Paper Fruit

I am basically running on empty right now, so the tears in my eyes might be my utter emotional exhaustion, but oh my goodness how wonderful does the Where the Wild Things Are movie look? It seems I have not learned from the Narnia movies, the Golden Compass movie, or any of the other vast, intense literary loves of mine that have been chewed up and destroyed by Hollywood, because I am holding onto some hope for this. Maybe it will get to be in the column of Series of Unfortunate Events and Holes in terms of quality adaptations, rather than the, uh, Prince Caspian column. 

Trailer!

Intersections in research are always fascinating, and I was lucky that when I was finding out how to make my own kombucha I found out about another awesome fermented beverage called kvass, which I was subsequently able to use as a nice piece of atmospheric detail in the novel I’m working on. Woo! A scintillating threeway to be sure. Since then I’ve wanted to make my own kvass but the recipes I found seemed to differ wildly and I was afraid of poisoning myself if I made a wrong step. Recently, however, I’ve obtained a copy of a not-written-by-some-possibly-insane-person-on-the-internet recipe for kvass and plan on starting my first batch this weekend, as I am now officially on spring break and can attend to any sort of evil that might ensue in my kitchen during the fermenting process.

Spring break! Woo!

My cohort in skulduggery Jesse just (and when I say just I mean four or five days ago) posted a nice blurb on the strange and stupid phenomenon of using “gay” as an adjective to describe things other than a person who is a homosexual. I know this is Old News but he and I have noticed it cropping up again after what I feel like was a few years of dormancy. Why? Why, people? It’s icky all around, and I’ve thought so no matter how many people assert to me such things as “well, “idiot” used to be a derogatory term for the mentally handicapped and now that’s OK” or “all the gay people I know say that, so it’s OK.” 

I first noticed it in college (no one ever, ever said it at my high school) and that was back in 2000. So as much as I can’t believe I’m posting about something so been there, done that, I can’t believe I still have to consider the topic. So there, world.

Raech just gave me an awesome pep talk about school, my writing, etc. I guess I hadn’t really thought about the fact that my writing should be as important to me as my school work; it needs to be my job, on some weird level. I need to give it time every day as much as possible, just like I do Greek, or teaching, or whatever. I think I am going to put aside at least half an hour, or better yet, an hour, every day. I am also going to stop feeling guilty about it when I do. It is just as important as anything else.

You know, like tonight. OK!

Here are the books on my immediate to-read list, in no particular order, although I know I’ll just add random crap as I go:

Fiction:

Lysistrata, Aristophanes (got a new lovely Sandglass hardcover edition with illustrations by Picasso)

Heroides, Ovid

The Secret History of Moscow, Ekaterina Sedia (very excited about this)

The Love-Artist, Jane Alison (also very excited about this)

Memoirs of a Medieval Woman: The Life and Times of Margery Kempe, Lousie Collis

The Annotated Hans Christian Anderson, edited by Maria Tatar

Non-Fiction:

Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire: A Study in Social Control, K.R. Bradley

Greek Religion (not just the sections on Orphism and Dionysos), Walter Burkert

The Greeks and the Irrational, E.R. Dodds

The Twelve Caesars, Suetonius

The Greek Way, Edith Hamilton

I know I’ll have a ton of Jane Austen to add to this list come January as I’m taking a class on her, so that’s in the works, as well.

Collecting books is no sin but I have quite a few lying around that I haven’t even cracked, much less given the attention they merit. Given that the last two weeks have included cashing out my credit at my local used bookstore and Christmas, I have decided to make a concerted effort to start a queue and get through it, blogging as I go. I am hoping the process of journaling about reading will inspire me to stop my bad habit of reading most of a book and then abandoning it for something new, an appalling habit I have developed with both fiction and non-fiction. I also also intend to use this as a convenient space for recording interesting tidbits from my non-fiction instead of simply jotting down incoherent notes in either random Word documents on my computer or instantly-lost pieces of notebook paper.