What I Read in 2013

Grad school ruined pleasure reading for me, mostly because any time I read a book for fun, I felt guilty that I wasn't reading something for a class or a research project instead. I still did some pleasure reading, but not much, and my Goodreads to-read list grew longer and longer. So in 2013 I decided to set a specific reading goal to put a dent in that list.

The rules: 40 books. 20 that I already owned (because I have SO MANY on my shelves that I haven't gotten around to reading). None related to my dissertation.

It turns out I broke all the rules—I didn't quite make it to 40 (which isn't even very many compared to what some of you manage!), I only owned 10 of the ones I read, and I included a few dissertation-related choices if a) they were enjoyable and b) I was reading them for the first time. Despite failing in the strictest sense, though, I'm pleased that my goal reminded me to stop surfing the internet so much in my downtime and go read a book instead. 

I think the main reasons I was able to get back into the swing of reading are 1) I got a Kindle for Christmas 2012—and my local library happens to have a great ebook selection—which made reading while traveling easier (also, many years of heavy internet use mean that I read faster on screens) and 2) I made a point of reading for at least a few minutes every night before going to bed. Now that I'm more or less finished (!!!) with my dissertation and grad school, I should have time for more. My 2014 target is 50 books.

Anyway, all of this is surely very boring, but here we go. Books I particularly recommend are starred.

1. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, by Mindy Kaling. Entertaining but not very memorable.
2. *The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. I was a few years late to the party on this, but it was incredibly fascinating. I do have a few quibbles with the way Pollan addresses the ethics of food and the role of shifting gender norms in changing our cultural eating habits. But I loved the chapters tracing where certain ingredients come from and where they show up in our food, and overall the book made me think much more deeply about how I eat. Peter probably got tired of me reading excerpts aloud to him.
3. *Graceling, by Kristin Cashore. My first YA fantasy of the year. And a good one. Interesting magical concept + political intrigue + kickass heroine.
4. Still, by Lauren Winner. I read this for a book club and wish I'd remembered to copy down some favorite passages. It's a spiritual memoir about renegotiating faith, and finding what's best about religious life and community, in the midst of doubts and major life changes.
5. NW, by Zadie Smith. Not Zadie Smith's best, I don't think, and I didn't always feel like the sections focusing on different characters cohered overall, but in general a really vivid, gritty London novel. I liked the experimental style of the first part, but if that's not your thing, don't worry—it's not all like that.
6. *The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. Another one people have been talking about for ages. I'm really glad I read this—fascinating, important, well researched story.
7. Drift, by Rachel Maddow. Read this quickly and don't remember much detail, but it's a timely and damning account of mission creep and how the US military industrial complex has come to control foreign policy.
8. People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks. The execution didn't live up to the concept (a book conservator uncovers the centuries-long history of an illuminated Jewish text), but I still enjoyed it.
9. Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson. I didn't love this book like I expected to—the style and voice irritated me a little bit—but it's super important as an eye-opener and conversation-starter about rape and victim-blaming/shaming.
10. Sweet Tooth, by Ian McEwan. Very McEwan: lovely writing, dramatic narrative twist at the end. It was fun to read the University of Sussex and Brighton scenes while I was there doing research.
11. Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand. I enjoyed this, despite not being super interested in sports or military biographies.
12. Leaving Everything Most Loved, by Jacqueline Winspear. Maisie Dobbs is my very favorite fluff reading. It features a charming private investigator, intriguing mysteries, World War I memories, 1930s London, and British class drama all rolled into one delightful series.
13. *Fire, by Kristin Cashore. Companion to Graceling; also excellent.
14. Divergent, by Veronica Roth. Okay, lots of people don't think this is very good. And sure, it's not the best. But I have a huge weakness for YA dystopian novels, and I thoroughly enjoyed this one.
15. Insurgent, by Veronica Roth. See above.
16. *The Wednesday Wars, Gary Schmidt. Fantastic. Read it.
17. There Were No Windows, by Norah Hoult. My first experience with Persephone Books, a fabulous small press that reissues neglected works by twentieth-century writers (mostly women). This particular one is about an old woman losing her memory during the Blitz—a darkly humorous and provocative metaphor for the condition of the city.
18. *Miss Ranskill Comes Home, by Barbara Euphan Todd. Another Persephone book. This one is a campy and hilarious novel about a women who was shipwrecked on an island before World War II started and is baffled by the strange wartime England she returns to.
19. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin. Not my usual fare (a book club pick) and LeGuin's writing style usually feels kind of flat and detached to me, but this one is an intriguing and influential exploration of anarchism and collectivism.
20. Regarding the Pain of Others, by Susan Sontag. Sometimes useful, sometimes problematic. Which is how I usually feel about Sontag.
21. A Drama in Muslin, by George Moore. A satirical look at Anglo-Irish society and the marriage market in the late nineteenth century.
22. Digging for Mrs. Miller, by John Strachey. A collection of fictionalized stories about Strachey's experiences as an air-raid warden in the Blitz.
23. *Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, by Susan Cain. Worthwhile reading for introverts and extraverts alike. Cain makes a compelling case for challenging our institutions and systems that cater to extraverts at introverts' (and the institutions' own) expense.
24. Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes. Mollie Panter-Downes should be read more. The end.
25. The World My Wilderness, by Rose Macaulay. Not my favorite post-Blitz novel, but still good. Macaulay does cool things with ruins.
26. Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell. Confession: I think Malcolm Gladwell is totally overrated. One of his books was enough for me. The case studies themselves are interesting, but his conclusions are wildly speculative and oversimplified and the writing is repetitive and sometimes contradictory.
27. The Midwife's Apprentice, by Karen Cushman. I finally got around to reading this Newbery winner, and it was lovely.
28. Bitterblue, by Kristin Cashore. Not as good as Graceling and Fire, but still worth reading.
29. Blitz Kids, by Elinor Mordaunt. Cheesy, morale-boosting fiction about kids in London during the Blitz.
30. *The One and Only Ivan, by Katherine Applegate. A deserving Newbery winner—sweet and sad.
31. A House in the Country, by Jocelyn Playfair. Another Persephone book--country house novel meets World War II. 
32. Saplings, by Noel Streatfeild. A much less cheesy and better developed story of a family of children growing up amidst the fear and destruction of the Blitz.
33. *Okay for Now, by Gary Schmidt. Just as fantastic as The Wednesday Wars. Only this one involves Audubon instead of Shakespeare.
34. Allegiant, by Veronica Roth. This was an unexpected ending to the trilogy. The pacing was a little strange, and there wasn't enough time to explain and explore the larger world in which the final installment is set, but Roth made some interesting, moving choices for plot and narration. Overall, I was satisfied.
35. Homer and Langley, by E. L. Doctorow. Meh. I love the idea—the story of two compulsively hoarding brothers (based on actual people) who gradually recede from the world into the squalor of their New York house—and Doctorow's writing is, as usual, vivid and incisive, but overall it was just okay.
36. Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov. I rarely do this, but I got about halfway through this, then I got bored, then I got more exciting books for Christmas... Look, it's well done and really fascinating in concept, but I felt like I read enough to get the point and didn't feel compelled to finish.

 Did you read any of these books? What did you think? What were your favorite books of 2013?

Farewell to 2013

I started this blog in January, and then I didn't post on it all year. Nice. So here's my year in review--some things that happened, in no particular order.

1. I traveled quite a bit. We visited my sister in Florida, we camped in Shenandoah National Park, and I went to Michigan once and Utah twice. More excitingly, Peter and I traveled to Hong Kong to visit his friend William. We breathed terrible air, did some hiking and sightseeing (Lamma Island, Kowloon Walled City Park, Hong Kong history and art museums, several temples and street markets), ate loads of dim sum and other delicious food (we're mostly vegetarian at home, but we realized pretty quickly that avoiding meat in Hong Kong wasn't really feasible; my stomach was grateful for the pork buns), and just generally enjoyed hanging out in a completely new place.

Dirty air! Skyscrapers! Boats!

Ruins in Macau!

Buddhist nunnery and temple complex! With skyscrapers!

I also spent a month in London doing dissertation research. I love both London and archival research, so this was fabulous. Peter also joined me there for the latter half of the month to participate in a seminar for librarians. I spent my days reading depressing but fascinating World War II documents, and in the evenings, we rode the Tube, revisited favorite places, explored new parts of the city, saw plays, and took basically no pictures (that weren't related to my research).

Oh, wait! I found some failed selfies:

In Greenwich

On a bridge

2. Peter and I celebrated our first anniversary (and now we're at a year and a half, though it feels like longer). I know that's nothing compared to many of our friends, but it was nice to reach that milestone and feel very settled and comfortable in our marriage.

3. I spent time on hobbies that sometimes fell by the wayside during grad school. I started binding books again. With a local choir (and the North Carolina Symphony, in some cases), I performed Holst's The Planets, Bach's St. John Passion, Handel's Messiah, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and probably some other things I'm forgetting. I continued working on projects with LDS WAVE. I read more books for pleasure than I have in years.

4. I started a new job as a journals production coordinator at a university press. It's a temporary position, but it's fun to be doing some publishing work again and it's a good transitional job to help me move from a tenure-track-focused graduate program into the alt-ac realm.

5. I successfully defended my dissertation! I still have a few minor revisions to make before I turn in the final version in January, but I feel relieved to have reached this point. I'm also proud of achieving a goal that seemed far away and unattainable during much of my program--it was difficult to find the way forward in a situation with little structure and guidance and lots of isolation. But I did it! Freedom, after 5+ years!

6. My strong, generous, wonderful grandma passed away. I drove directly to the airport from my defense to fly home for her funeral. It was nice to be with family I hadn't seen in years and to hear new stories about Nana's life, but her death was fairly sudden and I'm sad that I didn't have more time to spend with her.

7. My immediate families had two weddings and two new babies. (I haven't met S's yet, but R's baby is very sweet and adorable, and that's coming from someone who's really not into babies.) Two siblings also started college, and one of those is now on a mission in Chile.

These kinds of lists tend to make people's lives sound momentous and awesome. So in the interest of avoiding misrepresentation, I will also say that 2013 featured many mundane and/or frustrating moments: a fight with mold in a poorly maintained apartment, a move to a new apartment, lots of dread and procrastination and frustration related to my dissertation, anxiety about jobs and health, and expensive car repairs. But overall it was a year of good experiences and positive transitions. Here's to an adventurous 2014, in which we graduate, search for jobs, and move who knows where!

Want to see where I work?

I thought so.

One of the first things I did after we moved into our apartment was to set up a writing area in our second bedroom. It's a quiet corner filled with essential books, decorated appropriately with poetry and pictures of England, and outfitted with a substantial collection of office supplies as well as a printer (under the desk) and my IKEA chair Jeff (actually Jeff 2; I broke Jeff 1 by leaning too hard on the plastic backrest, then tried to make do with duct tape for a while before admitting I could probably just spring for another $10 chair).

So here's my writing nook:

...and here's where I actually do most of my work:

Not pictured are the stacks of books I often leave on the floor around the couch and the dishes that usually join me at the coffee table for lunch. As you can see, I've noted some of the convenient distractions that surround my work area of choice. I could also have pointed out my phone, although it's not much of a distraction because it's a three-year-old non-smart phone, and the big, comfy blanket my sister made for me.

Okay, so it doesn't seem like the most productive way to work, but I actually work better here than at my desk. Not only is the desk a little too high to sit at comfortably with a non-adjustable chair like Jeff, but when sitting on the couch I have more space to spread out my books and papers and I can look out the window once in a while to feel less isolated. Even when I had an office on campus, I rarely worked there outside of office hours because it was too cold and lonely. My ideal place to work is a coffee shop or a busy part of a library, because the background noise and the feeling of having other people around help me to be more focused and motivated. There are coffee shops just a short bike ride in either direction from my apartment, but I don't take advantage of those alternative work spaces as often as I'd like to. (Partly because I can only drink so much tea and hot chocolate. Also because my computer has to stay plugged in (it has no battery) and sit on an upside-down muffin pan (it overheats easily).)

How about you? Do you work best in quiet environments, or do you like background noise? If you work from home, how do you stay focused (I hear that working in a designated area helps, but I've already failed on that front)?

I live!

While lying awake far too late last night (too much sugar from eating brownies? constant coughing from that cold I can't shake?), I decided I felt like writing again. My old blog, which I lost interest in over the last few years, didn't seem like the right place to start up again, so here I am! Why?

1. Part of me feels a little stressed or guilty every time I write something that isn't my dissertation. But actually, any writing, however unrelated to my work, helps keep my brain in writing mode and makes the words come more easily when I do get around to the diss.
2. I'm living in a place where I know almost no one and have few opportunities to make friends, so I'm feeling disconnected. I want to be better at reaching out and staying in touch with friends and family in a venue other than Facebook, which already knows too much about me and where I'm not comfortable addressing personal or controversial topics. (Yes, I realize I'm complaining about Facebook's creepiness on a Google-owned platform, but I'm choosing my battles. That's a post for another time.)
3. I don't keep a journal, so it would be nice to have some record of what I'm up to and thinking about.
4. For Peter's sake, I should have somewhere to talk through and share my thoughts. Because I spend most of my time alone, I talk his ear off when he's around. True story: Almost every night he'll finish his dinner before I'm even halfway done because I talk so much.

When I was a freshman in college, I named the first incarnation of my blog "Inane Ramblings of an Incurable Cynic" (although the title later cycled through cynical Vonnegut and Beckett references).  I expect Blog 2.0 will be less cynical, possibly still inane. I imagine I'll write a lot about the things I think a lot about: books, food, feminism, travel, politics. But we'll see. Come along if you'd like!

P.S. I hate thinking of blog titles and addresses, so as often happens, I've resorted to literary references for both. Bonus points if you recognize them without googling.