Inspired by this comic by Fun Home's Alison Bechdel, I've been thinking about the big important books I really ought to get to reading. As an aside, I find it pretty liberating to confess that I haven't read this established classics but that I have actually trudged through each and every Harry Potter book and the accursed Da Vinci Code just so that I'd have some moral authority when I trash them.
Wuthering Heights has always appealed, but when I tried to read it at the age of seventeen I was pretty tired of overwrought gothic prose so I put it back down. The same issues struck me when trying on Dracula, but any desire I had to read that slips away more every day. A shame, but not unexpected.
Ulysses has a big reputation, but it sounds marvelous. I just hope I'll have time for it. Sheer size is what put an end to Don Quixote after all, and that's a fine book that I always mean to get back to. Gravity's Rainbow remains a work in progress, and I always enjoy it when I drag myself back to that end of the bookshelf. It's dense and wordy, but poetic and the dystopic setting is right up my dingy end of the street. Reading big books shouldn't be hard though, lord knows I had no trouble with Lord of the Rings or The Stand. Perhaps a film or TV show would help with them, but since the three books I just listed are allegedly unfilmable I suppose I should just get cracking those spines again.
After recently making the acquaintance of Kerouac and Bukowski, combined with a long-standing affection for William Burroughs, I've decided that I could stand to try some more American fiction. I enjoyed Of Mice and Men so why not The Grapes of Wrath. The same applies to some stuff by Neal Cassaday, Allen Ginsburg or Tom Wolfe, and Michael Chabon has really spiced up jewishy fiction for me in a way Phillip Roth never managed. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is apparently a work of genius, but doesn't fire me up like the mid-to late twentieth century stuff, and it certainly doesn't have the political edge of the Russian greats I'm missing.
Russian greats like Crime and Punishment or Anna Karenina sit on my shelf to this day, intimidated by the poor reception I gave to Resurrection and the high esteem I have for somewhat lighter titles such as Lolita and The Master and Margarita. I also have a strange uneasiness reading translated novels, with the nagging suspicion that I'm missing out by not getting the author's original text ever hanging over my head. I loved Things Fall Apart, but I've so far managed to avoid No Longer At Ease and Arrow of God for no real reason at all. The same motivation applies to my stockpile of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's entire catalogue, even though everything I've picked up has delighted me. Reading the translators notes on my Kafka short stories is like reminding myself I'm a terrible person for not speaking enough German. I thoroughly blame the Americans for this fact, as if it weren't for them we'd all be fluent apparently. Bastards! I've been racking by brain for a good French book to add here, but I can't actually think of one. This pleases me though I can't work out why.
So let this be my explanation as to why I'm reading Hamlet in between classes, and why I enjoy long-haul travel and frequent train journeys. Make sure that when I pause at the bookshelf on my way to the bathroom you realise that it's not a weird quirk, it's a conscious choice to spend this time furthering myself. Finally, if you ever see me reading some disposable airport fiction before I buy a copy of The Alchemist, you rip it from my hands and remind me that I still have a long way to go.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Fast Times at Apollo Education and Training
"If this were a sitcom office, we'd have a lot more hi jinx to fill all this downtime"
I didn't say this, but I'll be damned if it's not true. With up to twelve hours between classes I do spend a lot of time with my headphones on ignoring my co-workers. This could probably also account for the lack of hi jinx. So I've almost finished up my term here at work with just three and a half contact hours to account for. This is pretty exciting, and it's gonna be nice to leave a job on good terms again, as opposed to the somewhat unpleasant exit from the other tie-wearing job I had. It will be good to work in jeans again though, I think I'm much more pleasanter when my legs are all denimed up. Hell, I'm at my post pleasant in my boxers but that's a line most employers are unwilling to cross, especially those where I'd be working with kids. Probably sensible that.
So other than the final airing of my pink shirt (oh you can bet it ain't coming home with me, luggage space is precious and I have new books dammit) what has today brought? Well two of my classes had exams, so I got to spend three hours 'teaching' with my eyes closed most of the time. That was very 'me'. Sitting down for long periods of time is a luxury to me, and I'm not one to ignore them lately. Indeed, a comfy chair is second only to cheesecake on the list of things that get me through the week. Oh, and beer. Beer's pretty good. What? Teaching? Oh yeah. I got to use my awesome 'telling the time' activities, which have the slight weakness of sometimes teaching kids that it's half-to-eleven in the morning. That only ever gets the stupid ones anyway, and no amount of my slack-ass teaching is gonna save them.
Ooh, that sounded bad didn't it? Oh well. I do love most of my kiddies here, they're friendly and enthusiastic, and they don't mind when I make them act out any of the more amusing verbs in front of their peer group. It's tough getting adults to milk an invisible cow and teenagers are so apathetic and self-involved that they won't even pretend to sneeze. I have to say, I distinctly remember being a teenager and I'm damn sure I was both cooler and more willing to perform interpretive mime than these guys. It's not like I'm getting them to dress up like Marcel Marceau while they're doing it for Pete's sake. Also I've begun to think that 'wash the baby' would be an awesome metaphor for something, much like 'slicing the lemon' sounds dirty but actually just means taking a knife to some yellow citrus fruit. Plus, tickling as a form of discipline goes way beyond fun. British schools need to reform detention systems toot sweet.
Oh, and as for that little expression, I was watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (or at least it was on while I didn't take the remote into the bathroom) and I decided that it needed less awful puns in the form of song and more pedophiles with over sized butterfly nets. Over sized butterfly nets are hilarious, far more so than big cages and 'zany' cars. The Herbie movies would also do well to remember this.
Wow, that wandered off alarmingly didn't it?
I didn't say this, but I'll be damned if it's not true. With up to twelve hours between classes I do spend a lot of time with my headphones on ignoring my co-workers. This could probably also account for the lack of hi jinx. So I've almost finished up my term here at work with just three and a half contact hours to account for. This is pretty exciting, and it's gonna be nice to leave a job on good terms again, as opposed to the somewhat unpleasant exit from the other tie-wearing job I had. It will be good to work in jeans again though, I think I'm much more pleasanter when my legs are all denimed up. Hell, I'm at my post pleasant in my boxers but that's a line most employers are unwilling to cross, especially those where I'd be working with kids. Probably sensible that.
So other than the final airing of my pink shirt (oh you can bet it ain't coming home with me, luggage space is precious and I have new books dammit) what has today brought? Well two of my classes had exams, so I got to spend three hours 'teaching' with my eyes closed most of the time. That was very 'me'. Sitting down for long periods of time is a luxury to me, and I'm not one to ignore them lately. Indeed, a comfy chair is second only to cheesecake on the list of things that get me through the week. Oh, and beer. Beer's pretty good. What? Teaching? Oh yeah. I got to use my awesome 'telling the time' activities, which have the slight weakness of sometimes teaching kids that it's half-to-eleven in the morning. That only ever gets the stupid ones anyway, and no amount of my slack-ass teaching is gonna save them.
Ooh, that sounded bad didn't it? Oh well. I do love most of my kiddies here, they're friendly and enthusiastic, and they don't mind when I make them act out any of the more amusing verbs in front of their peer group. It's tough getting adults to milk an invisible cow and teenagers are so apathetic and self-involved that they won't even pretend to sneeze. I have to say, I distinctly remember being a teenager and I'm damn sure I was both cooler and more willing to perform interpretive mime than these guys. It's not like I'm getting them to dress up like Marcel Marceau while they're doing it for Pete's sake. Also I've begun to think that 'wash the baby' would be an awesome metaphor for something, much like 'slicing the lemon' sounds dirty but actually just means taking a knife to some yellow citrus fruit. Plus, tickling as a form of discipline goes way beyond fun. British schools need to reform detention systems toot sweet.
Oh, and as for that little expression, I was watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (or at least it was on while I didn't take the remote into the bathroom) and I decided that it needed less awful puns in the form of song and more pedophiles with over sized butterfly nets. Over sized butterfly nets are hilarious, far more so than big cages and 'zany' cars. The Herbie movies would also do well to remember this.
Wow, that wandered off alarmingly didn't it?
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