What day is it again?

I keep getting my days mixed up. Ever since my part-time gig at Spectrum ended, I really have no bearing on when it is. The only fixed date I've been able to keep in mind is, of course, this Saturday when I head back to Athens for my junior year as a creative writing major. Woo! But yeah. Today so far (at 11 a.m.) I have thought it was Friday, Tuesday and Monday (not necessarily in that order). I don't know what that says about me as a person, but I'm sure it can't be good.

No matter. I have coffee and Flogging Molly and articles to bullshit.... I mean write. I've already written one so far today (no guarantees on quality -this was done before I had coffee. Bad idea. Very, very bad idea) and my goal is to finish between 2 and 4 more. We'll see. I might be willing to settle for 1, depending on how the day goes.

I love old Disney movies. New ones are pretty decent as well, but it's the old ones -the ones I grew up with -that I just can't get enough of. I am very partial to Beauty and the Beast. The scene with the library? Oooh baby. That's my favorite. That right there would sell me on pretty much any movie. You let me loose in a place that has a library like that one and I will curl up like a kitten and refuse to leave. Probably ever.

Libraries -good libraries -are the bomb. Dark libraries, like OU's, where the lights are at semi-creepy levels of low and the shelves are tall and full and make big shadows... mmm. Yes please. I'd like it better if instead of those laminate-wood chairs and tables they had big oak writing desks and leather armchairs, but let's be real. Most college students cannot be trusted to maintain really nice things, especially over many many years. But still. From an aesthetic standpoint, dark green leather armchairs and oak. Still, it's an amazing library. Seven floors, tons and tons and tons of books, maps, presentations, quiet people (astonishingly enough -the only floor that's ever loud is really the 2nd one, because all of the computers and printers are there. It's also really warm)... definitely one of my favorite libraries.

I need more books to read. I'll be honest. I've still got a couple I'm working on (so, so slowly), and I think once I get back to school I'll have a jump-start on ideas and whatnot, but right now with the preparations for moving and all, I'm just kind of coasting. Which isn't a bad thing.

Where do you like to go to read? Just out of curiosity.

Generic Crunk Rap

It's stuck in my head. Thanks a lot, MC Lars. (No, seriously. Thanks. I like the song).

Yesterday was coffee night. Oh, wait -that's every night. Last night I had coffee with my friend Carolyn, which made it a different sort of coffee night. :) Very fun though. It's always nice to catch up and talk to a fellow English department-er.

Reading-wise I've done nothing lately. Well, that's a lie. I read "Morris the Moose Goes to School" before I fell asleep last night. Otherwise I've done nothing. I'm packing for school and trying to cram in as much time as I can with my family and Jonah. Reading has taken a backseat to that. Tonight I'm planning on starting the Hard SF Renaissance anthology I snatched up last time I was at the library.

I need a good dose of science fiction in my life.

Who knows? Maybe it'll jump-start something for me.

Any ideas on what else I should be reading? I'm leaving for Athens to go back to school, so I'll have a much bigger library to muck around in and find things to read.

Another thing I'll be working on is setting up a reading corner in my dorm room -which, fortunately, will be a single. I'll have a room of my own! (Blatant Virginia Woolf reference. Please somebody catch it.)

I'm thinking (wishfully perhaps) that I'll have enough room for my papasan to come with me, since I don't really have that much stuff. I'm not going to take it with me when I first move in, but if I think I have room for it, it'll come down eventually and become my reading corner. It's the most comfortable chair on the face of the planet.

What's your reading corner like?

Trying to read over the noise of my little brother's Speed Racer Sky Jump toy is impossible, even for me. It sounds like a cement mixer. As much as I love explosions, car crashes and death-defying stunts, sometimes the desire for silence (or at least quiet) takes precedence.

Reading The Library at Night is not an experience to be had when noises abound. The book takes on the feel of a library and its many silent tomes, and it demands to be read when the reader is able to sit peacefully, still and soak up the stories. At least that's how it seems to me, book-obsessed as I am (this book proving to be no exception to the rule; in fact in many ways the desire for this book is greater than for others, this being a book about libraries -a book about books -a book written by a man who has a gorgeous library that, when I see pictures of it, fills me with envy).

The Library at Night is a book I read with coffee in mind or at hand, and with nothing else going on. It's spoiled otherwise. Stringent demands for a reader like me; I read anywhere: in class, in the car, in bed, outside, inside, in restaurants, while driving (okay, just kidding) -you get the idea.

The book is great. Habent sua fata libelli -my new favorite phrase. Books have their own fate.

Go buy a copy of TLaN. I haven't reviewed it yet, but I'm telling you now -you don't want to miss out on this.

The living dead

I'm a big fan of the show True Blood. I don't have HBO at my house, sadly, so I have to watch grainy videos of it online the day after each episode comes out. Yes I'm that dedicated, shut up. I'm not missing that much of the season just because I don't get the right channel! It's a fun show -by which I mean it's nasty, snarky and full of violence and blood -and not a little sex. The characters are good, the acting is better than what I expect and it's just a nice mindless way to spend an hour every week.

The books the show is based on are not that great; I'll be honest. I like them a lot, but as far as literature goes? They're trashy. They're trashy, low-brow, simply written, easily read little books. And that is what makes them great. They're just good enough to merit being read for pleasure. And unlike some books, they don't pretend to be the next big thing in literary history. They're just there for fun, sort of like that one friend who always wants to go out and party -fun for a while. It's the coffeeshop books you go to for substance (real, capital L Literary books like Jane Eyre or Rebecca), and it's these books you go to when you need a mental break and something light to read.

Thus, today's review: Living Dead in Dallas (aka season 2 of True Blood). Awesome. Get on it.

It's been a slow couple of weeks for me, reading-wise. The library's shittiness is finally catching up with me, and I seem to have run out of steam. I'm still reading Zadie Smith's book White Teeth (slowly but surely) and I have a few other things out...but on the whole, I think I need a bit of a breather. I'm trying to build up a log of reviews for when I go back to school and yet here I sit with something akin to writer's block. It's very frustrating. Like someone has cut off my arm, or denied me coffee. I know the best solution to writer's block is just to write, so I have been -every day, writing something. But none of it is really breaking through the review block I seem to have developed.

I have a book on curing writer's block (which is sort of a funny thing when you think about it -the idea of writing a book about how to be able to write when you can't. I don't know. I'm amused), but it's largely geared toward fiction writing, which I do...but which doesn't offer much help in writing reviews. I don't need to create believable characters with human depths and flaws in them to write a review, I just need to write about the characters other people have already created. Normally that's not a problem. The problem is that I'm not reading as much, as fast or with as much pleasure.

And for that I blame the library. I have 4 new books coming in the mail from Amazon; hopefully they'll be here within the next week. That will give me some motivation to read/write again, so there's definitely a light at the end of this particular tunnel. For the time being, I'm just going to keep plugging through the same stale offerings at my public library and attempting to find some sparks there.

Part 2

It's up! WOO party party. Everybody DANCE. Just kidding, you only need to go and check out the review. It'll make more sense if you refer to part 1 and then go to part 2 (especially if you haven't yet read part 1).

In other book news, I went to the library yesterday and, as expected, they had 1 of the 10 books I went in specifically looking for. Let that sink in. I went in looking for 10 books (which is a lot, admittedly) -none of them are rare books. None of them are particularly obscure. You know which one they had? Walden Two. My public library does not even possess a copy of Ender's Game. It wasn't checked out (or missing, a la Generation X, thanks to a certain someone I know), they just don't have it. How they get away with not having one of the most influential sci-fi books around, I don't know. They have plenty of copies of awful books that no one will ever read ever in a million years (not even me for the sake of a review. Okay maybe me), but not Ender's Game. They don't have Population Bomb -or On The Road by Jack Kerouac.

I speak sincerely when I ask with great gusto and much shaking of hands, what the fuck?!

I go to my local library a lot. No, really. I'm there about 2x a week on average, and that's 2x checking out new things (or trying to), not taking stuff back. It's not a bad looking library. It's got nice big windows and it's well-lit. The books and shelves are getting a bit worn, but they disguise that by constantly moving sections around so that if you don't go for a couple of months, when you come back nothing makes any sense whatsoever. There will be Christian Fiction where the Anne Rice used to be (Christian Fiction, by the way, is something that confuses me. Is it just overtly preachy? Why can't it just be moral fiction? Where's the Hindu Fiction?), and that's a little bit trippy. Speaking of Anne Rice, I finally, finally, on my umpteenth attempt, managed to snag one of the two copies of Interview With The Vampire that the library has. I've been trying, 2x/week since June 12 to get one.

Yeah.

My library is not good. It's never been good, although I may at some point have been under the impression that it was, since when I was about 12 I used to check out pretty much the same 5 or 6 books every time I went and I would just buy everything else from B. Dalton (another rant for another day. I do have to go to work at some point this morning). This is even before funding got shafted.

I really don't know what can be done about a shit-tastic library. Anyone have ideas? I'm considering trying Paperback Swap, despite it costing me in postage. It'll save on gas and (possibly) time and frustration. Does anyone have experience with it? Good? Bad? Some in between or extreme? Are there other sources you've found besides the library for inexpensive books? My income is small and quickly exhausted, despite me only buying coffee and books and occasionally a necessary item of clothing.

The used bookstores in Findlay aren't really calling to me at this point (although I have reviewed them) since the people I know who frequent them do so to get a new stash of trashy romance novels. While I have nothing personally against trashy romance novels -aside from their being trashy romance novels- I don't particularly want to read them.

So! Today went up the review of TTTM + Frankenstein. Maybe Friday will be something new, if you're lucky. Like The Great Gatsby. We'll see!