Have Neuroses, Will Travel

Matt Gross wrote a piece for the NYT’s Frugal Traveler feature on his oddly needy trip to bourbon country here in Kentucky:

Hoping for more camaraderie, I moved to the dining room, but that stone-walled, wood-beamed space was nearly as desolate. A mother and her child ate cheeseburgers, and three older guys sipped sweet tea. In the corner, however, was a likely candidate for conversation — a single woman in her early 30s, whose accent indicated she wasn’t from Kentucky.

But how do you approach someone at random without seeming like a weirdo? I chewed over the question as I chewed my pork chops, but no answer emerged.

This is one of the strangest travel pieces I’ve ever read. Someone get Gross a partner, stat. Is Emma Peel available?

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Celebrating Endicott

Those clever ladies at the Endicott Studio have created a new blog (to go with the fabulous one they already have) featuring pictures of some artists and writers involved with the studio at its inception and now. This is part of their continuing celebration of 20 years of wonderful work.

Looking at those photos just makes me happy. So many strong, brave, amazing people. I feel incredibly lucky to know — or at least have a passing acquaintance — with many of them, and even luckier to have more than a passing acquaintance with most of their bodies of work.

Here’s to 20 more years.

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Tuesday Hangovers

Tuesday Hangovers Read More »

Monday Hangovers

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Oh, Goodie

I have a list, of which I’m only going to share the first five, because the other things on it keep changing — also, alas, there’s a pretty good chance those are the only five I’ll get to.

Anyway, the way my particular low residency program works is on a schedule of six month semesters, with five packets. After you turn in packet five, you have however long you have until the 10-day residency that kicks off the next semester, and your next packet goes in to your new advisor at some point after that. One of the things that goes into my monthly packet is an annotated bibliography — a paragraph or so — on all the books I’ve read. (You can see more or less what I’ve annotated by looking in the column to the immediate right in Reading List 2007.) I’ll have a little over a month until the residency after I turn in, so I have a list of books for adults (a silly designation, I know) that I’ve been holding back on reading because they won’t count for the annotated bibliography and I can’t get essays out of them. (If a book like this has a young protagonist or cross-over appeal, then I can count it and have — I was able to justify going ahead and reading Stacey Richter’s fabbie new collection, Twin Study, in this manner.)

So, these are the five books for adults I plan to read during that little break:

And Now We Are Going to Have a Party: Liner Notes from a Writer’s Early Life by Nicola Griffith
Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand
Spaceman Blues: A Love Song by Brian Francis Slattery
Jamestown by Matthew Sharpe (LBC pick)
Triangle by Katherine Weber (LBC pick)

My reason for posting is that Ysabeau just read and posted about Liz Hand’s book and Matt just read and posted about Slattery’s and both were very, very happy. I’m now filled with the best kind of reading anticipation.

For the record: I’m actually extremely happy with all the reading I’ve done this semester and amn’t complaining a bit. YA is where it’s at and I have an Extremely Long List of books I can’t wait to read for younger readers (or, at least, published for younger readers), but still, a girl likes free reign from time to time. That said, I can’t remember a half-year when my reading has made me more thoughtful or brought me greater pleasure.

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The Basic 8

The wonderful Susan at Chicken Spaghetti tagged me for the 8 things meme. Sayeth the rules:

For this meme, each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

1. Working a window shade or blinds — of any kind except the Roman variety — is like doing extreme physics for me. Christopher swears this is easy to do and most people learn to deal with them as children. I’m very skeptical.

2. I floss every day. And I don’t really understand you non-daily flossers.

3. I grew up in a county with only one stoplight, fifteen minutes away from my house.

4. I read the complete works of William Shakespeare between the ages of 11 and 13.

5. In high school, I wrote a lot of poetry about George Bush, Sr. If you’d like, I might be persuaded to humiliate my younger selfpost one.

6. So many of these are about my youth because we are at my parents’ house right now, in Bond, Ky.

7.  I often pretend to be a spy. Sometimes I wonder if now I really am one.

8. Nine times out of ten, I know whether I’m going to like a book by the end of the first paragraph. And why.

I would tag, but I am too the lazy to go posting in comments. Also, I can’t remember who has already done this one and who hasn’t, so if you haven’t done it yet and want to then go forth and listicate.

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Saturday Hangovers

I have all these posts fluttering around to write once packet the final (of this semester) is over, which is a week from today. Assuming all goes according to plan. This means, though, that since I’ve spent the last couple of weeks revising, I have to bust it and do 1500 words a day or so of new material for the next six days. (Yes, I have enough to turn in already, but I’d really rather turn in 50 new messy messy pages of stuff he hasn’t seen, so I get direction on where to go with them, than stuff that is now where it needs to be due to revision and just get the nod on it — it really is strange to do a draft this way, but working so far, so…) I also appear to have a bit of Scratchy Throat & Tiny Men Inside Temples Crud that no doubt came courtesy of Wiscon, but I’m pretending I don’t, other than sleeping in until nearly 11 today and still being in my pajamas.  Christopher leaves for Syc Hill this time next week, so he’s under the deadline gun too. This will be a fun week, no?

I am getting together an ordering page for Say… what’s the combination? that contributors can link to — and contributor and subscriber copies and such will be en route soon, but it may take a week or so longer than it should. Yes, we know we suck at this admin stuff, which is why the next issue is Say… is that the end?, ahem.

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Friday Hangovers

Friday Hangovers Read More »

Thursday Hangovers

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