The first 60 books of the year

I made a goal this year to read at least 120 books. That was about 20 more than I read last year (yes, I keep track of these things because yes, I am a nerd), and it came out to 10 books a month, which seemed reasonable.

Much to my surprise, I’m about two months ahead of schedule, since I passed the halfway point this week—guess that’s what happens when one doesn’t have homework taking up 24 hours a day and then some. Since I’ll be leaving the country in September, it’s a good thing that I’m moving along so well—I’m not sure what my access to books in English is going to be after that point, but I suspect I’ll have limited choices. I’m also leaving behind my favorite public library in just a month, which is going to kill the number of new books I get each week. I don’t have the funds to buy ten new books every week, especially if they could turn out to be awful. I also definitely don’t have the space to keep them somewhere. One of these days I’ll take a picture of my bookshelf as proof.

Anyway, I figured I’d do a quick recap of books 1-60, all of were given scores from 0-5, 5 being the highest and indicating that said book is generally awesome.

First book: The Red Leather Diary, by Lily Koppel, 3.

30^th book: 10 Things I Hate About Me, by Randa Abdel-Fattah, 3.

60^th book: Beautiful, by Amy Reed, 1.

Books receiving the full 5 points: The Last Time I Was Me, by Cathy Lamb and Paper Wings, by Marly Swick.

Books receiving 0 points: Winter Love, Winter Wishes, by Jane Claypool Minter (this book was an example of the perilous dangers of picking up any book that has figure skating on its cover) and My Name is Sus5an Smitth. The 5 is Silent, by Louise Plummer.

Average score for the first 60 books: 2.25.

On Poetry: In which I am a bad English major

As a child, I was quite the poet. Or so I thought, anyway. I enjoyed poetry for several well-thought out reasons:

1) Poems were shorter than books, meaning I could have my parents read several of them to me before bed.
2) Poems frequently rhymed, making them easier to memorize than books (I was a late reader and preferred to memorize rather than to read).
3) Anne of Green Gables liked poetry. I was raised on Anne of Green Gables.

I had a copy of A. A. Milne's When We Were Very Young, and I took it upon myself to memorize poems from it on a regular basis (I was particularly fond of Halfway Down). Starting in first grade, I saw talent shows as the perfect opportunity to display my ability to memorize poems. After all, Anne Shirley had given poetry recitations to thunderous applause at the White Sands Hotel in the 1985 Kevin Sullivan production of Anne of Green Gables, so why shouldn't I try to receive the same recognition?

Turns out elementary school children of the '90s just don't appreciate poetry the way everyone did in the movies.

Nevertheless, I maintained my loyalty to poetry and through the end of eighth grade, I was still memorizing poems for fun (as much fun as one can have, that is, mastering Emily Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop for Death) and writing poems to get out all of my middle school angst. I think that every middle school student should be required to write several poems whenever they are feeling particularly emotional, if only so that they will have something to laugh at in ten years.

Unfortunately, poetry and I had a bit of a falling out when I started high school. Though I would still write some (terrible) poetry, I didn't like the whole concept of thwacking poems with a wet noodle in hopes of finding some meaning (I did like Introduction to Poetry as the poem itself seemed to discourage that type of analysis). I had a brief fling with The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and I was always happy to flirt with The Highwayman and Lady of Shalott (mostly because, you guessed it, they were featured in Anne of Green Gables), but alas, it was not enough to repair my fraying relationship with poetry. Our split was tragically finalized in the latter half of high school, when I lost all patience with love sonnets that found it necessary to rhyme "love" with "prove." I exaggerate not: From the Passionate Shepherd to His Love.

Had I been a practical soul and decided to to study nursing, like my mother, or political science and economics, like my father, I could've gone on to live a perfectly happy existence without any further attention paid to poetry. Instead I decided to study English. I was able to avoid poetry-centric classes for the most part. I was not, however, able to avoid my guilt at being a bad English major. I was supposed to like poetry! If an English major couldn't appreciate it, then really, who could? Was there any hope for me?

It appeared, last fall, that there was. My philosophy professor introduced me to a fabulous poem by Mary Oliver, The Summer Day. The last two lines (where the speaker asks "What is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?") give me goosebumps. A breakthrough! I had found a poem not mentioned in Anne of Green Gables that I was fond of! Finally I could embrace poetry and be the outstanding English major I'd always known was hiding inside me somewhere.

This was the plan until last week. Last week I decided to read an entire book of Mary Oliver's poetry in order to boost my ego about how I read poetry for fun. This failed miserably. There was one poem, ONE, in the whole book that I did not find entirely useless. Plus all the poems were about gardens and woodland animals and clouds, and I'm a city girl. The keys to my heart are concrete and public transportation and sirens and skyscrapers.

It appears that poetry and I are not yet reconciled. Is there hope for me yet? Any poems I should be reading that will lead to my breakthrough? Any poems you particularly love or hate?

Willow, by Julia Hoban, OR Why Pay for Therapy When You Could Have a Boyfriend?

I want to hate this book. I really, really do. The fact that I don't hate it makes me seriously concerned.

Let’s start with the least problematic aspect: I really disliked Hoban’s (or her editor’s) comma usage. There were several points where the lack of commas interfered with clarity. I also spotted a few other errors like missing spaces, so she should get a better copy editor (I’ll go out on a limb and volunteer myself since I could use a job).

Working my way up from there, the next troubling aspect was the poor use of Shakespeare, particularly The Tempest. It’s used as a clumsy plot device, and it’s not done so by someone who understands it. Though not the biggest Shakespeare fan around, I do think that he had some fantastic plots and themes and (this is the big one) competing discourses. When we’re presented with The Tempest and told only that it’s “romantic,” that really discredits all the other themes running through the play. Even worse, Hoban doesn’t even entertain the possibility that Early Modern Drama might not have the same conception of romance that we have today (for those who are wondering, it doesn’t. Not even close).

Next problem, which is an extremely serious one from my point of view: gender roles! Guy (yes, the male love interest's name is Guy) only likes Macbeth because he’s male? Yikes. So much for the universality of literature. And it killed me to have to suffer through lines like “I hoped that there would be a time when I would need to…protect you like this” (299). Ugh. Male as protector and savior, that’s nothing new. (Aside on this quote: from my perspective, there are two ways of reading it. Either Guy is referring to having a condom as his way of protecting Willow—which, though a bit paternalistic, is good, since I’m all for safe sex—or he’s referring to the act of sex itself as protecting Willow from her cutting. Not a big fan of the second reading, but it seems to be the more likely of the two.) Unfortunately, Hoban’s choice to deal with cutting as a subject matter makes this even more problematic than other books (like Sarah Dessen’s) that frequently have a male as a savior figure.

This leads me to my next concern. Ultimately, Willow isn’t able to save herself—Guy has to save her from herself. Guy is responsible for keeping Willow from cutting, and he is also responsible for trying to make her stop. And in the resolution, it’s having sex with Guy that gives Willow the ability to stop cutting and work towards resolving her conflicts with her brother. I have no problems with sex in YA lit, and many authors pull it off wonderfully. Unfortunately, this novel never seems to address Willow’s sexuality. Instead, sex is simply another alternative to cutting, another way to feel, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want people thinking about sex like that. And in the end, Willow doesn’t need psychological help to deal with her cutting. She just needs a boy.

Despite all of the above, I liked the book. I didn’t realize it was written in third person until I was almost done with it, which shows how close Hoban is able to bring the reader to Willow. All of Willow’s emotions are strong and real and subtle, but clear.

Quite frankly, I’m even more concerned about the book because I did love it. If the characters were flat and uninspiring, if the plot wasn’t engaging, if we didn’t care about Willow—then there would be no danger in all of Hoban’s messages. We could dismiss the book as a whole. But since we can’t, we have to be sure that we make explicit the problematic assumptions Hoban makes about gender, sexuality, and mental illness. Because maybe a young 14-year old who’s cutting won’t be able to see how it’s problematic—she’ll just see that she needs to go have sex with a boy and then everything will be better.

This reads like a lit paper. Making explicit problematic assumptions? You can take the English major out of lit classes, but you can't take the lit classes out of the English major.

Skating Student Quote of the Day: Hello, young lovers, whoever you are, I hope your troubles are few

From a 6th grade guy, talking to one of his friends at the rink: "Relationship troubles, huh?"

A Burnt Orange Quest

I was back in my hometown this past week, and I stopped at Presence, one of my favorite stores to hunt down some burnt orange clothing. Shopping there is often hit-or-miss (probably because I'm not nearly as fashion forward as most of their styles), but whenever I like something there, I love it, so I keep going through everything they have in the store..

Unfortunately, this trip was a miss one. The only piece of burnt orange clothing I came away with was a camisole:


It's more orange in reality--the picture makes it look a bit more red. I plan on wearing it with my favorite shirt of all time, also purchased at Presence:


I also took home a dark red camisole and a pink scarf. I've decided I need to expand my scarf collection, and will be on the lookout for more scarves. Having purchased the pink one, my next order of business will be a gray one.

I'm not too happy with how these pictures look. It might be time to actually figure out how to do more on my camera. Currently I'm capable of taking pictures, looking at the pictures I've taken, and turning off the flash. I'm just a regular photography genius.

The Unlikely Romance of Kate Bjorkman, by Louise Plummer, OR Alternate Universe Me

This book was published in 1995. I was somewhat relieved to discover that, because it means that Louise Plummer is not somewhere out there reading my mind. After all, in 1995 I didn't know a thing about linguistics, I didn't yet have my strange fascination with the Twin Cities in MN, I had seen skating occasionally on TV but hadn't been introduced to ice dance at all, and I didn't have any opinions on the process of writing or the distinction between fiction and autobiography or the conventions of certain literary genres.

Kate Bjorkman is a linguistics nerd living in Minnesota when she has a wonderfully romantic Christmas. She decides to turn her story of that Christmas into a romance novel, with help from The Romance Writer's Phrase Book, which can turn an everyday action into someone "flounder[ing] in an agonizing maelstrom" (8). As she writes her romance novel (which makes up the bulk of the novel we read), she stops every few chapters to note revisions she may or may not want to take, and she often has to decide whether or not what really happened has a place in a romance novel. Her family wants her to change the way she presents them, and her best friend thinks that since it's a romance novel, not an autobiography, Kate should have no qualms about changing things around to make her best friend a more important character. And since this is, after all, a romance novel, we get to follow her reintroduction to Richard, a boy who grew up with her, and all the romance that follows.

I picked this book up because there was a girl in figure skates on the front cover. You may think that I'm exaggerating, but I cannot put down a book that looks as though it may have something to do with figure skating. Sometimes this means I end up reading some really awful books with just one mention of skating. In this case, however, the characters went skating twice, and the second time they made reference to both killian and waltz positions, so it was totally worth it.

To add to the skating situations, there were lots of linguistics tidbits throughout. In the sixth line we already hear about a name ending in "an unvoiced velar plosive" (1). I always was taught that they were called stops, not plosives, but I can handle that. Kate also likes to identify people's hometowns by their accent and get into debates about the Whorfian hypothesis. I enjoyed this immensely.

AND, as if the figure skating and the linguistics weren't enough, we get lots of explorations of literary theory. Kate opens every chapter with an explanation of what this chapter should be doing in order to conform with the genre of literary theories, and by page 28 she's discussing feminist literary criticism. The distinctions between fiction and autobiography topped everything off, and I was a very happy English major while reading this book.

I wonder if Louise Plummer could both see into the future and read minds...that might explain the confluence of everything I love into one book.

Testing Week: Pass or Retry?

Tomorrow is the last day of testing week at the ice rink.

Testing week is a trauma-filled week. When I was learning how to skate, I agonized. The first time I failed, I cried the entire evening. My coach for that session very kindly called that evening to give me some comfort and motivation. I'm afraid I don't remember anything he said, mostly because I was just sniffling and saying "Mhmmm" at appropriate moments. I like to think that he imparted some very key wisdom upon me, because I don't remember being that upset about a test again until I failed an ice dance test about five or six years later. It's a shame I don't remember it, because I'd love to impart similarly sage advice upon my skaters so that they'd stop being upset with failing.

I mistakenly assumed that agonizing over tests would end when I became a coach. Oh, how wrong I was. The other side of testing is probably even more wrought with emotional distress, because on the other side you have power. And it is terrifying. I don't want to make children cry! I don't want them to quit skating because of a setback! And I definitely don't want their parents unhappy with me because they don't pass. But I've also taught the students who probably shouldn't have been moved up a level, and the next level is even harder for them since they don't have the skills to build upon. It's also harder for the coach, because we then have to work on developing skills that the skaters should've already learned. You cannot win (unless the skater is clearly ready to pass--then you both win).

My only comfort is the fact that I'm merely a skating instructor, not an official USFSA judge. USFSA testing takes place in front of a panel (usually of three judges) and this is even more trauma-inducing that Learn to Skate testing. For that, you have to pay just to take a test, and after you fail, you're required to wait at least another month before you test again. I don't think I could take the pressure. Of course, I don't think it's standard practice for parents to challenge those judges and insist that the judges are mistaken, so that's a definite benefit.

Linguistic note of the day: I love all the euphemisms skating will find to say you failed. In Basic Skills you don't fail, you just need improvement, and with USFSA tests, you simply will have to retry. My coaches would frequently tell us stories about how in their day, you didn't retry, you simply failed and there was nothing you could do about it. No sugarcoating things for them. They all made it through okay, so maybe I don't have to worry nearly as much about traumatizing the next generation of skaters.