Archive for July, 2010

Title: The Year of the Flood
Author: Margaret Atwood
Genre: Speculative Fiction, Environmental Fiction, Women’s Fiction
Publisher: Doubleday, a division of Random House
Year: 2009
Pages: 434
This book was given to me by a friend as a Christmas present (said friend knew about my love for Margaret Atwood).

Silly me, I tried to package this book up neatly before I started reading it.  I had read a few reviews from fellow blogger’s and one of my teacher’s recommended it.  For whatever reasons, I believed that this book was going to be a continuation of Oryx and Crake.  Oh no, this is so much more complicated than just a sequel to what was already a complicated novel.  The Year of the Flood tells the story of Toby and Ren who survive the waterless flood, which can also be thought of as doomsday or the end of the world.  The book tells the story of Ren and Toby both before the waterless flood and how they survive afterward.  This enables Atwood to include glimpses of Jimmy and Crake (the major characters from Oryx and Crake).  And I have to say, getting a female perspectives really makes this story so much more fulfilling for me.

The plot of this book is difficult for me to describe so instead of attempting to write my own synopsis for you, I’m going to borrow one from GoodReads:

The times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly leader of the God’s Gardeners—a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the preservation of all plant and animal life—has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have survived: Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, a God’s Gardener barricaded inside a luxurious spa where many of the treatments are edible.

Have others survived? Ren’s bioartist friend Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighter stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Painballers, survivors of the mutual-elimination Painball prison? Not to mention the shadowy, corrupt policing force of the ruling powers . . .

Meanwhile, gene-spliced life forms are proliferating: the lion/lamb blends, the Mo’hair sheep with human hair, the pigs with human brain tissue. As Adam One and his intrepid hemp-clad band make their way through this strange new world, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move. They can’t stay locked away . . .

I have to warn you though, this book is filled with some painfully gruesome details.  But Atwood’s work is incredibly convincing because while some might categorize this as science fiction, everything that she writes about in these novels is completely plausible.  And that is what makes it terrifying.  This is a difficult novel to read and that is why it has taken me a while to finish it, but it is so worthwhile.

This is one of the many books on my reading list for both the English 152 class I will be co-teaching and the paper that I hope to complete by November about women and identity.  And both of the female lead characters in this novel provide me with so much material!  What happens to them through the course of this novel and how they cope is amazing and heartbreaking.  They demonstrate the results of a society that allows women to be objectified without question.  But this book also shows the links between a patriarchal society that underestimates women to a society that abuses nature without thinking about how future generations will survive.  This book provides so many discussion points about environmentalism, women’s issues, and even politics.

As always, Atwood’s writing is crisp, witty, and at times gruesomely vivid.  Her commentary is subtle and allows for personal reactions at every twist and turn.  For anyone interested in a challenging read, I highly recommend this.  And if you haven’t read Oryx and Crake, I highly recommend that you read that as well.

This Friday marks one of my last days (at least for this summer) working at the library.  On Sunday, I start my two week vacation before I begin to train for my new position, Assistant Resident Director.  Yes, in a few short months, I’ll be back on desk duty at the University Library, but for the rest of the summer, I’ll be busy team building and learning all about how to deal with different residence hall situations.  So I decided this week, it would be wonderful to celebrate all the wonderful online “resources” that keep me from pulling out my hair or gouging my eyes out due to boredom.

Twitter.  Ahhh.  How I love reading the constant stream of news, observations, rants, pictures, and other updates people post.  It is amazing how entertainment a collection of short 140 word or less messages can be!  Even better, their short size keeps me from getting distracted.  Even more, it is a great way of sharing my distress or starting a conversation.  I can always depend on entertainment from twitter.  It’s free and it’s fun.

Facebook.  At first, I fell in love with facebook because it allowed me to connect with friends both old and new.  Even better, I could stay updated on what my friends (and even my foes) were up to.  Stalker?  I think not.  I just like to know what people are up to.  I might have smiled in delight when I saw my ex-boyfriends falter a little.  But obviously that had nothing to do with the fact that they broke my heart.  Anyway, more recently facebook has become a lot less about the friends and more about the games!  Through facebook, you can pretty much become a farmer, open up a cafe, find your dream job, and even go treasure hunting.  The games are free although some items are only available by paying cash for special currency.  Still, they are addicting and they can make an eight hour day pass by uber quickly.

Blogs.  I have found a fascinating collection of blogs ranging from book blogs to fashion blogs to blogs for writers and I love reading them at work.  I pretend that blogging is my job and I focus, focus, focus!  And I get so much done.  During the summer, the library has very few customers so it is so easy for me to find focus.  I’ll occasionally be interrupted by a summer student looking for a book or a faculty member who needs a little research assistance, but these are brief encounters that rarely last over five minutes.

And lastly, my iPad.  Whether I want to read, write or play, the iPad is the perfect cure to boredom.  It has it all.  And sometimes, when I am stuck in the back with nothing to do, I take out my treasured new toy and time flies by.  When boredom hits, you just have to be resourceful!  A great time killer is Civ Rev, my favorite game for the iPad thus far.  It can make hours pass by like minutes.

And so, at least for now, these are my favorite distractions at work.  Don’t worry, when I get a real day job, I promise that I will focus on work but until then, I get paid for covering a desk.  I’m available to help but I’m only busy when the library is busy and right now, it isn’t.  So I cheat a little and enjoy myself.

How do you pass the time when you are bored?  What makes time just fly by for you?

I have a confession to make.  I am in love with words.  And in so many ways, I have been having a love affair with words for many many years.  And it has been terrific.  I first fell in love with the idea of blogging because it would allow me to share my words with other people.  And in six days, I will be celebrating the one year anniversary of my blog.  And trust me, there will be celebrations happening on that day.  But today, I am writing to you about something else extremely exciting happening in my life right now.

Because of my ongoing love affair with words, I have been holding on to a dream for a long time.  When I first told my parents that I wanted to be an English major in hopes of one day becoming a writer, they were less than pleased.  My father informed me that I was on a road to poverty, but I didn’t mind.  I had idealized in my head the picture of an impoverished writer constantly seeking beautiful stories to share with others.  And in some ways, I do that with my blog.  But thus far in my college career my writing has been limited at best.  I write essays constantly and for a while, I even did some opinion pieces for the newspaper on campus, The Santa Clara.  But I haven’t done anything big.  And unfortunately, I’ve let my writing slip.  I took a fiction writing class and I plan to take a few more this year, but I have been disciplined about creating a writing schedule.

But all of that will hopefully change soon.  Last spring I applied for a Canterbury Fellowship.  Getting said fellowship would have allowed me to spend a huge chunk of my senior year doing research to write a huge paper on whatever English-related topic I desired.  Naturally, I chose women and identity.  I wrote up a huge proposal and submitted it to the council.  They rejected me.  And for a while, I was hurt so deeply that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to write anymore.  I started to believe that my words weren’t good enough.  But that was months ago, and this summer I have focused on healing, on moving forward with my dreams and accepting that I can’t do everything (even if I want to).

And just yesterday, I was lucky enough to receive a wonderful gift: one of my favorite professor’s, the professor who had agreed to advise me on my Canterbury, informed me that I could still write the paper. I am going to be peer educating her Women, Lit, and Theory class this upcoming quarter and she is allowing me to use that time to work on my paper.  The reading list is similar to what I proposed and the theory will help me formulate the necessary arguments.  While I’m a little disorganized because I threw away most of my ideas months ago, I think I can use the summer to pull my ideas together.  This news reinvigorated me and led me to remember that failures and disappointments are not the end of the world.  My dream has reawakened and I am tingling with excitement.

The passion is still there and I’m going to let it fuel me into the unknown.  I’m hoping to share some of my ideas and full reading list with you all in the future.

Now, I’d love to hear about how you all pick yourselves up from failure and disappointment.  When something doesn’t work out the way you had planned, what do you do to recover?  How resilient are you in the face of defeat and how did you gain that resilience?  Don’t be afraid to share, I’d love to hear your stories!

This morning over breakfast, I asked my boyfriend for some advice.  My parents had recently given me a $15 Apple ITunes gift card.  I was so excited because I have had limited funds to deck out my new iPad.  But there are so many amazing aps for that thing (and unfortunately not very many of them are free).  But then, I realized how empty my iPad bookshelf is and suddenly felt the urge to splurge on a new eBook for my shiny new toy.  So the question was: buy some aps or buy a book?

And to me, the answer was simple: spend the money on a new book.  After all, I have been lusting after Aidan Donnelly Rowley’s Life After Yes.  But when I told my boyfriend that is what I planned to do with the family funds, he scowled at me.  He told me something I hate to hear: you have too many books.  And when he uttered the harsh criticism, my heart literally sank.  I wanted to scream back “there is no such thing as too many books!” or “well, you have too many DVDs” (his bookcases are filled with DVDs instead of books).  But I did neither.  I knew that he could never understand why I just had to buy myself another book.  Why whenever I get some extra money, I’m always going to spend at least some of it on books.  Don’t get me wrong, I love treating myself to cute clothes and shoes too, but books will always be something I collect and treasure.

But then he had to go and make it worse by adding in, you haven’t even read most of those books.  To which I replied, “that’s kind of the point.”  I am horrible at keeping books.  There are a few gems that I would never give away or trade, but since I have been moving so much lately, I keep most of those at my parent’s house.  I savor what little space I have in packing boxes for books that I haven’t read, which is why in my dorm room and now at the apartment that I’m sharing with my boyfriend, my bookshelves are filled with books I have yet to read.  My growing stack of to be read, that is somehow always interrupted with something newer and more exciting.  I tried to use his gaming addiction as a metaphor for my reading addiction but somehow, he still didn’t get it.

And so I began to wonder, am I maybe going overboard with books?  Do I have a problem?  Am I too much of a packrack?  Please, tell me about your to be read shelves/piles/lists/whatever.  Do you buy books or rent them from the library?  I’m intrigued to find out how my fellow bloggers acquire there books.  And even more, I have to wonder, do you keep them around?  Do you sell them back?  Trade them?  Give them away?  And most importantly, is it possible to have too many books?

I’m going to start a new feature on my blog!  Yes, I’m trying to be innovative and available.  I figure a weekly feature might just keep me on track.  It will force me to sit down every Friday and let you all know what I’m up to.  So what exactly is Friday Favorites?  Well, it’s going to be my opportunity to rant and rave about things that I absolute fell in love (in some cases, it could be hate) with throughout the week!  And this week, I swooned a lot.  I mean, hello, it’s summer: there is so much to love about summertime.  So what are my Friday Favorites?

First, the iPad.  If there is anything you know about me, you must know that I am a Mac-a-holic.  I have a MacBook and iPhone and I can’t imagine my life without either device.  So when it came to buying an e-reader, I knew immediately that I would go with Apple.  After months of waiting and swooning after this fabulous Apple device, I caved.  I was just sitting down at work and it hit me: Jennifer, you need to go to the Apple store after work and buy yourself an iPad.  And my boyfriend was more than happy to accompany me on what has turned out to be one of the biggest splurges I’ve probably ever made.  But when I had the shiny device in my hand, I knew that it was worth it.  I felt like nothing else in the world could possibly matter.  And since I bough the beauty Wednesday afternoon, I surprisingly have had no twinge of buyer’s remorse.  I’ve been shopping for apps like crazy and I bought my first iBook yesterday: Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth which I plan to dig into as soon as I finish Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood.  I would love to hear your app recommendations in the comments section!

Second, summer shows, particularly summer shows on USA.  Tuesday and Thursday nights I am essentially unreachable because I am glued to the TV watching my four favorite shows on TV right now.  On Tuesday I get the delight of disappearing into the world of a criminal mastermind in White Collar: Neil Caffrey is a con man fighting the good fight.  And I have to say, he looks so good doing it.  Even better there is amazing chemistry between Neil and his FBI handler, Agent Peter Burke.  The episodes are fast paced and the story line continues to have extremely interesting twists and turns.  After White Collar, I get to disappear into the life of a new CIA spy.  Covert Affairs has many of the perks of Alias.  Instead of Sydney Bristow and her extremely dysfunctional family, Covert Affairs follows newly recruited Annie Walker who has been hardened by a love affair gone wrong.  With quirky and fun characters like Auggie, the blind tech guy, this show is nonstop entertainment.  There is action, mystery, and even some humor in this gem.  Even more, you are really rooting for Annie because even though she is a kick-ass spy, she is also just like any normal girl.  She isn’t superwoman and I love that about her.  On Thursdays, I turn to Burn Notice and Royal Pains.  Burn Notice is on its fourth season but I only really just started watching it last season and now I’m totally addicted.  In case you don’t know what it’s about, Burn Notice follows burned spy, Michael Westen who run a sort of rougue spy operation.  He helps people who get into trouble.  The story line twists and turns a lot, but the show is so much fun to watch.  And the characters are well-developed, which is always a plus.  Royal Pains is a fairly new show that I loved from the first episode.  Hank gets fired from a major New York hospital and is practically exiled from the medial profession because of it.  Luckily, his brother Evan drags him to the Hamptons where he finds a way in with the rich and famous enabling him to start his own concierge practice.  I have a thing for medial dramas so during the summer when I can’t get my Private Practice or Grey’s Anatomy, I turn to Hank.  Plus, he’s a charming fellow.  So as you can see, I’m pretty busy with these awesome summer shows.  But don’t worry, I spend all my other nights reading (well, at least most of them).

And last but not least: rock climbing!  I have been at this sport for almost a year now and I am loving it more and more.  It is the perfect summertime adventure.  And last week, for the first time ever, I took it outdoors.  Granted, there were very few things I could actually do out there (I’m so weak compared to the guys I was climbing with!), but it gives me something to aspire to.  And let me tell you, I love goals and challenges and now I have a couple of both.  Reading keeps my mind busy and now rock climbing is keeping my body busy.  I’m hoping that if I can stick to a climbing schedule I can lose some of the freshman fifteen I accidentally gained from way too many long nights … studying.

Well, these are a few of my favorite things right now.  What are yours?