Is it Yuletide yet?

[lunabee34]

1. I have gotten a bounty of Christmas cards from goss, sallymn, spikedluv, and aurumcalendula!

I also got the most delectable and beautiful chocolate bar with dried figs on top from sheafrotherdon; a gloriously curated package from executrix full of books (including a collection of Beerbohm essays I can't wait to dive into), notebooks, a hand-knitted shawl, and other wonderful sundries; and a package from misbegotten with a Ouida sticker she designed, a makeup bag detailing the epic love story of Sam and Dean, bespoke stationery with my name on it, and other happies.

Thanks, all. Feeling the love! <3

2. If you are impatiently waiting Yuletide reveals and need something to read, check out these two stories.

Hark the Herald Angel Snarks
by misbegotten
SPN all-human AU
Sam/Gabriel, Dean/Cas
5488 words

The Man Who Forgot
by slightweasel
HP
Harry/Draco
Amnesia, mpreg
250k

3.

Bandwidth Recovery by Cia Verschelden

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book does an excellent job of explaining the science behind why marginalized students struggle academically. The last section of the book contains interventions to help these students at the individual instructor and institution level.



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Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief by Maxine Kumin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I really enjoyed this poetry collection. It begins with new poetry and then proceeds with selected poetry from each of Kumin's collections published to that point in reverse chronological order. Most collections of already published poetry are arranged in the opposite way; they begin at the beginning. I can see why Kumin structured the collection this way so as to start with the new material, but it makes for a kind of deflating reading experience. The strongest material is first, and then as the collection goes on, the writing becomes progressively weaker--still good, but weaker.



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No Nature: New and Selected Poems by Gary Snyder

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Huh. Turns out I don't really like Gary Snyder's poetry very much, only the Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems collection, and I think a lot of that is also nostalgia for the experience of reading it in an eco-poetry graduate class twenty years ago.

My track record of utter boredom with 20th-century, male, American poets sure is coming to a middle.



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The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is the weirdest book. It's didactic, which is to be expected, but the theology is completely muddled with a mixture of pagan and Christian elements, and I can't figure out what exactly is happening. Is Tom dead, and his journey as a water-baby happening in the afterlife? Does he reincarnate/resurrect at the end now that he's learned how to live as a moral being?

I really like the social critique; those parts of the novel are by turns very funny (especially when Kingsley is poking fun at the scientific questions of the day) and very sobering (especially when Kingsley is shedding light on the appalling treatment of children by various institutions).

I also really like the attention to the natural world; Kingsley is an excellent nature writer, and that shrines through all the other weird stuff he's doing in this novel.

I can't exactly recommend this book because it is really, really didactic, but the weird and funny parts are enjoyable.



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Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke by Theodore Roethke

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I'd like to think no self-respecting academic publisher would let Wagoner publish a book like this now. If Roethke's notebooks needed to be published, then Wagoner should have published them as Roethke wrote them and annotated them with footnotes like God intended instead of doing . . . whatever this is.

I know Wagoner was Roethke's student and then his friend and colleague and an important poet in his own right, but it's hard for me not to interpret him selecting and arranging fragments from Roethke's notebooks into poems and prose pieces as an act of self-aggrandizement. Or something.

This reads like a collection of random aphorisms, which it is.

Also, Roethke's description of the poet is universally male, his idea of the audience for the poet is universally male, and when he does deign to speak of female poets and female students and female readers, his contempt drips off the page.

I say good day, sir!



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The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I thought I'd read this as a kid but I guess not because I don't remember the plot at all.

I very much identity with how out of place Kit feels in this repressive environment and also the way she is still able to find love and camaraderie.

Great book.



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4. I can't believe I forgot to tell you all the most surreal best part of the SACS conference: 8:30 in the morning waiting for the second general session to start in a room that can seat more than 9000 and will be close to full by the time the session starts at 9:00 while colored lights zoom around overhead and the sound system blasts to the gathered middle-aged academics, "I didn't come here to party / I didn't come here to stay / I came to leave with somebody / I only came for the cake." Ah, yes. Truly the jam of the administrator preparing her institution for reaffirmation and the development of a Quality Enhancement Plan. At 8:30 in the morning.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

I love your reviews.

HUGS

[lunabee34]

*blushes*

[princessofgeeks]

New York was FABULOUS. I saw executrix and my friends and AND ATE ALL THINGS, including lobster ravioli. OMG.

Hope things are going okay with you and yours.

HUGS

[lunabee34]

I'm so glad you had a good time.

I saw you posted about it. Off to read that!