your face, and I suspect that is what draws many so-called white people to rap music. There is no pretense, no protocol, no curse words to shy away from, no Ps and Qs to mind, no feelings to worry about hurting. Kanye appears to say exactly what is on his mind, but does so in a way that can be goofy, charming, brilliant, and downright nasty by turns. It is fresh and intriguing to my old ears that have listened to years upon years of structured, guitar-driven, thoughtful, melodic, witty, depressing, esoteric rock and pop music in their lifetime. When I turn on Kanye and that attitude starts flowing, it's a welcome relief after putting up with other people's bullshit all day long.
I'm still fairly new, but so far his early albums seem to revolve around black-centric issues, it's true, but the subjects are very relatable no matter what your race--heartbreak, loving your mother, other people's expectations (or lack thereof), working shit jobs for no money, escapism, and the like. His new one--well, the misogyny and prevalent mentions of pussy I at times find off-putting (I can't listen to that song 'Blame Game, ever), but musically it is very complex and interesting.
We will see how far my new interest in rap extends. This might be a fixation on Kanye West specifically, or it could expand to other rappers. Only time will tell, and I can be a fickle bitch.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
I just finished Middlemarch, or What Happens to a Dream Declined
This is a momentous occasion, which I must underscore with a blog entry. I have just finished Middlemarch, one of the giant, imposing, touching, and admirable tomes written by Mary Ann Evans, known as George Eliot to the uninitiated. I started this book several years ago, and never finished. Well I have finished it, to the snoring of two pugs at my feet, and the ominous sounds of Lustmorde currently emanating from my husband's studio.
We go to London in a few short months, and finally finishing this novel was part of pre-London resolve. I started reading it before Christmas, my nightly hot bubble baths being the usual locale for revisiting this book. Since I left grad school and my love of Greek and Victorian lit behind me nearly 10 years ago, it has been difficult for me to pick up a Victorian novel since. But in the past year or two, I have read nonfiction Victorian lit and it has gradually reawakened my old obsession. The Other Victorians was a deliciously debauched and excellent expose on the (sur)real state of supposedly repressed Victorian sexuality, and Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages another an interesting imagining on the differently-married lives of five notable Victorian figures, including such stellar figures as John Stuart Mill, Charles Dickens, and Thomas Carlyle.
The introduction to this, the Oxford UP World's Classics edition of Middlemarch, was written by a professor I had the brief honor of knowing nearly 10 years ago at CUNY, when I attended their Comparative Lit PhD program. Professor Felicia Bonaparte was a singular person who will always live in my memory: she must have been in her late 50s or perhaps 60s, with jet-black hair, a decidedly distinguished nose, possessed of a tiny but wonderful NYC apartment (of which at least 1% was taken up by a copy of the OED), and a penchant for veganism and George Eliot. For a year, I was her research assistant, and it was my job to search through digitized manuscripts of 19th century literature, great and small, for any 'ominous or telling' reference to any number of innocent-seeming words or phrases. I can't recall them exactly now (there were too many items on it), but the nature of them may be reflected by this short, randomly-recalled list: light, diamond, dream, chisel, suffused, invention, book, etc. I still wonder to what purpose she put my findings, if any.
I am happy to discover that my love of literature written in England during the 19th century has not died altogether. My year spent at CUNY is not something I talk about regularly; it is a period of my life that, until recently, I would frankly rather not talk about. Looking back, it was a happy period to discover that I had been accepted into the realms of academia, such as they were, in my humble state as office manager and state-school graduate of English (with honors) from Louisiana, incidentally the first person in her family to attend college. Let me not forget that my future husband and I moved to New York state and to NYC from New Orleans solely so that I could attend this school under the auspices that I wanted to become a PhD professor who studied Ancient Greek and Victorian literature who taught at the college level. Mind you, this was never a dream of mine; it was more like the inevitable result from the unassailable facts that I was really, really good at writing theses, and was drawn to literature and philosophy courses in undergraduate school.
I am now not ashamed to 'own' my former life; indeed I look back upon it with a kind of fond sadness. I'm sorry that no one ever told me then that such a life would end only in teaching, and that if I didn't want to teach, I had better get out of the game altogether. But I am not sorry that I wasted my youth writing papers and treatises on various subjects, when I might have been drinking and living it up; the world of academia seemed vast and inconquerable to me then, but now, looking back, I am amazed that I got on as familiar terms with it as I did.
It is safe to say that my ability to cogitate and string arguments together sentence by sentence hasn't hindered me from being the low-level corporate drone that I am today. Being good at "literature" is not something everyone can claim; it takes a certain application and ability to see beyond the literal into the possible, and a certain amount of bullshit and self-confidence to be really, truly good at it, and to earn the respect of people who have managed to make it their lives. The time period from about age 16 to 26 that I was utterly devoted to literature and thinking I will always look back on as one of the best of my life. For a time, I had the respect of people I admired, Professor Bonaparte being among them, and it's good to be able to look back and know that, if I had really wanted to, I could have been a real contender.
We go to London in a few short months, and finally finishing this novel was part of pre-London resolve. I started reading it before Christmas, my nightly hot bubble baths being the usual locale for revisiting this book. Since I left grad school and my love of Greek and Victorian lit behind me nearly 10 years ago, it has been difficult for me to pick up a Victorian novel since. But in the past year or two, I have read nonfiction Victorian lit and it has gradually reawakened my old obsession. The Other Victorians was a deliciously debauched and excellent expose on the (sur)real state of supposedly repressed Victorian sexuality, and Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages another an interesting imagining on the differently-married lives of five notable Victorian figures, including such stellar figures as John Stuart Mill, Charles Dickens, and Thomas Carlyle.
The introduction to this, the Oxford UP World's Classics edition of Middlemarch, was written by a professor I had the brief honor of knowing nearly 10 years ago at CUNY, when I attended their Comparative Lit PhD program. Professor Felicia Bonaparte was a singular person who will always live in my memory: she must have been in her late 50s or perhaps 60s, with jet-black hair, a decidedly distinguished nose, possessed of a tiny but wonderful NYC apartment (of which at least 1% was taken up by a copy of the OED), and a penchant for veganism and George Eliot. For a year, I was her research assistant, and it was my job to search through digitized manuscripts of 19th century literature, great and small, for any 'ominous or telling' reference to any number of innocent-seeming words or phrases. I can't recall them exactly now (there were too many items on it), but the nature of them may be reflected by this short, randomly-recalled list: light, diamond, dream, chisel, suffused, invention, book, etc. I still wonder to what purpose she put my findings, if any.
I am happy to discover that my love of literature written in England during the 19th century has not died altogether. My year spent at CUNY is not something I talk about regularly; it is a period of my life that, until recently, I would frankly rather not talk about. Looking back, it was a happy period to discover that I had been accepted into the realms of academia, such as they were, in my humble state as office manager and state-school graduate of English (with honors) from Louisiana, incidentally the first person in her family to attend college. Let me not forget that my future husband and I moved to New York state and to NYC from New Orleans solely so that I could attend this school under the auspices that I wanted to become a PhD professor who studied Ancient Greek and Victorian literature who taught at the college level. Mind you, this was never a dream of mine; it was more like the inevitable result from the unassailable facts that I was really, really good at writing theses, and was drawn to literature and philosophy courses in undergraduate school.
I am now not ashamed to 'own' my former life; indeed I look back upon it with a kind of fond sadness. I'm sorry that no one ever told me then that such a life would end only in teaching, and that if I didn't want to teach, I had better get out of the game altogether. But I am not sorry that I wasted my youth writing papers and treatises on various subjects, when I might have been drinking and living it up; the world of academia seemed vast and inconquerable to me then, but now, looking back, I am amazed that I got on as familiar terms with it as I did.
It is safe to say that my ability to cogitate and string arguments together sentence by sentence hasn't hindered me from being the low-level corporate drone that I am today. Being good at "literature" is not something everyone can claim; it takes a certain application and ability to see beyond the literal into the possible, and a certain amount of bullshit and self-confidence to be really, truly good at it, and to earn the respect of people who have managed to make it their lives. The time period from about age 16 to 26 that I was utterly devoted to literature and thinking I will always look back on as one of the best of my life. For a time, I had the respect of people I admired, Professor Bonaparte being among them, and it's good to be able to look back and know that, if I had really wanted to, I could have been a real contender.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Boy, was I ever in a foul mood today!
This was the worst Monday, ever. First, I awoke out of a dream and into a stupor from the fourth 10-minute snooze. I sleepwalked through my morning routine, ate Cheerios in front of the tv, lingered too long, and somehow the old pug pooped on the floor when I wasn't looking. I didn't leave the house until quarter to nine, which is at least 15 minutes later than it takes to be punctual.
Then I get to work and of course I'm feeling the usual disgruntled hatred for all I survey. Then I open my computer, and it's slow going. I had trouble typing simple sentences, the letters kept getting all mixed up. I felt like I was moving through molasses until lunchtime, which gratefully saved me. I came back from lunch fortified and caffeined-up, my mood and work ethic much improved. I'm not one given to workaday cliches, but thank god for caffeine.
I managed to get some work done, but I called it quits on time today in order to put this awful day to rest, the day I should have called in sick, but didn't. Then my stomach starts hurting on the way home. I go to Zumba anyway, and turn white as a sheet by the end, feeling so queasy I thought I might vomit. My sister-in-law (and Zumba instructor) tells me it's probably from going too hard, too often--and then I realize she's right--I just did a high-intensity, one-hour Zumba class no less than four times in the last seven days, when previously I went once maybe twice a week, tops. Bingo.
Then I get to work and of course I'm feeling the usual disgruntled hatred for all I survey. Then I open my computer, and it's slow going. I had trouble typing simple sentences, the letters kept getting all mixed up. I felt like I was moving through molasses until lunchtime, which gratefully saved me. I came back from lunch fortified and caffeined-up, my mood and work ethic much improved. I'm not one given to workaday cliches, but thank god for caffeine.
I managed to get some work done, but I called it quits on time today in order to put this awful day to rest, the day I should have called in sick, but didn't. Then my stomach starts hurting on the way home. I go to Zumba anyway, and turn white as a sheet by the end, feeling so queasy I thought I might vomit. My sister-in-law (and Zumba instructor) tells me it's probably from going too hard, too often--and then I realize she's right--I just did a high-intensity, one-hour Zumba class no less than four times in the last seven days, when previously I went once maybe twice a week, tops. Bingo.
Also, I need to get my haircut, badly. It’s gotten a little leggy since my last cut in October, and even though I’m trying to grow it out, it has gotten lifeless and thick, and when my hair is out of sorts, it tends to bring me down because it makes me think I’m sliding into the abyss and turning into a fat, ugly lesbian. Irrational, I know.
I basically felt like a fat, ugly lesbian, bereft of joy and all that is good in the world. Nuff said? I think so.
Tonight I will get more sleep and tomorrow, I will make a hair appointment, and then I will feel back on top of my game. Right??
It's time to slide under the covers and hope for a new beginning.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
BBC's 100
BBC's Book List
The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. Looks like my interest in in Victorian lit has paid off for something, but I've still only read 55/100. Here's how I stack up:
1) Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (X)
2) The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (X)
3) Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (X)
4) Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (X)
5) To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6) The Bible (X)
7) Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (X)
8) Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (X)
9) His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10) Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (X)
11) Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (X)
12) Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (X)
13) Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14) Complete Works of Shakespeare [not the complete works, but quite a few]
15) Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (X)
16) The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (X)
17) Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18) Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (X)
19) The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (X)
20) Middlemarch - George Eliot (X) currently reading!
21) Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22) The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (X)
23) Bleak House - Charles Dickens (X)
24) War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25) The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26) Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27) Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (X)
28) Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (X)
29) Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (X)
30) The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31) Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32) David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (X)
33) Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (X)
34) Emma - Jane Austen (X)
35) Persuasion - Jane Austen (X)
36) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (X)
37) The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38) Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39) Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40) Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (X)
41) Animal Farm - George Orwell (X)
42) The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (X)
43) One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (X)
44) A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45) The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46) Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (X)
47) Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (X)
48) The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood (X)
49) Lord of the Flies - William Golding (X)
50) Atonement - Ian McEwan (X)
51) Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52) Dune - Frank Herbert
53) Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54) Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (X)
55) A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56) The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57) A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58) Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (X)
59) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60) Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (X)
61) Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (X)
62) Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (X)
63) The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64) The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (X)
65) Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66) On The Road - Jack Kerouac (X)
67) Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (X)
68) Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69) Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70) Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71) Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72) Dracula - Bram Stoker (X)
73) The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (X)
74) Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75) Ulysses - James Joyce
76) The Inferno - Dante (X)
77) Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78) Germinal - Emile Zola
79) Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (X)
80) Possession - AS Byatt
81) A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (X)
82) Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83) The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84) The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (X)
85) Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (X)
86) A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87) Charlotte’s Web - EB White (X)
88) The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90) The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91) Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (X)
92) The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (X)
93) The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94) Watership Down - Richard Adams
95) A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (X)
96) A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97) The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98) Hamlet - William Shakespeare (X)
99) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100) Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. Looks like my interest in in Victorian lit has paid off for something, but I've still only read 55/100. Here's how I stack up:
1) Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (X)
2) The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (X)
3) Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (X)
4) Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (X)
5) To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6) The Bible (X)
7) Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (X)
8) Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (X)
9) His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10) Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (X)
11) Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (X)
12) Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (X)
13) Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14) Complete Works of Shakespeare [not the complete works, but quite a few]
15) Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (X)
16) The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (X)
17) Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18) Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (X)
19) The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (X)
20) Middlemarch - George Eliot (X) currently reading!
21) Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22) The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (X)
23) Bleak House - Charles Dickens (X)
24) War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25) The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26) Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27) Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (X)
28) Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (X)
29) Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (X)
30) The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31) Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32) David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (X)
33) Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (X)
34) Emma - Jane Austen (X)
35) Persuasion - Jane Austen (X)
36) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (X)
37) The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38) Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39) Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40) Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (X)
41) Animal Farm - George Orwell (X)
42) The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (X)
43) One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (X)
44) A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45) The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46) Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (X)
47) Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (X)
48) The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood (X)
49) Lord of the Flies - William Golding (X)
50) Atonement - Ian McEwan (X)
51) Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52) Dune - Frank Herbert
53) Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54) Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (X)
55) A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56) The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57) A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58) Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (X)
59) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60) Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (X)
61) Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (X)
62) Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (X)
63) The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64) The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (X)
65) Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66) On The Road - Jack Kerouac (X)
67) Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (X)
68) Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69) Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70) Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71) Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72) Dracula - Bram Stoker (X)
73) The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (X)
74) Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75) Ulysses - James Joyce
76) The Inferno - Dante (X)
77) Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78) Germinal - Emile Zola
79) Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (X)
80) Possession - AS Byatt
81) A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (X)
82) Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83) The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84) The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (X)
85) Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (X)
86) A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87) Charlotte’s Web - EB White (X)
88) The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90) The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91) Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (X)
92) The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (X)
93) The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94) Watership Down - Richard Adams
95) A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (X)
96) A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97) The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98) Hamlet - William Shakespeare (X)
99) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100) Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Kid Fears
Been thinking a lot lately about whether or not I have the chops to be a good parent. I see all kinds of sentimental cheese about parenthood everywhere, especially regarding motherhood, and it makes me cringe. This feel-good bullcrap seems designed to make people feel that parenting is some kind of holy calling, wherein only the elite need apply. I wonder if it's like how supermodels make average women feel bad about themselves? I may be onto something.
I just finished reading this book recently and it didn't make me feel better. It seems that no one can really communicate why having kids is so great and worthwhile, largely because the reason varies from person to person, and probably partially because it is, in the end, somewhat underwhelming, after all. In every case, it seemed like the decision to have or not have a child was borne of the writer's ability or inability to rationalize and/or reconcile their own childhood experiences. The most disturbing essays were those written by people who professed to not want children, ever. The tone of these essays was largely juvenile in the sense that I felt they were trying to prove that they were different from the mainstream so hard that they kind of lost sight of rational argument. Part of me understands--no one is more persecuted in our society than people who either don't have kids or make the mistake of saying they don't want them in polite company; I've been there. But most of these essays were either written by young whip-smart (ass) twenty-somethings living the dream in NYC or by condescending, self-righteous women already long past their ripeness. One essay I found especially disturbing was a young woman who embarked on a crusade to get her tubes tied in her early 30s simply because society wouldn't let her. The ladies doth protest too much, methinks.
The essays written by people 'on the fence' and people who were on the fence but had them anyway, were the most enlightening for me. These are people with a sense of self, with an identity, who managed to have a kid and not allow their identity to become erased completely. These are people who didn't think it necessary to stop listening to rock music in favor of the Wiggles; people who aren't ashamed to admit that they need to have a glass of wine to help ease the transition between work and Kidworld. These essayists had no particular overarching reason for having a kid, other than just taking the leap and doing it, which is how I feel about it now, after many years of being on the 'no' side of the fence.
My feelings can best be summed up by these two quotes, which are available in the online review:
Basically, having kids boils down to entering into some mystical rite that is purported to be amazing but at the end of the day, looks like a lot of thankless work.
It's not that I'm afraid of losing myself and having to put this other person first, I've gotten past that initial fear. What I'm more afraid of now is that I won't find having a kid of my own as miraculous and life-affirming as most people claim it is. I worry that I am disturbed, somehow, that I will fuck things up and end up being like my mother, in the end. I don't know that I have the energy to be the Master Mother that I think I should be. I see other people's kids and I see the flaws in their parenting--whether it's neglect that leads to an angry and frustrated child, or superlative ego that leads to fostering an unrealistic sense of the child's abilities. And then there's the whole vegetables problem. I don't want a kid that only eats chicken nuggets and mac and cheese! I also don't want a kid that is so engrossed in boring shit like playing Barbies! I want my kid to be different, not just another run-of-the-mill product of consumer culture. The kid shouldn't determine what gets served at the dinner table, and yet so many parents these days seem to tailor everything to the kid, the lowest common denominator, letting them determine everything and feebly watching as their kids walk all over parental authority. I don't want a family if it's going to be this way! I want to play the music that my husband and I like in the car, and eat make nutritious dinners that everyone can enjoy. We are the adults, we existed first, the child is an addition to our lives, but we maintain control.
My mom was a single mother but she never played stupid kid music in the car with me--I grew up listening to the radio so I have memories associated with many late '70s and early '80s songs, and that early exposure to music is a big part of who I am still. We had family dinners and I wasn't given a second choice on what to eat, and although I was a picky child, I managed to get by, even if I picked at my food a lot. I was fed Swanson TV dinners, Spaghetti-O's, and McDonald's on occasion as a kid, don't get me wrong--but I don't eat those things today. I had a couple of Barbies at maximum my entire childhood, and I got a Barbie poolhouse and townhouse one Christmas...but a couple of years later those toys lived in our garage, b/c I played outdoors a lot and liked reading and writing in my diary and making secret hideouts, etc. I played by myself most of the time and had great imagination--not like some kids I've met, who seem to need nearly CONSTANT attention to the point of annoyance.
I think these days there is even more pressure to be aware of everything that could be potentially harmful to our children, and it's making parents into stressed-out worry-warts. If you don't use cloth diapers, and puree your own baby food, you're not doing the best you can to be an eco-conscious, good parent. I was reading the diary of my husband's late grandmother recently, and she noted that her sons were raised on a milk and brown sugar formula. Milk and brown sugar. They didn't breastfeed back then, because they thought it was gauche. Some people still today don't breastfeed because it just simply isn't done in their social echelon...and so they use processed formula filled with all kinds of crap. I was fed on some sort of formula, but I survived.
What is my point? I guess that there is so much to be aware of now that parenting could really be a full-time job. And yet, we still farm our kids out to daycare centers, because we are a culture of work-a-holics. So, in addition to holding down my current stressful, taxing job, I have to fight the system by making my own baby food, washing cloth diapers, still find time to exercise and be attractive, and, oh yeah, sleep. I know my husband will help me all that he can, but let's face it--women always end up doing more, period. We have to do it all, and try to look good while doing it all. And after all of that, what if having a kid, for me, is underwhelming? What if I end up feeling like a slave to baby, giving up my free time to this little parasite that will only leave me as soon as it's old enough?
These are the things I worry about. Parenthood is certainly a perplexing state, and I am still mystified as to why people continue to do it, but they do. I suppose I will never know what is so compelling about it until I just do it myself...so at the same time that I worry myself to death over questions like these, the other part of me just shrugs and says 'meh, it will be fine.'
Who knows, but the answer to the conundrum may have been in that 'meh' all along.
I just finished reading this book recently and it didn't make me feel better. It seems that no one can really communicate why having kids is so great and worthwhile, largely because the reason varies from person to person, and probably partially because it is, in the end, somewhat underwhelming, after all. In every case, it seemed like the decision to have or not have a child was borne of the writer's ability or inability to rationalize and/or reconcile their own childhood experiences. The most disturbing essays were those written by people who professed to not want children, ever. The tone of these essays was largely juvenile in the sense that I felt they were trying to prove that they were different from the mainstream so hard that they kind of lost sight of rational argument. Part of me understands--no one is more persecuted in our society than people who either don't have kids or make the mistake of saying they don't want them in polite company; I've been there. But most of these essays were either written by young whip-smart (ass) twenty-somethings living the dream in NYC or by condescending, self-righteous women already long past their ripeness. One essay I found especially disturbing was a young woman who embarked on a crusade to get her tubes tied in her early 30s simply because society wouldn't let her. The ladies doth protest too much, methinks.
The essays written by people 'on the fence' and people who were on the fence but had them anyway, were the most enlightening for me. These are people with a sense of self, with an identity, who managed to have a kid and not allow their identity to become erased completely. These are people who didn't think it necessary to stop listening to rock music in favor of the Wiggles; people who aren't ashamed to admit that they need to have a glass of wine to help ease the transition between work and Kidworld. These essayists had no particular overarching reason for having a kid, other than just taking the leap and doing it, which is how I feel about it now, after many years of being on the 'no' side of the fence.
My feelings can best be summed up by these two quotes, which are available in the online review:
Yes: "I've been granted access to a new plane of existence, one I could not have imagined, and would not now live without."—Peter Nichols
No: "I can sort of see that it might be nice to have children, but there are a thousand things I'd rather spend my time doing than raise them."—Michelle Goldberg
It's not that I'm afraid of losing myself and having to put this other person first, I've gotten past that initial fear. What I'm more afraid of now is that I won't find having a kid of my own as miraculous and life-affirming as most people claim it is. I worry that I am disturbed, somehow, that I will fuck things up and end up being like my mother, in the end. I don't know that I have the energy to be the Master Mother that I think I should be. I see other people's kids and I see the flaws in their parenting--whether it's neglect that leads to an angry and frustrated child, or superlative ego that leads to fostering an unrealistic sense of the child's abilities. And then there's the whole vegetables problem. I don't want a kid that only eats chicken nuggets and mac and cheese! I also don't want a kid that is so engrossed in boring shit like playing Barbies! I want my kid to be different, not just another run-of-the-mill product of consumer culture. The kid shouldn't determine what gets served at the dinner table, and yet so many parents these days seem to tailor everything to the kid, the lowest common denominator, letting them determine everything and feebly watching as their kids walk all over parental authority. I don't want a family if it's going to be this way! I want to play the music that my husband and I like in the car, and eat make nutritious dinners that everyone can enjoy. We are the adults, we existed first, the child is an addition to our lives, but we maintain control.
My mom was a single mother but she never played stupid kid music in the car with me--I grew up listening to the radio so I have memories associated with many late '70s and early '80s songs, and that early exposure to music is a big part of who I am still. We had family dinners and I wasn't given a second choice on what to eat, and although I was a picky child, I managed to get by, even if I picked at my food a lot. I was fed Swanson TV dinners, Spaghetti-O's, and McDonald's on occasion as a kid, don't get me wrong--but I don't eat those things today. I had a couple of Barbies at maximum my entire childhood, and I got a Barbie poolhouse and townhouse one Christmas...but a couple of years later those toys lived in our garage, b/c I played outdoors a lot and liked reading and writing in my diary and making secret hideouts, etc. I played by myself most of the time and had great imagination--not like some kids I've met, who seem to need nearly CONSTANT attention to the point of annoyance.
I think these days there is even more pressure to be aware of everything that could be potentially harmful to our children, and it's making parents into stressed-out worry-warts. If you don't use cloth diapers, and puree your own baby food, you're not doing the best you can to be an eco-conscious, good parent. I was reading the diary of my husband's late grandmother recently, and she noted that her sons were raised on a milk and brown sugar formula. Milk and brown sugar. They didn't breastfeed back then, because they thought it was gauche. Some people still today don't breastfeed because it just simply isn't done in their social echelon...and so they use processed formula filled with all kinds of crap. I was fed on some sort of formula, but I survived.
What is my point? I guess that there is so much to be aware of now that parenting could really be a full-time job. And yet, we still farm our kids out to daycare centers, because we are a culture of work-a-holics. So, in addition to holding down my current stressful, taxing job, I have to fight the system by making my own baby food, washing cloth diapers, still find time to exercise and be attractive, and, oh yeah, sleep. I know my husband will help me all that he can, but let's face it--women always end up doing more, period. We have to do it all, and try to look good while doing it all. And after all of that, what if having a kid, for me, is underwhelming? What if I end up feeling like a slave to baby, giving up my free time to this little parasite that will only leave me as soon as it's old enough?
These are the things I worry about. Parenthood is certainly a perplexing state, and I am still mystified as to why people continue to do it, but they do. I suppose I will never know what is so compelling about it until I just do it myself...so at the same time that I worry myself to death over questions like these, the other part of me just shrugs and says 'meh, it will be fine.'
Who knows, but the answer to the conundrum may have been in that 'meh' all along.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Got Christmas?
This year we won't be home for Christmas, we will be visiting my family in Louisiana. We go there every other year, so in those odd years, I typically put up our tiny fake tree instead of a real one. We have had this 6' fake pencil-thin tree since 2002, when I bought it for $20 at Target. It was our first year living in Albany after leaving New York City in the wake of 9/11. In the tiny apartment years that followed, this tree served us well, and we have many tiny ornaments that suit this tiny tree.
Since we bought a house in 2006, we have had a real tree a total of two times, in 2007 and 2009, both years that we stayed home for Christmas. To my mind, nothing can compare to having a real fir tree, despite the mess and hassle it brings. So this year, looking down the barrel of yet another Christmas trip to Louisiana, I just couldn't face putting up that pencil tree again. You see, I would like to buy a nicer, taller, fuller, prelit fake tree for the odd years, but in order to do so two things need to be in place: 1. I need to be in the area the day after Christmas in order to take advantage of the great fake tree sales, and 2. I need money, and post-Christmas, I am usually beyond broke. So probably out of spite and resentment for having to go on another frustrating and drama-filled family visit during the holiday, I proclaimed this year would be the No Tree Year.
After saying this to anyone within earshot for the past week, yesterday I caved in and put up the damned fake tree. I can't explain what came over me, but suddenly I was seized by the Christmas bug. It was almost as if some internal programming kicked in, and took over my reason. As a compromise, I only decorated the tree with the smaller ornaments, the vintage Shiny Brite ornaments I 'won' from eBay years ago, the smaller crystal ornaments, and the 'retro' Target finds. The collection of massive, beautiful glass Santas and globes my mom has given me over the years will sleep through this Christmas tucked in their original boxes, safe inside the plastic red and green bins in the basement.
I rode the Christmas wave as long as it lasted--I put up the outdoor lights, put the tree together, wrapped it with 4 strands of lights (wrapped on the branches, not draped), and then we decorated it together last night, after doing a little shopping and addressing 25 Christmas cards.
Now, we wait. Wait for the rest of the gifts to arrive by mail, wait for the days to pass so that we can do our final round of last-minute shopping before we have to start packing, wait for the inexorable experience of Christmas to happen as it does every year.
Since we bought a house in 2006, we have had a real tree a total of two times, in 2007 and 2009, both years that we stayed home for Christmas. To my mind, nothing can compare to having a real fir tree, despite the mess and hassle it brings. So this year, looking down the barrel of yet another Christmas trip to Louisiana, I just couldn't face putting up that pencil tree again. You see, I would like to buy a nicer, taller, fuller, prelit fake tree for the odd years, but in order to do so two things need to be in place: 1. I need to be in the area the day after Christmas in order to take advantage of the great fake tree sales, and 2. I need money, and post-Christmas, I am usually beyond broke. So probably out of spite and resentment for having to go on another frustrating and drama-filled family visit during the holiday, I proclaimed this year would be the No Tree Year.
After saying this to anyone within earshot for the past week, yesterday I caved in and put up the damned fake tree. I can't explain what came over me, but suddenly I was seized by the Christmas bug. It was almost as if some internal programming kicked in, and took over my reason. As a compromise, I only decorated the tree with the smaller ornaments, the vintage Shiny Brite ornaments I 'won' from eBay years ago, the smaller crystal ornaments, and the 'retro' Target finds. The collection of massive, beautiful glass Santas and globes my mom has given me over the years will sleep through this Christmas tucked in their original boxes, safe inside the plastic red and green bins in the basement.
I rode the Christmas wave as long as it lasted--I put up the outdoor lights, put the tree together, wrapped it with 4 strands of lights (wrapped on the branches, not draped), and then we decorated it together last night, after doing a little shopping and addressing 25 Christmas cards.
Now, we wait. Wait for the rest of the gifts to arrive by mail, wait for the days to pass so that we can do our final round of last-minute shopping before we have to start packing, wait for the inexorable experience of Christmas to happen as it does every year.
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