Summer Reading

Any ideas? So far my list includes Inkheart, thanks to the movie; Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, because there's an essay scholarship based on that book in September; all of Jane Austen's novels, because I still have my fingers crossed that I'll be able to get into Dr. McCuskey's British Writers class this fall (which is all about Miss Austen); oh and I still have to finish Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Maybe I'll even read God Grew Tired of Us, since I didn't read it when it was the Aggie Readers Book Club book of the month. Another book I saw in the bookstore that caught my attention was The Book Thief, which sounded extremely interesting.

I can read boring stuff too. To further my hopeful career as a freelance editor of scholarly writing, maybe even graduate theses, next fall, I'm hoping to get and should probably read The Chicago Manual of Style, maybe even books about the other top two academic styles, CBE and APA.

And just to be totally random, I want to read Made from Scratch by Jenna W., the author of Cold Antler Farm blog. I've decided I really like the idea of being green and doing some of the things that she's done, especially the "back to the land" idea. Being a semi-city girl I probably don't realize what I'm saying, but you never know til you try, right?

I love comments! If you have a good book you think I should read, please let me know!

Hiking, Dresses, and a Jester

Remember the problem with my camera? Old batteries. Thanks to Sarah for giving me new ones so I could take some pictures on our hike on Saturday! Sarah and Andrew invited me to go with them on a hike to the Wind Caves, which was awesome (and totally wonderful of them to include me). This was my first time hiking in Logan Canyon. Enjoy the pics!

The view across the highway.

Me inside the Wind Caves. It was a lovely cool respite from the warm sun (I actually did get some minor sunburns). I could hear and feel the wind really well. No wonder various Native American groups thought the wind was a spirit.

Sarah and Andrew eating lunch on the very ledge of the cave. Crazy kids.

Besides hiking, I watched two movies this week that I haven't seen before. The first was "27 Dresses" which I had never wanted to see before, but my friend Kellie brought it with her for the weekend while she was visiting and talked me into it. My first thought after the movie was over was that the cover of the DVD really didn't do Katherine Heigl justice. And having only seen James Marsden in "X-Men" as Cyclops and in "Enchanted" as Prince Edward, the role of city slicker-newspaper writer was a very refreshing one to see him play. For those of you who don't know, Heigl plays a woman who has been a bridesmaid 27 times, and has issues with planning her sister's wedding to the man Heigl's character loves. As far as plot, it seemed like th only thing the movie had to fall back on was that Jane mothered everyone; the movie hit home the point the first time really well, so the second time felt weird. I wish there could have been two problems with Jane, or two different versions of the same problem that were more obviously two different versions. Her tendency to mother her sister and to always say yes to her friends didn't feel as unrelated as I wanted them to be. The movie did do a good job of setting up suspense and major plot points, though. Within the first five minutes I knew who the love interest would be, and when the car hydroplaned down the hill I knew exactly what was coming next. It was a nice kind of predictability. I would recommend this movie to chick flick lovers, the kind of people who love the kind of chick flick that has no other plot besides falling in love.

I also saw an older movie today called "The Court Jester", which was hilarious. If you like musicals, or old-fashioned movies, or medieval England and Robin Hood-ish tales, this is a movie you must see. Danny Kaye plays a carnival entertainer who joins the forest band of the Black Fox (the Robin Hood-ish figure) to help overthrow an unlawful king, and ends up going undercover as the court jester. This movie had more twists and turns than most modern movies; probably the closest a recent movie (that I've seen) has come to that many plot turns is "The Dark Knight", and that one only because it was three hours long. Or felt like it. Anyway, hilariously funny movie, especially if you like tongue-twisters. Highly recommended to everyone.

Why I Love to Read

So in Dr. McCuskey's class today, we talked about why it's good to read novels, which is a hard thing to discuss because the satisfaction that comes from reading a good book can't be quantified, and that's how our society does things (for more on this, visit an older post, The Director of USU Press). This is how Dr. McCuskey proved that it's good for us to read deep, difficult novels like Middlemarch:

Books like Middlemarch are deep and slow, and therefore the opposite of things like Twitter with its instant updates. According to some new research, the rapid-fire news updates like those on Twitter come too fast for the brain's moral compass to process properly, which can negatively affect a person's morality. So if Twitter is bad for you, then it's opposite--books like Middlemarch--must be good for you.

I love it. Life is beautiful (except when you have chest cold and cough--ARGH!).

Just When I Want to Take More Pictures...

My camera dies and I need a new one. Early birthday present, anyone? I really don't want to have to wait until September for a new camera. The problem with the old one is that I change the batteries--I even tried two different brands--and the thing won't turn on. And I don't have a 3.4V DC adapter floating around either so I can't charge it.

I was going to take a picture of the afghan I'm working on, so I can show you all what I do when I watch movies (like the Ironman cartoon :) and what I'm all excited about all the time. Bummer.

I also wanted to show you guys a picture of my yard, since I wrote a poem about it yesterday. Random huh? Blame the exercises in my poetry book. The chapter dealt with writing about nature, and the exercise told us to praise something most people wouldn't praise, like weeds or flies. Here's the poem sans picture anyway, since I actually like it:

My yellow brown green lawn is littered
With sticks from my neighbor’s lovely shade
Tree, so huge and skyline-dominating that
It’s our cul-de-sac’s personal fire hazard.

Long sticks, short sticks, fat sticks, skinny sticks,
Some knotty, some straight, even a few
Whole branches have fallen across my
Sidewalk and into the bushes I’ve been
Planning to rip out anyway.

My roommates grimace at these bland
Gray lines that cross-hatch our curb appeal
But I like them: they give me something to do.
Someone has to meet them all,
Learn their names and their histories,
Introduce them all to each other in little bundles
So they don’t get lost on their way to the
Landfill.

Of course, doing my homework hinder my idleness too,
But
I’d rather meet the sticks.

So...let me know what you think. Ideas for revision are always welcome. I expect a comment from Chessie since we're in the same poetry class. And hopefully I'll figure out a way to put pictures from real life on here sometime soon.

Happy Easter!

The Easter Bunny found me today (which is the real reason I came home this weekend; never mind anything you hear about my brother's reception). I got a ton of candy, as usual, but the cool part is the useful gifts I got, such as the Ironman DVD pack that came with a DVD of the old cartoon too. Anybody wanna watch the cartoon? My brothers love it. I guess I'll have something to babysit with if they come up and hang out with me for a few hours (don't know when that might happen...).

I also got a DVD of the second season of Matlock!!! I love Matlock! It's one of the best TV shows of all time! I'm so excited. I've been waiting to see seasons of Matlock on DVD forever. The next time I get sick, it will be a difficult decision: Avatar or Matlock?




Since blogging is as much about networking as any other hobby (or many professions), every once in a while we need to talk about other people's blogs, right? So my faithful followers, check out some of my favorite blogs:
*My cousin Matt writes about the various hilarities of life, a lot like the rest of us, but with a unique voice all his own: www.mattbarrington.com/wordpress.
*I love the blog My Castle in Spain. The author writes about the kind of slower-paced life I hope to have someday.
*And a new discovery (thanks to my favorite website ever, MotherEarthNews.com) is Cold Antler Farm. The author is also a writer, so her posts are always interesting to read, but she also mostly addresses modern homesteading, which I would love to learn more about and maybe even try someday.



Now that you know a bit about my online tastes, let me know what you think about my faves, what your fave blogs are, and/or anything else you think I'd like. And I'd love to hear about your Easter! Mine was great. I hope yours were too!

The Director of the USU Press

His name is Michael. He was a Literary Studies major, so I figured he'd be interested to know I plan on changing my emphasis. I thought he'd be excited for me, but when I told him he made the weirdest exasperated kind of face. "You like to read," he said.

I nodded emphatically and asked, "Have you read Middlemarch?"

He nodded.

"Well, when we started reading it," I said, "I hated it. But now that I've finished it, I want to read it again. I want to write another paper on it." (even though I haven't actually written the first one, but that's beside the point) "Dr. McCuskey's Victorian Literature class is my favorite this semester."

Michael squinched his eyes and snort-giggled and said, "Christina you've got it bad! Wouldn't you rather work at a computer all day and make money and then come home and read Middlemarch?"

The answer is no. I want to read. It's one of the things I've always loved. I once got grounded from reading in the fifth grade because I wasn't doing my math homework, and it was horrible. And I don't actually want to read books like Middlemarch all the time; I'd prefer to read scholarly work for a career so that fiction is still fun.

So after that Michael and I had this great, albeit depressing, discussion of why such rewarding intellectual work is undervalued, especially by universities. If Lit Studies students are "only reading a novel" (Middlemarch), then why do they need any money? The problem is that university people are only interested in the economic, quantitative value of things, and the benefits of the humanities can't be measured that way.

P.S. I want to put pictures on here; my blog feels really boring compared to others, but when I'm not talking about movies what kind of pictures can I post? Ideas please! They're always welcome in the humanities! ;)

For Sarah

I'm blogging again. You can all give your thanks to my totally awesome roomie Sarah who reprimanded me on Facebook for not updating my blog regularly, like I said I would. The problem has been the last two weeks of stress and laziness. Odd combination, I know. C'est moi.

I was supposed to have McCuskey's Middlemarch essay done a week ago, at least a rough draft so I could meet with him again. So far I have nothing. By Thursday, since the essay is supposed to be done, I'm supposed to have gathered some outside criticism of the novel so I can build up that essay into something worthy of being published by, say, the Sigma Tau Delta Review. I'm also supposed to have gathered similar materials so I could do the same thing with an essay I wrote last semester about Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale" (if you remember that far back; that was some of my first blogging). I have nothing for either essay.

I'm also behind in my poetry homework. That class feels like such a waste of time. Sometime soon I'll have to start working on a revision of one of my stories for Advanced Fiction Writing to hand in during finals week. I can't express in words how excited I am for another class and writing exercise that feels like a waste of time. If you've been reading regularly (even though I haven't been posting regularly), you know that my dislike for these classes has been fairly consistent this semester. But I have good news: I'm changing my emphasis from Creative Writing to Literary Studies, so next semester I should at least feel more fulfilled and satisfied by my classes, if not actually happy with the workload. I realized about two weeks ago that the reason I wished I could fit the British and Commonwealth Studies minor into my schedule was because I really wanted to write a 20 ish page paper in the Directed Studies class; that realization led me to consider which classes all my favorites have been. All my favorite classes were/are Literary Studies, Dr. McCuskey kind of classes. It occurred to me that I would rather read a book and write an essay on it, even a huge one, than just make up something on my own.

This led to another realization, even more life-changing than the first. Part of why I don't like my Adv. Fiction Writing class is because we only ever workshop, which gets old fast. If I don't like writing fiction regularly in class, and I don't like workshopping fiction regularly in class, then why in the world would I ever want to become a fiction editor? One of the best things about my schedule this semester has been my internship at the University Press, which only publishes scholarly, research-based work, and I have loved all the minor editing tasks I've been assigned. As an RA (Rhetoric Associate) I regularly read and edit scholarly, generally research-based writing, and I love that too (except on weeks like this, when it prevents me from getting all my homework and other good plans done, so I always feel like I'm running to do something). I'd rather write and edit scholarly work, which means I can get a job at any university press or non-fiction publisher, like Gibbs Smith in Utah, and not be backed into the New York/Los Angeles based industry! I can live almost anywhere! Yay! That might seem like a silly thing to be happy about but I really don't want to live in NYC or LA.

So that's my life so far. Major thinking going on if you couldn't tell. And that's not all either: I need to see Career Services for what I can do to prepare myself for a publishing career, make an appointment with my advisor so I can actually change my emphasis and talk about graduation and career plans, keep writing all genres regularly so I can get my own stuff published, get a job and make tons of money so I can finish school and maybe go to University of Denver's Publishing Institute program in summer of 2010, read Sigma Tau Delta stuff and various literary magazine stuff to get to know the market and find calls for submissions, figure out how to nominate myself for a leadership position in Sigma Tau Delta besides just wanting a leadership position, get a job (did I mention that one yet? it's really important), clean my room, wash my sheets, read something for fun...the list is never-ending.

Ah! One more thing before I sign off for today (or this week): anyone ever heard of freelance editing? I hadn't before this week. It sounds like an interesting way of gaining experience, beefing up my resume, and making a little extra cash. I realize I couldn't charge much because I would compete with the Writing Center and other RA's, but I'm wondering how I would go about doing that. Where on campus could I advertise my service of scholarly editing? How much would be a reasonable amount to charge? Would anybody actually be interested in my "service"? Let me know what you think. Also if you have any other ideas for my never-ending to-do list of career advancement, you can tell me that too. ;)